Bishop Dennis Walsh, left, closes out the Jubilee Year of Hope Dec. 28 at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Davenport. Also pictured are, second from left, Deacon John Jacobsen, Deacon Dan Huber and Father Jason Crossen.
By Anne Marie Amacher
The Catholic Messenger
DAVENPORT — Welcoming Catholics gathered Dec. 28 at Sacred Heart Cathedral, Bishop Dennis Walsh closed out the Jubilee Year of Hope with prayer and thanksgiving. Concelebrants were Father Jason Crossen, pastor of the cathedral, and Father Simon Thoi Hoang, SVD, rector of Divine Word College in Epworth, Iowa.
“Brothers and sisters, we have experienced together the Jubilee Year. As a single people, we have offered our praise, thanksgiving and supplication to God, in union with those who are voiceless in the world, but whom the Father hears and welcomes as beloved sons and daughters: the sick, the aged, the prisoners, the poor,” said Bishop Walsh.
The bishop noted that through Jubilee Year indulgences, “the Lord has caused a river of grace and blessing to flow … He has said to each one of us, take courage and do not be afraid.”
In his homily, Bishop Walsh said, “We’re still in the glow of the manger. But if you look at the readings for this Feast of the Holy Family, the mood shifts pretty quickly. We go from the ‘silent night’ to the ‘flight in the night.’”
The Holy Family is suddenly homeless, fleeing a tyrant and moving to the unknown.
“As I was sitting with this story,” he said, “I kept thinking about a hero in my own family — my great-great-great-grandfather Bernard Honingford.”
Bernard’s story starts out in the mid-19th Century in Germany. “At that time, it wasn’t safe to be a practicing Catholic because of Kulturkamph — a period of intense religious persecution. Bernard saw the writing on the wall. He knew that to keep his family’s faith alive, he couldn’t stay.”
Bernard did as Joseph did — gathered what he could and fled. “He (Bernard) didn’t come to a land of easy opportunities. He ended up in the Great Black Swamp of Northwest Ohio.”
The bishop described the area as being thick with mud and malaria-carrying mosquitoes, conditions that made the area uninhabitable. “But Bernard and his fellow German-American immigrants didn’t see a swamp. They saw a future.” They cleared the area. They built farms and a home for their faith. They raised their families in the mud fields that became stable and “built the center of their community — the Church.”
“Like the Holy Family, Bernard’s migration was driven by one thing: the welfare of his family,” Bishop Walsh reflected.
“In today’s Gospel, we see St. Joseph doing the exact, same thing.” He noted Joseph never speaks a word in the Bible. “He just acts.”
“He (Joseph) takes Mary and the child and heads into Egypt. Imagine the hardship of that journey. They were foreigners. They were probably afraid. But Joseph was the protector. He was the one who ensured that the ‘Light of the World’ didn’t go out in a dark stable or on a dangerous road.”
“Every parent or grandparent here knows that ‘swamp’ feeling. You’ve had those moments where you’ve had to make a hard choice, work a job you didn’t love or move somewhere you didn’t want to go — just so your kids could have a better life. That is the holiness of the Holy Family,” Bishop Walsh said.
For the past 12 months, Catholics celebrated the Jubilee Year.
“We’ve been Pilgrims of Hope. And as we come to an end of this holy year, we can look back at the ditches we’ve dug and the swamps we’ve drained in our own lives,” he said.
The bishop asked Catholics to think about the graces experienced during the past Jubilee Year: the grace of reconciliation; the grace of solidarity; the grace of connection.
“We haven’t made this journey alone. We’re been shepherded through this Jubilee and this era by two men who have been absolute witnesses of hope for us: Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV. These two men have been our ‘Josephs’ watching over the Church, protecting the family of believers and pointing us constantly toward the mercy of God,” said Bishop Walsh.
As the Jubilee Year moves behind us “we might feel like we’re standing at the edge of another swamp. The world is still messy. Our families still have their struggles. But we move forward with the grace of this year. We move forward with the grit of Bernard Honingford and the courage of St. Joseph.”
The bishop concluded, “Let’s pray that we receive the grace to be protectors of our own families, to be builders of our communities, and to always, always be people of hope.”
Following Communion the bishop prayed that “we join our voices with the song of the whole Church. That today offers its thanksgiving of God for the gift of his indulgence. Through the sacraments, pilgrimage, prayer and charity, we have had an intense experience of the divine mercy. The Lord has washed away our sins and filled us with his grace. … Like the disciples who saw his face, we shall hold on to the joy of our meeting with the Lord and firmly maintain the profession of our hope, for his is faithful to his promises.”
