between two worlds, the secular and the profane.” He points out that it is only the deacon among
the threefold hierarchy of the Church who can give this unique contribution to the mission of the
Church.76 Once ordained a deacon, besides living his life in the world as he did before, must
also answer to his bishop and the Church. This complexity of existence is not a choice, a deacon,
as Fagerberg describes, “serves the hierarchical, visible, earthly society, and the spiritual,
invisible, heavenly enriched mystical body. He must serve them both. He is a man of the Church,
and so serves ‘one complex reality coalesced from a divine and human element,’ (Lumen
Gentium 8.) which means we will find him in the mystical and the mundane, as at home in the
spiritual as he is in the street.”77 It is this dual existence which is at the heart of the diaconate. It
is the way the deacon can connect to the faithful and draw them to the Eucharist. Bishop Luc
Bouchard, of Albert, Canada in a pastoral letter referenced in a reflection by James C. Kruggel,
Ph.D., explains that, “the deacon through his visible dedication to works of charity and justice by
his prominence at the altar symbolized the necessary connection between the gospel of love,
justice and peace and the liturgical life of the Church.”
76
77
James Keating, ed., The Character of the Deacon: Spiritual and Pastoral Foundations. 150-151.
ibid, 148.
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