There is a museum in Hamburg whose website states that it "showcases the role Hamburg played in the lives of those whose destination was the New World". The reason that this museum is of interest to me is because I have the original ticket from my maternal grandfather when he left Germany to come to the United States. The ticket is dated the 18th of June 1913, almost one hundred years ago, and the departure city is given as Hamburg.

My grandfather made the crossing of the Atlantic on the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, a ship of the Hamburg-Amerikan Line which was first put into service in 1906, and at the time, the largest ship in the world until the Cunarder Lusitania.

The new BallinStadt museum, named after Albert Ballin, general manager of the company that built the housing complex, has reproduced dormitory buildings where immigrants would sleep before boarding the ships that would take them to the new world. Perhaps one day I might go to Germany and see where my grandfather spent the night before he left his homeland and came to the new world.

In a real sense, Pinehurst is a "new world" for most all of us, because, except for an increasing number of our children, we were born somewhere else, and have come to live, or work, or retire in Moore County and its' environs after a number of years in another town, or city, or state, or even country.

We are, then, ALL immigrants, and yet not strangers to one another but family….brothers and sisters in Christ, and children of a God who loves one no more or less than another.

It is my privilege to welcome you to your new home, and to your new parish family in this your "new world" of Sacred Heart.