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. But all that was to change the moment I read that piece in Ad Clerum. 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.
8 THE AMPLEFORTH JOURNAL 2021-2022