By Klysha Best

On Divine Mercy Sunday, Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon welcomed a new group of Catholics—neophytes freshly baptised and received into the Church with a powerful message: this is not the end of the journey. It is only the beginning.

“The journey now starts,” he told the congregation gathered at the Minor Basilica of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. “Now you have a brand-new journey. Now you feed at the table of the Lord. Now you receive Him as He is in the Eucharist.”

The April 12 Mass brought together those who entered the Church through the Easter Vigil, now called neophytes, meaning “newly planted.” Archbishop Gordon urged them not to treat their initiation as a graduation.

“It is important as a neophyte that you understand this stage in your development as a Catholic. It’s important that you see this not as a graduation and you’re done. The journey now starts.”

The Archbishop asked the neophytes about emerging from the baptismal font.

“When you stepped out of the font and looked back, you saw how dirty the water was?” he said. “That’s because the water took the burden of your humanity, the burden of your sins, the burden of that ancient sin of Adam and Eve which has afflicted us and separated us from God.”

He declared that from that moment, they were “grafted into Him”, no longer strangers, but members of Christ’s mystical body. “You are His. He is yours.”

Drawing from the First Reading from Acts, Archbishop Gordon outlined the four devotions that grounded the early Church and must now ground the lives of the neophytes.

“They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles, to the fellowship, to the breaking of the bread, and to the prayer.”

He then turned to Thomas, who refused to believe unless he touched Christ’s wounds. When Jesus appeared, He invited Thomas to do just that, and Thomas responded with the greatest confession of faith: “My Lord and my God!”

The Archbishop recalled a man who would bellow that same cry whenever he saw the Eucharist exposed outside the Cathedral. “You knew that the faith of St Thomas had come to that man, and he reminded us that when we see the Eucharist, what we see is Jesus Christ Himself.”

He told the neophytes: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed. You know who that blessing is for? That is for you. You have not seen Him in the flesh, and yet you believe He is our Lord and our God.”

Archbishop Gordon also warned the new Catholics that challenges would come.

“As you give yourself to Christ, sometimes distractions become absolutely real. All kinds of things that you never thought could go wrong, go wrong.”

But he told them not to be afraid. “That only means that the enemy is not happy, and that should make you smile. When he’s not happy, you should be smiling.”

He urged them to keep their eyes fixed on Jesus. “Don’t look left and don’t look right. You set your eyes on Jesus Christ, and you do not shift. You do not deviate. You do not move, because He is your shepherd. And when the Lord is your shepherd, there is nothing, nothing, nothing that you will ever want.”

The Archbishop closed with a reminder of the profound gift the neophytes had received. “Catholicism is not a club that you join. It’s a sacred mystery that you enter.”