By David Myers

Southwest Kansas Register

The homily of Most. Rev. Ronald Gilmore, Bishop of Dodge City

Seeing that he was cured, the Gospel tells us, he came back. The sight triggered a rush of gratitude. His inner world was brimming over. It demanded an outward expression of what he was experiencing. Thus it was that he prostrated himself at the feet of Jesus in thanksgiving, the ancient sign of openness and worship.

Jesus blinked, and stirred, and was raised up, 8t. Paul told us this morning. That action too triggered a rush of gratitude. His inner world was brimming over with its extraordinary meaning. It demanded an outward expression of what he had lived through. Thus it was that his risen body bore the wounds of his passion and death. He had a way of being a body different from anyone else. His outside was an expression of his inside. His obedience to his Father, his sacrificial death for us, his desire to draw all things to himself, all this found expression in that wounded body.

As we blink and stir and celebrate forty years today, I think you should know that something similar is true of each parish, if in a more complex way. A parish is composed of personalities, and times, and circumstances, and problems, and opportunities. That makes it more complex than an individual, to be sure. But its inwardness too seeks outward expression, needs outward expression, must have outward expression. The living spirit of a parish needs a body.

You had that in the uncertainty and anxiety of the beginning. A decision was made in Dodge City in 1964, a line was drawn on a map on the other side of town, Father Pottorf was here, with a prayer, a television, a housekeeper, and two dogs, the record tells us. He was also here with one large question: will they come? To the Garden City Co-Op, to the K of C Hall, to the rented house?

There were hurt feelings, you see. There always are when lines are drawn. There always are when houses are divided. Loyalties were stretched and some of them snapped. There were regrets, you see, especially at losing the connection with the Precious Blood Fathers. They were such an essential part of this county. They had been for so long. Their charism had worked its way into every comer of Catholic life here. And now what?

Father Pottorf came with a single large question: Will they come? Will they? And so the story began, of a parish seeking its own form of outward expression, of a living, complex, spirit seeking its own body.

You had that in the single most important decision that affected your early years. In 1965 and 1966, after much prayer and discernment, you wanted to build a church. As Providence would have it, Bishop Forst wanted you to build a school. And so you swallowed hard, abandoned yourselves to Providence with the same sacrificial love that Jesus showed, and you poured your energies into the making of a school, thus taking on a character, a body, that marked you for decades.

You had that in the musical houses of Monsignor Hussmann and the Sisters. You had that in the sponsoring of Vietnamese families in the early 1970s. You had that in the mighty task of building this magnificent church in the days of Father Renner. You had that in the creation of that splendid adult formation program. You had that in providing the site for my own ordination as your bishop. You had that through all four decades, each of them a reaching out for your very own outward expression, different from all other parishes, a fleshing out of your own unique spirit.

And you have that now as you add to your bodiliness with this wonderful new parish center, born at least as far back as the desire of Father Reed, and achieved through the energy of the St. Dominic spirit. It will provide you space where God can delight in his people, and his people can delight in one another. It will provide you space to deepen and expand your handing on of what you have seen and heard of God. I commend Father Bahr and those many who gathered around him for the work and the wisdom that brought us to this day. You have every reason to take satisfaction in a job well done.

But the story is not over, of course. The St. Dominic spirit lives, and it moves. It will continue to unfold, to take new forms of expression, to show forth a new bodiliness, no doubt. We rejoice in what we have seen grow up in the past forty years. We rejoice in what now is. And we watch with happy anticipation for what will be.