Food and Feet

It's been a long time since my last post and for that, I apologize.  There's been a lot happening at the Seminary these days and I'll try to bring everyone up to speed in the weeks ahead. 

One of the highlights in the Seminary over the past month has been the Ordination to the Diaconate on our patronal feast - the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.  On this day, we celebrated and prayed with Rodnev Lapommeray, Dennis Suglia, Kevin Thompson and Frank Zero (see pictures below) as they were ordained to the diaconate. I have been fortunate to spend a significant amount of time with these men - my classmates - and it was a tremendous day for our entire community.

I had the opportuntiy to preach at Morning Prayer on December 8th. Below is the text of my homily that morning:

Today is a day of calling for sure. I’d like to suggest today that we, too, might be called, like Mary, in ways we could never imagine. Today, in a special way, in spirit of both this solemnity and the spirit of this day as we prepare for the Ordination to the Diaconate if this day is not about a calling to Food and Feet - yes, Food and Feet. Bear with me for a minute….



Rodnev Lapommeray, from the Diocese of Brooklyn.

Before coming to the Seminary, I had the opportunity to work with a program called, “Midnight Run”. It involved bringing together groups of people – in my case – high school students – to bring clothing and food to homeless women and men in Manhattan on Friday nights. Before one I received a call from the Dean of Students asking me to include a young man – who I knew all too well – who had gotten into some trouble. So, I strongly encouraged Sean to come and to spend the night with a group of people he was not too comfortable with and spending a Friday night in an unfamiliar way, for him at least.

So we journeyed and headed into Manhattan. I never failed (nor fail) to be humbled by the reaction of those we would bring and those we would encounter. The gratitude, appreciation and desire for relationship they sought too. There was also human moments of encounter, like on this night when one man said to Sean – after seeing the hundreds of sandwiches prepared and said, “What, you don’t have any Turkey? How can you come here and not have Turkey?”



That same night we journeyed to 55th Street and Park Avenue and saw a man who came to our van barefoot looking for shoes or sneakers. The shoes he was wearing were worn and ripped and clearly this man needed new shoes. We just did not have that much clothing this particular night and had to send the man away barefoot with only food. It wasn’t until the next stop that I realized what had happened. As we gathered everyone up I couldn’t find Sean. You can imagine the range of thoughts running through my mind. After a minute or two Sean came from around a corner and returned to the van. It wasn’t until we got to the next stop that I realized what happened. Sean wasn’t wearing any shoes.

I share that story because this day – because I think this morning’s reading and our preparations for the celebration of Diaconate – might en-flesh for us, if you will, the power of this Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. That we, like Mary, are called to greatness, even when we don’t think we’re worthy, even when we cannot imagine why God might have created us, why he formed us, what we are His.

How do we actualize this – how do we come to more powerfully recognize this – well it’s in Food and Feet. It’s in the example of the diaconate. It’s around the Table that we’ll gather around to share and encounter Jesus in bread and wine. And it calls us to look at the tables of our own lives. Who do we welcome? include? Exclude? Who is welcome? Who is shunned? The men who will be ordained today become more powerfully people of Table – should not the same be true for the rest of us.

And it’s from that sharing in the meal – that we are called to be people of feet – of the “washing of the feet”, of service to our God by service to another. Here, again, it’s in the example of the diaconate. The commitment of deacons to have a special love and priority to the poor. We, too, must look to that in our own lives. Are we really willing to serve and seek out the most vulnerable among us? It’s not about journeying into NYC and feeding the homeless. It’s about looking among our friends, our family members, the men we are in class with, those who live on our alleys. The men who will be ordained today prepare to embrace what it means to wash feet – should not the same be true for the rest of us?

As we celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception – a day we recognize in a deeper, even unseen ways, of Mary’s call to be the Mother of God, the Mother of the Church. God called her by name – saw and realized the gifts present within before she herself knew. Today, you and I are called to re-recognize, re-discover and reflect on how God constantly calls each one of us to encounter him in bread and wine, in the service of the other. – in food and feet.

Rockville Centre Deacons. From left to right: Deacon Frank Zero, Deacon Dennis Suglia, Bishop William Murphy and Deacon Dennis Suglia.

Let’s pray that we may be open to God’s dynamic call in our lives, that we like Mary, like the men to be ordained may respond to God’s call with enthusiasm and acceptance for we are his servants, let it be done to us according to his will.