Bishop Beckman gives vision for diocese with launch of new pastoral plan
By Bee Goodman
At the Easter Vigil Mass, a breathtaking moment happens when the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus completely darkens and the newly blessed paschal candle is carried through the front doors for the first time.
Bishop Mark Beckman always notices the same thing: how fast the light spreads.
“I had a privileged position this year because it was up front,” Bishop Beckman said, describing this year’s Holy Saturday Vigil procession at the cathedral. “So, I’m looking out throughout the whole church, and I see the light spreading from taper to taper until the entire cathedral church is filled with light. And you see the faces of God’s people reflected in that candlelight.”
That image of light spreading from the paschal candle to each person, candle by candle, person by person, throughout the pews to illuminate the church is now the heart of a new vision for the Diocese of Knoxville.
On Sept. 18, Bishop Beckman officially launched “Bearing the Light of Christ in East Tennessee,” his pastoral vision for the future of the diocese.
Built around The Eight Lights, these pastoral priorities are the culmination of his travels across the diocese as he listened to the faithful in parish halls, spending time with priests, engaging on hiking trails, and discerning what he has witnessed since he arrived two years ago as the diocese’s fourth bishop. It is through these lights that he calls us, in little ways, to join him in prayer, invitation, and service in Building a Civilization of Love.
Building a Civilization of Love
“We love because God first loved us. And every act of genuine charity—however quiet, however small—is another stone laid in the foundation of the civilization of love we are called to build together, right here in East Tennessee.”
The vision’s centerpiece, “Building a Civilization of Love,” borrows this phrase that Bishop Beckman traces to St. Paul VI, later echoed by St. John Paul II, and now, Pope Leo XIV. In a recent talk at the Community Connections event at St. Thomas the Apostle in Lenoir City, Bishop Beckman offered his own definition.
“A Civilization of Love is a society, a civilization where every single human person, from the moment of conception to their natural death, is valued and treasured as a beloved child of God, created in the image and likeness of God, and that every single person has what he or she needs to become fully alive and fully human,” the bishop said.
He envisions a community, stretching beyond our own diocese, where every person and all of God’s creation is lovingly cherished. It is seeing Christ’s image in the person that glows beneath the candlelight at the Vigil and in the stranger in the street.
Bishop Beckman believes the Church has been building that for 2,000 years, pointing to the early Christian communities described in the Acts of the Apostles who “never had anyone who had any need because the entire community shared their resources.” He also points to the Church’s role in ending the Roman Empire’s practice of branding slaves, establishing the first hospitals, and preserving learning through the monasteries of the early Middle Ages.
The bishop compared the work ahead to constructing a medieval cathedral, a project that took generations and required every kind of laborer.
“The person who’s laying the cornerstone is just as important as the person who’s laying the capstone on top, and every stone in between,” he said. “So, all of us have work to do. We each have work that we can do.”
The Eight Lights
The vision dives deeper by recalling another image from Easter Vigil—the baptismal font. Since the early centuries of the Church, baptismal fonts often have been in the shape of an eight-sided octagon. Eight is the number of new beginnings, of resurrection, of the life that baptism opens, and a reminder to live our baptismal promises in all corners of our life.
Around this font, the bishop’s vision organizes into “The Eight Lights”: Prayer, Vocations, Formation, Education, Charity, Youth Engagement, Evangelization, and Care of Creation.
“One light kindles the next,” the vision introduction reads. “You do not need to carry all eight. Wherever you are right now, this is an invitation to let them catch in your life.”
Bishop Beckman’s call is simple, through individual prayer, invitation, and service, one can make a meaningful impact in many important ways.
Pray. Invite. Serve.
When discussing The Eight Lights, Bishop Beckman keeps returning to three words to describe what any single person can do: pray, invite, serve.
“The Eight Lights. Eight small, ordinary acts,” reads the closing passage of the vision, “a prayer, a question, a name remembered, a door opened.” None of those acts seem like much by themselves, but the vision’s whole logic rests on the same image that Bishop Beckman keeps reflecting from Easter Vigil: one flame catching the next until a whole cathedral, or a whole diocese, renewed in baptism is illuminated with Christ’s love.
Pray means starting each day by actively listening for God’s voice. Invite means opening your life to Christ through individual prayer or by connecting with one person and asking God for the courage to bring them closer to Christ, to the Church, or to whatever calling He’s already placed in their life. Serve means encountering the person in front of you, whoever that is, with a generous love rather than waiting for a program or a committee to do it first.
Bishop Beckman is explicit that this isn’t meant to feel like homework layered on top of The Eight Lights. It’s the mechanism underneath all of them. Every light, from Vocations to Care of Creation, moves the same way: someone prays, someone gets invited, someone serves, and that is what ignites the next flame.
A parishioner who starts spending 15 quiet minutes with God each morning is living prayer. A father who pulls a teenage son aside and asks if he has ever thought about the priesthood is living vocations through invitation. A parish that hands out winter coats or volunteers with a mobile clinic is living charity through service. The three acts do not sit apart from The Eight Lights; they’re how ordinary Catholics walk into any of them. They transform ideals into practical actions everyone can participate in.
That’s also why the bishop’s vision insists nobody needs to carry all eight lights, or master all three apostolates, at once. Wherever a person appears in their faith, whatever single light has sparked in their life right now, praying, inviting, and serving are simply the next honest steps.
Bishop Beckman is not asking for perfection; he is asking us to take that step.
At baptism, a candle is entrusted to a parent or godparent with the charge to keep its flame burning. As the faithful renew their baptismal promises together, Bishop Beckman’s vision gives that call a simple shape: Pray. Invite. Serve.
“The light is already here,” the vision states in its closing lines. “Let us bear it together.” For Bishop Beckman, that is not a metaphor waiting to be explained but an instruction. Pray today. Invite one person this week. Serve whoever God happens to put in front of you. Do that, and the light spreads exactly the way it did through that dark cathedral on Holy Saturday, one candle at a time.
Visit www.dioknox.org/bearing-the-light for more information. Booklets, prayer cards, and more information will be available at parishes starting in early October.