STAMFORD—Bishop Frank J. Caggiano continued the diocese’s opening celebrations of the Jubilee Year on January 12, celebrating a Pontifical Mass on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord at the Basilica of St. John the Evangelist in Stamford.
The Mass at the Basilica was the second of three such celebrations, with the first Mass being celebrated January 5 at St. Augustine Cathedral in Bridgeport and the third set for January 19 at St. Peter Parish in Danbury. Those three churches will become the local pilgrimage sites for the Jubilee Year, where the faithful can receive a plenary indulgence if they pray for the intentions of the Holy Father while there and while meeting the other standard stipulations of receiving an indulgence.
The bishop reflected the first three Sundays of the year reflect upon three major epiphanies in the life of Christ. Last Sunday, he celebrated Mass for the Solemnity of the Epiphany, when Jesus’ identity as Lord and Savior was revealed to all the nations. That day, the Church celebrated Christ’s baptism, when the Father opened up heaven and revealed that child was his one and only Son. And the following weekend, the same Christ would be revealed as the heir to an eternal kingdom.
And so, aptly, the themes of those first three Sundays coincided with the Jubilee opening Masses throughout the diocese, celebrating what Pope Francis has called a “Jubilee of Hope.”
“Hope gives us eyes to look upon the horizon of heaven as our one true desire and to do whatever is required so that we might faithfully walk that path to eternal glory,” Bishop Caggiano said. “It is for that reason we are baptized. It is for that reason we come to be nourished with his Sacred Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. And it is for that reason that you and I gather each Sunday to give worship to the one who is the light of the world and the only savior the world will ever know.”
Photos by Amy Mortensen
Recognizing the three epiphanies as “divine moments of grace,” the bishop called upon the faithful to live out those moments during the Jubilee Year—especially in a world that can at times turn its back on Christ, but still sorely needs him.
“We have been born into an age, my friends, that does not welcome the child of Bethlehem,” the bishop said. “In this year of Jubilee, when you and I are called to be a people rededicated in hope, our Holy Father Francis and the whole Church asks us to commit ourselves in an extraordinary way to be the instruments of hope—that is, instruments that will bring the light of Christ out into that world.”
But it is not enough to just bring the message of Christ to others, the bishop said. Before we do that, he said we must look inward and recognize our own failings and shortcomings, seeking forgiveness so we will no longer be held down by them.
“There is not a person in this church who has not come laden with his or her own sins,” Bishop Caggiano said. “The Jubilee asks us to go upon our knees and to seek the forgiveness of the Lord who has come as light to free us from the chains of sin, and to use these months to draw evermore close to the Lord … By doing that, my friends, we will cleanse ourselves, so that you and I—who bear the light of Christ in the power of his Holy Spirit from the day of our baptism—may show it ever more purely to the world.”
The bishop noted that the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord traditionally closes out the Christmas season in the Church, meaning the next day would begin the season of Ordinary Time. But, he quipped, there is nothing ordinary about being a Christian.
“In this jubilee, there is only the extraordinary that we are celebrating,” Bishop Caggiano said. “Let us ask for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon our diocesan church and upon this remarkable community of faith, that we may do what is expected of us and bring the light of Christ—the Epiphany—to every human.”
By Rose Brennan