Bishop Barron’s Homily - Installation Mass, Diocese of Winona-Rochester

well good morning everybody i am delighted to be with you today and my heart's just overwhelmed with joy and with gratitude to everybody today you know i think first of pope francis my gratitude to him for gracing me with the appointment as bishop of the winona rochester diocese gratitude to cardinal harvey and to cardinal cupich to archbishop gomez archbishop hebda archbishop listecki archbishop lucas bishop quinn of course my illustrious predecessor now bishop emeritus huh it's it's just happened [Applause] i'm grateful to all my brother bishops and priests who have joined me today and can i just highlight my name but there are three bishops here whom i taught in the seminary do you want to know the definition of feeling old that's it grateful too of course to my family and friends all those who have inspired me and shaped me and supported me over the years gratitude to all those who've come from near and from far from chicago and santa barbara and cardinal harvey from rome to be here today and i'm just delighted that this installation falls on the feast of martha mary and lazarus declared as such by pope francis just last year remember it used to be just the feast of saint martha but how wonderful that all three of the siblings dear friends of jesus are now included in the gospels we hear a good deal about the crowds of people who followed the lord about the 72 whom he sent about those whom he healed and taught indeed a lot about the twelve but we don't hear much about his personal friends with the exception of martha mary and lazarus but see everybody the whole point of the christian life is to become a friend of jesus at the last supper the lord told his apostles i no longer call you servants but friends how extraordinary that statement is of course we relate to him as penitent to lord as disciple to master but at the culmination of the spiritual life we relate to him as a friend saint bernard catherine of siena 2 expressed his ascent symbolically as moving from the kiss of the feet that's the penitent the kiss of the hand that's the disciple to the kiss of the mouth the kiss of friendship and since jesus is divine it means the ordinary goal of the christian life is to become god's friend it seems to me the task that's been entrusted to me today by the holy father is to facilitate the process by which the people of this diocese become ever more deeply friends of jesus whatever teaching and sanctifying and governing i do here is subordinated to that great end intensifying your friendship with the lord and we can see what this looks like concretely by examining our three saints for today first mary who sits attentively at the feet of jesus listening to his word she represents the path that spiritual teachers call finding the center she knows that jesus stands at the absolute pivot of her life her concerns her activities she's rooted she's grounded everything else in her life revolves around her relationship with christ she's like the central medallion in a rose window the still point around which the entire beautiful design is organized now the first thing we learned about saint martha is that she doesn't quite get this principle while mary listens attentively to jesus martha's about all the details of hospitality so she complains tell her to help me just a hint everybody you know all is not well with your spiritual life when you find yourself telling god what to do but notice please how jesus corrects her he does not upgrade her for being busy with hospitality rather he says martha martha you are anxious and upset about many things mary he explains is chosen as the lovely latin version of us has it the unum necessarium the one thing necessary mary's found the center martha at this point is still divided now that she's learned this lesson thoroughly see we don't hear what happens after this dialogue with jesus but i think we can find out she does learn the lesson it's revealed in the account of the raising of lazarus in the gospel of john there martha utters a confession of faith that rivals that of peter in the synoptic gospels jesus refers to himself as the resurrection the life and he asks martha whether she believes this and she says yes lord i believe that you are the messiah the son of god the one coming into the world this magnificent confession of faith having found that center in jesus having found at last the unum necessarium martha can now assume with enthusiasm her customary task of service as such he represents another key dimension of friendship with the lord loving and caring for those whom jesus loves as for our third saint we never hear a word out of the mouth of lazarus in the gospels his name however is eloquent eliezer so lazarus being the latinized version of this eleazar has the sense of the one whom god has helped and the great truth proclaimed of course is that jesus has helped him in the most dramatic way possible raising him from the dead and because of this we are told and this is the key i think because of this many came to believe in jesus lazarus represents therefore a third great dimension of friendship with jesus namely evangelization once you've found that friendship once you've been healed you become a source of friendship and healing for others the most effective evangelists are those whom god has helped who've been brought back to life by jesus lazarus come out