by ARCHBISHOP CHRISTOPHER J. COYNE
In 1986, I was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Boston. I served there for 25 years. My last pastoral assignment in the Archdiocese was as the pastor of a local parish. Just before Christmas in 2010, I was in the parish office getting ready to run to a local Catholic high school to hear confessions when the phone rang. It was the papal nuncio in Washington calling to tell me that Pope Benedict had named me a bishop. To say I was flabbergasted is an understatement. (I was also soon to be late to Confessions.) The nuncio and I spoke for a while and he told me that I was to keep the nomination secret until the announcement was made by the Holy Father in Rome within the next few weeks. He did say that I could speak with my spiritual director about my being named a bishop but no one else. That I did.
I remember the meeting with my spiritual director when I told him I had been named a bishop by Pope Benedict. He was surprised (as was I) and happy for me. He congratulated me and then he said, “So how does it feel to soon be ordained a successor to the apostles?” Now it was my turn to be stunned. I hadn’t really thought about it. I was thinking more on the idea of the bishop as being a pastor, a shepherd, a priest — all that being so true — but I hadn’t done the deeper theological and historical dive of considering that I was to be ordained a successor to the apostles!
But there it was. I was overwhelmed by the thought. I was humbled by the thought. I was even a bit shy of the thought — a successor to the apostles! But there it was. A bishop of the Catholic Church is ordained by the laying on of hands and the gift of the Holy Spirit by at least three other bishops within the lineage of the apostles. As the resurrected Christ both breathed on the Apostles in the upper room to “receive the Holy Spirit” (John’s account) and as the Holy Spirit then fell upon the apostles and disciples at Pentecost as flames of fire (Luke’s account), the same Spirit was then continually given in succession to new “apostles” to carry on the apostolic mission of the Church until the second coming of Christ. So we see for example in Acts 13:3, Barnabas and Paul being sent forth after the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Spirit to preach, convert, baptize and confer the Holy Spirit themselves on the new members of the Church.
The apostolic succession in which the apostles handed on the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands to the next generation of apostles and then the next generation continues the apostolic mission of the Church to preach, to teach, and to sanctify through the Order of Bishops. Archbishop Blair and I in being ordained bishops were given a wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit, passed down by one bishop to another, one apostle to another, all the way back in time to the first apostles. It is a gift not to entitlement, but a gift of service. One could say, “It is a gift that keeps on giving,” especially in the Sacrament of Confirmation. I, along with all of you, thank Archbishop Blair for his apostolic ministry to the Church, especially here in the Archdiocese of Hartford. May he have a long and healthy retirement as he is now counted with Archbishops Cronin and Mansell as an “Archbishop emeritus.” Ad multos annos!