By Muriel J. Smith
PHILADELPHIA – “It was like nothing else I have ever experienced before!”
That’s the only way Deacon Robert Johnson of Atlantic Highlands could describe his emotions after dispensing Holy Communion to more than 200 Catholics of the hundreds of thousands of people of all faiths who attended Pope Francis’ final mass on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge late Sunday afternoon.
Johnson and Deacon Ray Rainville of Red Bank, both deacons at Our Lady of Perpetual Help-St. Agnes parish in the Bayshore, were selected to participate as Eucharistic ministers during the Mass, an honor both will remember and treasure for the rest of their lives. Both attended the special Mass the Pope offered at the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul Saturday afternoon, along with bishops, priests, seminarians, religious leaders, sisters and other deacons. It was at that Mass they received the Communion they would distribute, in an orderly, elegant yet simple organized method during Sunday’s outdoor Mass attended by close to a million worshippers.
Johnson, who is a carpenter with his own business in the Bayshore doing cabinetry and other woodworking, as well as a licensed home inspector for the state, said he filled out an application last June for the honor of serving at the Mass, and two days later got a response from the Diocese of Trenton saying he was selected. Between then and Saturday, he received instructions of where the Eucharistic ministers would meet, how they would be transported, where they would receive the consecrated wafers and how they would be accompanied to the spot where they would distribute Holy Communion during Sunday’s Mass.
He and Rainville traveled together from Monmouth County and waited with the 300 deacons, 300 bishops and 400 priests and seminarians. Then, following the consecration at the Sunday Mass, dressed in white amices, a long white vestment worn by the celebrant during Mass, and with the white stole, another liturgical vestment, around their necks, each accompanied his designated leader carrying a yellow and white umbrella, the papal colors, to the spot assigned for them to distribute Communion to the orderly and awed lines of communicants.
Johnson said that although he did not know it at the time, and only saw it on the video his wife had made of the Mass, he at one point was within 10 feet of Pope Francis. Still, it was the emotions and looks on the faces of people to whom he gave Communion that overwhelmed him the most.
“It was God working through me,” he tried to explain humbly. “I could actually see love and peace among the people I was serving. There were tears on faces of mothers who held up their children too young to receive but earnestly desiring a blessing at the Mass. I could see they felt the blessing was truly coming from God through Pope Francis, then at my hands.”
The deacon said among the hundreds he served, they were of all ages from just under 10 years to well over 70; they were of all ethnic groups and colors, they were both male and female, they came from all over and all walks of life. And all, he said, quietly gathered together, sensing a special feeling of community and love. He added that while he served Communion to all in his orderly line under the yellow and white umbrella, he did reserve a couple of hosts to bring home, one for his sister recovering from surgery and some for other ill friends and relatives unable to attend the Mass.
Johnson feels serving the people at a Papal Mass is just one more example that “God isn’t finished with me on earth yet. He’s got plans for me to continue doing something.” The carpenter is a throat cancer survivor of more than eight years, has worked in youth ministries in some capacity for more than 40 years, and for the last several years has been the youth minister at both St. Agnes and Our Lady of Perpetual Help churches. He followed in the footsteps of Rainville, who had been the youth minister at St. Agnes for many years and with whom he had ministered.
He knew God had a special calling for him, Johnson said, when he recovered so fully from cancer in spite of at least two surgeons telling him “I shouldn’t be here.”
He became a deacon, the first of three ranks of ordained ministry within the Catholic Church, at the invitation of the Rev. Bob Tynski, a former pastor at St. Agnes Church, and with the blessing and enthusiasm of his wife and his daughter, Kelsie. The diaconate enables Johnson to officiate at weddings, funerals, homilies and baptisms, but does not give him the power of consecration. It also includes with the ordination his vow he would not remarry should his spouse die, and ordination comes only after much reflection, prayer, and four years of study twice a week in Trenton. An Army veteran, he graduated from Middletown High School and vocational school before launching his own carpentry business.
Nor is Pope Francis the first pope Johnson has seen up close and personal. He saw Pope Benedict XVI in 1995 and also Pope John Paul when he took a group of teens to Rome.
But this time? “This was different,” Johnson said quietly, adding, “I am truly blessed.”
