Salt Lake City is preparing to ordain a new class of deacons, the first in several years:

Twenty-one men will follow the steps of Saint Stephen when they are ordained as permanent deacons by the Most Rev. John C. Wester, Bishop of Salt Lake next week.

St. Stephen, “a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 6:5) was one of the first seven deacons of the Catholic Church to help minister the growing congregation of believers.

Bob Hardy, a member of Saint Mary of the Assumption Parish in Park City, is one of the diaconate candidates. He investigated the possibility of becoming a deacon at the suggestion of his pastor, Msgr. Robert Bussen, and Deacon Tom Tosti. “I went through a long period of discernment,” Hardy said. “It was well into the first year (of the four-year program) before I really said, ‘This is something I want to do.’ It took me a long time to discern that this was indeed a calling and not just something that other people thought I ought to look at.”

Hardy has been a lector and Eucharistic minister as well as a member of the Knights of Columbus. He and his wife, Carol, also taught RCIA, so he fit the requirement that the deacon candidate be involved in ministry and active in his parish.

Under the guidance of Msgr. Bussen and other priests, Hardy had developed a prayer life that included the recitation of the daily Liturgy of the Hours even before he joined the deacon formation program, but “When I got into this program, it was really kind of an awakening to me. I thought I was pretty good and on the top of my game and in essence I found out that, realistically, I was just getting started… I found out that in essence what I had filled myself with was fluff. You look and find there’s this huge amount of empty space that needs to be filled and I am slowly finding ways to fill that with spiritual things.”

Check out the link for the rest — and please keep these men in your prayers!