Homily of His Excellency Archbishop Charles John Brown
at the Eucharistic Celebration for the Golden Jubilee of the Diocese of Catarman
March 11, 2025 | Cathedral of Our Lady of the Annunciation, Catarman
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ
Your Excellency, the Most Rev. Nolly C. Buco, Bishop of Catarman
Your Excellency, the Most Reverend Emmanuel C. Trance, Bishop-Emeritus of Catarman,
Your Grace, Most Rev. John Du, Archbishop of Palo,
Bishops who have come from near and far,
Priests here in big numbers, from the Diocese of Catarman and other dioceses,
Religious sisters who are here, religious brothers,
And most of all, you, the faithful people, the baptized people of the Diocese of Catarman
Today is a day of joy, a day of rejoicing, a day of thanksgiving because today you celebrate your 50th birthday.
Fifty years.
The golden anniversary of the foundation of your diocese on this very day, March 11th, 1975, with the installation here in the Cathedral of the Annunciation of your first bishop—Bishop Angel T. Hobayan, the first bishop of Catarman.
He had been ordained to the episcopate as a bishop a few days before, in Borongan, on March 5th, 1975, by my predecessor as the Nuncio in Manila, Bruno Torpigliani. He ordained Angel Hobayan into the episcopate on March 5th of 1975 and a few days later they arrived here in Catarman and he was installed as your first Bishop.
Your diocese began to exist at that moment.
And it’s a beautiful correspondence with the Gospel today because the Gospel today is the Gospel of the Annunciation, the announcement to Mary that she would be the mother of God. And I can say in parentheses it's very appropriate if the Nuncio celebrates the mass of the Annunciation because it's the same word: ‘nuncio’ is ‘to announce’; ‘annunciation’ is ‘announcement’.
And what did Gabriel announce to Mama Mary? That she would be the mother of God. And at that moment, when Mary said, “Let it be done to me according to Thy word”... the word became flesh and dwelled among us in the virginal womb of Our Lady, of Mary—the very beginning of the life of Jesus, incarnate Son of God, in this world, on March 25th.
So your Cathedral is dedicated to the beginning of the incarnation, the beginning of Jesus’ physical presence among us on earth, in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And today we look back to the beginning of your diocese, the moment in which it began 50 years ago today on March 11th, 1975.
Today's a day to remember beginnings. To rejoice in beginnings. And to continue as a church. To repeat in our own words the words of Mary, “Let it be done according to your word”. Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.
Of course, your dear first bishop bishop, Bishop Angel Hobayan, was bishop here, and then was succeeded by His Excellency Bishop Emmanuel C. Trance, who was bishop in 2004 until about two years ago, in 2023, when Bishop Nolly Buco was named as the first Apostolic Administrator and then was installed here as your bishop only about two months ago in January of this year. So you've had three bishops here in your diocese.
Nazareth
We think about Nazareth a little bit this morning, the place of the Annunciation, the place where the Angel Gabriel came to this young, unmarried spouse, the virgin named Mary.
Nazareth is not the capital—Nazareth is in the province. The capital is what? Jerusalem. God did not go to the capital to find Mary. God went to the province, to Nazareth.
It shows us already how God's vision is not always our vision. He looks out on the peripheries.
In the far flung places, God finds people of beautiful faith, of remarkable hope, of deep love—like Mary. Mama Mary. He chose her in the provinces to be the mother of God.
We heard this morning that beautiful Gospel of the Annunciation, that gospel in which the Angel Gabriel then tells Mary that Mary's cousin Elizabeth is going to have a baby. Our gospel reading ended this morning in the 1st chapter of St. Luke's gospel in the 38th verse. It ends. But in the next verse, if you open your bibles when you go home, what happened after this Annunciation, the very next verse of the gospel, after what we just heard and meditated on here in the cathedral? The next verse is this: in those days, Mary got ready to go to town in the country of Judah.
So immediately after receiving the gift of Jesus in her womb, the next line in St. Luke's Gospel is Mary got ready and hurried to the country of Judah. Where was she going? She was going to help Elizabeth, her cousin, who was pregnant with John the Baptist, who was already experiencing pregnancy. But Elizabeth didn't live near Nazareth, in the province. Elizabeth lived very close to the capital, very close to Jerusalem. That means that Mary had to travel. In the first days of her pregnancy. Here was a girl who was told that she was engaged to Joseph but they hadn't had the marriage feast yet. The angel tells her this news and Mary on her own—remember the angel Gabriel did not tell Mary ‘Go help Elizabeth’, the angel Gabriel did not order Mary to do that—it came spontaneously from the maternal love of Mary to immediately go to help her cousin Elizabeth.
Caravan
And already we see something very interesting: that after receiving the gift of Jesus, Mary goes on a journey. This is an important theme for us in the Catholic Church: the theme of the journey. It is an important theme for you here in Catarman after 50 years.
When Mary went from Nazareth down towards Jerusalem, she didn't go alone. She was a young woman. She’s not gonna be walking 150 kilometers all by herself. She went in a caravan with other people—fellow travelers going towards Jerusalem. She joined the caravan. She went with them. Why is that important?
