{"id":3480,"date":"2007-06-16T06:55:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-16T06:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2007\/06\/the-almighty-ambushed-me-one-deacons-story.html"},"modified":"2007-06-16T06:55:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-16T06:55:00","slug":"the-almighty-ambushed-me-one-deacons-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/06\/the-almighty-ambushed-me-one-deacons-story.html","title":{"rendered":"“The Almighty ambushed me”: one deacon’s story"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve come across some remarkable and moving stories about how men chose to become deacons — or, rather, how God chose them.<\/i> It’s the ordination season, after all, and it makes good copy. Take, for example, this little gem<\/a> from Charleston, South Carolina, about a new deacon named Paul Mahefky: <\/p>\n

\u201cThere were guys who said they had thought about and planned for it,\u201d Mahefky told The Times. For him, though, \u201cIt just totally appeared.\u201d<\/p>\n

After taking an early retirement, Mahefky and his wife, Diane, moved from Virginia to Beaufort, S.C.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was sitting at St. Peter\u2019s Church in Beaufort. I had just finished daily Mass. Probably for the first time in 25 years, I really had nothing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mahefky, in his early 50s at the time, wondered how he would occupy himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got up out of the pew, walked out the door, and there was Deacon Mike Beeler standing there, asking me, \u2018Would you think about going into the diaconate?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just like the Almighty ambushed me,\u201d Mahefky said. \u201cJust one door away, outside. There it was.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was so taken aback. I got a little fearful. At that flashpoint I thought about how much had been given to me, how blessed I had been. How could I say no?\u201d <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Go and read the rest and — to quote the great old hymn — “ponder anew what the Almighty can do.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve come across some remarkable and moving stories about how men chose to become deacons — or, rather, how God chose them. It’s the ordination season, after all, and it makes good copy. Take, for example, this little gem from Charleston, South Carolina, about a new deacon named Paul Mahefky: \u201cThere were guys who said…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"The Almighty ambushed me": one deacon's story - The Deacon'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\/2007\/06\/the-almighty-ambushed-me-one-deacons-story.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""The Almighty ambushed me": one deacon's story - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’ve come across some remarkable and moving stories about how men chose to become deacons — or, rather, how God chose them. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}