This month, on the Fourth of July, we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of our great county. As Catholics living in the United States of America, we are well aware of the flaws and imperfections of our nation, but we also celebrate the many blessings and gifts we have received as Americans. Last month, my brother bishops and I consecrated our country to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus on this significant anniversary of our country, and I invite you to join me in continuing to pray for our beloved nation so that we all may know, love and serve God and others through the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
This month is also the anniversary of another notable event, this one closer to home: The restructuring of our diocese as part of the Set Ablaze process and everything entailed in its implementation in our lives, parishes, schools and all Catholic institutions in our diocese.
Other stories and articles in this month’s edition of The Bishop’s Bulletin will address various aspects of Set Ablaze. In my column this month, I would like to take a big step back and look at the heart of why I have asked all of us to undertake something as significant as Set Ablaze and everything it entails.
As you’ll read in other articles—and as I’ve written here in the past—the ultimate purpose for Set Ablaze is to help all of us know, love and serve God and others so our entire diocese will be able to more fully respond to God’s plan for our diocese through the diocesan vision: To build a culture of Lifelong Catholic Missionary Discipleship Through God’s Love.
Last month in this column, I wrote about the final portion of the vision, “through God’s love,” which is the core of what will animate our hearts, minds and wills because it is a grace from God—a supernatural virtue—that God so desires and is dearest to my heart. This month, however, especially in light of Set Ablaze, I’d like to focus on the middle (the literal “heart”) of the vision: missionary discipleship and how it relates to Set Ablaze.
The heart of the vision is likewise the heart of our faith: To be Catholic is, above all, to enter into a real and personal relationship with God the Father, through his Son, Jesus Christ, in and by the power of the Holy Spirit. It can be easy—especially, but not only, for those who were raised Catholic—to focus on certain elements of our faith and think of them as the heart: For some, it might be the beautiful teachings of the faith; for others, it might be the rich devotions we practice as Catholics; and for even others, it might be the ethics of Catholicism.
These are all, of course, important aspects of what it means to be Catholic, but they flow from the heart of our faith, which is a deep and personal intimacy with Jesus Christ, and through him and by the power of the Holy Spirit, with our heavenly Father, which then flows outwardly to a deep personal intimacy of loving others as God loves us.
Throughout my priesthood as well as my time as your bishop, it has been a desire of mine that other people would come to know and experience God’s love through a deep relationship with him and others. It has been my desire that we might each respond to Jesus’ invitation to know him in a personal way, through our own spiritual lives and through the life of the Catholic Church. And it is my desire that each of us would—having come to know Jesus Christ and not just know about him—in turn help others to have that same encounter with him that we have and to love them with the supernatural virtue of charity that wills the good of others, especially their spiritual flourishing on earth and for all eternity in heaven.
This is the heart of the diocesan vision, and as such, it is the heart of Set Ablaze. As with our Catholic faith in general, there are many aspects to Set Ablaze, but like our faith, there is the essence, the heart of it, and in both cases, it is the same: That we might each respond to Jesus’ invitation to follow him as his disciples and help others to do the same.
That is what Set Ablaze is all about. So as we continue to live in this new reality, I would invite you each and all to pray for me and for one another, that we come to know our Lord in an ever greater way and lead others to him as well.
