Cardinal Hummes, Prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy, wrote a letter to all deacons on the feast of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr. He calls us to sanctity through rigorous prayer, especially Lectio Divina, and to renewed involvement with the poor.
The Synod on the Word of God was celebrated last October and prompts this letter, perhaps.
The Cardinal is pushing for greater and deeper preparation of deacons in Scriptural studies and in a spirituality rooted in Scripture and carried out in service to the poor. He calls upon the early deacons as examples for contemporary deacons. This is refreshing for me, as I have always thought that we cannot come to a mature and contemporary theology of the diaconate, nor a fully diaconal spirituality, without grounding in our roots, i.e., scripture, tradition and the diaconate as lived out in the early decades/centuries of the Church.
Read the letter in its entirety at: www.clerus.org/clerus/dati/2009-08/13-13/10agosto2009_en.html
