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More than 1,000 people journeyed to Ardingly in Sussex on Saturday, to mark the Diocese's 60th anniversary in this Jubilee Year of Hope. Speaking during the homily, Bishop Richard reflected on the message of hope in the Gospel, and highlighted the importance of mission for generations of people across our diocesan family:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We have gathered today to reflect on the Mission of the Church in this year that is both the 60th Anniversary of the Diocese, and the Jubilee Year inaugurated by the late Pope Francis on Christmas Eve last year, when he opened the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
The message of the Gospel is the message of Hope for the world, for it is the Good News of Jesus Christ, the true vine. [1] Our life is fruitful insofar as we remain part of the vine that is Christ Himself. [2] Only in Him can we bear the fruit of the Gospel.
Remaining in Him means that we never travel the journey of life alone. He is always with us, even when we choose to ignore His presence. When the journey is at its most difficult, when we find ourselves in the desert, in the darker moments of our lives, all that is required is to walk quietly, following the One Who loves us, who knows our inmost thoughts and whose gentle, insistent call shows us the way. We are fed for this journey in the Sacrifice of the Mass, in which the Lord gives us His very Self.
This greatest of gifts, the source and summit of our lives, is nothing less than an experience of the Kingdom to which we travel.
Our journey with the Lord is not only for ourselves. We journey as members of His Church and this brings with it the greatest joy and, also, the most privileged responsibility. Through our baptism, we are given the commission to share the Good News with the world around us. Here in the Diocese we have been carrying out this mission for the last 60 years.
Our parishes, schools, universities, hospital and prison chaplaincies, our families, and religious communities, have been communities of mission - centres of hope - through these years, and we give thanks today for the many blessings and graces have come to us and, indeed, through us.
We give thanks for the many priests who have given their lives in the Lord’s service. To begin with, of course, they were of [The Archdiocese of] Southwark, the Mother Diocese. Today, we rejoice in the many men from within the Diocese who have answered the Lord’s call. We also give thanks for the priests who have come to us from other dioceses around the world. Our Deacons have a wonderful ministry in so many of our parishes and we continue to pray for vocations to priesthood and diaconate as we look to the future.
St Paul, writing to the Ephesians, reminds us that we are the Lord’s chosen, chosen before the foundation of the world, that we be holy and blameless before him. [3] The universal call to holiness, to which St Francis de Sales gave such powerful testimony in his work "Introduction to the Devout Life" and to which the fathers of the Second Vatican Council gave such attention in the Dogmatic Constitution "Lumen Gentium" on the Church, is nothing less than the call to be saints.
This is the programme, as it were, for our lives.
A renewed openness to the promptings of the Holy Spirit will, indeed, enable us to take this path, that we form communities of saints. The resulting witness to the world will then be authentic and completely attractive to the world around us, enabling us to fulfil the call of our baptism, the witness of vowed life in its various forms, the witness of marriage, the service of diaconate and of priesthood.
It is through our response to choice God has made in favour of us – we who are His creation – that we obtain our inheritance.
This Jubilee Year of Hope – and our own 60th Anniversary – is a moment to renew our openness to the gentle promptings of the Holy Spirit as we journey on the path of holiness. This will ensure the effectiveness of our mission.
St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who died a martyr at Auschwitz, wrote: “The spirit of God is meaning and strength. It gives new life to the soul and makes it capable of realising things that by nature are beyond it, at the same time showing it a direction for its action.”[4]
Only two weeks ago, Pope Leo canonised Carlo Acutis and we have a relic of our new Saint here today, brought from St Peter’s in Hove. St Carlo recognised the possibilities of using the internet in the service of the Gospel. He was also a person of immense charity, stopping at nothing to go to aid of those in need. His witness to the Gospel to those immediately around him and his work of evangelisation through the wide-ranging means of digital media is a reminder to us of the task at hand.
St Paul reminds us that the preaching of the Gospel is necessary part of our faith in Christ. We cannot keep the Good News, the wonder of the sacraments and the life of the Church to ourselves. We – every one of us – is called to bring others to know the Lord and to know His Church, to listen to His Word and to share in the gift of the Sacraments.
This is, for the Church, the moment of action. We carry out this mission at a time when there are so many challenges to the Gospel in our own society and across the world. The peoples affected by war and conflict cry out for lasting peace. The refugee and the asylum seeker seek a home. The world needs our witness to the dignity of the human person from conception to natural death. The world needs the message of the Gospel, the witness and experience of prayer and the sacraments, and the Lord Himself has called us to be his instruments in proclaiming that message.
This is our mission and, while it may be daunting, we can look to the future with confidence. The Jubilee Year reminds us that we carry this out with the Church throughout the world. We travel in the company of the saints – our brothers and sisters whom the Church places before us as examples of faith. We travel with our Blessed Mother, God’s instrument in bringing us Jesus, the Word Who is Life – and we travel with the Lord Himself and He with us as, parts of the true vine, we travel in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in the mission to which we have been called.
Image: With thanks to Adam Simon
Footnotes: [1] Jn. 15:1, [2] Jn. 15:5., [3] Eph. 1:4, [4] cf. LEBRETON, C., Born from the Gaze of God: The Tibhirine Journal of a Martyr Monk (1993-1996), Collegeville, Cistercian Press, 2014, p. 11.
