Holy Trinity, Reading, 10 March 2004
All Saints, Weston-super-Mare, 13 March 2004
Emmanuel, Wylde Green, Birmingham, 17 March 2004
St Anne, Derby, 24 March 2004
St Andrew, Birchills, Walsall, 27 March 2004
St James, Hanslope, Milton Keynes, 31 March 2004
St Gabriel, Plymouth, 1 April 2004

Each of the seven homilies was a version of the following:

Listen to me Lord,
Hear what my adversaries are saying.
Should evil be returned for good?
For they are digging a pit for me. Jeremiah 18

E COULD BE forgiven if we very much made these sentiments of Jeremiah our own, as we keep Lent and watch others celebrate the tenth anniversary of women priests in the Church of England. After all, there is a group called GRAS - Group for the Rescinding of the Act of Synod - which is dedicated to ending the arrangement, whereby those who are unable to accept women priests look to Provincial Episcopal Visitors and suchlike for extended Episcopal care. If GRAS had its way, I should be out of a job!

The junketing is understandable: many of us have women priests as personal friends and we 'rejoice with those who rejoice'. For something as new as this - and all must agree that it is an innovation in a religion that is two thousand years old - ten years is a real landmark. In Exeter Diocese, for example, there is to be an event on 8th May called 'Celebrate Women and Men Working Together in Ministry'. Ordained women will share stories of the journey so far, over lunch. Then there is music and cream teas and, at the end of the afternoon, a celebratory Eucharist in the Cathedral. Other dioceses will celebrate in their own way.

Meanwhile we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the See of Ebbsfleet. The tenth anniversary of the revived See of Beverley was held earlier this year - and I remember going to Bishop John Gaisford's episcopal ordination in York Minster ten years ago. Our tenth anniversary is 29th April, the feast of St Catherine of Siena, patron of Europe. Had Bishop John Richards been alive, that would have been the first of two occasions - South then North - when we would have met together to share his joy and celebrate the past decade, a decade in which, through the mysterious providence of God, the Catholic movement in the Church of England has taken on a new coherence and a new life. Curiously, a couple of cathedrals - though they are usually keen to demonstrate their even-handedness - were keen for us not to meet on their premises for a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the See of Ebbsfleet. My Council of Priests, in view of Bishop John Richards' death, decided that we should have a dispersed series of celebrations - Stational Masses, Chrism Masses and a Children and Young People's Eucharistic Festival - to celebrate Ebbsfleet X. This series of 'in-house' celebrations will give us opportunity to be on a journey together thank God for his goodness, reflect on what has gone before and launch out on the next stage.

If GRAS had its way, there would be no 'next stage'. I find it extraordinary that they have chosen to attack the Act of Synod and 'flying bishops'. Their problem, surely, should be the parliamentary measure which permits discrimination against women. Why, I wonder, are they not called GRAB - the Group for the Rescinding of [Resolutions] A and B? Perhaps they are simply true revolutionaries - keeping the fight going in a Church which has got quite used to both women clergy and petitioning parishes.

Listen to me Lord,
Hear what my adversaries are saying.
Should evil be returned for good?
For they are digging a pit for me.

But the real 'adversaries' who are 'digging a pit' are not 'over politically-correct' supporters of women's ordination. It is one of Satan's tricks to incite squabbling in the Church, just as it is another of his tricks to encourage the followers of Jesus Christ to seek the kind of promotion the mother of Zebedee's sons seeks for James and John. The 'adversaries', faced by Jeremiah, by the Lord himself and by us, his disciples, are those who belittle the Faith and would have us put our trust in other things: wealth, personal autonomy, personal advantage, sexual fulfilment at the expense of others. The tactics of the 'adversaries' vary enormously, from day to day and from age to age, but the strategy remains the same. The adversaries are 'the troops of Midian', prowling around. We can smite them only 'by the merit of the holy Cross'. I spent a good deal of Lent in my childhood wondering who on earth the Midianites were. I knew only that they were a drastic enough threat to merit a unique change from minor to major within a single hymn tune. The Midianites, I discovered, are a people usually hostile to God's Israel, who are decisively thrashed by Gideon and his men in Judges chapter 7.

The Church has its own strategy for taking on the 'adversaries', not least the prayer, fasting and almsgiving of the Lenten pilgrimage. If my presence among you encourages you - as your presence with me encourages me - as we seek to go 'forward in faith', to find a proper and lasting structural solution to the disagreements about gender and order in the Church, then that is very good. But the real purpose of this Stational Mass - your encouragement of me and my encouragement of you - is not about new provinces or even tenth anniversaries, important thought these things are. We are celebrating this Stational Mass together because we are Lenten pilgrims together. We need each other's support as we take on the challenge of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Prayer, as you have heard me say many times before, is my relationship with God. Fasting is my relationship with myself. Almsgiving is my love for my neighbour.

But why a Stational Mass? If we are to have the sense of being on pilgrimage together, and especially if we are called to learn to become a 'local Church' in the full Catholic sense of that phrase, then we need to meet together often and in various ways. The 'stational Mass', 'shows forth the unity of the local Church as well as the diversity of ministries exercised around the bishop and the holy Eucharist', says The Ceremonial of Bishops ( 119). 'As many of the faithful as possible should come together for a stational Mass', it continues. At a purely practical level, going to various places - Reading, Weston-super-Mare, Birmingham, Derby, Walsall, Milton Keynes, Plymouth, Oxford, Wednesbury, Breen - allows 'as many of the faithful as possible' to 'come together'. More importantly, we do show that we are indeed on a journey.

'Marching towards the Promised Land: a Land of Milk and Honey' was the theme of the Festival of Faith last year. A journey theme. This year - another journey theme - we are very conscious of being in the midst of the desert: the winds of secular relativism are howling, we are surrounded by the troops of Midian, and even some of those with whom we make common cause seem to be digging a pit for us. We must press on with the journey of the Passion, the Way of the Cross. When the going gets tough, we depend more than ever on the prayers of the Saints and sometimes too on their encouraging words. I shall finish with just such an example of encouragement, some stirring words of our holy patron, St Gregory the Great. They focus us on the Paschal feast, on our duty not only to receive the Sacrament, but to model ourselves on Christ and to pass on to others the life-giving message of his Passion, Death and Resurrection:

If the mystery of the Lord's passion is to be effectual in us, we must imitate what we receive and proclaim to others what we venerate.

The Bishop of Ebbsfleet
Bishop's House, Dry Sandford, Abingdon, OXON OX13 6JP
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