The Deacon. Thomas Fargnoli

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СКАЧАТЬ four books would even be in my house. It was in one of these books where I found and read Pensées, by Blaise Pascal. Pensées is French for ‘thoughts.’ That essay was basically Blaise Pascal’s thoughts that he would write down. Pascal was a mathematician and had some amazing things to say about God and faith and the heart. I still have those books. Through them, I was also exposed to Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Dhammapada, the Upanishads, Friedrich Nietzsche, Confucius, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau, and even Sigmund Freud. They all made an impression on me, but especially Blaise Pascal. So here is the pivotal question. I attribute my hunger—my hunger to learn more about God—to those books. That hunger eventually led me to God and to a deeper meaning of the Catholic Church. Did my hunger start with those books or did it lead me to them? This question is important to me because it’s the hunger that led me to a relationship with God and the ongoing hunger that keeps my relationship alive. Many people, especially those I met in the hospital, told me that God wasn’t real to them. I know it’s because they don’t have this hunger. I wish I could instill this hunger in them but I can’t.”

      “Well, Tom, as far as when the hunger started for you, it probably started before you reached for that book. Did you ever hear the expression, ‘When the student is ready, the teacher will appear’?”

      “So, you are saying it was the hunger that led me to those books?”

      “That’s what I think, yes, but I am just a reporter. That’s just my opinion, but wasn’t it this hunger that you speak of that led you to God?”

      “Well, the books certainly did their part—eventually I began to see God’s wonders present all around me. In a baby’s laugh, in a sunrise or sunset, in the taste of my favorite fruit, and definitely in my favorite candy, milk chocolate. God seemed to be all around me and he became real for me. Jesus said he wants us to be his friend. He wants to have a relationship with us. If he didn’t want a relationship with us, he would have never sent his Son to be one of us. In every way, except sin, Jesus became one of us. God became one of us! When the priest or deacon mixes the water with the wine at Mass, he says a small prayer, ‘By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.’ This is the essence of building a relationship with God—realizing that he is one of us and realizing that he wants this relationship. This is the first step toward establishing a channel of communication with him—a channel to receive his calls.”

      “And through this channel, we can hear him and receive his calls?”

      “Yes! He is always calling us! And his call doesn’t have to be a call to be a deacon or a priest or a religious sister—it can simply be a call to action, a call to help someone, a call to contact a friend, a call to read, a call to rest or it can be an answer to a prayer.”

      Rick looked up from jotting down notes. “Or a call to do an interview?”

      “Yeah, in fact, when your call came in as ‘unknown’ I wasn’t going to answer it, yet I did and here we are.”

      “You mentioned the second thing necessary to hear God’s voice was to be in a fertile state. What do you mean by a state?”

      I took my normal pause, then explained, “Well, consider your cell phone. If it’s off, you cannot receive or make calls, correct? It’s in the ‘Off’ state, but when you turn the power on, it goes into a ‘Listening’ state. It is listening for a signal being transmitted from the closest transceiver station (a cell) to establish a channel for you when you wish to make or receive calls. When you make a call, your cell phone sends a signal to that transceiver station through the channel established for your phone. In a similar manner, by building a relationship with God, you also establish a channel through which to communicate. Of course, that takes more than pushing a power button. If fact, it may take years to build that connection. It’s like building a garden—it takes time and effort to build it and to transform it into a healthy, fertile state, keeping the soil rich with nutrients. And you have to water it and pull the weeds when necessary. Gardens not maintained become dry and full of weeds, and if let go for an extended period, they become unrecognizable as a garden.”

      Rick seemed to be following my explanation, so I continued, “Jesus describes ‘states’ best in his parable of the sower who went out to sow. As he sowed, some seed fell on the path and birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once but, because the soil was not deep, the sun scorched it, and it withered for lack of roots. Some seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it. But some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit. Jesus is indeed the sower and when he whispers to us, he is sowing seeds. If we have no relationship with him, or have not maintained a relationship with him, then we are in a ‘rocky-ground’ state. But, Jesus, who never gives up on us, continues to whisper again and again. We always have the ability to build our relationship with him and to evolve ourselves into a ‘rich-soil’ state.

      “But, we are all human. Even though we have built a good relationship with God, sometimes the world forces us back into a ‘rocky-ground’ state. It could be that we are preoccupied with our job, our children’s activities, etc., etc. We may just not be receptive to any whispers from God on a particular day or at a particular time, but they will come if we stay receptive.”

      Rick looked at me. “You have a very unique way of describing things. You would have made a terrific teacher.”

      “I love teaching. I taught computer science at the community college for eleven years and spent much of my time in engineering teaching. I’ve always been driven to simplify things, perhaps because I view myself as simple. It seems to me that everyone makes things more complicated than they need to be. I wrote a book about this, entitled, A Bridge to Simplicity through Diagrams. In it, I used diagrams to facilitate understanding, such as understanding cholesterol levels, a work or school assignment, or just a desire to get your point across more effectively. I traveled for my company teaching these visual concepts of systems analysis and design across the country. I thoroughly enjoyed that.”

      “So, your diagrams help simplify information to facilitate understanding?”

      “That’s the idea. The quote I like to use is, ‘Simplicity renders the obscure understandable.’”

      Rick surprised me with a challenge, “Can you show me an example? I would love to see a diagram that depicts your journey to get closer to God.”

      Grabbing some blank paper, I drew a quick diagram, “This is rather simplistic, but here is a diagram that depicts a journey toward God. As we move closer to God, learning more about him through prayer, meditation, reading, attending church service, contemplation, with each step we take, he reveals a little more to us.”

      Rick looked at my rather quickly drawn diagram, “Very good! Did you get a chance to apply your simplification and visual techniques when you were a deacon?”

      Smiling and remembering how much I loved creating homilies, I told Rick, “Absolutely, I always tried to make my homilies understandable by both young and old. Holy Scripture is certainly profound and involved, but it isn’t complex. In fact, it was inspired by God and he intended it to be understood and applied across generations. There is so much beauty and simplicity in the Bible, especially in the teachings of Jesus. But, for most people, the Bible isn’t a book you just pick up and find answers. It can be, but you must have a hunger for God’s words—a hunger to achieve peace—a peace that you get only from Christ.”

      “How about magic? Did you get a chance to use your magic tricks as a deacon?“

      “On СКАЧАТЬ