Cathedral News “HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER” Parish Town Hall—2018
Inside: Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School Holy Family Parishioners Receive Sacraments at Easter
Holy Family Cathedral
Newsletter, May 2018
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE WITH HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER by Very Rev. Chukwudi Jovita Okonkwo, Ph.D.
About a month ago, I got the call that I dreaded but which I knew was coming. I was at the Parish Women’s Club luncheon when my phone buzzed and I looked at it. It was a call from Bishop Konderla. I stepped aside to answer the call that I dreaded, and true enough, it was exactly what I suspected. It is no longer news that in less than two months, we’ll be losing Fr. John Grant as our Associate Pastor. John was to many of us— parishioners of Holy Family—a very dutiful priest. However, to me, he was more than that priest who prepared and delivered inspiring homilies, ran to the sick to comfort and aid them with the Church’s Sacraments, directed the celebration of the liturgy here at the cathedral, and inspired many young people of our parish to seek to hear God’s voice calling them to serve him in the priesthood and the religious life. John was to me like a right-hand-man. And as a right-handed person, the moving of John feels like ripping off my right hand. I have to regrow it or learn to use the left; and for a man nearing 50 that won’t be a cushy job. But that’s how the priestly life is; we’re constantly moving. And so in the next few weeks, we’ll have the opportunity to say a big ‘thank you’ to Fr. John Grant for his love, zeal and dedication to Holy Family Cathedral—the only parish he has so far served since he became a priest, six years ago. All hope is not lost because we still have our beloved Monsignor Gier. One of the things I’m glad to know about him is that he has served his body and mind well, and looks like he’ll have a lot more years to offer in the service of the Lord. We pray that God gives him the strength to enjoy his retirement and continue to provide his pastoral support to our family. We’ll also be welcoming a new priest-to-be by June, Vince Fernandez, who will spend his summer with us before going back to Rome to complete his studies. WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US? For the rest of the year, we’ll have no associate pastor. I’ll do my best to be sure you’re provided with all the pastoral assistance you need. We’re not going to trim
down the number of Masses celebrated in the weekends. We’ll maintain our regular confession schedule. The Sacraments won’t suffer as a result of the change. Some other events we hold from week to week may be impacted. We’ll make room for discussions on these and take counsel from you. For this reason, I invite you to attend the Parish Town Hall meeting that we’ll hold on the 9th of this month. We’ll discuss issues ranging from pastoral life of the parish to projects and developments that we deem very essential to grow the faith of our parish and school. It’ll also serve as a forum to meet and greet other parishioners you may not have met before— maybe because they attend a different Mass from the one you regularly attend on Sundays. We’ll also present the parish staff whom you probably have spoken to over the phone but have not had the chance to meet. Other volunteers who serve the parish in the Finance Council, Parish Council, Building Committee, and some members of Holy Family School staff will also be present. We’ll love to have your input and various ideas you may have. Putting forward your ideas is very important for growth and to lessen gossips and non-constructive criticisms. For example, a few months ago, a parishioner wrote me a letter inquiring about a few things about which they had concerns. One of the results of our discussion is that we’ll start publishing the minutes of the Parish Council meetings to acquaint everyone with the deliberations of the Parish Council and give room for you to provide your input. TOWN HALL MEETING I consider it pertinent to let us know the exact things we’ll be deliberating at the town hall meeting. I’m aware that not everyone will be able to attend because of other events around that might conflict with the scheduled meeting. I’m also aware that this is graduation season and many families will be tied down with the graduation of a child or nephew or niece. I therefore present a sneak peek of what you’ll hear at the town hall. SNEAK PEAK I am very pleased to welcome you to the Holy Family Cathedral Parish Town Hall Meeting. Thank you so much for being here. Why a Town Hall Meeting? It is a chance for me, as your servant, to update you on the state of our cathedral and express the joy and excitement that I have for
Holy Family Cathedral
our future. It is also a chance for each parishioner to learn about the parish and through that learning grow in love for God and His Church, particularly through Holy Family Cathedral. Like any good Town Hall, it is also a chance for you to ask questions about the cathedral and the direction in which it is going. Before we can get to this future and direction, it is impossible not to reflect on my own journey coming to this position as rector of the cathedral and how this journey here is truly and only inspired by God. Thinking back to my time growing up in Nigeria with a large Catholic family, I think of my father inviting us to family discussions and sitting down with him to reflect on the life of the family. His special emphasis on prayer as the binding cord for the entire family has remained with us. And today, with eight of us having our own families, the same spirit of prayer is still alive with my other seven brothers and sisters, 21 nieces and nephews, and seven grand nieces and nephews. I reflect also on: my time attending Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu Nigeria, which has produced 3 Cardinals, 13 Archbishops, 32 Bishops and numerous priests; my journey to the United States and experiencing a culture different from my own, but beautifully Catholic nonetheless; my time as chaplain of the Newman Center at the University of Tulsa, which showed me the vitality of the youth of our Church; my time as pastor in places like Sapulpa, which showed me the blessings of parish life in Oklahoma. From all these places I have come, and by the Holy Spirit’s guidance, I now lead this community here, full of truth, goodness and beauty. Thus I humbly stand before you today and ask for your prayers for my continued journey, but also prayers for this parish which I have come to love so dearly. Any parish is strengthened in important ways by its clergy, staff and lay leaders; we are thus so fortunate to have dutiful help here. [I’ll introduce the Deacons and their wives; introduce the Parish Staff; introduce the Parish Council and Finance Council members]. With my own journey and with the wonderful help I have described, we move forward. We do so by seeking to ever build on the foundations laid by our forebears. We build a future like Saint Katherine Drexel did at this very Church over 100 years ago. We build a future like Monsignor Heiring and Monsignor Halpine did, in whose named rooms we sit today. We build a future like Pope Francis has suggested when he said, “To Christians, the future does have a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a
Newsletter, May 2018
heart that doesn't lock itself into darkness, that doesn't dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow.” This tomorrow of hope is here and now, and we will build it together for the world, for the diocese, for this parish. With this build in mind, we have entered into an agreement with an organization named the Steier Group, from Omaha, Nebraska. They will be conducting a feasibility study beginning May 14th about what we hope to build at this very Church for our tomorrow of hope. I specifically speak of building an Activity Center for our parish across the street from the Holy Family Cathedral School. I also speak of building to our basement by adding an elevator and new restrooms while updating all the facilities in the Heiring Auditorium and Halpine room. Why do I speak of building as hope for tomorrow? Firstly, these projects will provide us with opportunities for growth; a hope for growth in the number of parishioners. For example, the elevator will increase the access to the basement for our more senior members who find it challenging to attend functions like Wednesdays at the Cathedral in the basement. In fact, I already received a promise for $25,000 from someone who’s not even a parishioner of Holy Family but wants an elevator for easier access to the basement for daily Mass. It will allow us to offer modern amenities people expect of a parish, like clean restrooms with additional toilet stalls, perfect for young families. Growth will also occur in being able to host more functions, like wedding receptions, in an updated auditorium and kitchen. Next, these projects will truly influence how we live our faith at the cathedral. People naturally like to be a part of something that is growing, and grow, we will. People’s faith will be enriched by having dedicated space for things like Bible Study, Holy Family Cathedral School functions and more. For example, this project will build classrooms where we can have dedicated spaces for religious programming for our children in Family Faith Formation. Additionally, this project will include a basketball court. Imagine a chance for the youth of our parish to more actively engage the parish with sports and physical activity. This can happen and I am pleased to introduce you to these renderings. [At this point, I’ll introduce and explain the project renderings]. The project cost will total 10 million dollars; 3.8 for the basement project with the remainder to the Activity Center project. While this is no small amount, the time to begin is now. It is no secret that our parish is aging and is in need of an injection of vitality. We thus have urgency in moving to this tomorrow of hope that Pope Francis
Holy Family Cathedral
referenced. The buildings and projects have given me and will give us this excitement and hope we need. So many in the Holy Family history have made sacrifices to build this place up to where it is today. No less sacrifice is asked of us. Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the sacrificial Saint of Auschwitz, commented, “Let us remember that love lives through sacrifice and is nourished by giving. Without sacrifice, there is no love.” The time is now. Who will join me? May the Mother of God, Mother of Good Counsel and Spiritual Vessel guide our thoughts and plant seeds of hope and courage in us as we look to the future with renewed hope and confidence.
Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ By Rev. Fr. John Grant “You are my witnesses…” (cf. Lk 24:48) We are witnesses of Jesus resurrected. What does it mean to be a witness? Well, we are familiar with eye witnesses of an event, who recount something they saw. This is a passive understanding of witness, and while it was true of the apostles: they did in fact see and hear what Jesus did; they didn’t understand and so that is not precisely what He is asking of them or us. What He means by saying that they “are witnesses of these things” is that they are to testify to others about the reality of Jesus that they have experienced. And this is something we can do too. At the very beginning of the new life to which Christ calls us, what was happening, who was speaking? It was the two disciples who had been walking to Emmaus, who recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. They have just run back to find the apostles and were testifying to their experience, and that is when our Lord then manifests Himself to the apostles. The second thing it means to be a witness in the context that Jesus intends is that His apostles and we His disciples must live out of the same radical love and trust that He demonstrated in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The apostles did this by their words, their lives, and even their blood, thus the Greek word for witness is Martyr. They witnessed without fear of suffering or death because they knew that if they remained faithful and were
Newsletter, May 2018
united to Jesus in a death like His, that they would manifest their hope to participate in His Resurrection as well. Finally, the third thing that Jesus means when he tells the apostles and us to be witnesses is that we are to have a practical effect in other people’s lives. Namely, that we are to proclaim the Good News to all people so that they might repent and receive forgiveness for their sins. And this is why the disciples were afraid when Jesus appeared in their midst. It is shocking enough to see someone who was dead standing before you, but what do you suppose would be the first thing you’d think of if you saw someone whom you had betrayed and abandoned come back from the dead? You might suppose that he’d come back for revenge. That’s why they were afraid, but it was because they didn’t understand, they never understood why all of this had to happen. So Jesus explains it to them, the scriptures which they already knew and had heard many times, but now he shows them what they mean. That the Christ had to suffer and die for the forgiveness of sins, for our salvation. We can’t understand the Good News, that we have been rescued, unless we first realize that there is something we need to be rescued from. And this is what St. John meant when he said: “Jesus Christ the righteous one… is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world” (1Jn 2:1-2). It’s also what St. Peter preached in his first sermon after Pentecost: “The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses… God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer. Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away” (Acts 3:15,18-19). “The message of Jesus has a purpose and that purpose is to change our lives (repentance) and lead us to holiness (forgiveness of sins).” Which is why, on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, our Holy Father Pope Francis issued an Apostolic Exhortation “On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World.” In it he recalls the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, which states: “Fortified by so many and such powerful means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect” (LG,11). The Pope reminds us that “We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves” (GE,14). “At its core,” the Pope says, “holiness is experiencing, in union with Christ, the mysteries of his life. It
Holy Family Cathedral
consists in uniting ourselves to the Lord’s death and resurrection in a unique and personal way, constantly dying and rising anew with him. But it can also entail reproducing in our own lives various aspects of Jesus’ earthly life: his hidden life, his life in community, his closeness to the outcast, his poverty and other ways in which he showed his selfsacrificing love. The contemplation of these mysteries… leads us to incarnate them in our choices and attitudes” (GE,20). And so we need to see our entire lives as a mission, a mission to witness to Christ, and to accomplish this we can always ask the Holy Spirit to help us to make every decision in every moment of our lives (cf. GE,23). And it is in the context of this universal call to holiness that God then calls each of us specifically to one of four Christian vocations: marriage, religious profession, consecrated single life, or the priesthood. All of them are important, and are perfect for the persons called to each of them for it is by these vocations that God intends to make us saints, and as Pope Francis says in his exhortation, “the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint” (GE,34). But it is the last of these Christian vocations which I wish to reflect upon today. Msgr. Hiering, who built this church, Msgr. Halpine who lived and served here for 33 years and died preparing to celebrate the holy Mass, and Blessed Stanley Rother himself: “Priests are called ‘father’ because they are life-givers in the spiritual order. Spiritual fathers protect their children; they teach them; they are there for them. At the limit, they give their lives for them.” Jesus gathered his apostles and gave them a mission to be His witnesses, to share the Gospel, to baptize, to break bread so that others too could become His witnesses. Priests, down through the centuries — from Augustine and Aquinas, to John Paul II and our own Archbishop Peter Wells — these are the descendants of those first priests and bishops, the apostles. “They have been needed in every age, and they are needed today, for the kingdom of heaven must be proclaimed, the poor must be served, God must be worshipped, and the sacraments must be administered.” I have been fortunate to serve this wonderful parish as a successor to so many holy and amazing priests on and off for nearly six years. It has been the only parish I’ve served in since being ordained. But now, the bishop has called me to leave Holy Family and to become pastor of another parish, St. Catherine of Alexandria in West Tulsa. I follow in the footsteps of Fr. Matt Gerlach when he left the Cathedral and went to St. Catherine’s many years ago.
Newsletter, May 2018
And while I am happy to be called to serve God and His people in this new way, there is also sadness in parting, made even more difficult because there is no one permanent to succeed me as a associate pastor. I don’t know how many decades it has been since Holy Family has not had an associate, but it is a bitter reminder of how much we are in need of priests. We are doing much better than most parishes; we have two young men from our parish in seminary, and a third who will likely be joining them in the Fall. But this highlights just how much need there is for more young men to answer the call. A Pew Research study from 2012 showed that 500,000 young men have seriously considered the priesthood at some point in their lives, and yet only about 500 priests are ordained in the US each year. “The sadness is that the vast majority of those half-million did not receive adequate direction or information or encouragement.” And so my question is Who will fill these shoes? “Are you one of those half-million who has heard the whisper of God’s voice?” Do you know someone who has? A son, a brother, a grandson, a friend? Can I ask you mothers and fathers, grandparents, relatives, co-workers of these prospective candidates to encourage them? And can I ask all of you to pray… to pray for vocations to the priesthood for our parish and for our diocese? We are blessed and grateful that we still have Msgr. Gier with us and Holy Family will make it through till next summer, when, God willing, five new priests will be assigned in our diocese. But it is clear that far more men are called to this vocation than are answering. We need to help them to hear that call over the din of our noisy world. We do this by our prayers, by our lives, by our witness to Christ. Sharing what we have received so that lives can be changed (repentance) and led to holiness (forgiveness of sins). I want to thank you all for what you have taught me these years as your associate pastor. I will try to apply what I have learned in my first pastorate at St. Catherine’s. I will miss this Holy Family, but I don’t leave until July so there will be plenty of time and there is still much to accomplish before I go. I ask for your prayers for me, for Fr. Jovita and Msgr. Gier and our deacons, and most of all for our seminarians Robert Healey, Landon Tulipana, our prospective seminarian, Bruce Sander, and all the young men from these pews whom God is calling to the high adventure of the priesthood. You have my gratitude; you have my love, and I thank you.
Holy Family Cathedral
Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School, 2017-2018
Newsletter, May 2018
Isabella Melton, Mia Shank, Trenton Tabler, and Brady Videll, who achieved the requisite academic, faith, and leadership standards to qualify as candidates for the Dear Holy Family Cathedral Parishioners, Robinson Brothers’ Leadership Scholarship to Cascia Hall. Graduates of the 2017-2018 Eighth Grade Class The school year is drawing to a close and we are looking are: Christina Constable (Cascia Hall), Dhinal DeSilva forward to a number of exciting events this month. Our (Memorial), Canyon Garner (Washington), Clifford second-grade students, who have been working hard all Helgason (Memorial), Isabella Melton (Cascia Hall), year preparing for the sacraments of Reconciliation and Matthew Monnot (Bishop Kelley), Nikki Phillips (Bishop Eucharist, will be celebrating their First Holy Communion on Kelley), Katherine Pi (Bishop Kelley), Brad Pykiet Mother’s Day! This year we have eleven students from our (Collinsville), Justin Schrader (Edison), Samantha Schuster second grade receiving this sacrament: Everleigh (Owasso), Mia Shank (Cascia Hall), Taylor Street (Cascia Appelberg, Jillian Beck, Tommy Buckley, Angelina Carrillo, Hall), Trenton Tabler (Cascia Hall), and Brady Videll Tommy Dowdell, Fernando Guillan, Gideon Meddler, (Cascia Hall). This has been a truly outstanding class both Venezia Melton, Jacob Barry, Camden Tabler, and Michael academically, and as members of the Body of Christ. This Zerbe. Join with us in supporting them with your presence class has excelled at kindness and acts of charity, and we and your prayers. are so proud of them all. We see great things in their future! May is also the month for our annual Spring Arts Please keep Festival. Join us if you can as we celebrate the them in your tremendous gifts of our students. The festival is held in the prayers as Heiring Auditorium and on the lower level of the school on they enter th the evenings of Wednesday May 16 and Thursday May high school. 17th. This year our middle school drama students will be presenting the musical revue, “At the Bandstand” on We would Wednesday and our upper elementary students will also like to present “Charlotte’s Web” on Thursday evening. In recognize addition, Wednesday evening’s program will include a the following performance by the Holy Family Cathedral School Choir Holy Family Cathedral School alumni who will be and Thursday evening’s program will include a graduating from Cascia Hall this year for their outstanding performance by the School’s Band students. academic achievements: Geoffrey Escandor, Each evening’s events begin at 6:00 P.M. Student art work Gabriella Bernal, Erika Ravitch, Epadejah Brooks, Avery will be on display on the lower level of the school both Videll, Peter Nguyen; and Stewart Wire who will be evenings. graduating from Bishop Kelley. We are especially proud of Avery Videll who has been recognized as a National May is also the month of graduations. Holy Family Merit Scholar, and Erika Ravitch who has been recognized Cathedral School students participate in two special rites to as a Commended Scholar. mark the end of their middle school journey, and the beginning of their high school experience. On May 18th we It has been a blessing to all the faculty and staff at Holy will have our traditional Light of Leadership Mass. During Family Cathedral School to serve and support these young this ceremony, our eighth-grade class will pass on the light men and women as they have grown on the path of of Christ to the seventh-grade class as they step into their righteousness, and we will continue to pray and love them leadership roles for the upcoming school year. Finally, on as they graduate from this community to the May 20th at the Noon Mass, we will be celebrating the next. Congratulations to them, and to their families! graduation of our eighth grade class and recognizing their many spiritual and academic accomplishments. This year Yours in Christ, we are proud to announce that we have four students, Mrs. Southerland
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Family Faith Formation 2017-2018/Easter at Cathedral 2018 marks our second Holy Week and Easter with Bishop David Konderla. Parishioners and guests from other parishes were blessed with beautiful and prayerful liturgies, moving music and our Bishop’s homilies. We joyfully received new Catholics into our family at the Easter Vigil, pictured here with their sponsors, Bishop David and Fr. Jovita.
Deacon Jon Conro and Deacon B. D.Tidmore celebrated their first Holy Week liturgies and Easter Masses following their ordination in June of 2017. Holy Family appreciates the service our deacons give to our parish. Remember them in your prayers that they may grow in holiness and remain faithful to their vows.
Our high school students received Confirmation at the Noon Mass on Easter Sunday. Congratulations to all those celebrating sacraments this Easter. When you see them at Mass, take a moment to
Newsletter, May 2018
offer congratulations and assure them of your continued prayers that they might have the courage to live what they professed to believe.
Holy Family Cathedral PO Box 3204 Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 Electronic Service Requested
Most Rev. David A. Konderla, Bishop of Tulsa Most Rev. Edward J. Slattery, Bishop Emeritus Very Rev. Jovita C. Okonkwo, Rector Rev. John Grant, Associate Pastor Rev. Msgr. Gregory A. Gier, Rector Emeritus Deacon Tom Gorman Deacon Greg Stice Deacon Kevin Tulipana Deacon Jerry Mattox Deacon B.D. Tidmore Deacon Jon Conro Holy Family Cathedral Parish PO Box 3204, Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 918-582-6247 HolyFamilyCathedralParish.com TulsaCathedral@gmail.com Holy Family Cathedral School 820 South Boulder Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74119 918-582-0422 HolyFamilyCathedralSchool.com
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Weekend Mass Schedule: 5:00 p.m. Saturday 8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 12:00 Noon, and 5:00 p.m. Sunday Weekday Mass Schedule: 12:05 p.m. Monday 7:00 a.m. & 12:05 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday 7:00 a.m., 12:05 & 5:05 p.m. Friday 8:00 a.m. Saturday Tuesday-Saturday daily Masses are usually in the Chapel of Peace. Confessions: Ten minutes before all Masses, and 3:30 - 4:45 p.m. Saturday Friday Evening Holy Hour: 5:05 p.m. Mass, followed by Adoration and Benediction until 6:30 p.m.
