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Let us ask Mary, who carried the Word made flesh in her womb to open the Scriptures for us this morning, so that we may bask in the great events of our salvation, events that unfolded in the land made holy by the footsteps of the Redeemer.

You, our first responders – police officers, firefighters, public safety officials – and all the civic officials and administrators who support them – you strive each day to be ambassadors of justice here in the City of Baltimore and throughout the State of Maryland.

My warmest congratulations to those of you about to be instituted in this ministry as also to your wives and families who share with you this journey of formation, which, God willing, will lead to diaconal ordination in the not-too-distant future.

If all this seems to be unrealistic, unreachable, hovering at 30,000 feet, perhaps you and I have only to recall brother priests of Baltimore who have been “bright lights”, beacons of the Spirit, in our midst.

In an age of cultural and intellectual fragmentation, Loyola is poised to render still greater service, both to the Catholic intellectual tradition and to the wider culture, by helping us and our contemporaries to integrate faith and reason, and helping all of us to overcome dead-end, polarizing ideologies, of the right and of the left, ideologies that refuse to view reality through a broader lens, the lens of reason illumined by faith.

As this Mass concludes, the Supreme Knight will install new members of the Board. The installation ceremony, though brief, outlines the high responsibilities for the good of the Order entrusted to each of you.

In this year when my classmates and I celebrate our 45th anniversary as priests, I am delighted to come home to the Mount to offer this holy Mass.

Among Msgr. Luca’s favorite days every year was March 19th, the Feast of St. Joseph, his patron saint.