Homily as delivered by Archbishop Edwin O’Brien of Baltimore

Church of St. Paul the Apostle, NYC
National Pastoral Life Center’s 25th Anniversary
March 26, 2009
Votive Mass of St. Paul

As I’m sure has been the case all day in formal presentations and private conversations, one cannot speak of an NPLC quarter century without constant reference to the founder, the noble Philip Murnion. I knew Phil from seminary days – he was two years ahead of me and light years brighter. How well co-founder of Church Magazine, Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, (no relation), describes him in this anniversary issue of Church:

“Above all…he was a priest’s priest; he understood the joys and burdens of their lives; he believed the parish is the heart of the U.S. Catholic Church. Most of all, he was smart, well-read, and ever ready to wrestle an issue into the ground.”

Those who worked closely with him knew as well that he had a heart as expansive as his mind and I could never forget the care and concern he evidenced as our mutual friend and mentor of mine, Msgr. (“Big Ed”) O’Brien (no relation) endured a long and torturous illness leading to death.

But I digress. Through Church Magazine, through studies and conferences related to parish life brimming with changes and developments, through the initiatives and innovative structures which the National Pastoral Life Center has helped midwife and guide, the Center has assisted the Church in America in avoiding the theological and pastoral shoals of extreme left and radical right. Consistently it has offered pastors and lay leaders safe space to chart a future course, truly Catholic and effectively responsive to the needs of local Church and parish. Yes, the parish was Phil’s project all throughout his priestly ministry – a project enriched by the collaboration of the indomitable Harry Fagan – a project that gave rise to so many of the Center’s imaginative initiatives that continue to stoke into flame many an embering presence of the Spirit.

I recall years ago when the newly elected Mayor Ed Koch, in one of his earliest receptions at Gracie Mansion, invited all the Catholic priests from the parishes of the five boroughs of New York. We all had a great time but it was only toward the very end that one of the gents raised his hand to ask why this very Jewish Mayor would single out this very Catholic clergy for an inaugural reception. Koch answered—not surprisingly, unhesitatingly—and said that of all the demographic, economic and ethnic changes that had flowed throughout New York City’s 19th and 20th centuries it had been the Catholic parish and their Catholic pastors who remained to welcome and serve each arriving group. And so it has continued here in New York and throughout our Church in America, thanks, in good measure these last twenty-five years, to the insights and accomplishments of the National Pastoral Life Center.
For Catholics, wherever they find themselves, the parish is the home of their Christian community, a place of welcome for all, the school of sanctity, a laboratory of faith, “The village fountain to which all would have recourse in their thirst.” John XXIII.

With all the changes in faith and society, the late Vincent Yzermans once wrote, “The parish is with us and will continue for generations yet unborn to be a part of religious life here and hereafter. No American institution has endured throughout our national life as family or the parish. It is haven and home, the stamp of spiritual identity.”

And in the midst of every parish there is found a focal point where souls find their ultimate meaning, the altar, the table of sacrifice, what Karl Rahner called our Faith’s most primitive and most indestructible structure. Mark’s Gospel carefully notes today that it was while the Eleven were sitting at such a table that they heard the Lord’s parting commission to preach, to baptize and to heal in his name: Go into the whole world and preach the good news.

That was then, what of now?

In opening the Year of St. Paul last June, Pope Benedict XVI suggested, “Let us not ask ourselves only who was Paul? Let us ask ourselves above all, who is Paul? What does he mean to me?” To us?

In the remarkably stringent Letter to the Galatians, Paul notes that even during his own violent, vehement persecution of the Church of God and his boundless devotion to his Jewish traditions, he was being set apart by God who, through it all, was leading him on through an unseen grace one day to encounter the risen Jesus. So too, no less today, within and without the People of God, Christ’s Church, God’s mysterious, unpredictable grace is at work where we would hardly expect it ever to be. And the Center plays a part in that mystery of grace. Our task is to listen and pray, to preach, to teach, as convinced and convincingly as if we ourselves have met Jesus on the Damascus Road.

For, as in the case of Paul, it is in and through us, it is by way of our deep, interior and ongoing conversion that God will have His way with His Church and with His universe. Certainly, Christ unveiled himself externally and persuasively to Saul on the Damascus road. But it was that inner illumination of the soul, God revealing Christ to Saul in the depths of Saul’s being that made Saul, Paul, and began to change cultures and centuries. It is that miracle of ongoing conversion that this evening we seek and pray to presume, for each present and future evangelizing apostle of the Center, as we approach its second quarter century.

We celebrate the exceptional gift that the National Pastoral Life Center has been to our Church through its charismatic founders, its illuminating publications, its consultations and programs, its search for common ground. We hear the empowering word of Jesus to go into the whole world and proclaim the good news to all creation, and for the strength to do so we are fed with his life, indeed we consume his Resurrection at a table of sacrifice, this altar, still our Church’s most primitive and indestructible structure. And all this, that God will reveal his Son to us, and through us, to a culture unknowingly but instinctively craving Him.

Christ, having shone in our hearts, may we in turn, as present day disciples drawn to the grand goals of this National Pastoral Life Center, make known the glory of God shining on the face of Christ.