Cathedral News “HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER” Parish Town Hall—2018
Inside: Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School Holy Family Parishioners Receive Sacraments at Easter
Holy Family Cathedral
Newsletter, May 2018
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE WITH HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER by Very Rev. Chukwudi Jovita Okonkwo, Ph.D.
About a month ago, I got the call that I dreaded but which I knew was coming. I was at the Parish Women’s Club luncheon when my phone buzzed and I looked at it. It was a call from Bishop Konderla. I stepped aside to answer the call that I dreaded, and true enough, it was exactly what I suspected. It is no longer news that in less than two months, we’ll be losing Fr. John Grant as our Associate Pastor. John was to many of us— parishioners of Holy Family—a very dutiful priest. However, to me, he was more than that priest who prepared and delivered inspiring homilies, ran to the sick to comfort and aid them with the Church’s Sacraments, directed the celebration of the liturgy here at the cathedral, and inspired many young people of our parish to seek to hear God’s voice calling them to serve him in the priesthood and the religious life. John was to me like a right-hand-man. And as a right-handed person, the moving of John feels like ripping off my right hand. I have to regrow it or learn to use the left; and for a man nearing 50 that won’t be a cushy job. But that’s how the priestly life is; we’re constantly moving. And so in the next few weeks, we’ll have the opportunity to say a big ‘thank you’ to Fr. John Grant for his love, zeal and dedication to Holy Family Cathedral—the only parish he has so far served since he became a priest, six years ago. All hope is not lost because we still have our beloved Monsignor Gier. One of the things I’m glad to know about him is that he has served his body and mind well, and looks like he’ll have a lot more years to offer in the service of the Lord. We pray that God gives him the strength to enjoy his retirement and continue to provide his pastoral support to our family. We’ll also be welcoming a new priest-to-be by June, Vince Fernandez, who will spend his summer with us before going back to Rome to complete his studies. WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US? For the rest of the year, we’ll have no associate pastor. I’ll do my best to be sure you’re provided with all the pastoral assistance you need. We’re not going to trim
down the number of Masses celebrated in the weekends. We’ll maintain our regular confession schedule. The Sacraments won’t suffer as a result of the change. Some other events we hold from week to week may be impacted. We’ll make room for discussions on these and take counsel from you. For this reason, I invite you to attend the Parish Town Hall meeting that we’ll hold on the 9th of this month. We’ll discuss issues ranging from pastoral life of the parish to projects and developments that we deem very essential to grow the faith of our parish and school. It’ll also serve as a forum to meet and greet other parishioners you may not have met before— maybe because they attend a different Mass from the one you regularly attend on Sundays. We’ll also present the parish staff whom you probably have spoken to over the phone but have not had the chance to meet. Other volunteers who serve the parish in the Finance Council, Parish Council, Building Committee, and some members of Holy Family School staff will also be present. We’ll love to have your input and various ideas you may have. Putting forward your ideas is very important for growth and to lessen gossips and non-constructive criticisms. For example, a few months ago, a parishioner wrote me a letter inquiring about a few things about which they had concerns. One of the results of our discussion is that we’ll start publishing the minutes of the Parish Council meetings to acquaint everyone with the deliberations of the Parish Council and give room for you to provide your input. TOWN HALL MEETING I consider it pertinent to let us know the exact things we’ll be deliberating at the town hall meeting. I’m aware that not everyone will be able to attend because of other events around that might conflict with the scheduled meeting. I’m also aware that this is graduation season and many families will be tied down with the graduation of a child or nephew or niece. I therefore present a sneak peek of what you’ll hear at the town hall. SNEAK PEAK I am very pleased to welcome you to the Holy Family Cathedral Parish Town Hall Meeting. Thank you so much for being here. Why a Town Hall Meeting? It is a chance for me, as your servant, to update you on the state of our cathedral and express the joy and excitement that I have for
Holy Family Cathedral
our future. It is also a chance for each parishioner to learn about the parish and through that learning grow in love for God and His Church, particularly through Holy Family Cathedral. Like any good Town Hall, it is also a chance for you to ask questions about the cathedral and the direction in which it is going. Before we can get to this future and direction, it is impossible not to reflect on my own journey coming to this position as rector of the cathedral and how this journey here is truly and only inspired by God. Thinking back to my time growing up in Nigeria with a large Catholic family, I think of my father inviting us to family discussions and sitting down with him to reflect on the life of the family. His special emphasis on prayer as the binding cord for the entire family has remained with us. And today, with eight of us having our own families, the same spirit of prayer is still alive with my other seven brothers and sisters, 21 nieces and nephews, and seven grand nieces and nephews. I reflect also on: my time attending Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu Nigeria, which has produced 3 Cardinals, 13 Archbishops, 32 Bishops and numerous priests; my journey to the United States and experiencing a culture different from my own, but beautifully Catholic nonetheless; my time as chaplain of the Newman Center at the University of Tulsa, which showed me the vitality of the youth of our Church; my time as pastor in places like Sapulpa, which showed me the blessings of parish life in Oklahoma. From all these places I have come, and by the Holy Spirit’s guidance, I now lead this community here, full of truth, goodness and beauty. Thus I humbly stand before you today and ask for your prayers for my continued journey, but also prayers for this parish which I have come to love so dearly. Any parish is strengthened in important ways by its clergy, staff and lay leaders; we are thus so fortunate to have dutiful help here. [I’ll introduce the Deacons and their wives; introduce the Parish Staff; introduce the Parish Council and Finance Council members]. With my own journey and with the wonderful help I have described, we move forward. We do so by seeking to ever build on the foundations laid by our forebears. We build a future like Saint Katherine Drexel did at this very Church over 100 years ago. We build a future like Monsignor Heiring and Monsignor Halpine did, in whose named rooms we sit today. We build a future like Pope Francis has suggested when he said, “To Christians, the future does have a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a
Newsletter, May 2018
heart that doesn't lock itself into darkness, that doesn't dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow.” This tomorrow of hope is here and now, and we will build it together for the world, for the diocese, for this parish. With this build in mind, we have entered into an agreement with an organization named the Steier Group, from Omaha, Nebraska. They will be conducting a feasibility study beginning May 14th about what we hope to build at this very Church for our tomorrow of hope. I specifically speak of building an Activity Center for our parish across the street from the Holy Family Cathedral School. I also speak of building to our basement by adding an elevator and new restrooms while updating all the facilities in the Heiring Auditorium and Halpine room. Why do I speak of building as hope for tomorrow? Firstly, these projects will provide us with opportunities for growth; a hope for growth in the number of parishioners. For example, the elevator will increase the access to the basement for our more senior members who find it challenging to attend functions like Wednesdays at the Cathedral in the basement. In fact, I already received a promise for $25,000 from someone who’s not even a parishioner of Holy Family but wants an elevator for easier access to the basement for daily Mass. It will allow us to offer modern amenities people expect of a parish, like clean restrooms with additional toilet stalls, perfect for young families. Growth will also occur in being able to host more functions, like wedding receptions, in an updated auditorium and kitchen. Next, these projects will truly influence how we live our faith at the cathedral. People naturally like to be a part of something that is growing, and grow, we will. People’s faith will be enriched by having dedicated space for things like Bible Study, Holy Family Cathedral School functions and more. For example, this project will build classrooms where we can have dedicated spaces for religious programming for our children in Family Faith Formation. Additionally, this project will include a basketball court. Imagine a chance for the youth of our parish to more actively engage the parish with sports and physical activity. This can happen and I am pleased to introduce you to these renderings. [At this point, I’ll introduce and explain the project renderings]. The project cost will total 10 million dollars; 3.8 for the basement project with the remainder to the Activity Center project. While this is no small amount, the time to begin is now. It is no secret that our parish is aging and is in need of an injection of vitality. We thus have urgency in moving to this tomorrow of hope that Pope Francis
Holy Family Cathedral
referenced. The buildings and projects have given me and will give us this excitement and hope we need. So many in the Holy Family history have made sacrifices to build this place up to where it is today. No less sacrifice is asked of us. Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the sacrificial Saint of Auschwitz, commented, “Let us remember that love lives through sacrifice and is nourished by giving. Without sacrifice, there is no love.” The time is now. Who will join me? May the Mother of God, Mother of Good Counsel and Spiritual Vessel guide our thoughts and plant seeds of hope and courage in us as we look to the future with renewed hope and confidence.
Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ By Rev. Fr. John Grant “You are my witnesses…” (cf. Lk 24:48) We are witnesses of Jesus resurrected. What does it mean to be a witness? Well, we are familiar with eye witnesses of an event, who recount something they saw. This is a passive understanding of witness, and while it was true of the apostles: they did in fact see and hear what Jesus did; they didn’t understand and so that is not precisely what He is asking of them or us. What He means by saying that they “are witnesses of these things” is that they are to testify to others about the reality of Jesus that they have experienced. And this is something we can do too. At the very beginning of the new life to which Christ calls us, what was happening, who was speaking? It was the two disciples who had been walking to Emmaus, who recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. They have just run back to find the apostles and were testifying to their experience, and that is when our Lord then manifests Himself to the apostles. The second thing it means to be a witness in the context that Jesus intends is that His apostles and we His disciples must live out of the same radical love and trust that He demonstrated in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The apostles did this by their words, their lives, and even their blood, thus the Greek word for witness is Martyr. They witnessed without fear of suffering or death because they knew that if they remained faithful and were
Newsletter, May 2018
united to Jesus in a death like His, that they would manifest their hope to participate in His Resurrection as well. Finally, the third thing that Jesus means when he tells the apostles and us to be witnesses is that we are to have a practical effect in other people’s lives. Namely, that we are to proclaim the Good News to all people so that they might repent and receive forgiveness for their sins. And this is why the disciples were afraid when Jesus appeared in their midst. It is shocking enough to see someone who was dead standing before you, but what do you suppose would be the first thing you’d think of if you saw someone whom you had betrayed and abandoned come back from the dead? You might suppose that he’d come back for revenge. That’s why they were afraid, but it was because they didn’t understand, they never understood why all of this had to happen. So Jesus explains it to them, the scriptures which they already knew and had heard many times, but now he shows them what they mean. That the Christ had to suffer and die for the forgiveness of sins, for our salvation. We can’t understand the Good News, that we have been rescued, unless we first realize that there is something we need to be rescued from. And this is what St. John meant when he said: “Jesus Christ the righteous one… is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world” (1Jn 2:1-2). It’s also what St. Peter preached in his first sermon after Pentecost: “The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses… God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer. Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away” (Acts 3:15,18-19). “The message of Jesus has a purpose and that purpose is to change our lives (repentance) and lead us to holiness (forgiveness of sins).” Which is why, on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, our Holy Father Pope Francis issued an Apostolic Exhortation “On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World.” In it he recalls the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, which states: “Fortified by so many and such powerful means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect” (LG,11). The Pope reminds us that “We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves” (GE,14). “At its core,” the Pope says, “holiness is experiencing, in union with Christ, the mysteries of his life. It
Holy Family Cathedral
consists in uniting ourselves to the Lord’s death and resurrection in a unique and personal way, constantly dying and rising anew with him. But it can also entail reproducing in our own lives various aspects of Jesus’ earthly life: his hidden life, his life in community, his closeness to the outcast, his poverty and other ways in which he showed his selfsacrificing love. The contemplation of these mysteries… leads us to incarnate them in our choices and attitudes” (GE,20). And so we need to see our entire lives as a mission, a mission to witness to Christ, and to accomplish this we can always ask the Holy Spirit to help us to make every decision in every moment of our lives (cf. GE,23). And it is in the context of this universal call to holiness that God then calls each of us specifically to one of four Christian vocations: marriage, religious profession, consecrated single life, or the priesthood. All of them are important, and are perfect for the persons called to each of them for it is by these vocations that God intends to make us saints, and as Pope Francis says in his exhortation, “the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint” (GE,34). But it is the last of these Christian vocations which I wish to reflect upon today. Msgr. Hiering, who built this church, Msgr. Halpine who lived and served here for 33 years and died preparing to celebrate the holy Mass, and Blessed Stanley Rother himself: “Priests are called ‘father’ because they are life-givers in the spiritual order. Spiritual fathers protect their children; they teach them; they are there for them. At the limit, they give their lives for them.” Jesus gathered his apostles and gave them a mission to be His witnesses, to share the Gospel, to baptize, to break bread so that others too could become His witnesses. Priests, down through the centuries — from Augustine and Aquinas, to John Paul II and our own Archbishop Peter Wells — these are the descendants of those first priests and bishops, the apostles. “They have been needed in every age, and they are needed today, for the kingdom of heaven must be proclaimed, the poor must be served, God must be worshipped, and the sacraments must be administered.” I have been fortunate to serve this wonderful parish as a successor to so many holy and amazing priests on and off for nearly six years. It has been the only parish I’ve served in since being ordained. But now, the bishop has called me to leave Holy Family and to become pastor of another parish, St. Catherine of Alexandria in West Tulsa. I follow in the footsteps of Fr. Matt Gerlach when he left the Cathedral and went to St. Catherine’s many years ago.
Newsletter, May 2018
And while I am happy to be called to serve God and His people in this new way, there is also sadness in parting, made even more difficult because there is no one permanent to succeed me as a associate pastor. I don’t know how many decades it has been since Holy Family has not had an associate, but it is a bitter reminder of how much we are in need of priests. We are doing much better than most parishes; we have two young men from our parish in seminary, and a third who will likely be joining them in the Fall. But this highlights just how much need there is for more young men to answer the call. A Pew Research study from 2012 showed that 500,000 young men have seriously considered the priesthood at some point in their lives, and yet only about 500 priests are ordained in the US each year. “The sadness is that the vast majority of those half-million did not receive adequate direction or information or encouragement.” And so my question is Who will fill these shoes? “Are you one of those half-million who has heard the whisper of God’s voice?” Do you know someone who has? A son, a brother, a grandson, a friend? Can I ask you mothers and fathers, grandparents, relatives, co-workers of these prospective candidates to encourage them? And can I ask all of you to pray… to pray for vocations to the priesthood for our parish and for our diocese? We are blessed and grateful that we still have Msgr. Gier with us and Holy Family will make it through till next summer, when, God willing, five new priests will be assigned in our diocese. But it is clear that far more men are called to this vocation than are answering. We need to help them to hear that call over the din of our noisy world. We do this by our prayers, by our lives, by our witness to Christ. Sharing what we have received so that lives can be changed (repentance) and led to holiness (forgiveness of sins). I want to thank you all for what you have taught me these years as your associate pastor. I will try to apply what I have learned in my first pastorate at St. Catherine’s. I will miss this Holy Family, but I don’t leave until July so there will be plenty of time and there is still much to accomplish before I go. I ask for your prayers for me, for Fr. Jovita and Msgr. Gier and our deacons, and most of all for our seminarians Robert Healey, Landon Tulipana, our prospective seminarian, Bruce Sander, and all the young men from these pews whom God is calling to the high adventure of the priesthood. You have my gratitude; you have my love, and I thank you.
Holy Family Cathedral
Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School, 2017-2018
Newsletter, May 2018
Isabella Melton, Mia Shank, Trenton Tabler, and Brady Videll, who achieved the requisite academic, faith, and leadership standards to qualify as candidates for the Dear Holy Family Cathedral Parishioners, Robinson Brothers’ Leadership Scholarship to Cascia Hall. Graduates of the 2017-2018 Eighth Grade Class The school year is drawing to a close and we are looking are: Christina Constable (Cascia Hall), Dhinal DeSilva forward to a number of exciting events this month. Our (Memorial), Canyon Garner (Washington), Clifford second-grade students, who have been working hard all Helgason (Memorial), Isabella Melton (Cascia Hall), year preparing for the sacraments of Reconciliation and Matthew Monnot (Bishop Kelley), Nikki Phillips (Bishop Eucharist, will be celebrating their First Holy Communion on Kelley), Katherine Pi (Bishop Kelley), Brad Pykiet Mother’s Day! This year we have eleven students from our (Collinsville), Justin Schrader (Edison), Samantha Schuster second grade receiving this sacrament: Everleigh (Owasso), Mia Shank (Cascia Hall), Taylor Street (Cascia Appelberg, Jillian Beck, Tommy Buckley, Angelina Carrillo, Hall), Trenton Tabler (Cascia Hall), and Brady Videll Tommy Dowdell, Fernando Guillan, Gideon Meddler, (Cascia Hall). This has been a truly outstanding class both Venezia Melton, Jacob Barry, Camden Tabler, and Michael academically, and as members of the Body of Christ. This Zerbe. Join with us in supporting them with your presence class has excelled at kindness and acts of charity, and we and your prayers. are so proud of them all. We see great things in their future! May is also the month for our annual Spring Arts Please keep Festival. Join us if you can as we celebrate the them in your tremendous gifts of our students. The festival is held in the prayers as Heiring Auditorium and on the lower level of the school on they enter th the evenings of Wednesday May 16 and Thursday May high school. 17th. This year our middle school drama students will be presenting the musical revue, “At the Bandstand” on We would Wednesday and our upper elementary students will also like to present “Charlotte’s Web” on Thursday evening. In recognize addition, Wednesday evening’s program will include a the following performance by the Holy Family Cathedral School Choir Holy Family Cathedral School alumni who will be and Thursday evening’s program will include a graduating from Cascia Hall this year for their outstanding performance by the School’s Band students. academic achievements: Geoffrey Escandor, Each evening’s events begin at 6:00 P.M. Student art work Gabriella Bernal, Erika Ravitch, Epadejah Brooks, Avery will be on display on the lower level of the school both Videll, Peter Nguyen; and Stewart Wire who will be evenings. graduating from Bishop Kelley. We are especially proud of Avery Videll who has been recognized as a National May is also the month of graduations. Holy Family Merit Scholar, and Erika Ravitch who has been recognized Cathedral School students participate in two special rites to as a Commended Scholar. mark the end of their middle school journey, and the beginning of their high school experience. On May 18th we It has been a blessing to all the faculty and staff at Holy will have our traditional Light of Leadership Mass. During Family Cathedral School to serve and support these young this ceremony, our eighth-grade class will pass on the light men and women as they have grown on the path of of Christ to the seventh-grade class as they step into their righteousness, and we will continue to pray and love them leadership roles for the upcoming school year. Finally, on as they graduate from this community to the May 20th at the Noon Mass, we will be celebrating the next. Congratulations to them, and to their families! graduation of our eighth grade class and recognizing their many spiritual and academic accomplishments. This year Yours in Christ, we are proud to announce that we have four students, Mrs. Southerland
Holy Family Cathedral
Family Faith Formation 2017-2018/Easter at Cathedral 2018 marks our second Holy Week and Easter with Bishop David Konderla. Parishioners and guests from other parishes were blessed with beautiful and prayerful liturgies, moving music and our Bishop’s homilies. We joyfully received new Catholics into our family at the Easter Vigil, pictured here with their sponsors, Bishop David and Fr. Jovita.
Deacon Jon Conro and Deacon B. D.Tidmore celebrated their first Holy Week liturgies and Easter Masses following their ordination in June of 2017. Holy Family appreciates the service our deacons give to our parish. Remember them in your prayers that they may grow in holiness and remain faithful to their vows.
Our high school students received Confirmation at the Noon Mass on Easter Sunday. Congratulations to all those celebrating sacraments this Easter. When you see them at Mass, take a moment to
Newsletter, May 2018
offer congratulations and assure them of your continued prayers that they might have the courage to live what they professed to believe.
Holy Family Cathedral PO Box 3204 Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 Electronic Service Requested
Most Rev. David A. Konderla, Bishop of Tulsa Most Rev. Edward J. Slattery, Bishop Emeritus Very Rev. Jovita C. Okonkwo, Rector Rev. John Grant, Associate Pastor Rev. Msgr. Gregory A. Gier, Rector Emeritus Deacon Tom Gorman Deacon Greg Stice Deacon Kevin Tulipana Deacon Jerry Mattox Deacon B.D. Tidmore Deacon Jon Conro Holy Family Cathedral Parish PO Box 3204, Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 918-582-6247 HolyFamilyCathedralParish.com TulsaCathedral@gmail.com Holy Family Cathedral School 820 South Boulder Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74119 918-582-0422 HolyFamilyCathedralSchool.com
NONPROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID TULSA OK PERMIT 381
Weekend Mass Schedule: 5:00 p.m. Saturday 8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 12:00 Noon, and 5:00 p.m. Sunday Weekday Mass Schedule: 12:05 p.m. Monday 7:00 a.m. & 12:05 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday 7:00 a.m., 12:05 & 5:05 p.m. Friday 8:00 a.m. Saturday Tuesday-Saturday daily Masses are usually in the Chapel of Peace. Confessions: Ten minutes before all Masses, and 3:30 - 4:45 p.m. Saturday Friday Evening Holy Hour: 5:05 p.m. Mass, followed by Adoration and Benediction until 6:30 p.m.
