Transcript of the Homily
Good afternoon and welcome. What a joy it is to be here on the Feast of Our lady of Guadalupe to thank God and the Blessed Mother for 25 years of leadership and service. We are truly blessed in so many ways and Father Rocky and I often speak of the blessings upon Relevant Radio. I want to acknowledge my brother bishop and friend for many years, Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki, Bishop of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois. I also want to acknowledge Father Rocky Hoffman, CEO of Relevant Radio, who is so well known and appreciated, and to acknowledge my brother priests as well, who are so closely associated with this apostolate. Thank you, Fathers. I acknowledge all of you, our brothers and sisters in the Relevant Radio family of faith and mission.
This truly is an example of the laity fulfilling the call of Vatican II to work for the sanctification of the world, in cooperation with the bishops and clergy. As we gather here for the closing Mass of the 25th anniversary year since [the founding of Relevant Radio], we give thanks and praise to God the Father for the incredible and manifold blessings God has showered upon this apostolate. We gather around the altar and the table of the Lord to enter once again into the greatest act of thanksgiving ever given to humanity: the Holy Mass, wherein we pray, giving gratitude and praise to the Father, through, with and in Jesus Christ, in unity with the Holy Spirit. We also gather under the mantle of our Blessed Mother, Our lady of Guadalupe, whose feast we celebrate today. She is known as, among many other titles, Empress of the Americas and the greatest evangelizer of all time. In only seven years, through her apparition and the gift of the tilma, 8 million native peoples were converted to the Catholic faith. Pope John Paul II called the shrine of Our lady of Guadalupe “the Marian Heart of America”.
Today, in this homily I have three watchwords that may help us to celebrate this concluding Mass of the past year, which providentially coincides with the Jubilee Year of Hope. For our reflection this afternoon, I want to provide these watchwords, hoping to express our thoughts and sentiments at this time and perhaps prepare us a little bit for for the years ahead. The first watchword is gratitude. Gratitude and good news always leads a person to hope, as the Gospel reminds us so brilliantly today.
“‘Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of David, his Father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there will be no end.'” (Luke 1:31-33)
This text from the Living Word of God restores hope not just for times past, but for now as well. We who also live in times of darkness, trial and tribulation must keep our eyes focused on Jesus Christ and the gift of our faith. By keeping our focus on Jesus Christ with the help of his grace, we can keep our spirits buoyed up, especially if we render thanks and praise to God with ever deepening gratitude of the heart. The Church is His body in the world today and the gift of the Catholic Church is the greatest antidote to the ills, the brokenness and the woundedness of our time. For the Church, we render thanks and we praise God. Let me count just a few of the ways God is blessing this ministry of Relevant Radio. We give thanks today for our founders of Relevant Radio, three businessmen from Green Bay: John Cavill, Bob Atwell and Mark Follett who began this ministry with the hope of bringing EWTN radio to our area. We give thanks for those early years of growth and development which expanded into Catholic talk radio and with support of so many people like you and many others, has been growing ever since.
Relevant Radio is an example of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. We give thanks to God and the Blessed Mother for their constant protection and blessing on this model of evangelization. We give thanks to God for the clarity of mission through a simple listening to people who need more information and have questions about the faith. People are listened to charitably and walked into the truth by people like Patrick Madrid, Father Richard Simon, John Morales and so many others. We give thanks to God for the graces that flow from the merciful love of God through the Divine Mercy Chaplet so expertly led and accompanied by Drew Mariani. We give heartfelt thanks for Father Rocky Hoffman, not only for his daily Family Rosary Across America, but for his simple faith, teaching, expert guidance, and willingness to push beyond the boundaries of the comfort zone by trusting in the Holy Spirit and leading into the often unknown and the yet to come. We give thanks for this significant time of growth for Relevant Radio under the leadership of Tom Vorpahl and Father Rocky, who collaborated a time of 10 years which has borne great fruit of significant growth and development. I am so thankful to God for Father Rocky’s dedicated and consistent promotion of the Shrine of Our lady of Champion, especially the Walk to Mary, begun and developed through Pat Deprey and Tom Schmitz.
