A LIFE IN THE DAY OF A PERMANENT DEACON

REVEREND NICHOLAS REYNOLDS (D61)

The approach came as a shock and my reaction took me totally by surprise.

My parish priest after Mass one Sunday early in 1991 passed me a copy of the latest Ad Clerum, open at the page where the bishop was asking his priests for possible suitable candidates for the permanent diaconate that he was anxious to expand in the diocese. “Read that bit, Nick and tell me what you think” he said , as he pointed to the open page. I barely knew what a Permanent Deacon was, the diaconate was still in its infancy and there were only 6 in the Portsmouth Diocese in which I was living.

I was 49 years old with 5 children between the ages of 8 and 18 and a demanding job in export to Europe, the Middle East and South America so I was away quite a lot. My wife, Meg, was at the time running the diocesan bookshop and studying also for an external Theology degree. We were both involved in our little parish of Alresford, where she had a naturally higher profile than mine. Being away a lot and family commitments largely determined how much time I was prepared to give to the Church and the parish.

My reaction came totally out of nowhere. Two incidents that had taken place in my life about which I had not thought about since they had occurred burst into my mind – one back in the early 60’s and the other in the late 80’s. It was a shock because it was suddenly clear that those two incidents and the call to diaconate were somehow inextricably linked. It was scary – a kind of ‘“divine” nudge ? It stopped me in my tracks, yet I just knew then that I had to say ‘yes’! But that didn’t stop me trying to run away from it for the next 18 months. Scariest of all was the thought of having to preach! I shared all my doubts with my parish priest who listened patiently and then just told me to come back in a month with an answer. I did, and said ’Yes’.

This calling unearthed a second vocation which somehow had to be interwoven with my marriage to Meg with all its responsibilities that go with raising and providing for a family of 5 young children. I was a layman when Meg married me and now, 20 years later, I was becoming a clergyman. The diaconate would now have to be slotted in; but where and how? Inevitably marriage and family dynamics would change yet one of the first things we were told was that the order of life’s priorities had to be: family, work, and then diaconate.

One of the first consequences of this was that Meg had to lessen her parish profile to allow me to increase mine. Not easy for either of us and it never came between us. But, as always, the Lord knew what He was doing because seemingly totally unconnected with my move into the diaconate, Meg, a fluent Spanish speaker, was asked by the Catholic Chaplain to Winchester Prison to assist him initially with a number of South American women recently arrived and serving sentences for bringing drugs into the country. Another ‘divine nudge’?

It was a ministry for which she was ideally suited and which she did for the next 10 years until her premature death in 2006 from a brain tumour.

When I announced to the family over lunch that Sunday in 1991 that I was going forward for the diaconate, there was a sense of uncertainty and unease among the children as to what was this going to mean for us as a family. These were issues that concerned me too, as this was a whole new way of life to accommodate.

Questions and comments from the children started coming: Will you be the same Dad to me? Will we be having to spend more time in church and less with you? Promise me you will NEVER EVER wear a dog-collar when collecting us from school or a party or around any of our friends? In a more humorous vein Will it help you queue jump at the Tesco checkout? And, if I wasn’t careful, I could be like Rowan Atkinson in “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

Will you have to dress like a priest? said one of my boys. Will you be different in the way you behave? More pious? Less fun? Still wanting to play as much table tennis with me? What about us? As the family of a dog-collar wearer, maybe we would have to be different? Pray more? Swear less? Could we still watch Baywatch?

He now says, looking back on all that: I noted that any increased piety or reduced enthusiasm for table tennis seemed to be staying at church, and the Dad I knew was still present and correct once back home after Mass. A great relief.

In the order of the Ordained Ministry in the Church, that of Deacon is the third after Bishop and Priest. There are two levels of Deacon: - the Transient Deacon, usually in his last year before priestly ordination, and the Permanent Deacon, usually a married man over the age of 35.

The order of Deacon is traced back to Acts 6:1-6 where seven men were called to service of the community, preaching and spreading the Gospel message. As the role developed in the early Church he became the eyes and ears of the bishop, “his right-hand man”. But early in the 5th Century deacons had their wings clipped, as it were, because they became too powerful and so their numbers declined. The ministry of Permanent Deacon was finally revived in 1972 by Pope Paul VI following the directives of Vatican ll. A deacon is ordained by a bishop in line with tradition. Though his ministry in modern times is parish based, it is a deacon, not a priest, today who stands at the altar alongside the bishop who is presiding – like his pilot-fish !

