HOMILY FOR MASS OF ORDINATION TO THE PERMANENT DIACONATE OF ROBERT TONKLI AND PHILIP PHAM
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 19 NOVEMBER 2025
Ours is a service economy. Over the last 25 years, services have grown so much that they now account for about 80% of Australia’s Gross Domestic Product and 90% of employment.[1] Once a nation of farmers, miners and manufacturers, we are now overwhelmingly engaged in fields such as hospitality, education, healthcare, finance and IT. We outsource much of what we once did ourselves. We consult experts and specialists. We hire labour from agencies. We pay others to cook our meals, care for our elderly, manage our money, fix our computers, tend our gardens. In short, service is what Australians do.
It’s not just about turning the economic wheels. In many ways service is hardwired into what we are, ‘social animals’ right down to our DNA. Some seals are weaned within days of their birth. Kittens and puppies need about eight weeks. Calves and foals leave their mums around nine months. Bear cubs take about two years, while elephant calves can stick to their mothers for up to 16 years. But human babies take many years to achieve self-sufficiency. Some say that adolescent dependence upon parents now lasts till about the age of forty! Apart from family, we rely on others for work, sport, commerce, arts, government, technology, security and more.
God made us that way, as image and likeness of a God who is a communion of persons. As St Catherine of Siena observed, God could have made us much more independent, but He deliberately chose to make us interdependent: not inordinately needy, but needy enough to complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses and so be drawn into relationships of family, friends, community, Church. Service, rightly understood, is simply being human.
Some dream of radical self-sufficiency. Not just an end to an overly indulgent Nanny State, but the beginning of an Orphan State, in which no one cares or is cared for, no one relies on others or reaches out to them. Hermit-like we’d eschew company and do for ourselves. Instead of a service economy it would be an economy of indifference: minimal interaction, little or no sharing, cooperating only as absolutely necessary. It would be a triumph for the claim that “there’s no such thing as society, only individuals”. But few of us could live that way…
In any case, there are kinds of service beyond ‘the service sector’, transcending market logic and the DNA of social animals. Christian service is not more biological or economic activity, not just a safety net for when all else fails. It’s of a higher order altogether, one measured not by GDP and paid employment, but by charity, selflessness, seeking the genuine good of others. Not “What’s in it for me?” but “What does love require?” Though it’s thoroughly practical, diakonia or sacred service does not go looking for a market rate of return on investment. The eye of Christian service is on the far horizon of building God’s kingdom, His communion of saints. Rather than self-interest, however enlightened, it is motored by the self-emptying love of God revealed in the Incarnation of that Christmas Babe we will soon be celebrating.
In our first reading (Num 3:5-9) Moses is told to call the Levites to sacred service, assisting in the sanctuary, guarding the holy things, ministering to the assembly. Consecration made a claim on their entire being: no longer their own, they would now belong to God and His people. It must have been daunting for them, as it can be for us. It requires trust in God, trading in ego and ambition for humility and obedience.
In our epistle (1Tim 3:8-13) Paul says regarding those New Testament Levites, the deacons: Pick guys, he says, who’ll be serious and truthful; good husbands and fathers; men of strong faith and clear conscience; not in it for drink or sex or money. Test that they are blameless and ready to serve, worthy of people’s respect, and witnesses to faith in Christ Jesus. But why such exacting standards in this J.D.? Shouldn’t we take any volunteer who isn’t barking at the moon?
The answer is not to be found in the H.R. policies of the service economy, but in the very logic of diakonia. It’s more than a job, even a worthy job. At its core is Christlike sacrifice. Christ addresses our deacons today with: “If you would be great, be the servant; if you would be first, be the slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and even give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt 20:25-28). The blueprint for diaconate is Jesus the Slave, God giving His all. If we pattern ourselves on His self-gift in service of word, altar and charity, we make visible in ourselves the servanthood of the Saviour.
