THIS is ARCHBISHOP MARK COLERIDGE’S homily from the ordination of Fr Nev Yun and Fr Stephen Gronow at St Stephen’s Cathedral on November 29.
ONCE upon a time the answer to the question “what does it meant to be a priest?” seemed fairly straightforward.
That was when priestly identity seemed clearer than it does now. But in a moment like this, an ordination, we asked inevitably “what does it mean to be a priest?” In the end only the word of God can answer the question for us. It is why we turn to the scripture now, and to the successor of Peter, as the trustworthy interpreter of the scripture.
We’ve heard St Paul say that, for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation. The old creation has gone and now the new one is here. These are words echoed by Pope Francis. In his long exhortation to the Church called the “Joy of the Gospel”, the title relates to what we have heard from John’s gospel this evening.
“These words I have spoken to you, says Jesus, so that my joy may be in you. And that your joy may be complete.”
In what the Pope has written, we hear the voice not only of Francis, we do that unmistakably, but we also hear the voice of Peter – and in the end the voice of Christ himself. So I urge all of you tonight to read this letter that the Pope has written. It’s a cracker.
At times even startling. And in a particular way I make this invitation to Neville and Steven on this night of priestly ordination. Read what the successor of Peter has written and inscribe those words on your priestly heart.
The Pope speaks of the old creation, as a world, indeed a person, marked by what he calls the desolation and anguish born of the complacent, incompetent heart.
The feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures and a blunted conscience. There’s no joy there. Not a hint of newness, it’s all depressingly old and joyless.
Nothing there to help us understand what it means to be a priest. Because the priest is to be the minister of all that is new and joyful.
He is to be witness to Easter – a man whose whole life breathes what the Pope calls “the freshness of the gospel”, the freshness that never grows old. But the priest will be that only if he has, what the Pope calls, a missionary heart. He is to be no mere church official, or administrator, but a genuine missionary wherever he may be working.
The Holy Father summons the whole Church to what he calls a missionary conversion, starting with the papacy. He notes memorably that he dreams of a Church driven by a missionary impulse, capable of transforming everything so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be channelled for the evangelisation of today’s world, rather than for the Church’s self-preservation.
And those words could, and should, apply to the priesthood. The priest used to be a man of missionary heart.
Of the missionary heart, the Pope says it never closes itself off, never retreats into its own security – never opts for opportunity and defensiveness. It realises it has to grow in its understanding of the Gospel and in discerning the ways of the spirit – even if in the process, its shoes get soiled by the mud of the street.
The Holy Father goes on: “I prefer a Church (for which we can read priest) “that is bruised, hurting and dirty because it’s been out on the streets rather than a Church that is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its on security.”
The missionary priest is to be the man with muddy shoes and a wounded heart. Then, and only then, will he be a minister of the new creation. The path of such a man has its traps.
One the Pope mentions is what he calls an inordinate concern for personal freedom and relaxation – which leads the priest to see his work as an appendage to his life, as if it were not part of his very identity. Another trap the Pope says is a kind of obsession about being like everyone else and possessing what everyone else possesses, which he says ends up stifling the joy of mission. Another trap is an attachment to financial security, or a desire for power or human glory at all cost, rather than the giving of his life to others in mission.
What the Pope calls a spiritual worldliness, which hides behind the appearance of piety and even love for the Church, seeking not the Lord’s glory but human glory and personal wellbeing. Yet another trap, according to Pope Francis, is not an excessive activity but rather an activity undertaken badly, without adequate motivation, without a spirituality, which would permeate it and make it pleasurable.
This, the Pope says, leads not to a contented tiredness but to a tense, burdensome, dissatisfying and, in the end, unbearable fatigue.
Finally, there is, says the Pope, a defeatism, which turns us into quarrellers and disillusioned pessimists. “Sourpusses” – how’s that for a new word in the papal vocabulary? God save the church and the world from sourpuss priests.
To fall into these traps, to fall prey to these dangers, is for the priest to end up, the Pope says, a man of Lent without Easter. And how sad that would be.
To us all, the Pope says at one point early in the letter, let us not flee from the resurrection of Jesus.
He means, let us not flee from mission. Let us not flee from joy. Let us not flee from all that is new. And these words have a special power and pungency when spoken to a priest or one who comes for ordination.
If we are not to flee from the resurrection of Jesus, then we must not flee from the cross of Jesus. In fact, we have to embrace it. There is no other way.
And Andrew, the apostle, stands in our midst, the brother of Peter, and says exactly that tonight, holding the triumph of his cross in his hand. There is no other way to embrace the resurrection than to embrace the cross with the passion of the apostle.
This is where we finally understand the mystery of the priesthood and know what it means to be a priest – a man who lives a life standing at the altar and publically committing himself to imitating the mystery that he celebrates – the body broken, the blood poured out for the life of the world.
May that mystery be the deep truth of the life of Neville and Stephen so that they may go forth from the cathedral tonight as joyful missionaries, as priests of the new creation. Amen.
