The following are Bishop Joseph Galante’s remarks at the Commissioning of the Pirest Conveners and Core Teams at St. Agnes Church, Blackwood , on Sunday Oct. 19.
The readings that are chosen for today very much speak not of the past but of the present. Each of these readings, God’s living Word that speaks to us in the here and now, really speaks to us of the challenge and the call we have received.
In the Old Testament reading, we find the prophet is asked to do something that seems strange. Ezekiel is told, take one stick and write the name Judah on it. Another stick [the stick of Ephraim] and write the name Joseph on it. The two [Ephraim, Judah], symbolize the future union of Judah and Israel. And when the people ask you what you are doing, put both sticks together and hold them, and remind them that God says, “You will be my people. I will make of you one people. I will bring you unity and community.” That’s the task, the challenge.
The second reading speaks to us of reality. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians talks about not grieving the Holy Spirit of God with which you were sealed. All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. The reality of Church is the reality not only of today, but of the past. And there is for Paul an antidote to those things that he asks to be put away: be kind to one another, be compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.
And finally, how do we deal with the challenge, the reality? We find those words of the Gospel: “You, do as I have done. If I who am Lord and Master have washed your feet, if I who am your Lord, your redeemer and your teacher have served you, then you serve your sisters and brothers.” This is the challenge, the reality, the way. You are given a challenge, the challenge of bringing together communities into a new community, a new union, in a sense, a new people.
Change is difficult. It always has been. Think about some of the readings from the Acts of the Apostles. The Church represented a change, a change from what had been established, a change from the Old Covenant, which had been a blessed and sacred reality. God had made a covenant with His people, through Moses and Abraham. And that covenant, that calling—“you are my people, I will be your God”—was something that they had lived with for so long. Then Jesus came, and He brought about a change. It was a fulfillment, but it was a change. And so, there was struggle in the early Church, a struggle for how to be followers of Jesus and, at the same time, to understand how they were moving from what they had been, especially as Jews. There was the struggle with Peter and Paul. Paul, who was the apostle to the Gentiles, reprimanded Peter because Peter at one point had been very comfortable living as a Gentile, not keeping kosher, not following what had been the Law, the Old Testament Law.
And yet, when some came from Jerusalem, Peter out of human respect began to follow again the Jewish custom. And Paul remonstrated with him: “If you can live as someone who is free of the Law, why are we having this struggle in the early church to make the Gentiles undergo circumcision and follow other tenets of the Old Testament Law?” We are the New Covenant and the New People. That was difficult for the people who were the foundation stones of the early church, the Jewish converts. They had to change and it was hard, it was difficult. But it was always to bring about the fulfillment of the New Covenant, the new way of relating to God.
And so, as we hear in so many of Paul’s letters, he invites us to rise above those human contentions that create animosity among good people, people that want to do the right thing. And so, in this challenge to bring about new communities, stronger communities, communities of faith which show themselves in how they worship and pray, and in how they grow in their relationship with the Trinity, we also work to bring about communities of love. How do we relate to one another? Our relationship with the Trinity really will be measured by our relationship with one another. How can you love God that you do not see, St. John tells us, if you hate your brother who you do see?
And so the challenge of building community, in helping others to understand, and in your understanding, pain, discomfort and sense of unease at doing something we haven’t been used to, you have the example of those who’ve gone before us. You have the example of Peter and Paul. You have the example of the early Church. You say, yes, but I’ve never really thought about it. But when you are struggling, you have to look at some of those passages in Acts of the Apostles and understand that part of the challenge of Christian Faith is the challenge to grow, not to stand still, not to remain where we were, to let go of one good for something better.
We think of conversion often only in terms of letting go of the bad so we can take hold of the good. But conversion at times is letting go of something good for something better. The whole Catholic Church experienced that through some of the changes that came about through the Council. As we changed the liturgy, we did not change the way we celebrated the liturgy because it was bad or because there was something wrong with it. It was the source of holiness for countless people throughout the centuries. But at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, it was an opportunity to do something that might help God’s people to be better, to understand more deeply and to participate more fully in the reality that has been consistent: the celebration of the suffering, dying and rising of Jesus, the sharing in the food with which we are fed, the body and blood of Jesus. So that was difficult for the whole Church [to move] from what was good, and comfortable and that we were used to, to seek something that would help others to be better.
That’s the challenge and that’s what you have to understand and help those that you serve understand. It is not a rejection of the past, but it is rather a hope for the future. Hope as a virtue is not wishful thinking. It is the making present in an imperfect way what we hope to experience in perfection in eternity. And so, you have to be messengers of hope, sensitive and attentive, yet always reminding and inviting people to the hope, the reality to which we are all called.
Jesus bent down and washed the feet of his apostles. He served them because of His love for them and His love for us, to give us a model of how we should treat one another and how we should serve each other.
Today you are being commissioned to service. It is not an easy service. It is a unique service here for our Church in South Jersey. Yes, it will have its difficulties. But you are called to build the Church. That call is active over centuries. That call was given to the apostles. That call later was given to St. Francis of Assisi, “Build my Church.” That call was given in a very real way to now Blessed John XXIII, “Continue to build my Church.” The Church is always in need of being built. There is a phrase in Latin, “Ecclesia semper reformanda est,” or “the Church always needs to be re-formed,” not reformed, but re-formed, growing, taking on new life. That is the call we have. That is the call I ask you to take with you today,
Please, you our Priest Conveners, and sisters and brothers of the Core Teams, to do this well, your own relatio
nship with the Trinity will need to deepen. To do this well, you will need to pray. Pray not only words, but you also will need to reflect and to share, especially with one another. You will need as Conveners and Core Teams to become a community yourselves, so you can model for those you are serving what it is that they will be called upon to achieve. That can be done and must be done through prayer.
There will be plenty of sacrifice, not just of time, but the sacrifice of feeling misunderstood, of being criticized for what you’re trying to do. But that’s not unusual when you are called to build the Church.
And so, today, my sisters and brothers, as we continue this process of trying to grow, to build the Church of South Jersey, to re-form, not just change for the sake of change, but to become a more faith-filled, faith-lived community, to become communities where faith is expressed, as people asked for, in good liturgy, in worship that expresses the internal belief that we have. To be, as our people asked, communities of service, of love, of compassionate outreach. Go out to others who are hurting, alienated, who feel abandoned or lost.
You are called to help build that community of love: “Whatever you do to the least of my sisters and brothers, you do to me.” “Love one another as I have loved you, this is my new commandment.” “By this we will all know you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.” My sisters and brothers, you are called to this noble and wonderful vocation, within the vocation of baptism and confirmation. You are called to help build the Church of Jesus Christ, to help God’s people to know Jesus more intimately, to love Jesus more ardently, to live Jesus more totally, to help all our people to truly be what we have been called to be: God’s people, God’s community, God’s Church.
No one of us can do it alone. But, all of us together will be able with God’s help, with our willingness to pray and to make sacrifices, to continue to build this Church in South Jersey, to make us more who we have professed to be, to make us more alive and more excited to be what it means to be an active Christian, what it means to be Church.
I can’t thank you enough. You have my prayers, my collaboration, and especially, you have my love because we share a common love, we share a love of and for the Church. With that, we love one another in a very special way.
I thank you and I know God will continue to bless all of you and all of us in the work we seek to do, the “yes” we are giving to God’s call.