During the Jubilee Year of Hope so close to the heart of Pope Francis, on this Trinity Sunday, the Church in Kilkenny, the Diocese of Ossory and the Dominican family rejoice. Today, a son of this county, a member of the Dominican Order is about to take a vital step forward on his journey to priesthood as he is ordained a deacon. Next year, please God, he will be ordained to the priesthood.
Today, Br Bruno you will be configured to Christ the Servant. This will hopefully allow you to deepen the commitment you have already made in religious life when you took your vows as a Dominican friar. Soon, during this liturgy you will bear the stole across your shoulder and be presented with the Book of the Gospels – visible signs of your call as a deacon to proclaim the Word of God to the people. By proclaiming and preaching the Word of God as a deacon, and for the rest of your life, you will serve God and his people in a most important way.
Present now in the beautiful Black Abbey during this year 2025 when we are celebrating 800 years of Dominican witness in this city. It is most poignant and appropriate that the Irish Dominican family gather in such numbers in this place hallowed by generations of faith and prayer in good times and bad to celebrate this ordination Mass. Br Bruno as a Dominican, a son of St Dominic, you are heir of a charism that prioritises the importance of good preaching, a charism centred not on power or status but on truth spoken in love. And now, by ordination, you will be entrusted with that truth in a new way: as herald, as minister of the Word, and as servant of both table and altar. This is a beautiful and demanding path – one that unites the characteristic Dominican love of study and preaching with the humble, embodied service of the diaconate. As a Dominican deacon, you will now stand at a marked intersection in the Church: called to contemplate and to serve, to preach with fire and to kneel with compassion. You are to be an icon and echo of the Christ who said: “I am among you as one who serves”. And recall those poignant words of Jesus to the disciples in today’s gospel: “I still have many things to say to you, but they would be too much for you now.”
May it be enough to say now that the world you are being sent into is rapidly changing. We live in an age of endless information and scarce wisdom. A time of connection without communion. A time of war, famine and merciless inaction.
For one thing, technology – especially artificial intelligence – is transforming how people learn, communicate and even make moral decisions. AI can simulate conversations. It can summarise scientific, philosophical and theological volumes. It can even generate lectures and sermons. But, mindful of the words of St Paul in our second reading today, it cannot love, it cannot suffer, it cannot pray, and it cannot proclaim the Gospel from a heart conformed to Christ. The late Pope Francis in his message for the World Day of Peace earlier this year, warned that AI, if left ungoverned by human conscience, risks distorting truth, amplifying injustice and replacing genuine human relationships with artificial substitutes. He reminded us that what is needed is not smarter machines, but wiser humans — witnesses formed by the Gospel. To be such a witness, and to form others on this path of life is the vocation of the deacon.
Precisely because you will soon be a deacon, one in the Dominican tradition, and you will henceforth always be a deacon, even if you are also ordained to the priesthood later, remember that your calling will be to speak to this digital culture. Not to retreat into a holy huddle or reject it, but to evangelise it. To meet people where they are – in the church, yes, but also in hospitals, in the digital margins, in academic settings and in one-on-one conversations. You are to be a preacher of the Word made flesh – not a purveyor of disembodied data nor the categories that occupy the antiquarian … but one who is on fire with the living truth of Christ who speaks through Scripture, tradition and the lives of countless people.
No one has surpassed Hopkins’ wonderful encapsulation of this “for Christ plays in ten thousand places/Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his/To the Father through the features of men’s faces.” Never forget: your preaching will only have power if it flows from your service. With an eye to Jesus stooping to wash his disciples’ feet, remember you are to preach the Word but also to be a minister of the chalice and the towel — feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, listening to the ignored. In doing this, trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit, you will make the Word you preach credible. The world no longer assumes that the Church is trustworthy. But it still listens when it sees love in action. That’s why Pope Francis was respected and loved well beyond the boundaries of the Church and Christian faith and why many already find Pope Leo compelling. In a secular world that doubts the value of truth, and in a digital culture that often replaces depth with speed, I pray that your ministry will be a quiet revolution.
Acknowledging the Dominican motto of ‘Veritas,’ it is indisputably true that you are called to speak truth with clarity, live truth with humility and serve truth with joy. This, it seems to me, is the type of diaconate that honours the Dominican tradition: preaching that springs from prayer and issues forth in service to the world. Let me offer you an image of St Dominic, walking dusty roads, barefoot, with the Gospel in his heart and the poor on his mind. He studied deeply, prayed constantly and preached with tears.
Finally, aim to be a Dominican deacon and, please God later, a priest who is committed to study and learning. Let the study of Word of God, theology and the other sciences feed your preaching, let your preaching feed the people, and let your service feed your soul. God’s Word, entrusted to you as deacon, will bear fruit — in His time, in His way, through your fidelity. Preach boldly. Serve humbly. Love deeply. And may the Word you proclaim shape everything you are now and always. Amen.
Most Rev Niall Coll, Bishop of Ossory.
