ORDINATION TO THE EPISCOPATE OF FR PHILIP TARTAGLIA

ST MIRIN’S CATHEDRAL PAISLEY

FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING NOVEMBER 20 2005

Homily Given by Archbishop Mario Conti, Archbishop of Glasgow and Metropolitan

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

The Lord says this: “I am going to look after my flock myself and keep all of it in view … I myself will pasture my sheep.”

The earliest iconography of the Church depicts Christ as a young shepherd with a lamb across his shoulders. The image is found frescoed in the Roman catacombs and reproduced in marble sarcophagi. 

Jesus said of himself: “I am the good shepherd… the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.”

The early Christians continued the Jewish practice of singing the psalms.  Among the most familiar to them, as to us, is the psalm which commences: “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want …”

 It has the most amazing sacramental references:

 “Near restful waters he leads me to revive my drooping spirit…” (Baptism) 

You have prepared a banquet for me …” (The Mass) 

My head is anointed with oil, my cup is overflowing …” (Confirmation, Holy Orders, Episcopate.)

The image of the shepherd is extended to the Apostle.  St John’s Gospel records the words of Jesus addressed to Peter after the Lord’s resurrection: “Feed my lambs; Feed my sheep.”

It was confirmation of a promise already made to Peter that the Church would be established on him: “Upon this rock I will build my Church…to you I will give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.”

With such powerful imagery the Lord Jesus chooses a man, frail as he was, and places him in charge of his flock.  Peter is to take the place of Jesus.  He does, and lays down his life for him, dying, if ancient tradition can be trusted, on a cross like his master.

Tradition, in that context, means a story handed down from one generation to another.

Tradition can also mean a way of doing things as done by those who have gone before us.

But Tradition has another and more important meaning in the Church.  It refers to the handing down of the Gospel itself – not so much, or only by the passing on of the Creed, but by the communication of the Holy Spirit invoked upon the faithful by those to whom the Spirit was first given, the Apostles.

The Apostles imparted the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands as the Acts of the Apostles testifies, and to which St Paul refers in his second letter to Timothy: “I am reminding you now to fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you.  God’s gift was not a spirit of humility, but the spirit of power and love and self control … you are never to be ashamed of witnessing to the Lord.”

This laying on of hands would appear to have been done to equip Timothy to share Paul’s mission.  “With me, “ he says, “bear the hardships for the sake of the Good News.”

It is by the laying on of hands that a man is ordained to the diaconate, the priesthood and the episcopate.  The hands of a priest are anointed while chrism is poured on the head of a bishop.

It is by these sacramental signs that you, Philip, will today be ordained bishop and take your place in the Apostolic Succession by which the Church itself is confirmed in its faith.

We must never forget, however, that the place you take in the administration of the sacraments is Christ’s place as shepherd of the flock.  “As a shepherd keeps all his flock in view when he stands up in the middle of his scattered sheep, so shall I (says the Lord) keep my sheep in view … I shall look for the lost one, bring back the stray, bandage the wounded and make the weak strong … I shall be a true shepherd to them.”

May He, the true shepherd, when He comes to separate the sheep from the goats, place you and the flock you lead on his right hand, saying; “Come you whom my Father has blessed, take for your heritage the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world.”