Two Months and Counting Till Ordination Day

I am writing this on July 22, the year of Our Lord, 2012.  In two months, God willing, I and nine other gentlemen will be in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, being ordained as Permanent Deacons for the Roman Catholic Church in Boston, Massachusetts. 

This will be the culmination of many years of formation, academic classes, days of recollection, and retreats.  And the end of the process suddenly seems so close.  We recently gathered, as a class, in a local parish church to practice the deacon’s role in the celebration of the Eucharist.  Last week, my wife and I met with the administrator of a parish I may be assigned to.  And yesterday, I picked up the alb that I will wear on my ordination day.  We are all waiting to schedule our final fittings for our dalmatics.

There is still a lot of preparation work to do.  There are invitation cards to prepare and mail; seating plans to approve, and receptions to plan.  But at the same time, there is the waiting for the results of our final evaluation interviews, and the marks from our last academic semester still have to be reported.  So nothing is written in stone.

I feel these next couple of months should be for me a time of preparation, with more intensive prayer, and more study and reflection on the call of the diaconate. I hope it will be a fruitful time.