{"id":1317,"date":"2008-12-21T09:48:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-21T09:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/12\/a-merton-meditation-for-advent-lady-i-am-your-deacon.html"},"modified":"2008-12-21T09:48:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-21T09:48:00","slug":"a-merton-meditation-for-advent-lady-i-am-your-deacon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/12\/a-merton-meditation-for-advent-lady-i-am-your-deacon.html","title":{"rendered":"A Merton meditation for Advent: &#8220;Lady, I am your deacon&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: justify\">&#8220;Since the diaconate, Our Lady has taken possession of my heart.  Maybe, after all, <i>she<\/i> is the big grace of the diaconate.  She was given to me with the book of the Gospels which, like her, gives Christ to the world.  I wonder what I have been doing all my life not resting in her heart, which is the heart of all simplicity.  All life, outside of her perfect union with God, is too complicated.<\/p>\n<p>Lady, I am your deacon, your own special and personal deacon.  What made me want to laugh in the middle of the Gospel this morning was the fact that you were doing the singing, and I was just resting and sailing along.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: right\">&#8212; Thomas Merton, <i>&#8220;The Sign of Jonas&#8221;<\/i> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Since the diaconate, Our Lady has taken possession of my heart. Maybe, after all, she is the big grace of the diaconate. She was given to me with the book of the Gospels which, like her, gives Christ to the world. I wonder what I have been doing all my life not resting in her&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prayer","category-thomas-merton"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Merton meditation for Advent: &quot;Lady, I am your deacon&quot; - The Deacon&#039;s Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/12\/a-merton-meditation-for-advent-lady-i-am-your-deacon.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Merton meditation for Advent: &quot;Lady, I am your deacon&quot; - The Deacon&#039;s Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;Since the diaconate, Our Lady has taken possession of my heart. 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