For His Friends

“twas the night before Chistmas and all through the Hospital

not a creature was stirring, not even the new battery power-gerbil…..

Not a stocking was hung from any ceiling with or without care,

and no one expected St. Nicholas to be here.”

Well that is more than enough of a teaser but, yes, I am still in the hospital and will remain so probably till Saturday. As the world prepares to celebrate the birth of the Messiah, I have had some time today and last night to think about my own celebration of this singular moment in Christian humankind’s history. I can look our the window of my hospital room and look down on today equivalents of urban shepherds or “bedouins.” They are the homeless sleeping tonight and almost every night under the interstate outside of St. Vincent de Paul headquarters and across from the hospital here in St. Pete. It seems to me that they are more alike the people to whom the angels appeared in the Gospel tonight than I. I have it so much better – heat, warm water, food, loving care and concern, blankets that protect me from the unusual chill of these last few nights. It seems to me that the Lord is using me this Christmas to reflect on how lucky I really am, not how unfortunate to be in the hospital this Christmas eve and day.

Usually on Christmas eve I celebrate three Vigil Masses for Christmas – somewhere in Citrus or Hernando County for the early Mass for Children, a Mass in Spanish somewhere in Pasco County or Hillsborough around 830pm and Midnight Mass at the Cathedral of St. Jude followed by Christmas day mass in the morning at a local prison, jail or detention center. Tonight, like most of the rest of you, I will simply attend Mass celebrated by someone else. The hospital has a Mass at 730pm tonight, Christmas eve, which I hope to simply attend, in my wheel chair with the others here who are well enough to come down for Mass. I am a lucky man, Christmas, Eucharist, celebrating Christ’s birth in a far more simple and much more appropriate way perhaps than in the past. God is truly good.

So while I might have felt a little sorry for myself when it was decided (largely by myself) to remain through Christmas, I have been graced with new insights about how God today, December 24th and 25th, 2009 interacts with humanity and how lucky we are to be children of the Lord who cared enough on a cold winter’s night to send him Son to earth as a harbinger and bringer of peace. Tonight I find Mary and Joseph in the lives and love of my doctors, my incredibly patient nurses and hospital caregivers, and family and friends who tonight pray for me. I am blessed beyond belief. I have had neither the time nor the energy this year to buys gifts, sign and send cards. Maybe, just maybe in this simplicity I am coming closer and closer to the true spirit of Christmas – sharing hope in the Lord, trust in His ways, preaching his Gospel of compassion and acceptance of suffering and bringing confidence to others. Who knows? Merry Christmas to all and to all a GOOD NIGHT.

Bishop Robert N. Lynch

Christmas 2009

Laying Hands on Bishop Etienne as part of the Rite of Ordination. Photo courtesy of John Christian.

Yesterday, December 9th, I flew out and back to Cheyenne, Wyoming for the ordination of my friend and former colleague, Bishop Paul Etienne, as a bishop. It would never have been possible for me to do that were it not for a generous friend who made his private plane available for the round trip in one day.  I attach here my Homily for the Occasion which I hope you will enjoy as the people of the Church of Wyoming seemed to appreciate it.

Preaching the Homily at Bishop Paul Etienne's Ordination. Photo courtesy of John Christian.

No more blogs from me till I am well enough  to resume, probably in about one week. Let us pray for one another and seek God’s help as we prepare to celebrate again the birth of the Messiah.

+RNL

As regular readers of this space know, since discharge from the hospital on September 1st I have always has the specter of returning one more time to the hospital for what I hope will be the final surgery. Following the emergency surgery in early August for the removal of the infections which threatened my life, I have known and understood that one more major surgical procedure would be required. In that surgery, the ileostomies would be reversed, the colon would be reconnected and there was a possibility that my gall bladder would be removed as stones were discovered on the CAT-SCAN which preceded the emergency surgery. Well, the day for the reversal surgery is here and I will be operated on for the third, and please God and hopefully, the final time on Thursday, December 10th.

My doctors are in agreement that I am now strong enough to endure the reversal procedures and the sooner this is done and recovery completed, the sooner I will be back and doing the things a bishop should do. I have been told that hospitalization this time will most likely be a week to ten days, and recovery four to six weeks, this compared to five weeks in July and August in the hospital (four weeks in CPICU) and three months and then days in recovery at home.

My office will keep the diocese informed of my progress on this site and the diocesan web site (http://www.dosp.org) . While I enjoy the same rights of privacy as everyone else, the position of leadership which I hold compels me to be straight-forward and honest in letting the priests, deacons, religious and faithful of the diocese know what is going on.

May I ask several special favors: please no flowers, cards, expressions of good cheer. I know you will be praying for me and that is more than enough. Also, the hospital was very grateful last time for some severe restrictions on visitors. They can be disruptive of recovery and, in my case, challenge the staff of the hospital to do their work not just for me but for the other patients. I would much rather be out and among you doing what I should be doing and that will come sooner as recovery progresses. As soon as I can I will resume my commitment to this blog and am certain that we will be communicating again well before Christmas.

