Homily of Most Rev. Donald W. Wuerl, S.T.D., Archbishop of Washington
September 10th, 2007 by Fr. Pius, OP
MASS
FOLLOWING THE BLESSING OF THE CORNERSTONE OF
THE NEW
ACADEMIC CENTER AND DOMINICAN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY
AND THE
INSTALLATION OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE
PONTIFICAL FACULTY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.C.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
5:30 p.m.
HOMILY
by
Most Reverend Donald W. Wuerl, S.T.D.
Archbishop of Washington
It is a privilege and pleasure to join the Dominican fathers and brothers today for this important celebration, both of the blessing of the cornerstone of the new Academic Center and Dominican Theological Library, and the installation of Father Stephen Boguslawski, O.P. as the next president of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception
Coming to the Dominican House of Studies brought me back to my own days as a philosophy student here in Washington at The Catholic University of America, blessed with the presence of so many Dominican Fathers on the teaching faculty, particularly the School of Philosophy, and my days in graduate work in theology at Rome at the University of Saint Thomas, the Angelicum, also blessed with so many Dominican professors. I am grateful for the great efforts so many Dominicans made in trying to help me grow spiritually and academically on the road to priesthood. Any of their failures evidenced in me is not because of their lack of trying.
The Gospel today [Luke 14:25-33] places before us the cross of Christ. It also recalls for me an experience that I would like to share with you as I begin these reflections. A number of years ago while on a pilgrimage to Lourdes I had a conversation with a priest, whose words have stuck with me ever since. It seems appropriate for a lot of reasons today to share with you that conversation Very shortly we will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady under the title of the Immaculate Conception at Lourdes. We have just blessed the cornerstone of the new Academic Center and the Dominican Theological Library as a part of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception and we, today, also install Father Steven Boguslawski as the next president of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception.
The priest with whom I spoke was paralyzed from the shoulders down He made his way through the procession on a gurney, face down, propped up on his arms folded across his chest. One day in quiet conversation with him, I said to him that I had prayed for him earlier that day. With a beautiful smile he replied, “Thank you, but I hope the next time you pray for me it will be to join your prayer to mine so that we are both praying for the same thing.” I paused, somewhat unsure now if I had had the right intention in my prayers. I asked him, “Father for what do you pray?” and he replied, “I pray that God will always give me the strength to carry the cross that he, in his love, has fashioned for me.”
I can never read the Gospel we just listened to today “whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” without thinking of the strength of faith of that Italian priest at the Grotto of Lourdes.
But I also cannot help but reflect, as we must do today, on how he had come to hear, know, understand and appropriate the message, wisdom and challenge of the cross.
How is it that we can be so certain that the words that are proclaimed to us today, the challenge of the Gospel, the demands of the cross are truly the words of Jesus expressing the plan of his Heavenly Father for each of us?
So often in driving to the Archdiocesan Pastoral Center in recent months we would pass by on Michigan Avenue and watch the new Academic Center and the Dominican Theological Library go up. In practical, concrete terms, in the steel beams and building blocks that brought that building into being, we see something of the answer. How is it that the words, message, Gospel, teaching and salvation of Jesus Christ are ours today to hold onto, appropriate and live? How have these words of everlasting life come to be ours in 2007?
We recognize that the fullness of that revelation came in the person of Jesus Christ, the eternal word who took on flesh and dwelt with us. As John’s Gospel tells us, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word became flesh.” In the first reading today from the Book of Wisdom [Wisdom 9:13-18a], we are reminded that on our own we simply cannot know the wisdom of God, his counsel, deliberations or plans.
However because God sent his Son into this world and Jesus freely revealed to us the plan of God’s mercy and our redemption, we do know.
But to get from Jesus and Peter, Andrew, James, John and the others to us today, we also have to stand before the mystery of the Church. To continue his presence and his ministry, Jesus established his new and enduring body that would span the ages and cover the globe. This body, alive in his Spirit, would continue to make known the Father’s plan of salvation, Jesus’ redemption on the cross and our share in it every time we celebrate the Eucharist.
Because in his love Jesus established his Church, we can say as we did in the Responsorial Psalm today, “in every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.” [Psalm 90:1]
The mystery of the Church participates in the Incarnation. The divine was united with the human so that we would be able to see, hear, understand and follow the word of God. The Eternal Word took on our human nature so that he could speak in our words, with our accents and our tones..
