The Bishop of Ebbsfleet's Chrism Mass Homily 2002 |
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted ... to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. Isaiah 61:1, 3
NE OF THE unanswered questions about the
sermon at Nazareth is whether Luke is abbreviating Isaiah 61 to give us a
flavour of what Jesus said or whether Jesus himself abbreviated Isaiah 61.
There's no 'day of vengeance' but the pledge that God will make an everlasting
covenant is at the heart of our understanding of the death and resurrection of
Jesus which we're poised to celebrate with particular intensity these coming
few days. Not only that but the vocation of Israel to be priests of the Lord
and ministers of our God is at the heart of our understanding of ministry.
Two questions pose themselves with great force this year. One is: if the pledge
that God will make an everlasting covenant is at the heart of our understanding
of the death and resurrection of Jesus, what do we make of the steep slide into
secularisation that faces us? We live in a society, as Bishop Paul Richardson
has reminded us, which is more bothered about fox-hunting than the rights of
the unborn child and the dignity of the foetus. We live in a society, a recent
newspaper report suggests, where a couple would rather get married in Fortnum
& Mason's, where they work, than in All Souls', Langham Place, just up the
road.
The other question is: if the vocation of Israel to be priests of the Lord and
ministers of our God is at the heart of our understanding of ministry, how do
we deal with the thinning out of resources? An urgent version of that question
for us is how do we cope with a Church of England that's trying again to
centralise and smooth out differences of churchmanship? There're plans to
relocate and smooth out theological training and there're plans to make the
deanery instead of the parish the effective unit. How does the parish
petitioning for 'extended episcopal care' fit into all of that?
In the end, both questions - 'what about decline?' and 'how do we deal with the
thinning out of resources?' - can be addressed together. The one is about
morale - how do I keep going in a shrinking church? The other is about
strategies and tactics - how do I cope when I'm asked to run two parishes
instead of one, three parishes instead of two? Things have been quite cosy in
the Church of England till recently and there's relevant Roman Catholic
experience to hand.
In Roman Catholic circles, the shortage of priests is well-known. It's not a
worldwide shortage: there's been an overall increase in this pontificate. But
in Western Europe and North America there's been a sharp decline. The title of
a book on my shelves says it all: Europe without Priests. In Anglican circles,
if there isn't yet a shortage of priests, there's likely to be a shortage of
money to pay the stipends. There's much talk around the place about 'clusters'
and alternatives to the parish as the local unit. This last year we've seen the
beginnings of a 'cluster' arrangement in Tividale and another in Plymouth. Each
of the clergy is licensed to each of the parishes. The good news is that any of
the clergy can cover for any of the others. The bad news is that the number of
licensed clergy can all too easily be reduced. There's talk too about dusting
down the Tiller Report, with local non-stipendiaries running parishes, backed
up by stipendiary diocesan priests. And there's talk about lay leadership, and
not just in the C of E.
In The Tablet recently the RC Bishop of Arundel and Brighton is reported as
telling lay people that they must prepare themselves for running parishes. In
his Lent letter the Bishop predicts that, by 2020, there'll be only 27 priests
in the diocese under the age of 75 and there're currently 116 parish churches:
one priest for every four parishes. The Bishop would like to see parishes
retaining their identity and run by lay people as 'vibrant evangelical
communities'. Priests, meanwhile, would have to take on 'daily ministry to a
large area', living in, and serving one parish, but having an equal
responsibility for other parishes. The Bishop - Kieran Conry - says that
substituting other eucharistic services for Mass is 'not a good idea'.
Certainly there have been problems in Catholic France, with congregations
getting so used to Sunday Communion from the Tabernacle that the visit of the
priest - monthly or whatever - has sometimes seemed like an intrusion into the
pattern.
To gain a perspective on decline, I've borrowed some words of Alasdair
McIntyre, quoted by Dom Anthony Sutch, writing about Benedictine abbeys and
their schools . In After Virtue, McIntyre concludes that what's happening now
is very similar to what happened when the Roman Empire collapsed into the Dark
Ages. 'What matters at this stage', says McIntyre, 'is the construction of
local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual moral life
can be sustained through the new dark ages which are clearly upon us'. More
strikingly, McIntyre sees these new dark ages as already having begun. The old
has already collapsed. What do we make of this? Benedictine abbeys and their
schools have been remarkably successful through many a dark age, but surely so
has the local Christian community, the parish church. To make a rather obvious
point, the local parish church contains people who are biologically renewing
their numbers, at least in theory. The Benedictine abbey is only renewed by
constantly drawing new life into itself. Perhaps, with modern mobility and
growing secularization, parish churches are endangered by biological
extinction. If so, like the abbey, they must draw new life to themselves so
they that they can shed light on the treacherous terrain beyond their walls. I
have to say that none of this really gets me down.
