When the history of the Church in our time is written,
it will contain many paradoxes. Not least of these will be the fact that
alongside enormous crises of faith, in society and even in parts of the Church,
there have been significant movements of spiritual renewal – movements
described by the Belgian Cardinal Leon Josef Suenens as “surprises of the Holy
Spirit.”
It was ever thus. Think of the early nineteenth
century. Thomas Arnold spoke for most of the intelligentsia when he said that
“the Church of England as it is, no human power can save.” But God the Holy
Spirit, who – as we know from Ezekiel 37 – works mightily in graveyards, raised
up a company of men and women whose hearts were on fire with love for the Lord
and a vision of his glory, and who were, humanly speaking, responsible for the
great Catholic Revival within our Church which is all about worship, prayer,
evangelism and transformation of communities.
The spiritual movements of OUR day include:
1. THE RENEWAL OF CATHOLIC THEOLOGY that climaxed in the
Second Vatican Council, enabling us to understand grace, Church and sacraments
not in institutional and juridical terms, but as dynamic, personal, communal
and spiritual realities. Like our brothers and sisters in the early Christian
centuries, we now believe that we live under an open heaven and we know that in
our gatherings we encounter Jesus who comes to us in all his love and risen
power, transforming our lives and enabling us to be his witnesses. That’s what
the Council was all about!
2. THE OPENING UP OF SCRIPTURE to Catholic
Christians so that we now expect to be nourished at “two tables” in the
Eucharist. The “table of the Word” has come back into its own alongside the
“table of the Sacrament.” In urging us to read the Bible for ourselves and
rediscover the power of God’s Word in our daily lives, the Council document
reiterates St Jerome’s conviction that to be ignorant of the Scriptures is to
be ignorant of Christ. Like the companions of Jesus on the Emmaus Road, our
hearts now burn within us when we hear the Scriptures read and proclaimed.
3. THE LITURGICAL MOVEMENT, which has expanded, deepened
and enriched our worship, emphasising the one-ness of the royal priesthood with
Jesus our great high priest, and with each other. We are learning that to
worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness – and the holiness of beauty! – is a
gathering up of the community into the flow of love between Jesus and his
Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit. It is not just grand and triumphant; it
is also intimate and deeply personal, and is itself a sign of the new community
of love which is the Kingdom of God.
4. THE RENEWAL OF THE CONTEMPLATIVE AND DESERT
TRADITIONS OF PRAYER in which “run of the mill” Christians like us are
rediscovering the classical masters of the spiritual life, from the East as
well as from the West. We know that this is happening here because of the
astonishing number of books by writers such as Metropolitan Anthony, Carlo
Carretto, Thomas Merton and Catherine Doherty being sold through the bookstall
in the porch.
5. THE CHARISMATIC RENEWAL, overflowing upon Christians of
many different traditions and Church communities, including the Roman Catholic
Church, a movement that has so nurtured our faith to the point that we now
expect the healing gifts and other supernatural actions of the Holy Spirit to
be experienced within the praying life of the Christian community for the
blessing of all. The healing ministry of this parish under Father John Hope was
the main precursor of the charismatic renewal in this city.
6. THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT, in which so many
barriers separating Christian brothers and sisters from one another are
tumbling down, and we are learning a new humility as we recognise that all the
traditions – including some we don’t like – have held certain of God’s gifts
“in trust” for the whole Church. This movement, emphasising the “koinonia” –
“participation” in and with each other in the life of God himself – has
gathered momentum from the beginning of the century, and as we pray together,
work together and learn together – “converging toward Christ” as Father Harry
Smythe expressed it in this pulpit – we look forward to the fruition of that
unity for which Jesus prayed “so that the world will believe.”
7. THE NEW MOVEMENT FOR CATHOLIC RENEWAL IN THE
ANGLICAN CHURCH with its emphasis on theology, worship, personal
holiness, evangelism and the social dimensions of the Gospel.
