The gift is given to be shared by the way the chosen live and serve

This is the text of Cardinal O'Connor's homily in St. Patrick's Cathedral April 19.

Peace be with you and welcome from wherever you come to St. Patrick's Cathedral on this first Sunday after Easter. The procession in which we have just engaged would surely be worthy of having the pope himself here. Those 450 or 500 individuals that you saw together with sponsors and others who have helped them on the way were either received into the Church at the Easter Vigil, baptized for the first time, or, having already been baptized at some point in the past, received their first Holy Communion and confirmation. We are very grateful to all of those who have helped make this all possible, particularly Sister Rose Vermette, Sister Onellys Villegas, and all of the families and the friends and especially those whose example has encouraged these individuals to enter into or advance in the faith. The 450 or 500 here are but representative of far greater numbers who entered or advanced in the Church on the Easter Vigil throughout the Archdiocese of New York.

We are very happy to have, in addition, some 110 young people preparing for confirmation. They are from Mary Mother of God Church in the Diocese of Metuchen. They are here with their pastor, Father Minogue. We are happy to have Father John Minkler from the Diocese of Albany, Father John Higgins from the Bronx here in New York, who has some 27 neophytes with him. All of these are called neophytes because they are brand new in the faith and we hope that they will continue their catechetical studies now throughout the Easter Season. We have our own Father Mustaciuolo back from Rome. Others will forgive me if, in the interest of time, I do not mention them at this point.

Every day in ordinary time I receive an enormous amount of mail, all of which I read, most of which I try to answer. When I make a comment on events in far away places like South Africa and the conditions for receiving Holy Communion my mail soars. But when I suggest that perhaps it would be better to refrain from playing baseball on Good Friday the post office has to work overtime.

I mention the correspondence, however, relative to neither of those events but to highlight a letter that I have received that is one of the most beautiful I have ever received. I wish sometime 100 years after I am dead perhaps, someone would write a letter like this about me.

"Dear Cardinal O'Connor,

"This letter is in reference to my very dear parents.

"On April 20, 1998, my parents will be celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. They were married in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1958 at St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Church. My parents have been lifelong communicants of the Catholic Church. My father is a vibrant, outgoing man who is devoutly religious. Every morning he wakes up and does the Rosary. My mother is a wonderfully caring and loving person. For years, she has participated in our local church choir. They always support the church as volunteers. Their faith in God and in each other has been put to the test over the years...

"Currently, my parents are taking care of their mothers. Both of my grandmothers have dementia and my parents treat them with all of the love and respect they did while they had their complete mental faculties. They never complain, even though their lives changed drastically as they took care of their parents in different ways. My mother cooks large dinners and feeds my grandmothers, and anyone who stops over to the house at dinner time is always welcomed to enjoy a meal.

"My parents have always displayed beautiful Catholic beliefs through their actions. Through the most strenuous times my parents have remained loyal to one another. They have taught us what a true marriage is all about. In life there are many obstacles that will present themselves, however, you must always keep your marital foundation strong and never threaten it. My parents' marital foundation is comprised of faith, unconditional love, respect and trust. Today my husband and I have built our marriage on the same foundation that my parents imparted to us.

As a child, whenever we journeyed to New York City one of the highlights was to attend the cardinal's Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Cardinal O'Connor, I write to you today to ask that during the Mass on Sunday, April 19, at 10:15 a.m. you would consider mentioning my parents, and bless them on their 40th wedding anniversary."

This is signed by their daughter, Jean Marie, Mrs. Jonathan Collins, and the mother and father of whom she speaks so lovingly are Richard and Ann-Louise Pedone. Could they stand so we can acknowledge them. You are lucky to have such a daughter, she is lucky to have such parents.

In our residence attached to the cathedral there is a carving of a pair of praying hands. There are very few people who aren't familiar with the famous painting on which this is based, the painting by the German artist Albrecht Durer. I have known the painting a long time, and recently someone had the praying hands carved for me. I hadn't known the story until I came across it very recently. Albrecht Durer, you will recall, painted at around the time Columbus was finding America, in 1492. He had a very close friend, Franz Nixtine. They were both artists, both struggling, both trying to learn, teaching themselves. It was obvious that too many years would pass before they would succeed without formal training and education. So they agreed between themselves that Albrecht Durer would go first to the university to study art and when he had achieved his goal, he would assist Franz Nixtine to go.