Cathedral News “HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER” Parish Town Hall—2018
Inside: Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School Holy Family Parishioners Receive Sacraments at Easter
Holy Family Cathedral
Newsletter, May 2018
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE WITH HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER by Very Rev. Chukwudi Jovita Okonkwo, Ph.D.
About a month ago, I got the call that I dreaded but which I knew was coming. I was at the Parish Women’s Club luncheon when my phone buzzed and I looked at it. It was a call from Bishop Konderla. I stepped aside to answer the call that I dreaded, and true enough, it was exactly what I suspected. It is no longer news that in less than two months, we’ll be losing Fr. John Grant as our Associate Pastor. John was to many of us— parishioners of Holy Family—a very dutiful priest. However, to me, he was more than that priest who prepared and delivered inspiring homilies, ran to the sick to comfort and aid them with the Church’s Sacraments, directed the celebration of the liturgy here at the cathedral, and inspired many young people of our parish to seek to hear God’s voice calling them to serve him in the priesthood and the religious life. John was to me like a right-hand-man. And as a right-handed person, the moving of John feels like ripping off my right hand. I have to regrow it or learn to use the left; and for a man nearing 50 that won’t be a cushy job. But that’s how the priestly life is; we’re constantly moving. And so in the next few weeks, we’ll have the opportunity to say a big ‘thank you’ to Fr. John Grant for his love, zeal and dedication to Holy Family Cathedral—the only parish he has so far served since he became a priest, six years ago. All hope is not lost because we still have our beloved Monsignor Gier. One of the things I’m glad to know about him is that he has served his body and mind well, and looks like he’ll have a lot more years to offer in the service of the Lord. We pray that God gives him the strength to enjoy his retirement and continue to provide his pastoral support to our family. We’ll also be welcoming a new priest-to-be by June, Vince Fernandez, who will spend his summer with us before going back to Rome to complete his studies. WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US? For the rest of the year, we’ll have no associate pastor. I’ll do my best to be sure you’re provided with all the pastoral assistance you need. We’re not going to trim
down the number of Masses celebrated in the weekends. We’ll maintain our regular confession schedule. The Sacraments won’t suffer as a result of the change. Some other events we hold from week to week may be impacted. We’ll make room for discussions on these and take counsel from you. For this reason, I invite you to attend the Parish Town Hall meeting that we’ll hold on the 9th of this month. We’ll discuss issues ranging from pastoral life of the parish to projects and developments that we deem very essential to grow the faith of our parish and school. It’ll also serve as a forum to meet and greet other parishioners you may not have met before— maybe because they attend a different Mass from the one you regularly attend on Sundays. We’ll also present the parish staff whom you probably have spoken to over the phone but have not had the chance to meet. Other volunteers who serve the parish in the Finance Council, Parish Council, Building Committee, and some members of Holy Family School staff will also be present. We’ll love to have your input and various ideas you may have. Putting forward your ideas is very important for growth and to lessen gossips and non-constructive criticisms. For example, a few months ago, a parishioner wrote me a letter inquiring about a few things about which they had concerns. One of the results of our discussion is that we’ll start publishing the minutes of the Parish Council meetings to acquaint everyone with the deliberations of the Parish Council and give room for you to provide your input. TOWN HALL MEETING I consider it pertinent to let us know the exact things we’ll be deliberating at the town hall meeting. I’m aware that not everyone will be able to attend because of other events around that might conflict with the scheduled meeting. I’m also aware that this is graduation season and many families will be tied down with the graduation of a child or nephew or niece. I therefore present a sneak peek of what you’ll hear at the town hall. SNEAK PEAK I am very pleased to welcome you to the Holy Family Cathedral Parish Town Hall Meeting. Thank you so much for being here. Why a Town Hall Meeting? It is a chance for me, as your servant, to update you on the state of our cathedral and express the joy and excitement that I have for
Holy Family Cathedral
our future. It is also a chance for each parishioner to learn about the parish and through that learning grow in love for God and His Church, particularly through Holy Family Cathedral. Like any good Town Hall, it is also a chance for you to ask questions about the cathedral and the direction in which it is going. Before we can get to this future and direction, it is impossible not to reflect on my own journey coming to this position as rector of the cathedral and how this journey here is truly and only inspired by God. Thinking back to my time growing up in Nigeria with a large Catholic family, I think of my father inviting us to family discussions and sitting down with him to reflect on the life of the family. His special emphasis on prayer as the binding cord for the entire family has remained with us. And today, with eight of us having our own families, the same spirit of prayer is still alive with my other seven brothers and sisters, 21 nieces and nephews, and seven grand nieces and nephews. I reflect also on: my time attending Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu Nigeria, which has produced 3 Cardinals, 13 Archbishops, 32 Bishops and numerous priests; my journey to the United States and experiencing a culture different from my own, but beautifully Catholic nonetheless; my time as chaplain of the Newman Center at the University of Tulsa, which showed me the vitality of the youth of our Church; my time as pastor in places like Sapulpa, which showed me the blessings of parish life in Oklahoma. From all these places I have come, and by the Holy Spirit’s guidance, I now lead this community here, full of truth, goodness and beauty. Thus I humbly stand before you today and ask for your prayers for my continued journey, but also prayers for this parish which I have come to love so dearly. Any parish is strengthened in important ways by its clergy, staff and lay leaders; we are thus so fortunate to have dutiful help here. [I’ll introduce the Deacons and their wives; introduce the Parish Staff; introduce the Parish Council and Finance Council members]. With my own journey and with the wonderful help I have described, we move forward. We do so by seeking to ever build on the foundations laid by our forebears. We build a future like Saint Katherine Drexel did at this very Church over 100 years ago. We build a future like Monsignor Heiring and Monsignor Halpine did, in whose named rooms we sit today. We build a future like Pope Francis has suggested when he said, “To Christians, the future does have a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a
Newsletter, May 2018
heart that doesn't lock itself into darkness, that doesn't dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow.” This tomorrow of hope is here and now, and we will build it together for the world, for the diocese, for this parish. With this build in mind, we have entered into an agreement with an organization named the Steier Group, from Omaha, Nebraska. They will be conducting a feasibility study beginning May 14th about what we hope to build at this very Church for our tomorrow of hope. I specifically speak of building an Activity Center for our parish across the street from the Holy Family Cathedral School. I also speak of building to our basement by adding an elevator and new restrooms while updating all the facilities in the Heiring Auditorium and Halpine room. Why do I speak of building as hope for tomorrow? Firstly, these projects will provide us with opportunities for growth; a hope for growth in the number of parishioners. For example, the elevator will increase the access to the basement for our more senior members who find it challenging to attend functions like Wednesdays at the Cathedral in the basement. In fact, I already received a promise for $25,000 from someone who’s not even a parishioner of Holy Family but wants an elevator for easier access to the basement for daily Mass. It will allow us to offer modern amenities people expect of a parish, like clean restrooms with additional toilet stalls, perfect for young families. Growth will also occur in being able to host more functions, like wedding receptions, in an updated auditorium and kitchen. Next, these projects will truly influence how we live our faith at the cathedral. People naturally like to be a part of something that is growing, and grow, we will. People’s faith will be enriched by having dedicated space for things like Bible Study, Holy Family Cathedral School functions and more. For example, this project will build classrooms where we can have dedicated spaces for religious programming for our children in Family Faith Formation. Additionally, this project will include a basketball court. Imagine a chance for the youth of our parish to more actively engage the parish with sports and physical activity. This can happen and I am pleased to introduce you to these renderings. [At this point, I’ll introduce and explain the project renderings]. The project cost will total 10 million dollars; 3.8 for the basement project with the remainder to the Activity Center project. While this is no small amount, the time to begin is now. It is no secret that our parish is aging and is in need of an injection of vitality. We thus have urgency in moving to this tomorrow of hope that Pope Francis
Holy Family Cathedral
referenced. The buildings and projects have given me and will give us this excitement and hope we need. So many in the Holy Family history have made sacrifices to build this place up to where it is today. No less sacrifice is asked of us. Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the sacrificial Saint of Auschwitz, commented, “Let us remember that love lives through sacrifice and is nourished by giving. Without sacrifice, there is no love.” The time is now. Who will join me? May the Mother of God, Mother of Good Counsel and Spiritual Vessel guide our thoughts and plant seeds of hope and courage in us as we look to the future with renewed hope and confidence.
Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ By Rev. Fr. John Grant “You are my witnesses…” (cf. Lk 24:48) We are witnesses of Jesus resurrected. What does it mean to be a witness? Well, we are familiar with eye witnesses of an event, who recount something they saw. This is a passive understanding of witness, and while it was true of the apostles: they did in fact see and hear what Jesus did; they didn’t understand and so that is not precisely what He is asking of them or us. What He means by saying that they “are witnesses of these things” is that they are to testify to others about the reality of Jesus that they have experienced. And this is something we can do too. At the very beginning of the new life to which Christ calls us, what was happening, who was speaking? It was the two disciples who had been walking to Emmaus, who recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. They have just run back to find the apostles and were testifying to their experience, and that is when our Lord then manifests Himself to the apostles. The second thing it means to be a witness in the context that Jesus intends is that His apostles and we His disciples must live out of the same radical love and trust that He demonstrated in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The apostles did this by their words, their lives, and even their blood, thus the Greek word for witness is Martyr. They witnessed without fear of suffering or death because they knew that if they remained faithful and were
Newsletter, May 2018
united to Jesus in a death like His, that they would manifest their hope to participate in His Resurrection as well. Finally, the third thing that Jesus means when he tells the apostles and us to be witnesses is that we are to have a practical effect in other people’s lives. Namely, that we are to proclaim the Good News to all people so that they might repent and receive forgiveness for their sins. And this is why the disciples were afraid when Jesus appeared in their midst. It is shocking enough to see someone who was dead standing before you, but what do you suppose would be the first thing you’d think of if you saw someone whom you had betrayed and abandoned come back from the dead? You might suppose that he’d come back for revenge. That’s why they were afraid, but it was because they didn’t understand, they never understood why all of this had to happen. So Jesus explains it to them, the scriptures which they already knew and had heard many times, but now he shows them what they mean. That the Christ had to suffer and die for the forgiveness of sins, for our salvation. We can’t understand the Good News, that we have been rescued, unless we first realize that there is something we need to be rescued from. And this is what St. John meant when he said: “Jesus Christ the righteous one… is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world” (1Jn 2:1-2). It’s also what St. Peter preached in his first sermon after Pentecost: “The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses… God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer. Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away” (Acts 3:15,18-19). “The message of Jesus has a purpose and that purpose is to change our lives (repentance) and lead us to holiness (forgiveness of sins).” Which is why, on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, our Holy Father Pope Francis issued an Apostolic Exhortation “On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World.” In it he recalls the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, which states: “Fortified by so many and such powerful means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect” (LG,11). The Pope reminds us that “We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves” (GE,14). “At its core,” the Pope says, “holiness is experiencing, in union with Christ, the mysteries of his life. It
Holy Family Cathedral
consists in uniting ourselves to the Lord’s death and resurrection in a unique and personal way, constantly dying and rising anew with him. But it can also entail reproducing in our own lives various aspects of Jesus’ earthly life: his hidden life, his life in community, his closeness to the outcast, his poverty and other ways in which he showed his selfsacrificing love. The contemplation of these mysteries… leads us to incarnate them in our choices and attitudes” (GE,20). And so we need to see our entire lives as a mission, a mission to witness to Christ, and to accomplish this we can always ask the Holy Spirit to help us to make every decision in every moment of our lives (cf. GE,23). And it is in the context of this universal call to holiness that God then calls each of us specifically to one of four Christian vocations: marriage, religious profession, consecrated single life, or the priesthood. All of them are important, and are perfect for the persons called to each of them for it is by these vocations that God intends to make us saints, and as Pope Francis says in his exhortation, “the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint” (GE,34). But it is the last of these Christian vocations which I wish to reflect upon today. Msgr. Hiering, who built this church, Msgr. Halpine who lived and served here for 33 years and died preparing to celebrate the holy Mass, and Blessed Stanley Rother himself: “Priests are called ‘father’ because they are life-givers in the spiritual order. Spiritual fathers protect their children; they teach them; they are there for them. At the limit, they give their lives for them.” Jesus gathered his apostles and gave them a mission to be His witnesses, to share the Gospel, to baptize, to break bread so that others too could become His witnesses. Priests, down through the centuries — from Augustine and Aquinas, to John Paul II and our own Archbishop Peter Wells — these are the descendants of those first priests and bishops, the apostles. “They have been needed in every age, and they are needed today, for the kingdom of heaven must be proclaimed, the poor must be served, God must be worshipped, and the sacraments must be administered.” I have been fortunate to serve this wonderful parish as a successor to so many holy and amazing priests on and off for nearly six years. It has been the only parish I’ve served in since being ordained. But now, the bishop has called me to leave Holy Family and to become pastor of another parish, St. Catherine of Alexandria in West Tulsa. I follow in the footsteps of Fr. Matt Gerlach when he left the Cathedral and went to St. Catherine’s many years ago.
Newsletter, May 2018
And while I am happy to be called to serve God and His people in this new way, there is also sadness in parting, made even more difficult because there is no one permanent to succeed me as a associate pastor. I don’t know how many decades it has been since Holy Family has not had an associate, but it is a bitter reminder of how much we are in need of priests. We are doing much better than most parishes; we have two young men from our parish in seminary, and a third who will likely be joining them in the Fall. But this highlights just how much need there is for more young men to answer the call. A Pew Research study from 2012 showed that 500,000 young men have seriously considered the priesthood at some point in their lives, and yet only about 500 priests are ordained in the US each year. “The sadness is that the vast majority of those half-million did not receive adequate direction or information or encouragement.” And so my question is Who will fill these shoes? “Are you one of those half-million who has heard the whisper of God’s voice?” Do you know someone who has? A son, a brother, a grandson, a friend? Can I ask you mothers and fathers, grandparents, relatives, co-workers of these prospective candidates to encourage them? And can I ask all of you to pray… to pray for vocations to the priesthood for our parish and for our diocese? We are blessed and grateful that we still have Msgr. Gier with us and Holy Family will make it through till next summer, when, God willing, five new priests will be assigned in our diocese. But it is clear that far more men are called to this vocation than are answering. We need to help them to hear that call over the din of our noisy world. We do this by our prayers, by our lives, by our witness to Christ. Sharing what we have received so that lives can be changed (repentance) and led to holiness (forgiveness of sins). I want to thank you all for what you have taught me these years as your associate pastor. I will try to apply what I have learned in my first pastorate at St. Catherine’s. I will miss this Holy Family, but I don’t leave until July so there will be plenty of time and there is still much to accomplish before I go. I ask for your prayers for me, for Fr. Jovita and Msgr. Gier and our deacons, and most of all for our seminarians Robert Healey, Landon Tulipana, our prospective seminarian, Bruce Sander, and all the young men from these pews whom God is calling to the high adventure of the priesthood. You have my gratitude; you have my love, and I thank you.
Holy Family Cathedral
Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School, 2017-2018
Newsletter, May 2018
Isabella Melton, Mia Shank, Trenton Tabler, and Brady Videll, who achieved the requisite academic, faith, and leadership standards to qualify as candidates for the Dear Holy Family Cathedral Parishioners, Robinson Brothers’ Leadership Scholarship to Cascia Hall. Graduates of the 2017-2018 Eighth Grade Class The school year is drawing to a close and we are looking are: Christina Constable (Cascia Hall), Dhinal DeSilva forward to a number of exciting events this month. Our (Memorial), Canyon Garner (Washington), Clifford second-grade students, who have been working hard all Helgason (Memorial), Isabella Melton (Cascia Hall), year preparing for the sacraments of Reconciliation and Matthew Monnot (Bishop Kelley), Nikki Phillips (Bishop Eucharist, will be celebrating their First Holy Communion on Kelley), Katherine Pi (Bishop Kelley), Brad Pykiet Mother’s Day! This year we have eleven students from our (Collinsville), Justin Schrader (Edison), Samantha Schuster second grade receiving this sacrament: Everleigh (Owasso), Mia Shank (Cascia Hall), Taylor Street (Cascia Appelberg, Jillian Beck, Tommy Buckley, Angelina Carrillo, Hall), Trenton Tabler (Cascia Hall), and Brady Videll Tommy Dowdell, Fernando Guillan, Gideon Meddler, (Cascia Hall). This has been a truly outstanding class both Venezia Melton, Jacob Barry, Camden Tabler, and Michael academically, and as members of the Body of Christ. This Zerbe. Join with us in supporting them with your presence class has excelled at kindness and acts of charity, and we and your prayers. are so proud of them all. We see great things in their future! May is also the month for our annual Spring Arts Please keep Festival. Join us if you can as we celebrate the them in your tremendous gifts of our students. The festival is held in the prayers as Heiring Auditorium and on the lower level of the school on they enter th the evenings of Wednesday May 16 and Thursday May high school. 17th. This year our middle school drama students will be presenting the musical revue, “At the Bandstand” on We would Wednesday and our upper elementary students will also like to present “Charlotte’s Web” on Thursday evening. In recognize addition, Wednesday evening’s program will include a the following performance by the Holy Family Cathedral School Choir Holy Family Cathedral School alumni who will be and Thursday evening’s program will include a graduating from Cascia Hall this year for their outstanding performance by the School’s Band students. academic achievements: Geoffrey Escandor, Each evening’s events begin at 6:00 P.M. Student art work Gabriella Bernal, Erika Ravitch, Epadejah Brooks, Avery will be on display on the lower level of the school both Videll, Peter Nguyen; and Stewart Wire who will be evenings. graduating from Bishop Kelley. We are especially proud of Avery Videll who has been recognized as a National May is also the month of graduations. Holy Family Merit Scholar, and Erika Ravitch who has been recognized Cathedral School students participate in two special rites to as a Commended Scholar. mark the end of their middle school journey, and the beginning of their high school experience. On May 18th we It has been a blessing to all the faculty and staff at Holy will have our traditional Light of Leadership Mass. During Family Cathedral School to serve and support these young this ceremony, our eighth-grade class will pass on the light men and women as they have grown on the path of of Christ to the seventh-grade class as they step into their righteousness, and we will continue to pray and love them leadership roles for the upcoming school year. Finally, on as they graduate from this community to the May 20th at the Noon Mass, we will be celebrating the next. Congratulations to them, and to their families! graduation of our eighth grade class and recognizing their many spiritual and academic accomplishments. This year Yours in Christ, we are proud to announce that we have four students, Mrs. Southerland
Holy Family Cathedral
Family Faith Formation 2017-2018/Easter at Cathedral 2018 marks our second Holy Week and Easter with Bishop David Konderla. Parishioners and guests from other parishes were blessed with beautiful and prayerful liturgies, moving music and our Bishop’s homilies. We joyfully received new Catholics into our family at the Easter Vigil, pictured here with their sponsors, Bishop David and Fr. Jovita.
Deacon Jon Conro and Deacon B. D.Tidmore celebrated their first Holy Week liturgies and Easter Masses following their ordination in June of 2017. Holy Family appreciates the service our deacons give to our parish. Remember them in your prayers that they may grow in holiness and remain faithful to their vows.
Our high school students received Confirmation at the Noon Mass on Easter Sunday. Congratulations to all those celebrating sacraments this Easter. When you see them at Mass, take a moment to
Newsletter, May 2018
offer congratulations and assure them of your continued prayers that they might have the courage to live what they professed to believe.
Holy Family Cathedral PO Box 3204 Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 Electronic Service Requested
Most Rev. David A. Konderla, Bishop of Tulsa Most Rev. Edward J. Slattery, Bishop Emeritus Very Rev. Jovita C. Okonkwo, Rector Rev. John Grant, Associate Pastor Rev. Msgr. Gregory A. Gier, Rector Emeritus Deacon Tom Gorman Deacon Greg Stice Deacon Kevin Tulipana Deacon Jerry Mattox Deacon B.D. Tidmore Deacon Jon Conro Holy Family Cathedral Parish PO Box 3204, Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 918-582-6247 HolyFamilyCathedralParish.com TulsaCathedral@gmail.com Holy Family Cathedral School 820 South Boulder Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74119 918-582-0422 HolyFamilyCathedralSchool.com
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Weekend Mass Schedule: 5:00 p.m. Saturday 8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 12:00 Noon, and 5:00 p.m. Sunday Weekday Mass Schedule: 12:05 p.m. Monday 7:00 a.m. & 12:05 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday 7:00 a.m., 12:05 & 5:05 p.m. Friday 8:00 a.m. Saturday Tuesday-Saturday daily Masses are usually in the Chapel of Peace. Confessions: Ten minutes before all Masses, and 3:30 - 4:45 p.m. Saturday Friday Evening Holy Hour: 5:05 p.m. Mass, followed by Adoration and Benediction until 6:30 p.m.