So, I want to ask: What is a renewed Christian? What
is a renewed Church? How does “renewal” affect our worship? In fact, I don’t
think that enthusiastic participation in any of the important renewal movements
necessarily indicates that we are personally being renewed by the Holy Spirit. When we
examine our hearts we know how even then (perhaps especially then!) it is so
easy to become static and entrenched, judging everyone else by the kind of
experience of his grace that God has given us. What I’m saying is that it is
not “renewal” merely to move our tent along the journey a bit, set it up again,
and create a new fortress around it!
Surely, to be a renewed Christian – or a renewed
parish – is to be truly open to God for him to work with great freedom and
originality. Renewal is when we are so wanting God’s perfect will that we
simply allow him to be God. We take the risk of inviting the Holy Spirit – “God
the Disturber” as Alan Walker calls him – to come afresh in love and power to
disturb US, so that we are continually open to being recreated in the image of
Jesus. And we keep our bags packed from now on. We are pilgrims and strangers
in this world of ours, journeying forward, the new community of his love,
following Jesus wherever he might lead. And as Pope John Paul is always telling us,
WE ARE NOT TO BE AFRAID. Such a way of living is, from the human perspective,
precarious indeed. But only then can we be that living sacrament of God’s love,
the Body of Christ in the world.
Of course, the amazing thing about the Holy Spirit is
that – most of the time – he is gentle and docile, and he does wait to be
invited. The other side of that, of course, – and this is a warning – is that
he WILL allow us to completely freeze over as individuals and as a community if
that’s what we really want. But if we mean the things we say in our prayers, if
we try to be open to God’s disturbing love and power in an ongoing way, if we
are returning often to the well to be filled with his life and love – that is,
if we are people of renewal – I believe that our worship will be affected in
four ways:
FIRST, WE WILL INCREASINGLY PERCEIVE WHAT IS REALLY
GOING ON WHEN WE WORSHIP THE LORD. We will grow in our understanding of the real
significance of worship. We will become aware at various levels of what Jesus
our great High Priest is doing as he leads us in the worship of the heavenly
Mount Zion. We cannot help this Christ-centred perception, for Jesus himself
said about the Holy Spirit, “he will glorify me, for he will take what is mine
and declare it to you.” (John 16:14)
The Christian community that is truly being renewed
receives from the Holy Spirit a revelation of our being united with Jesus in
the heavenly worship. Our worship in this holy place ceases to be merely
something we “do” on earth, or even the life of service we are living here. It
becomes the gathering up of mankind, creation and all things into heaven, the
“adding up” of everything into Christ, into his praise of the Father. It is a
celebration of all things in heaven and all things on earth being drawn
into a unity of love through the power of the once-for-all Sacrifice of
Calvary. The Church’s worship is not centred on her earthly altars; these earthly
altars of wood and stone are icons of the heavenly altar, the REAL centre of
worship – which is truly cosmic – in which we and all whom we represent are
incorporated into the prayer of Jesus, and are . . . “caught up into the
movement of his self offering” (ARCIC). This point was well made by Vatican II:
“Christ indeed always associates the Church with
Himself in this great work wherein God is perfectly glorified and men are
sanctified. The Church is His beloved Bride who calls to her Lord, and through Him
offers worship to the Eternal Father . . .
“In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of
that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward
which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God,
a minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle; we sing a hymn to the
Lord’s glory with all the warriors of the heavenly army . . . we eagerly await
the Saviour, Our Lord Jesus Christ, until He, our life, shall appear and we too
will appear with Him in glory.”
This, then, is the meaning of the Mass. In his
priestly love for us, Jesus “through the eternal Spirit” gathers us and offers
us to the Father “with, in and through him”, one single living sacrifice of
praise. This is the dynamic at the heart of a truly renewed catholic
community.