Durer went off to the university, and it was there that he learned all of the techniques that he needed to become one of the most famous artists in the world. Something like a million copies of his praying hands are in existence right now, spread throughout the world. He came back very excited as an accomplished artist to help his friend who had worked during all of this period of time so that he could go to art school at the university. Durer discovered that the work that his friend had been doing had been highly laborious work and his hands became so callused and damaged that he would never be able to become a great artist. One day he saw Franz Nixtine kneeling in prayer. It was his hands that Durer quickly sketched. The sketch was the basis of his famous painting.

I thought of that story as I was preparing to be with you this morning because it seems to me so reflective of the profound meaning of Thomas saying to the other Apostles, "Unless I see the holes in his hands, I will not believe that you have seen the true Christ." He was saying, "Maybe you have seen a vision; maybe you have seen an impostor, but the true Christ is the one whose hands so reflect the horror of the sufferings he endured out of love for me." It is always a test, isn't it? It is a test of sacrifice. We have just listened to a beautiful letter about a couple who are now sacrificing so much for their respective mothers, who are sacrificing for their children. This to me is one of the meanings of this exquisitely beautiful Gospel. The Christ who rose for us is the Christ who suffered for us. If God had simply appeared on this earth, if he flowed through the world for 30 or 33 years and then disappeared, what would he have accomplished? Would we even know his name today? Would we know of those who ripped those bleeding, those suffering hands, so reflective of the love that he has for us? It is his love, more than anything, that attracts us. It was this that made Thomas fall on his knees and cry out the sum total of our theological teaching, "My Lord and my God."

One of the many lessons of this Gospel, it seems to me, is that the Church is spread everywhere throughout the world despite the gravest obstacles. Christ walked right through the door of that upper room that was locked against all intruders just as he had risen from the tomb, despite his own death, despite the huge boulder rolled in front of the tomb. Nothing could stop Christ. We say this without any sense of triumphalism because this is not a human accomplishment. This is true of this our beloved Church. It gets suppressed, it goes underground. There have been countless numbers, perhaps millions of martyrs through the years, but the Church continues. We have here today some 500 of those, representative of the many others throughout the Archdiocese of New York and the United States, far more, from the world at large, who come into the Church attracted not by the visible institution that they see, with all of its weaknesses and faults, but by the Christ who suffered and died for them.

A number of years ago, our Holy Father asked 10 cardinals from different parts of the world, including myself, to go to Russia for the celebration of the millennium of Christianity in that land. Glasnost was taking place, yet they were still far from freedom. I offered Mass each day in the Church of St. Louis, the only Catholic church in Moscow. It is a simple little church. Each day after Mass, someone outside would come up to me and slip me surreptitiously, at great risk to himself or herself, a note. One was a bishop who looked like a tramp. Disguised, he slipped me a note letting me know he was functioning underground, asking if somehow I could get to him Bibles, rosaries, prayer books, catechetical materials. Another was a young woman, doing much the same thing that the bishop was doing, and asking for help. In China today, regardless of the propaganda to the contrary, there are priests, there are Christians who are still suffering underground, still being imprisoned for trying to practice the faith that they believe Christ gave them and for trying to be the true Church that they believe Christ established.

A few years ago it was my privilege to go with our Holy Father to Albania. It is the only country that I have ever heard of that formally declared in its constitution that God is forbidden to enter the country, and bishops and priests, to say nothing of the great number of lay persons and religious, spent much of their lives in prison and were finally released at that time. The Church keeps going with the dynamism of Christ himself, not despite but perhaps because of the sufferings shared with Christ.