Cathedral News “HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER” Parish Town Hall—2018
Inside: Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School Holy Family Parishioners Receive Sacraments at Easter
Holy Family Cathedral
Newsletter, May 2018
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE WITH HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER by Very Rev. Chukwudi Jovita Okonkwo, Ph.D.
About a month ago, I got the call that I dreaded but which I knew was coming. I was at the Parish Women’s Club luncheon when my phone buzzed and I looked at it. It was a call from Bishop Konderla. I stepped aside to answer the call that I dreaded, and true enough, it was exactly what I suspected. It is no longer news that in less than two months, we’ll be losing Fr. John Grant as our Associate Pastor. John was to many of us— parishioners of Holy Family—a very dutiful priest. However, to me, he was more than that priest who prepared and delivered inspiring homilies, ran to the sick to comfort and aid them with the Church’s Sacraments, directed the celebration of the liturgy here at the cathedral, and inspired many young people of our parish to seek to hear God’s voice calling them to serve him in the priesthood and the religious life. John was to me like a right-hand-man. And as a right-handed person, the moving of John feels like ripping off my right hand. I have to regrow it or learn to use the left; and for a man nearing 50 that won’t be a cushy job. But that’s how the priestly life is; we’re constantly moving. And so in the next few weeks, we’ll have the opportunity to say a big ‘thank you’ to Fr. John Grant for his love, zeal and dedication to Holy Family Cathedral—the only parish he has so far served since he became a priest, six years ago. All hope is not lost because we still have our beloved Monsignor Gier. One of the things I’m glad to know about him is that he has served his body and mind well, and looks like he’ll have a lot more years to offer in the service of the Lord. We pray that God gives him the strength to enjoy his retirement and continue to provide his pastoral support to our family. We’ll also be welcoming a new priest-to-be by June, Vince Fernandez, who will spend his summer with us before going back to Rome to complete his studies. WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US? For the rest of the year, we’ll have no associate pastor. I’ll do my best to be sure you’re provided with all the pastoral assistance you need. We’re not going to trim
down the number of Masses celebrated in the weekends. We’ll maintain our regular confession schedule. The Sacraments won’t suffer as a result of the change. Some other events we hold from week to week may be impacted. We’ll make room for discussions on these and take counsel from you. For this reason, I invite you to attend the Parish Town Hall meeting that we’ll hold on the 9th of this month. We’ll discuss issues ranging from pastoral life of the parish to projects and developments that we deem very essential to grow the faith of our parish and school. It’ll also serve as a forum to meet and greet other parishioners you may not have met before— maybe because they attend a different Mass from the one you regularly attend on Sundays. We’ll also present the parish staff whom you probably have spoken to over the phone but have not had the chance to meet. Other volunteers who serve the parish in the Finance Council, Parish Council, Building Committee, and some members of Holy Family School staff will also be present. We’ll love to have your input and various ideas you may have. Putting forward your ideas is very important for growth and to lessen gossips and non-constructive criticisms. For example, a few months ago, a parishioner wrote me a letter inquiring about a few things about which they had concerns. One of the results of our discussion is that we’ll start publishing the minutes of the Parish Council meetings to acquaint everyone with the deliberations of the Parish Council and give room for you to provide your input. TOWN HALL MEETING I consider it pertinent to let us know the exact things we’ll be deliberating at the town hall meeting. I’m aware that not everyone will be able to attend because of other events around that might conflict with the scheduled meeting. I’m also aware that this is graduation season and many families will be tied down with the graduation of a child or nephew or niece. I therefore present a sneak peek of what you’ll hear at the town hall. SNEAK PEAK I am very pleased to welcome you to the Holy Family Cathedral Parish Town Hall Meeting. Thank you so much for being here. Why a Town Hall Meeting? It is a chance for me, as your servant, to update you on the state of our cathedral and express the joy and excitement that I have for
Holy Family Cathedral
our future. It is also a chance for each parishioner to learn about the parish and through that learning grow in love for God and His Church, particularly through Holy Family Cathedral. Like any good Town Hall, it is also a chance for you to ask questions about the cathedral and the direction in which it is going. Before we can get to this future and direction, it is impossible not to reflect on my own journey coming to this position as rector of the cathedral and how this journey here is truly and only inspired by God. Thinking back to my time growing up in Nigeria with a large Catholic family, I think of my father inviting us to family discussions and sitting down with him to reflect on the life of the family. His special emphasis on prayer as the binding cord for the entire family has remained with us. And today, with eight of us having our own families, the same spirit of prayer is still alive with my other seven brothers and sisters, 21 nieces and nephews, and seven grand nieces and nephews. I reflect also on: my time attending Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu Nigeria, which has produced 3 Cardinals, 13 Archbishops, 32 Bishops and numerous priests; my journey to the United States and experiencing a culture different from my own, but beautifully Catholic nonetheless; my time as chaplain of the Newman Center at the University of Tulsa, which showed me the vitality of the youth of our Church; my time as pastor in places like Sapulpa, which showed me the blessings of parish life in Oklahoma. From all these places I have come, and by the Holy Spirit’s guidance, I now lead this community here, full of truth, goodness and beauty. Thus I humbly stand before you today and ask for your prayers for my continued journey, but also prayers for this parish which I have come to love so dearly. Any parish is strengthened in important ways by its clergy, staff and lay leaders; we are thus so fortunate to have dutiful help here. [I’ll introduce the Deacons and their wives; introduce the Parish Staff; introduce the Parish Council and Finance Council members]. With my own journey and with the wonderful help I have described, we move forward. We do so by seeking to ever build on the foundations laid by our forebears. We build a future like Saint Katherine Drexel did at this very Church over 100 years ago. We build a future like Monsignor Heiring and Monsignor Halpine did, in whose named rooms we sit today. We build a future like Pope Francis has suggested when he said, “To Christians, the future does have a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a
Newsletter, May 2018
heart that doesn't lock itself into darkness, that doesn't dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow.” This tomorrow of hope is here and now, and we will build it together for the world, for the diocese, for this parish. With this build in mind, we have entered into an agreement with an organization named the Steier Group, from Omaha, Nebraska. They will be conducting a feasibility study beginning May 14th about what we hope to build at this very Church for our tomorrow of hope. I specifically speak of building an Activity Center for our parish across the street from the Holy Family Cathedral School. I also speak of building to our basement by adding an elevator and new restrooms while updating all the facilities in the Heiring Auditorium and Halpine room. Why do I speak of building as hope for tomorrow? Firstly, these projects will provide us with opportunities for growth; a hope for growth in the number of parishioners. For example, the elevator will increase the access to the basement for our more senior members who find it challenging to attend functions like Wednesdays at the Cathedral in the basement. In fact, I already received a promise for $25,000 from someone who’s not even a parishioner of Holy Family but wants an elevator for easier access to the basement for daily Mass. It will allow us to offer modern amenities people expect of a parish, like clean restrooms with additional toilet stalls, perfect for young families. Growth will also occur in being able to host more functions, like wedding receptions, in an updated auditorium and kitchen. Next, these projects will truly influence how we live our faith at the cathedral. People naturally like to be a part of something that is growing, and grow, we will. People’s faith will be enriched by having dedicated space for things like Bible Study, Holy Family Cathedral School functions and more. For example, this project will build classrooms where we can have dedicated spaces for religious programming for our children in Family Faith Formation. Additionally, this project will include a basketball court. Imagine a chance for the youth of our parish to more actively engage the parish with sports and physical activity. This can happen and I am pleased to introduce you to these renderings. [At this point, I’ll introduce and explain the project renderings]. The project cost will total 10 million dollars; 3.8 for the basement project with the remainder to the Activity Center project. While this is no small amount, the time to begin is now. It is no secret that our parish is aging and is in need of an injection of vitality. We thus have urgency in moving to this tomorrow of hope that Pope Francis
Holy Family Cathedral
referenced. The buildings and projects have given me and will give us this excitement and hope we need. So many in the Holy Family history have made sacrifices to build this place up to where it is today. No less sacrifice is asked of us. Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the sacrificial Saint of Auschwitz, commented, “Let us remember that love lives through sacrifice and is nourished by giving. Without sacrifice, there is no love.” The time is now. Who will join me? May the Mother of God, Mother of Good Counsel and Spiritual Vessel guide our thoughts and plant seeds of hope and courage in us as we look to the future with renewed hope and confidence.
Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ By Rev. Fr. John Grant “You are my witnesses…” (cf. Lk 24:48) We are witnesses of Jesus resurrected. What does it mean to be a witness? Well, we are familiar with eye witnesses of an event, who recount something they saw. This is a passive understanding of witness, and while it was true of the apostles: they did in fact see and hear what Jesus did; they didn’t understand and so that is not precisely what He is asking of them or us. What He means by saying that they “are witnesses of these things” is that they are to testify to others about the reality of Jesus that they have experienced. And this is something we can do too. At the very beginning of the new life to which Christ calls us, what was happening, who was speaking? It was the two disciples who had been walking to Emmaus, who recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. They have just run back to find the apostles and were testifying to their experience, and that is when our Lord then manifests Himself to the apostles. The second thing it means to be a witness in the context that Jesus intends is that His apostles and we His disciples must live out of the same radical love and trust that He demonstrated in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The apostles did this by their words, their lives, and even their blood, thus the Greek word for witness is Martyr. They witnessed without fear of suffering or death because they knew that if they remained faithful and were
Newsletter, May 2018
united to Jesus in a death like His, that they would manifest their hope to participate in His Resurrection as well. Finally, the third thing that Jesus means when he tells the apostles and us to be witnesses is that we are to have a practical effect in other people’s lives. Namely, that we are to proclaim the Good News to all people so that they might repent and receive forgiveness for their sins. And this is why the disciples were afraid when Jesus appeared in their midst. It is shocking enough to see someone who was dead standing before you, but what do you suppose would be the first thing you’d think of if you saw someone whom you had betrayed and abandoned come back from the dead? You might suppose that he’d come back for revenge. That’s why they were afraid, but it was because they didn’t understand, they never understood why all of this had to happen. So Jesus explains it to them, the scriptures which they already knew and had heard many times, but now he shows them what they mean. That the Christ had to suffer and die for the forgiveness of sins, for our salvation. We can’t understand the Good News, that we have been rescued, unless we first realize that there is something we need to be rescued from. And this is what St. John meant when he said: “Jesus Christ the righteous one… is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world” (1Jn 2:1-2). It’s also what St. Peter preached in his first sermon after Pentecost: “The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses… God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer. Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away” (Acts 3:15,18-19). “The message of Jesus has a purpose and that purpose is to change our lives (repentance) and lead us to holiness (forgiveness of sins).” Which is why, on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, our Holy Father Pope Francis issued an Apostolic Exhortation “On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World.” In it he recalls the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, which states: “Fortified by so many and such powerful means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect” (LG,11). The Pope reminds us that “We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves” (GE,14). “At its core,” the Pope says, “holiness is experiencing, in union with Christ, the mysteries of his life. It
Holy Family Cathedral
consists in uniting ourselves to the Lord’s death and resurrection in a unique and personal way, constantly dying and rising anew with him. But it can also entail reproducing in our own lives various aspects of Jesus’ earthly life: his hidden life, his life in community, his closeness to the outcast, his poverty and other ways in which he showed his selfsacrificing love. The contemplation of these mysteries… leads us to incarnate them in our choices and attitudes” (GE,20). And so we need to see our entire lives as a mission, a mission to witness to Christ, and to accomplish this we can always ask the Holy Spirit to help us to make every decision in every moment of our lives (cf. GE,23). And it is in the context of this universal call to holiness that God then calls each of us specifically to one of four Christian vocations: marriage, religious profession, consecrated single life, or the priesthood. All of them are important, and are perfect for the persons called to each of them for it is by these vocations that God intends to make us saints, and as Pope Francis says in his exhortation, “the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint” (GE,34). But it is the last of these Christian vocations which I wish to reflect upon today. Msgr. Hiering, who built this church, Msgr. Halpine who lived and served here for 33 years and died preparing to celebrate the holy Mass, and Blessed Stanley Rother himself: “Priests are called ‘father’ because they are life-givers in the spiritual order. Spiritual fathers protect their children; they teach them; they are there for them. At the limit, they give their lives for them.” Jesus gathered his apostles and gave them a mission to be His witnesses, to share the Gospel, to baptize, to break bread so that others too could become His witnesses. Priests, down through the centuries — from Augustine and Aquinas, to John Paul II and our own Archbishop Peter Wells — these are the descendants of those first priests and bishops, the apostles. “They have been needed in every age, and they are needed today, for the kingdom of heaven must be proclaimed, the poor must be served, God must be worshipped, and the sacraments must be administered.” I have been fortunate to serve this wonderful parish as a successor to so many holy and amazing priests on and off for nearly six years. It has been the only parish I’ve served in since being ordained. But now, the bishop has called me to leave Holy Family and to become pastor of another parish, St. Catherine of Alexandria in West Tulsa. I follow in the footsteps of Fr. Matt Gerlach when he left the Cathedral and went to St. Catherine’s many years ago.
Newsletter, May 2018
And while I am happy to be called to serve God and His people in this new way, there is also sadness in parting, made even more difficult because there is no one permanent to succeed me as a associate pastor. I don’t know how many decades it has been since Holy Family has not had an associate, but it is a bitter reminder of how much we are in need of priests. We are doing much better than most parishes; we have two young men from our parish in seminary, and a third who will likely be joining them in the Fall. But this highlights just how much need there is for more young men to answer the call. A Pew Research study from 2012 showed that 500,000 young men have seriously considered the priesthood at some point in their lives, and yet only about 500 priests are ordained in the US each year. “The sadness is that the vast majority of those half-million did not receive adequate direction or information or encouragement.” And so my question is Who will fill these shoes? “Are you one of those half-million who has heard the whisper of God’s voice?” Do you know someone who has? A son, a brother, a grandson, a friend? Can I ask you mothers and fathers, grandparents, relatives, co-workers of these prospective candidates to encourage them? And can I ask all of you to pray… to pray for vocations to the priesthood for our parish and for our diocese? We are blessed and grateful that we still have Msgr. Gier with us and Holy Family will make it through till next summer, when, God willing, five new priests will be assigned in our diocese. But it is clear that far more men are called to this vocation than are answering. We need to help them to hear that call over the din of our noisy world. We do this by our prayers, by our lives, by our witness to Christ. Sharing what we have received so that lives can be changed (repentance) and led to holiness (forgiveness of sins). I want to thank you all for what you have taught me these years as your associate pastor. I will try to apply what I have learned in my first pastorate at St. Catherine’s. I will miss this Holy Family, but I don’t leave until July so there will be plenty of time and there is still much to accomplish before I go. I ask for your prayers for me, for Fr. Jovita and Msgr. Gier and our deacons, and most of all for our seminarians Robert Healey, Landon Tulipana, our prospective seminarian, Bruce Sander, and all the young men from these pews whom God is calling to the high adventure of the priesthood. You have my gratitude; you have my love, and I thank you.
Holy Family Cathedral
Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School, 2017-2018
Newsletter, May 2018
Isabella Melton, Mia Shank, Trenton Tabler, and Brady Videll, who achieved the requisite academic, faith, and leadership standards to qualify as candidates for the Dear Holy Family Cathedral Parishioners, Robinson Brothers’ Leadership Scholarship to Cascia Hall. Graduates of the 2017-2018 Eighth Grade Class The school year is drawing to a close and we are looking are: Christina Constable (Cascia Hall), Dhinal DeSilva forward to a number of exciting events this month. Our (Memorial), Canyon Garner (Washington), Clifford second-grade students, who have been working hard all Helgason (Memorial), Isabella Melton (Cascia Hall), year preparing for the sacraments of Reconciliation and Matthew Monnot (Bishop Kelley), Nikki Phillips (Bishop Eucharist, will be celebrating their First Holy Communion on Kelley), Katherine Pi (Bishop Kelley), Brad Pykiet Mother’s Day! This year we have eleven students from our (Collinsville), Justin Schrader (Edison), Samantha Schuster second grade receiving this sacrament: Everleigh (Owasso), Mia Shank (Cascia Hall), Taylor Street (Cascia Appelberg, Jillian Beck, Tommy Buckley, Angelina Carrillo, Hall), Trenton Tabler (Cascia Hall), and Brady Videll Tommy Dowdell, Fernando Guillan, Gideon Meddler, (Cascia Hall). This has been a truly outstanding class both Venezia Melton, Jacob Barry, Camden Tabler, and Michael academically, and as members of the Body of Christ. This Zerbe. Join with us in supporting them with your presence class has excelled at kindness and acts of charity, and we and your prayers. are so proud of them all. We see great things in their future! May is also the month for our annual Spring Arts Please keep Festival. Join us if you can as we celebrate the them in your tremendous gifts of our students. The festival is held in the prayers as Heiring Auditorium and on the lower level of the school on they enter th the evenings of Wednesday May 16 and Thursday May high school. 17th. This year our middle school drama students will be presenting the musical revue, “At the Bandstand” on We would Wednesday and our upper elementary students will also like to present “Charlotte’s Web” on Thursday evening. In recognize addition, Wednesday evening’s program will include a the following performance by the Holy Family Cathedral School Choir Holy Family Cathedral School alumni who will be and Thursday evening’s program will include a graduating from Cascia Hall this year for their outstanding performance by the School’s Band students. academic achievements: Geoffrey Escandor, Each evening’s events begin at 6:00 P.M. Student art work Gabriella Bernal, Erika Ravitch, Epadejah Brooks, Avery will be on display on the lower level of the school both Videll, Peter Nguyen; and Stewart Wire who will be evenings. graduating from Bishop Kelley. We are especially proud of Avery Videll who has been recognized as a National May is also the month of graduations. Holy Family Merit Scholar, and Erika Ravitch who has been recognized Cathedral School students participate in two special rites to as a Commended Scholar. mark the end of their middle school journey, and the beginning of their high school experience. On May 18th we It has been a blessing to all the faculty and staff at Holy will have our traditional Light of Leadership Mass. During Family Cathedral School to serve and support these young this ceremony, our eighth-grade class will pass on the light men and women as they have grown on the path of of Christ to the seventh-grade class as they step into their righteousness, and we will continue to pray and love them leadership roles for the upcoming school year. Finally, on as they graduate from this community to the May 20th at the Noon Mass, we will be celebrating the next. Congratulations to them, and to their families! graduation of our eighth grade class and recognizing their many spiritual and academic accomplishments. This year Yours in Christ, we are proud to announce that we have four students, Mrs. Southerland
Holy Family Cathedral
Family Faith Formation 2017-2018/Easter at Cathedral 2018 marks our second Holy Week and Easter with Bishop David Konderla. Parishioners and guests from other parishes were blessed with beautiful and prayerful liturgies, moving music and our Bishop’s homilies. We joyfully received new Catholics into our family at the Easter Vigil, pictured here with their sponsors, Bishop David and Fr. Jovita.
Deacon Jon Conro and Deacon B. D.Tidmore celebrated their first Holy Week liturgies and Easter Masses following their ordination in June of 2017. Holy Family appreciates the service our deacons give to our parish. Remember them in your prayers that they may grow in holiness and remain faithful to their vows.
Our high school students received Confirmation at the Noon Mass on Easter Sunday. Congratulations to all those celebrating sacraments this Easter. When you see them at Mass, take a moment to
Newsletter, May 2018
offer congratulations and assure them of your continued prayers that they might have the courage to live what they professed to believe.
Holy Family Cathedral PO Box 3204 Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 Electronic Service Requested
Most Rev. David A. Konderla, Bishop of Tulsa Most Rev. Edward J. Slattery, Bishop Emeritus Very Rev. Jovita C. Okonkwo, Rector Rev. John Grant, Associate Pastor Rev. Msgr. Gregory A. Gier, Rector Emeritus Deacon Tom Gorman Deacon Greg Stice Deacon Kevin Tulipana Deacon Jerry Mattox Deacon B.D. Tidmore Deacon Jon Conro Holy Family Cathedral Parish PO Box 3204, Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 918-582-6247 HolyFamilyCathedralParish.com TulsaCathedral@gmail.com Holy Family Cathedral School 820 South Boulder Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74119 918-582-0422 HolyFamilyCathedralSchool.com
NONPROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID TULSA OK PERMIT 381
Weekend Mass Schedule: 5:00 p.m. Saturday 8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 12:00 Noon, and 5:00 p.m. Sunday Weekday Mass Schedule: 12:05 p.m. Monday 7:00 a.m. & 12:05 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday 7:00 a.m., 12:05 & 5:05 p.m. Friday 8:00 a.m. Saturday Tuesday-Saturday daily Masses are usually in the Chapel of Peace. Confessions: Ten minutes before all Masses, and 3:30 - 4:45 p.m. Saturday Friday Evening Holy Hour: 5:05 p.m. Mass, followed by Adoration and Benediction until 6:30 p.m.
