Deacon Joe Katarsky, OSFS
Last week this newsletter published a few photos of Deacon Joe Katarsky, OSFS, beginning his temporary ministerial experience with the Jesuits in Alaska. Joe is spending a year as a transitional deacon preparing for ordination as an Oblate priest. Following a few months in Alaska, Joe will finish his diaconate placement at Our Lady of Good Counsel, an Oblate parish in Vienna, VA.
The transitional diaconate provides the deacon with a well-rounded ministerial background in preparation for his ministry as a priest. The year follows other “on-the-job” training experiences which occur during the formation of an Oblate.
I learned a lot during my ministerial experiences in formation. Following a few years working at Camp de Sales in Michigan, I branched out, looking more for challenging experiences in ministry.
I began with a summer in an impoverished section of South Philadelphia. It was violent, dirty, and foreign to me, but I met some great people of faith and had my first immersive experience with an African American Catholic Parish. The irony was the priests at the parish were from a Dutch community working in what they considered mission territory.
Following Philly, there was a summer in Eastern Kentucky ministering in rural hollers that were the actual homes of the Hatfield and McCoys, a summer as a student chaplain in a large hospital in Toronto, and a summer at an Oblate parish in the lake country of Michigan. All of these preceded my year-long experience as a deacon in an impoverished parish in Detroit. As I approached my ordination as a priest, I felt well prepared with all these experiences under my belt.
If anything, these varied experiences taught me the truth of the Salesian principle that the human heart has a yearning for God, and God yearns to reside in the human heart. No matter how different our lives are, all people seek goodness, peace, and love. Saint Francis wrote volumes on this search.
I hope Joe’s experiences this year provide him with a healthy foundation as a minister. More importantly, I hope Joe gains an appreciation for the goodness of people and how invaluable every person is, despite how unique or different they may be. In a world seemingly torn apart by violence, war, acrimony, and indifference, Salesian optimism and gentleness are indispensable virtues for unity and healing.
Fr. Jack Loughran, OSFS
Provincial
Toledo-Detroit Province
