ROGERS — As the Church begins the season of Lent, there is another change occurring in the Diocese of Little Rock.
A new office — the Office of Divine Worship — has been established to provide instruction to diocesan priests on liturgical matters.
Diocesan administrator, Msgr. J. Gaston Hebert, appointed Father Shaun Wesley, associate pastor at St. Vincent de Paul Church in Rogers, as director of the new office, effective Feb. 22.
According to Father Wesley, the new assignment, in addition to his parish duties, has been in the works for some time.
“Even before Bishop (J. Peter) Sartain left (in June 2006), he had talked about my working in this capacity of helping to coordinate liturgy on a diocesan level,” he said. “Msgr. Hebert decided to go ahead and give me this appointment in order to help him get the necessary information out to the priests of the diocese.”
One of his main duties would be the dissemination of liturgical information the diocese receives from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“In our talking about this new office, Msgr. Hebert needs someone to help him filter this information and send it out to the priests to be certain that all the liturgies are being carried out in the way they are supposed to be in the diocese,” Father Wesley said.
Recently, the USCCB changed the title of one of their standing committees, Committee on Liturgy, to the Committee on Divine Worship.
Father Wesley said, “The reason we are changing the title in the diocese is because the Catholic bishops changed the title of their office and we wanted to follow their example.”
His new title will be director of the Office of Divine Worship.
In his new role, he will be able to disseminate information about the new official rite for the Quinceaños, a religious ceremony celebrated by Hispanic girls on their 15th birthdays. Over the years pastors in the United States have written or adapted their own service based on customs in Mexico.
“There had never been an official rite before. We should all be using that now that it has come out,” Father Wesley said.
Other areas of responsibility would include periodic mailings to priests and a role in the continuing education of priests.
“We do think it probably will be a quarterly mailing of some kind that I would send out — sometimes reminders of different things,” Father Wesley said. “In talking about continuing education for priests, I would have a role in that so we would devote certain amounts of our continuing education to liturgical topics.”
Father Wesley is already looking forward to other changes his office will need to keep up to date on.
“Sometime in the future, there is supposed to be a revised version of the Missal — the sacramentary — coming out. So there would need to be some kind of continuing education for these changes in the Missal and the General Instruction that goes along with that,” he said. “This is to make sure that all the priests are up to date in making the changes they would need to do.
“It is also that as a diocese we would all be doing the best we can to celebrate our liturgies according to the way it is laid out in the new Missal.”
Educated at Sacred Heart Elementary and High School in Morrilton, Father Wesley, 28, said, “My first liturgical experience began when I started singing. I even cantored my first time in Sunday Mass in the fourth grade. That really got me involved in the liturgy at an early age.
“I continued to sing throughout junior high and high school. In 11th and 12th grades, I had the title in school of student liturgy coordinator. I was the one making sure all of those classes had everything lined up — making sure they had their lectors and altar servers, their music chosen and petitions written.”
Even after first entering Holy Trinity Seminary in Dallas, and later at St. Meinrad Seminary in Indiana, he served on various liturgy committees. One of his liturgical projects at St. Meinrad involved the renovation of the seminarians’ chapel.
“This provided more liturgical experience and background in the studies to make sure we were doing what we were suppose to do in these renovations,” Father Wesley said.
These studies included reviewing certain Church documents supplied by the USCCB as well as the General Instruction of the Roman Missal to ensure that the space was appropriate for the celebration of the Mass.
In his second year of seminary, Father Wesley’s class was in charge of a tenebrae service — a service that grew out of the Liturgy of the Hours, especially for Good Friday. Tenebrae is taken from the Latin word for “darkness” or “shadow” and the prayer symbolizes Jesus and the disciples as they individually flee from him before his death.
“Our class president came to me and said, ’We are in charge of the tenebrae service during Lent. You better get started on it.’ I took that seriously and I wrote a whole new tenebrae service that they continued to use each year. I am hoping to use it in the parish this year. It is a very dramatic darkening,” Father Wesley said.
Breaking bread is a sacramental as well as social activity for Father Wesley. The dinner parties he prepares for silent auctions in the parish are in high demand. The dinners for groups feature his cooking and presentation of the meal.
“Even in a formal meal there is a liturgical aspect to that,” he said. “There is a certain sharing. We’re sharing of our lives — we’re being changed even how we are going through this meal together. All of that is connected — my interest in liturgy, my interest in entertaining, in putting events together. They are all related.”
