For His Friends

I mentioned that I would post the homily at the funeral Mass for Sister Germaine Bevans, OSB, Vicar for Religious for the Diocese of St. Petersburg. She was buried from the Abbey Church of St. Leo Benedictine Monastery with a full Church and in the presence of her family from Belize and elsewhere. I think you will be able to tell that I will miss her even though in both my heart and mind I know she is in a better place. For the homily, please click here.

Bishop Lynch making the sign of the cross with ashes on the forehead of a student at Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Petersburg Catholic High School. Photo Credit: John Christian

Hard as it may be to believe, our celebration of Lent 2010 began yesterday with Ash Wednesday and now will continue through Easter Sunday on April 4th. I began my liturgical celebration of this holy and penitential season by celebrating Mass for the students of St. Petersburg Catholic High School. They are unfailingly attentive at Mass when I am there and make it a genuine pleasure. The provincial superior of the Salesians, Father Thomas Dunne, was present and preached the homily to the assembly.

Bishop Lynch and Fr. Tom Dunne, SDB at Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Petersburg Catholic High School. Photo Credit: John Christian

On March 11, 2010 we will repeat last year’s highly successful The Light is ON for You event. If you recall, we promise that all 75 parish churches and missions will be open on that Thursday night from 5pm until 8pm for the celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Most Churches will also continue their practice of Penance Services sometime during Lent, so what’s the big deal about The Light is ON for You? To begin with, it will be easy to go to confession. You need not call the parish and ask what time confession is because every parish in the diocese will offer confession between five and eight that night. If you find a place closed during those hours that night, I want to know about it.

Secondly, if you have been away for a while or wish true anonymity, you can go to confession at any Church. Perhaps you work in downtown Tampa and live and worship in New Tampa at St. Mark’s as an example. You could choose Sacred Heart downtown, Corpus Christi in Temple Terrace, St. Mary’s in north Tampa and just stop by on the way home. Chances are you would have the anonymity which you feel you need for peace. Just come in, reflect on your mortal sins and your life in general, enter the confessional space and talk to the Lord and the priest. Listen carefully to his words of absolution and leave feeling healed and clean.

You may recall that last year when I presented the idea of The Light is ON for You to the priests they were skeptical. Well, to their amazement many of them were slammed that night by the number of people who made use of this opportunity and they were pleased in the end. It is now the priests who have asked that this opportunity become an annual one and it will be repeated on the Thursday night of the second full week of Lent for the foreseeable future or as long as it meets a need. Word came to me that many were wonderful confessions of people who had been away from the sacrament for a long, long time.

This Sunday finds me  at the Cathedral of St. Jude for two “Rite of Election” ceremonies. This is always a day that makes a bishop feel particularly good as he officially and formally welcomes the catechumens (those who will be baptized at the Easter Vigil, confirmed and make their First Holy Communion) and the candidates (those who have already been baptized, perhaps in another religion or if Catholic it has been years since they practiced) and who will make a profession of faith, be confirmed and make their first communion. Next Sunday there will be 385 catechumens and 678 candidates for a grand total of 1063 coming into the Church and present at the Rite of Election (there are always those who are catechumens or candidates who are unable to make this ceremony but will still be received at Easter.) By the way, this year’s number is down by only nine from the number received at last year’s two Rites of Election.

From all of this, you should be able to tell that I am finally back at work. I will do all I am physically capable of doing but still am told and suspect that it will be the Fall before I can expect to be fully recovered and back at full strength. For this reason, I have reduced my confirmation schedule this year but expect to resume full service in the Fall for confirmations.

I hope that together we can spend these forty days fasting and praying so that we may fully comprehend the great Easter mystery all the more.

