CHARLOTTE — Families and friends filled St. Patrick Cathedral Aug. 10 to watch as 15 men were instituted as acolytes – one of the final steps toward their formation as permanent deacons for the Diocese of Charlotte.
Paul Bruck, Ralph D'Agostino Jr., David Faunce, Steffen Fohn, Frank Moyer, Timothy Mueller, Matthew Newsome, Quang Nguyen, David Ramsey III, Martin Sheehan Jr., Francis Skinner, Paul Sparrow, Peter Tonon, Donald Waugh Jr. and Jack Yarbrough are candidates for the diaconate, expected to be ordained next year.
As acolytes, the men are now entrusted with the duties of attending to the altar, assisting the deacon and priest at Mass, and distributing Holy Communion as extraordinary ministers.
Bishop Peter Jugis celebrated the Mass on the feast of St. Lawrence, deacon and martyr, during which the diocese's permanent deacons – as well as their wives – also renewed their commitment to serving the Church.
During the institution rite, the 15 deacon candidates, clothed in white albs, approached the altar one by one and knelt before the bishop. He placed a ciborium in the hands of each candidate and said, “Take this vessel with bread for the celebration of the Eucharist. Make your life worthy of your service at the table of the Lord and of His Church.” To which they replied, "Amen."
In his homily, Bishop Jugis urged the deacon candidates to draw closer to the Eucharist in their daily lives, just as they are now drawing nearer to the altar with this step towards the diaconate.
"Because you are specially called to this ministry, you should strive to live more fully by the Lord's sacrifice and to be molded more perfectly in His likeness," he said.
"The Eucharist forms us and shapes us," he said, referring to St. John Paul II's 2003 encyclical "Ecclesia de Eucharistia" and Pope Benedict's 2007 apostolic exhortation "Sacramentum Caritatis," which describe the "Eucharistic form" of the Christian life.
"It is not the Eucharistic food that is changed into us, but rather we who are mysteriously transformed by it. Christ nourishes us by uniting us to Himself," Pope Benedict wrote in "Sacramentum Caritatis."
As "servants of the Eucharist, men of the Eucharist," Bishop Jugis told the candidates, they must "allow the Body and Blood of Christ at Mass and at Eucharistic Adoration to form a Eucharistic shape to your life, constantly being renewed by the love of Christ which we celebrate at the Eucharist."
The Eucharist "is bound to have an effect on our lives," he noted. "That affects everything. It affects our thinking, it affects our affections; it has an effect on our behavior, on our attitude, on our words, on our actions.
"In fact, if it doesn't affect our lives – if we're not constantly being renewed by Christ's love – Pope Benedict said, there is a fracture that has taken place, some breakdown has occurred between what we celebrate and what we do."
Bishop Peter Jugis confers the ministry of acolyte on deacon candidate Paul Bruck of Charlotte during Mass Aug. 10 at St. Patrick Cathedral.Drawing closer to Jesus through the Eucharist should lead the candidates closer to others, Bishop Jugis said, so that building communion with Christ builds communion with their brothers and sisters in Christ.
This personal communion is particularly needed today, when contemporary society has turned away from God and glorifies individualism above all else, Bishop Jugis said. People end up marginalized, excluded or feeling like they don't belong, he said.
As "servants of the Eucharist" and future deacons of the Church, he said, the men have a special responsibility to help the Church build communion – a relationship – with God and with each other.
"It's the gift that Jesus wants to give to the world through the Church," he said.
As the deacon candidates and the entire congregation bowed their heads, Bishop Jugis prayed, "Grant that they may be faithful in the service of Your altar and in giving to others the Bread of life. May they grow always in faith and love and so build up Your Church."
After Mass several of the deacon candidates said they were touched by Bishop Jugis' words calling them "men of the Eucharist," feeling excited and a little nervous about taking on the ministry of acolyte, yet gladly abandoning themselves to whatever God wills for them.
"This makes it real," said Matthew Newsome, a deacon candidate from Sylva who also serves as campus minister at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. He and the other 14 candidates have been through years of preparation, study and discernment, and they have been given the ministries of lector and now acolyte.
As ordination day approaches, Newsome said, "I feel like we're drawing closer to Christ. As a lector, you are called to be especially devoted to Him in the Word, His Scripture. Now as an acolyte, we're called to be especially devoted to the altar and to the Eucharist. We’re just being drawn further and further into the mystery of Christ."
