Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to another edition of our diocesan podcast, Big City Catholics, with Bishop Robert Brennan, our diocesan bishop of Brooklyn, myself, Father Christopher Henu. Today we're recording in the Immaculate Conception center in Douglaston as we prepare for our priest convocation. Topic of our convocation is a topic of deliverance, and I think it'd be important for us to pray, perhaps the prayer of St. Michael the Archangel as we begin this podcast. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him. We humbly pray unto thou, o prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who roam about the world seeking the rune of souls. Amen. In the name of the Father, Holy Spirit, amen.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yes, today promises to be a great day as we gather with the priests of the diocese. I always enjoy it when the priests are together. It's a chance for us to enjoy each other's company and to kind of support each other, share our experiences. It's always a very pleasant day. And you mentioned the topic of the deliverance ministry and some of the work that's being done in our own diocese. But of course, the broader topics and the reality of evil in our midst, and they were all different levels of it, but it's great. The bottom line is, as you said in the opening prayer, it is being rooted in prayer, seeking the protection of God, of the angels, the saints and one another.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: Now, I imagine, bishop, that you recognize, we recognize as priests, as bishops, even as the lay faithful trying to stay true to the tenets of the church, true witnesses of our faith. There's an evil force that doesn't want that, that tries to divide, that tries to ruin vocations. The priesthood tries to divide families. I mean, this is an important topic of one that we should.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Right. And it's not necessarily, well, the makings of the movies. I mean, we tend to focus in on the extreme and makings of the movies. It's just recognizing. I had one friend who used to say, the devil is busy. And so this will be a good day for us to be rooted together in prayer. In that ongoing battle against the forces of Egypt.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: We had 190 priests at least, plus signed up for today's convocation. So it'll be great for you again. I mean, there's a few occasions during the year, the charisma mass, we come together. Really, I think it might be the largest of those priests retreats that the diocese offers. But this as a convocation is a great chance for you as a bishop to kind of come together with your priests and see them all together as one.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: I always enjoy it. I always enjoy it. We do this twice a year, generally we do it in the fall and again in the spring. So this is good. And this weekend we come to the great feast of Pentecost, which has a great deal of honor in itself. But also the feast of Pentecost is the close of the Easter season. And as we've been saying for a while, everything this year seems to be so rushed or so early. You know, we began lent way back.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Yeah, February 15, February 14, 1414. That's right, yeah, Valentine's Day.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: We began lent on February 14. And now here we are completing the Easter tide, going into ordinary time. But it's been quite an Easter season. Hasn't been.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: It's been busy. It's been busy. I know at the co cathedral we celebrated recently our 10th anniversary of it being named and dedicated, consecrated as the co cathedral of the diocese. Thank you bishop, for your presence at some of our events. We had a nice, speaking of priestly fraternity, a nice event last week where we invited the priests that were ordained in the last ten years at the co cathedral, plus some of the curia, the members of our diocesan officials and yourself, Bishop Mansoor, Bishop Dimarzio, Bishop Cisneros and others to be present. It was a great success. On Saturday, May 11, we had a community event, block party celebration. It was a beautiful day, thank God, and just successful, but busy, busy, busy, busy, busy.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: And lots of parishes are busy as well as a lot of families. So we've got all kinds of things happening all around. First communion season. Last weekend was a big first communion week. I encountered that in a number of ways. It was a big first communion week and of course I'm out there doing confirmations these days for some reason. I don't know if it's being here, if it's this year with an early lent, but it seems that the confirmation season came much later on. So there was really nothing during lent. And we were well into Easter when we started. And I'm going to continue with confirmations right through to the very end of June. But those two, it's a great experience being in the parish, sharing the joy of the young people, families getting to know the young people. That's such a rewarding part of confirmation for me. I meet with young people beforehand just to get a sense of them, find out their interest and just chat with them a little bit, and we can be really proud of the young people who are coming forward for confirmation. I tell them that I admire them, and I really mean that sincerely. So we've been celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit in a very real way among our young people.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: And recently I saw on your facebook page that you had visited our lady of Sorrows. That seemed like a beautiful encounter in the school and your visit with the young. We had ardas and eucharistic revival. I was so impressed by the amount of people. It was obvious at the stadium in Flushing Meadows park, the amount of participants from Our lady of Sorrows.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: We had a great, great showing from all over the diocese, from all over. And it was a tremendous number. It was wonderful, wonderful in every way. They were the parish next door, you might say.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: So the pastor there, Father Rodriguez, used as an opportunity for his confirmation students.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: How many confirmation students does he have in that room?
