21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Installation of Pastors
Father Thomas Dymowski, O.SS.T., St. Lawrence / Resurrection
Father Ernest Cibelli, Immaculate ConceptionEmmitsburg, MD
August 26 & 27, 2023
Introduction (St. Lawrence / Resurrection)
Let me begin by thanking Father Victor Socco for his (your) dedicated service to this parish in a time of rapid change. You began as the shepherd of what had been a small country church, and almost overnight it became a large suburban parish, especially as Fort Meade and NSA expanded and many new homes were built. Add to that, you lovingly embraced Resurrection Parish when it was joined to St. Lawrence as a Pastorate. No small accomplishment! May the Lord bless you for your wonderful ministry among his people here!
Fr. Tom Dymowski and I have worked closely together over these past two years in serving the many religious communities here in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. I have experienced his goodness as a human being, his ardor as a disciple, and his pastoral love – all wrapped up in the Trinitarian charism! I am grateful to the Trinitarians for making available these two wonderful priests to the Archdiocese for service to this Pastorate.
Introduction (Immaculate Conception)
Let me begin by thanking Msgr. Jim Farmer for his service as your shepherd. Interim though he was, he put his heart and soul into serving this parish, together with Fr. Jeremy – to both of these good priests I am very grateful!
To Fr. Cibelli I offer my profound thanks! You were peacefully serving St. Mary’s Parish in Hagerstown when lightning struck! But you rose to the occasion and embraced this parish family with a shepherd’s love, placing at its service your talents & gifts as also your generous heart and faithful spirit. May this great parish and school grow and flourish, as in the grace of God, you journey and collaborate with the people you’ve been send to lead and serve. And let me add a word of personal greeting to your newly ordained associate pastor, Fr. Nicolas Mwai who begins a lifetime of priestly service in this parish family. My warmest greetings also to the newly ordained Fr. John Bilinki, who will soon return to Rome to complete his studies.
Turbulent Times
And what a time to begin this new ministry. To put it mildly, we live in turbulent times. The place of religion in society and in people’s personal lives is diminishing. The Church is challenged on a variety of fronts, from within and from without. The numbers are not trending favorably; people, especially the young, are leaving. Opinions abound, both on social media and around the kitchen table. Not only questions about the Church and her leaders, but questions about the validity of Christianity itself… …and indeed about the Person of Christ – his truth, reality, and goodness. A relative recently said to me, “You’d be better off selling analogue phones!”
Isn’t it interesting that Jesus himself walked the earth in a time of cultural, political, and religious ferment? Then as now, society was restless, opinionated, and polarized. Arguments about the meaning of the Law and the Prophets went on constantly. And, to be sure, people did not know what to make of one Jesus of Nazareth … or for that matter, of his disciples, his teachings, and his miracles.
Who Do You Say That I Am?
Maybe that’s why Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” He was tapping into the cultural, political, and religious ferment of the times. The disciples told him that people thought he was John the Baptist, or Elijah, or possibly Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. In other words, a lot of confusion, smoke, and fog.
But then, Jesus turns the spotlight on his own closest followers. “Who do you say that I am?” As if to say: “You see me every day. You hear me preach. I instruct you in private. We eat together. Pray together. Walk together. Who do YOU say that I am?”
This was not an academic question, not a theology quiz. Rather, as one author says, “[It was] the inquiry of a Lover who wants to know if he has been understood and accepted in his deepest identity by those [before whom] he has been at pains to manifest himself.”
Overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, Simon Peter answers for the other apostles: “You are the Christ, the Messiah, the Lord and Savior, the Son of the Living God!” Receiving this confession of faith that was inspired by the Spirit of the Eternal Father, Jesus “installs” Peter as the leader of the apostles, as the rock upon which he would build his Church. Entrusting the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven to Peter, he and his fellow apostles, and their successors would be charged with opening for the whole of humanity the gates of revealed truth, but also with shutting out that which corrupts true faith. Henceforth Peter and his fellow apostles and their successors would be charged (in God’s name and power) to set people free to embrace Jesus as Lord and Savior, free to be united to Jesus by ties of love and loyalty that only sin can destroy.
The Upshot
It follows that the single most important duty of every pastor is to proclaim by word and witness what Simon Peter first confessed: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Every pastor has multiple responsibilities and duties but none compares with this joy and privilege of proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus! And this is not just a matter of teaching correct doctrine, vitally important as that is. It is a question, above all, of unlocking, as St. Paul says in his Letter to the Romans, “the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God” – revealed most fully in the Person of God’s own Son. In his own life as a disciple and as priest, the Pastor is to bear witness to the truth, power, and love of Christ’s Presence and Mystery as he goes about preaching the Word, baptizing, celebrating Mass, reconciling penitents, visiting the sick, consoling the dying, ministering to his flock – the young, those advancing in years, the churched and the unchurched – all the while calling forth the gifts of God’s People and placing them at the service of the Gospel.
Indeed, the pastor’s first duty is to enable his people, individually and collectively, to listen to and encounter Jesus Christ so as to experience the power of his love, and the beauty of his goodness and truth, and to be molded by him into disciples, indeed a community of disciples who are “a light brightly visible” – shining amid the fog, a guiding light amid the confusion, illuminating the way forward.
Inevitably, a vital part of that encounter is the experience of the Lord’s mercy, the forgiveness of sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation or Penance. There we are freed from our sins, not simply to wipe the slate clean, but to shine ‘with the glory shining on the face of Christ’.
We all need his mercy, myself included. After all, it was for the forgiveness of sins that Christ shed his precious Blood.
So let us be of stout heart and good cheer! The Church, founded on the Rock of Peter and the Eternal Son of God is more durable than the sum of obstacles put in her path from within and without. This is the time and place wherein the Lord willed us to live and to follow him. Therefore, there is no better time or place than this to be a pastor, and indeed to be parishioners! May God bless us and keep us aways in his love.