Cathedral News “HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER” Parish Town Hall—2018
Inside: Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School Holy Family Parishioners Receive Sacraments at Easter
Holy Family Cathedral
Newsletter, May 2018
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE WITH HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER by Very Rev. Chukwudi Jovita Okonkwo, Ph.D.
About a month ago, I got the call that I dreaded but which I knew was coming. I was at the Parish Women’s Club luncheon when my phone buzzed and I looked at it. It was a call from Bishop Konderla. I stepped aside to answer the call that I dreaded, and true enough, it was exactly what I suspected. It is no longer news that in less than two months, we’ll be losing Fr. John Grant as our Associate Pastor. John was to many of us— parishioners of Holy Family—a very dutiful priest. However, to me, he was more than that priest who prepared and delivered inspiring homilies, ran to the sick to comfort and aid them with the Church’s Sacraments, directed the celebration of the liturgy here at the cathedral, and inspired many young people of our parish to seek to hear God’s voice calling them to serve him in the priesthood and the religious life. John was to me like a right-hand-man. And as a right-handed person, the moving of John feels like ripping off my right hand. I have to regrow it or learn to use the left; and for a man nearing 50 that won’t be a cushy job. But that’s how the priestly life is; we’re constantly moving. And so in the next few weeks, we’ll have the opportunity to say a big ‘thank you’ to Fr. John Grant for his love, zeal and dedication to Holy Family Cathedral—the only parish he has so far served since he became a priest, six years ago. All hope is not lost because we still have our beloved Monsignor Gier. One of the things I’m glad to know about him is that he has served his body and mind well, and looks like he’ll have a lot more years to offer in the service of the Lord. We pray that God gives him the strength to enjoy his retirement and continue to provide his pastoral support to our family. We’ll also be welcoming a new priest-to-be by June, Vince Fernandez, who will spend his summer with us before going back to Rome to complete his studies. WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US? For the rest of the year, we’ll have no associate pastor. I’ll do my best to be sure you’re provided with all the pastoral assistance you need. We’re not going to trim
down the number of Masses celebrated in the weekends. We’ll maintain our regular confession schedule. The Sacraments won’t suffer as a result of the change. Some other events we hold from week to week may be impacted. We’ll make room for discussions on these and take counsel from you. For this reason, I invite you to attend the Parish Town Hall meeting that we’ll hold on the 9th of this month. We’ll discuss issues ranging from pastoral life of the parish to projects and developments that we deem very essential to grow the faith of our parish and school. It’ll also serve as a forum to meet and greet other parishioners you may not have met before— maybe because they attend a different Mass from the one you regularly attend on Sundays. We’ll also present the parish staff whom you probably have spoken to over the phone but have not had the chance to meet. Other volunteers who serve the parish in the Finance Council, Parish Council, Building Committee, and some members of Holy Family School staff will also be present. We’ll love to have your input and various ideas you may have. Putting forward your ideas is very important for growth and to lessen gossips and non-constructive criticisms. For example, a few months ago, a parishioner wrote me a letter inquiring about a few things about which they had concerns. One of the results of our discussion is that we’ll start publishing the minutes of the Parish Council meetings to acquaint everyone with the deliberations of the Parish Council and give room for you to provide your input. TOWN HALL MEETING I consider it pertinent to let us know the exact things we’ll be deliberating at the town hall meeting. I’m aware that not everyone will be able to attend because of other events around that might conflict with the scheduled meeting. I’m also aware that this is graduation season and many families will be tied down with the graduation of a child or nephew or niece. I therefore present a sneak peek of what you’ll hear at the town hall. SNEAK PEAK I am very pleased to welcome you to the Holy Family Cathedral Parish Town Hall Meeting. Thank you so much for being here. Why a Town Hall Meeting? It is a chance for me, as your servant, to update you on the state of our cathedral and express the joy and excitement that I have for
Holy Family Cathedral
our future. It is also a chance for each parishioner to learn about the parish and through that learning grow in love for God and His Church, particularly through Holy Family Cathedral. Like any good Town Hall, it is also a chance for you to ask questions about the cathedral and the direction in which it is going. Before we can get to this future and direction, it is impossible not to reflect on my own journey coming to this position as rector of the cathedral and how this journey here is truly and only inspired by God. Thinking back to my time growing up in Nigeria with a large Catholic family, I think of my father inviting us to family discussions and sitting down with him to reflect on the life of the family. His special emphasis on prayer as the binding cord for the entire family has remained with us. And today, with eight of us having our own families, the same spirit of prayer is still alive with my other seven brothers and sisters, 21 nieces and nephews, and seven grand nieces and nephews. I reflect also on: my time attending Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu Nigeria, which has produced 3 Cardinals, 13 Archbishops, 32 Bishops and numerous priests; my journey to the United States and experiencing a culture different from my own, but beautifully Catholic nonetheless; my time as chaplain of the Newman Center at the University of Tulsa, which showed me the vitality of the youth of our Church; my time as pastor in places like Sapulpa, which showed me the blessings of parish life in Oklahoma. From all these places I have come, and by the Holy Spirit’s guidance, I now lead this community here, full of truth, goodness and beauty. Thus I humbly stand before you today and ask for your prayers for my continued journey, but also prayers for this parish which I have come to love so dearly. Any parish is strengthened in important ways by its clergy, staff and lay leaders; we are thus so fortunate to have dutiful help here. [I’ll introduce the Deacons and their wives; introduce the Parish Staff; introduce the Parish Council and Finance Council members]. With my own journey and with the wonderful help I have described, we move forward. We do so by seeking to ever build on the foundations laid by our forebears. We build a future like Saint Katherine Drexel did at this very Church over 100 years ago. We build a future like Monsignor Heiring and Monsignor Halpine did, in whose named rooms we sit today. We build a future like Pope Francis has suggested when he said, “To Christians, the future does have a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a
Newsletter, May 2018
heart that doesn't lock itself into darkness, that doesn't dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow.” This tomorrow of hope is here and now, and we will build it together for the world, for the diocese, for this parish. With this build in mind, we have entered into an agreement with an organization named the Steier Group, from Omaha, Nebraska. They will be conducting a feasibility study beginning May 14th about what we hope to build at this very Church for our tomorrow of hope. I specifically speak of building an Activity Center for our parish across the street from the Holy Family Cathedral School. I also speak of building to our basement by adding an elevator and new restrooms while updating all the facilities in the Heiring Auditorium and Halpine room. Why do I speak of building as hope for tomorrow? Firstly, these projects will provide us with opportunities for growth; a hope for growth in the number of parishioners. For example, the elevator will increase the access to the basement for our more senior members who find it challenging to attend functions like Wednesdays at the Cathedral in the basement. In fact, I already received a promise for $25,000 from someone who’s not even a parishioner of Holy Family but wants an elevator for easier access to the basement for daily Mass. It will allow us to offer modern amenities people expect of a parish, like clean restrooms with additional toilet stalls, perfect for young families. Growth will also occur in being able to host more functions, like wedding receptions, in an updated auditorium and kitchen. Next, these projects will truly influence how we live our faith at the cathedral. People naturally like to be a part of something that is growing, and grow, we will. People’s faith will be enriched by having dedicated space for things like Bible Study, Holy Family Cathedral School functions and more. For example, this project will build classrooms where we can have dedicated spaces for religious programming for our children in Family Faith Formation. Additionally, this project will include a basketball court. Imagine a chance for the youth of our parish to more actively engage the parish with sports and physical activity. This can happen and I am pleased to introduce you to these renderings. [At this point, I’ll introduce and explain the project renderings]. The project cost will total 10 million dollars; 3.8 for the basement project with the remainder to the Activity Center project. While this is no small amount, the time to begin is now. It is no secret that our parish is aging and is in need of an injection of vitality. We thus have urgency in moving to this tomorrow of hope that Pope Francis
Holy Family Cathedral
referenced. The buildings and projects have given me and will give us this excitement and hope we need. So many in the Holy Family history have made sacrifices to build this place up to where it is today. No less sacrifice is asked of us. Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the sacrificial Saint of Auschwitz, commented, “Let us remember that love lives through sacrifice and is nourished by giving. Without sacrifice, there is no love.” The time is now. Who will join me? May the Mother of God, Mother of Good Counsel and Spiritual Vessel guide our thoughts and plant seeds of hope and courage in us as we look to the future with renewed hope and confidence.
Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ By Rev. Fr. John Grant “You are my witnesses…” (cf. Lk 24:48) We are witnesses of Jesus resurrected. What does it mean to be a witness? Well, we are familiar with eye witnesses of an event, who recount something they saw. This is a passive understanding of witness, and while it was true of the apostles: they did in fact see and hear what Jesus did; they didn’t understand and so that is not precisely what He is asking of them or us. What He means by saying that they “are witnesses of these things” is that they are to testify to others about the reality of Jesus that they have experienced. And this is something we can do too. At the very beginning of the new life to which Christ calls us, what was happening, who was speaking? It was the two disciples who had been walking to Emmaus, who recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. They have just run back to find the apostles and were testifying to their experience, and that is when our Lord then manifests Himself to the apostles. The second thing it means to be a witness in the context that Jesus intends is that His apostles and we His disciples must live out of the same radical love and trust that He demonstrated in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The apostles did this by their words, their lives, and even their blood, thus the Greek word for witness is Martyr. They witnessed without fear of suffering or death because they knew that if they remained faithful and were
Newsletter, May 2018
united to Jesus in a death like His, that they would manifest their hope to participate in His Resurrection as well. Finally, the third thing that Jesus means when he tells the apostles and us to be witnesses is that we are to have a practical effect in other people’s lives. Namely, that we are to proclaim the Good News to all people so that they might repent and receive forgiveness for their sins. And this is why the disciples were afraid when Jesus appeared in their midst. It is shocking enough to see someone who was dead standing before you, but what do you suppose would be the first thing you’d think of if you saw someone whom you had betrayed and abandoned come back from the dead? You might suppose that he’d come back for revenge. That’s why they were afraid, but it was because they didn’t understand, they never understood why all of this had to happen. So Jesus explains it to them, the scriptures which they already knew and had heard many times, but now he shows them what they mean. That the Christ had to suffer and die for the forgiveness of sins, for our salvation. We can’t understand the Good News, that we have been rescued, unless we first realize that there is something we need to be rescued from. And this is what St. John meant when he said: “Jesus Christ the righteous one… is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world” (1Jn 2:1-2). It’s also what St. Peter preached in his first sermon after Pentecost: “The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses… God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer. Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away” (Acts 3:15,18-19). “The message of Jesus has a purpose and that purpose is to change our lives (repentance) and lead us to holiness (forgiveness of sins).” Which is why, on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, our Holy Father Pope Francis issued an Apostolic Exhortation “On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World.” In it he recalls the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, which states: “Fortified by so many and such powerful means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect” (LG,11). The Pope reminds us that “We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves” (GE,14). “At its core,” the Pope says, “holiness is experiencing, in union with Christ, the mysteries of his life. It
Holy Family Cathedral
consists in uniting ourselves to the Lord’s death and resurrection in a unique and personal way, constantly dying and rising anew with him. But it can also entail reproducing in our own lives various aspects of Jesus’ earthly life: his hidden life, his life in community, his closeness to the outcast, his poverty and other ways in which he showed his selfsacrificing love. The contemplation of these mysteries… leads us to incarnate them in our choices and attitudes” (GE,20). And so we need to see our entire lives as a mission, a mission to witness to Christ, and to accomplish this we can always ask the Holy Spirit to help us to make every decision in every moment of our lives (cf. GE,23). And it is in the context of this universal call to holiness that God then calls each of us specifically to one of four Christian vocations: marriage, religious profession, consecrated single life, or the priesthood. All of them are important, and are perfect for the persons called to each of them for it is by these vocations that God intends to make us saints, and as Pope Francis says in his exhortation, “the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint” (GE,34). But it is the last of these Christian vocations which I wish to reflect upon today. Msgr. Hiering, who built this church, Msgr. Halpine who lived and served here for 33 years and died preparing to celebrate the holy Mass, and Blessed Stanley Rother himself: “Priests are called ‘father’ because they are life-givers in the spiritual order. Spiritual fathers protect their children; they teach them; they are there for them. At the limit, they give their lives for them.” Jesus gathered his apostles and gave them a mission to be His witnesses, to share the Gospel, to baptize, to break bread so that others too could become His witnesses. Priests, down through the centuries — from Augustine and Aquinas, to John Paul II and our own Archbishop Peter Wells — these are the descendants of those first priests and bishops, the apostles. “They have been needed in every age, and they are needed today, for the kingdom of heaven must be proclaimed, the poor must be served, God must be worshipped, and the sacraments must be administered.” I have been fortunate to serve this wonderful parish as a successor to so many holy and amazing priests on and off for nearly six years. It has been the only parish I’ve served in since being ordained. But now, the bishop has called me to leave Holy Family and to become pastor of another parish, St. Catherine of Alexandria in West Tulsa. I follow in the footsteps of Fr. Matt Gerlach when he left the Cathedral and went to St. Catherine’s many years ago.
Newsletter, May 2018
And while I am happy to be called to serve God and His people in this new way, there is also sadness in parting, made even more difficult because there is no one permanent to succeed me as a associate pastor. I don’t know how many decades it has been since Holy Family has not had an associate, but it is a bitter reminder of how much we are in need of priests. We are doing much better than most parishes; we have two young men from our parish in seminary, and a third who will likely be joining them in the Fall. But this highlights just how much need there is for more young men to answer the call. A Pew Research study from 2012 showed that 500,000 young men have seriously considered the priesthood at some point in their lives, and yet only about 500 priests are ordained in the US each year. “The sadness is that the vast majority of those half-million did not receive adequate direction or information or encouragement.” And so my question is Who will fill these shoes? “Are you one of those half-million who has heard the whisper of God’s voice?” Do you know someone who has? A son, a brother, a grandson, a friend? Can I ask you mothers and fathers, grandparents, relatives, co-workers of these prospective candidates to encourage them? And can I ask all of you to pray… to pray for vocations to the priesthood for our parish and for our diocese? We are blessed and grateful that we still have Msgr. Gier with us and Holy Family will make it through till next summer, when, God willing, five new priests will be assigned in our diocese. But it is clear that far more men are called to this vocation than are answering. We need to help them to hear that call over the din of our noisy world. We do this by our prayers, by our lives, by our witness to Christ. Sharing what we have received so that lives can be changed (repentance) and led to holiness (forgiveness of sins). I want to thank you all for what you have taught me these years as your associate pastor. I will try to apply what I have learned in my first pastorate at St. Catherine’s. I will miss this Holy Family, but I don’t leave until July so there will be plenty of time and there is still much to accomplish before I go. I ask for your prayers for me, for Fr. Jovita and Msgr. Gier and our deacons, and most of all for our seminarians Robert Healey, Landon Tulipana, our prospective seminarian, Bruce Sander, and all the young men from these pews whom God is calling to the high adventure of the priesthood. You have my gratitude; you have my love, and I thank you.
Holy Family Cathedral
Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School, 2017-2018
Newsletter, May 2018
Isabella Melton, Mia Shank, Trenton Tabler, and Brady Videll, who achieved the requisite academic, faith, and leadership standards to qualify as candidates for the Dear Holy Family Cathedral Parishioners, Robinson Brothers’ Leadership Scholarship to Cascia Hall. Graduates of the 2017-2018 Eighth Grade Class The school year is drawing to a close and we are looking are: Christina Constable (Cascia Hall), Dhinal DeSilva forward to a number of exciting events this month. Our (Memorial), Canyon Garner (Washington), Clifford second-grade students, who have been working hard all Helgason (Memorial), Isabella Melton (Cascia Hall), year preparing for the sacraments of Reconciliation and Matthew Monnot (Bishop Kelley), Nikki Phillips (Bishop Eucharist, will be celebrating their First Holy Communion on Kelley), Katherine Pi (Bishop Kelley), Brad Pykiet Mother’s Day! This year we have eleven students from our (Collinsville), Justin Schrader (Edison), Samantha Schuster second grade receiving this sacrament: Everleigh (Owasso), Mia Shank (Cascia Hall), Taylor Street (Cascia Appelberg, Jillian Beck, Tommy Buckley, Angelina Carrillo, Hall), Trenton Tabler (Cascia Hall), and Brady Videll Tommy Dowdell, Fernando Guillan, Gideon Meddler, (Cascia Hall). This has been a truly outstanding class both Venezia Melton, Jacob Barry, Camden Tabler, and Michael academically, and as members of the Body of Christ. This Zerbe. Join with us in supporting them with your presence class has excelled at kindness and acts of charity, and we and your prayers. are so proud of them all. We see great things in their future! May is also the month for our annual Spring Arts Please keep Festival. Join us if you can as we celebrate the them in your tremendous gifts of our students. The festival is held in the prayers as Heiring Auditorium and on the lower level of the school on they enter th the evenings of Wednesday May 16 and Thursday May high school. 17th. This year our middle school drama students will be presenting the musical revue, “At the Bandstand” on We would Wednesday and our upper elementary students will also like to present “Charlotte’s Web” on Thursday evening. In recognize addition, Wednesday evening’s program will include a the following performance by the Holy Family Cathedral School Choir Holy Family Cathedral School alumni who will be and Thursday evening’s program will include a graduating from Cascia Hall this year for their outstanding performance by the School’s Band students. academic achievements: Geoffrey Escandor, Each evening’s events begin at 6:00 P.M. Student art work Gabriella Bernal, Erika Ravitch, Epadejah Brooks, Avery will be on display on the lower level of the school both Videll, Peter Nguyen; and Stewart Wire who will be evenings. graduating from Bishop Kelley. We are especially proud of Avery Videll who has been recognized as a National May is also the month of graduations. Holy Family Merit Scholar, and Erika Ravitch who has been recognized Cathedral School students participate in two special rites to as a Commended Scholar. mark the end of their middle school journey, and the beginning of their high school experience. On May 18th we It has been a blessing to all the faculty and staff at Holy will have our traditional Light of Leadership Mass. During Family Cathedral School to serve and support these young this ceremony, our eighth-grade class will pass on the light men and women as they have grown on the path of of Christ to the seventh-grade class as they step into their righteousness, and we will continue to pray and love them leadership roles for the upcoming school year. Finally, on as they graduate from this community to the May 20th at the Noon Mass, we will be celebrating the next. Congratulations to them, and to their families! graduation of our eighth grade class and recognizing their many spiritual and academic accomplishments. This year Yours in Christ, we are proud to announce that we have four students, Mrs. Southerland
Holy Family Cathedral
Family Faith Formation 2017-2018/Easter at Cathedral 2018 marks our second Holy Week and Easter with Bishop David Konderla. Parishioners and guests from other parishes were blessed with beautiful and prayerful liturgies, moving music and our Bishop’s homilies. We joyfully received new Catholics into our family at the Easter Vigil, pictured here with their sponsors, Bishop David and Fr. Jovita.
Deacon Jon Conro and Deacon B. D.Tidmore celebrated their first Holy Week liturgies and Easter Masses following their ordination in June of 2017. Holy Family appreciates the service our deacons give to our parish. Remember them in your prayers that they may grow in holiness and remain faithful to their vows.
Our high school students received Confirmation at the Noon Mass on Easter Sunday. Congratulations to all those celebrating sacraments this Easter. When you see them at Mass, take a moment to
Newsletter, May 2018
offer congratulations and assure them of your continued prayers that they might have the courage to live what they professed to believe.
Holy Family Cathedral PO Box 3204 Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 Electronic Service Requested
Most Rev. David A. Konderla, Bishop of Tulsa Most Rev. Edward J. Slattery, Bishop Emeritus Very Rev. Jovita C. Okonkwo, Rector Rev. John Grant, Associate Pastor Rev. Msgr. Gregory A. Gier, Rector Emeritus Deacon Tom Gorman Deacon Greg Stice Deacon Kevin Tulipana Deacon Jerry Mattox Deacon B.D. Tidmore Deacon Jon Conro Holy Family Cathedral Parish PO Box 3204, Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 918-582-6247 HolyFamilyCathedralParish.com TulsaCathedral@gmail.com Holy Family Cathedral School 820 South Boulder Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74119 918-582-0422 HolyFamilyCathedralSchool.com
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Weekend Mass Schedule: 5:00 p.m. Saturday 8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 12:00 Noon, and 5:00 p.m. Sunday Weekday Mass Schedule: 12:05 p.m. Monday 7:00 a.m. & 12:05 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday 7:00 a.m., 12:05 & 5:05 p.m. Friday 8:00 a.m. Saturday Tuesday-Saturday daily Masses are usually in the Chapel of Peace. Confessions: Ten minutes before all Masses, and 3:30 - 4:45 p.m. Saturday Friday Evening Holy Hour: 5:05 p.m. Mass, followed by Adoration and Benediction until 6:30 p.m.