It has been left to bishops worldwide to decide upon the introduction of permanent deacons in their dioceses The USA went in for them in a big way. In the UK the uptake was slower. I was the 14th to be ordained in the Portsmouth Diocese (to which I still belong even though I now live in London). Now 25 years later, it has nearly 60. The Diocese of Westminster has about half that number - a slow starter under the late Cardinal Basil Hume.

My training period lasted 3 years and began in September 1992. Candidates attended lectures one Sunday a month in term time at Wonersh Seminary, and wives were also expected to attend. There were about 15 of us drawn from four or five dioceses across the South and East of England. At that time the training programme was not nearly as stringent and structured as it is now, 30 years later, due largely to the fact that the Permanent Diaconate was still relatively in its infancy in the whole Church. As far as I can recall, the training was delivered almost exclusively by priests, covering relevant Canon Law, Theology, Church documents, Scripture, the Sacraments and Liturgy. Only one weekend in all this time was devoted to preaching, and we were expected to preach in our parishes after ordination on about one Sunday in four.

We were focused principally on the necessary background to the principal roles of ‘diaconia’ which are Altar, Word and Charity.

Altar: because he assists the presider (bishop and priests)

“..in the celebration of the divine mysteries”

Word: “he proclaims the Gospel and preaches the Word of God”.

Charity (I prefer the word Service and Pastoral Care): “he conforms himself in the likeness of Christ the Servant whom he represents” (I’ve always prioritised them in reverse order: Service, Word and Altar.)

These are very simple thumbnail definitions which, when unpacked in the context of a parish, embrace a wide spectrum of its community life and activities - sacramental, liturgical, administrative and pastoral and so on.

Before candidates are accepted, the Church needs to be sure that certain requirements are met as set out in Church law and the relevant Vatican Documents based on Pope Paul Vl’s directives:

“In the case of married men, care should be taken that only those are promoted to the diaconate who have lived as married men for a number of years and have shown themselves to be capable of running their own homes, and whose wives and children lead a truly Christian life and have good reputations”.

Moreover, in addition to stability of family life, married candidates cannot be admitted unless “their wives not only consent, but also have the Christian moral character and attributes which will neither hinder their husbands’ ministry nor be out of keeping with it”.

So it is abundantly clear that suitability of the wife is critical. And so it should be!

My Ordination on the Feast of the Sacred Heart in June 1995 was a very happy event conducted by Bishop Crispian Hollis in our small church in Alresford attended by over 200 people, with an inter-church choir and a particularly large contingent of clergy, which would have been Meg’s doing through her popular role running the diocesan bookshop where most of them were regular customers. The reception which followed was held in the teetotal Methodist Church Hall within walking distance, so we had our drinks in the car park on the way there!

About a month before, I was having a serious wobble! In my lunch hour one day, I popped into one of the churches I know well, close to where I worked. The sun was shining through the beautiful Rose Window and as I gazed at it as I had done many times before, I noticed for the very first time that in the ‘bullseye’ of the window was the figure of the Sacred Heart ! Uncanny. Why had I never noticed it before? But the message was clear: the third ‘divine’ nudge … and my wobble vanished!

By now 3 of my children were at university and the 2 boys away at boarding school. Then 11 months later I was made redundant but with a good package, thank God. I started up on my own making use of all my trade contacts and export experience to drum up some income. Being at home more meant that I had more time to devote to my ministry. As the parish priest was working full time for the diocese in another role, he left me to attend to pastoral visiting, baptism and marriage preparation, helping families of recently deceased plan funerals, undertake RCIA., organising the Easter and Christmas liturgies etc. As the parish was small with only 120 Mass goers the load was not huge.

Where Mass was not required I would occasionally take funerals and conduct marriages, and cremations. On one occasion I totally forgot, after one cremation to inter the ashes a few days later for the widow who had just lost her husband. She never held it against me. On the contrary she gave me a big hug when I went to apologise, hiding behind a huge bunch of flowers. She had been very worried that some accident had befallen me! My sense of shame was intense and we became even firmer friends!

It soon dawned on me that in the eyes of the community Ordination makes a difference. I realised that suddenly I was seen as a person worthy of greater trust and therefore available and accessible pastorally in a way I wasn’t before. (Meg and I decided that I would spare one evening a week for the parish and so I had to learn to say ‘no’ when asked to do more!)

The Diaconal ministry is necessarily different from that of the presbyterate both in essence (‘being’) and in the detail (’doing’) though this may not be immediately evident on the surface either to him or to others, especially as after ordination they ‘hit the deck running’. Apart from Eucharistic Consecration and Absolution, there is effectively nothing the deacon cannot ‘do’ that the priest does. And that does nothing to help either deacon or others to grasp that the calling to diaconate is not the same as the calling to priesthood. It is about ‘being’ but in a different way. In fact, it took me 10 years before I could preach about how I understood my ministry.

