Can women be deacons? Can divorced people be deacons? I don’t hear much about deacons at all these days, let alone about these two questions. Maybe our culturally-driven preoccupation with prominent pastors and other high profile Christian leaders draws our attention away from the multitude of faithful deacons who serve Christ anonymously in churches all over the world. In this post we’ll spend a little time reviewing the New Testament teaching on deacons and then speak to the two questions raised above.
Archives for July 2022
The Blessed Virgin, a Wedding Party with Problems, and a Lesson on Prayer.
It’s helpful to understand the language that different churches use to describe Mary, and it’s fun to ponder what she was thinking when she told Jesus the wine had run out at the wedding feast. There’s even more value for us when we think of Mary’s request as a model of prayer. Are we mindful of the hour of Jesus’ passion when we pray, or do we just blurt out prayers assuming that God exists to meet our personal needs in the way we want them met? Hopefully we’re learning, as Mary was, about cruciform praying. Our requests, like hers, need to be in step with the hour of Jesus’ passion, when he prayed three times, “I want your will to be done, not mine.”