Denver Catholic

43 DENVER CATHOLIC | DECEMBER 2024-JANUARY 2025 BY ANDRÉ ESCALEIRA, JR. Managing Editor, Denver Catholic & El Pueblo Católico H ope and H ealing through Christ Deacon Donald Weiss' Ministry to Adult Children of Divorce and Separation DENVER CATHOLIC | DECEMBER 2024-JANUARY 2025 I magine finding your seat at a parish dinner and then finding… your vocation? For Deacon Donald Weiss, there were certainly a few steps between, but it was a providential seating next to his parish pastor at a parish mission dinner that opened the door. Invited by his pastor to a retreat at the Abbey of St. Walburga, Deacon Weiss and his pastor made the trek some time after the parish mission. On their way, Deacon Weiss' pastor looked over at him and asked, "Have you ever considered the diaconate?" "From that point on, there was this incredible sense of joy that came over me, and I couldn't get rid of it in the weeks after that," Deacon Weiss said of the initial invitation to discernment. From there, he prayed, discerned and applied, but he missed the application deadline for that particular formation year. Disappointed, Deacon Weiss prayed, "Okay, God, if you want this to happen, then let it happen." Sure enough, he received a phone call a year later, "and the rest is history," he said. Years later, his sense of joy continues and permeates Deacon Weiss' ministry at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in Fort Collins and with Life-Giving Wounds, a ministry to adult children of divorce and separation. With the estimates of between 25 and 50% of American children having expe- rienced the divorce of their parents, Life-Giving Wounds seeks to help individuals "give voice to their pain and find transformative healing in Christ," as the organi- zation's mission statement says. ⊲ 43

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