Welcome to the table of immense respect!

Bishop's crozier and miter: Image from the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, University of Notre Dame

Rocco has two interesting posts up: one on a young priest, Oscar Cantú, about to be ordained a bishop in San Antonio and the other on Cardinal Godfried Daneels who, at 75, has just submitted his letter to the pope asking to retire as the Archbishop of Melechen-Brussel and thus primate of Belgium.

Cantú is the first bishop to be ordained who was born after Vatican Council II. Daneels was a co-author of the first document to come from Vatican II: the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (1963) which inaugurated decades of liturgical reform and renewal. The San Antonio Express News has this to report on the bishop-elect:

"When he becomes a bishop, Cantú will have his own coat of arms, a tradition for those becoming bishops. At its center Cantú chose to have a table. For him it represented the church altar and the family dining table. He described to his congregation how his parents presided over the table with eight kids and their friends. Somehow, there was enough food, and guests were always welcome.

“From my mother I learned to roll with the punches,” he said. “To have the confidence that God would provide.” From his father he learned the importance of honesty. "When we try to fool others, we simply fool ourselves,” he said.

Rocco's post on Daneels is based on Robert Mickens' interview with the cardinal in the current issue of the British journal The Tablet. Consider Daneels' words:

"From time to time they say that I see things as too rosy, but I think we have to give credit to the good that is happening," he says. "I have always had an immense respect for every feeling and every thought of every human being I have ever met," he tells me. Keeping an "open mind" and being "very hopeful" comes from a belief that "fundamentally the human being is a good being."

Amazing words from a sitting cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church: "immense respect for every feeling and every thought of every human being..." Can there be, should there be any other starting point for any minister of the gospel? Was this not how Jesus approached the men and women in his life? Was Jesus seeing things as 'too rosy" when he approached people and spoke to them right where they were, in their own circumstances? loving them when they'd been marginalized by others? accepting them after they'd been spurned and rejected? dining with them even when he knew their hearts' selfish motives? laying down his life for all: for every human being?

My experience teaches me over and over again that the hearts of others are most open to what my ministry might offer them when I approach without prejudice, without judgment every human being with their every feeling and every thought with immense respect.

These two bishops, young and old, give me hope from different vantage points. Those who know my preaching and how virtually all my homilies conclude will understand how much I appreciate a bishop choosing a table as part of his coat of arms: Cantú "gets" the importance, the centrality of the table ministry of Jesus! And Cardinal Daneels knows how to invite guests to the table of the the gospel: by showing their every thought and feeling immense respect.

If the elder bishop must retire, I thank God that someone like this younger man is coming along...

-ConcordPastor