+RNL

Regular readers of this space may recall that while I was still in the hospital I asked for prayers for my colleague, Sister Germaine Bevans, a Benedictine Sister of Holy Name Monastery in St. Leo, FL and our diocesan Vicar for Religious for almost eleven years. My colleagues at the Bishop Larkin Pastoral Center are, in faith, grieving her death but happy her battle with cancer was cut somewhat short. Sister Germaine was born in Belize, a small nation in Central America some seventy-three years ago. She always wished to be a religious sister and professed in 1956 as a Pallottine sister. She served with that community as a teacher and principal for twenty years before coming to Holy Name Monastery in 1973 attracted to the Benedictine charism and the example of Saints Scholastica and her brother, St. Benedict. From 1976 to 1986 she was principal of Saint Anthony School in San Antonio, Florida, just a mile from the monastery. Chosen by the members of her community, she served two full terms as prioress, reflecting the trust and love of her fellow sisters. When her second term was concluded, I asked her to serve the diocesan Church as Vicar for Religious which she did till Friday when the Lord came for her. She loved religious and fought for them when she thought they were being mistreated or wronged. She was persistent and did not take “no” from me without challenging the justice of the situation. Most often she was right but little could be done to right the perceived wrong. She was a holy woman, living a very simple life style with a deeply prayerful commitment. I cared deeply for her and will miss her. At the request of the sisters, I shall celebrate her funeral Mass on Tuesday morning at the Abbey Church, St. Leo, and preach the homily which will be available here after delivery. Rest in the peace of Christ, dear Sister Germaine, you have more than earned it.

+RNL

Fourteen years ago this afternoon (at two ‘clock p.m.) I was ordained and installed as the fourth bishop of St. Petersburg. It was a wonderful moment that I recall every year in a special way on my anniversary date and I recall it at Mass with special prayers of love and thanksgiving for the priests, deacons, religious and laity of the diocese who have embraced me, occasionally and properly upbraided me, but who on the whole have strongly supported my ministry among you. It didn’t take you long to figure out that I was not an ideologue but a mediator looking for common ground; it did not take you long to learn that I preferred a Gospel of ‘HOPE” to a more punitive reading of the same; it did not take you long to realize that I preferred collaboration and consultation to an autocratic style. For most of you this has been just fine. For some I have been a keen disappointment but the genius of our Church governance is that one never has to wait long for another day, another leader, another theory of management and leadership. To those whom I have disappointed be patient, with me and with the Church you love. To those whom I have pleased, continue to pray for me, my health, my spirituality, my peace and serenity with who I am and why God has now left me here, To all of you, regardless, thanks for this fourteen year love affair. Unconditionally and irrefutably I can say fourteen years later, I love you just as much as I did on my ordination day – no, even more.

+RNL

“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

Yesterday, our Church ordained its 100th priest since its establishment in 1968. John Bailey Lipscomb was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop John C. Favalora, Archbishop of Miami, at the Chapel of St. James, Bethany Center in Lutz. Father John is the first priest to enter priestly service in our diocese under what is called the “Pastoral Provision” by which married Anglican/Episcopalian priests can become priests of the Roman Rite.  Father John and his wife Marci  made their profession of faith almost two years ago at Nativity parish in Brandon and he has been assigned to be the priest-in-residence and Spiritual Director at the Bethany Center. In this capacity he will be celebrating the sacraments for groups who may be unable to have the presence of a priest, assisting in hearing the confessions of young people on retreat and guiding retreatants during their stay at Bethany. He spent his diaconate months at St. Paul parish in Tampa and will celebrate his First Mass this coming Sunday at St. Paul and then another the following Sunday at Nativity, Brandon.

Since I was uncertain of my ability to preside at the ordination ceremony, I invited Archbishop Favalora to return to ordain Father Lipscomb and he graciously accepted. I was able to preach and if you wish, you can read my homily for the occasion.

100 priests in forty-eight years ordained for this diocese is a milestone of sorts but also an indicator of how desperate we are for vocations from the diocese. With over thirty in the seminary at this time, things look brighter but I don’t count my chickens until my hands rest on their heads at their ordination. What I do count as a blessing is the renewed generosity of young men to try the seminary against the current of popular opinion about the celibate and chaste life and I also pray that the sisters may also experience a growth in vocations.

Congratulations, Father John Lipscomb and we welcome you to priestly ministry in the Church of St. Petersburg.

+RNL

Deacon John Lipscomb is presented as a candidate for priestly ordination

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Deacon John Lipscomb stands as he is presented to Archbishop Favalora by Fr. Len Piotrowski (not pictured) as a candidate for ordination to the priesthood.

Pictures by Ray Basett, Maddock Photographers
for the Diocese of Saint Petersburg