ARCHBISHOP Mark Coleridge of Brisbane has encouraged Catholics throughout the archdiocese to “leave the lonely pigsty of ‘worthiness’ behind and come to the feast as daughters and sons of the Father”.
The Archbishop has made the statement in his first Pentecost Pastoral Letter to the archdiocese. He will deliver the pastoral letter at the 10am Mass at St Stephen’s Cathedral on Sunday (May 27).
The message will be shown further afield as a video at parishes throughout the archdiocese, where resources permitted, as well as being made available in audio and printed form.
The pastoral letter also launched the Year of Grace being held in Australia from Pentecost 2012 to Pentecost 2013.
Archbishop Coleridge, in the letter, said “the events of Easter, which come to their climax at Pentecost, overturn all human imaginings of God”.
“They show the real God to be far stranger and more wonderful than we had ever thought,” he said.
Last Sunday (May 20), Archbishop Coleridge launched his first annual Pentecost Pastoral Letter to Brisbane archdiocese’s young people at Sacred Heart Church, Rosalie, during the Emmanuel Community’s Fuel Mass.
Both pastoral letters had similar content.
In the letter, Archbishop Coleridge cautioned against the sort of defeatist thinking proposed by the 4th Century Welsh monk Pelagius that Christians had to earn their salvation.
“People at times imagine the Christian life as something like this: there’s a great high mountain, and we are at the foot of the mountain,” the archbishop said.
“Enthroned on the summit, shrouded in mists of majesty, there is God; and our task is to get from the foot of the mountain to the summit where, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, ‘the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine’ (25:6).
“We are made for the feast, so we have to get to the summit somehow.
“So off we go, struggling up the slopes, leaping crevices, falling and rising in an effort that costs us almost everything.
“… Eventually we arrive at the summit, bruised and battered and bloodied and broken.
“We fall exhausted at the feet of God.
“He takes one look at us and says, ‘Not good enough!’
“And with the flick of a finger, God sends us tumbling back to the foot of the mountain in a cosmic game of ‘Snakes and Ladders’.”
The Archbishop said “on this account, the Christian life is a doomed response to a malicious God who asks us to do what we can never do”.
“It’s an exercise in total frustration – trying to make ourselves acceptable, trying to prove ourselves to God, trying to earn the divine love,” he said.
Archbishop Coleridge said “there is a high mountain, God is on the summit preparing the feast, and we do have to get to the top to enjoy the feast for which we were created”.
“But the truth turns things on their head. We don’t have to climb the mountain, because God is the one who comes down to us in Jesus,” he said.
“We’re not the ones bruised and battered and bloodied and broken. God is – as we see whenever we look at Jesus on the Cross.
“He is God coming down to get us, to carry us to the summit where he wants to sit us down at the feast and wait on us.”
The Archbishop went on to discuss the parable of the Prodigal Son and how in a sense both sons “are pathetically alike”.
One son declares he is no longer worthy to be called his father’s son; the other says he has slaved all these years to really earn his father’s love.
“The Year of Grace is a time for a change of heart, a time to leave behind the pig-sty of ‘worthiness’ and to come to the feast as daughters and sons of the Father,” Archbishop Coleridge said.
“It’s a time to start afresh from Christ.”
Archdiocesan youth ministry co-ordinator Michael Hart, speaking after the launch of the Pentecost Pastoral Letter to youth, said the Archbishop had spoken with “passion and humour” to those gathered.
“He referred to the message in terms of the need to focus on Christ and the Year of Grace,” he said.
Mr Hart said the Pentecost pastoral message to youth, a practice started by Archbishop John Bathersby in 2009, had proved to be an excellent teaching tool.
“The practice is also the archbishop’s public statement on the importance of young people to the archdiocese,” he said.
By way of “breaking open the pastoral message”, Mr Hart organised a video of three young people involved in youth ministry giving their responses.
Mr Hart said the video would be included on the ministry’s website at http://www.cymbrisbane.org.au/
Printed versions will be sent to all schools, youth organisations and youth leaders in the archdiocese.
A video of Archbishop Coleridge delivering the Pentecost Pastoral Letter will be available on the Youth Ministry website and the archdiocese’s website http://bne.catholic.net.au/asp/index.asp
The inauguration of the Year of Grace followed a call last year by then Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Archbishop Philip Wilson in a pastoral letter to the Catholics of Australia.
In releasing the letter to coincide with the Feast of Christ the King last November, Archbishop Wilson said he was sharing a message of hope on behalf of the bishops.
“We call the Catholic people in Australia to a Year of Grace, to span the time from Pentecost 2012 to Pentecost 2013,” he said.
