Deacon Digest: An Incubator for Faith

Deacon Mike Allgaier
Asst. to the Director of the Permanent Diaconate

A mother’s faith was the incubator of faith for the family. Three boys were brought to ordination because of it.
 
I was talking with the Bishop at one post-confirmation luncheon and the subject of faith came up. I nonchalantly told him I got my faith from my mother. He replied he finds that to normally be the case.+  Now if anybody has witnessed a significant population up close and personal receive the Holy Spirit, it is the Bishop.

In this age of secularism and high dropout rates from religion from all denominations, it is worth thinking about what brings one to act on a calling to vocations. Our family is blessed with 3 of 7 siblings being ordained to the diaconate and one of those additionally to the priesthood. Three others are highly active in lay roles in the church. One is not so “churchy,” but everyone knows if you need a helping hand, go see him.

Outward signs are not sure indicators of inward reality. But if it acts like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then you have some indicator of interior motivation to be a duck. In the field of education and training, we know we can only measure observable facts to assure knowledge or skill mastery. Motivation or belief is not so objectively measured. “They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love,” the song says. 
 
Our mother was of German Catholic descent. Some of her clan migrated to America to avoid “The Great War.” A large contingent settled in the Wichita County, Texas, area. As a girl in Texas, she attended an all-girls’ Catholic school taught by the good nuns. Upon graduation from high school, they each put their life’s dream in a note and cemented it into the new grotto masonry dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her wish was to marry a good Catholic man and have a large family. Her prayers were answered.

After WWII, she met and married our dad.  He was fresh out of the navy from a tour with the occupation forces of Japan. They bought a farm north of Kansas City, Mo. Dad worked in the steel mill full time. Mom was a stay-at-home mom with a full-time job raising 7 children. One of her charters in life was to get to Sunday Mass come “hell or high water.”  Notwithstanding floods of the nearby creek or snow storms in the winter, she was going to get us kids to Mass, even if Dad was at work making double-time-and-a-half at the steel mill on Sundays. Church was 13 miles away down the state highway and only ten minutes away on a sunny day. It was an odyssey on bad weather days.

We were the only Catholic family in the area. We were surrounded by a sea of good Protestant people who were most curious about this Catholic family with seven kids. Mom had half of the saying “barefoot and pregnant” down pat. 


Figure 1. Fay Dell Allgaier – “Mom” on 80^th Birthday, 2006.

After I was thrown out of the choir for singing “loud and bad” by Sister, I turned my attention to altar serving. The good Father asked mom for her son’s service and my mother said yes without hesitation.  My brother Jim and I showed our interest in serving by playing Mass at home.  We would roll the wonder bread flat with the rolling pin and cut out “hosts” with the biscuit cutter. We put a sheet on the card table and got the wine goblets with candles in front and we had our “altar.” We put the wonder bread “host” on a little plate and a handkerchief over the goblet. Got a small bible with ribbons. We were all set to play “Mass.”  

In all seriousness, when we were ready to volunteer for real Mass, we got our “cheat cards” and started learning the responses in Latin. Mom practiced with us over and over again. The Confiteor, Orameus, and Omnipetant Deius became Latin words and prayers we got used to saying.  I served with my brother and friends through grade school, high school, and even the weekend I came home from Navy boot camp. The cassock began to look like a miniskirt in the end. We stuck with it from Latin to English, from facing the altar and crucifix to the priest facing the congregation on the other side of the altar. The roots of my faith had been laid down and nailed down. However, first I played the role of the prodigal son before I returned to my Father’s house after the Navy, college and my first job. My mother had marked us with her faithful example. It was my wife-to-be and our pastor, Fr. Flanagan, who got me back on the straight and narrow.Children and service in the Church marked the next twenty years.

My wife, Marie, supported me all the way in the deacon formation process.  She attended most of my classes and activities during the five-year formation journey. However, she did remind me that it was I, and not she, being ordained to serve the Lord and the Church.  She remains my best advisor and counselor. She also reminds me to say no, once in a while.

My next brother, Deacon Jim Allgaier, has some overlap with me in his journey to ordination.

As part of our family's spiritual development, Jim too was privileged to serve as an altar boy with his brother, Mike. One of the greatest challenges was striving to properly pronounce the Latin responses. Our Mother, Fay Dell, gave us instructions and direction not only in the home, but ensured we all received instruction from the nuns for Catechism. Many a Saturday morning was spent with our noses buried in the Baltimore Catechism learning about our faith. As Jim outgrew his surplice and cassock in the altar server role, he then become a lector. Proclaiming the Word of the Lord in the readings enabled him, even as a teenager, to feel he was really serving God and our faith community. 