Cathedral News “HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER” Parish Town Hall—2018
Inside: Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School Holy Family Parishioners Receive Sacraments at Easter
Holy Family Cathedral
Newsletter, May 2018
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE WITH HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER by Very Rev. Chukwudi Jovita Okonkwo, Ph.D.
About a month ago, I got the call that I dreaded but which I knew was coming. I was at the Parish Women’s Club luncheon when my phone buzzed and I looked at it. It was a call from Bishop Konderla. I stepped aside to answer the call that I dreaded, and true enough, it was exactly what I suspected. It is no longer news that in less than two months, we’ll be losing Fr. John Grant as our Associate Pastor. John was to many of us— parishioners of Holy Family—a very dutiful priest. However, to me, he was more than that priest who prepared and delivered inspiring homilies, ran to the sick to comfort and aid them with the Church’s Sacraments, directed the celebration of the liturgy here at the cathedral, and inspired many young people of our parish to seek to hear God’s voice calling them to serve him in the priesthood and the religious life. John was to me like a right-hand-man. And as a right-handed person, the moving of John feels like ripping off my right hand. I have to regrow it or learn to use the left; and for a man nearing 50 that won’t be a cushy job. But that’s how the priestly life is; we’re constantly moving. And so in the next few weeks, we’ll have the opportunity to say a big ‘thank you’ to Fr. John Grant for his love, zeal and dedication to Holy Family Cathedral—the only parish he has so far served since he became a priest, six years ago. All hope is not lost because we still have our beloved Monsignor Gier. One of the things I’m glad to know about him is that he has served his body and mind well, and looks like he’ll have a lot more years to offer in the service of the Lord. We pray that God gives him the strength to enjoy his retirement and continue to provide his pastoral support to our family. We’ll also be welcoming a new priest-to-be by June, Vince Fernandez, who will spend his summer with us before going back to Rome to complete his studies. WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US? For the rest of the year, we’ll have no associate pastor. I’ll do my best to be sure you’re provided with all the pastoral assistance you need. We’re not going to trim
down the number of Masses celebrated in the weekends. We’ll maintain our regular confession schedule. The Sacraments won’t suffer as a result of the change. Some other events we hold from week to week may be impacted. We’ll make room for discussions on these and take counsel from you. For this reason, I invite you to attend the Parish Town Hall meeting that we’ll hold on the 9th of this month. We’ll discuss issues ranging from pastoral life of the parish to projects and developments that we deem very essential to grow the faith of our parish and school. It’ll also serve as a forum to meet and greet other parishioners you may not have met before— maybe because they attend a different Mass from the one you regularly attend on Sundays. We’ll also present the parish staff whom you probably have spoken to over the phone but have not had the chance to meet. Other volunteers who serve the parish in the Finance Council, Parish Council, Building Committee, and some members of Holy Family School staff will also be present. We’ll love to have your input and various ideas you may have. Putting forward your ideas is very important for growth and to lessen gossips and non-constructive criticisms. For example, a few months ago, a parishioner wrote me a letter inquiring about a few things about which they had concerns. One of the results of our discussion is that we’ll start publishing the minutes of the Parish Council meetings to acquaint everyone with the deliberations of the Parish Council and give room for you to provide your input. TOWN HALL MEETING I consider it pertinent to let us know the exact things we’ll be deliberating at the town hall meeting. I’m aware that not everyone will be able to attend because of other events around that might conflict with the scheduled meeting. I’m also aware that this is graduation season and many families will be tied down with the graduation of a child or nephew or niece. I therefore present a sneak peek of what you’ll hear at the town hall. SNEAK PEAK I am very pleased to welcome you to the Holy Family Cathedral Parish Town Hall Meeting. Thank you so much for being here. Why a Town Hall Meeting? It is a chance for me, as your servant, to update you on the state of our cathedral and express the joy and excitement that I have for
Holy Family Cathedral
our future. It is also a chance for each parishioner to learn about the parish and through that learning grow in love for God and His Church, particularly through Holy Family Cathedral. Like any good Town Hall, it is also a chance for you to ask questions about the cathedral and the direction in which it is going. Before we can get to this future and direction, it is impossible not to reflect on my own journey coming to this position as rector of the cathedral and how this journey here is truly and only inspired by God. Thinking back to my time growing up in Nigeria with a large Catholic family, I think of my father inviting us to family discussions and sitting down with him to reflect on the life of the family. His special emphasis on prayer as the binding cord for the entire family has remained with us. And today, with eight of us having our own families, the same spirit of prayer is still alive with my other seven brothers and sisters, 21 nieces and nephews, and seven grand nieces and nephews. I reflect also on: my time attending Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu Nigeria, which has produced 3 Cardinals, 13 Archbishops, 32 Bishops and numerous priests; my journey to the United States and experiencing a culture different from my own, but beautifully Catholic nonetheless; my time as chaplain of the Newman Center at the University of Tulsa, which showed me the vitality of the youth of our Church; my time as pastor in places like Sapulpa, which showed me the blessings of parish life in Oklahoma. From all these places I have come, and by the Holy Spirit’s guidance, I now lead this community here, full of truth, goodness and beauty. Thus I humbly stand before you today and ask for your prayers for my continued journey, but also prayers for this parish which I have come to love so dearly. Any parish is strengthened in important ways by its clergy, staff and lay leaders; we are thus so fortunate to have dutiful help here. [I’ll introduce the Deacons and their wives; introduce the Parish Staff; introduce the Parish Council and Finance Council members]. With my own journey and with the wonderful help I have described, we move forward. We do so by seeking to ever build on the foundations laid by our forebears. We build a future like Saint Katherine Drexel did at this very Church over 100 years ago. We build a future like Monsignor Heiring and Monsignor Halpine did, in whose named rooms we sit today. We build a future like Pope Francis has suggested when he said, “To Christians, the future does have a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a
Newsletter, May 2018
heart that doesn't lock itself into darkness, that doesn't dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow.” This tomorrow of hope is here and now, and we will build it together for the world, for the diocese, for this parish. With this build in mind, we have entered into an agreement with an organization named the Steier Group, from Omaha, Nebraska. They will be conducting a feasibility study beginning May 14th about what we hope to build at this very Church for our tomorrow of hope. I specifically speak of building an Activity Center for our parish across the street from the Holy Family Cathedral School. I also speak of building to our basement by adding an elevator and new restrooms while updating all the facilities in the Heiring Auditorium and Halpine room. Why do I speak of building as hope for tomorrow? Firstly, these projects will provide us with opportunities for growth; a hope for growth in the number of parishioners. For example, the elevator will increase the access to the basement for our more senior members who find it challenging to attend functions like Wednesdays at the Cathedral in the basement. In fact, I already received a promise for $25,000 from someone who’s not even a parishioner of Holy Family but wants an elevator for easier access to the basement for daily Mass. It will allow us to offer modern amenities people expect of a parish, like clean restrooms with additional toilet stalls, perfect for young families. Growth will also occur in being able to host more functions, like wedding receptions, in an updated auditorium and kitchen. Next, these projects will truly influence how we live our faith at the cathedral. People naturally like to be a part of something that is growing, and grow, we will. People’s faith will be enriched by having dedicated space for things like Bible Study, Holy Family Cathedral School functions and more. For example, this project will build classrooms where we can have dedicated spaces for religious programming for our children in Family Faith Formation. Additionally, this project will include a basketball court. Imagine a chance for the youth of our parish to more actively engage the parish with sports and physical activity. This can happen and I am pleased to introduce you to these renderings. [At this point, I’ll introduce and explain the project renderings]. The project cost will total 10 million dollars; 3.8 for the basement project with the remainder to the Activity Center project. While this is no small amount, the time to begin is now. It is no secret that our parish is aging and is in need of an injection of vitality. We thus have urgency in moving to this tomorrow of hope that Pope Francis
Holy Family Cathedral
referenced. The buildings and projects have given me and will give us this excitement and hope we need. So many in the Holy Family history have made sacrifices to build this place up to where it is today. No less sacrifice is asked of us. Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the sacrificial Saint of Auschwitz, commented, “Let us remember that love lives through sacrifice and is nourished by giving. Without sacrifice, there is no love.” The time is now. Who will join me? May the Mother of God, Mother of Good Counsel and Spiritual Vessel guide our thoughts and plant seeds of hope and courage in us as we look to the future with renewed hope and confidence.
Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ By Rev. Fr. John Grant “You are my witnesses…” (cf. Lk 24:48) We are witnesses of Jesus resurrected. What does it mean to be a witness? Well, we are familiar with eye witnesses of an event, who recount something they saw. This is a passive understanding of witness, and while it was true of the apostles: they did in fact see and hear what Jesus did; they didn’t understand and so that is not precisely what He is asking of them or us. What He means by saying that they “are witnesses of these things” is that they are to testify to others about the reality of Jesus that they have experienced. And this is something we can do too. At the very beginning of the new life to which Christ calls us, what was happening, who was speaking? It was the two disciples who had been walking to Emmaus, who recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. They have just run back to find the apostles and were testifying to their experience, and that is when our Lord then manifests Himself to the apostles. The second thing it means to be a witness in the context that Jesus intends is that His apostles and we His disciples must live out of the same radical love and trust that He demonstrated in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The apostles did this by their words, their lives, and even their blood, thus the Greek word for witness is Martyr. They witnessed without fear of suffering or death because they knew that if they remained faithful and were
Newsletter, May 2018
united to Jesus in a death like His, that they would manifest their hope to participate in His Resurrection as well. Finally, the third thing that Jesus means when he tells the apostles and us to be witnesses is that we are to have a practical effect in other people’s lives. Namely, that we are to proclaim the Good News to all people so that they might repent and receive forgiveness for their sins. And this is why the disciples were afraid when Jesus appeared in their midst. It is shocking enough to see someone who was dead standing before you, but what do you suppose would be the first thing you’d think of if you saw someone whom you had betrayed and abandoned come back from the dead? You might suppose that he’d come back for revenge. That’s why they were afraid, but it was because they didn’t understand, they never understood why all of this had to happen. So Jesus explains it to them, the scriptures which they already knew and had heard many times, but now he shows them what they mean. That the Christ had to suffer and die for the forgiveness of sins, for our salvation. We can’t understand the Good News, that we have been rescued, unless we first realize that there is something we need to be rescued from. And this is what St. John meant when he said: “Jesus Christ the righteous one… is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world” (1Jn 2:1-2). It’s also what St. Peter preached in his first sermon after Pentecost: “The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses… God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer. Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away” (Acts 3:15,18-19). “The message of Jesus has a purpose and that purpose is to change our lives (repentance) and lead us to holiness (forgiveness of sins).” Which is why, on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, our Holy Father Pope Francis issued an Apostolic Exhortation “On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World.” In it he recalls the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, which states: “Fortified by so many and such powerful means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect” (LG,11). The Pope reminds us that “We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves” (GE,14). “At its core,” the Pope says, “holiness is experiencing, in union with Christ, the mysteries of his life. It
Holy Family Cathedral
consists in uniting ourselves to the Lord’s death and resurrection in a unique and personal way, constantly dying and rising anew with him. But it can also entail reproducing in our own lives various aspects of Jesus’ earthly life: his hidden life, his life in community, his closeness to the outcast, his poverty and other ways in which he showed his selfsacrificing love. The contemplation of these mysteries… leads us to incarnate them in our choices and attitudes” (GE,20). And so we need to see our entire lives as a mission, a mission to witness to Christ, and to accomplish this we can always ask the Holy Spirit to help us to make every decision in every moment of our lives (cf. GE,23). And it is in the context of this universal call to holiness that God then calls each of us specifically to one of four Christian vocations: marriage, religious profession, consecrated single life, or the priesthood. All of them are important, and are perfect for the persons called to each of them for it is by these vocations that God intends to make us saints, and as Pope Francis says in his exhortation, “the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint” (GE,34). But it is the last of these Christian vocations which I wish to reflect upon today. Msgr. Hiering, who built this church, Msgr. Halpine who lived and served here for 33 years and died preparing to celebrate the holy Mass, and Blessed Stanley Rother himself: “Priests are called ‘father’ because they are life-givers in the spiritual order. Spiritual fathers protect their children; they teach them; they are there for them. At the limit, they give their lives for them.” Jesus gathered his apostles and gave them a mission to be His witnesses, to share the Gospel, to baptize, to break bread so that others too could become His witnesses. Priests, down through the centuries — from Augustine and Aquinas, to John Paul II and our own Archbishop Peter Wells — these are the descendants of those first priests and bishops, the apostles. “They have been needed in every age, and they are needed today, for the kingdom of heaven must be proclaimed, the poor must be served, God must be worshipped, and the sacraments must be administered.” I have been fortunate to serve this wonderful parish as a successor to so many holy and amazing priests on and off for nearly six years. It has been the only parish I’ve served in since being ordained. But now, the bishop has called me to leave Holy Family and to become pastor of another parish, St. Catherine of Alexandria in West Tulsa. I follow in the footsteps of Fr. Matt Gerlach when he left the Cathedral and went to St. Catherine’s many years ago.
Newsletter, May 2018
And while I am happy to be called to serve God and His people in this new way, there is also sadness in parting, made even more difficult because there is no one permanent to succeed me as a associate pastor. I don’t know how many decades it has been since Holy Family has not had an associate, but it is a bitter reminder of how much we are in need of priests. We are doing much better than most parishes; we have two young men from our parish in seminary, and a third who will likely be joining them in the Fall. But this highlights just how much need there is for more young men to answer the call. A Pew Research study from 2012 showed that 500,000 young men have seriously considered the priesthood at some point in their lives, and yet only about 500 priests are ordained in the US each year. “The sadness is that the vast majority of those half-million did not receive adequate direction or information or encouragement.” And so my question is Who will fill these shoes? “Are you one of those half-million who has heard the whisper of God’s voice?” Do you know someone who has? A son, a brother, a grandson, a friend? Can I ask you mothers and fathers, grandparents, relatives, co-workers of these prospective candidates to encourage them? And can I ask all of you to pray… to pray for vocations to the priesthood for our parish and for our diocese? We are blessed and grateful that we still have Msgr. Gier with us and Holy Family will make it through till next summer, when, God willing, five new priests will be assigned in our diocese. But it is clear that far more men are called to this vocation than are answering. We need to help them to hear that call over the din of our noisy world. We do this by our prayers, by our lives, by our witness to Christ. Sharing what we have received so that lives can be changed (repentance) and led to holiness (forgiveness of sins). I want to thank you all for what you have taught me these years as your associate pastor. I will try to apply what I have learned in my first pastorate at St. Catherine’s. I will miss this Holy Family, but I don’t leave until July so there will be plenty of time and there is still much to accomplish before I go. I ask for your prayers for me, for Fr. Jovita and Msgr. Gier and our deacons, and most of all for our seminarians Robert Healey, Landon Tulipana, our prospective seminarian, Bruce Sander, and all the young men from these pews whom God is calling to the high adventure of the priesthood. You have my gratitude; you have my love, and I thank you.
Holy Family Cathedral
Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School, 2017-2018
Newsletter, May 2018
Isabella Melton, Mia Shank, Trenton Tabler, and Brady Videll, who achieved the requisite academic, faith, and leadership standards to qualify as candidates for the Dear Holy Family Cathedral Parishioners, Robinson Brothers’ Leadership Scholarship to Cascia Hall. Graduates of the 2017-2018 Eighth Grade Class The school year is drawing to a close and we are looking are: Christina Constable (Cascia Hall), Dhinal DeSilva forward to a number of exciting events this month. Our (Memorial), Canyon Garner (Washington), Clifford second-grade students, who have been working hard all Helgason (Memorial), Isabella Melton (Cascia Hall), year preparing for the sacraments of Reconciliation and Matthew Monnot (Bishop Kelley), Nikki Phillips (Bishop Eucharist, will be celebrating their First Holy Communion on Kelley), Katherine Pi (Bishop Kelley), Brad Pykiet Mother’s Day! This year we have eleven students from our (Collinsville), Justin Schrader (Edison), Samantha Schuster second grade receiving this sacrament: Everleigh (Owasso), Mia Shank (Cascia Hall), Taylor Street (Cascia Appelberg, Jillian Beck, Tommy Buckley, Angelina Carrillo, Hall), Trenton Tabler (Cascia Hall), and Brady Videll Tommy Dowdell, Fernando Guillan, Gideon Meddler, (Cascia Hall). This has been a truly outstanding class both Venezia Melton, Jacob Barry, Camden Tabler, and Michael academically, and as members of the Body of Christ. This Zerbe. Join with us in supporting them with your presence class has excelled at kindness and acts of charity, and we and your prayers. are so proud of them all. We see great things in their future! May is also the month for our annual Spring Arts Please keep Festival. Join us if you can as we celebrate the them in your tremendous gifts of our students. The festival is held in the prayers as Heiring Auditorium and on the lower level of the school on they enter th the evenings of Wednesday May 16 and Thursday May high school. 17th. This year our middle school drama students will be presenting the musical revue, “At the Bandstand” on We would Wednesday and our upper elementary students will also like to present “Charlotte’s Web” on Thursday evening. In recognize addition, Wednesday evening’s program will include a the following performance by the Holy Family Cathedral School Choir Holy Family Cathedral School alumni who will be and Thursday evening’s program will include a graduating from Cascia Hall this year for their outstanding performance by the School’s Band students. academic achievements: Geoffrey Escandor, Each evening’s events begin at 6:00 P.M. Student art work Gabriella Bernal, Erika Ravitch, Epadejah Brooks, Avery will be on display on the lower level of the school both Videll, Peter Nguyen; and Stewart Wire who will be evenings. graduating from Bishop Kelley. We are especially proud of Avery Videll who has been recognized as a National May is also the month of graduations. Holy Family Merit Scholar, and Erika Ravitch who has been recognized Cathedral School students participate in two special rites to as a Commended Scholar. mark the end of their middle school journey, and the beginning of their high school experience. On May 18th we It has been a blessing to all the faculty and staff at Holy will have our traditional Light of Leadership Mass. During Family Cathedral School to serve and support these young this ceremony, our eighth-grade class will pass on the light men and women as they have grown on the path of of Christ to the seventh-grade class as they step into their righteousness, and we will continue to pray and love them leadership roles for the upcoming school year. Finally, on as they graduate from this community to the May 20th at the Noon Mass, we will be celebrating the next. Congratulations to them, and to their families! graduation of our eighth grade class and recognizing their many spiritual and academic accomplishments. This year Yours in Christ, we are proud to announce that we have four students, Mrs. Southerland
Holy Family Cathedral
Family Faith Formation 2017-2018/Easter at Cathedral 2018 marks our second Holy Week and Easter with Bishop David Konderla. Parishioners and guests from other parishes were blessed with beautiful and prayerful liturgies, moving music and our Bishop’s homilies. We joyfully received new Catholics into our family at the Easter Vigil, pictured here with their sponsors, Bishop David and Fr. Jovita.
Deacon Jon Conro and Deacon B. D.Tidmore celebrated their first Holy Week liturgies and Easter Masses following their ordination in June of 2017. Holy Family appreciates the service our deacons give to our parish. Remember them in your prayers that they may grow in holiness and remain faithful to their vows.
Our high school students received Confirmation at the Noon Mass on Easter Sunday. Congratulations to all those celebrating sacraments this Easter. When you see them at Mass, take a moment to
Newsletter, May 2018
offer congratulations and assure them of your continued prayers that they might have the courage to live what they professed to believe.
Holy Family Cathedral PO Box 3204 Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 Electronic Service Requested
Most Rev. David A. Konderla, Bishop of Tulsa Most Rev. Edward J. Slattery, Bishop Emeritus Very Rev. Jovita C. Okonkwo, Rector Rev. John Grant, Associate Pastor Rev. Msgr. Gregory A. Gier, Rector Emeritus Deacon Tom Gorman Deacon Greg Stice Deacon Kevin Tulipana Deacon Jerry Mattox Deacon B.D. Tidmore Deacon Jon Conro Holy Family Cathedral Parish PO Box 3204, Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 918-582-6247 HolyFamilyCathedralParish.com TulsaCathedral@gmail.com Holy Family Cathedral School 820 South Boulder Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74119 918-582-0422 HolyFamilyCathedralSchool.com
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Weekend Mass Schedule: 5:00 p.m. Saturday 8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 12:00 Noon, and 5:00 p.m. Sunday Weekday Mass Schedule: 12:05 p.m. Monday 7:00 a.m. & 12:05 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday 7:00 a.m., 12:05 & 5:05 p.m. Friday 8:00 a.m. Saturday Tuesday-Saturday daily Masses are usually in the Chapel of Peace. Confessions: Ten minutes before all Masses, and 3:30 - 4:45 p.m. Saturday Friday Evening Holy Hour: 5:05 p.m. Mass, followed by Adoration and Benediction until 6:30 p.m.
