January A New Beginning. January 4, 2001

Transcription

1 January A New Beginning January 4, 2001 Just a few days ago, I finished my last column for the Catholic Advocate of Newark, and here I am beginning again as I write to you. I called that column Time to Say Goodbye after that wonderful song that Andrea Bocelli sings so well. I was going to call this one Time to Say Hello, but it really sounded awkward, and so the title is a more prosaic A New Beginning, and I guess that says it all. In the months and years ahead, however many God gives me to serve you, hopefully we will get to know each other pretty well. I will try to get around to all the parishes every couple of years, so at least I will have a chance to get to know the priests, deacons, and religious to some extent. If I don t get to know each of you who are the real life of the parishes by name, at least we will be praying together at Mass, and I will have the occasion to shake your hand. I am hoping that the pastoral councils in every parish will give me an opportunity to listen and to learn about the hopes and dreams, the concerns and the fears, of our people, so that I can understand and try to help. From the extraordinary ministry of Cardinal Hickey, I know that you already are a Eucharistic people rich in love for the Blessed Sacrament, that awesome sign of God s love for us. I know that you have a great devotion to Our Lady, one that is fostered in a special way by the presence of her beautiful National Shrine here in our midst. How fortunate we are in Washington to have the shrine so close to us as a constant reminder of Mary s caring love. I know, too, that under the cardinal s leadership, you have always reached out to the poor, the homeless, and the hungry. I want to do that too,

2 4 Thinking of You and so we will work together to ease the burdens of these sisters and brothers of ours. People are always asking about my priorities. I tell them that they are very simple. First and foremost, I need to know you in your parish settings, in your schools and your institutions, pastoral and charitable services. Secondly, I want you to help me and the vocations office of the archdiocese in our encouragement of priestly and religious vocations. A parish that is filled with faith and love is a parish that gives its sons and daughters to the Lord in lifelong, generous service. Pray for vocations, be on the lookout for those who have them, and don t be afraid to talk to young people and those not so young about service as priests and religious. In the dioceses where I was privileged to serve in the past, I always called my column Thinking of You. I d like to use that title here in the Archdiocese of Washington, too. It is a real description of what I hope my life will be like as your bishop and your servant. In all the things I will try to do, I must always be thinking of you and your needs. Getting around to see you and to listen will help me to think of you all the time. You know, of course, that thinking of you guarantees that I will be praying for you all the time, too. That is a two-way street, isn t it? It comes with a plea that you will always pray for me. Getting to Know You January 11, 2001 It does seem a little corny as we used to say to use a line from an old musical to introduce a column like this. But it does say everything that I have been doing since I arrived last Tuesday.

3 January I can t believe that I have been here in Washington a whole week. It seems just the day before yesterday that I drove down from Newark with a lot of boxes and a couple of suitcases, following a moving van with more boxes, an excercycle, and some paintings. I can t seem to lose the feeling that this is all happening in an altered state of consciousness. I told Bishop Lori who by the way has been an extraordinary help, guide, and friend that I still had the feeling that I am just working here on some project for a few days and then I ll have to head back to New Jersey! The problem is unpacking. I have been so busy since I have arrived that my rooms are still a mess and I spend half the free time that I have looking for things I just put away somewhere. Once I get everything organized, it will be better. (Please God, I get everything put away by Easter!) It is not that I haven t been working. You probably know that I have had several great visits to some of our parishes and neighborhoods. After Wednesday s evening prayer in the cathedral and the great Mass of Installation on Thursday in the National Shrine, I have offered Mass in seven of our churches, and had the chance to visit some five of our parishes in Anacostia last Saturday morning. Whenever I have been with the people, they have been truly wonderful. They have received me with great graciousness and love and made me feel very much at home. I look forward to visiting more of our parishes in the weeks ahead, either for a Sunday or Saturday Vigil Mass, or just for quiet early morning Mass on a weekday. Being with the people continues to be a special grace for me. What a wonderful diocese this is! What great and beautiful churches we have and how blessed we are with the people who fill them. I want to visit all our churches, together with our schools and social service agencies, as time goes by. In fact, I could probably use eight or more days a week to do all the things I would like to do. Please pray for me that I can

4 6 Thinking of You organize my life in the way the Lord wants me to and that, as I continue thinking of you, I may learn each day how to serve you better. Thank You! January 18, 2001 What a wonderful diocese this is! I am really so inspired by the priests and religious I have met, the great deacons and their families, and by all our people. They are from many nations, races, and ethnic groups and yet each has as Saint Paul wrote in his epistle last Sunday his or her own gifts to bring to the building up of this Church of Washington. All of you have been so very welcoming to me! It s not too soon to say thank you, and I do it with the deepest sense of how blessed I am to be here to serve you. I am writing this in Leonardtown in St. Mary s County. It is 6:45 on Sunday morning and I just came back to my room in the rectory after praying for all of you in the little chapel in this historic house where I stayed last night. You will probably read of my journeys around our local Church in another part of today s Catholic Standard, but I am writing to you now so that you will be assured that in all these meanderings around the different parts of this archdiocese, you are always in my prayers. Whenever I offer Mass, it is always for you, and whenever I go to chapel to pray, I take you with me. (I wish I were a holier man so that my prayers would be more effective, so you must pray for me that God will give me the grace to be better!) It is less than two weeks since I arrived on the day before the ceremony at St. Matthew s Cathedral. It has already been filled with enough memories to write a short book. The

