Homily for the Ordination of Blake Ryan Thompson to the Transitional Diaconate

Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Husband of Mary

March 19, 2025
St. Maria Goretti Catholic Church
Arlington, Texas

Numbers 3:5-9
Psalm 23:1-3, 4, 5, 6
Acts 6:1-7b
Luke 2:41-52

Today is a joyful day in the life of the local Church of Fort Worth as we celebrate the ordination to the transitional diaconate of Blake Thompson who has persevered through discernment, study, ministry, and prayer for the last eight years to arrive at this point of firmly saying “yes” to Christ’s call to him to follow Him in giving himself entirely to Christ and to His Church. This evening our relative and friend, Blake Thompson, will solemnly promise to live a life imbued by celibate chastity in total dedication to the Kingdom of God as established by Christ and manifested through humble service to the People of God. He will promise to pray daily the Liturgy of the Hours with and for the People of God here and throughout the world. Finally, he will be ordained to give himself as a minister of charity and as a herald of the Gospel of Christ, to preach at liturgies, to preside at weddings and funerals, and to administer the sacrament of Baptism within the Church.

I would offer briefly that we should note with gratitude that this ordination takes place on the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Husband of Mary. We ask for his intercession. It is particularly fitting that Blake’s ordination to the diaconate should be celebrated on this Solemnity of Saint Joseph because in a certain sense, the diaconate is a preparation for the chaste and celibate fatherhood of priesthood as exemplified by the humble, generous, and chaste love of Saint Joseph. Sacrifice without loving and humble service soon becomes an empty ritual that looks inward thereby making the priest, and not God, the center of worship. As Pope Francis observed, “Chastity is freedom from possessiveness in every sphere of one’s life. Only when love is chaste, is it truly love. A possessive love ultimately becomes dangerous: it imprisons, constricts, and makes for misery. God Himself loved humanity with a chaste love. The logic of love is always the logic of freedom, and Joseph knew how to love with extraordinary freedom. He never made himself the center of things. He did not think of himself but focused instead on the lives of Mary and Jesus.”

Blake, the promise of chaste celibacy that you make tonight is a free and generous offering of yourself to love God and others with the humility of Christ the Servant.

Our first reading from the Book of Numbers speaks to us about how when God established the Temple, He commanded to Moses that the descendants of the firstborn sons of Aaron should be chosen to serve as priests for offering sacrifices at the Temple while the sons of Levi and their descendants were chosen to serve the priests and to care for the tabernacle of the Temple. There was a clear demarcation between the priests who were the descendants of Aaron and the assistants and servants who were the descendants of Levi. The mark of the priests was sacrifice while the mark of the Levites was service. Sacrifice and service were separated and not to be confused or intermingled with each other.

While the sacrifice of the priestly order of Aaron and the service of the Levitical order were separated, the same cannot be said for the Church’s corresponding ministries of priest and deacon as intended by Christ. These ordained ministries along with that of the bishop are united through sacramental configuration to Christ. The unity of our respective ministries is found in the centrality of Christ. If we refuse to give ourselves generously to Him through prayer and study, we soon become self-absorbed and lose our way. The reason that a man is ordained to the diaconate before being ordained to the priesthood is so that the fitting sacrifice of the Eucharist and of priestly life should never become void of the generosity of loving service that is at the heart of the order of deacons.

We read in the Acts of the Apostles that the Apostles are faced with an urgent challenge that is more than a practical problem of finding right priorities for action. They are faced with the challenge that the human leadership of the Church might lose their way and begin to consider the Church as simply a social organization for outreach with no charitable character. The Apostles recognize through their prayer and discernment that unless the Church responds to the needs of the foreign widows and orphans, the poorest and most vulnerable among their number, they will fail in the Lord’s primary command “to love one another as I have loved you.” So, guided by the Holy Spirit, the Apostles call seven men to serve as deacons to protect the foreign widows and orphans who are most vulnerable to abuse, neglect, and mistreatment.

The needs of widows and orphans, and of all the poor, cannot be reduced only to a lack of material possessions. It is true that their poverty includes life-threatening financial hardship, and that cannot be minimized, but the poverty that oppresses their dignity even more affects them socially and spiritually. Their poverty stems in part from their not belonging as wives and mothers to husbands or children, to fathers and mothers, or to families of any type. They are foreign and have no place in a hostile society that speaks another language. Their alienation tempts them to think that God and the Church have no place for them. This even more profoundly oppressive spiritual burden of poverty can only be met by service of heralding Christ’s Gospel of unconditional love.

There is too strong of a temptation today in society and even with the Church to ignore our Christian obligation to place the poor first in our loving concern and instead to see them as foreign threats to our comfortable way of life or to overlook their plight as too complicated for our inconvenience. The preaching of Christ’s authentic Gospel and the ministry of charity provided through the grace of diaconal ordination enables the Church to truly be the Church established and intended by Christ. Given the current dysfunction in our social and political life, the world urgently needs us to truly be the Church as Christ intends because the world desperately needs Christ whom only the Church can offer.

Blake, the Gospel, of which you will soon become its herald, reveals that the poor and marginalized come first within the communion of the Church. Christ and His Church through the grace of your ordination charge you to remind us of this fact by your life and ministry. An essential part of your life and ministry as a deacon that will remain after you are ordained a priest is to protect the poor and vulnerable. Ask Saint Joseph to assist you because it is Saint Joseph who protects the Church as he protected the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Christ Child.

Pope Francis indicates, “Every poor, needy, suffering or dying person, every stranger, every prisoner, every infirm person is ‘the child’ whom Joseph continues to protect. For this reason, Saint Joseph is invoked as protector of the unfortunate, the needy, exiles, the afflicted, the poor and the dying. Consequently, the Church cannot fail to show a special love for the least of our brothers and sisters, for Jesus showed a particular concern for them and personally identified with them. From Saint Joseph, we must learn that same care and responsibility.”

In conclusion, tonight you are ordained a transitional deacon on this solemnity of Saint Joseph. Follow his example of finding happiness not in mere ritual but in meditating on the Word of God and in offering the loving gift of yourself. Follow Saint Joseph’s example of prayerful and patient silence for listening and in trusting God’s call to you. Follow Saint Joseph’s example as a father who loves and protects the Church as his spouse and her members as his children. Your vocation is truly born of Christ’s gift to you and your response is the gift of yourself, which is the fruit of service and sacrifice humbly offered in mature freedom.