Monday 29th Week
Jesuit Community Loyola
Baltimore, Maryland
October 20, 2025
It is a delight to be with you this evening for Mass and dinner. Thanks so much for your kind invitation but even more so for the ministries you advance and sustain in the Archdiocese of Baltimore – whether it is here at Loyola University, or Loyola Blakefield, or St. Ignatius Parish, or the Father Watters’ network of schools & much more. Thank you for your charism expressed in all these forms of service. The Archdiocese and the Society of Jesus in America have common roots. We trace our lineage to Jesuit pioneers beginning with Father Andrew White, S.J., and extending to Archbishops John Carroll and Leonard Neale. I can never forget that the Archdiocese is standing on the shoulders of these Jesuit pioneers.
Did they have their blind spots and moral failings? For sure. And so do we. What they did have, and what we must emulate, is faith and hope. When St. Paul describes the indomitable faith of Abraham – who believed when there was little reason to believe, and hoped when all appeared hopeless – he could be describing those who went before us in faith here in Maryland, a colony that was founded to protect and advance religious freedom but instead morphed into a place where the Catholic faith could be practiced only sub rosa.
We are living in days that call for the unconquerable faith of Abraham, and likewise, the faith of Ignatius and the Jesuit missionaries and martyrs, not to mention my predecessors who helped lay the foundations of the Church in these United States. In challenging these days such as these, we can sometimes imagine all is lost. Dioceses and provinces are facing crippling lawsuits. In many quarters, the appetite for the faith has greatly diminished. We are confronted more with indifference than hostility. Of the two, I’d prefer hostility. At least you get to sing for your supper!
What is our reaction? Often it is to plan. To strategize. To do a capital campaign. Nothing wrong with any of that, except that it doesn’t get to the heart of things. No plan, strategic or otherwise, will reverse things. No matter how much money we raise, it will never be enough. Well-executed plans and adequate material resources cannot replace the radical faith and trust that our forebears had in the Providence of God. This is what attracted extraordinary individuals to Ignatius. This is what sent a Fr. Francis Xavier or a Fr. Matteo Ricci to the missions. This is why Fr. Andrew White set sail. This is what enabled Archbishop John Carroll to chart a new course in a new nation for the Church.
The Jubilee of Hope is not over. I was in Rome last week and saw for myself that it is overflowing with pilgrims. I can attest that amazing things are happening to innumerable souls thanks to the vision and leadership of the late Pope Francis. Even as we fondly remember him in our prayers, let us ask him to pray for us from his place in eternity, that you and I might be pilgrims of hope during our life’s journey, and more than that, prophets of hope in an ecclesial and secular culture that has grown comfortable, self-righteous, and self-referential. This evening we pray for a double portion of that faith and hope that will be ‘credited to us as righteousness.’ Thus will we ‘store up for ourselves treasures in what matters to God.’