The Deacon as a Minister of Hope

This last weekend, our annual Deacons Conference took place, this time in Basingstoke, and many of our deacons and their wives from across the Diocese were present, along with Fr. Dominic Adeiza, the Director of the Diaconate, and his team. I joined the conference on Sunday for Mass and after lunch I gave a talk about the Deacon as a Minister of Hope. The documents of Vatican II speak of the Deacon as a Minister of Charity, but I invited everyone to think about the deacon and his wife as a minister of Hope, especially in these times when the news can seem so bleak. Hope is a gift of God that we should pray for: it is the joyful expectation that God is going to act in response to our prayers and that one day He will bring us to the happiness of heaven. Hope “transforms life and the world from within” (Benedict XVI Spe Salvi 6). I then spoke about the Holy Year of Jubilee next year, 2025, with the theme chosen by the Holy Father ”Pilgrims of Hope.” This is a real opportunity for every member of the Church to pray for a renewal of hope by going on a pilgrimage as a ‘pilgrim of hope,’ ideally to one of the six shrine churches designated for the Diocese: Jersey and Guernsey, the Cathedral, Sacred Heart Bournemouth, St. James’s Reading and St. Edmund’s Southampton. I then turned specifically to the deacon, especially his role in the Church’s liturgy, his teaching and preaching, and his care of the poor. I made some practical suggestions to help: that the deacon himself prays for the gift of hope in order to be a man of hope, that in preaching he should not neglect speaking about heaven and the life of the world to come, and that the people he should be closest to are those most need of hope: those who are suffering. The Holy Year 2025 is a great opportunity to put all this into practice more energetically.

You can read my talk in full by clicking here.