In establishing his Church, Christ continued his presence with us. The divine gift of his Spirit would live in the human dimensions of our world. Water, oil, bread, wine would all be used to communicate a divinity present in the Holy Spirit. The Church would take on a visible, tangible, structured presence that would enable those words of everlasting life to be repeated, and repeated, and repeated, generation after generation, in tones, accents and words that every successive generation could understand and make their own. Thus the great adventure and journey began. From Peter and Andrew, James and John to a line of successors – Linus, Cletus, Clement, Pius, Paul, John Paul and Benedict.
At different times, according to the needs of the Church and the challenges to the faith, God raised up others to see that the message would be passed on, in tact, unsoiled, unaltered so that whomever heard it would know that it was the voice of Jesus. In the twelfth century in Calaruega, Spain was born the man who would found a community whose work would be for centuries after his death the task of preaching that word, making it heard and understood. From Dominic came the Order of Preachers and from the Order of Preachers has come a continuous eight-century long participation in the mystery of the Word taking flesh and dwelling among us, of the word entrusted to the Church, a word now taught, articulated, proclaimed and preached.
How do we know today that as we take up our cross so Christ will bless us in the same way his Father embraced Jesus on the cross? Because generation after generation the message has been proclaimed and passed on. Even in the face of challenges, even when some offered different interpretations or even reinterpreted the words of Jesus, the truth of the Gospel and the voice of the Good Shepherd have been passed on in the Church that allows all of us here today to say with assurance as we stand at the altar what we do we truly do in remembrance of Christ.
The new Academic Center and the Dominican Theological Library is one more visible, tangible sign of the enduring presence of Christ and his word articulated faithfully and authentically for the people of this day.
Just as the Church has relied upon the passing realities of brick and mortar, parchment and pen to help maintain the continuity of the living word, so this new structure becomes one more part of a great chain reaching back to and keeping us connected with the Apostles.
At the very heart of the passing on of the message are those individuals whom God has called, whom the Church has ordained and who personally commit themselves, individually or as part of a community, to take their turn in the pilgrimage from Calvary and the Easter garden to eternity.
Today we also celebrate a loyal and faithful son of Saint Dominic, Father Steven Boguslawski, who assumes his responsibility as President of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception. It is an honor for me to participate in this event since I have had the opportunity of working closely with Father Steven and have come to admire him and his abilities.
Years ago the Conference of Bishops issued a pastoral letter on “The Church in our Day.” In it they pointed out that the Church, the kingdom of God coming to be, does not hover formlessly over the cities and towns of our land. It is found in the visible structured reality we recognize as God’s faithful people gathered around their pastors. I thought of that when reflecting on the great Dominican tradition of learning, teaching and preaching and how it comes to be visible in individual Dominicans. Father Steven represents in an exceptional manner the vision of Saint Dominic, the academic commitment of the community, and the effective presence of the Order of Preachers.
Our prayer for him today as he assumes these new responsibilities as President of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception is that he will use his gifts, energies and talents to see that this house of studies and its new Academic Center and Theological Library will advance the Gospel by instructing well those who come here to know it, to experience it and to be prepared, as they share in the great living intellectual tradition of the Church, to explain it.
Father Steven, your challenge is all the greater today because we live in a culture that is all too ready to dismiss the Gospel and its life-giving message as it hopes to dismiss the challenge of the cross. We live in an age where too many find the inspiration for the direction of their lives elsewhere. You are called to oversee at this moment in time the link entrusted to you and your community that connects today and tomorrow with all of those yesterdays going back to Peter and the Twelve.
On a more encouraging note, you also inherit this responsibility at a time when so many of our young people are searching, seeking, looking for some guidance, some relationship with God, some spirituality in their lives. Under your direction may this house continue to be a calm, serene oasis of wisdom rooted in the Gospel and tied to the cross of Christ.
As the ancient hymn once proclaimed, “stat crux dum volvitur orbis.”
May God bless you, this house of studies and the Order of Preachers as all of you work so hard to proclaim today the words of everlasting life, as they have been proclaimed from the beginning.
