The three-night-tent revival, held every year on the grounds of St. Veronica Par­ish since 1997, has become a fixture of the summer land­scape in the greater Howell area.

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Dynamic Catholic speak­ers, uplifting music and entertainment for children are all hallmarks of the event sponsored by Good News International Ministries.

This year several hun­dred people from around the diocese attended the event June 27-29 where notable speakers included Father John Riccardo, host of the radio show, “Christ is the Answer” on Ave Maria Radio and other Catholic networks, Therese Cirner, an author, speaker and clini­cal counselor and perennial favorite, Father Bill Halbing, pastor of St. Antoninus Par­ish, Newark.

Faithful attendees of the only Catholic tent meeting in the diocese will tell you though that the real highlight of the event is Mass with Bishop John M. Smith and the opportunity to hear him preach and teach in a tent struck under the open sky.

Bishop Smith has been preaching at the tent meeting every year since 1997 when the event began. Indeed, he preached his first Mass as sitting bishop of Trenton on July 1 of that year.

His homilies, as St. Veronica parishioner Ann Wyman put it, are “down to earth and holy.”

This year, on June 28, in anticipation of the great feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, Bishop Smith stayed true to those sentiments with a homily that brought hundreds of listeners back to the ancient Rome the apostles knew.

Combining his homiletic skills, great knowl­edge of and love for Catholic history and teaching, Bishop Smith opened a doorway in time to the perilous journeys of Peter and Paul.

He walked his listeners through the fabled city on seven hills and down the cobblestone streets of Rome where, after two millennia, the memories of the apostles are still revered.

Hearing Bishop Smith, those at the Mass were able to follow along with the apostles, as they threaded their way through dark allies and into carved out catacombs where early Christians gath­ered to practice their faith below a landscape rife with persecution.

He painted a picture that included the sites where they preached and where they died and were buried and proclaimed once again that the stories they told were real and they go back, as he is so fond of saying, to the beginning.

“It’s so wonderful when you’re Catholic to go to Rome,” he said. “You go there, and you are back to the apostles, back to the followers of Jesus.”

Learning those stories, tak­ing them to heart, he told the group, shows that “God leads and directs us” and that direc­tion is for us the same as it was for Peter and Paul: “to bring us to eternal life.”

In remarks at the conclusion of the Mass, Father Brendan Williams, pastor of St. Veroni­ca, spoke of the importance of Bishop Smith’s annual appear­ance at the tent revival.

“He’s been here from the beginning with us. He has been here with us all the way down the years.”

Bishop Smith said he re­membered his first appearance at the tent meeting very well. “I got the letter that morning telling me that as of that day, I was the sitting bishop of Trenton. Being here at the tent meeting for my first public Mass as bishop was a great, great moment.”

As the Mass concluded, he left the tent, staff in hand and turned to face a growing line of people who wanted to share a few words with him and seek his blessing.

“I just want to thank him for everything he’s done,” said Linda DeGregory who spoke of his leadership and his personable nature. “He’s really very down to earth. He’s been a special leader.”

Deacon Charles Daye of St. Veronica Parish, credited Bishop Smith’s homilies over the years and Pope John Paul II’s writings, with bringing him into the Church. “I think those who come to the tent meeting look forward to seeing him. He is the cul­mination of our tent revival. People so look forward to hearing his homilies.”