By Rita McInerney

There was no thunderbolt on the road to Damacu for the Rev. Richard Narey.

“I’ll try it. It wasn’t like Paul. I didn’t get knocked down and blinded. The studies weren’t going to hurt me. If it’s to be, it’s to be,” was his response to suggestions by priests at Holy Cross parish in 1974 that he think about the diaconate. Earlier, his involvement with the Cursillo movement had brought him to the Trappist Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit in Conyers where Father Anthony Delisi had talked to him of the same program.

In June 1978, Narey was ordained a permanent deacon at Holy Cross Church after three years of preparation including 18 months of study with the monks in Conyers. “An experience I’ll never forget,” he says with deep feeling.

Home and parish gave him the support needed in deciding to become a minister of the church and during the years of study and formulation. His wife Marjorie, their six children, the parish priests and parishioners were generous with encouragement. His children, he recalls, “thought it was good although, they didn’t quite understand. To them it was like creating a new office in the church.” From the Dominican priests at Holy Cross, there was “absolutely great support. They understood our roles, understood we were not a threat.”

Fellow parishioner Walter Bedard made the journey with him and was ordained at the same time. Earlier this month, Narey was appointed by Archbishop Thomas Donnellan as full time permanent deacon at Holy Cross. This will be his third year on assignment for the parish.

Dick Narey was involved on different levels of parish life before becoming permanent deacon. He was known and liked by fellow parishioners so the transition into a defined role was well accepted. He and his wife had been working together for several years, teaching Bible courses. Marjorie’s participation, he says, was extensive. Then as he came closer to ordination, she began to feel threatened. “I’m not leaving you,” he reassured her, “I want you to be in this with me.” She admits feeling both threatened and happy about his calling. Now she is “very happy, very much at peace about it. We did a lot of teaching together for several years and benefited a lot from that.”

Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., in an address on the role of the permanent deacon before the convention of the National Association of Permanent Diaconate Directors in Boston on April 28, 1981, defined deacons as “Men endowed by the Spirit with certain gifts and talents who, by virtue of the public and permanent character of their ordination commitment, are called to minister God’s people in a way avowedly and unabashedly expresses a Christian value system and by this ministry to make the mission of Jesus alive, vibrant and relevant in our contemporary Church society.”

“Dick is really pastoral. He falls naturally into that role (deacon). He also has a great sense of humor. We’re really fortunate,” says a Holy Cross parishioner who has known and worked with him for years.

Life as a permanent fulltime deacon is busy and satisfying for the man who spent 31 years with Weyerhauser Co. before retiring from a management position in 1982. He is now 61.

It’s easy to see how busy his life is. He preaches every other Sunday, officiates at baptisms, coordinates the high school CCD classes, gives spiritual direction, is involved with the parish RCIA program, celebrates Communion services, encourages parishioners’ efforts to help street people, attends class once a week for three hours, and uses his business expertise in the buying of supplies and equipment for the parish buildings.

Narey begins preparing for his Sunday homily. “I take the readings, usually on Monday, and read them, think about them, look for key phrases. I pray about them. On Wednesday, I start zeroing in. If something in the Epistle strikes me, I’ll go to the library and research in the Bible commentaries. We have a very good one here. By Friday, I’m really starting to pray and reflect. I make a short outline with notes on points I want to make. I never want to get lost,” he says with conviction.

To add luster to their homiletic skills, Narey and Bedard will attend Aquinas Institute in St. Louis, Mo., from June 23 until 28. The Domincan workshop, “Preach the Word,” will be conducted by Sister Joanne Delaplane, O.P., and Father Jude Sicillano, O.P.

“The deacon’s liturgical role as preacher, baptizer, and presider at public prayer is fairly well defined, but his ministry in the field of education, counseling, administration, and service to the diocese, parish and wider community is very much unspecified or open ended.” Bishop Hubbard

Narey’s ministry in the field of continuing education becomes more specific each year. It is something he feels very strongly about: “Anyone going into the diaconate should have that in mind. It’s almost like a life commitment to continuing education.”

This year he began a three-year course that the Loyola Institute of Ministry gives each Thursday at Holy Cross parish. “In two more years I’ll get a pastoral ministry degree. This year we studied Ministry and Context which puts you in a pattern of learning, makes you look at your culture, institution, personal life and ministry. We had to read all of the Old Testament. The institute is marvelous for people who can’t go to campus in New Orleans.” Loyola also holds Thursday night class at Holy Cross.

Homework is a major part of the serious study. “Loyola tells us it takes six hours a week. I have found it usually takes 10 or 12,” he says.

Another facet of his education centers on the RCIA program in the parish. With Father Cayet Mangiaracina, O.P., assistant pastor, he attended a workshop in Memphis, Tenn., two years ago. After that they began implementing what they had learned into the parish program. “One of the things I think we get hung up on is in trying to pour too much education into them (the candidates). It’s not a program, it’s a process,” he says of the inquiry, teaching and illumination stages. “Once you’ve been through it for a year you see this.”

