The Bishop of Ebbsfleet's Chrism Mass Homily - AD2005 |
OME WORDS from the Easter Letters of St Athanasius:
It is an excellent thing, brothers, to go from one feast to another, to pass from one prayer to another, to advance
from the keeping of one feast or solemnity to another. We are very near now to that time which is for us a new
beginning, the commencement of the blessed Passover in which the Lord was sacrificed.
Priests who make use of the Office of Readings will have bumped into those words on the Friday of the Fourth Week
of Lent. This is my fifth Chrism Mass sermon and, once again, I shall try to combine some edifying words appropriate to
this occasion - bearing in mind the continual formation in the priestly life - with what has sometimes been called my
annual 'State of the Union' address. First, then, something of a homily for this occasion. This year, at least, the
homily will be four-fifths of what I have to say and the 'State of the Union' bit just a few stirring words at the
end.
Having grappled for four years with the Chrism Mass readings, I am using the excuse of this year's collisions of date
to branch out a bit. There are two collisions, each of them worthy of note. Sitting light to the Ordo we have arranged
a Chrism Mass for the Solemnity of St Joseph, 19th March, and Ebbsfleet rubricists have been rubbing their eyes after
much searching and thinking about how to do that - whether indeed it can or should be done. Then, as I am sure you have
noticed, Good Friday this year falls on 25th March, normally celebrated as Lady Day, the Annunciation. It is at this
point that we are grateful not to be Eastern Orthodox - or at least Orthodox keeping the Western date of Easter. When
two great days collide - such as Lady Day and Good Friday - the East keeps them both in full on the same day. Bishop
Kallistos Ware has been known to say that he is never happier than when the Annunciation and Good Friday co-incide. I
encountered a not dissimilar attitude in a low church clergyman, a devotee of the Book of Common Prayer, who ignored
the table of transferable feasts in the front and took great delight in celebrating Lady Day in Holy Week, if not on
Good Friday itself. Here was one Low Churchman, at least, who understood the importance of the Blessed Virgin Mary in
the scheme of salvation!
So - I ask myself - what can we learn, how can our faith be deepened, by the collision of St Joseph with one of the
Chrism Masses, how does the memory of Gabriel's Message resonate in our minds as we celebrate the Solemn Afternoon
Liturgy of Good Friday?
Let me begin with the Annunciation. There was a time when the Annunciation was the Church's New Year's Day. More than
that, there are signs that the dating of the Annunciation - the beginning of our salvation, when God takes our human
flesh - is deliberately focused on the time of the Passover, when God the Son redeems our humanity, by dying on the
cross and bringing us to new life.
Those who want to reflect most fully on the co-incidence of Lady Day and Good Friday could well read John Saward's The
Mysteries of March this year. Fr Saward is reflecting on the teaching of von Balthasar and he gives us this quote:
'Coming from God, this Yes is the highest grace; but coming from man, it is also the highest achievement made possible
by grace: unconditional, definitive self-surrender.'*
We are reminded that God in Christ saying 'yes' in obedience to the Father is the highest grace but that Mary, the
daughter of Zion, saying 'yes' to God's Message through Gabriel is pointing us to what grace can achieve in and through
our human lives. And when we say 'but we are not immaculately conceived like Mary' we need to remember that, through
the grace of God, we could and eventually will be nonetheless 'full of grace', as St Stephen is described, even before
his death (Acts 6:8). We too can say 'yes' to God, in a radical and practised way. Radical because it goes to the roots
of whom we are. Practised because it is learnt only through the practice of prayer and the daily school of
holiness.
Moving our focus to Golgotha we see Mary standing there. 'At the foot of the Cross,' says Saward,
'Mary personifies the Church as described by St Paul: 'without spot or wrinkle or any such thing…holy and without
blemish' (cf. Eph. 5:27) ...
