30 Years

 

The Gospel we just heard [Luke 10:1-9] is, by design, the one proclaimed at my ordination in Toronto, Canada, 30 years ago tomorrow. It was also read, five years ago, at my 25th anniversary Mass, at Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN. That was the year of covid. So, my “Silver Jubilee” was a somewhat muted affair. Not completely muted! The Knoxville Symphony’s First Violinist and his wife played. Our cantor brought her professional choral group to sing Mozart’s Laudate Dominum and Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli. But it was otherwise a modest celebration - just the Knoxville house and a few parishioners. Bishop Stika also attended, which I greatly appreciated. Five years later, we assemble today in this very different setting for another even more modest anniversary commemoration.

Now, despite the Lord’s command in the Gospel, I must confess that I have not, to my knowledge, healed any sick these 30 years. But I do hope at least to have been better about fulfilling the rest of the Lord’s command: whenever you enter a city say, “The kingdom of God has come near.” Our world is now very different from 30 years ago, but it remains a world which very much needs to hear that the Kingdom of God is near - and how to find the right road to reach it.

Often enough, I have felt more like Thomas Merton when he prayed; “I have no idea where I am going [and] do not see the road ahead of me.” But, now so many years down that road, I feel closer to Saint Paul, writing to his friends in Philippi: straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus [Philippians 3:8-14].

Like the seed in the parable, I have thrived in the rich soil of the Church, in which God’s grace and mercy have taken root and produced fruit. Like the seed in the parable, I may have been scattered all over the place. But God never gives up, because that is who God is. God never gives up on the commitment he has made to each of us.

In the 15th century, Nicholas of Cusa, whom I once dressed up as at a grad students’ Halloween party in the mid-1970s, prayed this prayer:

Thank you, Jesus, for bringing me this far.                                                                                          In your light I see the light of my life.                                                                                               You persuade us to trust in our heavenly Father.                                                                          You command us to love one another.                                                                                           What is easier?

Well, sometimes certainly it doesn’t seem so easy, does it? So often, the Good News that the Kingdom of God is at hand can come across as no news at all, or, even bad news, or maybe as good news learned once upon a time but long since forgotten. That is why the world so desperately needs the Church to show the world what Good News the Kingdom of God really is, Good News that is actually at hand for anyone and everyone.

I knew that much 30 years ago, although I could not know that I would make it to this day or what path might take me here - an amazingly grace-filled path, punctuated by daily Masses, Sunday Masses, school Masses, Spanish Masses, Italian Masses, Wedding Masses, Funeral Masses, an amazingly grace-filled path from Toronto to New York, to Knoxville,  now back to New York: singing Christmas carols on Bloor Street and blessing Saint Anthony’s Bread, living through the soul-searing sadness of 9/11 and the welcome comfort of weekly breakfasts with parishioners at the Flame, the spiritual uplift of pilgrimages to famous shrines and a summer spent studying at Windsor Castle, the challenge of walking for miles in the pre-dawn dark at World Youth Day in Cologne, and the adventures of saint-school in Rome, then pastor of Knoxville’s historic and beautiful first parish church, and the amazing adventure of chairing meetings, paying bills, replacing a boiler, restoring the church ceiling and climbing the scaffolding to touch a century-old ceiling painting, blogging, e-mailing, and eventually even live-streaming, teaching and learning, preaching, praying with the sick, baptizing babies, burying the dead, caring for a cemetery, now doing some of the same but on a much smaller scale as superior of this wonderful community – all the time being challenged and stretched in ways I had hardly ever expected.

And I still cannot heal the sick.

But I am at least still able to witness how God has revealed himself to us in Jesus our Lord who brings us together in his Church, through which we may have hope that the Kingdom of God really is at hand to heal our broken world - that God’s power is greater than the forces that dominate our world, and so can overcome all the obstacles and worries which, if we let them, will threaten to separate us from God and from the salvation he intends for us.

So, yes, thank you, Lord, for bringing me this far.

And, thank you, all of you, for making this journey with me.

So now may all of us together continue to help one another on our ongoing journey into the Kingdom of God, where the news is always good and true for all.

Homily for my 30th Anniversary Mass, Paulist Mother House Chapel, October 27, 2025.