(The following is the text of Cardinal Robert McElroy’s homily at his Solemn Mass of Installation as the archbishop of Washington on March 11, 2025 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.)
As we gather this afternoon I give thanks. Thanks to my family for their nurturing of my faith and my life. Thanks to the priests and religious who have been so critical to my formation as a priest and a bishop. Thanks to the many friends who have enriched my life and taught me much.
In particular, I give thanks today to Pope Francis for his inspiring pastoral service to the Church throughout the world and his monumental witness of faith amidst human suffering, and to Cardinal Christophe Pierre, his representative in the United States. As I begin this new ministry in Washington in service to the people of God, I am privileged to have the wisdom of Cardinal Gregory and Cardinal Wuerl to help guide me in the challenges that lie ahead in my service as Archbishop of Washington, and the collaboration of Bishop Campbell, Bishop Esposito and Bishop Menjivar to help in discerning what pathway this local Church should follow in the coming years.
I am so grateful for the presence of my fellow cardinals and bishops for this celebration, for the many priests who are here, for the consecrated religious and deacons, and for the presence of so many ecumenical and interfaith leaders in our region. I am extremely grateful for civic leaders who are here from Washington, Maryland and California. Most of all, I thank the People of God in this beautiful local Church to which the Lord has led me. May the Lord bless us always.
On August 5, 2010, there was a massive cave-in in the vast Copiapo copper mine in Chile. Because of the negligence of the mine operator, elementary safety protocols had been ignored and 33 miners were trapped in a small crevice deep within the earth. With very limited provisions of food and water, the miners realized the gravity of their peril. News reports stated that the situation was hopeless, that the cave-in had destroyed so many avenues of access that it would be impossible to rescue anyone who might have survived.
But the miners did not lose hope. They organized a routine to conserve supplies and sustain their energies. They supported one another with tenderness in their times of need. And they prayed together each day in a small chapel space which the men had created. The families of the miners also did not lose hope. They formed a tent city around the mine, began a perpetual prayer vigil and pressed for government action. And in a collaborative effort that came to involve the whole world, ranging from the Chilean military to NASA to European engineers and equipment, the impossible became possible. After an ordeal of 69 days and several failed attempts at rescue, the miners were individually brought to the surface in a very narrow cylinder and stepped forth into daylight and safety. Miraculously, all 33 miners were rescued and were in good condition.
When Mario Gomez, one of the leaders of the miners, was asked how they had kept their spirits knowing intimately the enormous danger they were facing, he responded forthrightly: “We had some terrible moments, but we placed our lives in the hands of God and knew that God would find a way to stand with us. That was our hope.”
Christian hope – the conviction that in our moments of greatest need God will find a way to stand with us, this is the theme and challenge of the Holy Year we are now celebrating in the universal Church. We are called to be pilgrims of hope in a wounded world, not ignoring the suffering that abounds, but seeing it as a call to strive even more deeply to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ into our lives and our nation and our world.
As I begin my new ministry as Archbishop of Washington, I want to point to three marks of Christian hope that can illuminate our pathway as pilgrims of hope in a tormented world.
The first of these is captured in today’s Gospel. Mary Magdalene journeys to the tomb of Jesus filled with sorrow, but not despair. She encounters the empty tomb. She is perplexed, but afterward she remains at the tomb, waiting, waiting, waiting and believing. She is an apostle of hope. And in her hope the Risen Jesus appears to her and calls her by name. Suddenly, her whole world changes. For as she comes to understand the reality of the Resurrection and its implications, she realizes that every supposition that she had held about her life, her mission, her purpose in this world had to be changed.
For the disciple, a constant encounter with the Passion, Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the essential foundation for bringing a truly Christian notion of hope into our lives and into our world. For as Saint Paul says so penetratingly, we are already citizens of heaven even as we live upon this earth. God’s power over death itself and the light of the Resurrection recalibrate every major element of our understanding of the meaning of our lives on this earth. They recast the standards by which we must judge our opportunities to ennoble this world in which we live. And they constitute an unending reservoir of peace which finds in the Risen Christ both the beauty of God’s love and the power of God’s glory.
In the light of the Resurrection, we as a local Church must unswervingly understand our vocation as disciples of hope. It is all too easy for every one of us to let the limits of earthly worries and perspectives erect prisons in our souls that shut us off from the expansive presence of the Resurrection in its fullness We must refuse to be overpowered by these prisons, and instead journey together as a local Church, companions in faith and in fragility to embrace the same Risen Lord that Mary of Magdala encountered in the garden so many centuries ago.
If Mary Magdalene points to the glory of the Risen Lord as the supreme foundation for Christian hope, Saint Paul in today’s second reading points to a second mark of Christian hope: “I consider that the sufferings of this present day are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God.”
Pope Francis has given us an image of the Church that points simultaneously to the sufferings we endure, the mercy that God constantly showers upon us, and the mercy we are called in turn to bestow upon others. It is the image of the field hospital. Not a modern field hospital as our military has in the present day – technically advanced, sterile and organized. No, the field hospital that Pope Francis wants us to envision would be like that of the field after the Battle of Bull Run, not far from here. Hundreds of wounded men, wrenching in pain, seeking relief, in various states of consciousness – all desperately in need of hope and healing. Pope Francis confronts us with this image of the Church so that we can come to understand that in the life of the Church all of us are wounded, all of us are in pain, all of us are sinners in need of mercy and forgiveness. It reminds us also that the Church sins and is in need of healing, especially in its failure to protect the young from sexual abuse.
It is God who bestows mercy on us and calls us in turn to become bestowers of mercy upon others. Mercy and compassion must be our first impulse when confronted with sin and human failure. For hope arises when we confront ourselves as we truly are, understanding that the bountiful mercy of God is without limit, and undertake the call to live out the teachings of the Church and be sacraments of mercy to others. We are a Church which believes that love and truth do meet. That is precisely our glory as the children of God.
A final mark of hope which is vital for our local Church of Washington and Southern Maryland is the hope that comes from seeing the world as God sees it. The overpowering drama of the creation in the book of Genesis continues to capture us with its beauty and wisdom. Everything that we know on this earth, every blessing that we receive and every hope that we have is rooted in God’s beneficent desire for the whole of humanity. God is the father of us all. And God sees us as equal in dignity and moral worth.
How deeply that contrasts with the world we have made. Divisions of race and gender and ideology and nationality flourish in the world of politics, religion, family life and education. The poor and the migrant are daily dispossessed, and the dignity of the unborn is denied.
The only effective witness that our Church can give to the world is to view every conflict which surrounds us through the eyes of God. The constant refrain in the book of Genesis as God moves through the arc of creation is to affirm the goodness of all, and especially humanity. It constitutes a rejection of division and scorn, of seeing enemies in those with whom we disagree.
The search for genuine encounter and unity lie at the heart of God’s vision for our world, alongside special care for those who are most vulnerable among us. What hope we could bring to our world as the Church of Washington if we could truly help our society to see others more as God sees them, beloved children, brothers and sisters.
We are called in this Jubilee Year to be pilgrims of hope in a wounded world. We find the foundation for that hope in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which alters every understanding that we have about ourselves, our lives and our destinies.
We find the consolation of hope in the Mercy of God that calls us to recognize our own woundedness and sin amidst the unending forgiveness of God and the call to forgive others.
And we find the challenge to hope in God’s vision for humanity, rooted in the common good and the sacred dignity of every human person. For only such a vision can heal our society which now stands so adrift.
The miners in Chile believed that in their greatest moment of need, God would find a way to stand with them. Let us share that conviction in this moment as we begin our pilgrimage together in this Jubilee Year of Hope and grace.
