Your Excellency,
Dear brothers and sisters,
may the Lord give you peace!
Before I address our brother candidates for the diaconate directly, let me first say a word about the Gospel that has just been proclaimed.
On this last Sunday of the Easter season, we have just heard a passage from the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of Saint John, in which, after having spoken at length with his disciples and having opened his heart to them, Jesus addresses himself directly to the Father: it is the long prayer of Christ, the one called "priestly" prayer.
Jesus entrusts to the Father what he holds most dear: first of all, his mission to the people, who are now going to experience the trial of death and failure of the Passover, so that everything may be fulfilled and Jesus may grant eternal life to all.
He also entrusts to the Father his disciples, his friends, those who have listened to him and accepted him.
He prays not only for them, but also for all those who, in the future, will believe in him and receive from him the gift of new life.
The Father has entrusted them all to him – "they belonged to you, and you gave them to me" (Jn 17:6) – so that he may fill them with life and lead them to completely knowing the face of God. Now that Jesus is about to complete this mission, he can give everything back to the Father, from whom everything comes: it is now up to the Father to guard this work.
Jesus' prayer begins with a request that may seem strange to us: "Father, Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you" (Jn 17:1). This is a request that will come up several times in the passage.
We must understand what Jesus is asking for here, what glory he is asking to be glorified with, because it is not the glory as we, from a human point of view, understand it.
In the gospels of Matthew (20:20-28) and Mark (10:35-45) there is an episode in the life of Jesus and the disciples that can help us understand this passage.
John and James ask Jesus to reserve for them a place at his side in his kingdom, one on the right and the other on the left: their request reflects a very human and worldly idea of glory. Glory, in this case, corresponds to power, fame, success, greatness. And Jesus seizes the opportunity at this point to explain that such glory is not true glory.
On several occasions, he will tell as well the disciples, who sometimes get lost wondering which of them is the greatest (cf. Lk 22:24), that the true glory is that of those who serve, of those who take the last place, of those who give their lives without keeping anything for themselves.
For glory is nothing other than what manifests God to men, and the God of Jesus has chosen to manifest Himself in every humble act of love, for He himself is love and humility. He will therefore not manifest Himself in wealth, power and domination, but in every moment of gratuitousness.
In John's gospel, Jesus is very hard on those who refuse to believe him, those who do not want to "come" to him "that they may have life" (John 5:40): "I do not accept glory from human beings... How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God?" (John 5:41-44). In their search for glory, the Pharisees and scribes, like James and John, seek an earthly glory, "from one another". But it is precisely this mistaken search that prevents them from believing in Him, that prevents them from receiving the true glory of God, which is manifested in the works of Christ, in the paradox that true glory consists in losing everything.
Human glory not only divides us and distances us from God, but it also divides us and distances us from each other: in the episode of James and John, their request only causes discord among the other disciples, who are scandalized.
In contrast, the glory that Jesus asks of the Father in the passage we have heard today ultimately results in the unity of the disciples, for the glory of Christ is accomplished precisely by making his people one, just as Jesus and the Father are one (Jn 17:11-21).
It is now easier for us to understand the meaning of this request at the beginning of Jesus' long prayer: at this decisive moment, Jesus asks only to be able to fully reveal the Father.
He will do so on the cross, which is the greatest theophany, the paradoxical place where the true face of God shines the brightest: we could not know the Father if Jesus had not revealed him to us in his passion.
Dear brothers,
Today you are about to take a necessary step towards the priesthood: the ordination to the diaconate. You are to become deacons – servants. The passage on which we are meditating today is therefore very relevant and gives you very clear indications of the meaning of your condition as servants, which, I continually remind you, will not cease with the priesthood, but will remain a constitutive aspect of your ministry in the Church throughout your life.
Your consecration as deacons does not make you special persons, superiors, masters. Just as your consecration as a priest will not. Even if, in some of our contexts, it will grant you a special place, remember that you are only serving the Kingdom and not its masters, that you are not possessors of the Word of God, which you can now proclaim and comment on, but only servants, that is to say, those who help to spread and to love it, and nothing else. You will serve in a special way at the Eucharistic table, but only to break the heavenly bread and share it. This is the very act that you will be called to do throughout your life.
Do not fall into the temptation of those who want to use their role and position to show yourselves, and who put their idea of the Messiah at the service of their own opinions, expounding the word of God in their own way, instead of serving and proclaiming it in communion with the Church. Let the Eucharist, which celebrates the death and resurrection of Christ, his total gift of self, be the center of your ministry, on the altar and in life. Do not make these sacraments, of which you are only servants, an occasion to display and elevate yourselves. Rather, be the instruments of the grace they signify.
In our world, which draws its glory from one another, which seeks first place, success, power, money, which does not know gratuity, which puts the self before the other, you are called to make a difference. May your difference, while being happy, be the proclamation of a fullness that is only possible in giving and not in appropriating.
The diaconate, as today's gospel explains, means to manifest in your life the glory of God; to adopt the same style as Jesus, to carry your own cross and to manifest your own free love, not according to the logic of the world, but according to Christ.
To become a deacon is not first of all to do something, to accomplish acts; it is to participate intimately in a way of life which is that of God. God is the One who continually empties Himself to give Himself entirely to others.
The attitude closest to God’s is precisely that of service. Jesus showed this earlier, when he put on a cloth around his waist and washed the feet of his disciples. You too, by putting on yourselves this cloth, are putting on the life of God, which is a life of self-giving.
This is how the glory of Jesus will also be reflected in you. It will be the ultimate truth of your life, your true greatness, beyond all success or failure, all wealth and poverty.
Take heart, then!
We have an admirable example who showed us that this way of life is indeed a source of joy and fulfillment: St. Francis of Assisi. He showed us that what Jesus asks in his beautiful priestly prayer are not empty words, but possible words. That stripping oneself of everything, emptying oneself completely, in order to serve only and exclusively the Lord, doing what our world would call madness, is a source of incomparable happiness and fullness of life.
May therefore your life as Friars Minor become even more luminous today. May your diaconate in the Church increase the Kingdom of which we are all, each in our own way, humble servants.
†Pierbattista Pizzaballa
Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem
