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Tuesday 17 September, 2013
Bishops & Priests of the Province of New Orleans Convocation
New Orleans, Louisiana
Wilton D. Gregory,Archbishop of Atlanta
The Alpha & Omega of Our Lives
My Dear Brothers,
I am deeply flattered to have been invited to be
with you if only for a brief part at the beginning
of your time together as Priests and Bishops of
the Province of New Orleans. I deemed it a
great joy to have been asked to share these re-
marks with you regarding the importance of our
Church’s past in our mission as a community of
faith and as a vitally significant component of
our ministry as Ordained Ministers of the
Gospel. I apologize that my time with you must
be so brief – but my own Presbyteral Council
meets tomorrow morning and I don’t want them
to sell the ranch – at least – not without me!
In light of this current Year of Faith, which
Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI introduced, to
commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the open-
ing of the Second Vatican Council, I believe that
2013 has provided all of us with abundant pos-
sibilities to ponder some of the numerous sig-
Page | 2
nificant world events that have occurred within
that half-century time frame. I opted to use the
word ponder since it’s the word that we most
frequently hear used when describing Mary’s
reflective stance during those events surround-
ing Jesus’ birth and the finding of the adolescent
Christ in the Temple when He spoke to His par-
ents about His mission. She thought carefully
about what these events and predictions would
mean both for Him and for Her. To ponder
something implies that we believe that God may
be at work in the events and moments of our
past and for our future.
Page | 3
Many of our perspectives regarding the issues
that we currently wrestle with today would then
have been vastly different 50 years ago and di-
rectly impacted by the Second Vatican Council,
which was still in its very early stages. At that
moment in time whenever Catholic Bishops and
Priests might have managed to meet together
as we are today now more than 50 years later,
there would probably have been a noticeable
mood of euphoria, felt throughout the Church,
of excitement, curiosity, and perhaps even jubi-
lation. We would then undoubtedly have been
much more formally attired than we may be to-
day and probably we would not have mingled so
Page | 4
easily or casually together. Moreover, this new
informality is indeed a very welcome change as
it now draws priests and bishops together in a
treasured friendship and important relationship
that enriches all of us.
The world itself would have been massively dif-
ferent fifty years ago. The historic American
Civil Rights Movement was also then in high
gear at that time and the races were still rou-
tinely and in some places formally separated
from each other. Most of us might not have
been very attentive to the mobility needs of
those people among us with disabilities; the
Page | 5
long-lasting International Cold War was then
heating up. For the most part there would not
have been any feminist movement to speak of
and few people would have been so concerned
about public safety at that moment as we obvi-
ously are today because of the seemingly end-
less occasions of vicious public violence that
erupt and have claimed far too many innocent
lives. World events would not have been as
omnipresent in all of our lives as they are today
thanks to cyberspace and the Internet.
Fifty years ago, unlike today, we would have re-
ceived most of our information on the evening
news or with the morning newspaper. The
Page | 6
price of gas was very cheap especially by cur-
rent standards, media entertainment was gen-
erally PG, and Catholic priests as indeed reli-
gious leaders in general were almost univer-
sally admired and widely respected. We each
probably have cherished memories of priests
from our youth who now loom large as our idols
if not the instruments of our own vocations.
They remain as a treasured part of our heart’s
history and their good examples continue to
give an idyllic character to that past that re-
mains a spiritual and personal treasure from
our youth. As Archie and Edith would eventually
croon together – “those were the days!”
Page | 7
Within the past month, our nation has observed
the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washing-
ton and the exquisite sermon that Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. preached to the people of this
nation on that epic occasion. In recalling that
momentous event from a half-century ago,
many commentators invited us to reflect on how
life has changed for our nation and our world.
Some observers have chosen to see the glass as
half-empty while others have seen it as half-full.
It all depends upon one’s perspective on history.
Much of that perspective depends upon where
one might reside on the racial divide of our na-
tion. Certainly, the oppressive structures that
Page | 8
kept all of us – Black and White People – either
enslaved in our privileged state or in our social
condition have changed. Yet we also must con-
fess that more must still be done since oppres-
sive tyranny and unbridled privilege always
make for a noxious twosome.
Very few of us however would honestly ever se-
riously choose to return to those bygone days in
spite of the fact that we all do seem to like to
reminisce about them and the retrospective
carefree climate that we might imagine that
they characterized. There is something quite
charming and intriguing about recalling things
Page | 9
from the past. We all have the very human ten-
dency to embellish the good things from yester-
year and routinely to diminish the unpleasant
things that were also present. We might all
tend to imagine some past era as something of
a golden age – whether one such a time ever ac-
tually existed or not. However, we are men
who are essentially directed toward tomorrow
even as we must honestly understand, embrace,
and value the gifts of yesterday.
One of my very favorite liturgical prayers is the
one that we now offer in English during the
blessing of the Easter candle at the Vigil Mass
Page | 10
where we pray: Christ yesterday and today, the
beginning and the end, the alpha and the
omega, to Him belong all times and the sea-
sons. This blessing prayer references a title
from the Book of Revelation the Church pro-
claims as we begin the great paschal ceremony
that assures us of Christ’s dominion over all
times – times from the past, our own times with
all of their many problems, and the times that
are yet to come with their still unknown chal-
lenges. There are no moments when Jesus
Christ is not in control of creation and over
which He does not have ultimate authority.
Page | 11
Even in our darkest hours – and there have
been more than a few of them in recent years,
the Lord Jesus never loses His control over His
Church or abandons us. Great saints whose
witness and fidelity never languished have also
accompanied every era of suffering that the
Church has endured or conflicts in which she
might have been engaged.
The great and life-giving paschal mystery of the
Lord has mastered every moment in our history
and managed to overcome every adversity and
every human blunder – including those for
which we are responsible in our own times.
Page | 12
Furthermore, our futures are all secure in Him
who is Lord of every moment and season.
This is constantly a very important prayer for
our entire Church but perhaps especially for
those of us as priests and bishops as in today’s
environment where we might easily be given
over to believing that the best times for the
Catholic Priesthood may have already occurred
for us and for the ministry that we share. This
is perhaps the unarticulated suggestion of those
who believe that if we could just turn back the
clock to another moment in time when life
seemed to have been more secure and certain,
Page | 13
more predictable and controllable that such an
adjustment would solve all of our problems and
concerns today. There is no turning back in
search of a past sanctuary – for those of us who
believe in Christ Jesus there is only preparing to
live today with courage and to look forward in
hope to tomorrow – even as we praise God for
the past that in fact has prepared us for today
and for tomorrow.
Several months ago I received a stinging retort
to one of my bi-weekly columns in our Arch-
diocesan newspaper in which I had extolled the
work of the Second Vatican Council. The writer
Page | 14
took harsh exception to my very positive com-
ments about the Council and suggested that the
problems that we now face within the Church
are directly related to the council and its eccle-
sial reforms. The author insinuated in the text
that if the Second Vatican Council had not
taken place and initiated so many sweeping and
destructive changes in the Church that the diffi-
culties that we currently face might well not
have occurred. The letter suggested that the
Second Vatican Council itself was the specific
cause of our ecclesial unrest as though all the
rest of the world would simply have stood still –
save for the Second Vatican Council. Viewing
Page | 15
and judging the past in light of the present is al-
ways a very risky undertaking.
Imagine with me for a moment what our eccle-
sial life might be like today had the Second Vat-
ican Council and its sanctioned reforms not
have taken place. The Church’s liturgical life
would be as it was in the 1950’s, our ecumeni-
cal and interfaith encounters and dialogues
with people of other religious traditions would
have to be reset, our penitential practices
would be reestablished as they were a genera-
tion ago. What impact would that now have on
our lives and the life of the world around us?
Page | 16
Would it even be possible to revert to such cus-
toms and practices that once identified and
classified us? Would it not be more similar to
those often popularly staged reenactments of
famous moments in history that do help to re-
mind all of us of a past that is clearly important
to remember but that does no longer quite fit
the world in which we live today? Even those
folks who enjoy recreating historic moments
from the past must eventually take off the
replica costumes, set aside the props, and re-
turn to the world of today.
Page | 17
While I did not respond to the author of that
critical letter presuming that what was sent to
me was more of a cathartic exercise rather than
a sincere desire for amenable dialogue – we
have all received many such communications
before – I am certain. Nevertheless, the letter
did prompt me to think seriously and quite of-
ten since receiving it, about what our Church
would be like today if the Second Vatican Coun-
cil in fact had never occurred. Rather than
maintaining its once perceived secure and
steadfast equilibrium, I believe that our Church
would now be hopelessly anachronistic – even
more so than many people consider us to be al-
Page | 18
ready. The world simply would not have paused
in its development simply because the Second
Vatican Council would not have taken place.
The societal, moral, political, and technological
changes would not have been shelved if the
Second Vatican Council were not to have oc-
curred. The Second Vatican Council in fact was
intended to help to prepare us to face and to re-
spond to the challenges that were just around
the corner and that have now come to ultimate
fruition.
The post-conciliar Church truthfully has faced
lots of serious difficulties many of which still do
Page | 19
need to be addressed. Our catechetical efforts
have genuinely faltered to the point where we
now find ourselves confronting a second – if not
approaching a third generation of Catholics
who may know little or nothing about their own
faith heritage. We must also do a better job at
helping our people understand the connection
that must exist between the doctrines of the
Church to our social teaching. These indispens-
able and symbiotic dimensions of Church life
are not “either/or” propositions for Catholics –
although they are sometimes described as such.
Page | 20
One of the first consequences of the Civil Rights
Movement was the enthusiastic proliferation of
serious studies of the history and the heritage
of people of Color in this nation. Where did we
come from? What are the gifts that we brought
with us and now have to share with others? We
African-Americans were all quite eager to dis-
cover the uniqueness of our backgrounds as
this knowledge and history had been denied to
us and to our ancestors as a result of the op-
pressive consequence of slavery and its after-
math.
Page | 21
There quickly developed many television pro-
grams like Black in America, and books like Be-
fore the Mayflower and Roots, and myriad col-
lege and university courses that delved into
African history. African-Americans and others
were very excited to recapture our history as a
first step toward restoring our dignity and fur-
thering our place in this multi-cultured nation
of ours. This interest in the past was an impor-
tant step toward securing a more hopeful and
informed future.
Many Catholics today unfortunately simply
know far too little about the legacy of our
Page | 22
Church and the teachings of the faith that we
now share. Although cyberspace continues to
make universal experts of any one with a com-
puter, we have not always found thorough and
clear presentations on the Internet that detail
our history – with all of its obvious difficulties
and its triumphs. Recently some efforts at pre-
senting that history and heritage of Catholicism
have been made available and seemingly at-
tracted a great deal of positive feedback – Fa-
ther Robert Barron’s Catholicism and Tom Pe-
terson’s Catholics Come Home are but two ex-
amples. Both of these apologetic sources
present a balanced and positive perspective on
Page | 23
the faith and the heritage of the Catholic
Church. They are professionally done, attrac-
tively made, and intended to introduce or re-in-
troduce people to the Catholic Church. What
adds to their success is that they encounter
people using a medium that is appealing and
effectively used in other venues – televised pro-
ductions readily available in cyberspace. We
have become a society that receives most of its
information electronically and with visual dis-
play and not through books. Whether you like
that development or not, the Church must make
much more effective use of these vehicles of so-
cial communication.
Page | 24
Society in general has developed a keen inter-
est in genealogy. We can find all types of re-
sources on the Internet that claim to be able to
trace our personal origins. Ethnic groups have
long celebrated their heritage with festivals and
celebrations that trumpet where a particular
people originated and how these cultures and
traditions have enriched our world. People
want to log onto sites that will help them dis-
cover where great-great-grandfather came
from, how our family name is related to other
names, what personal legacy we can bring forth
that will link us to others from our cultural or
ethnic community. These searches are in-
Page | 25
tended to discover our pasts so that we can sit-
uate ourselves more accurately in the present
moment. Occasionally these searches are in-
tended to help us better understand our physi-
cal and medical make-up with the practical im-
plications such knowledge brings.
We priests and bishops must also become much
more engaging in the presentation of the faith
of the Church. One of my close priest friends
started a study group in his parish a couple of
years ago – that has now developed into two
different groups – that reads and reflects on The
Catechism of the Catholic Church – not the
Page | 26
abridged version that was published by the
USCCB – but the full text of the catechism. He
told me that many of the people in his parish
are fascinated to read and to reflect with him on
the articulated faith issues that are contained in
the catechism. Folks do want to know about our
faith heritage – not in a sugarcoated or fabri-
cated fashion, but with the real honest truth –
not just the highly publicized historic or con-
temporary scandals, but also with the glory and
the splendor of our Church that belongs to yes-
terday. But why is the past important for us?
The past is essential for us because it will help
Page | 27
us to live faithfully today and to prepare for to-
morrow.
It might seem surprising to some people, but
there is an authentic interest on the part of lots
of our folks to understand and appreciate our
Catholic faith more perfectly. We just need to
develop better delivery systems to quench that
desire. My dear brothers, the 12-minute Sun-
day homily is usually not the moment for such
necessary catechesis. The homily is our weekly
opportunity for spiritual inspiration – certainly
not devoid of information – but a resource for
our people for living out the faith that the
Page | 28
Liturgy makes sacramental. The liturgical
homily is the occasion when we must bring to-
gether in a harmonious unity the Word of God,
the ordinary lives of our people, and their hopes
for living out their faith in the week that lies
ahead.
