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(Editor's note: Bishop Hubbard delivered this homily Oct. 20 during his golden jubilee Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany. Part II will appear in next week's issue of The Evangelist.)

Your Eminence, Cardinal Dolan, Your Eminence, Cardinal Egan, Bishop Ball [of the Episcopal Diocese], my brother bishops, priests and deacons, dear religious, parish life directors and seminarians, honored members of other faith traditions and distinguished elected officials, members of the faithful, my family and friends, we are gathered today to celebrate the Boston Red Sox win!

The good part is, my team, the Red Sox, won the American League Championship! The bad part is, it puts me at odds with my metropolitan archbishop. He's a native of St. Louis. Hopefully, we can get past the tension in the coming weeks.

Today, we are celebrating what the railbirds and patrons in the grandstand at Saratoga would label a trifecta: my golden jubilee of ordination to the priesthood, my 75th birthday and my retirement as bishop of Albany after a tenure of 36-plus years. It is a tenure that has coexisted with the tenure of three Albany mayors, four metropolitan archbishops and cardinals of New York, five popes, six presidents, six governors and a partridge in a pear tree.

Covering 50 years of priestly ministry will take more than a two-minute romp around the track, so fasten your saddles accordingly.

In observing this milestone occasion, I am reminded of an admonition I received early in my priesthood from Bishop Edward Maginn, who was serving as apostolic administrator in the Diocese at the time. I delivered a speech to the Catholic Interracial Council wherein I stated that we in the Catholic community have been guilty of racism, prejudice and discrimination, for which we must repent and apologize. An account of my presentation appeared in The Knickerbocker News, and I got a summons from the Bishop.

Bishop Maginn was a Churchman from his head to his toes who, because of the discrimination he experienced in his native Scotland, regarded any criticism of the Church as an act of belligerence and betrayal. Once I acknowledged that the quotes were accurate, he banged his fist on the desk and bellowed, "Never are you to utter another public word in this Diocese."

Given the fact that Bishop Maginn served as co-consecrator at my episcopal ordination and allowed me to rename the merged high schools of Vincentian Institute and Cardinal McCloskey in his honor, I presume that the prohibition has been lifted at least tacitly, so I will proceed.

My mind and heart are filled with gratitude: gratitude to God, who has given me the gift of life and the treasure of the episcopate; gratitude to my family: to my parents, Elizabeth and Howard; to my aunt, Loretta Burke; to my sisters, Joan and Kathy, and their spouses, Dick and Con; to my 13 nieces and nephews and their spouses; to my 27 grandnieces and -nephews and to my great-grandniece and -nephew. They have made me an integral part of their family, their challenges and triumphs...gratitude to the priests, deacons, religious and laity of our Diocese with whom I have interacted at the Pastoral Center, in our parishes, grammar and high schools, colleges; in our faith formation, youth ministry, campus ministry and parish nurse programs; in healthcare institutions, in Catholic Charities agencies and institutions for children and at-risk youth; in our Consultation Center and counseling services, housing for seniors and homeless shelters; in our various commissions for women, peace and justice, restorative justice, pastoral care and the elderly; cemeteries; in our diocesan newspaper, The Evangelist; in camps, shrines, prayer houses, retreat centers; in jails and prisons throughout our 14-county Diocese.

I'm also grateful as well to the members of the Spanish, Black, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino and Deaf apostolates; and to the members of organizations like the Knights and Dames of Malta, the Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre, the Knights of Columbus and Columbiettes, the St. Vincent DePaul Society, the Catholic Daughters of the Americas, Ancient Order of Hibernians, Married and Engaged Encounter, Cursillo, Residents Encounter Christ, Charismatic Renewal, the Ladies of Charity, the Christ Child Society, the Catholic Women's Service League and the variety of respect life groups.

I also express my deep gratitude to my colleagues from other Christian denominations and from the Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist communities, with whom we have been partners in breaking down discrimination and historical, social and doctrinal barriers, developing bonds of mutual understanding and respect and working for the common good.

Gratitude to our elected representatives present today for the cooperation and collaboration in supporting programs and policies that respond to the social and economic needs of our communities, especially on behalf of the least among us.

And, of course, gratitude to the people of our 14-county Diocese with whom I have interacted over the years, who have taught me so many lessons about love, compassion, gratitude, perseverance, resiliency, community-building and generosity.

Priest for all
Recently, Rev. Matt Malone, editor of America magazine, penned a reflection on the occasion of his first anniversary of ordination to the priesthood. He stated that what he had learned during his initial year of ordination is that the priesthood is not "my priesthood;" rather, it belongs to Christ and His Church. The priest and bishop participate in a ministerial priesthood for the sake of reconciling others to Christ.

The priesthood exists to teach, to lead and to sanctify God's people so that they may be one in Christ and, thus, fulfill their call to be God's priestly people. As we heard in the second reading today, taken from Paul's letter to the Ephesians, we are asked to be evangelists, pastors and teachers in order "to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ." (Eph 4:12).

However, this mediator role of the priest or bishop is not to be exercised apart from the people he serves. Rather, it is for them that the priest exists and it is from them that the priest learns. How true this is!

That's why I chose as my episcopal motto, which we heard in our responsorial psalm today, "Rejoice, we are God's people."

