With love of Jesus 'in our hearts,' everything else falls 'into place,' says Nashville's bishop

By Andy Telli, OSV News

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (OSV News) -- When Bishop J. Mark Spalding was installed as the 12th bishop of the Diocese of Nashville Feb. 2, 2018, he summed up his vision of the church with the phrase, "The love of Jesus in my heart."

"If we have the love of Jesus in our hearts, we must pray that it ever increases," he said that day. "Because when we have the love of Jesus in our hearts, our eyes open up, our ears open up, our arms open up, our hands open up to others. We see others, and we lift them up, and we walk with them, we build God's kingdom here on earth."

As he marked the fifth anniversary of his episcopal ordination and installation Feb. 2 of this year, that vision endures. "Some of the things I said at that moment is what I want to see continue in the next five years, an ever increasing of the love of Jesus in our hearts, " Bishop Spalding told the Tennessee Register, Nashville's diocesan newspaper.

"If you have that, all other things fall into place," he said. "It helps us in the joys and gives us strength and encouragement during the challenges. The love of Jesus is in my heart, and may it ever increase. I think the calling of all of us as disciples of Jesus is to ever increase our love for him. And if we have the same kind of love that Jesus has, it will ever increase our love of those around us as well."

As Bishop Spalding prepared to enter Sagrado Corazón Church for his installation and ordination, he had feelings of anxiousness and joy as he silently prayed, "Lord, you've brought me here, be at my side as I go through this moment."

"That's above all what I was praying," he recalled. "Be with me Lord, be with me." Sagrado Corazón Church at the Catholic Pastoral Center was filled with more than 3,000 family, friends, priests, deacons, religious sisters, parishioners and laity of both the Diocese of Nashville and the Archdiocese of Louisville, Kentucky, where Bishop Spalding formerly served as a priest and pastor.

Among his first tasks was to learn his new diocese. He launched a "Look, Listen and Learn" tour of all of its churches to deepen that knowledge.

"First and foremost, I found people in middle Tennessee have a strong faith," Bishop Spalding said. "Their Catholicism means something to them, and they rejoice in the fact that they are Catholic. I do see an evangelical and inspirational element of people's faith here in middle Tennessee. I try to witness to that, and make sure we share that with as many others as we can."

The bishop noted that while Catholics only make up a small percentage of the population in Middle Tennessee, the church's impact is much larger than its numbers, touching the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in some way.

The size of the Catholic community "also makes people determined to make sure the church is taken care of, and that the church takes care of others," Bishop Spalding said. "So there is that kind of drive, or inner fire, for the faith that inspires me."

Bishop Spalding is shepherd to a growing flock. During his time in middle Tennessee, the diocese has established two new parishes outside of Nashville, and enrollment in Catholic schools is higher than it has been in a decade, and is still rising.

And he expects the growth in the region's population will require more parishes or larger spaces for people to worship.

Also to meet that growth the diocese will continue to emphasize developing leaders as a priority, Bishop Spalding said. To make increasing the love of Jesus in our hearts a reality, "you must have good leaders."

As it has in the past, the diocese "will continue to be about, seminarians, permanent deacons, religious and other leadership," he said.

The diocese currently has 21 seminarians in formation and has had as many as 28 during Bishop Spalding's time in Nashville, but the search for leaders goes beyond the Vocations Office to include Catholic schools.

Another key to the future will be the diocese's efforts to communicate with the broader community.

"We have to ever speak and witness to our faith in a wider world," Bishop Spalding said. "There’s a lot of good news in the church. The first is the good news of Jesus Christ. The second is the good news of our work here in the Diocese of Nashville, particularly the work that goes on here at the diocesan level and the parish level. It's incredible. But we've got to keep communicating, keep sharing that story of Christ and his activity in the church itself."

The diocese's communication efforts are important to counter the secularism and relativism of the broader culture, the bishop added.

Western culture more and more sends the message "you don't need God, that faith is irrelevant, and that people are indifferent to it," Bishop Spalding said.

The bishop's first five years have not been without challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic chief among them.

"There was a resilience from our leadership team on the diocesan level, and a resilience by our pastors and their parish teams" that helped them adapt to the changes forced by the pandemic, Bishop Spalding said.

"But now I do believe we're coming out of that fog of COVID and into the light," he said. "We need to come together. ... We are a people about communion and community, and there's no better way to come back together than to be at the Eucharist at Mass."

That "sets us up" for the National Eucharistic Revival, said Bishop Spalding, a member of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Advisory Group for the revival, a three-year effort by the country’s bishops to restore Catholics’ understanding and worship of the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.

"One of the things we all see and read about is the wider anxiety of people," Bishop Spalding said. "When you bring Christ into people's hearts, it pushes that kind of anxiety back. But it's a constant effort."

Another effort the Nashville Diocese has been involved in, like all U.S. dioceses, is the ongoing Synod on Synodality, leading to the first world Synod of Bishops on synodality in Rome in October.

With the synod, Bishop Spalding has seen once again that "people have a desire to make the church even better, they have a desire to have the church grow. What I also heard is we're diverse, and diversity will only continue to grow as well."

When he celebrated the fifth anniversary of his episcopal ordination and installation Feb. 2 at the Cathedral of the Incarnation, Bishop Spalding looked out on the congregation of more than 500 priests, deacons, religious and laity and reiterated what he told the people at his installation Mass.

"We must pray to God to ever increase the love of Jesus in our hearts because if we're going to be church, if we're going to truly live in the way that Christ wants us to live, then our love for him must increase," he said. "We must pray to God to ever increase the love of Jesus in our hearts because if we’re going to be church, if we're going to truly live in the way that Christ wants us to live, then our love for him must increase."

He also said he was filled with a sense of awe, "due to the beauty of this cathedral."

"Those who have gone before us have given us a great legacy, and we get to pray here together, to be in the awe of Christ," Bishop Spalding said in his homily.

"Every time, processing up with voices lifted, and we gather around this wonderful and beautiful altar, it's a sense of awe that fills me," he said. "And every time I get to that chair and turn around and look at you, there before me, in so many ways, is the face of Christ, an awesome face to take in every time."