Thoughts from the Cathedra

Dear Friends in Christ, 
Greetings from Rome! Over the next eight days, I am here in the Eternal City to participate in New Bishops School, an orientation program where every bishop who has been ordained across the world this past year comes together in Rome to meet one another and to receive talks from different dicasteries (departments) of the Vatican. It has been fascinating getting to know the different bishops and hearing about their experiences of being ordained and of their first months in ministry in their local Churches.
Yesterday, Cardinal Arthur Roche, the Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, offered a wonderful presentation on the mystery of being called to the Office of Bishop. He based his talk directly on the Rite of Ordination of a Bishop, focusing on one specific line from the rite, which reads in Latin, placuit in his quos elegisti glorificari, and in English, You (God) are pleased to be glorified in those You have chosen.
As I recall the day of my ordination and the wonderful welcome the people of the Diocese of Tucson so graciously gave me, this idea that God is pleased to be glorified in me moves me to extend this to all of you. In a correlative way, that was also a day when God was pleased to be glorified in the Diocese of Tucson. Yes, it was a day about me as your new bishop, for sure. But it was also a day about you as the people of God of the Diocese of Tucson. In a sense, though in different ways, God was pleased to be glorified in us that day.
A second talk, given by the Secretary of the same dicastery, Archbishop Vittorio Francesco Viola O.F.M., included a fascinating theological concept that I will take some time to consider more deeply. He explained that the liturgy, Mass and the sacraments must never simply fall into ritual on their own. The ritual must draw us to theology. And what is theology? It is the art of talking about God: Theos (God) + Logos (Word, or word, or the meaning of the words). We might call it God-words. So, theology is talking, thinking about, and even more so, encountering God with our mind and our very being.
As we celebrate Mass, the ritual should be well executed and beautiful, no doubt. But really, it must draw us to a deeper consideration of the presence of God in us and in and through all things. The archbishop referred to the liturgy as a happening that marks our existence and said that renewal in the Church must always start with an encounter in the liturgy. That encounter, of course, is with God and one another. In a sense, the liturgy is where we come to know who we are and whose we are.
We will continue with talks each day on various subjects, and I look forward to sharing them with you. Please pray for me that this will be a fruitful time of friendship in Christ with my brother bishops. I will be praying for you each day in my Masses along the way.

Bp. Misko