The two men before us tonight have taken very different caminos toward this service. Born in Vietnam to Catholic parents, Philip’s baptism was postponed by the chaos of war. An encounter with a French missionary at the age of 18 inspired him to seek Baptism and Confirmation. Arriving in Australia as a refugee at the age of 21, he studied software engineering and then law. He married Theresa and together they raised five children. Motivated by Christ’s mercy, Pham’s desire is to serve all God’s people, but especially the old, sick and dying.
Robert’s journey began in George’s Hall here in Sydney, where he was raised by devout parents and Catholic schools. Like Philip he experienced a kind of conversion as a young adult, in his case through the Disciples of Jesus Community. He joined their Youth Mission Team for two years and tried the seminary for three, with now-Rector Fr Michael DeStoop as a classmate. He discerned a call to marriage but always remained at the service of the Church, in the Emmanuel Community, his parish, ACU etc. He has sought to promote Catholic social teaching in the union movement and politics, and recently walked the Way to Santiago de Compostella with his son Matthew. Now he will walk with people along their ways to heaven, armed with that teaching he has studied and enacted.
My sons, Philip and Robert, tonight you stand, kneel or lie on the threshold of a new service. You will continue to serve the families, communities and causes that have claimed you. But now you will serve also at the ambo, where human words become divine revelation, God speaking cor ad cor loquitur, Sacred Heart to hungry heart. You will serve at the altar, as bread and wine are transformed into Christ’s Body and Blood, to feed hungry souls. You will witness and bless as human lovers become married icons of Christ’s union to the Church. You will serve at the font where babies are made saints, and at the bedside as you bring the Lord to the sick and weak. You will present the dying and dead to the Lord. And you will serve in the Church’s great ministries of charity, as advocates for justice, foot-washers for the needy, bearers of hope.
Your service will be in the economy of grace, where success is measured by humble charity, in assisting the bishops and priests in dispensing the sacraments and other care, in holding fast to the mystery of faith and proclaiming it in word and deed, in maintaining a spirit of prayer and conforming yourselves to the example of Christ whose Body and Blood you will minister. What a responsibility! What a grace! What a joy!
[1] Institute for International Trade (University of Adelaide), Australia’s Services Economy: A Teaching Case Study https://iit.adelaide.edu.au/system/files/media/documents/2022-04/finaltiisacollaborative-teaching-case-study-australia.pdf?
INTRODUCTION TO MASS OF ORDINATION TO THE PERMANENT DIACONATE OF
PHILIP PHAM AND ROBERT TONKLI
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 19 NOVEMBER 2025
Welcome to St Mary’s Cathedral Sydney for the Diaconal Ordinations of Philip Pham and Robert Tonkli. I especially welcome Philip with his wife Theresa, and Robert with wife Maryanne, and thank the wives for so generously supporting their husbands’ vocations; as they witness their husbands being ordained they will themselves be changed into ‘clergy wives’!
I salute Robert and Maryanne’s son Matthew, along with Robert’s parents Paul and Pauline, his brother Stephen and extended family present this evening. I likewise greet also Philip and Theresa’s children Darra, Derrick, Dorothy, Dean, and Dione, and Philip’s sisters Maria and Chantell. Xin chào to Philip’s mother and extended family in the United States and Vietnam who are joining us by livestream.
Tonight, we acknowledge those who have assisted our two candidates in discerning their vocation and in their formation for it. I thank in particular Fr Simon Kitimbo and Deacon Aisavali Salu who lead our Permanent Diaconate Programme, Professor Hayden Ramsay and the staff of the Catholic Institute of Sydney who take care of their intellectual formation, and the others who have formed them for their ministry.
I salute concelebrating with me tonight Auxiliary Bishops Most Rev. Richard Umbers and Danny Meagher, Vicar General Very Rev. Fr Sam Lynch, Episcopal Vicar for Clergy Very Rev. Father Daniel McCaughan, Seminary Rector Fr Michael de Stoop, and priests of the Archdiocese and beyond.
Tonight I especially celebrate the Deacons who do such great service in the Archdiocese and who tonight welcome with great joy two new members into their ranks. To everyone present on this happy occasion a very warm welcome to you all.
Conscious of the call of baptism to each one here to serve and to build up God’s kingdom, we repent of our failures to do so…