First Sunday of Advent (A)

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The Unknown Day and Hour   Lectionary: 1 Reading 1 -  Isaiah 2:1-5 Responsorial Psalm -  Psalm 122: 1-9 Reading 2 -  Romans 13:11-14 Alleluia -  Cf. Psalm 85:8 Gospel -  Matthew 24:37-44 '... Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.' Introduction  As we gather on this First Sunday of Advent , we also mark the beginning of the Church’s new liturgical calendar and a four-week preparation period leading up to Christmas. The word Advent comes from either of two Latin words, which simply mean “to come” (Ad-venire) or “to arrive” (Ad-ventus), and as early as the fourth (4th) century, Christians have had this special time of preparation towards Christmas. Of course, Advent is not merely a countdown to Christmas; Even as we begin the material preparations for the social celebration of Christmas, the liturgical celebrations of these weeks invite us to prepare ourselves for the coming of Jesus. But what does the co...
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Deacon Aspirant

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Back to School ...

The first year in formation is primarily focused on the spiritual aspect of the diaconate; although there are some academic classes that provide brief introductions to the Old Testament (Fall Semester) and the New Testament (Spring Semester) to aid in interpretation and exegesis.  Classes were twice a week on Monday and Wednesday evenings; and we were initially expected schlep down to the Pastoral Center in Braintree until COVID threw the whole program into chaos and everything went 100% remote for this year.  This was a HUGE blessing since the wives were also required to attend ... only now by Zoom instead of trying to figure out how to manage all this with only one car from two different work locations.   It took a bit to ramp up though and many of the instructors in the other classes were a tad technically challenged ... Having some prior experience with asynchronous learning for my own Masters degree from the University of Phoenix, I have to admit ... it could have been better ... but it all worked in the end.

In addition to the weekday classes, one Saturday a month, all the men in formation were required to attend a Spiritual Formation Day (again, this was via Zoom for this year).  Finally, there were two (2) weekend retreats (one with the wives one with just the men) that were required as well ... expect this year they were all cancelled because of COVID.

Each class would begin with Evening Prayer (Liturgy of the Hours) ... for this year, we did it as a class, taking turns as presider and reader; however, once the hybrid class model was stable, we did evening prayer with all the classes together and only the 3rd and 4th year did the presider and reader/reflector ... giving the newbies (which I was) a chance to get better at using the physical book (the app was not allowed).  I already had a good back ground on the Old Testament and New Testament where I was already aware of the academic consensus with respect to the "senses" for interpretation as well as the timeline for when they were written ... folks with a more fundamental/literalist view of scripture might find some of this troubling, but I found it still more or less on the conservative side and enjoyed it all quite a bit (and still learned a good amount of new information).  

I didn't get nearly as much from the "Aspirancy" classes which focused on a lot of guest speakers and their spirituality (what the deacons are), when I was actually more interested in "just the facts" about what deacons do (which I thought was a reasonable expectation given the title of Aspirancy for that year long class).  At times it seemed like there was a conspiracy to avoid any details about that (which now I realize was probably more because each deacon experience was very individual to that specific deacon).  It was still interesting and helpful ... just spread out and so general that I found myself getting bored and/or frustrated a lot (especially since none of these classes could be used in the Master of Arts in Ministry (MAM) program through St John's Seminary that some of us were interested in taking advantage of (but no-one has actually explained to us yet).  More on that later.

There were a few additional requirements/activities this year as well.  Each semester, we were expected to volunteer for a day at a charity within the Archdiocese ... so my two this year was both outside (COVID remember) where one was picking (aka Gleaning) left over produce in farmer fields to ship to the Boston Food Bank and the other a demolition with Habitat for Humanity in Lynn.  Normally we would have also done a long weekend (60+ hours for the MBK Plunge Weekend) with an organization known as My Brother's Keeper ... but that was pushed off a year because of lingering issues with COVID.

I also had to submit to the Bishop a hand written letter (along with one from my wife as well) asking to be accepted as a Candidate for the Permanent Diaconate in Boston.  Over the summer we conducted a self-evaluation (readiness scored across various dimensions) and interviewed with another deacon and his wife as a couple (so I had to bring my wife) to discern if I was ready to advance to the next stage ... which I did ... but one of our number withdrew and we were now down to eight (8).



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