This year 7,000 pilgrims walked all or part of the 21-mile pilgrimage from the National Shrine of St. Joseph in Green Bay to Our Lady’s Shrine in Champion. 10,000 people were present last May 1st on the campus for the Masses, and to absorb the beautiful presence of Mary in that holy place. We give deep thanks for the service of the great team members behind the scenes in Relevant Radio, without whom none of this would ever be possible. We give thanks for the board members who are so helpful with their skills, expertise and and generosity in sharing their wisdom. We are grateful for my brother bishops who serve on the board of directors and provide advice and encouragement. We are most indebted to the donors of Relevant Radio, from the generous gift of the widow’s mite to the large legacy gift. Thank you Lord, for all of their generosity.
Thank you, Lord. We also give thanks to God for the growth of Relevant Radio and the necessary expansion to Chicago for an even larger bandwidth of communications and marketing for mission. As you can see, brothers and sisters, these are just a few of the blessings I know about with only a few people mentioned by name. But just this small enumeration of our blessings moves us to greater hope. Gratitude also leads to humility. We are humbled when we give thanks.
That’s our second watchword. The first one was gratitude. The second is humility. We can take great encouragement today and the example from the Blessed Mother from St. Juan Diego in this domain. December 9th, just a few days ago, was the feast day of St. Juan Diego. We can learn a lot about humility from this humble saint and his relationship with Our Lady of Guadalupe. She chose him because of his littleness, because of his trust and his faith.
As the former archbishop of Mexico City, who is now a servant of God himself, Archbishop Luis Maria Martinez wrote about Juan Diego, “Who can deny that the mystery of Tepeyac is the most exquisite and the most beautiful, glorious and fruitful part of our history in Mexico. How did it come about? A poor native and Mary. A tilma, and miraculous flowers. That’s all. To accomplish this wonder, poverty protected by maternal tenderness, smallness protected by the omnipotence of love, intervened.” The virtue of humility is important, no matter what one’s vocation is. To grow in holiness as individuals and as an apostolate, we must lean more into humility. The root word for humility is humus in Latin, which means “the earth”.
Humility does not mean becoming a doormat for everyone to walk on or to walk over. A humble person is not self-delusional, nor inflated in one’s views of one’s self or in the success or fruitfulness in ministry. A humble person is one deeply connected to reality. As Archbishop Martinez writes in his beautiful essay published in this month’s Magnificat, “Mary chose Juan Diego because he was poor and small and had no power or greatness. She chose a poor, simple, unlettered and powerless man because she wanted us to understand that our littleness, protected by her greatness, was to become our joy and glory. So what is needed now,” he continues, “is that we fill ourselves with the Christian spirit, that we be like Juan Diego, poor, simple, humble. We must place our smallness and our weakness at Mary’s disposal. And so we open the tilma of our lives so that she may place in it the roses of the miracle.
As we work with others, especially the listeners of Relevant Radio, who are having such struggles in their lives of almost unbearable proportions, I listen to the stories, I hear the stories and am so grateful Relevant Radio is there to accompany people. We must convince them of how much they are loved by Jesus and his mother, no matter their circumstances. It is by giving God thanks for his manifold blessings in their lives, even though they may be few, and by surrendering their helplessness with a simple and docile spirit. That’s what gets Heaven’s attention. This is the pathway, no matter what our vocation or our station in life. Gratitude. Humility. The third watchword is obedience.
I must commend Relevant Radio for its commitment to obedience to the Holy Father, to the Magisterium of the Church, and to the local bishop. This commitment is to be understood in the Catholic context of the scriptural mandates and examples of obedience. For example, Abraham followed the voice and the command of the Lord to leave everything that he was familiar with and to go into an unfamiliar land in obedience to God the Father. Our Lady, with her fiat to the message of the angel Gabriel, said yes with her whole life, even though naturally she had questions and did not foresee the future. She said yes anyway to the will of God, and she never looked back, except with contemplative wonder and appreciation. As St. Thomas Aquinas indicated, true obedience is aligned with moral virtue and the natural law. He rightly taught that individuals have a moral duty to obey laws and authorities that are consistent with reason and the moral order.
True obedience involves following just laws and legitimate authorities in a matter that upholds above all God’s law and proper ethical principles. This also applies to secular rulers who possess valid authority. As we pray today, in gratitude, we also ask for God’s continued abundant blessings on Relevant Radio. As you strive to fulfill the mission to be heralds of the Gospel, heralds of the Good news, may we all grow together in discipleship and in holiness under the mantle of our Blessed Mother. And may gratitude, humility and obedience grow in each one of our lives.
Our lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.
Our lady of Champion, pray for us.
St. Joseph, pray for us.
May Almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.