Courtesy of Catholic Review, Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina.
May 29, 2024, HUNTERSVILLE, North Carolina [USA] — Sunlight streamed into St. Mark’s Church [on] Wednesday – a poignant visual representation of the Holy Spirit – as the Diocese of Charlotte welcomed a new bishop for the first time in twenty years.
Conventual Franciscan Father Michael T. MARTIN was ordained during a three-hour liturgy that included hundreds of priests and deacons, more than a dozen bishops and one cardinal representing Pope Francis. Bishop MARTIN succeeds the retiring Bishop Peter JUGIS.
Percussion instruments and horns heralded the entrance procession into the Huntersville church and parish hall that were filled with 1,700 ticketed guests, including many of Bishop MARTIN’s former parishioners from St. Philip Benizi Church in Jonesboro, Georgia [USA], whom he greeted with smiles.
His family, friends, Franciscan friars, and clergy from the Charlotte diocese and multiple states packed the pews for the historic occasion.
“I am so proud of my brother (in Christ). It is an honor to have a role in his ordination liturgy,” said Bishop MARTIN’s longtime friend and fellow Conventual Franciscan Father Michael HEINE. “The smile on his face and the joy of the day truly shows us the Holy Spirit is moving in exciting ways!”
Father Christian COOK, pastor of St. Margaret Mary Parish in Swannanoa, was among more than a hundred priests from the Charlotte diocese in attendance. He said it was his first episcopal ordination as a priest or otherwise.
Atlanta Archbishop Gregory HARTMAYER, also a Conventual Franciscan and a close friend of Bishop MARTIN, was the principal celebrant and consecrator for the Mass. He offered a moving homily, highlighting the new bishop’s Franciscan roots, his prayerfulness and humility, as well as their long history together – beginning when the archbishop was a teacher and MARTIN was a student at Archbishop Curley High School in Baltimore.
The co-consecrators were Bishop JUGIS and Cardinal Christophe PIERRE, the pope’s ambassador to the United States.
In his homily, Archbishop HARTMAYER, emphasized the new bishop’s chosen episcopal motto, the words spoken by Jesus to Peter – “Duc In Altum” or “put out into the deep” – referencing the bishop’s call for people to deepen their relationship with Jesus.
“It is the Lord who invites us to put out into the deep as Peter did…” Archbishop HARTMAYER said. “Putting out into the deep is an invitation to trust in the Lord at all times. It means relying less on ourselves and more on the One who calls us. The call of Christ, ‘Duc In Altum,’ is a challenge for each of us. With Peter, we can put out into the deep, having caught nothing all day, and see the miracles that the Lord works.”
Addressing the bishop-elect, he continued, “You will be even more dependent on the Lord’s loving kindness as you step forward in this service of sacrificial loving for the Church, both local and universal as a contemporary apostle. You stand in a continuous line of succession reaching back to those first apostles who became friends with the Lord Jesus.”
“Do all you can to call the people of the Diocese of Charlotte to an ever more loving and joyful friendship with Our Savior. And by your own example, lead your seminarians, priests, deacons and consecrated religious toward a renewed personal relationship with the Lord.”
To read the complete article, go to:
https://catholicnewsherald.com/90-news/local/10516-bishop-martin-ordained
Annie FERGUSON
Photos by Travis BURTON, Troy HULL and Patrick SCHNEIDER Photography
