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Thirteenth Sunday of the Year
27 June 2010
Dear Friends in Christ,
I began my service as the sixteenth pastor of St. Mary’s on 28 June 2001, nine years ago this Monday, and on my ninth anniversary, it seems opportune to take stock of where we’ve been together. In my first homily here, I said this: “Evangelization is not something undertaken only by priests and religious or only by missionaries in foreign lands. Evangelization is the common mission of the entire Church, and every Christian shares in the duty and privilege of sharing the Gospel with all people. For this reason, the heart of my service here will be preaching the Gospel with the conviction born of conversion and inviting every member of this parish family to do the same. Every single one of us should feel in our hearts the same fire which burned in the heart of St. Paul: “If I preach the Gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting, for necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!”(1 Cor 9:16).
“Before we can announce the Gospels to others, however, we must first have received it ourselves–and not only received it. We must be changed by the Gospel; we must be converted from the way of sin and death and placed firmly on the Way of the Lord Jesus–the Way of the Cross, the Way of Truth, the Way of Life. In a word, we must become faithful disciples by surrendering to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in body, mind, and soul. If Jesus Christ is Lord, then he is Lord of everything–of all that we are and all that we have. In the coming years of my service here, we will explore together the inexhaustible riches of the Incarnate Word who calls us by our Baptism to follow him unreservedly. This is what I call ‘radical discipleship’, and it is something most of you live out in marriage and family life; I have been called to live it out in the priesthood.”
After nine years together, I hope that you can now see some of the practical consequences (in the liturgy, in teaching, in Christian formation, in public witness, in service) of this commitment. In that same homily, I promised you that I would make mistakes, and I have kept that promise. You and I now know each other well enough to know our respective strengths and weaknesses, our faults and merits, and following the Lord together peacefully despite our failings is one sure sign of our common commitment to be Christian disciples first, last, and always. I renew today the words I first spoke to you nine years ago: “Friends, on the day of our baptism Jesus said to each one of us, ‘Follow me’, and every day of our lives he renews that invitation. The drama of our lives is the struggle we each undertake to answer Christ’s call, to resist the mystery of iniquity in our hearts, to repent of our sins and believe in the Gospel–in a word, to be disciples. Today I begin my ministry among you as priest and pastor, a herald of the Gospel and a steward of the Sacred Mysteries of salvation, but I am both priest and pastor only because I am first a disciple of Jesus Christ. I pledge to you today my solemn commitment to love you as a shepherd, to teach you as a father, and to walk with you as a brother in the daily struggle to answer the call of Christ: ‘Follow me.’”
Father Newman