St. Albert the Great Parish welcomes Father Daniel Cooper’s first celebration
By Bill Brewer
Father Daniel Cooper’s first Mass, his Mass of Thanksgiving, attracted a large St. Albert the Great congregation to the 11 a.m. service on June 7.
Concelebrating the Mass was Father Christopher Floersh, pastor of St. Albert the Great, Monsignor Patrick Garrity, sacramental associate at St. Albert the Great, and Father Guerric DeBona, OSB, director of spiritual formation and an instructor of homiletics at St. Meinrad Seminary, who has led Father Cooper and a number of Diocese of Knoxville priests in spiritual formation.
Monsignor Garrity delivered the homily, saying the congregation was joining together to celebrate not only the feast of Corpus Christi but Father Cooper’s first Mass of Thanksgiving and the gift of priesthood.
He called that holy order “an awesome gift and an awesome responsibility.”
He pointed to Scripture where Jesus approached the fishermen at the Sea of Galilee and said, “Come, follow me.”
“At some point, Jesus said the same thing to you,” Monsignor Garrity said to Father Cooper. “Come, follow me.”
Monsignor Garrity recounted how in Father Cooper’s early adult years, he served as a Baptist minister. But on a youth mission trip to Savannah, Ga., a nun he was working with invited him to a Catholic church and to attend a Mass. Father Cooper attended Mass with the Sister each day.
“He found something new and different each day that he never experienced before,” the monsignor said. “And that led to a long journey where Jesus said, ‘Come, follow me.’”
Following that experience in Georgia, Father Cooper returned to Maryville College and approached Monsignor Garrity, who then was pastor of St. John Neumann Parish in Farragut, and asked to become Catholic. Monsignor Garrity asked him to look more closely into the Catholic Church in the Knoxville area and put him on the RCIA path.
Father Cooper, who is 37, joined the Catholic Church at Easter Vigil in 2018 and almost immediately asked Monsignor Garrity to be a lector, and shortly after that he asked to become a eucharistic minister. Less than a month later, he approached Sister Elizabeth Wanyoike, ESM, about being an RCIA leader.
“He was still discovering what Jesus said, ‘Come, follow me,’” Monsignor Garrity noted. “Then after about a year, he said he was interested in going to seminary to become a priest.”
Father Cooper spent several months discerning a vocation before attending St. Meinrad Seminary.
“There he discovered that Jesus was calling him just like He called Peter. Peter spent years walking with Jesus. He didn’t know where it was leading. He didn’t know what was going to be asked of him. But he went. Even with his fears, his human weaknesses, his anxieties, he followed Jesus,” Monsignor Garrity said.
The monsignor, who recently celebrated his 50th anniversary as a priest, reminded Father Cooper that Jesus told Peter, “Feed my sheep,” which means administering the sacraments, including the Eucharist, an especially poignant message on the feast of Corpus Christi.
“The people of God are entrusted to you. They look to you to be fed. They look to you to be fed with the Word of God. They look to you to be fed with the Bread of Life,” he said. “That’s what we celebrate today: the Bread of Life.”
He reminded Father Cooper that priesthood is a great gift that comes with great responsibility.
“We pray for you today as you have accepted that gift. You’ve heard that voice of Jesus like Peter did, ‘Come, follow me.’ You’ve answered with a full heart. You said, ‘Yes, I’m ready.’ … We give thanks for your answer to that call, ‘Come, follow me.’ We celebrate the body of Christ, the blood of Christ. We celebrate the priesthood that makes that possible,” Monsignor Garrity said to conclude his homily.
Father Floersh asked the new priest for a blessing and encouraged members of the congregation to continue celebrating Father Cooper at a reception following Mass, where Father Cooper would be giving blessings.
Father Cooper embraces Renee and Steven Hamilton, to whom he presented his maniturgium and confessional stole during his Mass of Thanksgiving. (Photo Jenny Martinez)
Father Cooper then called Renee and Steven Hamilton to come forward, and he presented Mrs. Hamilton with his maniturgium, the small, white linen cloth used during Father Cooper’s ordination that has absorbed sacred chrism from his hands. He then presented Mr. Hamilton with the stole that he used when he heard his first confession.
The presentations, a cherished tradition, are sacred keepsakes to express gratitude for the Hamilton’s love, prayers, and sacrifices.
Father Cooper shared that he is the only person in his family who is Catholic and said he considered the couple he first met at St. John Neumann as adopted parents who have been very special to him during his conversion to Catholicism and his journey to priesthood.
“I met Daniel the day he came into the Church at St. John Neumann. And I welcomed him. He didn’t know me, but I had this feeling that I had to welcome him. And so I did. I met him at his car and I knocked on his window and he rolled his window down. I said I just want to welcome you. My heart is so happy to see you here,” an emotional Mrs. Hamilton said through tears. “That was the beginning of him being in our life and we just love him. We just love him.”
“I never would have imagined anything like this,” she added, referring to the gifts from Father Cooper. “I never would have imagined this. This is an honor that I never would have imagined. Thank you, God.”
Mr. Hamilton said Father Cooper and Monsignor Garrity have been part of their lives for several years, and he described Father Cooper as a “wonderful man.”
“It has been such a joy to watch his journey. I never would have dreamed it would be this way, though. This is beyond anything,” Mrs. Hamilton noted.
As Father Cooper reflected on his ordination, he said he was filled with an overwhelming sense of peace.
“I’m finally feeling the fulfillment of what God has been preparing me for through years with seminary formation and really being able to say that I am capable of celebrating the sacraments for the people of God in East Tennessee. These people have shown me so much love and so much grace throughout my entire life, not just as a Catholic,” Father Cooper said.
“It’s exciting for me to give back to them in a way that I’ve wanted to do for a while,” he added.
Father Cooper is looking forward to serving at St. Francis of Assisi.
“I have completely fallen in love with those parishioners. They are so pure in their faith. To be able to tell them that their faith journey is continuing is incredible,” he said.
He shared that his interest in faith “started showing itself pretty early.
“The director of the RCIA program when I came into the Church, Sister Elizabeth Wanyoike, used to call me Peter because I entered RCIA and had a friend who was going to go with me on a trip to Rome that September. I encouraged him to attend a Mass before we went so he wouldn’t be lost. He went with me and by that weekend he was in RCIA,” Father Cooper said. “As I was coming into the Church, I was subtly casting nets and people were coming along. Sister and I joke that I was a fisher of RCIA candidates.”