The Holy Father made a beautiful reference to the centrality of the diaconate to the life of the Church and to the life of Jesus Christ in his homily to the newly appointed cardinals two days ago.
I am using the Italian translation in rendering this English version of his comments here.
“To be united with Christ in faith and in communion with him means to be ‘rooted and founded in charity’ (Eph. 3:17), the fabric that unites all the members of the Body of Christ.
“In the Church no one is lord, but all are called, all are sent, all have arrived and are guided by divine grace. This is also our security! Only by listening again to the words of Jesus, who calls ‘come and follow me’, only by returning to the original vocation is it possible to know one’s proper presence and mission in the Church as authentic disciples….
“The criterion of greatness and primacy according to God is not domination, but service; the diaconate is the fundamental law of the disciple and of the Christian community, and it lets us see something of the ‘Lordship of God’. Jesus also indicated this point: the Son of Man, who came to serve; he brought together his mission under the category of service, understood not in a general sense, but in a concrete manner in the Cross, in the total gift of life as a ‘ransom’, as redemption for the many, and he pointed out this as the condition for following him…..
“It is not the logic of the world, of power according to human criteria, but a logic of bending over to wash feet, the logic of service, the logic of the Cross that is at the base of every exercise of authority…..” (Bold print mine)
The washing of feet is at the base of every exercise of authority!
Let us pray that all of us deacons take to heart these words. Those of us who are permanent deacons have a good sense of this. Our brother who share in our Order, i.e., priests and bishops by virtue of their ordination to the diaconate, may benefit from them also, as clearly the Holy Father was directing these words to them specifically last Saturday.
