GUEST COLUMN
By Deacon Wesley Lindsay

There is a saying I have heard all my life, and it still rings true: “The Lord moves in mysterious ways.” My faith journey is a living testament to this truth. When I look back on each misstep, each wrong turn, and every encounter, both good and bad, I can now see that they all prepared me for the calling I answered more than seven years ago. At each of the three levels of my progression – discernment, formation and ordination – God has revealed more and more of Himself and His plan.

When I was much younger, I believed I was ready to understand the “real” message of the Almighty. However, Hebrews 5:12-14 compares followers of God to children who must be fed with milk because they are not yet mature enough for solid food. I thought differently about myself and craved the solid food of spiritual maturity. Be careful what you ask for – you just may get it.

Discernment
God’s hand was moving in my life, even when I had no clue. A friend and Brother Knight encouraged me to apply for the permanent diaconate. There was just one problem: the application process was already closed. However, I decided to test a core Christian tenet: faith. I submitted my application anyway, just to see what would happen. To my surprise, it was accepted despite being late! I was admitted to aspirancy.

The aspirancy period is when prospective candidates begin to learn about the ministry and duties of the permanent deacon. For married men, their wives are encouraged to attend the monthly meetings, usually held on Saturdays. This step is crucial because a wife’s active support and consent are required at each stage of her husband’s progression toward ordination. She must write a letter indicating her support for his journey. If the wife is not fully on board, the permanent diaconate is not in that man’s future.

Formation
After about nine months of aspirancy, my six brother candidates and I had to write a letter to our bishop requesting admission to candidacy. This is when our real formation began. We embarked on a Master’s degree-level religious education program directed by Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. This was our seminary of Christian education. Along the way, we completed practicums specific to our Catholic faith, such as homiletics and the sacraments of baptism and marriage.

A funny thing happened at each of these steps: I began to notice a change not only in myself but in my fellow candidates as well. This is no slight to them – from the start, they were already good, God-fearing men of service! Yet somehow, their goodness was magnified, and they became, in my opinion, even stronger in the faith.

The hardest part of formation, in my experience, was keeping an open mind. I thought I knew the Bible and the ways of the Almighty. Boy, was I mistaken! Isaiah 55:8-9 made this point abundantly clear to me. This is where Spring Hill College truly shined. All our instructors provided the help and support we needed, making the educational experience second to none. Reading a variety of Christian authors and texts was fundamental, and now I have an extensive theological library. Formation also taught me valuable time management skills – we all learned to appreciate the blessing of a 45-minute time gap!

Ordination
July 16, 2022, will forever be one of the happiest days of my life. Almost five years of preparation had led me to that moment. Another chapter had begun, filled with the promise and expectation of serving God and His people.

In the nearly three years since my ordination, my eyes have witnessed so much – some good, some bad. At this stage of my journey, I hold onto the words of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 4:12-13: “I have the strength for everything through Him who empowers me.” Thanks be to God!

For more information on the permanent diaconate visit https://jacksondiocese.org/office-of-the-permanent-diaconate.

(Deacon Wesley Lindsay was ordained in 2022 and serves at the Cathedral of St. Peter in Jackson.)

FROM THE HERMITAGE
By sister alies therese

I learned from Elizabeth Lesser (The Seeker’s Guide, pg. 397), that “When Bishop Desmond Tutu introduced Nelson Mandela at his inauguration … he described him as a man who had obuntubotho … the essence of a human being. It speaks of humanness, gentleness, putting yourself out for others and being vulnerable, embracing compassion and toughness.” I would add that he was a man of shalom, one for whom things were as they ought to be. This would be our goal, our calling – our obuntubotho.

Lent has stirred us, challenged us, or gone quickly and unremarkably. Dionysius the Areopagite (5-6C CE), though his real identity remains unknown, as do his exact writing dates. He was known for ‘the rapt impotence of the mind before God,’ a spirituality of self-emptying. To discover the essence of the human person is to find this spirit of the Christ, the anointed One, and not to pay so much attention to ourselves. Did you come to know Jesus better this Lent? Did you discover what Jesus has done for you and what you are called to do for others? Are you willing to surrender all and enter the darkness?

Dionysius writes, “Entering the darkness that surpasses understanding, we shall find ourselves brought, not just to brevity of speech, but to perfect silence and unknowing.” And what good is that you ask? Well, in that silence, the fullness of God resides! He goes on, “Emptied of all knowledge, man is joined in the highest part of himself, not with any created thing, nor with himself, nor with another, but with the One who is altogether unknowable, and in knowing nothing, he knows in a manner that surpasses understanding.” Once we have let go of ourselves, entered into prayer and silence, we can move to be of some small service to others.

In the Pirke Avot 5:27 (a collection of rabbinic sayings compiled between 250 and 275 CE), though many sages lived long before and very little is known about them. They seem to “speak in one great sane voice of the necessity of enacting holiness and making prayer real in the service of others, bringing things into harmony.” (Wisdom of the Jewish Sages, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, 1993). Here is an example:
“Ben Hei Hei said: Effort is its own reward.

“We are here to do. And through doing to learn; and through leaning to know; and through knowing to experience wonder; and through wonder to attain wisdom; and through wisdom to find simplicity; and through simplicity to give attention; and through attention to see what needs to be done.”