It is on Calvary that the bridal aspect of Mary's faith becomes most evident ... . 'Mary begins by being the
Mother', says Saward quoting Balthasar, 'but at the Cross she finishes by becoming Bride, the quintessence
of the Church'. She somehow embodies the Church as the cherished spouse for whom Christ gives himself up on the
Cross (cf. Eph. 5:25f).'**
This is heady stuff and you will no doubt have noticed that those who do not share our Catholic Faith think that all
this talk of Mary's fiat, of Christ as Bridegroom and Mary and of the Church as Bride is at best a bit of poetry and at
worst an excuse for the Church to put the Virgin Mother on a pedestal and exclude ordinary flesh and blood women from
its ordained ministry. It is important that we remain clear and confident in our Catholic Faith. Our defence of the
imagery of bride and bridegroom, indeed of God's revelation of himself as Father, is not quaint or old-fashioned but
points straight through to the central dilemmas of our society. As I write, the papers tell us that, though 'at present
most of Britain's 42 million adults are married',
'by 2011 just 46 per cent of women and 48 per cent of men will be
married ... . The number of couples who live together, but are not married, will almost double to 3.8 million [by
2031]. Most are likely to be aged over 45.'***
At the same time, we find a continuing collapse in the role of fathers. More and more children grow up without the
contribution of a resident father and sometimes without a father in evidence at all. Just as the Church needs to be
preaching and teaching about what it is to be a father, what it is like to have God as our Father, what it is to be
family, what it is like to grow up in the love and security of family life, we are twisting ourselves into theological
knots to explain away God's fatherhood and to minimise the social effects of co-habitation, divorce and single
parenthood. Meanwhile the implications of the Annunciation, Jesus in the womb of Mary his mother, for the status of
every unborn child are increasingly disregarded.
The collision of the Annunciation and Good Friday - even though we separate them out so that, as Athanasius says, we
'go from one feast to another, ... advance from the keeping of one feast or solemnity to another' - is a reminder that
the saving mystery of the Incarnation is inseparable from the saving mystery of the Cross. Not only that: the symbology
of all this is not dispensable allegory, fable and metaphor but part of how God in Christ reveals himself to us and
enables us to share in the 'Mysteries of March', at Nazareth and at Golgotha.
Time marches on and I shall be very brief about St Joseph. But it is worth reminding ourselves that this 'pious Jew of
Davidic descent'**** didn't make it into the General Calendar in the West until 1479 and the Roman Canon until 1962. He is
nowadays a solemnity, which is why we had to decide whether to keep him in mind at the Pusey House Chrism Mass or to
shift the date. As we reflect on Joseph, his faith in the visions he received, his courage and steadfast protectiveness
- not least during three or four particularly difficult journeys - and his role as foster father all impact upon us. He
himself underlines the importance of being a father - and having a father. Though tradition says that he was an old man
- Joseph was an old man and an old man was he, as the Cherry Tree Carol helpfully tells us - the mention of him in Luke
4:22, the verse after the Chrism Mass Gospel usually ends, suggests that, even if he was dead by then, he would have
been alive recently enough for Jesus' childhood still to be remembered by the folk at Nazareth.
And so, at the end of the homily proper - and before rather fewer words on the 'State of the Union' - I suggest that,
this year at least, as we celebrate the Christian Passover, we are enriched by the collisions. St Joseph colliding with
one of the chrism masses - reminds us, priests and people, of the importance of the father: the natural father, the
foster father, the priest as spiritual father, God our Heavenly Father. We Catholics, at least, must hang on to and
proclaim all this. And the other collision too: keeping the Annunciation to Our Lady at the back of our minds as we
ourselves creep to the cross on Good Friday and try, each one of us, to say 'yes' to God, to try again to make that
unconditional, definitive self-surrender which Mary, as the archetype of the Church, made to the archangel of God; that
unconditional, definitive self-surrender which Jesus, the faithful Son of God, made to his Father as he was crucified
and poured out his life for our sake.
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