Pakefield 2008 - Homily
PAKEFIELD 2008
This sermon was preached at the Caister Retreat at Pakefield April 2008. The theme of each day was based on the words of the Regina Ceali. This homily was based on the second line:-
He whom thou was meet to bear
While they were there the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to a son, her first born Luke 2
My mother never wanted me to be a priest. Now you wouldn’t have known that at my ordination to the episcopate. She was pretty proud that day and my photo wearing a modest mitre sits on top of her telly for all to see!
Now of course, you and I know, I hope, that being a bishop is not about achievement or superiority but about a particular call to service. I was just the one who got the short straw. – ‘Just more feet to wash’ in the immortal words of the Keith Ackerman, Bishop of Quincy whom some of you will know. But parents look at things differently, they yearn for the children to do well in the world so that the can boast about them –it’s only human. You have only to be in the presence of a group of parents for a short time before they start talking about their offspring particularly about what they have achieved.
Our Blessed lady must have looked back after the resurrection justifiably satisfied, humbled and indeed joyful by what her son had achieved and the part she as his mother played.
Sister Elizabeth Obbard tells a lovely story about Pope John 23rd in her anthology about Our Lady ‘A year with Mary’. Cardinal Roncalli, as he was then, was celebrating his first Easter as Patriarch of Venice. St Marks was dark and filled with incense at the end of Benediction but the choir burst into another Hymn. ‘What do we do now?’ said the confused cardinal. The MC pointed to the icon of our Lady and said ‘Let us go your Eminence to congratulate Our Lady on her son’s resurrection.’
Whatever she is, whatever she achieved, whatever honour we give her is only because of what her son has done through her and for her.
Today’s theme is that second line in the Regina Caeli
He whom thou was meet to bear
What had she done to deserve such an honour to bear the Christ? The answer is simple – nothing at all. She is favoured because what God has done for her. It is all God’s work from the moment of her immaculate conception to her glorious assumption. She was chosen even before her conception in God’s divine plan.
From the epistle to the Ephesians:
Before the world was made, he chose us in Christ, to be holy and spotless, and to live through love in his presence. Eph 1:4
If he chose us how much more did he choose and prepare Mary for the unique role she was to fulfil.
While they were there the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to a son, her first born
It has been a strange year liturgically no sooner did we finish celebrating Christmas than Lent was upon us, Easter was almost the earliest it could be and now the Tuesday in Low week I find myself back at Christmas singing Christmas Carols and all! Of course, we cannot isolate the doctrines of our faith which together form a coherent whole. That is why the recitation of the Creed every Sunday is so important.
One of the most challenging questions in the Gospels is the one Jesus asks at Caesarea Philippi recorded in the first three gospels. Who do you say I am? It was asked of the disciples but Jesus also asks it of us. In the end it is a personal question which we all must respond to but the gospels and the teaching of the Church helps us.
Those familiar accounts of his birth recorded by the Christian community after Pentecost, one of which we heard as the Gospel, are not meant to be biographical notes for the life of Jesus to enable film makers to look at the Jesus through stained glass windows if not rose tinted spectacles; they are theological proclamations. They are the answer to that question about who Jesus is.
The divine origin of the child is given to us in very human terms in by Matthew and Luke. And when the faith of the Church proclaims that he was born of a virgin it is not because of some embarrassment about the processes of reproduction; there is nothing unholy about conceiving a child. They want to tell us something much more significant - this child is uniquely a gift of God, a fulfilment of God’s promises – a totally new beginning for creation Matthew speaks of him as ‘Emmanuel God with us’. In him says the Epistle to Titus ‘God’s grace has been revealed’ But it is a revelation of God rooted in our common humanity. He did not come as some stranger from another world appearing and then disappearing mysteriously, he was born of a woman a true descendent of the human family to which we all belong. He is in the words of the late Dominican Fr Geoffrey Preston ‘God living a human life. He is the face of God’
Some of you may have been present Loughborough Conference for Catholic Renewal 1978. The thing I remember most was the inspirational lecture entitled ‘Consecration’ by Richard Holloway, the Vicar of Old St Paul’s who went on to become the Bishop of
The First World War Army Chaplain GeoffreyA Studdert-Kennedy, known as Woodbine Willie, expressed something of this in a short verse:
I’m a man and man’s a mixture
Right from his very birth
There is part of him comes from heaven
and part of him comes from earth
There’s summat that draws him upward
and summat that drags him down
And the consequence is he wobbles
Twixt muck and a golden crown
Or St Augustine of Hippo put it rather more succinctly and beautifully:
I am overawed at the measure I am unlike him, and I glow with fire at the measure I am like him
Holloway went on to say that in Jesus God becomes dust like us not only generally but even to the point of death that ultimate symbol of the possibility that life is meaningless. Dust he is and to dust he returns. But God raises him to new life in the resurrection. God takes that dust
and brings it to the glory of heaven. He transfigures the dead dust of Jesus into the eternal Manhood of Christ.
Make no mistake about said Holloway the materiality of the Resurrection is crucial to its meaning.
One handful of dust in the universe has been consummated, restored to its divine destiny’ And I say Amen to that.
And that Resurrection says
We can only understand the real significance of the resurrection if we understand who Jesus is ‘the awesome God, the creator of the world becoming man like me, for me’ in the words of the late Cardinal Hume.
The word of God, Jesus Christ, said St Irenaeus 2nd Cent Bishop of Lyn, on account of his
great love for mankind became what we are in order to make us what He is himself.
St Thomas Aquinas tells us that God became man that we might become Gods.
St Peter in his second epistle speaks of us as sharing in the divine nature or as another translation puts it ‘sharing in the very being of God’
What a possibility, what a hope it gives us. We may be dust but because of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ we are dust bound for glory.
If that is true, as I believe it is, then it tells us something really important, something that must affect the way we live, the way our society is organized, how we treat our own bodies, how we treat others, and how we use our lives, and yes what we think about the Human fertilization and Embryology Bill. It is simply this; every human life is infinitely precious and has the potential to share in the Life of God.
While they were there the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to a son, her first born