My prayer for six months has been and remains the familiar words of the Lord’s Prayer:” fiat voluntas tua “or “Not my will, Lord, but yours be done.”

I hope to see many of you soon and be assured of my prayers and best wishes for a most blessed Christmas.

+RNL

Lent is almost history for this year and in a few hours we will begin to celebrate the sacred Triduum, the three most important days of the Catholic Christian calender. Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday comprise the Triduum and each has a special meaning for Catholics. Holy Thursday is the night we celebrate the institution of the Eucharist. Good Friday is the day we celebrate the reality that he died for us. And at the Easter Vigil in the final hours of Holy Saturday we relive again the reality that He rose from the dead. Many people express their concern for myself and the other priests at how busy we are during these days. Well, we are, but there is only one liturgy allowed each of these days, most confessions should have been heard, and Easter does not hold a candle to Christmas when it comes to bequeathing fatigue. Christmas is a killer, not liturgically necessarily, but because of all that leads to Christmas eve and Christmas day. Holy Week is much easier on us. Our Churches will be packed for Easter for sure but sadly there will be lots of room during the liturgies of the Triduum. If you have not attended these in the past, give it some serious thought. It is your Church at prayer at its very best. “Serious Radio 90.5 FM” will be broadcasting the entire liturgies of Holy Week live from the cathedral. My homilies will be posted throughout the coming days here and I will share with you some of my thoughts each day of why these days are so important. Stay tuned! Then expect a week of nothing following Easter Sunday.

+RNL

I truly hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and that this week-end has been a time devoted to family and perhaps some relaxation. Today at St. Jerome Catholic Church in Indian Rocks Beach we said our farewells to Sister Helen Conway who died on Christmas eve at the age of 78 after a little more than two years of living with cancer. Sister Helen chose to forego all forms of cancer treatment and devoted her remaining days to helping others who were facing death to prepare for it and be at peace with it. It is a little unusual for me to attend a funeral for a religious sister, but Sister Helen had been the General of her religious order for twenty years. She was a Sister of St. Clare (they work at a number of our parishes in the diocese). Born in Ireland and a religious for just a few months shy of sixty years, she was the principal of St. Lawrence School in Tampa and worked in New Port Richey, on St. Petersburg Beach and at St. Jerome. My presence was a way of thanking God for the life of this good women and thanking the Sisters of St. Clare for their presence in the diocese. Sister Helen is now resting in peace, home for Christmas as she predicted.

During the seven days between Christmas and New Year’s the Church celebrates a number of saints and one horrific event. St. Stephen, the first martyr for the faith and a deacon of the Church was celebrated on Friday. Most likely stoned to death by an angry mob which included Saul of Tarsus (later the convert, St. Paul), Stephen’s  last words were those of Jesus on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

On Saturday, the Church celebrates the Feast of St. John the Evangelist and Apostle. This is interesting because it is highly likely that these were two entirely different men.

On Monday we recall the 12th century martyrdom of Thomas a Becket. Like Thomas More some centuries later, Becket was Chancellor of England to King Henry II who ultimately had him murdered in the Cathedral of Canterbury. Thomas a Becket was also the Archbishop of Canterbury. The “rub” between the two men was the same as for More, the freedoms between Church and State. Canonized only three years after his death, English Catholics would make pilgrimages to his grave in Canterbury, later memorialized by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales and by T.S. Eliot in the wonderful play and movie, Murder in the Cathedral.

The atrocity of which I spoke would have been recalled on Sunday were that day not a Sunday and the Feast of the Holy Family. It is the day the Church remembers all the newborn males slaughtered by a jealous Herod in an attempt to put to death the Messiah born in Bethlehem, in the city of David. We call this day the Feast of the Holy Innocents and it reminds us today’s sad atrocity, the death of over a million of unborn children by abortion each year.

Thursday is a Holy Day of Obligation throughout the United States and attendance at Mass is obligatory. It is the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and the World Day of Peace.

I am taking the next seven days off and will resume again next Sunday night, January 4th. Until then, my prayers and very best wishes go out to the readers of this blog and the people of the diocese for a happy, healthy and holy New Year.

+RNL

A live "baby Jesus" who needed a diaper change in the front pew just prior to his big moment. Oh, well!

I began my Christmas eve journey at an overflowing Church with well over 1200 men, women and especially children at St. Francis Xavier Cabrini Church in Spring Hill. One of the three largest parishes in the diocese, Cabrini serves an across the generations population of Catholics in Hernando County. During the proclamation of the Gospel the children acted out a pageant.  Then I shared with them my absolute best Christmas story which you will never be able to read here but hopefully will sometime attend a children’s Mass on Christmas eve somewhere before I pass on.

The children of the Gospel story pageant

Thanks to Father Richard Jankowski for inviting me and allowing me the honor to begin my own celebration of the Birth of the Lord Jesus at St. Francis Xavier Cabrini.

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