Homily for the Installation of
Most Reverend Brian Dunn as the Ninth Bishop of Antigonish
January 25, 2010
We gather today as a family of faith experiencing a tragedy. The recent resignation of Bishop Lahey in the midst of the charges of possession of child pornography has created a scar on this diocese and on the whole Church. These charges take on further significance since Bishop Lahey was in the process of negotiating and implementing a legal settlement for survivors of child sexual abuse by priests in the diocese. As with any tragedy, our hearts are heavy and we are filled with sadness, disappointment, shock, and disillusionment, but this situation has filled us with even deeper emotional responses of anger, resentment, betrayal and outrage. The whole situation has rocked the foundations of our faith and has immersed us in an atmosphere of distrust, suspicion and second-guessing.
The situation touches the lives of every single person in the diocese: those who have been abused by clergy and indeed anyone who has been abused; the faithful who have had their faith shaken because of the example of one of our leaders; religious who strive to be faithful to their commitment of consecrated life; priests who unfailingly minister to their parishioners week in and week out trying to invite them to a deeper faith and listening to their pain and struggle. I appreciate the courage that it has taken each one of you to walk through the doors of this church today and I see this as a giant step in trust.
All of this has created a tremendous need for stillness and understanding, for caring and healing, for reconciliation and peace. I am aware of the call within our diocese that these times call for a renewal, a conversion, in the ways that we respond in faith in our local communities. It is within this atmosphere that we gather for this liturgy of installation: my being received at the doors of this cathedral, the reading of the apostolic letter from Pope Benedict XVI and my being seated in the chair of this cathedral. This officially begins my relationship with the people I have been called to serve and shepherd in this diocese.
While I am grateful for this appointment, I am also filled with fear and trepidation, with feelings of my own inadequacies, with a realization that I am setting out into unchartered waters. However, I am also aware of the enormous support that is present for all who make up our faith community. Since my nomination, innumerable people – friends and strangers, priests and lay people, religious and bishops – have made it a point of expressing that they are praying for all of us here in the Diocese of Antigonish. These past few weeks and months have made me more deeply aware of the tremendous responsibilities of leadership in a faith community. However, I have also experienced am amazing grace of consolation in the fact that the Lord has called me; that He has made me aware of his presence, invited me to participate in His ministry of healing and called me to be a vehicle for His reconciliation.
Reflecting on this situation, I am reminded of the saying of Saint Augustine as he reflected on his own episcopal ministry: for you, I am a bishop; with you, I am a Christian (Sermon 46). The responsibilities of leadership can be a burden, but the consolation of discipleship can give great encouragement. St. Augustine’s statement captures the challenge of leadership in the Church today, a leadership of service deeply rooted in the essential relationship between the faithful and those called to serve within the community of faith. The call to service of God’s people within a local church must reflect the example of Jesus who came, not to be served, but to serve; Jesus states: “I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:27).
Today’s feast, the Conversion of Saint Paul, provides us with a rich context for reflection on what we are doing here today. The story of Saint Paul’s conversion is so important for St. Luke that he includes three different accounts of Paul’s experience in the Acts of the Apostles. From St. Luke we learn that Paul was a very zealous and religious Jew, a Pharisee who was committed to ensuring that the true tradition of the Jewish faith was preached and lived. As a result, he zealously sought out the early followers of the Way, persecuting the early Christians to the point of death, because Jesus’ teaching did not fit well with the Jewish faith. This is the context of Paul’s experience of the Lord Jesus, an experience that shattered his thinking and his categories, an experience that called him to reconsider the direction of his life, an experience that profoundly changed his whole life. In that moment of realization where he made the connection that his actions of persecuting Christians were actually the actions of persecuting the Lord Jesus, his whole life was turned around.
Paul made this experience a part of himself over the next few years. Gradually Paul began to preach about the amazing gift that he had received, the freedom of realizing that he was totally loved by God, not because of any of his good works, but because of God’s free invitation – an invitation to know the grace and peace of God through experiencing the outpouring of God’s love through the Holy Spirit. The early followers of Jesus recognized Paul’s conversion and described Paul as the one who had been persecuting the Church but who was now preaching the Good News of Jesus. And they gave thanks.
