Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Lord,
On Saturday, March 25, 2023, His Excellency, The Most Reverend Gregory M. Aymond, Archbishop of New Orleans, announced my appointment to become the next Pastor of Mary, Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Mandeville, Louisiana. This means that effective July 1, 2023, the ways of the Lord will take me to the Northshore, to a parish in the heart of the pretty pines of Mandeville. Mary, Queen of Peace Catholic Church was founded on June 18, 1988, by Archbishop Philip M. Hannan. The parish has been served for the past nine years by The Most Reverend John-Nhan Tran who was recently appointed by His Holiness, Pope Francis, as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Atlanta.
While this announcement calls forth a variety of emotions, as it means I must leave all of you, the good people of Divine Mercy Parish, I do want to thank Archbishop Aymond for his paternal solidarity and for his confidence in me by requesting that I accept my third pastorate. It is humbling to be given this new responsibility by the Shepherd of our local Church, and I thank our Archbishop for the great example of pastoral solicitude, paternal care, and personal witness that he has given to both the priests and the people of God in the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
As I have often commented, my four years of service as the Pastor of Divine Mercy Parish, even though they have been relatively brief, have been years of immense grace for me. I have encountered in this remarkable parish family an extraordinary depth of Catholic faith, strongly connected to sacred Tradition, and lived practically in the homes of the faithful. With our focus on Jesus Christ, we have been able to cooperate with His grace to build up the Church in significant ways. So much has happened and so many memories will continue to live on in my heart! Jesus has been with us in His Word, Sacrament, and in our parish family. In union with Our Lord, we have shared joys and sorrows, challenges, and difficulties (including the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of Hurricane Ida) with mutual love and confidence. With open minds and hearts, we have accepted and responded to our Lord’s loving call to reconciliation and holiness. The message of Fatima is clear: “prayer, penance, and conversion.” This will lead us to repair the brokenness in our own lives and bind up the wounds of the world. The words of Jesus to His disciples resound this day in my heart: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete” (John 15:11).
I express my particular gratitude to those who have worked most closely with me in the pastoral care and the administrative responsibilities entrusted to me as your Pastor. The parish’s parochial vicars, deacons, and pastoral staff, who are my closest coworkers in the vineyard, welcomed me warmly from the day I arrived and have always responded with loyalty and generosity. The members of the clergy, staff, and key volunteers have embraced me with familial love, mobilized with unwavering trust and commitment in all my pastoral projects and provisions, and most importantly, have loved me into the priesthood—and for that, I am truly thankful to God. Collaborating with these men and women has been nothing but a pure gift from a loving and merciful God who surrounds us with the people we need to complete the mission He has given us. Although much of their work remains in the background, they have helped me to be in fellowship and solidarity with you, as much as possible, and to carry out, as best as possible, the great diversity of my duties and responsibilities.
I also extend my gratitude to all of the faithful who serve the mission of Christ and His Church in the various ministries of Divine Mercy Parish, especially those who make great sacrifices in the work of Catholic education at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic School and in the administration of the spiritual and temporal affairs of the parish. Your humility and love for the Church does not allow me to name each of you one by one, but I hope that all of you know how thankful I am for the gift you have made of yourselves. Moreover, I trust that each of you, especially my closest collaborators in the vineyard of the Lord, will receive back a hundredfold in God's blessings. My heart is full of gratitude to God for letting me be His coworker in His wonderful field of Divine Mercy Parish, especially in the care of souls and in the promotion of several grace-filled projects and initiatives.
How can I adequately say goodbye? Probably the best way is simply to express concisely what I have been trying to do over the past four years—to be completely empty of self (to avoid the temptation to see myself, instead of Christ, as the protagonist in the works of pastoral charity), so that Christ Jesus—and He alone—can shine through me towards you. And please know that you, for your part, have been a “transparent window” of Christ for me. I have strived to proclaim the Good News of the victory of Love over hatred, the victory of Grace over sin, and the victory of Life over death. I have often invited each of you to cultivate a faith illuminated by the Word of God, which calls us continuously to conversion. I have also been reminded of the grace of the Eucharist, which nourishes the Christian commitment to the most deprived and the hope of our blessed immortality. Of all the Beatitudes, my favorite has always been, “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). I have tried my whole life to be a person that is consistent and pure, without agenda, honest and charitable. The intention of my ministerial approach was simply to help each of you see that I, too, am struggling to cooperate with the gift and call of God—to let go of pride and fear, to accept the ways God keeps me humble and often uses me when I do not understand or even agree. The challenge of the Christian life seems to be learning to be “self-reflective” without becoming “self-absorbed.” May God grant us the grace to continue in this effort!
