East Hanover’s Bob Lang Celebrates 31 Years as a Deacon

East Hanover’s Bob Lang was ordained a Deacon of the Archdiocese of Paterson on May 24, 1991, and those 31 years have been a blip.

“It seems a lot shorter,” Lang says.

And when asked how many Masses he’s served at and the number of homilies he’s delivered over the years, he claims it’s impossible to tell.

Lang served first at Saint Rose of Lima in East Hanover until 2007, and since then, the parishioners of Saint Peter the Apostle Parish in Parsippany have benefitted from his spiritual wisdom.

Lang was always involved in various church functions. “I became one of the lectors, and then I became one of the first extraordinary ministers – and this was all at Saint Rose of Lima Parish in East Hanover. There was an older Deacon there, an older fellow who was from the second class of Deacons. He used to come to me all the time and say, ‘Why don't you join the Diaconate?’ And I used to say to him, ‘When the Lord wants me to, he’ll let me know.” At that time, Lang’s son was still at home and the two spent much time together. His pastor, however, also encouraged him to join. “I just felt that as time went on, a call could happen. It got stronger and stronger, and at some point, it was obvious that that I was being called. That's the way it all came together. My son was a senior in high school at that point approaching his graduation year, so it was appropriate in that sense, too.”

Lang, as with all Deacons, normally preaches a homily once per month. He describes the process or preparation. “When I know I have a preaching coming up, I will look at the scriptures for the weekend,” he says. “I have the lectionary that has all of the readings and so forth in it. I read everything in the beginning of the week, and then I don't do anything for the next day or two, other than think about it and pray about it. And then, probably about Wednesday or Thursday, I take some papers out and I start looking at what it is I want the message to be. Once I understand a bit about how I want to put this together, to have some kind of a message, then I start to do two things. One, I start to look into things on the computer that might give me some inspiration. Sometimes I'll have a subject in mind, like Baptism or the Holy Eucharist. I'll look those up and I'll see what people are saying about all those different things, and many times what it does is it triggers something in my mind that fits. Then I sit down finally and start to make some notes, and normally I do not type my homilies because I'm a one finger-typer. I do my whole homilies from handwritten pages, and every homily is different in the sense that I don't follow any guidelines. I always write my own, with thoughts from other people sometimes. My goal with my homily is to leave something in people's minds to take home; some final thought. So, I look for that, and that usually takes the longest to put together, to come up with something that people can put in their pocket and take home. That’s the goal.”

Lang’s Catholic life of service is a full plate. He has been involved in many key aspects of Diaconate ministry. He has worked part-time for LIFENET, a pro-life ministry, and has been involved in Project Rachel, a post-abortion program. Lang also often speaks to groups regarding other key areas, including chaste living and pornography, end-of-life issues, and stem cell research. In addition, Lang has other duties at Saint Peter Parish, like setting up schedules for the Deacons for Mass. “I also take care of the Extraordinary Ministry, the ministers that go up to distribute the host, and I run a bible study every other week,” Lang says. “Also, I’m usually the guy who takes the initial information for Baptism. I fill out the form with the parents - the other Deacons do some, too, and we have a lot - but I get them started in a Baptism preparation direction. Each of the Deacons, about once every two or three months, runs a Baptism preparation evening with the people who are due to have Baptism, and their godparents.”

Lang celebrated 58 years of marriage with his wife Judy on July 11, and he turned 85 on July 8. “I got my wife for my birthday. That’s what I always tell her,” he says. The couple has three children, Robin, Jennifer, and Bob. The Langs have 14 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.