Here are some highlights from Cardinal Robert McElroy’s homily at his Solemn Mass of Installation as the archbishop of Washington:

Christian hope – the conviction that in our moments of greatest need God will find a way to stand with us, this is the theme and challenge of the Holy Year we are now celebrating in the universal Church. We are called to be pilgrims of hope in a wounded world, not ignoring the suffering that abounds, but seeing it as a call to strive even more deeply to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ into our lives and our nation and our world….

Mary Magdalene journeys to the tomb of Jesus filled with sorrow, but not despair. She encounters the empty tomb. She is perplexed, but afterward she remains at the tomb, waiting, waiting, waiting and believing. She is an apostle of hope. And in her hope the Risen Jesus appears to her and calls her by name. Suddenly, her whole world changes. For as she comes to understand the reality of the Resurrection and its implications, she realizes that every supposition that she had held about her life, her mission, her purpose in this world had to be changed.

For the disciple, a constant encounter with the Passion, Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the essential foundation for bringing a truly Christian notion of hope into our lives and into our world. For as Saint Paul says so penetratingly, we are already citizens of heaven even as we live upon this earth. God’s power over death itself and the light of the Resurrection recalibrate every major element of our understanding of the meaning of our lives on this earth. They recast the standards by which we must judge our opportunities to ennoble this world in which we live. And they constitute an unending reservoir of peace which finds in the Risen Christ both the beauty of God’s love and the power of God’s glory….

Pope Francis has given us an image of the Church that points simultaneously to the sufferings we endure, the mercy that God constantly showers upon us, and the mercy we are called in turn to bestow upon others. It is the image of the field hospital. Not a modern field hospital as our military has in the present day – technically advanced, sterile and organized. No, the field hospital that Pope Francis wants us to envision would be like that of the field after the Battle of Bull Run, not far from here. Hundreds of wounded men, wrenching in pain, seeking relief, in various states of consciousness – all desperately in need of hope and healing. Pope Francis confronts us with this image of the Church so that we can come to understand that in the life of the Church all of us are wounded, all of us are in pain, all of us are sinners in need of mercy and forgiveness. It reminds us also that the Church sins and is in need of healing, especially in its failure to protect the young from sexual abuse.

It is God who bestows mercy on us and calls us in turn to become bestowers of mercy upon others. Mercy and compassion must be our first impulse when confronted with sin and human failure. For hope arises when we confront ourselves as we truly are, understanding that the bountiful mercy of God is without limit, and undertake the call to live out the teachings of the Church and be sacraments of mercy to others. We are a Church which believes that love and truth do meet. That is precisely our glory as the children of God….

Everything that we know on this earth, every blessing that we receive and every hope that we have is rooted in God’s beneficent desire for the whole of humanity. God is the father of us all. And God sees us as equal in dignity and moral worth.

How deeply that contrasts with the world we have made. Divisions of race and gender and ideology and nationality flourish in the world of politics, religion, family life and education. The poor and the migrant are daily dispossessed, and the dignity of the unborn is denied.

The only effective witness that our Church can give to the world is to view every conflict which surrounds us through the eyes of God. The constant refrain in the book of Genesis as God moves through the arc of creation is to affirm the goodness of all, and especially humanity. It constitutes a rejection of division and scorn, of seeing enemies in those with whom we disagree.

The search for genuine encounter and unity lie at the heart of God’s vision for our world, alongside special care for those who are most vulnerable among us.