I want to believe there is a special and hopefully lasting comfort felt by Guam’s Catholic faithful in anticipation of our new shepherd, Archbishop-elect Ryan Jimenez. The new Archbishop of Agana will begin leading the Christian flock under the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Agana upon his Installation Mass on August 15 at the Dulce Nombre de Maria Agana Cathedral Basilica.
For all the archdiocese has been through since the corruption of the Apuron regime, I’m sure there are many questions and concerns about the new archbishop, some of which won’t be quickly answered and allayed. My hope is that none of these questions – and even doubts – overshadow what is really important.
Souls.
There is no way my frail mind can encapsulate, much less form into words, my conversion from cafeteria Catholic to Catholic. It was an awakening not of my making. What I can say is that my life changed after I accepted Christ’s invitation to His Love. I say this as a preface to what I write below, because I don’t know how to bridge your life (and how fervently I wish for the salvation of your soul) to what seem to me are the two greatest sacraments the Mother Church extends. Up until recently – and after four decades of baptism into the Catholic faith – I really had no idea how essential it is to receive these sacraments so that, when we die from this life, we are accepted into the Heavenly Kingdom.
Beyond my infirmities and yours, our sicknesses of spirit, our emptiness of heart, our affliction by temptation, and our fall to sin, are the outspread arms of the Lord from His Cross, releasing us each time we come to Him. Never has there been greater consolation and joy in my life than at the Confessional, where I meet Him and hear His words of absolution cleansing my filth.
My guess is that most of us fall to the same sins, hard as we may try not to fall to the same temptations. I do. My sins are the same, so my confessions sound like a broken record to me, with each after the one before bringing a greater degree of shame and greater remorse for my failures. Never has the priest – in persona Christi – intensified this shame. He has only ever recognized my remorse, shared advice to strengthen my resolve against temptation, instructed my penance, and by the power of God found only in the Confessional, He has absolved me of my sins. Every single time, and as often as I go, which is often.
In my experience, we have good priests here. They have told me how they rejoice every time someone comes to the Confessional. It’s the sacrament that brings us closest to the Cross, opening Heaven’s gates to the penitent and saving souls.
I hope the Archbishop-elect has some way of convincing Guamanians to baptism and Catholics to Confession. I get that some churchgoers are concerned about the so-called threat from the activities of the Neocatechumenal Way hierarchy or the financial administration of the church or the healing process from the devastation of the clergy sex abuse scandal. But those matters seem trivial compared to our need for a shepherd who will convince his flock to accept Christ’s invitation to His Love. And that starts in the Confessional.
It continues to the source and summit of our souls: being in communion with His Body and Blood, transubstantiated at the Holy Mass in the Liturgy of the Eucharist and offered to those who have been cleansed of their sins through the Confessional.
I hope Archbishop-elect Jimenez personifies Pope Francis’ call, “Todos, todos, todos,” for a church that invites everyone through her doors. It’s a message more of us need to hear against the backdrop of the cacophony of secularism constantly at war with conservatives who have placed distance between the Cross and sinners whom they have ostracized from the church. I hope he pushes back against calls to constrict the church’s ministry from those whom Christ came to save. Sinners like me, who would be damned without the Grace of God that starts at the Confessional and is covenanted at the Holy Mass.
Aside from our souls
As for the politics of the position, it is difficult to see Jimenez without acknowledging his youth. And where there is a youthful leader, there is hope for lasting change, bigger dreams, and vigor in accomplishing more. What has been lacking for decades in the ministry of the Archdiocese of Agana has been leadership over a predominantly Catholic society suffering ever more from social ills.
Anthony Apuron engaged some righteous issues as a veil attempting to cover his abuses of power, widespread corruption, and his more obvious love of the trappings of his office. That ended up only alienating Catholics from the church who equated the sins of the church’s leaders to the church itself.
With the new archbishop, there is hope that in a holy man new to Guam he can lead social change. He can advocate for law defining life as beginning at conception while strengthening church ministry for families experiencing unwanted pregnancy, the placement of children into foster care and adoptive families, maternal health care, and mental health care.
He can create a ministry with resources emboldened by his youthful efforts to bring rehabilitative services to drug abusers and drug abusers to repentance and to the loving arms of the Lord.
He can improve the existing ministry for the homeless and the hungry and coordinate wider networks and ways to reach more people.
And I hope the new archbishop becomes our leading voice against the corruption of the state. I hope he possesses the intestinal fortitude to speak up against injustice where so many have been silent. I hope he challenges power whenever and wherever it is abused, and calls into reconciliation with what is true and good every institution influencing the lives of our people.
I have so much to learn and experiences from which to grow. Personally, I hope Archbishop-elect Jimenez leads the church in Guam in a pastoral way that fosters my conversion and leads me to a holy death in a state of Grace. And I pray this happens for you as well. May God bless the new archbishop, and all the people of the Marianas. Biba Santa Marian Kamalen!