Cathedral News “HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER” Parish Town Hall—2018
Inside: Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School Holy Family Parishioners Receive Sacraments at Easter
Holy Family Cathedral
Newsletter, May 2018
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE WITH HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER by Very Rev. Chukwudi Jovita Okonkwo, Ph.D.
About a month ago, I got the call that I dreaded but which I knew was coming. I was at the Parish Women’s Club luncheon when my phone buzzed and I looked at it. It was a call from Bishop Konderla. I stepped aside to answer the call that I dreaded, and true enough, it was exactly what I suspected. It is no longer news that in less than two months, we’ll be losing Fr. John Grant as our Associate Pastor. John was to many of us— parishioners of Holy Family—a very dutiful priest. However, to me, he was more than that priest who prepared and delivered inspiring homilies, ran to the sick to comfort and aid them with the Church’s Sacraments, directed the celebration of the liturgy here at the cathedral, and inspired many young people of our parish to seek to hear God’s voice calling them to serve him in the priesthood and the religious life. John was to me like a right-hand-man. And as a right-handed person, the moving of John feels like ripping off my right hand. I have to regrow it or learn to use the left; and for a man nearing 50 that won’t be a cushy job. But that’s how the priestly life is; we’re constantly moving. And so in the next few weeks, we’ll have the opportunity to say a big ‘thank you’ to Fr. John Grant for his love, zeal and dedication to Holy Family Cathedral—the only parish he has so far served since he became a priest, six years ago. All hope is not lost because we still have our beloved Monsignor Gier. One of the things I’m glad to know about him is that he has served his body and mind well, and looks like he’ll have a lot more years to offer in the service of the Lord. We pray that God gives him the strength to enjoy his retirement and continue to provide his pastoral support to our family. We’ll also be welcoming a new priest-to-be by June, Vince Fernandez, who will spend his summer with us before going back to Rome to complete his studies. WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US? For the rest of the year, we’ll have no associate pastor. I’ll do my best to be sure you’re provided with all the pastoral assistance you need. We’re not going to trim
down the number of Masses celebrated in the weekends. We’ll maintain our regular confession schedule. The Sacraments won’t suffer as a result of the change. Some other events we hold from week to week may be impacted. We’ll make room for discussions on these and take counsel from you. For this reason, I invite you to attend the Parish Town Hall meeting that we’ll hold on the 9th of this month. We’ll discuss issues ranging from pastoral life of the parish to projects and developments that we deem very essential to grow the faith of our parish and school. It’ll also serve as a forum to meet and greet other parishioners you may not have met before— maybe because they attend a different Mass from the one you regularly attend on Sundays. We’ll also present the parish staff whom you probably have spoken to over the phone but have not had the chance to meet. Other volunteers who serve the parish in the Finance Council, Parish Council, Building Committee, and some members of Holy Family School staff will also be present. We’ll love to have your input and various ideas you may have. Putting forward your ideas is very important for growth and to lessen gossips and non-constructive criticisms. For example, a few months ago, a parishioner wrote me a letter inquiring about a few things about which they had concerns. One of the results of our discussion is that we’ll start publishing the minutes of the Parish Council meetings to acquaint everyone with the deliberations of the Parish Council and give room for you to provide your input. TOWN HALL MEETING I consider it pertinent to let us know the exact things we’ll be deliberating at the town hall meeting. I’m aware that not everyone will be able to attend because of other events around that might conflict with the scheduled meeting. I’m also aware that this is graduation season and many families will be tied down with the graduation of a child or nephew or niece. I therefore present a sneak peek of what you’ll hear at the town hall. SNEAK PEAK I am very pleased to welcome you to the Holy Family Cathedral Parish Town Hall Meeting. Thank you so much for being here. Why a Town Hall Meeting? It is a chance for me, as your servant, to update you on the state of our cathedral and express the joy and excitement that I have for
Holy Family Cathedral
our future. It is also a chance for each parishioner to learn about the parish and through that learning grow in love for God and His Church, particularly through Holy Family Cathedral. Like any good Town Hall, it is also a chance for you to ask questions about the cathedral and the direction in which it is going. Before we can get to this future and direction, it is impossible not to reflect on my own journey coming to this position as rector of the cathedral and how this journey here is truly and only inspired by God. Thinking back to my time growing up in Nigeria with a large Catholic family, I think of my father inviting us to family discussions and sitting down with him to reflect on the life of the family. His special emphasis on prayer as the binding cord for the entire family has remained with us. And today, with eight of us having our own families, the same spirit of prayer is still alive with my other seven brothers and sisters, 21 nieces and nephews, and seven grand nieces and nephews. I reflect also on: my time attending Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu Nigeria, which has produced 3 Cardinals, 13 Archbishops, 32 Bishops and numerous priests; my journey to the United States and experiencing a culture different from my own, but beautifully Catholic nonetheless; my time as chaplain of the Newman Center at the University of Tulsa, which showed me the vitality of the youth of our Church; my time as pastor in places like Sapulpa, which showed me the blessings of parish life in Oklahoma. From all these places I have come, and by the Holy Spirit’s guidance, I now lead this community here, full of truth, goodness and beauty. Thus I humbly stand before you today and ask for your prayers for my continued journey, but also prayers for this parish which I have come to love so dearly. Any parish is strengthened in important ways by its clergy, staff and lay leaders; we are thus so fortunate to have dutiful help here. [I’ll introduce the Deacons and their wives; introduce the Parish Staff; introduce the Parish Council and Finance Council members]. With my own journey and with the wonderful help I have described, we move forward. We do so by seeking to ever build on the foundations laid by our forebears. We build a future like Saint Katherine Drexel did at this very Church over 100 years ago. We build a future like Monsignor Heiring and Monsignor Halpine did, in whose named rooms we sit today. We build a future like Pope Francis has suggested when he said, “To Christians, the future does have a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a
Newsletter, May 2018
heart that doesn't lock itself into darkness, that doesn't dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow.” This tomorrow of hope is here and now, and we will build it together for the world, for the diocese, for this parish. With this build in mind, we have entered into an agreement with an organization named the Steier Group, from Omaha, Nebraska. They will be conducting a feasibility study beginning May 14th about what we hope to build at this very Church for our tomorrow of hope. I specifically speak of building an Activity Center for our parish across the street from the Holy Family Cathedral School. I also speak of building to our basement by adding an elevator and new restrooms while updating all the facilities in the Heiring Auditorium and Halpine room. Why do I speak of building as hope for tomorrow? Firstly, these projects will provide us with opportunities for growth; a hope for growth in the number of parishioners. For example, the elevator will increase the access to the basement for our more senior members who find it challenging to attend functions like Wednesdays at the Cathedral in the basement. In fact, I already received a promise for $25,000 from someone who’s not even a parishioner of Holy Family but wants an elevator for easier access to the basement for daily Mass. It will allow us to offer modern amenities people expect of a parish, like clean restrooms with additional toilet stalls, perfect for young families. Growth will also occur in being able to host more functions, like wedding receptions, in an updated auditorium and kitchen. Next, these projects will truly influence how we live our faith at the cathedral. People naturally like to be a part of something that is growing, and grow, we will. People’s faith will be enriched by having dedicated space for things like Bible Study, Holy Family Cathedral School functions and more. For example, this project will build classrooms where we can have dedicated spaces for religious programming for our children in Family Faith Formation. Additionally, this project will include a basketball court. Imagine a chance for the youth of our parish to more actively engage the parish with sports and physical activity. This can happen and I am pleased to introduce you to these renderings. [At this point, I’ll introduce and explain the project renderings]. The project cost will total 10 million dollars; 3.8 for the basement project with the remainder to the Activity Center project. While this is no small amount, the time to begin is now. It is no secret that our parish is aging and is in need of an injection of vitality. We thus have urgency in moving to this tomorrow of hope that Pope Francis
Holy Family Cathedral
referenced. The buildings and projects have given me and will give us this excitement and hope we need. So many in the Holy Family history have made sacrifices to build this place up to where it is today. No less sacrifice is asked of us. Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the sacrificial Saint of Auschwitz, commented, “Let us remember that love lives through sacrifice and is nourished by giving. Without sacrifice, there is no love.” The time is now. Who will join me? May the Mother of God, Mother of Good Counsel and Spiritual Vessel guide our thoughts and plant seeds of hope and courage in us as we look to the future with renewed hope and confidence.
Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ By Rev. Fr. John Grant “You are my witnesses…” (cf. Lk 24:48) We are witnesses of Jesus resurrected. What does it mean to be a witness? Well, we are familiar with eye witnesses of an event, who recount something they saw. This is a passive understanding of witness, and while it was true of the apostles: they did in fact see and hear what Jesus did; they didn’t understand and so that is not precisely what He is asking of them or us. What He means by saying that they “are witnesses of these things” is that they are to testify to others about the reality of Jesus that they have experienced. And this is something we can do too. At the very beginning of the new life to which Christ calls us, what was happening, who was speaking? It was the two disciples who had been walking to Emmaus, who recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. They have just run back to find the apostles and were testifying to their experience, and that is when our Lord then manifests Himself to the apostles. The second thing it means to be a witness in the context that Jesus intends is that His apostles and we His disciples must live out of the same radical love and trust that He demonstrated in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The apostles did this by their words, their lives, and even their blood, thus the Greek word for witness is Martyr. They witnessed without fear of suffering or death because they knew that if they remained faithful and were
Newsletter, May 2018
united to Jesus in a death like His, that they would manifest their hope to participate in His Resurrection as well. Finally, the third thing that Jesus means when he tells the apostles and us to be witnesses is that we are to have a practical effect in other people’s lives. Namely, that we are to proclaim the Good News to all people so that they might repent and receive forgiveness for their sins. And this is why the disciples were afraid when Jesus appeared in their midst. It is shocking enough to see someone who was dead standing before you, but what do you suppose would be the first thing you’d think of if you saw someone whom you had betrayed and abandoned come back from the dead? You might suppose that he’d come back for revenge. That’s why they were afraid, but it was because they didn’t understand, they never understood why all of this had to happen. So Jesus explains it to them, the scriptures which they already knew and had heard many times, but now he shows them what they mean. That the Christ had to suffer and die for the forgiveness of sins, for our salvation. We can’t understand the Good News, that we have been rescued, unless we first realize that there is something we need to be rescued from. And this is what St. John meant when he said: “Jesus Christ the righteous one… is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world” (1Jn 2:1-2). It’s also what St. Peter preached in his first sermon after Pentecost: “The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses… God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer. Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away” (Acts 3:15,18-19). “The message of Jesus has a purpose and that purpose is to change our lives (repentance) and lead us to holiness (forgiveness of sins).” Which is why, on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, our Holy Father Pope Francis issued an Apostolic Exhortation “On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World.” In it he recalls the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, which states: “Fortified by so many and such powerful means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect” (LG,11). The Pope reminds us that “We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves” (GE,14). “At its core,” the Pope says, “holiness is experiencing, in union with Christ, the mysteries of his life. It
Holy Family Cathedral
consists in uniting ourselves to the Lord’s death and resurrection in a unique and personal way, constantly dying and rising anew with him. But it can also entail reproducing in our own lives various aspects of Jesus’ earthly life: his hidden life, his life in community, his closeness to the outcast, his poverty and other ways in which he showed his selfsacrificing love. The contemplation of these mysteries… leads us to incarnate them in our choices and attitudes” (GE,20). And so we need to see our entire lives as a mission, a mission to witness to Christ, and to accomplish this we can always ask the Holy Spirit to help us to make every decision in every moment of our lives (cf. GE,23). And it is in the context of this universal call to holiness that God then calls each of us specifically to one of four Christian vocations: marriage, religious profession, consecrated single life, or the priesthood. All of them are important, and are perfect for the persons called to each of them for it is by these vocations that God intends to make us saints, and as Pope Francis says in his exhortation, “the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint” (GE,34). But it is the last of these Christian vocations which I wish to reflect upon today. Msgr. Hiering, who built this church, Msgr. Halpine who lived and served here for 33 years and died preparing to celebrate the holy Mass, and Blessed Stanley Rother himself: “Priests are called ‘father’ because they are life-givers in the spiritual order. Spiritual fathers protect their children; they teach them; they are there for them. At the limit, they give their lives for them.” Jesus gathered his apostles and gave them a mission to be His witnesses, to share the Gospel, to baptize, to break bread so that others too could become His witnesses. Priests, down through the centuries — from Augustine and Aquinas, to John Paul II and our own Archbishop Peter Wells — these are the descendants of those first priests and bishops, the apostles. “They have been needed in every age, and they are needed today, for the kingdom of heaven must be proclaimed, the poor must be served, God must be worshipped, and the sacraments must be administered.” I have been fortunate to serve this wonderful parish as a successor to so many holy and amazing priests on and off for nearly six years. It has been the only parish I’ve served in since being ordained. But now, the bishop has called me to leave Holy Family and to become pastor of another parish, St. Catherine of Alexandria in West Tulsa. I follow in the footsteps of Fr. Matt Gerlach when he left the Cathedral and went to St. Catherine’s many years ago.
Newsletter, May 2018
And while I am happy to be called to serve God and His people in this new way, there is also sadness in parting, made even more difficult because there is no one permanent to succeed me as a associate pastor. I don’t know how many decades it has been since Holy Family has not had an associate, but it is a bitter reminder of how much we are in need of priests. We are doing much better than most parishes; we have two young men from our parish in seminary, and a third who will likely be joining them in the Fall. But this highlights just how much need there is for more young men to answer the call. A Pew Research study from 2012 showed that 500,000 young men have seriously considered the priesthood at some point in their lives, and yet only about 500 priests are ordained in the US each year. “The sadness is that the vast majority of those half-million did not receive adequate direction or information or encouragement.” And so my question is Who will fill these shoes? “Are you one of those half-million who has heard the whisper of God’s voice?” Do you know someone who has? A son, a brother, a grandson, a friend? Can I ask you mothers and fathers, grandparents, relatives, co-workers of these prospective candidates to encourage them? And can I ask all of you to pray… to pray for vocations to the priesthood for our parish and for our diocese? We are blessed and grateful that we still have Msgr. Gier with us and Holy Family will make it through till next summer, when, God willing, five new priests will be assigned in our diocese. But it is clear that far more men are called to this vocation than are answering. We need to help them to hear that call over the din of our noisy world. We do this by our prayers, by our lives, by our witness to Christ. Sharing what we have received so that lives can be changed (repentance) and led to holiness (forgiveness of sins). I want to thank you all for what you have taught me these years as your associate pastor. I will try to apply what I have learned in my first pastorate at St. Catherine’s. I will miss this Holy Family, but I don’t leave until July so there will be plenty of time and there is still much to accomplish before I go. I ask for your prayers for me, for Fr. Jovita and Msgr. Gier and our deacons, and most of all for our seminarians Robert Healey, Landon Tulipana, our prospective seminarian, Bruce Sander, and all the young men from these pews whom God is calling to the high adventure of the priesthood. You have my gratitude; you have my love, and I thank you.
Holy Family Cathedral
Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School, 2017-2018
Newsletter, May 2018
Isabella Melton, Mia Shank, Trenton Tabler, and Brady Videll, who achieved the requisite academic, faith, and leadership standards to qualify as candidates for the Dear Holy Family Cathedral Parishioners, Robinson Brothers’ Leadership Scholarship to Cascia Hall. Graduates of the 2017-2018 Eighth Grade Class The school year is drawing to a close and we are looking are: Christina Constable (Cascia Hall), Dhinal DeSilva forward to a number of exciting events this month. Our (Memorial), Canyon Garner (Washington), Clifford second-grade students, who have been working hard all Helgason (Memorial), Isabella Melton (Cascia Hall), year preparing for the sacraments of Reconciliation and Matthew Monnot (Bishop Kelley), Nikki Phillips (Bishop Eucharist, will be celebrating their First Holy Communion on Kelley), Katherine Pi (Bishop Kelley), Brad Pykiet Mother’s Day! This year we have eleven students from our (Collinsville), Justin Schrader (Edison), Samantha Schuster second grade receiving this sacrament: Everleigh (Owasso), Mia Shank (Cascia Hall), Taylor Street (Cascia Appelberg, Jillian Beck, Tommy Buckley, Angelina Carrillo, Hall), Trenton Tabler (Cascia Hall), and Brady Videll Tommy Dowdell, Fernando Guillan, Gideon Meddler, (Cascia Hall). This has been a truly outstanding class both Venezia Melton, Jacob Barry, Camden Tabler, and Michael academically, and as members of the Body of Christ. This Zerbe. Join with us in supporting them with your presence class has excelled at kindness and acts of charity, and we and your prayers. are so proud of them all. We see great things in their future! May is also the month for our annual Spring Arts Please keep Festival. Join us if you can as we celebrate the them in your tremendous gifts of our students. The festival is held in the prayers as Heiring Auditorium and on the lower level of the school on they enter th the evenings of Wednesday May 16 and Thursday May high school. 17th. This year our middle school drama students will be presenting the musical revue, “At the Bandstand” on We would Wednesday and our upper elementary students will also like to present “Charlotte’s Web” on Thursday evening. In recognize addition, Wednesday evening’s program will include a the following performance by the Holy Family Cathedral School Choir Holy Family Cathedral School alumni who will be and Thursday evening’s program will include a graduating from Cascia Hall this year for their outstanding performance by the School’s Band students. academic achievements: Geoffrey Escandor, Each evening’s events begin at 6:00 P.M. Student art work Gabriella Bernal, Erika Ravitch, Epadejah Brooks, Avery will be on display on the lower level of the school both Videll, Peter Nguyen; and Stewart Wire who will be evenings. graduating from Bishop Kelley. We are especially proud of Avery Videll who has been recognized as a National May is also the month of graduations. Holy Family Merit Scholar, and Erika Ravitch who has been recognized Cathedral School students participate in two special rites to as a Commended Scholar. mark the end of their middle school journey, and the beginning of their high school experience. On May 18th we It has been a blessing to all the faculty and staff at Holy will have our traditional Light of Leadership Mass. During Family Cathedral School to serve and support these young this ceremony, our eighth-grade class will pass on the light men and women as they have grown on the path of of Christ to the seventh-grade class as they step into their righteousness, and we will continue to pray and love them leadership roles for the upcoming school year. Finally, on as they graduate from this community to the May 20th at the Noon Mass, we will be celebrating the next. Congratulations to them, and to their families! graduation of our eighth grade class and recognizing their many spiritual and academic accomplishments. This year Yours in Christ, we are proud to announce that we have four students, Mrs. Southerland
Holy Family Cathedral
Family Faith Formation 2017-2018/Easter at Cathedral 2018 marks our second Holy Week and Easter with Bishop David Konderla. Parishioners and guests from other parishes were blessed with beautiful and prayerful liturgies, moving music and our Bishop’s homilies. We joyfully received new Catholics into our family at the Easter Vigil, pictured here with their sponsors, Bishop David and Fr. Jovita.
Deacon Jon Conro and Deacon B. D.Tidmore celebrated their first Holy Week liturgies and Easter Masses following their ordination in June of 2017. Holy Family appreciates the service our deacons give to our parish. Remember them in your prayers that they may grow in holiness and remain faithful to their vows.
Our high school students received Confirmation at the Noon Mass on Easter Sunday. Congratulations to all those celebrating sacraments this Easter. When you see them at Mass, take a moment to
Newsletter, May 2018
offer congratulations and assure them of your continued prayers that they might have the courage to live what they professed to believe.
Holy Family Cathedral PO Box 3204 Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 Electronic Service Requested
Most Rev. David A. Konderla, Bishop of Tulsa Most Rev. Edward J. Slattery, Bishop Emeritus Very Rev. Jovita C. Okonkwo, Rector Rev. John Grant, Associate Pastor Rev. Msgr. Gregory A. Gier, Rector Emeritus Deacon Tom Gorman Deacon Greg Stice Deacon Kevin Tulipana Deacon Jerry Mattox Deacon B.D. Tidmore Deacon Jon Conro Holy Family Cathedral Parish PO Box 3204, Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 918-582-6247 HolyFamilyCathedralParish.com TulsaCathedral@gmail.com Holy Family Cathedral School 820 South Boulder Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74119 918-582-0422 HolyFamilyCathedralSchool.com
NONPROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID TULSA OK PERMIT 381
Weekend Mass Schedule: 5:00 p.m. Saturday 8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 12:00 Noon, and 5:00 p.m. Sunday Weekday Mass Schedule: 12:05 p.m. Monday 7:00 a.m. & 12:05 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday 7:00 a.m., 12:05 & 5:05 p.m. Friday 8:00 a.m. Saturday Tuesday-Saturday daily Masses are usually in the Chapel of Peace. Confessions: Ten minutes before all Masses, and 3:30 - 4:45 p.m. Saturday Friday Evening Holy Hour: 5:05 p.m. Mass, followed by Adoration and Benediction until 6:30 p.m.
