Tom Ciccarelli's path to becoming a deacon for the Catholic Diocese of Stockton is a tale of tragedy, romance and changed hearts, with a little social justice thrown in.Unlike Protestant deacons, Ciccarelli's role at St. Mary's in Oakdale is much deeper and broader.
He celebrates Mass at the altar with the priest, holding the cup containing -- as Catholics and Orthodox faiths believe -- the holy blood of Christ.
He can officiate at weddings, funerals and baptisms and give the homily, or lesson, during a service.
About the only thing he can't do that priests can is offer the sacraments of the Eucharist and repentance (forgiving sins). And although he is married, if his wife should die, he must remain celibate as long as he is a deacon.
It's a major commitment and includes five years of study before becoming ordained. Why would a successful agribusinessman, former director of Interfaith Ministries and current head of the United Way add to his busy schedule those years of study and commitment to the diocese and local parish?
"I was active in my church, but if you would have told me I would be an ordained minister, I would have laughed at you," he said.
Ciccarelli only knows that for him, like other things in the past eight years, it is a calling from God, one shared with his second wife, Sherrill.
And that story began in 1999, the year Tom's wife of 30 years, Sandee, and Sherrill's husband of 33 years, George Medeiros, both died of cancer.
"We're taught in corporate America that we can control things and manipulate the process, if necessary. Your success is your salary and your title and your power. So to go through the cancer experience with my wife, that was the first realization that I didn't really have any control. As we went through the three surgeries and the two chemotherapies, you have to say, 'OK, this is serious. Lord, what do we have to do to get through this together?' "
Sandee Ciccarelli died Sept. 9, 1999, four years after her initial breast cancer was diagnosed and treated and just a short time after it came back as ovarian cancer, Tom said.
"At the end, I put Sandee on life support just so the kids could get home to see her. I never believed before that the Lord spoke to your heart, but it started happening to me with Sandee's death. As I sat in the lobby that night and wondering how I could ever take her off of life support, I felt the Lord say, 'She's not there. Sandee isn't in that body.' "
It was a tough time, he said, especially because he still had a young child. Three other children were adults and had been on their own for a while, but Christian was only 7½ years old.
"I was thinking, 'Lord, how can you do this to me? How can you do it to my 7½-year-old son? We've got grandkids.' There was a lot of emotion wrapped up in all that."
"After that, I kept asking the Lord, 'Lord, send me an angel here because I'm not going to make it.' Grief affects everyone differently, and for me, I couldn't breathe. It was worse at night -- I just had that horrible feeling that God had to send me an angel or I would die."
A few weeks later, a friend stopped by, concerned that Tom wasn't doing well. The friend said he knew of a woman who had lost her husband about nine months earlier and said the Lord had told him to take Tom to meet her so that she might shed some light on the grieving process and help him get through it.
"I told him it was a horrible idea," Tom said.
But a few days later, the friend showed up again, saying he had called Sherrill Medeiros and she was waiting to talk to them. She lived in Escalon; he lived in Modesto. They knew each other casually through Journey in Christianity, a weekend of renewal that both couples had experienced.
"When we got to her house, I heard this little voice say, 'Behold your angel.' It just spoke to my heart," Tom said.
For her part, Sherrill said she had "been praying for a man of God. I said, 'If that's not for me, Lord, just teach me to be content in my solitude.' "
They began talking over the phone at night, the time when the grief hit Tom the hardest. She understood that, having gone through it herself. Then she began visiting Tom.
"There was some denial with the older kids, who had some issues, but the 7½-year-old was ready," Tom said.
"He was crying and having a hard time going to bed. When Sherrill would come to the house, he connected with her right away and she would put him to bed, and he'd sleep through the night."
"In the end, it was Christian who proposed to Sherrill. He told her that he wanted her to spend the night. I told him she couldn't. He asked why, and I told him, 'Because we're not married.' So lo and behold, the next time she came over, he asked her, 'Would you marry my dad so you can spend the night?' "
Added Sherrill, "He did it behind closed doors without his dad there."
The two were married not quite three months after Sandee had died. "To be honest with you, if Christian had not been in the mix, we would have taken more time," Tom said.