What is faith? What is our faith? What was the faith of Thomas and the other Apostles and Mary, and Mary Magdalene? One writer says that in order to believe one must dispense with clear and certain evidence. We can not argue our way into the faith. We can not put data under a microscope. We can not use computers to figure it all out. It is a gift, a great gift. We believe without having the proof in front of us. Our Lord said to Thomas, "Blessed are you, Thomas, because you have seen me and believe. Far more blessed are those who have not seen me and have believed." Our Lord is talking about you and about me. What a marvel this is! What an extraordinary thing this is, that we are here and we believe that very shortly now a piece of bread will become the Body of Christ, a cup of wine will become his Blood. He will be mysteriously, spiritually crucified. He will rise again on this altar, and you and I will receive him in Holy Communion. What evidence do we have? I could take a consecrated host and give it to you and you could take it home and test it until doomsday and you would find all of the elements of a piece of bread, and that's all. I could give you a cup a wine, a chalice, that has been consecrated and is now the Blood of Christ. There is no way you can test that, yet we believe this is an enormous gift, a gift worth thanking God for, worth reflecting on. But there is even more.

In the Acts of the Apostles we read that when our Lord rose and revealed himself, St. Paul, author of this portion of the Acts, said not to everyone but only to the witnesses that God had already chosen did Christ reveal himself. I am not sure I had ever thought much about that. Christ rose from the dead. He did not appear to Pilate, for example, who had condemned Jesus. He did not appear to the people who were screaming out, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" He did not appear to the high priests. He did not appear to the soldiers who actually killed him. He did not appear to the thousands that he had fed with a little bit of bread and fish. He appeared only to those chosen by God.

Why do we believe? We have been chosen by God. The poorest of us, the richest of us, whatever our color, whatever our background, whatever our nationality, whatever our language, whatever our education. I was not "educated" into recognizing that Christ is the Son of God. It comes to me by way of the Eucharist. It was not the university that gave me to believe that, and there are those who have never been to first grade who are given this great gift. We are singled out. Not everyone has the gift of faith. Hundreds of millions of people in the world do not have this gift. Why you? Why me? I know that I never did anything to deserve it. But why does God give it to us? For the same reason he gave it to the Apostles, as the Acts of the Apostles say, so that we will go forth and preach the Gospel. He commanded us to preach the Gospel. We are not expected, all of us here, to go out and stand on the street corners. We are not expected to write books, to go on television or radio. We are not expected to harass our friends telling them, "We have the truth, you have to listen to it." We predominantly preach the Gospel through our lives, through our love, through being available to others, by keeping the commandments, by being faithful to the teachings of the Church, through our respect for the sacredness of every human life, including the person next door. This is the way we preach the Gospel. And this is why God gave us the gift of faith, to preach the Gospel in this fashion to others.

Why did he select you 500 neophytes and all of the others whom he has received into or advanced in the Church at the Easter Vigil? You have been given a great gift. I was absolutely thrilled at the Easter Vigil when I stood in the sanctuary and baptized 15 of you, confirmed 17 of you, gave Holy Communion to each of you. I was thrilled that I would have the privilege of doing that. Did Christ single you out to give you this great gift of faith so that you can just then revel in it yourselves? So that you could say, "Look at me. I have been given something that millions of people don't have." No. Christ gave you that gift of faith for the same reason he gave it to the Apostles, for the same reason he gave it to Thomas, for the same reason that Thomas was able to cry out, "My Lord and my God."

He gave it to you whom we call neophytes because you are still new in the faith. You still have much to learn, as I have much to learn. But he gave you this gift so that through your lives you can be the vehicle, the channel of grace to others. You will not necessarily find in your local parishes great joy, great enthusiasm about you. You may walk into your parish church and say, "Why isn't everybody applauding me? Why doesn't everybody realize who I am? I am very special! I have been chosen!" It is you who must give your fire, your light, your enthusiasm to them. It is you who must be the channel of grace. It is you who, wherever you go, as is true of all of us here, have the commandment from Our Lord, himself, to preach the Gospel through your lives.

Once again, we are grateful to all of our musicians under the direction of Mr. John West who, with Ms. Cori Ellison here in the sanctuary, always make Mass in the cathedral a very special experience. We congratulate further all of you neophytes and we will be praying that you will continue in your zeal, in your love of Jesus and His Church.