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  • The Heart of the Diaconate: Communion with the Servant Mysteries of Christ by James Keating
  • David W. Fagerberg
The Heart of the Diaconate: Communion with the Servant Mysteries of Christ by James Keating (New York: Paulist Press, 2015), 79 pp.

WHEN MEDIEVAL CARTOGRAPHERS were drawing up a map of the world and came to a place where they knew there was a landmass but they could not circumscribe it because it had not been adequately explored, they wrote terra incognita at the edge of the map. Something was up there—perhaps something important—but they were not sure what to say about it. Their picture of the world was incomplete until more work could be done.

The terra incognita on the map of ecclesiology is a landmass called the Diaconate. We know that something is up there, probably important, but we cannot describe it for want of a more adequate explanation. We have heard reports from visitors to the area in the fourth or sixth centuries, but their reports are difficult to decipher. It would be useful to chart this territory because it is bordered by the laity on the one side and by the presbyterate and episcopacy on the other, and discerning it would give greater clarity to these two lands. Most of us do not know what life there is like: transitional guests visit for a year, but it would be nice to hear from someone who is both a permanent citizen and could theologically describe what life there involves.

James Keating is among the few possessing both these desired characteristics. Himself a permanent deacon, he is Director of Theological Formation at the Institute for Priestly Formation located at Creighton University. And he uses a spiritual compass to find his way around the Diaconate, thereby describing its theological meaning and not merely its practical activity. Understanding the identity of the permanent deacon requires going deeper than a list of functions. If he is understood only by a functional rubric, then he comes across as either an overqualified layman or an underqualified priest: “Diaconate ministry is not ‘essential’ in the sense that a priest is ‘needed’ to hear confessions, celebrate Eucharist, in anointing the sick, the deacon can be easily dismissed” (6); and “when an inquirer approaches the deacon director to initially discuss his attraction to the diaconate, he is filled with pragmatic questions. … He wants to measure the requirements of a “program” against his competencies in the quest to judge his own possible ‘success’” (14). Keating would bring us further inland and does so by three chapters that attempt to nudge the deacon candidate beyond these modern and masculine concerns about success and time and competency, beyond these initial and peripheral concerns and into [End Page 946] the heart of the diaconate, which is the servant mysteries of Christ.

The first chapter concerns the calling of the deacon. Christ asks, “Will you allow me to live my servant mysteries over again in your own flesh?” (8). The whole aim of diaconal discernment, suggests Keating, is to assist men in removing whatever hinders cooperation with the Holy Spirit. It makes the discernment process a crucible of intimacy with God. The challenge in discernment is developing one’s availability to receive God. The reader can detect in this first chapter that Keating does not think being a deacon consists of being drawn into a certain set of activities, but of being drawn into Christ’s own self-giving. This is the harder part because the male American mind is political, economic, and hedonistic (16). Therefore the voice of God must be attentively heeded as the deacon explores interiority, spiritual direction, how to make diaconal vows and marital vows work cooperatively, spiritual poverty, and celibacy (since a deacon whose wife dies must reckon with this). “That is what the diaconate is in its essence: the consent by a man to be drawn into Christ’s very being for others” (19).

The second chapter turns to formation and ordination. Every baptized Christian is called to holiness, but the deacon’s way to holiness is now through his clerical formation. One goal is to encourage a new diaconal imagination that connects...

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