If we know that we're entering the Dark Ages again, let us draw strength from
the Western Benedictine tradition that sustained the Church last time. If we
know that we're fighting against godlessness and secularism, let's draw
strength from the example of the Church behind the old Iron Curtain last
century - Polish and Czech Roman Catholicism, Rumanian and Russian Orthodoxy -
or the underground Church in China at the present. Let's also draw strength
from the Church in the two-thirds world, where the Faith's spreading like wild
fire. Let's also draw strength from our own congregations - where a good deal
of rather conventional churchgoing has been replaced by real personal
commitment to Christ. Leaner sometimes does mean fitter.
The purpose of this sermon is not just to show awareness, with gritty realism,
of declining numbers. Not just to show awareness of the increased pressure on
those who're renewing their ordination vows. What I want to do is to encourage
you to stand firm in the faith - indeed, to go 'forward in faith'. The human
advice that stays with me is the advice of George Austin, that much under-rated
prophet in our Church. George - somewhere - reminded us that God had not called
us to be priests in some Romantic age, when all was well. He has called us to
be priests at this point, in this Church, with these problems and with these
opportunities.
If my job is to encourage you - and I certainly want to encourage you - then I
shall provide you with three resources for the task ahead. The first is the
fellowship of the Apostolic District of Ebbsfleet. I belong to you and you
belong to me. Together we belong to God and share a vision for living out the
Catholic Faith that comes to us from the apostles.
The text of this sermon could easily be our Mission Statement:
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me
to bring good tidings to the afflicted… to give them a garland instead of
ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of
a faint spirit.
As deacons and priests - and as bishops - we are anointed by the Holy Spirit
to 'bring good tidings to the afflicted' - the poor and the broken-hearted, the
people whom the Beatitudes give priority to. Most particularly, as ministers of
Word and Sacrament, we're called to help people to be open to God's Holy
Spirit. Instead of their own faint spirit they are to be covered with 'the
mantle of praise'. 'The Holy Eucharist' - the Great Thanksgiving - is a fair
translation of 'the mantle of praise'. As St Jean Vianney reminds the parish
clergy:
There is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something more
precious, He would have given it to us.
The first resource, then, is our life together in the Apostolic District of
Ebbsfleet, working with the faint hearted, and sustained by the Holy Eucharist,
the mantle of praise. The second resource is a new Ebbsfleet patron: Saint
Gregory the Great (540-605). Listen to what St Bede the Venerable wrote about
him:
It is fitting that he should receive special mention in this history,
since it was through his zeal that our English nation was brought from the
bondage of Satan to the Faith of Christ, and we may rightly term him our own
apostle.
In a rather special way, St Gregory relates to our practice of holding a
series of Chrism Masses. As the present pope reminded us
St Gregory the Great…established a 'station' church for each day of
Lent, so that the whole season became a pilgrimage of conversion leading to
Easter. The celebrations began with a gathering or collecta at one church,
followed by a procession to the station church or statio, where the Mass was
held.
I'd love to be able to fully recover that Lenten sense of pilgrimage in the
Apostolic District of Ebbsfleet. The final resource for the task ahead is
personal holiness, the gift of God. Here are some words from the homily at last
year's Chrism Mass in Westminster Cathedral, words dug up for me by my
Chaplain, Fr Bill Gull SSC. The Cardinal was telling the tale of Cardinal van
Thuan from Vietnam, made cardinal at the same time. Van Thuan was taken
prisoner a few months after he had been ordained bishop in 1975 and lived for
13 years in prison, nine of them in solitary confinement.
I'll let Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor takes up the tale:
He became convinced during the long nights in prison that living the
present moment is the most simple and the most secure way to holiness. He
prayed, 'Jesus, I will not wait, I will live the present moment and fill it
with love. The road of hope is paved with little steps of hope, the life of
hope is made of these minutes of hope; every minute I want to sing with the
whole Church, Glory to the Father and Son and Holy Spirit.'
Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor continued (and I shall finish with these
words and make them my own):
The way to holiness, dear fathers, as mine is, is every day. Daily
prayer, daily conversion, daily commitment to the ministry to which we have
been called. So undo any mental habits or negative self-talk that lead to low
morale. Pray and be faithful to the gift God has given you and respond every
day to the call to conversion which comes as very gift of God to you