Cathedral News “HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER” Parish Town Hall—2018
Inside: Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School Holy Family Parishioners Receive Sacraments at Easter
Holy Family Cathedral
Newsletter, May 2018
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE WITH HOPE AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S INVISIBLE RUDDER by Very Rev. Chukwudi Jovita Okonkwo, Ph.D.
About a month ago, I got the call that I dreaded but which I knew was coming. I was at the Parish Women’s Club luncheon when my phone buzzed and I looked at it. It was a call from Bishop Konderla. I stepped aside to answer the call that I dreaded, and true enough, it was exactly what I suspected. It is no longer news that in less than two months, we’ll be losing Fr. John Grant as our Associate Pastor. John was to many of us— parishioners of Holy Family—a very dutiful priest. However, to me, he was more than that priest who prepared and delivered inspiring homilies, ran to the sick to comfort and aid them with the Church’s Sacraments, directed the celebration of the liturgy here at the cathedral, and inspired many young people of our parish to seek to hear God’s voice calling them to serve him in the priesthood and the religious life. John was to me like a right-hand-man. And as a right-handed person, the moving of John feels like ripping off my right hand. I have to regrow it or learn to use the left; and for a man nearing 50 that won’t be a cushy job. But that’s how the priestly life is; we’re constantly moving. And so in the next few weeks, we’ll have the opportunity to say a big ‘thank you’ to Fr. John Grant for his love, zeal and dedication to Holy Family Cathedral—the only parish he has so far served since he became a priest, six years ago. All hope is not lost because we still have our beloved Monsignor Gier. One of the things I’m glad to know about him is that he has served his body and mind well, and looks like he’ll have a lot more years to offer in the service of the Lord. We pray that God gives him the strength to enjoy his retirement and continue to provide his pastoral support to our family. We’ll also be welcoming a new priest-to-be by June, Vince Fernandez, who will spend his summer with us before going back to Rome to complete his studies. WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US? For the rest of the year, we’ll have no associate pastor. I’ll do my best to be sure you’re provided with all the pastoral assistance you need. We’re not going to trim
down the number of Masses celebrated in the weekends. We’ll maintain our regular confession schedule. The Sacraments won’t suffer as a result of the change. Some other events we hold from week to week may be impacted. We’ll make room for discussions on these and take counsel from you. For this reason, I invite you to attend the Parish Town Hall meeting that we’ll hold on the 9th of this month. We’ll discuss issues ranging from pastoral life of the parish to projects and developments that we deem very essential to grow the faith of our parish and school. It’ll also serve as a forum to meet and greet other parishioners you may not have met before— maybe because they attend a different Mass from the one you regularly attend on Sundays. We’ll also present the parish staff whom you probably have spoken to over the phone but have not had the chance to meet. Other volunteers who serve the parish in the Finance Council, Parish Council, Building Committee, and some members of Holy Family School staff will also be present. We’ll love to have your input and various ideas you may have. Putting forward your ideas is very important for growth and to lessen gossips and non-constructive criticisms. For example, a few months ago, a parishioner wrote me a letter inquiring about a few things about which they had concerns. One of the results of our discussion is that we’ll start publishing the minutes of the Parish Council meetings to acquaint everyone with the deliberations of the Parish Council and give room for you to provide your input. TOWN HALL MEETING I consider it pertinent to let us know the exact things we’ll be deliberating at the town hall meeting. I’m aware that not everyone will be able to attend because of other events around that might conflict with the scheduled meeting. I’m also aware that this is graduation season and many families will be tied down with the graduation of a child or nephew or niece. I therefore present a sneak peek of what you’ll hear at the town hall. SNEAK PEAK I am very pleased to welcome you to the Holy Family Cathedral Parish Town Hall Meeting. Thank you so much for being here. Why a Town Hall Meeting? It is a chance for me, as your servant, to update you on the state of our cathedral and express the joy and excitement that I have for
Holy Family Cathedral
our future. It is also a chance for each parishioner to learn about the parish and through that learning grow in love for God and His Church, particularly through Holy Family Cathedral. Like any good Town Hall, it is also a chance for you to ask questions about the cathedral and the direction in which it is going. Before we can get to this future and direction, it is impossible not to reflect on my own journey coming to this position as rector of the cathedral and how this journey here is truly and only inspired by God. Thinking back to my time growing up in Nigeria with a large Catholic family, I think of my father inviting us to family discussions and sitting down with him to reflect on the life of the family. His special emphasis on prayer as the binding cord for the entire family has remained with us. And today, with eight of us having our own families, the same spirit of prayer is still alive with my other seven brothers and sisters, 21 nieces and nephews, and seven grand nieces and nephews. I reflect also on: my time attending Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu Nigeria, which has produced 3 Cardinals, 13 Archbishops, 32 Bishops and numerous priests; my journey to the United States and experiencing a culture different from my own, but beautifully Catholic nonetheless; my time as chaplain of the Newman Center at the University of Tulsa, which showed me the vitality of the youth of our Church; my time as pastor in places like Sapulpa, which showed me the blessings of parish life in Oklahoma. From all these places I have come, and by the Holy Spirit’s guidance, I now lead this community here, full of truth, goodness and beauty. Thus I humbly stand before you today and ask for your prayers for my continued journey, but also prayers for this parish which I have come to love so dearly. Any parish is strengthened in important ways by its clergy, staff and lay leaders; we are thus so fortunate to have dutiful help here. [I’ll introduce the Deacons and their wives; introduce the Parish Staff; introduce the Parish Council and Finance Council members]. With my own journey and with the wonderful help I have described, we move forward. We do so by seeking to ever build on the foundations laid by our forebears. We build a future like Saint Katherine Drexel did at this very Church over 100 years ago. We build a future like Monsignor Heiring and Monsignor Halpine did, in whose named rooms we sit today. We build a future like Pope Francis has suggested when he said, “To Christians, the future does have a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a
Newsletter, May 2018
heart that doesn't lock itself into darkness, that doesn't dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow.” This tomorrow of hope is here and now, and we will build it together for the world, for the diocese, for this parish. With this build in mind, we have entered into an agreement with an organization named the Steier Group, from Omaha, Nebraska. They will be conducting a feasibility study beginning May 14th about what we hope to build at this very Church for our tomorrow of hope. I specifically speak of building an Activity Center for our parish across the street from the Holy Family Cathedral School. I also speak of building to our basement by adding an elevator and new restrooms while updating all the facilities in the Heiring Auditorium and Halpine room. Why do I speak of building as hope for tomorrow? Firstly, these projects will provide us with opportunities for growth; a hope for growth in the number of parishioners. For example, the elevator will increase the access to the basement for our more senior members who find it challenging to attend functions like Wednesdays at the Cathedral in the basement. In fact, I already received a promise for $25,000 from someone who’s not even a parishioner of Holy Family but wants an elevator for easier access to the basement for daily Mass. It will allow us to offer modern amenities people expect of a parish, like clean restrooms with additional toilet stalls, perfect for young families. Growth will also occur in being able to host more functions, like wedding receptions, in an updated auditorium and kitchen. Next, these projects will truly influence how we live our faith at the cathedral. People naturally like to be a part of something that is growing, and grow, we will. People’s faith will be enriched by having dedicated space for things like Bible Study, Holy Family Cathedral School functions and more. For example, this project will build classrooms where we can have dedicated spaces for religious programming for our children in Family Faith Formation. Additionally, this project will include a basketball court. Imagine a chance for the youth of our parish to more actively engage the parish with sports and physical activity. This can happen and I am pleased to introduce you to these renderings. [At this point, I’ll introduce and explain the project renderings]. The project cost will total 10 million dollars; 3.8 for the basement project with the remainder to the Activity Center project. While this is no small amount, the time to begin is now. It is no secret that our parish is aging and is in need of an injection of vitality. We thus have urgency in moving to this tomorrow of hope that Pope Francis
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referenced. The buildings and projects have given me and will give us this excitement and hope we need. So many in the Holy Family history have made sacrifices to build this place up to where it is today. No less sacrifice is asked of us. Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the sacrificial Saint of Auschwitz, commented, “Let us remember that love lives through sacrifice and is nourished by giving. Without sacrifice, there is no love.” The time is now. Who will join me? May the Mother of God, Mother of Good Counsel and Spiritual Vessel guide our thoughts and plant seeds of hope and courage in us as we look to the future with renewed hope and confidence.
Our Mission to be Witnesses to Jesus Christ By Rev. Fr. John Grant “You are my witnesses…” (cf. Lk 24:48) We are witnesses of Jesus resurrected. What does it mean to be a witness? Well, we are familiar with eye witnesses of an event, who recount something they saw. This is a passive understanding of witness, and while it was true of the apostles: they did in fact see and hear what Jesus did; they didn’t understand and so that is not precisely what He is asking of them or us. What He means by saying that they “are witnesses of these things” is that they are to testify to others about the reality of Jesus that they have experienced. And this is something we can do too. At the very beginning of the new life to which Christ calls us, what was happening, who was speaking? It was the two disciples who had been walking to Emmaus, who recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. They have just run back to find the apostles and were testifying to their experience, and that is when our Lord then manifests Himself to the apostles. The second thing it means to be a witness in the context that Jesus intends is that His apostles and we His disciples must live out of the same radical love and trust that He demonstrated in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The apostles did this by their words, their lives, and even their blood, thus the Greek word for witness is Martyr. They witnessed without fear of suffering or death because they knew that if they remained faithful and were
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united to Jesus in a death like His, that they would manifest their hope to participate in His Resurrection as well. Finally, the third thing that Jesus means when he tells the apostles and us to be witnesses is that we are to have a practical effect in other people’s lives. Namely, that we are to proclaim the Good News to all people so that they might repent and receive forgiveness for their sins. And this is why the disciples were afraid when Jesus appeared in their midst. It is shocking enough to see someone who was dead standing before you, but what do you suppose would be the first thing you’d think of if you saw someone whom you had betrayed and abandoned come back from the dead? You might suppose that he’d come back for revenge. That’s why they were afraid, but it was because they didn’t understand, they never understood why all of this had to happen. So Jesus explains it to them, the scriptures which they already knew and had heard many times, but now he shows them what they mean. That the Christ had to suffer and die for the forgiveness of sins, for our salvation. We can’t understand the Good News, that we have been rescued, unless we first realize that there is something we need to be rescued from. And this is what St. John meant when he said: “Jesus Christ the righteous one… is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world” (1Jn 2:1-2). It’s also what St. Peter preached in his first sermon after Pentecost: “The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses… God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer. Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away” (Acts 3:15,18-19). “The message of Jesus has a purpose and that purpose is to change our lives (repentance) and lead us to holiness (forgiveness of sins).” Which is why, on the Solemnity of the Annunciation, our Holy Father Pope Francis issued an Apostolic Exhortation “On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World.” In it he recalls the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, which states: “Fortified by so many and such powerful means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect” (LG,11). The Pope reminds us that “We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves” (GE,14). “At its core,” the Pope says, “holiness is experiencing, in union with Christ, the mysteries of his life. It
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consists in uniting ourselves to the Lord’s death and resurrection in a unique and personal way, constantly dying and rising anew with him. But it can also entail reproducing in our own lives various aspects of Jesus’ earthly life: his hidden life, his life in community, his closeness to the outcast, his poverty and other ways in which he showed his selfsacrificing love. The contemplation of these mysteries… leads us to incarnate them in our choices and attitudes” (GE,20). And so we need to see our entire lives as a mission, a mission to witness to Christ, and to accomplish this we can always ask the Holy Spirit to help us to make every decision in every moment of our lives (cf. GE,23). And it is in the context of this universal call to holiness that God then calls each of us specifically to one of four Christian vocations: marriage, religious profession, consecrated single life, or the priesthood. All of them are important, and are perfect for the persons called to each of them for it is by these vocations that God intends to make us saints, and as Pope Francis says in his exhortation, “the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint” (GE,34). But it is the last of these Christian vocations which I wish to reflect upon today. Msgr. Hiering, who built this church, Msgr. Halpine who lived and served here for 33 years and died preparing to celebrate the holy Mass, and Blessed Stanley Rother himself: “Priests are called ‘father’ because they are life-givers in the spiritual order. Spiritual fathers protect their children; they teach them; they are there for them. At the limit, they give their lives for them.” Jesus gathered his apostles and gave them a mission to be His witnesses, to share the Gospel, to baptize, to break bread so that others too could become His witnesses. Priests, down through the centuries — from Augustine and Aquinas, to John Paul II and our own Archbishop Peter Wells — these are the descendants of those first priests and bishops, the apostles. “They have been needed in every age, and they are needed today, for the kingdom of heaven must be proclaimed, the poor must be served, God must be worshipped, and the sacraments must be administered.” I have been fortunate to serve this wonderful parish as a successor to so many holy and amazing priests on and off for nearly six years. It has been the only parish I’ve served in since being ordained. But now, the bishop has called me to leave Holy Family and to become pastor of another parish, St. Catherine of Alexandria in West Tulsa. I follow in the footsteps of Fr. Matt Gerlach when he left the Cathedral and went to St. Catherine’s many years ago.
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And while I am happy to be called to serve God and His people in this new way, there is also sadness in parting, made even more difficult because there is no one permanent to succeed me as a associate pastor. I don’t know how many decades it has been since Holy Family has not had an associate, but it is a bitter reminder of how much we are in need of priests. We are doing much better than most parishes; we have two young men from our parish in seminary, and a third who will likely be joining them in the Fall. But this highlights just how much need there is for more young men to answer the call. A Pew Research study from 2012 showed that 500,000 young men have seriously considered the priesthood at some point in their lives, and yet only about 500 priests are ordained in the US each year. “The sadness is that the vast majority of those half-million did not receive adequate direction or information or encouragement.” And so my question is Who will fill these shoes? “Are you one of those half-million who has heard the whisper of God’s voice?” Do you know someone who has? A son, a brother, a grandson, a friend? Can I ask you mothers and fathers, grandparents, relatives, co-workers of these prospective candidates to encourage them? And can I ask all of you to pray… to pray for vocations to the priesthood for our parish and for our diocese? We are blessed and grateful that we still have Msgr. Gier with us and Holy Family will make it through till next summer, when, God willing, five new priests will be assigned in our diocese. But it is clear that far more men are called to this vocation than are answering. We need to help them to hear that call over the din of our noisy world. We do this by our prayers, by our lives, by our witness to Christ. Sharing what we have received so that lives can be changed (repentance) and led to holiness (forgiveness of sins). I want to thank you all for what you have taught me these years as your associate pastor. I will try to apply what I have learned in my first pastorate at St. Catherine’s. I will miss this Holy Family, but I don’t leave until July so there will be plenty of time and there is still much to accomplish before I go. I ask for your prayers for me, for Fr. Jovita and Msgr. Gier and our deacons, and most of all for our seminarians Robert Healey, Landon Tulipana, our prospective seminarian, Bruce Sander, and all the young men from these pews whom God is calling to the high adventure of the priesthood. You have my gratitude; you have my love, and I thank you.
Holy Family Cathedral
Graduation Season at Holy Family Cathedral School, 2017-2018
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Isabella Melton, Mia Shank, Trenton Tabler, and Brady Videll, who achieved the requisite academic, faith, and leadership standards to qualify as candidates for the Dear Holy Family Cathedral Parishioners, Robinson Brothers’ Leadership Scholarship to Cascia Hall. Graduates of the 2017-2018 Eighth Grade Class The school year is drawing to a close and we are looking are: Christina Constable (Cascia Hall), Dhinal DeSilva forward to a number of exciting events this month. Our (Memorial), Canyon Garner (Washington), Clifford second-grade students, who have been working hard all Helgason (Memorial), Isabella Melton (Cascia Hall), year preparing for the sacraments of Reconciliation and Matthew Monnot (Bishop Kelley), Nikki Phillips (Bishop Eucharist, will be celebrating their First Holy Communion on Kelley), Katherine Pi (Bishop Kelley), Brad Pykiet Mother’s Day! This year we have eleven students from our (Collinsville), Justin Schrader (Edison), Samantha Schuster second grade receiving this sacrament: Everleigh (Owasso), Mia Shank (Cascia Hall), Taylor Street (Cascia Appelberg, Jillian Beck, Tommy Buckley, Angelina Carrillo, Hall), Trenton Tabler (Cascia Hall), and Brady Videll Tommy Dowdell, Fernando Guillan, Gideon Meddler, (Cascia Hall). This has been a truly outstanding class both Venezia Melton, Jacob Barry, Camden Tabler, and Michael academically, and as members of the Body of Christ. This Zerbe. Join with us in supporting them with your presence class has excelled at kindness and acts of charity, and we and your prayers. are so proud of them all. We see great things in their future! May is also the month for our annual Spring Arts Please keep Festival. Join us if you can as we celebrate the them in your tremendous gifts of our students. The festival is held in the prayers as Heiring Auditorium and on the lower level of the school on they enter th the evenings of Wednesday May 16 and Thursday May high school. 17th. This year our middle school drama students will be presenting the musical revue, “At the Bandstand” on We would Wednesday and our upper elementary students will also like to present “Charlotte’s Web” on Thursday evening. In recognize addition, Wednesday evening’s program will include a the following performance by the Holy Family Cathedral School Choir Holy Family Cathedral School alumni who will be and Thursday evening’s program will include a graduating from Cascia Hall this year for their outstanding performance by the School’s Band students. academic achievements: Geoffrey Escandor, Each evening’s events begin at 6:00 P.M. Student art work Gabriella Bernal, Erika Ravitch, Epadejah Brooks, Avery will be on display on the lower level of the school both Videll, Peter Nguyen; and Stewart Wire who will be evenings. graduating from Bishop Kelley. We are especially proud of Avery Videll who has been recognized as a National May is also the month of graduations. Holy Family Merit Scholar, and Erika Ravitch who has been recognized Cathedral School students participate in two special rites to as a Commended Scholar. mark the end of their middle school journey, and the beginning of their high school experience. On May 18th we It has been a blessing to all the faculty and staff at Holy will have our traditional Light of Leadership Mass. During Family Cathedral School to serve and support these young this ceremony, our eighth-grade class will pass on the light men and women as they have grown on the path of of Christ to the seventh-grade class as they step into their righteousness, and we will continue to pray and love them leadership roles for the upcoming school year. Finally, on as they graduate from this community to the May 20th at the Noon Mass, we will be celebrating the next. Congratulations to them, and to their families! graduation of our eighth grade class and recognizing their many spiritual and academic accomplishments. This year Yours in Christ, we are proud to announce that we have four students, Mrs. Southerland
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Family Faith Formation 2017-2018/Easter at Cathedral 2018 marks our second Holy Week and Easter with Bishop David Konderla. Parishioners and guests from other parishes were blessed with beautiful and prayerful liturgies, moving music and our Bishop’s homilies. We joyfully received new Catholics into our family at the Easter Vigil, pictured here with their sponsors, Bishop David and Fr. Jovita.
Deacon Jon Conro and Deacon B. D.Tidmore celebrated their first Holy Week liturgies and Easter Masses following their ordination in June of 2017. Holy Family appreciates the service our deacons give to our parish. Remember them in your prayers that they may grow in holiness and remain faithful to their vows.
Our high school students received Confirmation at the Noon Mass on Easter Sunday. Congratulations to all those celebrating sacraments this Easter. When you see them at Mass, take a moment to
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offer congratulations and assure them of your continued prayers that they might have the courage to live what they professed to believe.
Holy Family Cathedral PO Box 3204 Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 Electronic Service Requested
Most Rev. David A. Konderla, Bishop of Tulsa Most Rev. Edward J. Slattery, Bishop Emeritus Very Rev. Jovita C. Okonkwo, Rector Rev. John Grant, Associate Pastor Rev. Msgr. Gregory A. Gier, Rector Emeritus Deacon Tom Gorman Deacon Greg Stice Deacon Kevin Tulipana Deacon Jerry Mattox Deacon B.D. Tidmore Deacon Jon Conro Holy Family Cathedral Parish PO Box 3204, Tulsa, OK 74101-3204 918-582-6247 HolyFamilyCathedralParish.com TulsaCathedral@gmail.com Holy Family Cathedral School 820 South Boulder Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74119 918-582-0422 HolyFamilyCathedralSchool.com
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Weekend Mass Schedule: 5:00 p.m. Saturday 8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 12:00 Noon, and 5:00 p.m. Sunday Weekday Mass Schedule: 12:05 p.m. Monday 7:00 a.m. & 12:05 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday 7:00 a.m., 12:05 & 5:05 p.m. Friday 8:00 a.m. Saturday Tuesday-Saturday daily Masses are usually in the Chapel of Peace. Confessions: Ten minutes before all Masses, and 3:30 - 4:45 p.m. Saturday Friday Evening Holy Hour: 5:05 p.m. Mass, followed by Adoration and Benediction until 6:30 p.m.