Well, good morning from here at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy as we're approaching Christmas.

It's a very snowy day in Massachusetts, so people are not able to travel real well,

so we're glad that you could join us from home.

And I just wanted to say thank you to all of you for your prayers.

I just returned late last night

from the funeral of my mother, and I'm grateful for all of you, part of our Marion family.

This is what it's about and being part of the body of Christ. I'm very, very happy and grateful

for all of you to have so many Marians and Marion Halper's there

and contacting us with prayers has been so greatly appreciated. So today, we're going to talk

about a special talk because there's a lot of confusion in it about the deaconate. Can women be deacons? Can they be ordained deacons? There's a lot of talk with the

synod going on. Who was St. Stephen? How did the deaconate come about? And what you didn't know about

it, because although I learned and had classes in seminary on the diaconate,

I did, as I was putting this all together, learned some things that I never knew that I'm

very excited to share with you.

And I think this is a very interesting talk that we all need to know as Catholics because

we don't really know the deacon, uh, the role of the deacon like

I think we think we do. So let us begin with a prayer in the name of the Father and of the

Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father through the intercession of St. Stephen,

whose feast day we celebrate in a couple days, first martyr, deacon, and

intercessor, help us to follow in his example in faithfulness to Christ, and we ask all this

through Christ, our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Well, it was definitely difficult to be the last week going through the last week,

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