Paul’s conversion experience continued to deepen as he lived out his ministry of preaching and leadership. When Paul was disturbed by the example of Peter, Paul readily challenged him with the new perspective from Jesus that God touches the hearts of all people, inviting them to experience his saving grace. When Paul was discouraged that people did not listen to his preaching, he continued to return to his experience of God’s love for him. When he was persecuted and stoned, he reached deep within himself to be renewed with the awareness of the life of Christ within him. When he was tempted to focus on his own gifts, God reminded Paul, through his thorn in the flesh, that God’s strength was most profound in the midst of the awareness of his own weakness. Paul could eventually affirm that all is rubbish except knowing Christ Jesus and Him crucified, to know His sufferings in order to know His resurrection and rising to new life (Phil. 3:8-10).
Paul’s example recalls for us the power that God has through Jesus Christ to penetrate our hearts and lives with his love and to turn our lives around. He reminds us that the Lord is very present with us in our suffering. In fact, Christ suffers with us and that’s the insight that Paul had on the road to Damascus, which is the key lesson for us all. The Son of God suffers with us, plants within us a sense of hope for those who cooperate with his will. From this knowledge and experience, we can conclude in fact, that God has a plan of hope for us.
Part of that plan is for each of us to have a new or deeper experience of the church as a place of communion, the place where we know our oneness with each other and with our God. This sense of communion is rooted in the fact that we believe in God who lives in the mystery of the communion of the Trinity and invites us to a spirituality of communion. Pope John Paul II describes this spirituality for the church of the 21st century:
A spirituality of communion means an ability to think of our brothers and sisters in faith within the profound unity of the Mystical Body, and therefore as “those who are a part of me”. This makes us able to share their joys and sufferings, to sense their desires and attend to their needs, to offer them deep and genuine friendship. A spirituality of communion implies also the ability to see what is positive in others, to welcome it and prize it as a gift from God: not only as a gift for the brother or sister who has received it directly, but also as a “gift for me”. A spirituality of communion means, finally, to know how to “make room” for our brothers and sisters, bearing “each other’s burdens” (Gal 6:2) and resisting the selfish temptations which constantly beset us and provoke competition, careerism, distrust and jealousy. Let us have no illusions: unless we follow this spiritual path, external structures of communion will serve very little purpose. They would become mechanisms without a soul, “masks” of communion rather than its means of expression and growth (Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, January 6, 2001, n. 43).
The pope then notes that this communion must be cultivated and extended day by day and at every level in the structures of each diocese. The relations between bishops and priests and deacons, between pastors and the entire People of God, between clergy and religious must all be clearly characterized by communion. As well, all the structures of the diocese and parish, including the various councils of participation, must reflect this sense of communion, encouraging a fruitful dialogue within every relationship.
I believe in this sense and spirit of communion and consequently recognize that the symbols of the bishop’s office will be a constant reminder of this belief. The ring makes me aware of the relationship that I have with the people for whom I am called to serve, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in times of joy and in times of difficulty. The bishop’s chair in this cathedral is a sign that we are all called to gather together to be renewed as God’s Holy People and it reminds me that the teaching that I give must be in line with the Gospel and the tradition entrusted to me through the laying on of hands at ordination. The miter reminds me of the crown of holiness that I must seek in my life and ministry, a holiness which cannot bypass the crown of thorns, a holiness that we all must seek. The crozier or the pastoral staff is a reminder of the vigilance of the Good Shepherd reaching out to those who are hurt or alienated or are suffering and a reminder of my own need to be upheld and supported.
This day, January 25, the Feast of the Conversion of Paul, reminds us of the larger church to which we belong. We have heard the apostolic letter from Pope Benedict XVI appointing me as your bishop. Fifty-one years ago today, in 1959, Pope John XXIII startled the whole world with his announcement to hold an ecumenical council to renew the church and to seek Christian unity. And January 25 traditionally closes the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, reminding us of the work of reconciliation necessary for the unity of Christians throughout the world.
I know that Vatican II has taken root through the renewal within the parishes of this diocese. I am aware of your tradition of ecumenical ministry, especially as seen in the many services in our parishes during this past Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. I am aware of the example of Fr. Moses Coady and Fr. Jimmy Tompkins and their work with cooperatives, a tradition that continues in the wonderful work of the Coady Institute. I realize that many lay people have been involved in the long tradition of lay formation programs. I know that the diocese has made a significant contribution to the development of the faith through the Catholic tradition connected with St. Francis Xavier University. I recognize the fact that many priests and members of consecrated life from this diocese have generously been involved in ministry in other parts of Canada and the world. Above all, I am aware of the resilience of the faith within families and within small communities, a resilience immortalized by some of the lyrics of the local song “We Rise Again”. My hope is that we all can experience this life of faith and I believe that we can do this together.
