[Jesus]  has shown us what it really means to be His disciples. He has founded this on our better understanding of the first sacrament we all received, the sacrament of Baptism. He has revealed to us how this sacrament is more essential to our identity than whether we are priests or laity, religious or married, deacons, teachers, young people or parents. It is baptism that establishes in each of us a personal relationship with God and makes us brothers and sisters, with hearts of flesh, to welcome each other in equal dignity as children of God. It is by baptism that our Heavenly Father gives us our spiritual gifts and talents and instils in all of us equally the full responsibility for building up our Church and being evangelisers of our villages, towns and nation. It is in the baptism of every new child that God gives our parishes new heart and it is in the return of each of us to the grace of our own baptism in daily prayer that God gives our diocese a new spirit. Since all of this is true it must follow that all of us, priests and people, should work together in full, collaborative engagement on the basis of this, our common baptismal vocation. In such companionship alone we will rediscover with joy that our Church really is chosen and precious in God’s sight.

Through our Synod the Holy Spirit has called us to be a Church that looks, above all, like our Father’s joyful family. We live full of joy that He took us from the nations and gathered us to be His people with Him as our God. For once we were not a people at all but now we are the people of God; and once we had not received mercy but now we have received mercy. Having been called together to be His new creation we are to become living stones, letting ourselves be built into a spiritual house, rejoicing to be His chosen race, His royal priesthood and His holy nation. But the Spirit has revealed that the first sign He wants our parishes and diocese to show in order to be truly His people is that we welcome everyone with open arms, that we are a welcoming family of faith where all members feel they belong, especially the young and those families we find broken by our topsy-turvy world as they stumble into our midst. It is by being actively welcoming and open that we will receive the reward from our Father to be the vibrant, growing Church that He bequeathed to our forefathers.

The Spirit has called us to be a missionary diocese of evangelisation. Our missionary effort, of course, must be centred on our personal relationship of holiness with Jesus Christ for He calls us to be a holy nation, a consecrated people set apart to worship Him with the fragrant sacrifice of our good lives; to remain in Him in order to bear much fruit, because apart from Him we can do nothing. But He commissions us to reach out to all of society, in particular to that ever-growing number of those who feel excluded and on the margins, because they have been made to feel poor or unworthy, both inside and outside of our Church, and for us to proclaim to all, without distinction, the mighty deeds of God who calls the whole world out of darkness into His marvellous light. In the modern world of today the Holy Spirit has told us that proclamation means communication in all its media, from bulletins to social media, from every day contacts with family and friends, to street apostolate among the citizens of the world.

Rt. Rev. John Keenan, Homily, Diocesan Synod Closing Mass