It is the members of the Church who first made God present to me; who first revealed the love, mercy and forgiveness of God; who have supported me in their prayers, inspired me with their zealous witness to and the living out of the Gospel; and who have reminded me constantly that it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life - and if I have been half the priest and bishop that you, and those past and present whom you represent this afternoon, have been to me, then I'll be a very lucky man when I go to meet the Lord.

Blessed with people
How greatly blessed I have been over the years by the various priestly assignments I have received and the men, women and children with whom I have been privileged to interact.

The parishioners in the cathedral, my first full-time assignment as a priest, taught me what a faith-filled community is meant to be. When I came to this parish in 1964, it was a hurting community. The erection of the South Mall was in the process of displacing nearly 3,000 households. Their lives were in turmoil, their neighborhoods destroyed, their future uncertain.

But they manifested a tremendous trust in God's providence and were so supportive to one another through their acts of affirmation, encouragement and compassion. They made real for me the old axiom that "through faith and reliance upon God's providence, all things work unto good."

I must admit that I had something of a vocation crisis at the end of my first year here at the cathedral when, against my own wishes and desires to continue to serve there, I was assigned by the bishop to pursue a degree in social work at the Catholic University of America [in Washington, D.C.], with a view to becoming an administrator in one of our Catholic Charities agencies. Quite frankly, this had no appeal to me, as I had the fear of spending the next 20 to 30 years as an ecclesiastical bureaucrat, when all I ever wanted to be was a parish priest.

However, this assignment led to unparalleled opportunities which would totally change my understanding of priestly life and ministry.

Early days
We were at the height of the civil rights movement and the war on poverty, and in the midst of the burgeoning new ecumenical and interfaith relationships spawned by the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Upon completion of my first year of studies at Catholic University, during the summer I became a member of the Interfaith Task Force in Albany, composed of priests, ministers, rabbis, seminarians, religious and the laity, committed to work for two months in the summer with neighborhood groups on Arbor Hill and in the South End of Albany on issues like discrimination in housing, employment and education, and on much more mundane matters such as code enforcement, trash pickup and the upgrading of neighborhood parks and playgrounds.

As a result of that experience, Bishop Maginn asked me to start a storefront apostolate known as Providence House to address in an ongoing way the social and economic needs of the poor in the South End of Albany.

For the next 11 years, I had the privilege of working side by side with courageous civil rights leaders, community organizers, clergy and grassroots community groups. We sought not only to alleviate dire human needs for food, clothing, decent housing and jobs, but to bring about systemic or structural change designed to break the vicious cycle of poverty. I witnessed social and economic deprivation I could have never imagined, and I was inspired by the heroic willingness of these leaders and ordinary folks to confront the powers that be - elected officials, bankers, landlords, educational and religious leaders - so that true reform and renewal might take place.

Helping addicts
I also learned about a social ill of which I was previously unaware: addiction to hard-core drugs, which was a major problem in the inner city of Albany, but of which the wider community was in denial. I discovered that not only was there no program for the treatment of drug abuse in the Albany area, but none in the northeastern part of New York State.

However, with the help of some enlightened leaders from the business community, the colleges, law enforcement, the Junior Chamber of Commerce and members of Alcoholics Anonymous, we were able to launch Hope House - which, 47 years later, through the efforts of dedicated staff and board members, continues to be a haven for treatment and rehabilitation in our community - fulfilling its motto, "Where there is life, there is hope."

Interaction with other churches and synagogues opened the doorway to ecumenical and interfaith efforts like food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters for the homeless and affordable housing for low-income families, and the establishment of the Urban Apostolate in our own Diocese. This work paved the way for a later outreach to the growing Muslim community in our area, and the solidarity of these bonds [later] helped us to jointly support our Muslim brothers and sisters in the wake of the fallout from the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Turning points
These social service and social justice efforts led to my appointment to our diocesan Commission for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. In addition to supporting joint social service programs and social justice advocacy, the commission was also committed to promoting constructive dialogue with the Orthodox, Protestant and Jewish communities, and to encouraging pulpit exchanges, living-room dialogues and joint Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King and baccalaureate services.

All this eventually led to joint trips to the Holy Land, Geneva and Rome and to the "From Fear to Friendship" reconciliation service held here at the Cathedral in 1986, wherein we became the first Roman Catholic community in our nation to apologize formally for the anti-Semitism throughout our Church history, which had laid the ground for the reprehensible Shoah. This historic event is memorialized in the sculpture titled "Portal," which is located immediately behind our Cathedral.

These years also provided opportunities to serve on the board of the Urban League, the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition, the Living Resources Corporation (providing services to the developmentally disabled), the American Red Cross and Senior Services of Albany.

In 1972, my priestly journey took another unexpected turn when I was elected by the priests of the Diocese to serve as chair of our priests' personnel board, which was established to address the placement of priests and to attend to their spiritual, social and financial needs. What a marvelous opportunity this accorded me to come to know my brother priests better - their needs, their challenges, their hopes and expectations - but also to assist the various parishes throughout our 10,000-square-mile Diocese, spreading from the Pennsylvania line to the Vermont border, from the Massachusetts border to the Utica city line.

It was truly enriching to travel throughout the Adirondacks, the Catskills and the Mohawk, Hudson and Schoharie valleys and to observe the many and varied ways the liturgical, sacramental and social mission of our Church was being exercised throughout the Diocese in our urban, suburban and rural communities.[[In-content Ad]]

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