As your new bishop, I come here to be with you and I count on you to be with me. I bring to you what I have: my firm commitment to listen to you and to receive your stories. During the next few months, I plan to listen to each priest, and to the religious and parishioners of each area of the diocese. I bring to you my deep desire to be an instrument of the Lord’s healing and reconciliation. I bring to you my profound conviction that nothing can separate us from the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus. And above all, I bring to you my complete confidence in the gift of the Eucharist which gathers us when we are scattered, heals us in our hurts and wounds, and nourishes us in our hunger for God.
And so, we continue with this Eucharist, that we may be one with the Lord Jesus, who on the night of his betrayal, gave His Body and Blood as a reminder of His love and of His total surrender to the will of His Father. With the help of God’s grace, we look forward with hope to the new life which the Lord has in store for us, as we experience His resurrection and new life, and as we trust in His promise that we will rise again.
Address of Msgr. Luca Lorusso, P.H.
Installation of Bishop Brian Dunn
January 25, 2010
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
It is a great honor to be with each of you in this Cathedral and University town of Antigonish, so well known throughout Canada and throughout the world for the spirit and the faith of the people of Eastern Nova Scotia.
I am pleased to bring greetings from the newly appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Canada, the Most Rev. Pedro Lopez Quintana, who will assume his duties at the end of February. I also wish to acknowledge with gratitude, Archbishop Anthony Mancini, who has served so diligently and sensitively as Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Antigonish these past four months.
The faith of the people of this Diocese has always shone as a beacon of light because of the good example of the many clergy, religious and lay faithful who, amid the tempests that beset us, have extended the light of Christ's message, thereby, illuminating these darkest hours, giving witnesses to the words of St. Paul: where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more (Rom. 5.20).
Given the pressing challenges facing the Church in this part of Canada, and in view of recent and very sad events, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, with an intense pastoral solicitude for this diocese and for its faithful, was anxious to provide as soon as was possible, a new pastor in the person of Bishop Brian Dunn.
In fact, the Holy See in a very short period of time, having made the appropriate consultations, was able to appoint Bishop Dunn for this ecclesial community when the normal time for such appointments can take several months or even more.
Bishop Dunn is no stranger to these parts, having served as a priest of the Diocese of Grand Falls. In the years since his presbyteral ordination Bishop Brian has been a parish priest, chancellor, a teacher in the Seminary, and more recently, Auxiliary Bishop in the extensive diocese that is Sault Ste Marie. On this occasion, I would like to thank in a special way Bishop Plouffe, who accepted the loss of a valued collaborator for the good of the Church.
Many of the challenges that confronted Bishop Dunn in that part of Canada are similar to those faced by the priests, religious and lay faithful of this diocese.
We celebrate his installation on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. It is one of the primary tasks of a bishop, to proclaim the transforming message of the gospel which, more than anything, is an invitation into a life giving and life altering relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ. Speaking of Paul's conversion, our Holy Father notes:
"This turning point in his life, this transformation of his whole being came as the result of his encounter with Jesus Christ. In this sense it was not simply a conversion, but rather a death and resurrection for Paul himself. This event alone, this powerful encounter with Christ, is the key to understanding what had happened: death and resurrection, one existence died and another, new one, was born with the Risen Christ... In this deeper sense we can and we must speak of conversion... Nevertheless, we must not think that Paul was thus closed in a blind event. The contrary is true because the Risen Christ is the light of truth, the light of God himself. This expanded Paul's heart and made it open to all. Being open to Christ with all his heart, he had become capable of an ample dialogue with everyone; he had become capable of making himself 'all things to all people."'
This will be your task also, dear Bishop Brian, to enter into a lively dialogue with the people entrusted to your care so that together, all members of this ecclesial community, building upon the foundations so carefully placed by former generations, can continue to renew the Church and announce the powerful and transforming message of the Gospel: that through a personal encounter with Christ Jesus, we too can find healing, renewed hope and confidence
In the name of Pope Benedict XVI, I greet each of you and assure you of the Holy Father's affection and of his spiritual closeness and communion with this esteemed diocese, the Church of Antigonish.