“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 heart, which is the heart of all simplicity. All life, outside of her perfect union with God, is too complicated.

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.”

— Thomas Merton, “The Sign of Jonas”