Five prayer evenings held in various parts of Brisbane archdiocese in recent weeks as part of the Year of Grace have attracted large crowds. ROBIN WILLIAMS reports
A SERIES of prayer evenings led by Archbishop Mark Coleridge is giving Catholics of Brisbane archdiocese a deeper understanding of the Year of Grace.
As chairman of a committee set up by the Australian bishops to lead the initiative, Archbishop Coleridge is well placed to explain the reasoning for the Year of Grace.
During the first of five prayer evenings scheduled during October and early November, the Archbishop described the events leading up to the Year of Grace and what the bishops hope it will inspire.
“Archbishop (Philip) Wilson, who was then president of the bishops’ conference, decided that this was a moment in the journey of the Church in Australia when we needed what he called ‘a big ecclesial event’ – some big event in the Church to galvanise our energies, to address our many challenges and to plot a course into the future – the kind of future that God has in mind for us,” Archbishop Coleridge said.
He said the Church was “not going out of business” although some people seemed to think so.
“Well, I’m here to say it’s not, so if we are not going out of business then where are we going and how are we going to get there?”
The Archbishop said although the Australian bishops rejected the idea of a national synod they agreed something was needed, and a five-member committee was set-up to investigate alternative proposals.
Archbishop Coleridge said the committee settled on the idea for a Year of Grace.
“We felt we needed a journey of discernment before we would be ready to make a decision about the big Church event that we might need,” he said.
Archbishop Coleridge said that at times there was “a kind of bewilderment, even anger” around issues such as sexual abuse in the Church in Australia and in many western countries.
“And even more, perhaps, the bishops’ handling or mishandling of the many issues that go under that heading,” he said.
“There’s also a kind of a fragmentation – a growing polarisation in the Church here and sometimes this leads to a politicisation of Church life.”
Archbishop Coleridge said these issues along with “a kind of a weariness of spirit at times” were concerns for the bishops and the committee.
“For some people, perhaps for many of a certain age – my age roughly – there was that dazzling agenda after the Second Vatican Council where it seemed we could remake the Church and the world,” he said.
“In the meantime there has been a loss of momentum, and it can lead to a certain weariness of spirit particularly among the clergy.
“That can in its way bring problems with morale, that sense that we are becalmed or in the doldrums, that we are not particularly going anywhere or even that the great energies of Vatican II have somehow dissipated and the council itself and its fruits are being undone.”
Although that is not the Archbishop’s opinion, he said there was the question of what to do as a bishop faced with such thinking.
“Even if it’s half right, you can’t just bury your head in the sand and look the other way,” he said.
Archbishop Coleridge said the Year of Grace was a year of discernment – “where at the end of the year’s journey we will be better positioned to make a decision about the future than we were when we were first talking about this stuff”.
He said the Year of Grace was not a program.
“It’s more like a retreat than anything else,” he said.
“So you could say what the bishops have done – I think under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit – is invited all the Catholic people of Australia for a year to go into a kind of retreat experience.
“In a retreat you set aside many of the usual challenges, tasks and pressures and you seek to focus on what really matters.”
Archbishop Coleridge said negativity could blur the focus and make it easy to forget Jesus.
“The Year of Grace is really the year of Jesus because he’s the one whom we forget and he’s the one in whom the free and perfect gift of love comes to us from God and that’s Grace,” he said.
“Grace is not some magic fluid that’s poured into us from above.
“It costs you nothing, you don’t have to earn it – Grace is the free gift of perfect love that’s given to us in Jesus.”
Archbishop Coleridge said the committee decided to take as the framework for the Year of Grace a letter written by Pope John Paul II at the end of the Jubilee Year of 2000 and entitled Entering the New Millennium.
The Pope referred to “contemplating the face of Jesus Christ”, which the bishops chose as the theme for the Year of Grace.
Archbishop Coleridge said this was “Jesus who was crucified and risen”.
“We don’t need another role model,” he said.
“What we do need particularly at this time, individually and us together, is the presence and the power of the risen Christ – the one whose scars shine like the sun.
“At one point (Pope John Paul II) says in the letter ‘if I were asked what was the great legacy left by the Jubilee Year and all these celebrations I would say without hesitation that it was the contemplation of the face of Christ’.
“That’s what we have been saying for this Year of Grace.
“It’s an experience of contemplating together the face of Jesus Christ.
“He’s not a ghost or a spirit; he’s got a face – God’s got a face – to contemplate Jesus Christ in his humanity at such a depth that we discover there is divinity.
“See, in all of us, there’s a tendency to disbelieve the incarnation … God became one of us – took flesh.
“… It’s the heart of what we believe in and if you deny the truth of the incarnation, that God’s got a face, then in the end what you end up saying is in order to discover the divinity – God – you’ve got to deny your humanity.
“That’s heresy.
“What Christianity says, is you can only discover the real God, the real divinity, by entering more and more deeply into your humanity, by entering more and more deeply into the humanity of Jesus at that point and at that depth where you discover that this is God with us – not just some role model once upon a time but God with us.”
Archbishop Coleridge said the journey of knowing Jesus was infinite.
“What we’re saying is, and these are the words of John Paul II, ‘start afresh from Christ’. It is time for us all – the whole Church – the bishops, you, the priests to start afresh.
“This is God’s call to us.”
Archbishop Coleridge said it was only when one encountered Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, “see him, hear him, touch him”, that they discovered the truth of the human being – “and even of yourself because he is more your self than you are.
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“In that sense the Year of Grace is a call into an experience of amazement, a fresh encounter beyond all the bewilderment and anger – however justified – beyond all the resentments, beyond all the recriminations and fragmentations and conflicts and divisions however justified they may seem,” he said.
“What the bishops are saying in this Year of Grace is there is so much more.
“The face of the more is Jesus Christ and the name of the more is Jesus Christ so come then all of you, come into this.
“Experience more and more deeply we’ve scarcely begun.”