Because of the caravan—the word in Greek of caravan is synodos— which we have been talking about in these years because of the inspired idea of Pope Francis that the Church should be a synodal church. We’ve been talking of this idea of synodos. The word means a caravan, a group of people traveling together. And that's what Mary joined to go help Elizabeth. She went in a caravan with all types of different people—old people, young people, you have merchants carrying goods from the province to bring the capital to be sold in the market. You have maybe political leaders in the caravan—all kinds of people, some walking a little bit faster, some a little bit slower, but everyone walking together.
This is Pope Francis’ image of the church. And we need to be like a synod, like a caravan.
We have different roles: to be a bishop is not the same as to be a religious sister; to be a mother of a family, which is so important, so crucial for giving and passing on the faith, is not the same as to be a parish priest. We have different roles in this caravan but we are walking together. We’re staying together. We’re helping one another. We’re comforting one another. We are going together towards the Kingdom of God. That is Pope Francis’ fundamental idea of what the church should be.
A Caravan Through Time
Let me give you another reflection on the idea of the caravan. I've been talking about the church at this moment, 2025, as a caravan—a diverse group of people walking together united by faith in Jesus. And we could also think about the church as a caravan going through history. Not a caravan in 2025 but a caravan that began in the year 33, through the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus. If we see that caravan, if you think of the church as a kind of procession, as a caravan stretching through time, and we are walking in the footsteps of the people who walked before us. Imagine a caravan and in the front the very first 12 apostles. St. Peter, Our Lady, the 12 apostles. And immediately behind them, we see the early martyrs of the church: Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia. Behind them, the great Fathers of the Church: Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, St. John Chrysostom. Behind them, getting closer to us, the great saints of the middle ages: St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis. And even closer to us in this procession, the people just in front of us, we would see Lorenzo Ruiz, Pedro Calungsod, and all the uncanonized saints. And even closer, maybe 400 years ago, we see the first evangelists who came here to Northern Samar, to begin the evangelization of this part of the Philippines, from Palapag (which I visited yesterday) 400 years ago. And getting even closer, we may even see very close to us St. John Paul II, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, walking just in front of us. We are walking in that caravan. We are walking in that caravan. It is an important image for us.
When we think about the church and how the church should proceed, we need to walk in the footsteps of the saints.
That's what synodality means.
When we think about the synod, the caravan stretching through time, if we walk in the footsteps of the Saints, we will be walking in the right direction in the reform of the church. Making the church holy, making the church more beautiful, making the church more radiant means looking to the people who went before us and walking in the way they walked.
There’s a form of non-Catholic reform of the church. Non-catholic reform says I'm not going to follow the Saints. I'm going to go this way because I think this is a better direction. That's not the Catholic way of reform. Our way of reform is to follow the saints before us, to look to their example. That's what we're doing this morning.
We are looking to what happened here 50 years ago, to the people who began the life of the diocese here in Catarman. We need to be faithful to their vision. We need to be faithful to what they created. Maybe some of you here this morning were here 50 years ago in this cathedral for that moment, I don’t know—after mass you can tell me. But we need to be faithful to those who went before us. That’s what we call holy tradition in the church. That's a synodal reality because the church is this beautiful and amazing caravan.
Evangelize this Generation
But brothers and sisters, there are people behind us in the caravan walking after us. Let's not forget about them. The young people that we need to evangelize. Let's pray that in 25 years—your 75th anniversary—you can invite me back. I'll be 90 years old but I’d like to come. It would be wonderful to be here. We hope that in 25 years, your 75th anniversary, the church is as crowded, as joyful, filled with life as it is this morning.
It is our responsibility to make that happen. To evangelize this generation by going out to the peripheries, by showing them the beauty of Catholic life, what it means to be in this caravan of God, to be a son and daughter of God, following the example of the saints loving Our Lady.
So let's recommit ourselves to evangelization so that in 25 years—or in 50 years when you celebrate the 100th anniversary (I don't think I'll be here for that)—that this church will be even fuller, even more crowded with people, lovers of Jesus, followers of our Heavenly Father.
So dear brothers and sisters of Christ, for me as the representative of Pope Francis, it’s a great joy to be with you this morning. I greet you in his name. I say in his name, Happy 50th birthday! You all look wonderful for being 50 years old!
And let's also pray for our Holy Father Pope Francis. As all of you know, as I’ve been saying these days during my visit in the Diocese of Catarman, he's been in the hospital for a couple of weeks and He needs our prayers. As I said last night, his health condition has improved somewhat and I attribute that improvement to the prayers that are being offered for him all over the world but especially here in the Philippines. So let us continue to pray for Pope Francis.
Let's be a synodal church—a church that’s all-encompassing, a church that includes everyone, a church that walks in the path of the saints towards the Kingdom of Heaven.
May God bless you Happy Golden Anniversary!
Transcribed by Margaux Salcedo
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