and the dead man came out untie him said jesus and let him go free as anyone in this room who's ever followed my writings and speaking knows i am all in favor of knowing the faith being able to articulate it well intellectually but those whom jesus has liberated and untied will most powerfully convey the truth of jesus to others one of my favorite definitions of evangelization applies here quote one starving person telling another starving person where to find bread there's a delicious legend i'm sure the nuncio knows it that if not true should be as the italians say according to this story martha mary and lazarus along with joseph of arimathea were sent out by sea by enemies of the faith made to drift on the mediterranean with no sails or oars or supplies they came to rest finally on the southern shore of present-day france lazarus the legend goes on became a powerful evangelist and the first bishop of marseille in whose cathedral his skull is venerated to this day again if not true it should be true the spiritual point remains the one whom jesus called back to life evangelizes best now with those three saints in mind pope benedict said something that's always struck me as profoundly illuminating the church he said does three basic things it worships god it serves the poor and it evangelizes those three things in a word it does the work of mary of martha and of lazarus if you want to know my program for the diocese of winona rochester that's it now to speak of the worship of god is to speak of the mass the eucharist the sacrament sacramentals benediction private prayer the liturgy of the hours it is to speak of monks nuns mystics and contemplatives all those who sit attentively at the feet of jesus i want a diocese that worships god with enthusiasm devotion and deep love in terms of the form of that worship the pope's recent letter on the liturgy reflects very much my own mind neither an experimental progressivism nor a repudiation of the reform of the liturgy called for by vatican ii but i want to point to something deeper than just the form of worship because we live in a society we all know this that's largely forgotten how to worship god at all or perhaps to state it more clearly has fallen into different forms of idolatry false worship whatever one considers to be of highest value is what one worships so sex and pleasure money power worldly success reputation family country all that becomes for different people in different ways objects of worship the job of the church is to remind everybody that these idolatries will lead in short order to addiction and deep sadness massive evidence of which is on display i think in a lot of young people today it is furthermore the task of the church to model and to embody true praise the right worship that serves to order both the self and the wider society when the young thomas merton came to gethsemane abbey for the first time for a holy week retreat he told his diary quote i found the still point around which the whole country turns without knowing it so our worship is indeed for ourselves but it's also for the world just as the jerusalem temple was meant to be a magnet to draw all the nations to the praise of the true god so our worship should prove compelling to a society that's fallen into false worship and now in relation to this theme can i be very specific and can i ask all the seminarians are here please to stand here's some of this there they are god bless you guys saint john paul the second said eloquently enough ecclesia deuce rastia the church comes from the eucharist and of course the eucharist comes from priests hence no priests no church and so if we want a church that vibrantly worships god we need priests can i offer a challenge now to everybody here it's not just for me not just for the vocation director not just for the clergy for everybody in this diocese how about we double the number of these guys in five years no pressure on the vocation director where are you i can see you there you are god bless you you guys can be seated no pressure no pressure just doubled in five years that's all i want so the church worships god it also benedict said cares for the poor it performs the work of martha now it carries out this task in numberless ways caring for those who are poor economically emotionally intellectually spiritually we think of catholic charities prison ministries catholic hospitals soup kitchens those who visit the homebound we recall pope francis marvelous image of the church as a field hospital where the wounded or treated where those on the margins both economic and existential as he puts it are given aid so i want our church here to be a place of refuge and in and how can i as i stand here literally in the shadow of the of the mayo clinic not see this connection that the church be a source of healing as this great city is a source of healing for the whole world one of my heroes my chicago colleagues know this is my senior reynold hillenbrand who was one of my predecessors as rector of mundoline seminary back in the 1940s inspired by the leaders of the liturgical movement hillenbrand saw the intimate connection between what we do at mass and the commitment to improve the lot of the poor the link to put it simply between liturgy and justice the reconciliation with god that we find through the eucharist should lead to a reconciliation with our neighbors and yes even with our enemies and if i can make this even more concrete can i suggest that we learn and practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy another of my heroes is dorothy day the co-founder of the catholic worker movement impatient with the overly abstract language about peace and justice that was heard so often dorothy day said quote everything a baptized catholic does every day should be directly or indirectly related to the corporal and spiritual works of mercy can i suggest when i first read that line it changed my life that's one of those lines that gets down into your heart and soul and changes you everything we do every day should be directly or indirectly related to the corporal and spiritual works of mercy the corporal works of feeding the hungry giving drink to the thirsty clothing the naked visiting the imprisoned sheltering the homeless caring for the sick burying the dead the spiritual works admonishing sinners instructing the ignorant i used to tell my students at mundoline that's what i do i instruct the ignorant that's even these three bishops here that i talk counseling the doubtful comforting the sorrowful bearing wrongs patiently forgiving injuries praying for the living and the dead i'd love our parishes to be places where the corporal and spiritual works of mercy are known and vibrantly practiced now i know those who know me one thing you know about me is i'm a great fan of bob dylan and here i'm in bob dylan's home state of minnesota but i'm not going to quote bob dylan although there's a bob dylan song that quotes saint martha do you know that ring them bell saint martha for the poor man's son ring them bell so the world will know that god is one so dylan did quote our are saying for today but i want to draw attention to uh another musical hero of mine johnny cash he was once asked why he performed so often in prisons and he said well first prisoners are the best audience but then second he said because i'm a christian that's a darn good answer jesus said visit those in prison johnny cash also resolved after he became famous and when he was always the most prominent person in the room that he would always purposely seek out the person who looked the most lost or lonely or isolated and on purpose he'd make a beeline for him or her i think that's a great christian instinct and a great instinct for our parishes do we know who the neediest loneliest hungriest and thirstiest people in our community are are we caring for them directly personally getting our hands dirty in the process thirdly the church evangelizes it does the work of lazarus under this rubric we include teaching and preaching the maintenance of our schools and universities the creative use of the media engaging the questions of the culture etc as many of you probably know a good deal of my ministry as both priest and bishop is centered around evangelization why do i feel so strongly about this well first because the lord told us to do it go therefore and make disciples of all nations but secondly because the need is so great in our time did you know that for every new catholic who joins the church today over six are leaving did you know the percentage of disaffiliation among catholics under 30 is 50 percent half of our young catholics are leaving the church behind in the speech he gave at the general congregation prior to the conclave of 2013 cardinal jorge mario bergoglio said he wanted a church that goes out from itself even to the margins once elected pope he told the group of priests that the oil of their ordination grows rancid unless it's allowed to flow to the ends of their garments and then out into the world i do believe it's time for our parishes to become not simply places where catholics are sanctified and instructed in the faith as important as that is they are to become centers of evangelization places from which catholics are sent out on mission during the last priest convocation in chicago that he would ever attend cardinal francis george said something that i've never forgotten at the beginning of the church he told the priest of chicago there was no vatican there were no dioceses no parishes no chancery offices no basilicas or cathedrals no catholic schools or hospitals but there were he said evangelists if i were to emphasize any one of the three great tasks that i've outlined i would emphasize evangelization as the most basic the most central therefore i'd like this local church to be a vibrantly evangelizing church i'd like the focus to be first on those who are disaffiliating especially among the young what are we doing to reach them how is every particular ministry in our parishes ordered toward the work of calling young people back home that basic form will always be the lazarus form show others how christ has brought you back to life how he's untied you and set you free okay everybody that's my program worship god care for the poor and evangelize mary martha and lazarus i promise i pledge it to pray for all of you every day please pray for me [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

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Keywords: Bishop Barron, Bishop Robert Barron, Winona-Rochester, Catholic, Catholic Church, Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, Worship God, Evangelize, Care for the Poor, Evangelization

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Length: 20min 21sec (1221 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 08 2022