What have you discovered that needs to be done? Wash, rinse, repeat … deal with your family issues, care for a sick neighbor, tutor a child, give money to a disaster fund or children’s hospital. You have found the one that works for you. Lent helps us find the one best suited to us.

Consider all the ways Jesus was a man of prayer and service! A man of shalom … everything about Him spoke of the deep relationship He had with the Father, so that he might do the work the Father had given Him. That gives us clues as to how we might grow. Even if we can list the seven deadly sins, the beatitudes, and the commandments, they are worthless if we do not want to allow shalom to fill our lives. We grow by prayer and action.

Mother Teresa, the saint of the slums, did not have an easy life. After she had gone back to God, folks opened her diaries and found great darkness and difficulty, and some even complained that she should ‘not be considered a saint.’ Really? No, it was her suffering and surrender that brought her ever deeper into God’s heart so that she might minister to those in distress. She gave us this to help remind us: “Loving as He loves, helping as He helps, giving as He gives, serving as He serves, rescuing as He rescues, being with Him twenty-four hours, touching Him in His distressing disguise.” It is that disguise that we have to pay attention to. Just as we could be ‘entertaining angels.’ we might also be serving Jesus in distress. There is still time to allow Lent to be moments of deep conversion and a new beginning, well on the way to shalom, on the way to obuntubotho.

Joseph Campbell, the philosopher, reminded Elizabeth Lesser that “from sacrifice comes bliss.” She says, “that is a liberating concept if learned from the real-life experience of following one’s heart.”
Blessings.

(sister alies therese is a canonical hermit who prays and writes.)

Reflections on Life
By Melvin Arrington

When the subject of prayer comes up, many people immediately think of petition, that is, asking God for a favor. But petition constitutes only one type of what the church calls “raising of one’s mind and heart to God” (CCC 2559); other categories include penitence, praise, thanksgiving, intercession, and silence in the form of meditation and contemplation. The Mass, which is often referred to as “the great prayer of the church,” contains all of these. It is, in essence, one long sustained prayer.

Bishop Robert Barron calls prayer “intimate communion and conversation with God.” I like that definition because it highlights the element of intimacy, which suggests both closeness and privacy. Here’s a story that may or may not be true. In a certain Baptist Church there used to be an old gentleman, a deacon, who was often called upon to pray during the service. But he always prayed so softly that it was difficult for other members of the congregation to hear him. Once, after the service, a young man went up to the deacon and told him, “You need to speak louder when you pray. I couldn’t hear you.” The old gentleman looked at him and said in a gentle voice, “I wasn’t talking to you.” That deacon must have had an intimate personal relationship with the Lord.

Another indispensable aspect of prayer is an attitude of humility. When we address our Creator and Lord, it’s always from a position of dependence. He is God and we are his creation, his creatures. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows what’s best for us. So, we should pray, “Thy will be done.” And yet, there are things that we want, and God, the source of all goodness, wants to give us good things, but He wants us to ask for them.

The fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus said, “Do not be troubled if you do not immediately receive from God what you ask Him, for He desires to do something even greater for you while you cling to Him in prayer.” Those words are particularly meaningful to me because of something that happened many years ago during my job- hunting days. A certain job that I wanted and needed badly came open. Upon learning that the position was given to someone else, my spirit sank very low, and I felt like abandoning my job search. However, two or three days later an offer came in for a much better position, one that I could not have accepted had the first one worked out. As a friend of mine once said, “His will is much better than my plan.” Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen really knew what he was talking about when he remarked, “Some day we will thank God not only for what He gave us, but also for that which He refused.” Amen!

And then there’s perseverance. Several years ago, in preparation for retirement, I began asking the Lord to reveal to me a place where I could serve after retiring. This was an ongoing part of my daily prayer for two or three years. In the meantime, I had convinced my mother, who had been living in a nursing home in Madison, to move to a similar facility in my hometown, so I could check on her more frequently. My first few visits were painful because I’ve always felt nervous and uneasy around hospitals, clinics and nursing homes.

And then something marvelous happened. The more I visited the facility the more comfortable I felt being around the sick. Gradually, I began to make friends with many of the nursing home residents. Before long, I was helping them get around the building in their wheelchairs and participate in various group activities. I had become a volunteer! God had answered my prayer, but in a totally unexpected way because a nursing home was way outside of my comfort zone, and it would have been the last location I would have chosen. Nevertheless, He chose that place for me, and now I see the wisdom of His plan. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

The old saying, “prayer changes things,” remains true. But it doesn’t change God; it changes us. We learn to call on Him for help rather than relying solely on ourselves. We learn to shift the worries and cares of this world from ourselves to our Heavenly Father. Instead of agonizing over things we can’t control, we take them to the Lord, confident that He will answer them in His own time and according to His perfect will. As Jesus tells us, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:28-30)

What a wonderful gift prayer is! What an amazing privilege we have! Almighty God, our Maker, is calling us to intimate communion with Him. Just the very thought of what this means is awe-inspiring! Why would anyone who hears Him reject the call? Right now, during Lent, we are all being invited to enter into that relationship. We need to make time for prayer. This is not the kind of gift to be put up on the shelf and forgotten. The church has a wealth of prayers to draw upon. The saints are ready to pray for us and with us. And God is waiting for us to have a conversation with Him.

(Melvin Arrington is a Professor Emeritus of Modern Languages for the University of Mississippi and a member of St. John Oxford.)