The fact that our mother made sure we attended Mass every Sunday, rain, snow or shine, ingrained in him not only the love of the Mass, but the beauty of service to God. The best story he remembers about our mother's dedication was of one very snowy Sunday when we didn't think we could get out of our long driveway even to get to the gravel road. There weren't street plows to help us in the rural countryside. Only my mother's will and determination were with us. Our father was insistent that we couldn't make it, so Mom got in the car herself and started driving. Of course, we became hopelessly stuck before we made it 25 yards down the road and Dad had to pull us out of the snow with a tractor and chain. There was not a word of recrimination said by him to Mom, only his grudging admiration and love that we all felt when our mother pushed to get us to Mass. 
All of this, plus the support and love of his wife, Karen, kept Jim's tradition of service to the church strong throughout the years. He grew from multiple outreach ministries to being an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, a lector and eventually explored becoming a deacon. He was never far from serving and his love of the liturgy. 

The third son and fourth child of the family, Fr. Sebastian (Tom), entered life with the same faith and vigorous Catholic environment in the Allgaier household. Odd as it seems now, he did not become an altar server but did become a priest. However, without trying, Mother espoused the teachings of the church by her example and words.

He spent four years studying law enforcement in college before discovering he had non-normal color perception and could not get into the state police or large city police forces. Many people don’t realize that the personality of a policeman and a priest are very similar. They both want to do what is right for their fellow man, protect the weak, enforce the rules and serve others.  After continuing his college summer job at the steel mill for a year or two, he joined the Air Force to get out of his old stomping grounds and see the world. It was a funny thing, everywhere you go there was always the church to rely on for consistent support in good times and bad.  From airbase to airbase, the Church, Mass and the presence of Jesus was always there. The Air Force trained him as a dental technician.  While in the jungles of the Philippines, providing goodwill dental care to the natives, he still found a Church and God.

When he returned home, he was drawn to the priesthood. He began by volunteering at the local soup kitchen, aiding the immigrants in Kansas City, and volunteering around the diocese. He attended the minor seminary at Conception College to discern his vocation further. There he made his final and solemn vows as a Benedictine monk. After completing major seminary, he was ordained a transitional deacon and then a priest in the Order of St. Benedict in 1994. He served in various capacities at the seminary including chaplain to the young seminarians, leading to assignments as pastor sequentially at two different local parishes.

Our mother’s faith was the incubator for the family. Her eggs hatched in the warm light of her faith.  Three boys matured in it to ordination as Roman Catholic clergy.


Figure 2. Deacon Mike, Deacon Jim & Fr. Sebastian, O.S.B., Allgaier’s all, on the   
occasion of Jim’s ordination on June 11, 2016, in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,
with reception at Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church in Claremont, CA.
 

Figure 3. Awaiting start of David and Hanna’s Wedding Mass, April 2018. 
(Deacon Jim, Fr. Sebastian, O.S.B, and Deacon Mike)


Figure 4. Allgaier Siblings – On the occasion of Hanna and David’s wedding,
St. Ann’s Church, Excelsior Springs, Mo., April 2018.
(1st row Rob, Cathy, Beth and David; 2^nd row Jim, Sebastian and Mike.)
 

Figure 5. 4th of July Family Reunion 2015, Lawson, Missouri Farm.

Deacon Mike Allgaier is the first child and son of Bob and Fay Dell Allgaier.  He and his wife Marie reside in the Metropolitan New York area of New Jersey. He was ordained May 5, 2005, at St. John the Baptist, Paterson, New Jersey, and is now serving as Permanent Deacon at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Denville, NJ.  He also serves as Formation Team Leader for Deacon Candidates while functioning as Assistant to the Director of the Permanent Deaconate at St. Paul Inside the Wall, Madison, NJ.

Deacon Jim Allgaier is the 2nd oldest son of the Allgaier clan. He and his wife, Karen, reside in the Los Angeles area of California. He was ordained on June 11, 2016, at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He now serves as a Permanent Deacon at Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church in Claremont, CA.  Besides normal deacon parish roles, he is also Coordinator of Leadership Development, Outreach and Stewardship.

Reverend Sebastian Allgaier, O.S.B., is the third son and fourth child of the Allgaier family.  He resides at Conception Abbey, Conception Junction, Missouri.  He was ordained May 25, 1999.  He and his confreres exist to praise God in a daily cycle of prayer and work,  to welcome guests, to educate future priests, and to share the Gospel in accordance with the Rule of St. Benedict. They serve as a formation center for seminarians, retreatants, deacon candidates and visitors from the road of life with their basilica, monastery and minor Seminary College.

Their brothers and sisters are lectors, Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, ushers, church leaders, event supporters and salt-of-the-earth people. Each fulfills his priestly lay roles in his own way.

Mom and Dad have returned to the Lord, leaving behind a legacy of love and faith for their children and the Roman Catholic Church faith community.