Homily of Bishop Michael Duignan at his Installation as Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh and Apostolic Administrator of Kilfenora
Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven & Saint Nicholas, Galway
Homily
On the cover of your booklets, you will see that we have gathered here this afternoon for my “Installation” as Bishop of Galway, Kilmacduagh and Apostolic Administrator of Kilfenora. Some weeks ago, when I used the word “Installation” in conversation with my mother she simply replied: “could they not have got a better word for it? Installing something … that sounds like getting a new washing machine or a fridge freezer.” While the word Installation is rightly used to describe the technical and canonical aspects of today’s ceremony another less common but perhaps a more personal description is simply the “Reception of the New Bishop” or even the “Welcome of the New Bishop”.
A “Threshold Moment”
It is customary that this ceremony of reception or welcome takes place in the Cathedral Church – which takes its name from the Latin word “Cathedra” or “Chair” – that place where the bishop sits, the mother Church of a diocese. What a striking and majestic Cathedral we have here on the banks of the Corrib in the heart of the City. It has surely lived up to Bishop Browne’s dream that it would be “solid, dignified and worthy of Galway”. It stands as a testimony to the faith of the people of this locality and a visible daily reminder to raise our minds and hearts towards God.
I am conscious of the passing of the years since it was built and the fact that I am the first Bishop of Galway to be born after it was consecrated in 1965. Today’s reception and welcome began at the great west door. As I crossed over its threshold, I could not but think that this is in a very real sense a “threshold moment” – a graced moment of transition from the past to the present to the future.
Click on link for the full homily, courtesy of the Irish Bishops Conference website: