Homily: Mass of Installation

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Dear brothers and sisters in Christ. As I stand here before you today, I'm truly moved by your presence, both here in this church, but also to those who are joining us via our livestream feed. Words cannot adequately express the feelings and emotions that I carry within me at this moment. I am humbled by Pope Leo XIV’s appointment of me as the sixth bishop of the Diocese in Austin. To our Apostolic Nuncio, Cardinal Christoph Pierre, who is our Holy Father’s representative to the United States, thank you for your presence, but also for your confidence in me to serve this local church. Please assure our Holy Father Pope Leo of our daily prayers for him as he shepherds our Universal Church. I'm also grateful for the presence of his eminence, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop emeritus of Galveston-Houston; to Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller of San Antonio; Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans; Archbishop Jose Gómez of Los Angeles; and someone who you are very familiar with Archbishop Joe S. Vásquez of Galveston-Houston. Thanks to all of you. 
Likewise, I am grateful for the presence of so many of my brother bishops here from Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Washington. I want to extend a special welcome to my brother bishops from California, whom I have been fortunate to get to know and have served with for the last six and a half years. Your presence is especially meaningful to me because it was there in California that I began to learn what it means to shepherd a local church. 

To you, the priests, deacons, consecrated men and women religious, diocese staff, and the faithful to the diocese of Monterey, thank you. You have shaped me and prepared me to serve in the capacity which the church is now asking me to assume here in the Diocese of Austin. I will always carry you with me. 

Last but not least, a special thank you to Bishop Emeritus Sylvester Ryan, who I know is watching this via livestream. Thank you, Bishop Ryan, for your wisdom, your kindness, and your willingness to allow me to learn from you in more ways than you may realize. 

As Bishop Michael Mulvey of the Diocese of Corpus Christi said last night at Vespers, you and I are formed by the relationships and experiences we have through life. Some of those experiences that we know are joyful and moments of happiness. But others, at times, are moments of crisis, disappointment, failure, and even loss. Yet through them all, God is present. 

Today's first reading to the Book of the Prophet Isaiah is often used and deemed appropriate for an ordination of a priest, a deacon, a bishop. But it reminds us all that by virtue of our baptism, we who have been anointed and are called to be those messengers of hope, of joy, of mercy, and compassion that our world today is so much in need of. My friends, our world today is hungry for the word of God, for the bread of life, for the cup of salvation. But it is also hungry for justice and mercy. Look around. Every day there are stories after stories of hurt and misery. We find them in our families amidst our friends and coworkers. We may not be able to prevent some of our hurt that was experienced, but we can make decisions as to how we choose to respond when we encounter these events. 

About an hour and a half south of where I lived in Carmel, California, is the new Camulti Hermitage. It is situated about two miles up the Santa Lucia Mountains, overlooking the Pacific Coast. The site is unbelievably beautiful. The Camocha these monks offer anyone who wants to go to a place that removes us from the everyday stuff that can cloud our vision and obstruct our hearts from listening to the voice of God. Soon after I arrived there, I commented to the friar after driving up the crookid road to the hermitage. I said, I understand that this is a good place to get away to listen to God. But why is it that you monks cannot find God down here at the bottom of the mountain? I said this in jest, but not completely. Most of us here are not called to that kind of life. Most of us are called to come down the mountain and to find God in the experiences and people we encounter along the journey of life.

God calls you and me to get our hands and feet dirty. He calls us to walk with people who are hurting and find themselves in situations that are very messy and complex. He challenges you and me to seek the good in each and every person, even those who have hurt or offended us. 

Why? Because I believe that God has created each and every one of us in his own image. But that image, over time, can become disfigured and perhaps undesirable. But to God, no one is undesirable. Jesus never stopped trying to soften people's hearts, regardless of who they may be or where they're from. Today, we live in a world where all too often we find ourselves fostering division, hate, and angst toward those who believe different from us. We have to relearn how to have conversations where we can disagree with one another, yet still be able to sit at table and enjoy each other's presence rather than looking for what we do not like in the other. In my office, ever since I was a young priest, I always hung a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a hero of mine that has the inscription at the bottom of that picture, I Have A Dream. My history and experience as a child, teenager, and as a priest in the church, in regards to race and religious indifferences in the church and in our society, has often been heartbreaking yet because of my own experiences, I can tell you that I have no tolerance for racism, prejudice, or unacceptance because one is different or thinks different than I do. We need to call it out when we see it or experience it. You would think that we could learn from the errors of our past and the mistakes of our past in the history in the church but also in our world. We as a church must not give into the voices of those who want to sow seeds of hate and of division when it comes to race or religious indifference. 

Pain and hurt can be found on so many levels in our society and our world. We experience it in our politics. We see it so palpably in Ukraine or Russia, South Sudan, Gaza, Israel, just to name a few places. So many of our family members and friends experience and suffer for mental health, domestic violence, physical and sexual abuse. Where are our voices when we see this suffering? Where are our actions in response? I believe God weeps each and every time any of our brothers and sisters are hurt by actions, words, gestures, thoughts, but also to our indifference to their struggles. We cannot stand by and say we love God and yet look away from our neighbors. Even if they are here legally or not. The hateful rhetoric toward our immigrant brothers and sisters today is shameful. We will all be held accountable to our actions in this life. 

Evangeli Gaudium Elaborating on Jesus's words, Pope Francis warns us, “Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping from other people's pain and feeling a need to help them as though all this was someone else's responsibility and not ours.”

My friend, it is time for you and me to change the way we treat one another, especially the least among us, those who live on the margins and peripheries of our society and those who are different from us. If our church is to be one that is to grow, we must first and foremost make people feel welcome and help people to see that they have gifts that are to be honored and treasured. Sunday after Sunday, we gather around an altar like this, not because we are perfect, but because we are not perfect. We all seek the Lord's guidance and wisdom to become more like him. It is  from this table, the Eucharist, and this table of the word that we are strengthened to be Christ from one another. 

My friends, please join me in working together here in the Diocese of Austin to make this local church a beacon of goodness, mercy, hope and joy for all who visit and all who call this diocese home. Today, I invoke the patron saint of the Diocese of Monterey, St. Junipero Serra, and Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, the patroness of the Diocese of Austin, as together we seek to walk humbly with God.
May the Eucharist we receive this day give us courage to be the men and women that God has called us.