20061015
My Chaplain Assistant--SGT James Roark
To let you know more about my life here I wish to introduce you to the man who is with me just about every waking hour of the day. He is my chaplain assistant, SGT James Roark. The job of the chaplain assistant is to protect me and to help me perform my chaplain duties. As far as protection goes, the chaplain is the only member of the military who is not allowed to carry a weapon. As a chaplain, I am a non-combatant. Since I am unarmed, a big part of my assistant's role is to make sure I don't get hurt. He is well trained in using different types of weapons and combat skills. He has to be willing to put his life in danger to protect me. It reminds me of how Jesus was willing to lay down his life for us. "There is no greater love than this, than to lay down one's life for one's friends." The other part of a chaplain assistant's job is to help the chaplain with administrative work and other details of the job. More practically, this means taking care of our Humvee and office, helping to arrange transportation to various bases to take care of the Catholic soldiers there, preparing the weekly and monthly reports that we send to our chain of command, setting up for Mass so I can hear Confessions, and other duties that I can't even think of right now. To put it plainly, his job is to protect me and do all the small things so I can spend as much time as possible taking care of the emotional and spiritual needs of our soldiers. SGT Roark is 24 years old. I got to know him first as he attended Mass at Saint Cecilia's before we got called up to go to Iraq. He has roots at Saint Cecilia's as he recieved the sacrament of Confirmation there, grew up in the area, and graduated from Omaha Central High School. He graduated from the University of Nebraska Lincoln in May of 2005 with a degree in criminal justice. After this deployment, he wants to pursue becoming a police officer. One interesting fact is that he was a walk-on for the football team there for three years. If you want to know anything about recent players on the team, he is a person to talk to. He is a devout Catholic who really grew in his faith while in college. One aspect of the faith that interests him is apologetics (the rational defense of the faith--knowing why we believe what we believe and why we do what we do). The hardest part of his job will be putting up with me. The other hard part will be listening to me preach all the time. Most weekends, he hears my homily three times. He doesn't seem to mind too much. Well, now you know a little bit about my chaplain assistant. Please keep him and me in your prayers. The job of taking care of the needs of our soldiers is not easy but is also very grace-filled. My hope is to put some pictures with this article in the next few days. Plus, the base newspaper found our story interesting so they are writing an article about us. I will try to put a copy of that article or a link to it on this page.
