A Blessing, Father to Son

June 14, 2026

By David Dufek

CARLISLE — For Deacon Rob Stark, the most intimate moment of the Mass comes a half-second before the Gospel. He leans within inches of the celebrant’s face and asks for a blessing.

The celebrant is his son.

“I’m talking to my son, but yeah, I’m calling him ‘Father,’ because that’s who he is,” Deacon Rob said. “When he gives me his blessing and I sign myself, we look up at each other and we give each other a smile, and then I go proclaim the Gospel. It registers in my heart. It really does.”

That’s who he is, not what he does.

Father Nick Stark, pastor of St. Elizabeth Seton Parish in Carlisle, has had his father serving alongside him for about 90 days. Earlier this year, the bishop reassigned Deacon Rob from St. Pius X in Urbandale to Christ the King and St. Elizabeth Seton, after both parishes needed deacon coverage.

Deacon Rob said the bishop’s order even acknowledged, parenthetically, that there was “going to be some dynamic between father and son.”

“I didn’t ask for that,” he said. “I didn’t politic for it.”

Father Nick puts the blessing into theological language. “It’s the inversion of spiritual versus temporal authority. My dad, in this liturgical action, asking me for my blessing, willfully putting himself under my spiritual authority just for that one little moment. It is very, very powerful.”

Their two vocations did not arrive together. Deacon Rob’s came first, in 2005, in the middle of a Saturday vigil at St. Pius X. He was staring at the crucifix when he heard a male voice he later understood to be Christ’s, repeating: “I need you to do more.” He silently asked for a sign. A few weeks later, at a Christ Renews His Parish retreat, a deacon visiting from St. Augustine’s turned to him and asked whether he had ever considered the diaconate.

“You’re my sign,” Rob told him.

Nick was 11 at the time. He says he was always “positively disposed to things church” and altar-served almost every weekend from fourth or fifth grade on. The decisive ask, though, came over Easter dinner in 2013, from a parish priest (Father John Harmon) who suggested seminary.

He went.

Both Starks now insist on the importance of that ask.

“Sometimes people are waiting for that invitation,” Father Nick said. “I think it’s actually obedience to the Spirit.”

At home, the dynamic inverts again. In public, Rob and Carol Stark call him “Father”; privately, he is Nick. Father Nick refers to his dad as “Deacon” in front of the congregation. At Easter, Christmas, and other big celebrations, parishioners often comment on seeing father and son together at the altar.

“Our lives have really only been enriched by this,” Father Nick said. “Placing yourself at the service of God is very similar to placing yourself at the service of your family. Growing in one helps you to grow in the other.”

His father had one last thing to add as the conversation closed: “When guys think maybe they have a call … I would say, don’t be afraid.”