"We certainly weren't in a hurry. (The quick marriage) created some issues for some people, but we decided that if Christ had put us together, which we were confident he had, and since Christian was at the forefront of this thing, we decided if we took a hit, so be it."
The priest who married them said they would make a good deacon couple. In the Catholic faith, a man generally may not become a deacon unless his wife approves. Many wives go through the training program with their husbands.
The following spring, Tom began taking the basic faith formation classes, the first step toward becoming a deacon.
But because diaconate classes are started only every four years, there sometimes is a waiting period. That's what happened to Tom, who couldn't start the next round of classes until 2003.
In the meantime, he was asked to apply for the job of executive director at Interfaith Ministries. His agribusiness consulting work was going well and there were a "million other reasons" why he shouldn't take the job with the financially struggling agency, he said.
"I remember going home that night and talking to Sherrill about it," Tom said. "I'll never forget what she asked me: 'Do you feel called to that position?' I said, 'What does that mean?' She said, 'You know what it means, that little tugging at your heart.' I said, 'Yeah, I think I am.' She said, 'If you're called, you are.'
"That's really where my diaconate work started. I took over an organization that was barely getting by. That allowed me to take all my business experience and plug it into something to get the agency up and going and solvent."
Then one day, he went to work and discovered a campsite out front. It appeared that a single woman and at least two children had camped overnight in front of the Interfaith building. A teddy bear and some diapers were evidence of the children.
"I went home that night and told Sherrill how much I was bothered by that," Tom said. "I went to my board and said, 'If I ever get a chance to expand this ministry, I want to open up a shelter for women and children. In my heart, that was the day Redwood Family Center was born. It took until 2003, three years to get the board to get all the pieces in place to do that. Over those years is when the Lord really started preparing me to become a deacon, shaping my heart to be a man of compassion."
As Redwood was taking shape, starting with a place "with holes in the roof and buckets in the hallway," Tom and Sherrill began the diaconate classes.
The first year was brutal, Tom said, adding he thinks the difficulty is intentional to "weed out" those who can't cut it in the long haul.
It was especially hard because of the long hours Tom was working.
"Many times, I'd get home from 12-hour days and Sherrill would say, 'We've got some reading to do tonight.' I'd say OK. She'd read some and I'd read some and keep each other awake. I couldn't have done it without Sherrill."
The second year also was difficult, but in areas Tom had more interest in, such as Bible study and homiletics.
"Of course, my favorite was talking about social justice and working with the poor," he said. "I was living that every day.
"But I was struggling with feeling worthy enough to be a deacon. The thing that makes this real for me was (the biblical story) when Christ called the tax collector and then he goes and has dinner with him and his friends, and the leadership of the church at the time says, 'Look at him. He hangs around with tax collectors and sinners and whatever,' and he comes back to say, 'I didn't come to call righteous men. I came to call sinners.' That's what spoke to me. I've certainly done a lot of sinning. I'm not worthy, but what we've learned through the process is that no one is worthy. And if you're called, you're called."
"That's what this total thing is, it's a call. If you accept the call, it's amazing how the Lord will assist you in the process and give you the strength and courage to get through all the classes and the homework."
And Sherrill was with him for every class, all the homework.
"What did I learn?" she asked. "I learned that religion is very complicated. I learned that when I look at (Tom), I feel lucky to see Christ in him. When he shares something that the Lord has put on his heart, he really has heard the Lord speak to him. And I learned that no matter what, we're in this together."
Stephen Blaire, bishop of the Stockton Diocese, can clearly see attributes of a deacon in Tom, one of nine deacons recently ordained. "He has a tremendous sense of working with the poor in the community and for the poor," Blaire said. "He has a great sense of what it means to be a deacon, mainly that it's a ministry of service. The image of the deacon in the theology of the church is this: The deacon is a reflection of Jesus Christ as a servant of God."
"Tom is very competent and very well educated. He also works in the diocese as our ecumenical officer, working to bring together other Christians and people of other faiths."
Looking back over the process it took to move from agribusinessman to executive director of the United Way and a deacon, Tom said he's seen a vast change in his heart and mind.
"Oh yeah," he said. "You're taught to grab it all, to take everything you can in the corporate world. Your salary and your position and all the political stuff. You're taking at that point. Now you have to put it all back. That's my job now."
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