New York: Br. Ky Nguyen Instituted as Acolyte

By Fr. Mike Mendl, SDB

(New Rochelle, NY – August 1) – Br. Ky Nguyen was installed (“instituted”) as an acolyte on Saturday morning, August 1. Fr. Tim Zak presided over the rite during the provincial house community Mass. Most of the local Salesian community took part. Br. Sal Sammarco represented the formation community of Orange, NJ, to which Br. Ky belongs while he studies theology at Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University. Br. Ky is assigned to the provincial house for the summer in order to take some theology courses online. 

Liturgically, it was the memorial of St. Alphonsus Liguori, and Fr. Tim chose the optional readings proper to St. Alphonsus, which linked the great eighteenth-century saint to Don Bosco and to us as apostles. Through his teaching and preaching, especially on the Eucharist and the Blessed Mother, St. Alphonsus was a light to the people of southern Italy, and subsequently through his influence on others. He modeled the mercy of God in his moral theology and in the confessional. As an acolyte, Br. Ky will attend carefully to Eucharistic matters, and as a Salesian, he, like all of us, is called to be a light to the world.