Homily for the Diocesan Mass for Deceased Bishops and Priests
"Remembering Our Deceased who Desired 'to Know the Way'"

by The Most Reverend John C. Nienstedt

November 18, 2003
St. Aloysius Church, Olivia

 

  Intro:   “I think I am losing my vocation.”

  This was the opening line I heard Mother Teresa speak at a gathering in Detroit many years ago. She went on to explain that she had been on the road for several weeks at that point and longed to return to Calcutta , the place where God had called her to minister.

  I now know what she was feeling. Having been away for the Bishops’ Conference last week and then for the NCYC gathering in Houston where 528 young people from the Diocese participated in a wonderful celebration of faith, I am pleased to be finally back home where God has called me to minister.

  The context of our Gospel passage is, of course, the Last Supper narrative in St. John’s Gospel. Jesus has just told his disciples that he must go away and they are at once both confused and terrified. So he tries to reassure them by urging them to have faith: he’s going away for their benefit for he will prepare a place for them and then return to take them away too.

  It is Thomas, however, who asks the most salient question, undoubtedly not knowing the depth of its meaning: How can we know the way? Indeed, how do we know the way? In a society plagued with war and violence, promiscuity and permissiveness, economic manipulation and exploitation, how do we know the way? Do we flee the world or give in to its allure? Do we risk rejection by standing up for the truth or do we allow ourselves to be compromised by just going along? How do we know the way?

  The National Catholic Youth Conference held in Houston last week focused on the topic of our Church’s Social Teaching. The main speaker on Saturday evening was Craig Kielburger, a twenty-one year old Catholic Canadian man who came “to know the way” one morning at breakfast when he was just twelve years old.

  On that day as he was searching for the comics in his morning newspaper, he spied an article about a Pakistani boy his same age, who had been sold at the age of four into a trade slavery, forced to make carpets twelve hours a day, six days a week, and for all his effort was paid only three cents a day. This young Pakistani eventually escaped and began to tell about the horrors of the child labor practiced in his country. His message gained international attention, forced Pakistani carpet manufacturers to lose money and resulted in the boy being shot and killed.

  This story touched Craig Kielburger’s very soul and he organized his schoolmates to do something about the situation. He founded Free the Children – an organization concerned about children’s rights – and began to travel throughout Asia to see first hand the tragic working conditions of children forced into labor. Since then his message has brought relief to well over 1.1 million young people all over the world.

  Craig Kielburger discovered the “way” that the apostle Thomas was seeking by simply reading the morning newspaper with an open and compassionate heart. Today he speaks with conviction and from a passion that radiates from the core of his being. His is a story of the great difference one person can make in the world when motivated by a compassionate love. Whether he recognized it or not at the time, that compassionate love sprang from the presence of Jesus within him – Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life.

  My dear sisters and brothers, we gather here today to remember our beloved dead. In a special way, we remember those who led us in faith, who presided at our Eucharist, who instructed us in the ways of Christ. We do so confident of God’s mercy, but equally convinced of God’s justice. At the same time, we are consoled with the teaching of the Church on the efficacy of our prayers and good works on behalf of those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith.

  The stories of Bishop Schladweiler and Bishop Lucker, Msgr. Berg, Father Hillesheim and all the others is not the same as Craig Kielburger and his Free the Children campaign. And yet, their lives too were marked with that same desire “to know the way”, that same passion to right all human wrongs, that same compassion to establish God’s Kingdom by leading others to Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life.

  At the same time, however, we cannot afford to overlook St. Paul’s instruction to the Corinthians in our first reading that the kingdom comes about only when its enemies have been destroyed, the last of these being death itself. Evil is still very real and it lurks within social relationships, in human institutions and in people’s hearts, even good people like those for whom we pray this night.

  On the bus taking a group of our diocesan NCYC youth and chaperones from the Canby-St. Leo area to a midnight prayer service in Houston on Saturday, a grandmother from Minneota told me that she was praying for me on a daily basis. When I encouraged her to keep on praying, she said, “Oh yes, as my neighbor tells me, we must pray for sinners every day.” Then she sheepishly added, “Not that you are a sinner, Bishop.” I quickly protested, “Oh, but I am and that’s all the more reason for you to continue your prayer.” Yes, bishops, too (and some might say “especially”) need to acknowledge that they are sinners and that they stand in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness.

  And so, my dear friends, thank you for being here for this very first Diocesan Liturgy for our Deceased Clergy who have served us faithfully in the past. We pray that God will reward their works of compassion, we ask God to forgive them their sins. And as you and I come forward to be renewed with the Body and Blood of our Risen Lord, let us ask him for the resolve and passion of a Craig Kielburger to make a positive difference in the lives of those we touch as well as the strength to resist temptations to all evil. Let us ask our blessed Lord, in the words of Thomas, to show us the “way” he is going and to be, for us, “the way, the truth and the life.”

  May the souls of our deceased bishops and priests as well as the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.