Our Catholic people, no less than all of us, come
together each Sunday to plan their lives for the
next week. They understand that the future –
even the relatively immediate future of the next
seven days – needs preparation so as not to
catch them or any of us unprepared. The Sun-
day assembly is filled with folks who intend to
Page | 29
do better next week than they may have done
last week. It is an assembly of believers who re-
ally wants to take their faith seriously into the
week that lies just ahead. We homilists are
commissioned to become their spiritual coaches
to whom they regularly turn to with reasonable
expectations and high hopes that we can indeed
prepare them to perform better in the game of
life. Sunday worship is filled with folks who be-
lieve in tomorrow and they ask us to help them
to get there. One sure way that we can help,
them prepare for tomorrow is to help them gain
a healthy and a balanced understanding of the
yesterdays of the Church. Like good coaches,
Page | 30
we help them remember where they came from
even as we challenge them to see the road that
lies ahead for them and for us. If we are to be-
come successful faith coaches, we need to find
a chalkboard that will allow us to examine the
plays and the strategies that will bring success
to our players.
We Catholics believe that God’s Revelation ar-
rives for us through a dual but always unified
source of Scripture and Apostolic Tradition.
Dei Verbum the Dogmatic Constitution of the
Second Vatican Council on Divine Revelation is
the shortest of all of the four dogmatic constitu-
Page | 31
tions from the Second Vatican Council and yet
one of the most significant of the council docu-
ments as it explains how the faith is dependent
upon our sacred heritage and the very Word of
God. This council document enshrines our
Apostolic Tradition always combined with Sa-
cred Scripture as the vehicle through which
God reveals Himself to us. God’s Voice echoes
throughout our Tradition. Our history and her-
itage are not insignificant nor can any of us af-
ford to neglect this sacred legacy. We find God
Himself in our traditions and in our yesterdays.
However, the Church Universal places in a
unique position of faith the Apostolic Tradition
Page | 32
the gift of heritage that belongs to the ages.
The tradition that the Church enshrines is far
more than the mere customs and practices of a
culture or people – as important and cherished
as they may be. When the Church holds up Tra-
dition as a source of God’s Revelation of Self,
she refers to that Tradition which links us to the
Apostolic age and continues throughout each
generation and era. It is that meaning of Tradi-
tion that is most sacred and timeless.
Nevertheless, we are not limited to our yester-
days and in our heart of hearts, we must always
anticipate that the best is yet to come – cer-
Page | 33
tainly, this will be found in the fullness of God’s
Kingdom, but even in the immediate tomorrows
that lie ahead for all of us. It is that hope that
has been so manifest in the election of Pope
Francis whose simplicity and humility have al-
ready won the hearts of people throughout the
world. Even our cynics – of which there is no
shortage – seem to take heart in the witness of
this gentle and approachable man. Francis
dares to challenge those of us who are priests
and bishops to raise our eyes and see the prom-
ise of tomorrow. He also demands that we lift
up the poor and the neglected in our midst
Page | 34
above all because they are our sisters and
brothers made so in Christ.
The Holy Father has invited all of us to risk hop-
ing in a tomorrow that is grounded in the reali-
ties of today and yesterday but always open to
God’s grace-filled tomorrow. His emphasis on
the poor is also a reminder that they are never
to be treated as collateral damage in the wake
of economic progress. His unassuming charac-
ter is a very important reminder to all of us as
pastors that we can be most effective when we
station ourselves in the very midst of our peo-
ple.
Page | 35
We priests must be willing to be spiritual an-
chors for the communities that we serve – con-
stantly helping our people to be rooted ade-
quately in our Catholic faith heritage, but al-
ways open to tomorrow with its many graces
and the obvious challenges that will inevitably
confront us. We do this not by merely focusing
on things from yesterday and pretending that
former times were perfect; neither can we sim-
ply neglect or deny our heritage and faith
legacy and disengage ourselves from the trea-
sures and triumphs of our inheritance. We
must each become the consummate realists in
the world of today who always remind our folks
Page | 36
of our hope for tomorrow and assure them that
the future is already secure in Christ. Christ
yesterday and today, the beginning and the
end, the alpha and the omega, to Him belong all
times and the seasons. Amen.
Page | 37