At this point in time, the Lord is calling me to exercise a new ministerial assignment. Today, I entrust myself to your prayerful support and spiritual solidarity that I may fulfill generously and well my new pastoral responsibilities. God will always provide, even despite our own limitations and inadequacies. For this reason, I am confident that the hand of Divine Providence is directing my course so that I may always be a humble instrument in service to the Lord. I place my whole heart, together with the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, into the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus, I am confident that I will find the zeal and wisdom that I will need to carry out the new responsibilities to be confided into my hands. Confident that the bond of friendship formed between us will continue to unite us in the love of the Church, I commend myself to your prayers that you would obtain for me the gift of spiritual discernment and the wisdom necessary to accomplish my new ministerial responsibilities in a manner that will be selfless, prudent, effective, and charitable.
As we undertake these final months together, I thought it might be appropriate to reflect with you on what it means to share in the ministerial priesthood of Jesus. The priest, united to Christ, lays down his life out of love for the Lord and others. The priest seeks and finds the presence of Christ in every person, in every situation, in every circumstance—no exception. The priesthood is not a “job” or “career.” The priesthood is a total surrender of oneself out of love. The priest is aware that he is a priest not because of his great abilities or personal merit, but because he has been called by God for a unique role in the Church. God does not choose the ready He makes ready the chosen. “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to bear fruit that will remain” (John 15:16). The priest goes to wherever he is sent to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ because wherever there are ears to listen, there the Gospel must be preached. The priest surrenders his whole being to those he serves, not as a master, but as a friend. The priest is an instrument of unity, aiding those wishing to grow closer to Christ. The priest’s task is not to get in the way between Jesus and the faithful, but to be a guide. The priest is indispensable when it comes to celebrating the Sacraments, but a specific priest is never indispensable. The Priesthood of Jesus Christ has existed before any priest alive today, and it will continue to exist after every priest alive today has gone home to the Lord. I pray that, in my time with you, I have followed the example of St. John the Baptist and simply pointed the way to Christ for you, so that you can experience the power of His love and mercy, that you can make Him the center of your life, and that you can know the joy that He longs to give you. If by the grace of God, I have been able to do this, then I can know that, whatever the future may bring, I have faithfully responded to His call.
My words seem tremendously poor and inadequate. It is only a frail attempt to give expression to the sentiments of a heart filled with gratitude and love. I look forward to the opportunity to thank each of you more properly than I can at this moment for your collaboration, prayers, friendship, and support. I am grateful for all of you—for all that you have done for me, all that you have meant to me, and all that I know you will continue to be for me. In the end, I can only ask your forgiveness for my failures as your spiritual father, and from the depths of my heart, thank all of you who have loved me and supported me in my priestly ministry. I am a sinner, redeemed but still on the way to salvation. This is why I have often asked you to pray for my continued conversion, and I ask you to do so again as I prepare to move on to the next stage of my ministry. Conscious that the bonds of love formed by the Spirit will never die and will always keep us united, I promise you, dear friends, to carry your intentions daily to the altar of the Lord. Even though I am deeply saddened in leaving each of you and this wonderful family of faith that forms Divine Mercy Parish, I go to my new assignment with joy, trusting in God's providence in all things. I ask for your prayers, that I may fulfill generously and well my new pastoral duties.
Over the past sixteen years of priesthood, I have cultivated a deeper appreciation for St. Paul, and part of that is because, just as he tried to preach the Gospel to the gentiles, I have tried in a shamefully poorer way to do that here at Divine Mercy Parish. Since he is the Saint that I am still striving to be, my only affinities with him are in his love of the Master, and his love for his people. That love was evident at Miletus when he said farewell to the elders he had summoned from Ephesus as he was embarking for Jerusalem. “And when he had spoke thus, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And they all wept and embraced Paul and kissed him, sorrowing most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they should see his face no more. And they brought him to the ship” (Acts 20:36-38). I am only going to Mandeville and not to Jerusalem however, I do kneel like St. Paul as I prepare to leave, with happy tears of thanks for having been among you.
May God the Father, in His infinite mercy and love, make the fruit of my time as your Pastor to be the faithful union of our hearts with His heart, the Sacred Heart of His incarnate Son, so that we may always find our joy and peace in serving Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. In this time of farewells, transition, and new beginnings let us hold each other in prayer. To God alone be the glory, to God alone be the honor, to God alone be the power, forever and ever…Amen!