A five-year old counting to twelve, every time all the candidates moved around. Then he kept track of each time all twelve had to do something, individually. There are eight or ten of those moments, and after the first two, he knew when it would be his uncle’s turn, which person went before his uncle, and which after. 

All the candidates wore albs that came from Cameroon, and matched in shape. The albs had gorgeous embroidery on the bottom, front and back, and on the sleeve cuffs. This diocese is sponsoring two Cameroonian seminarians and they arranged the deal and measured everyone. It looked spectacular. 

A seven-year-old, whom we will call Karol, watching the bishop place his hands on each candidate’s head, leans over and whispers, “Is this the actual moment? Right now? Now they are deacons?”

It would be different if I had pointed it out to him … but I hadn’t. Someone had done prepwork much earlier, and he was waiting.

The actual answer is, there’s a long prayer that goes along with the imposition of hands, and THEN you are a deacon. But in this case, since there were twelve candidates, the bishop touched each one, and then said the long prayer once. But the long prayer was too difficult for Karol to see.

Now — A couple of months ago three new auxiliary bishops were appointed in Philadelphia. My son knows two of them; one is the rector of the seminary and one is the dean of students, though he probably won’t be able to stay on. However, the dean, now Bishop, came to the ordination, and to the party that four of the seminarians gave together, afterwards. He tried explaining the prayer part of the ‘actual moment’ to Karol. 

Karol’s mind went immediately to the next moment when his uncle was actually up in front of the bishop, and so he said, “You mean the prayer when [the other bishop] gave him the Gospel, and held onto one side of the book, while [my uncle] held the other side?”

The Bishop looked at him and asked, “How did you know he was receiving the Gospel?” 

Karol said, “I was listening.” 

The Bishop looked at him for a long time and said, “We should all be listening.”

Here, by the way, is a link to an article John wrote four years ago about vocations. 

https://www.catholicherald.com/article/local/into-the-unknown

Also… I’m still hoping for a link to Sunday’s sermon but it hasn’t been posted yet.