November 2, 2024

‘Whatever comes, Jesus is still Lord,’ says newly installed Boston archbishop

REGIONAL
By Gina Christian, OSV News

BOSTON (OSV News) — “Jesus is still Lord” and “the Eucharist is still real” no matter what challenges and sufferings lay ahead, said Archbishop Richard G. Henning of Boston in his homily during his Oct. 31 installation Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

The 60-year-old archbishop, who succeeds the retired Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, is the 10th bishop and sixth archbishop of the Archdiocese of Boston, home to 1.8 million Catholics.

The Rockville Centre, New York, native was ordained as a priest of the Rockville Centre Diocese, and in 2018 was named one of its auxiliary bishops. In November 2022, Pope Francis appointed him as coadjutor bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, and in May 2023 he succeeded Bishop Thomas J. Tobin in that diocese.

After quipping that he’d frequently been asked if he would become “a Red Sox fan,” Archbishop Henning began his homily at the installation Mass — which was attended by Cardinal O’Malley, Springfield Bishop William Byrne and more than 1,400 guests, including 50 bishops and 500 priests — by saying that “the most important thing that you, the people of this archdiocese, need to know about me is that I believe.”

He then reflected on the words of the Nicene Creed and the nature of God.

“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” said the archbishop, quoting the creed’s opening line, before commenting, “This God is all-powerful, all-knowing, eternal, and shockingly, in accord with the Scriptures, this God is love itself.”

Acknowledging God as creator of all things is “a somewhat scandalous thing to say, given the world in which we live,” said Archbishop Henning, noting that while “we are mere mortal creatures, sinners all,” who have failed in fidelity to the Lord, “God does not give up on us.

“God follows after us, seeks us out. And this God longs to be in a relationship with us,” said the archbishop. “I believe that God desires us to be a part of a partnership. If you really think about this truth of what we believe, it’s a little bit crazy.”

That relationship between God and humankind “is deeply personal,” Archbishop Henning said. “Not in the usual cultural sense of individuals, or me and Jesus against the world, but in the sense that, when God desired to fully reveal his heart to his human family, he does so in a person.”

Jesus Christ is God’s “greatest gift, the gift of his own heart, his beloved Son,” who willingly sacrificed his life to redeem humanity, Archbishop Henning said.

“Jesus … comes among us, and he reveals to us the heart of God, the compassion of God, the healing, reconciling power of this God, who is love,” he said. “We see it in his ministry. We see it in his own self-gift. For his ministry is just that: It’s gift, it’s grace. We could not save ourselves.”

From Jesus’ self-gift, “the Lord builds up a people, particularly through the gift of that Eucharist,” Archbishop Henning said.

He added, “This Jesus, who is the face of God, the God who is love and is just as much a mirror held up to us to show us who we were made to be, who we are truly in the sight of God. This I believe. I hope you do, too.”

At the same time, said the archbishop, faith — which is “not just a list of beliefs” or “just a feeling” — is “a whole life” that rightly makes demands upon the believer. He said, “That faith, that belief, finds its true expression in the living of it.”

Since “a relationship also has demands,” God “demands of us that we be changed, that these beliefs transform us, for he wishes us to become what he has made us to be,” the archbishop said.

Among those demands are worship, with Catholics “acknowledging that we are not gods, and that there is one God, and that we need the grace and the mercy, the forgiveness, of that God,” he said. “So, we give God the glory.”

Also required by God is “the truth of solidarity,” he said, adding that “we all know how human it is to define and divide, to put up the walls, us and them.

“Yet the Scriptures and the prophets remind us of this fundamental truth — that we all are, as the Holy Father, Pope Francis, teaches, ‘Fratelli tutti’ — ‘brothers and sisters all,’ inside the church and out, every human person,” Archbishop Henning said.

In turn, solidarity is linked to compassion, he said.

“When human beings forget themselves and give themselves away, when they turn to each other, we find ourselves, we find our truest selves, we find who we are, made to be in the image and likeness of God,” said Archbishop Henning.

He admitted that the Boston Archdiocese — an epicenter of the clerical sexual abuse crisis in the U.S. — is still “in a very real sense, a wounded church, because of the failure to act with compassion and healing.”

“We feel the weight of those wounds,” he said. “And we owe a debt of gratitude to victim-survivors who tell their story, for they have helped to protect new generations by their courage and by their prophetic truth-telling to us, and in their living of the faith, in their capacity for compassion and solidarity of love of neighbor, they become for us hope in the midst of the world, a light in the darkness.”

Along with worship, he said, “God demands of us solidarity, compassion, healing, and hope.”

In Jesus, that demand can be met; Jesus reveals God is love and that love is “a love that sweats and bleeds and dies” to redeem humanity, said Archbishop Henning.

“I know at the start of my journey here with you that there will be many things that are difficult to come. There’ll be many challenges. I’m sure there’ll be days when we’ll have a hard time, I’ll be exhausted,” he said. “But I will know this, believe this, that whatever happens on any day, whatever comes, Jesus is still Lord. Whatever makes me fear, whatever tires me out, the Gospel is still true. Whatever may come, whatever suffering, whatever moments of darkness, the Eucharist is still real.”

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Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @GinaJesseReina. Wes Cipolla, a staff writer for The Boston Pilot, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston, contributed to this report.