Paul Sparrow said he felt uplifted by the bishop's homily. "I definitely want to continue to grow" closer to Christ through the Eucharist, he said, especially by spending more time in Eucharistic Adoration in the months leading up to ordination day.
— Patricia L. Guilfoyle, editor
Paul Bruck, Ralph D'Agostino Jr., David Faunce, Steffen Fohn, Frank Moyer, Timothy Mueller, Matthew Newsome, Quang Nguyen, David Ramsey III, Martin Sheehan Jr., Francis Skinner, Paul Sparrow, Peter Tonon, Donald Waugh Jr. and Jack Yarbrough are pictured after Mass Aug. 10 with Bishop Jugis.
CHARLOTTE — Connection and our shared faith was the theme at a recent celebration of Polish culture.
Approximately 350 people attended the sixth annual Polish Mass Aug. 27, celebrated in honor of Our Lady of Czestochowa and, in a nod to the 100th anniversary this year, Our Lady of Fatima.
Father Matt Nycz, pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church in Tonawanda, N.Y., celebrated the Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Church, assisted by Deacon James Witulski. The two men’s lives are connected, as they discovered not too long ago.
Deacon Witulski first met Father Nycz on a pilgrimage to Poland. The Polish-born priest now serves in the Diocese of Buffalo, N.Y., where Deacon Witulski was born, and he pastors the church where Deacon Witulski received his first Holy Communion.
That wasn’t the only “small world” moment. The Mass was concelebrated by Father Matthew Bean of St. Thomas Aquinas Church, who is from Buffalo and trained as an altar server with Father Nycz when he was a priest at Sacred Heart Church in Buffalo.
“Amazing how things are connected on a small and a large scale in our lives and in the world,” Father Nycz noted in his homily.
“On a large, historic scale the feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa on Aug. 26 also has many important connections,” he said. “This year we celebrate the 100th anniversary of apparitions at Fatima. Pope St. John Paul II, who had a very strong personal devotion to Our Lady of Czestochowa, strongly believed that it was the Blessed Virgin Mary who saved his life in the assassination attempt on his life on May 13, 1981, in St. Peter’s Square.
In fact, he believed that his life was spared so he could fulfill a most special mission to introduce to the world the message and devotion of the Divine Mercy as recorded in the diary of the Polish mystic St. Faustina Kowalska. In the year 2000, after instituting the Divine Mercy feast and the beatification of the two visionaries of Fatima, Francisco and Jacinta, the third secret of Fatima was revealed to the world by the Vatican with a commentary. The secret mentions a call by the Blessed Virgin for consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by a pope in order that God would grant the world a period of peace.”
He continued, “The last apparition at Fatima on Oct. 13, 1917, brought a great miracle of the dancing sun seen by about 70,000 people. Just recently, millions of people witnessed another great sign in the sky, the Aug. 21 Great American Eclipse. Aug. 21 is also a date of another apparition of Our Lady at Knock, Ireland. There the visionaries saw Mary, St. Joseph, an altar with the Lamb of God, and an Apostle holding a book.”
That book most likely symbolized Revelation, he noted, and then he connected that with the day after the eclipse, Aug. 22, which marked the feast of Mary Queen of Heaven, and an upcoming stellar and planetary alignment occurring Sept. 23 that some say depict Revelation’s description of Mary: “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”
“Mary’s apparitions, messages, the miracles of nature and signs in the sky seen by millions are powerful spiritual reminders and call for conversion in these times of dimming of our moral lives and darkening of our culture,” Father Nycz said. “In the past century we have been witnessing repeated, serious attempts to rewrite God-given moral codes and redefine human relation to God and to one another.
Perhaps we can rededicate ourselves to the message of Fatima, which is always the message of Mary and Jesus: daily praying the rosary, personal sacrifice and penance, ongoing conversion, and the reception of God’s grace through the sacraments of the Church.”
Deacon Witulski gave thanks for all of the blessings that flowed from the celebration, which was an opportunity for people of all backgrounds to come together and experience Polish culture yet also our shared Catholic faith.
“Many people came forward to express their appreciation for the opportunity to experience the beauty of this Mass, and they traveled from the corners of our diocese. Some have come for the first time and others have come year after year,” he noted.
People lined up for hours to receive the sacrament of reconciliation in either Polish or English, and after the bilingual Mass they venerated first-class relics of Poland’s famous saints: St. John Paul II and St. Maria Faustina Kowalska. They also enjoyed fellowship and lots of traditional Polish food after the liturgy.
— Photos by Doreen Sugierski | Catholic News Herald