5 January Masses last weekend in St. Augustine and Sacred Heart, the visits to different parishes and convents each morning, this great weekend in Southern Maryland have all given me a sense of the Church of Washington, which fills me with gratitude for the extraordinary pastoral service of Cardinal Hickey and the remarkable spirit of cooperation and willingness to work together of everyone I met. This is not to say that I understand it all already. That will take many weeks and months as I try to listen and try to learn. The only thing that I have asked already is that we must all concentrate more on praying for and working for vocations to the priesthood and religious life. This is a real concern for all of us, and I truly count on you to help both by your prayer and your willingness to raise the consciousness of our people so that it is on the front burner of our thoughts. From all of this, you can tell that just about all the time I am here, I am thinking of you and hoping that you are praying for me too. On Many Things January 25, 2001 I had planned to write about my visit to Southern Maryland again and especially to comment once more on that oyster stew! My friends in Leonardtown will be happy to know that I guarded it carefully and that it lasted for several suppers. I did share it with Bishop Lori on at least one occasion, however, and he, too, remarked on how good it was. The events of the last few days have changed the life of the Archdiocese of Washington again, as you well know, and I thought I probably should write to you about them and put

6 8 Thinking of You off my further reminiscences about my most pleasant journey to our southern counties for a later date. About my nomination as cardinal, much has already been written. From my statement, which appears in another part of our Catholic Standard, you know how honored I am by this most gracious appointment of our Holy Father and how I truly believe that in a special way Pope John Paul II is honoring the Archdiocese of Washington, which has become so extraordinary a local Church under the dedicated care of my truly beloved predecessor, Cardinal Hickey. As I tell the media every time they ask me about what this new designation means, I am still going to be the same person and still have as my number one priority getting to know you, to love you, and to serve all God s people here in the district and in the five counties of Maryland that make up our family. Of course, I will need your prayers all the more now, so please don t forget me! For me, the most touching news was the Holy Father s appointment of Bishop Lori to the dynamic and growing diocese of Bridgeport. It is a great appointment, and Bishop Bill will be a wonderful shepherd of that young local Church. He brings so much goodness and enthusiasm and so much extraordinary experience from his tremendous service to the Church of Washington and, in a special way, from the great example and invaluable on-the-job training he received from working closely with Cardinal Hickey, one of the most pastoral and farsighted diocesan bishops of our United States Catholic Church. But how I will miss him! Not a day has gone by since I was named to Washington that I did not speak to him and learn so much from his vast storehouse of knowledge and wisdom. Not only has he been an excellent guide, but also a wonderful friend and brother. I rejoice that our Holy Father is promoting him to the leadership of a diocese he will be one of the

7 January youngest diocesan bishops in our country! and I know that the Church of Bridgeport will be truly blessed. As I look to the future and see all the things we have to do together, I count so much on our priests, our deacons, and religious, as well as all the great lay men and women of the Church of Washington to continue your already most generous and gracious help that I may learn more quickly and serve more effectively as a good pastor here. You know I ll be thinking of you all the time and counting on your good counsel and love. Is God Calling You? February 1, 2001 Years ago I had the great idea (at least I thought it was a great idea) of leasing outdoor advertising billboards for vocation recruitment. As a matter of fact, several Catholic dioceses around the country have already started doing it. The idea is to start people thinking about vocations to the priesthood and the religious life at a time when they might not be distracted by the multitude of other daily cares and concerns. A sign along a highway as someone is driving by or atop a building as someone goes walking along could do just that. I had it all figured out what the billboard should say. It would be the catching question, Is God Calling You? Perhaps setting those simple words against a background of clouds or something like that. The only other wording would be the name and phone number of the archdiocese s vocation office. I never got to do it, probably because the costs up in the northeast would make it an expensive proposition and because my colleagues weren t overwhelmed by the idea.

8 10 Thinking of You That s why I thought it would be a good topic for this column. I have to warn you that I will be writing about vocations a lot since it is so very important to you and to me that we have the priests, sisters, and brothers to take care of our people in the years ahead. We have an excellent vocation program here in the Archdiocese of Washington, but it will only be successful if we all keep praying for vocations every day and if our families with children bring them up with openness to embrace and answer God s challenge to religious service when it comes. Last weekend, I had the opportunity to be part of a discernment retreat for almost twenty young men from our area who are seriously considering what God has in mind for their lives. Most of them have not yet decided, and so the retreat was geared to give them a couple of days apart in prayer and reflection with priests available to listen and to talk to as needed. I was truly very impressed by the caliber of the men who were present, by their seriousness, and by their obvious deep faith. I pray that some of them at least will decide that God is calling them and that they will come to study for the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Washington. I write to you all about this for many reasons. First of all, since I like you to know what is going on in this local Church of ours; second, in case someone reading this column might be inspired to contact the vocations office himself; and finally because I need your prayers and your own encouragement for this vital need of ours. We need to do the same thing for religious sisters and brothers, and with God s help we will redouble our efforts for every religious vocation. In all of this your participation is essential. That is why whenever I think of vocations I am thinking of you and even wondering, Is God Calling You?