Deacons should see the empowerment of their laity as one of their prime responsibilities.” Bishop Hubbard

One of Narey's top responsibilities is getting lay people involved in parish life. “We are enablers. We might become involved with a program with the object of getting the lay people involved then taking over.” He was successful in this goal with a baptismal class he led for a year. “I asked six couples to help me, now one couple has been working it for the past year.” This empowerment he terms “just marvelous.”

He used the same approach for the RCIA program where the parishioners “more or less handle the sessions now.”

Another area where he gets satisfaction from the empowerment of the laity is the parish mission to street people. It began with some of the men going down to St. Anthony’s and Central Presbyterian shelters. Now the parish takes about 18 dates each year with members spending the night at the shelters and the fourth Saturday of each month is Holy Cross day at St. Francis Table at the Shrine of Immaculate Conception.

Narey is sensitive to the fact that many people are anxious to help but unable, for many reasons, to go to shelters and food kitchens. “When we make sandwiches the object is to get as many people to help as possible. I try to make it as difficult as I can for them,” he says with his quiet humor. “Make it hard to find the mustard, need to get more bread. It’s very good for the parishioners. They feel they’re contributing even though they can’t go down.”

The street people fund the parish maintains has been increased considerably through the efforts of one woman, Ruth (Bunny) Bohaczwk, who came to him last year with an idea of putting on a variety show to benefit the homeless. “Father Al (the pastor, Father Alberto Rodriguez, O.P.) thought it was a great idea and the parish council approved it. We made about $1500. We’ll do better this year.”

With money raised from the show and program book, Narey says, a check was sent to The Open Door Community on Ponce de Leon Avenue which provides hospitality to the homeless and those in prison, and to St. Francis Table. The rest was added to the parish fund for street people and used over the winter months.

Narey is pleased that there is a core group of seven or eight people in the parish who handle the work for the homeless since he “backed out.” Most of the candidates now in the diaconate program are involved.

The fact that Holy Cross had five members certified as master catechists by the archdiocese makes him extremely proud. “The people we’ve had (attaining this level) are top quality. They’re Catholic-oriented with good backgrounds.”

“For some time in the future we should avoid any institutionalization of the diaconate and allow its growth and development to be limited only by the movement of the Spirit.” Bishop Hubbard

“We think you have the qualities, we don’t know if you have the calling,” Narey was told when he began the diaconate training.

“I took it because I wanted to do something in the Church. I certainly didn’t expect to be a CCD coordinator at my age. I love the kids. I’ve learned a lot from them. It’s been a great experience,” he says of the two years he spent coordinating religious education for high school age students. “I’ll probably do it one more year, then I’d like to move on to something else.” What that might be he isn’t prepared to say now.

“The focal point of the deacons’ mission is the human person who has been charged by God with a dignity that is unique, sacred and inviolable.” Bishop Hubbard

There is an aura of strength and compassion about Narey that prompts easy communication and relates to his skill at giving spiritual direction. A large part of his ministry, this role as spiritual advisor to people in the parish and in the diaconate, keeps him involved in the late afternoons and evenings with those who cannot see him earlier in the day.

He can offer reverence and joy through his celebration of Communion service at ultreyas (Cursillo meetings), for youth groups and in homes. What is a deacon’s Communion service? “After the liturgy of the Word we do the petitions and then move to the Our Father, then complete the rest of the Mass. We cannot do the consecration, so we always take consecrated hosts.”

Whether counseling, giving Communion, preaching or studying, Narey keeps in mind what he sees as his obligation as a deacon to “be in the world and to react to what we encounter in the environment we are in.”

Sometimes this concerns the business side of parish life. On a Monday morning he will make a bank run. Later in the morning there is the weekly staff meeting. “There is good communication with each department advising the other what they are doing,” he says. The give and take continues through lunch at the rectory where the discussion with the pastor might focus on the advantages and disadvantages of investing in a new energy system for the church plant to replace the 20-year-old model now showing signs of its age.

“We work well together,” Narey says of his association with Father Rodriguez. “My concern when I first came here was to cut down cost, change our buying habits.” He’s achieved good results but is still looking for ways to cut costs.

Like any loyal employee, Narey doesn’t discuss his monetary arrangements with his parish except to say he’s paid a salary for his work as CCD coordinator. As a deacon, he has an expense allowance for car mileage in performing his duties.

“What deacons need to avoid is a new clericalism wherein they transfer from the ranks of lay amateurs to clerical professionals and seek to carve out roles that solidify their own position in the hierarchy of the Church...” Bishop Hubbard

There is “Reverend” before his name in the weekly parish bulletin. Sometimes “strangers” call him “Father” when he dons his alb, a long-sleeved white vestment, for liturgical celebrations at Holy Cross. He doesn’t wear a Roman collar, none of the deacons in the archdiocese of Atlanta are permitted to. “Walt (Bedard) and I have talked about it and neither of us want any part of it.” Yet, he can see situations where it might be helpful, especially at jails or hospitals where “it would give better entry.”

He has heard deacons referred to, in jest, as hierarchical weirdos.” He smiles when he uses the label. It’s a far cry from what he is, what he does. His three years as a full time permanent deacon have given him a full life and the priceless satisfaction of knowing he helps people to richer spiritual life.