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We’ve gathered for this installation on the beautiful feast of the Epiphany. We celebrate that day when the Savior of the World was made manifest by a star that attracted the Magi from the East.

This year will mark the 50th anniversary of Mother Seton’s canonization. Let us prepare for that great event by reflecting on her life and in God’s grace let us absorb the lessons of her life, such that we too will be accounted pilgrims of hope on the road to holiness.

Mary’s maternal vocation also extends to you and me. She is Mother of the Church and that means she is our spiritual mother, yours and mine. She loves us and prays for us and understands us more than we know. Continually, she leads us to Jesus.

Just as my parents taught me how to hope, so the Holy Family teaches all of us how to hope, as indeed our Holy Father calls us to be a people of hope, that is to say, a light brightly visible in the darkness of a world searching.

If we would be good citizens, prudent and virtuous, true advocates for peace, doers of charity and justice, lovers of the poor and vulnerable, then let us give proper allegiance to our country, but let our first and ultimate allegiance be to the One who is truly Lord of Heaven and Earth, the One who came, not to compete with Caesar’s earthly power, but to be the light of the world, to be the hope that does not disappoint, the One who truly loves the poor and hears their cry, the One whose love not even sin and death can conquer.

As we keep the Vigil of the Lord’s Birth, let us do what Joseph did: When the angel announced to him the very essence of God’s mysterious drama, Joseph took it heart; not only did he hear the Gospel, he acted on it.

In these days, as we prepare our hearts anew to celebrate the Incarnation, let us ask the Holy Spirit to purify us of sin and to shape and mold our hearts, that we response to our calling as Mary responded to hers: in humility, in a spirit of holiness, full of wonder and awe, a readiness to cooperate with God’s plan, a faith that seeks understanding, a heart, a mind, a body, a soul that surrenders to God’s plan and indeed to the part he is asking us to play in fulfillment of his plan.

Assenting to what seems humanly impossible, going the extra mile when the road has already been long – all of this becomes possible when, at Christmas, we peer into the creche and see the Word made flesh lying in a manger, the very One we receive in Holy Communion.

We are surrounded by “a [heavenly] cloud of witnesses” – the Blessed Virgin Mary, the saints, the angels, your dear father, who are praying with us and for us in the communion of saints.
Above all, we have entered into the presence of Christ, the great High Priest.

In searching for us, God’s Son did not stride the earth like a giant but came rather as a pilgrim, clothed in our own human nature. His pilgrimage took him to the depths of the human experience, for he rescued us from oblivion by undergoing the oblivion of the Cross – the very mystery that we celebrate at every Mass.

The Gospel proclaims a message of hope and consolation, as indeed you pastor is called upon to offer hope and consolation to you, his people, especially in time of illness, loss, weakness, and uncertainty.