[00:06:00] Speaker B: He has a few hundred. He has a few hundred. They came a little bit later. They were walking. A few of the local parishes came in procession. They got held up a little bit by the rain. So when they arrived, some of their seats were taken and they would have been divided. So they went up to the upper level so as to stay together. So it was quite obvious that they were in the house.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: They had these yellow t shirts, a sea of yellow on that top floor. I think that was really impressive. The tablet covered. They said something like over 1200 participants from our lady of Sorrows. Unbelievable.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: So that was just, that was just great. And then again, that was part of our Easter celebration. We welcomed the newly baptized. We did it kind of symbolically because a great number of them couldn't come because of work obligations and all that. But we celebrated the neophytes, the newly baptized. It was a great celebration of Easter. And then I, I had the chance to do the 8th grade graduation miss. We really packed in the co cathedral. It was a joyful experience. And I was again, so impressed. The young people, they not only behaved. That almost sounds like a patronizing word. They were more than well behaved. They were participants fully engaged. They were Reverend Mass. They knew how to pray, they knew how to be part of the mass. They knew how to show that reverence. It's great to see youth, it's great to see joy and exuberance. Let me say it this way. They made us proud. And during the season, we, as you've heard in some of our podcasts along the way, experience death and resurrection, death and new life. We experienced some sorrow, such as the closing of three of our schools, we experienced some of the joys of seeing our young people really step forward and take on leadership roles. We've seen the ups and the downs of life and really keep pledging ourselves to the Lord to try to build up the community here, to build our communion with one another again. Life hands us all kinds of challenges, but what we want to do is maintain our communion, our unity with each other, but our common unity with the Lord. And that really is our strength. And that brings us back to the feast of Pentecost. That's what this is all about. The Lord told the disciples that things would be different. He didn't promise them at the last Supper that life would be easy, but he promised that he would send them his spirit, that he would abide, remain. He would abide with them always. He would send them this gift of the spirit. And so in this new era that was unfolding with the Lord's ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit, we see the effect of the Holy Spirit on those apostles.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: How much do you enjoy the fact that we in the northeast, here in our metropolitan dioceses, maintain ascension Thursday?
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Honestly, I think it's great. I really do. I was in Ohio for a short time and that was one thing I missed, was the moving of the feast to the Sunday. You know, I'll be honest with you, we can talk about holy days of obligation and all of that. It gets very, very confusing. And there are all kinds of debates about holy days of obligation.
But holy day or not, the feast of the Ascension 40 days after Easter is a marker. And then the nine days before Pentecost, we're living right now as we speak and as this podcast is released in this time of the Novena to the Holy Spirit, the 7th Sunday of Easter that we just celebrated last week is remarkable. It's an important Sunday with the Lord's prayer for his disciples. And he makes it pretty clear in that prayer, he says, I'm not just praying for these who are sitting at the table, but for all those who will believe in me through their word. This is Jesus's direct message to us, to us, to us. He's talking, he's praying for us. He's talking to us, he's praying for us. It's a powerful, powerful experience. And then the prayers of the church through those days, of all those prayers, send your Holy Spirit, oh Lord, and what a blessing.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: I mean, you're in confirmation season.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: It's a privileged time. I loved confirming in those days. I tell the kids on ascension Thursday, on the vigil, and on the day I had confirmations, and I said, this is really seen, and I had it over the weekend, and we'll have some this week. It's a great, great time for confirmation while the church is in that prayer mode. So when we come now to this feast of Pentecost, and one of the things I'm focusing on is that letter from St. Paul to the Corinthians, no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. And then Paul goes into the ways that the Holy Spirit works in different ways. There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but one spirit, the one spirit, the one Holy Spirit works in all kinds of ways in each and every one of us, providing gifts, talents, abilities. But that same Holy Spirit is working to draw us together so that we complement one another, so that we build up one another. And that's becoming such an important message for us as catholic Christians, that we build on that unity, that we recognize each other's gifts. You know, the same Holy Spirit that places gifts and abilities within me is the same holy spirit that gives gifts and abilities to you, but at the same time, helps us to recognize those gifts and abilities in each other. In each other, and then to pull them together for that common purpose. St. Paul's meditation on the body of Christ and the working of the spirit in the 12th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians is such a powerful, powerful. It reminds us to be a little bit humble, but also to be a little bit bold, and to recognize that we are all beneficiaries of these great gifts, but gifts given for the service of others. And so as we look on the many, many gifts and the wonderful blessings we have here in Brooklyn and Queens, we are continuing to work with each other and to try to build communion. As I said at the charisma mass, we're a family of families or a communion of communions. That's who we are. And I'm so grateful for the ways that people here are living that out. And as I go around the deaneries, I'm finding that experience where the parishes, local parishes, are sharing gifts, experiences, and helping one another to grow in our.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Faith and recognizing we're not all given the same gifts. And so there's a complementarity in that.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: And we rely on the other gifts of the Holy Spirit from that in other people.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: That's right. And what a blessing. You know, this past week, we recorded with the ordained priests from 2023, which have a distinct group of cultures and backgrounds. And now, in just a few short weeks, you'll ordain another four priests of our diocese of Brooklyn as well. Different gifts given to bring into this complementarity of the gifts that are already present in our diocese.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: I always say at confirmation at the end, I do a little word about vocations in general, but I highlight some of the priests who are stepping forward, some of the women who've answered the call to religious life from Brooklyn and queens. I mean, you'd be amazed at how many young women are in different communities throughout the US in recent years, and men in religious communities as well. But I end up by saying God is doing great things in Brooklyn and queens. And that's true, and that's been the case. What we're seeing now are the fruits of the labors of years past. So God is doing amazing things.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Well, bishop, perhaps you could end us with a prayer as we continue our day and enter into this Pentecost.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: Certainly I'd be glad to end with the prayer. And again, keeping that theme of this novena to the Holy Spirit and getting ready to celebrate this week and the great feast of Pentecost. Let us pray. Come, holy spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your spirit and they shall be created and you shall renew the face of the earth. Let us pray. O God, who have taught the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit, grant that in the same spirit we may be truly wise and ever rejoice in his consolation through Christ our Lord.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: And may almighty God bless you and your families today and always. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Amen. Bishop, always great to be with you and great to record. We thank you all for listening to another edition of our diocesan podcast, big city Catholics. We hope that you'll join us again this coming week and a blessed Pentecost Sunday to you and all.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: God bless.
