BY GRETCHEN KEISER

A week after he served at a papal Mass at St. Peter's Basilica, 29-year-old Mark Lacey receive the gift of his own ordination to the transitional diaconate in his home parish in Atlanta.

His mother and sisters wiped tears away from their eyes during the litany of the saints, while Lacey lay prostrate before the altar at Holy Spirit Parish. Archbishop John F. Donoghue, Msgr. Edward Dillon, pastor and the congregation invoked the intercession of the saints on behalf of his ordination.

The slim, six-foot-one candidate also dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief when he rose following the prayer chanted by musicians Tara McNulty and Ken Macek.

"The litany was what really got me," Reverend Mr. Lacy said in an interview later. “But I heard everyone had the same reaction. Even a number of men came up to me and said they were teary-eyed."

This step toward priesthood has been accomplished by a growing sense of the rightness of his path, said Lacey an Emory University graduate in business who worked as a certified public accountant before entering seminary.

"I was much more apprehensive at the beginning (of seminary studies). During the years of growth I have been blessed with the feeling of being reassured and blessed and happy with what I am doing."

"I thought as this day approached I would be more nervous," he added. “I felt an overall peace with what has happened and what is happening and a sense of security that this is what God wants."

Lacey’s father, Patrick, is English, and his mother, Mary, Irish, and the family lived in England until Mark, third of four children, turned 13. They moved to Greenwich, Conn., where he went to public high school, and he spent two years of college at Lehigh University before transferring to Emory.

Moving frequently has made the Lacey children, Catherine, Sean, Mark and Mary-Anne, very close. This has been a great help to him in seminary, particularly in his last two years spent at the North American College in Rome where he will receive a degree in sacred theology in 1995.

His theology classes, all in Italian, are likely to be followed by an additional course of study at the Gregorian University in Rome for a licentiate in canon law, Lacey said. Seven years of post-graduate study is something unexpected for him, the one of the siblings who struggled with academic studies. “It's easier when you see the future if you know what's coming and what you're studying this for.”

He is appreciative of the immersion in the heart of the Church, and has written for The Georgia Bulletin about the American seminarians studying for the Atlanta Archdiocese in Rome. Three were able to serve in the pallium Mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II on June 29, at which Archbishop Donoghue received his stole symbolizing his authority as metropolitan archbishop of the Province of Atlanta.

The presence of saints was invoked in both cities, Sts. Peter and Paul on the feast day when the pallium is given and St. Maria Goretti on the July 6 date of Lacey’s ordination.

The right of ordination begins with vocations director Father Don Kenny presenting the candidate to the archbishop for acceptance by him and the people. Public commitments to a life of solvency and service to the church, and obedience and respect to the archbishop and his successors are then made.

Prayer for the candidate begins as everyone joins the litany of saints. The archbishop then imposes his hands on the candidate kneeling before him, prays a prayer of consecration and, after the candidate is vested, presents him with a Book of the Gospels as a sign of his call to preach the word of God.

Reverend Mr. Lacy is now spending his summer at Holy Family parish in Marietta, continuing pastoral experience that seminarians are given each summer. He has previously served at St. Joseph's parish, Athens and at Prince of Peace parish, Buford under father Peter Rau who vested him at the Mass with the stole and dalmatic vestments of the diaconate.

Summer assignments are very meaningful for him, Lacey said. "Summers have a wonderful way of bringing you back" to the purpose behind academic studies. "When you get back here and meet the people (in the parishes) it all comes back into perspective."

On his mother's side of the family, an uncle is a priest in Ireland. And an aunt a sister of Loretto in Calcutta said Lacey, but he recalls his consideration of priesthood as an inner call, nothing voiced either by family or himself.

The thought "kept coming back" during his twenties, he said.

"I lived right around the corner from Christ the King (Cathedral). I spent many evenings in there just praying. I knew God wanted me to do something, I wasn't sure what."

During that time, I realized I could give up a lot of things if I really believed God would take care of me."