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May 17, 2024By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press
He didn’t plan on some of the things he’s done with his faith – including becoming a permanent deacon.
But tomorrow he is to be ordained at St. Paul Cathedral.
James “Jay” C. Guillette, 66, tells his story this way.
“I’m a baby boomer who left the Church with the other baby boomers. ... I was at least 14 when I started skipping Mass.”
His parents, now deceased, let him do that?
“My father was pretty sick,” Mr. Guillette replied. “My mother was trying to keep the rest of us in line.” As “a middle kid” with five siblings, he got away with this.
“I never doubted that God existed,” he said. “I rationalized [that] God didn’t need my worship.” That was partly true; “God doesn’t need anything.”
Mr. Guillette had attended Holy Name of Jesus Elementary School in Worcester, when it was still open, and Worcester Academy. He got his bachelor’s degree in English from the University of New Hampshire and his master’s degree in liberal arts from Clark University.
He said he and his wife, Debra (Bellione) Guillette, had their daughter, Stefanie, and son, Ryan, baptized and their marriage convalidated (since they had not been married in the Catholic Church). They tried to attend Mass but “it didn’t stick,” he said. “One of us would want to go” when the other didn’t.
“Twenty-eight years ago God had a sense of humor; he made a bunch of things happen,” Mr. Guillette said. “We started going back to church and then my wife prayed for me, ‘God, can you make my husband holy?’” She’d seen other women’s husbands in church and “she wanted that for her family.”
Their family had been attending Mass “more or less,” at St. Mary Parish in Jefferson, near where they live, but a couple days after his wife’s prayer “something just shifted in me,” Mr. Guillette said.
“I can’t explain it any better than that. ... We took the family to Mass every Sunday and I started going daily, and then one of my friends asked if I could cover” his hour in the perpetual eucharistic adoration chapel then at St. George Parish in Worcester. “I said, ‘Sure. What’s adoration?’”
After praying there, Mr. Guillette said, he signed up for his own hour, as did his wife. They kept going for about 17 years until the chapel’s hours were reduced.
In 2001, they joined St. Paul Cathedral Parish.
Mr. Guillette said he started going to pray outside the Planned Parenthood abortion facility on Lincoln Street in Worcester, then on Pleasant Street when it moved to its present location.
What prompted him to do this?
“I think I felt like I wanted to help protect the ‘little guy,’” he replied. “Pro-life [efforts] just made sense to me.”
He said he also participated in First Friday/First Saturday adoration and Masses “to pray for an end to abortion,” held at the Problem Pregnancy resource center near Planned Parenthood. When organizer Kevin O’Brien moved out of state, Mr. Guillette coordinated this prayer period until 2019.
He said he sent emails and started a blog, sharing information about the pro-life cause and the Catholic faith, especially local activities.
“I used to go to the March for Life” in Washington, D.C., annually during the 2000s, he said.
His local pro-life work basically continued until he started his diaconate studies, he said.
The permanent diaconate was another thing Mr. Guillette hadn’t planned on.
“I thought I was a CCD teacher and pro-life prayer warrior,” he said. “I thought that was good.”
But one day Alex M. Garcia, a permanent deacon candidate at the time and a fellow parishioner at Holy Family Parish in Worcester, which the Guillettes had joined, called him at work.
“Why aren’t you a deacon?” Mr. (now Deacon) Garcia queried?
“It hit me in the heart, the way he asked it,” Mr. Guillette said. “The Holy Spirit struck me.”
He said men active in church get asked whether they’ve ever considered being a priest or deacon, and he had said “no” in the past.
This time, “I said, ‘O.K.’ ... I instantaneously agreed with him.”
Mr. Guillette said he applied for the diaconate program immediately and received a “confirmation” about this decision when he learned he was three weeks away from the application cut-off age; he was about to turn 61.
Now on the verge of ordination, he said, “I tell people two things: ‘It wasn’t my idea’ and ‘It’s Deacon Alex’s fault!’”
In the 1980s, Mr. Guillette taught middle school and high school students on a “computer bus,” a refurbished school bus equipped with computers, that went to different schools. He now works for the Burlington-based computer and network security company RSA.
Might he use, in his work for the Church, his experience as a technical instructor/technical support engineer?
“I like to figure out how something works, and, if I understand it, I like to explain it,” Mr. Guillette replied, adding that he thinks that applies to the faith too.
He had worked with the Brazilian youth group at Holy Family, now St. Joseph and St. Stephen Parish, but at his parish assignment at St. George’s in Worcester he’s been taking the Eucharist to shut-ins in their 90s, because that’s where the need is, he said.
After his ordination tomorrow, he is to assist and preach at a Mass of Thanksgiving Sunday at 10 a.m. at St. George’s, where Bishop McManus has assigned him for diaconate ministry. A public reception follows in the parish hall.
Does he have goals or hopes for his ministry as a deacon?
“My plans always get changed, so I’m going to do what the bishop tells me,” Mr. Guillette replied. “If you show up, God’s going to point you where he sees the greatest need.”
