Jesus Christ is for all nations
In the Acts of the Apostles, we hear about the Apostle Peter, not long after the first Pentecost, going from Jerusalem to Joppa, as the Lord has commanded him in a vision. He is told to go to the house of a Gentile, Cornelius, a Roman soldier. After Peter arrives there, he realizes that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for all nations and all peoples, not only the Jewish people. These are Peter's words: "In truth I see God shows no partiality. Rather, every nation who fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him."
Twenty centuries later, that is a lesson the Catholic Church is still learning and putting into practice. Down through the centuries, the Church has had to learn and re-learn this truth, over and over again. She had to get past her Mediterranean-centric preferences, and become a missionary to Northern Europe. Then she had to get past her Eurocentric preference, and evangelize in Asia, North and South America, and throughout Africa.
And this re-learning never stops. In my youth the Church in this country sent missionaries to Africa and Asia and Central and South America. Now, in my old age, Africa, Asia and Central and South America send missionaries to us. When Monsignor Ignatius Wang was ordained a bishop over six years ago, what was the headline? "First U.S. Catholic Bishop of Chinese Ancestry and Asian Background Named." The scholar Philip Jenkins tells us that, at the beginning of this century, for the first time in the Church's history, there are more Christians in the southern hemisphere than in the northern hemisphere.
See how true that verse is that we sang from Psalm 98: "The Lord has revealed to the nations His saving power." Always the Lord has revealed His saving power through Incarnation-God becoming man with and for us, because of His saving love for us. The eternal Son of God became man in Christ Jesus, and lived and died and was raised for us and for our salvation.
There is a paradox in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ: He had to leave us in order to remain always with us. Jesus said that himself at the Last Supper. He promised that he would send the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to be with us always, to remind us of all that he - Jesus - had taught. However, the Spirit would not come unless Jesus returned to the Father. Why? Jesus lived a human life here on earth, in a particular time and in a particular place. But when the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit of their divine life and love, the Spirit makes Jesus powerfully present among all men and women of all times and places, until he comes again. His Body and Blood are present on the altars of all ninety parishes in our Archdiocese this afternoon, nourishing us, his members, with his Body and Blood, teaching us his love and his truth in English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Tagalog, French, Italian, Portuguese, Burmese, American Sign Language, Vietnamese, and all the languages I am forgetting or leaving out, that many of you will remind me about during the social hour downstairs.
The Church is indeed universal, in the three counties of our Archdiocese of San Francisco and around the world. What is the Good News that people are still not tired of hearing, after 2000 years? Saint John tells us in our second reading: God is love. Not "God recommends love" or "God favors love" or "God prefers love," but God IS love. And John tells us how God's saving love has worked, and still works among us: God the Father loves the Son, and sends the Son to be the Father's love for us in the flesh, and to give his life and be raised from the dead so that we might have forgiveness of sins and life in Christ now, and life forever.
That divine love calls forth a response from us, John tells us. The commandment is that we love one another, and all our sisters and brothers, as Jesus the Son has loved us. God's love for us is meant to make us not proud, but humble. In humble gratitude for God's saving love for us we are to love and serve one another. Notice, in that first reading, what Peter says to Cornelius when the soldier falls to his feet in homage before him: "Get up. I myself am also a human being."
If that kind of humility is essential for the leader of the twelve apostles, it is certainly important for a successor of the apostles. We priests and bishops know the great privilege we have received in being called to serve the Church, the people of God, and we know that the greatness of this call comes from Christ, not from ourselves.
Jesus has called all Christians friends, not slaves, and he told us so at the Last Supper, in the Gospel of John, proclaimed this evening. Jesus says something crucially important in this Gospel passage; he makes a distinction that is easy to miss. He says to his first priests and bishops, "It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you." Do you hear how important, how un-American those words are? In this country we pride ourselves on our independence, our freedom, our individuality. We make our own decisions. We decide where to live, what profession to work at, which car to buy, which schools to send our children to, which candidates to vote for, which church to join, which religion to believe in, which God to worship.
Wait a moment, though: let's run those last three by again! Jesus says clearly: "You have not chosen me, I have chosen you." Long before any of us could go in search of God, our God came lovingly in search of us. God came in search of Bishop Ignatius Wang; born in China, he was only fourteen or fifteen years old when the Communist government came to power. He entered the seminary in Hong Kong, and was ordained almost fifty years ago, on July 4, 1959, in the Church of St. Francis of Assisi. Do you see some significance there? July 4th, the Independence Day of the nation he would one day call home; St. Francis of Assisi, the name saint and patron saint of the parish where he would serve as pastor, and of the Archdiocese where he would serve as priest and bishop for 35 years. God saw it, but young Father Ignatius did not - yet.
Father Ignatius Wang served in Grenada, in the Caribbean, far from Beijing and Hong Kong. But, remember, our Catholic Church is universal. Most of us know the latter part of this story: Father Wang's widowed sister became ill, and, in 1974, he came to San Francisco, and after her death he became the guardian for her children. Here in the Archdiocese he served as Parochial Vicar, Pastor, and Chancellor of the Archdiocese. In 2003 Pope John Paul II called Monsignor Ignatius Wang to serve as Auxiliary Bishop to Archbishop William Levada in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, and, as Auxiliary Bishop, he has served as Episcopal Vicar for the Promotion of Spiritual and Apostolic Life, and for Ethnic Ministries, Vicar for Religious and Director of the Office for the Propagation of the Faith. I thank him here tonight for his dedicated, faithful and generous service to the life of the Catholic Church here in San Francisco.
The motto on Bishop Wang's coat-of-arms reads: Quid retribuam Domino - What return shall I make to the Lord? The words come from Psalm 116, verse 12: "What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me?" The Bishop is aware that his faith, his vocation, all his relationships, and so much else, are gifts from God, and he is right to be humbly grateful, and this is a good example for all of us. After all, St. Paul asks somewhere in his letters, "What do you have that you have not received?"
Nevertheless, we who have lived and worked with you, Bishop Ignatius, can tell you that, with the Lord's grace, you have made a return to him. Many, many times we have been the witnesses and the beneficiaries of that return. We said earlier that Jesus Christ continues to be present and active among us, incarnationally, in one another. We thank God for calling you to let the Savior be present among us in you and your ministry, and we pray that, in your retirement, you will continue to experience his call, his presence and his loving action in the midst of us, your community of faith in him. We thank God for the years of your gifts and the gift of your years. Ad multos annos - may God grant you many, many years more!
San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer delivered this homily May 16 at St. Mary's Cathedral for the Mass of Thanksgiving for the Golden Jubilee of Priesthood and the Episcopal Retirement of Auxiliary Bishop Ignatius C. Wang.
From May 22, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
