The Deacon

“For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths” (2 Tm 4:3-4).

Paul’s warning to Timothy is especially relevant today. It is clear that we are living in a post-Christian culture that seems to be devolving into an anti-Christian one. Year after year, polls show a decline in Christian church membership. Christianity is passé for enlightened moderns. Or so we are told.

It is, therefore, more important than ever for the baptized to proclaim the Good News. It is time to invite the lost to meet the person of Jesus, the Christ who conquered sin and death on a cross. At the conclusion of every Mass, the deacon exhorts the congregation to do the mission — the mission of proclaiming the Gospel.

While it is the role of all Christians to announce the kerygma, it is literally what deacons are ordained to do when the bishop places the Gospels in the hands of the newly ordained, saying: “Receive the Gospel of Christ whose herald you have become. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.”

This means that while all the baptized are called to evangelize, deacons have a special charism to proclaim the Gospel. Many, if not most, deacons engage in informal evangelization, but more formal efforts are needed. Perhaps deacon formation needs to better prepare deacons for this increasingly important vocation.

Jesus Is the Answer

It has always been important, of course. But we are living in a culture where so many are lost, lonely, depressed and drifting without hope, purpose or meaning; it is time to muster the troops into battle.

Many young people, especially Gen Zers, seem to be searching for something more than the religion of materialism and individualism. My husband and I are seeing this in the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults. This year we have several unbaptized young people coming to find out who this Jesus is. What does the Church have to offer? They come for every session. In our approximately 30 years of being involved in RCIA (now OCIA), we have never had so many unbaptized young people enter.

During one-on-one meetings, these young people have expressed how lost they are. They are looking for a secure anchor. But I wasn’t quite sure what they were trying to convey. The stereotypical Gen Zer is supposed to be a woke snowflake. But, of course, stereotypes are superficial and often just false.

So, I did my due diligence and searched down the rabbit hole known as the internet. There I discovered thoughtful young people who were aware that there is something very wrong with the culture they are embedded in. There is this from a Substack called Girls, run by a writer named Freya India: “People say Gen Z follow these new faiths because we crave belonging and connection, but what if we also crave commandments? What if we are desperate to be delivered from something? To be at the mercy of something? I think we underestimate how hard it is for young people today to feel their way through life without moral guardrails and guidance, to follow the whims and wishes of our ego and be affirmed by adults every step of the way. I’m not sure that’s actual freedom. And if it is, I’m not sure freedom is what any of us actually wants.”

India’s questions are what we hear from the young people who are searching for meaning in their lives. Pope Benedict XVI, as he recounts in volume 1 of “Jesus of Nazareth,” knows that Jesus is the answer. He wrote: “He has brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about our origin and destiny: faith, hope, and love. It is only because of our hardness of heart that we think this is too little.”

SUSAN KEHOE is co-director of OCIA at Christ the King Parish in Des Moines, Iowa, along with her husband, Deacon Larry Kehoe. She writes at adeaconswife.com.