Photo credit: Anthony Tulliani Photography and Jesuit Communications Australia
Australian scholastic Julian Butler SJ was ordained a deacon by Archbishop Richard Henning of Boston, together with five US Jesuits during a Mass at the Church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, on 3 October.
Julian is studying theology at the Clough School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College. Shortly before his ordination, he wrote a reflection for the Australian Jesuits’ website. In it, he reflects on the ministry of the diaconate as a “servant to all”.
“‘Servant leadership’ is a phrase with great currency in Catholic circles and beyond, and rightly so,” Julian writes. “It helps orient our thinking about what it means to have responsibility, to be attentive to others in all we do.”
He continues: “It’s humbling to think that the day after my ordination I will be at the local parish, at the Sunday Mass, proclaiming the Gospel and then preaching about it as a minister of the Church. In time as a deacon, I will do other things that the Bishop speaks of in the Ordination Rite – ‘administer Baptism, assist at and bless Marriages, bring Viaticum to the dying, and conduct funeral rites’”.
All such service, he says, “can only be offered by God’s grace”. He adds: “Maybe that sounds a little pious, but I believe it to be true.”
Photo credit: Anthony Tulliani Photography and Jesuit Communications Australia
A lawyer by profession, Julian entered the Australian Jesuit Novitiate, then in Mount Druitt, New South Wales, in February 2017. He reflects on what he had brought with him to the Society and what the Society has taught him during his years of formation.
He arrived, he says, with “a capacity for sharp thoughts and well-crafted words”, as well as “a capacity to love” shaped by my parents, sisters, grandparents, extended family, friends, teachers, and colleagues. His years as a Jesuit, he writes, have been “a time of allowing God to grow that openness in myself to love others.” It remains “very much imperfectly”, he concedes. “But maybe just enough to serve.”
Read Julian’s full reflection, “Receive, believe, teach, practise”, on the Australian Jesuits’ website.