There is a constant tension in trying to keep the balance between the Deacon’s dual roles of layman (family man with mortgage etc) and cleric, and the better the balance the more clearly the role of deacon is understood by everyone. His role is on one level to be the bridge between priest and laity yet he will always have one foot on either side of the fence. Among many there is the feeling of unease that the diaconate is just another layer of clerical hierarchy preventing the development of collaborative ministry. Not without reason, therefore, do women in particular feel ‘here we go again’.

When it came to my children’s weddings, I walked my daughters up the aisle. At my sons’ I was in the pew alongside Meg and the family. When my youngest son was confirmed I was in the pew with him and the family, not alongside the bishop at the altar.

Importantly, the diaconate is not about Power. It is about Service. The diaconate will never be fully understood, I fear, if deacons are allowed to appear too clericalised. In my experience when at clergy gatherings or inset days, for instance, it is deacons who appear in clerical dress while the priests come in mufti.

I have never possessed a black suit and will only wear a dog-collar when it is pastorally appropriate – like visiting a hospital or Care Homes. On other occasions when necessary I wear a small cross in my lapel.

I found preaching to be the most difficult aspect of the ministry - and still do. It was from the start my greatest dread. In practice putting each homily together is a bit like ‘pulling teeth’. I deal with this by having a blank sheet of paper and pencil and asking the Lord for inspiration on the basis that He knows who needs to hear what: and then I leave the rest to Him. More divine nudging!

In 1999 I was asked by Bishop Crispian to set up Child Protection in the diocese according to the directives of the Nolan Review. Each parish had to have its own Child Protection Team and training would be delivered to both clergy and laity across the diocese, often assisted by input from the statutory authorities. The Review contained 83 recommendations and is considered by many worldwide as the most robust available. The consequences, as we know, for failing to meticulously follow procedures can be very damaging and far reaching.

Early on and still green behind the ears I launched into my first training session before about 40 newly appointed parish CP officers. Things began to go horribly wrong when I got my papers in the wrong order and lost my way! Cringingly embarrassing and humiliating. But people were very kind.

After 6 years I resigned my Child Protection role in order to care for Meg in the last months of her life. Following her death I found security in immersing myself in my ministry but soon found that I was experiencing ‘Church overload’ which answered questions that some were already asking whether I would be going forward for the priesthood.

Happily, the Lord seemed to have other plans for me.

About a year later I re-met Lis whom I had not seen for 40 years since the mid 60’s when briefly we had been ‘an item’. We were widowed 3 months apart and had both been born and brought up in Portugal, so we had a lot in common. The rest, as they say, is history!

The fact that Lis is Church of England has not been a problem, thankfully. On the contrary she is extremely supportive, respecting and encouraging, and for whom her faith is also very important.

We married 2 years later once the Vatican eventually, and with the help of firm intervention from the bishop, discovered that the request for permission for me to remarry - as required by the Church in the case of widowed deacons - had lain there for a number of months in the wrong in-tray! I chose to move to Twickenham where we now live and where Lis had made her life. Between us we now have 7 children and 17 grandchildren, 12 of whom are mine all under the age of 15. And both sets of families get on like old friends. Such a great blessing!

With these growing family commitments, I chose not to incardinate into the Westminster Diocese. Although now attached to the parish of St James in Twickenham I do not figure officially on any parish or diocesan records. In that respect I’m a kind of ‘phantom deacon’. However I help out when possible if requested – usually for baptisms and cremations, and in other ways – pastoral and liturgical. There is also a Care Home I’ve been visiting regularly for the past 10 years.

On being asked recently how I thought I’d succeeded in doing what I had been called to do, I found it difficult to answer apart from saying “you’d better ask God“. One of the mysteries of life is the way the God uses us. Doors open along the way. You either walk through them or He has to pull you through, which is what I feel happened to me. What I have grown to realise is that once through the door He has so much to offer to enrich your understanding of who you are and how He wants you to be. He keeps me going through the encouragement I receive from the affirmation I get especially from my children, and from the way Lis has helped me to accept the gifts I have which are God given and not of my doing.

This comes across strongly when I spend time with the sick and the dying. I come away inspired and humbled by their dignified acceptance of their own condition of vulnerability, helplessness and dependency, and I tell them that I bank all this to draw upon later for strength should anything similar happen to me.

Reluctant as I have been to step beyond my comfort zone in so much of my life my Faith tells me that the ‘Divine’ has nudged and prodded me all the way with amazing patience – a bit like a Driving Instructor.

Perhaps it’s just as well, therefore, that I still feel I need my ‘L’ plates on.