Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Archbishop of Canterbury's homily at the basilica of San Gregorio al Celio




Your Holiness,
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

It is a privilege to stand here, where my predecessors stood in 1989 and 1996, and to offer once again, as we did most recently in Westminster [and Assisi], the sacrifice of praise that we owe to the One Lord in whose name we are baptized; the One Lord who by his Spirit, brings to recognisability in each member of his sacramental Body, the image and abundant life of Christ his Son, through the temptations and struggles of our baptismal calling. 

St Gregory the Great had much to say about the peculiar temptations and struggles of those called to office in the Church of God. To be called to this service is to be called to several different kinds of suffering – the torment of compassion, as he puts it (Moralia 30.25.74), the daily awareness of urgent human needs, bodily and spiritual, and the torment of praise, flattery and status (ib. 26.34.62). This latter is a torment because those called to this ministry know so clearly their own inner weakness and instability. But that knowledge is a saving knowledge, which among other things helps us minister effectively to others in trouble; and it reminds us that we find stability, soliditas, only in the life of the Body of Christ, not in our own achievement (Homilies on Ezekiel 2.5.22) … Continue reading …


The high altar of the basilica of San Gregorio al Celio. 



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