SECOND, and based on that reality, WE BECOME
INCREASINGLY AWARE OF OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS WITH WHOM WE WORSHIP. This is so
elementary, but it must be said, because in some Anglo-Catholic circles there
is as much a “me and God” approach to prayer and worship as there is among the
most individualistic protestants. Such Anglo-Catholics seem to be unaware that
sacramental worship is by its very nature corporate and communal. It is in the
community – even when that is just “two or three” gathered in his name – that
the Lord makes his presence most deeply felt by the power of the Holy Spirit
through the sacramental signs he has appointed. Praise God for the growing
sense of community among us here, so that the Peace exchanged in the Mass, far
from being a ritualized greeting of those we want to avoid afterwards in the
hall, has become a real sign of our belonging to the Lord and one another. This
is in contrast to some other places I’ve been where people want to encounter
Jesus in the proclamation of the Word, and to receive him in Holy Communion,
but are vehemently unwilling to participate in a simple, beautiful, loving and
holy acknowledgement of his real and sacred presence in each another.
The Catholic Faith teaches us that we are a community
of freed slaves who have passed from darkness to light, foreshadowed by Israel
of old being freed from the bondage of Egypt. Through the living water of
baptism (our Red Sea) we were joined to the new people of God journeying
together to the promised land. Jesus leads us, he protects us, he
supernaturally feeds us, he manifests his presence “tabernacling” in our midst.
“Once we were no people; now we are the people of God.” Changing the image
somewhat, it also says that together we are “living stones” being fashioned
into a temple for his glory. (1 Peter 2 9 ff). So, we need each other. We are
companions. You are to help me on the journey; I am to help you. You are to
support me; I am to support you. Each of us needs supportive caring
relationships in which our joys and sorrows can be honestly shared, for in that
sharing we not only grow as human beings; we grow in God.
Sometimes, though, you and I think that if we get too
close to others they might find out what we’re really like and then reject us.
Of course that is the risk of being alive. Who among us hasn’t been wounded by
others . . . or done the wounding? But our faith journey is all about taking
risks. In one sense, the greatest risk we take is opening ourselves to God in
the first place. Who knows where HE might send us, or what HE might want us to
do with our lives? Being open to each other is not a separate risk; it is part
of that same risk, for as St John says, it is not possible to grow in our
relationship with God while at the same time pushing the brothers and sisters
away from us. The genuineness of our walk with God is measured by the reality
of our love for one another.
In any case, we often find that having taken the risk
of opening up to others we are not rejected at all. The honesty involved in
such a process is reciprocated. (Then again, on the odd occasion when we do
experience rejection, we have something real to offer the Father in union with
the suffering and rejection of Jesus; and, like any pain, it even becomes
redemptive if we offer it lovingly to the Father for the blessing of the person
who has hurt us!)
We are the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:11) and
members in particular. It is as scandalous for us to gather for the Eucharist
today and not discern the body as it was among the parishioners in Corinth of
old (1 Corinthians 11:29). We are the body of Christ, called into being as an
effective sign of the reconciliation and love at the heart of the Gospel. We
are not just an assembly of individuals. All our gatherings – Sunday High Mass,
as much as weekday Masses and the Friday night prayer fellowship – should
reflect that.
THIRD, WE WILL JOYFULLY ACCEPT A GREATER VARIETY OF
WORSHIP AND PRAYER WITHIN THE PARISH COMMUNITY. After all, we know from our
experience here at Christ Church that there is nothing at all incongruous about
some for whom the beauty, mystery and transcendence of the old High Mass (which
you know I love so deeply) is absolutely central to their spiritual lives
finding great help and sustenance in less structured kinds of worship such as
house Masses, mission services, healing services, prayer meetings, Taizé
gatherings, and even those huge ecumenical charismatic rallies we had at the
Horden Pavilion. Human beings are frustratingly unpredictable, and each of us
has been influenced by such a range of culture, music and spiritual practice,
that we dare not disparage expressions of worship that demonstrably help others
journey more deeply into God. So, within the general framework of our parish
life, such diversity should be encouraged, even if it occasionally attracts
criticism. (I was so embarrassed after the last Mary Rogers healing service
when in front of a group of people who had experienced the Lord’s healing power
very strongly, an extremely snooty Anglo-Catholic – NOT from this parish, thank
God – remarked at the “dreadful music” – he meant the singing of one of those
gentle choruses while the sick were being prayed for. He went on at length
complaining about the “general lack of aesthetic appeal” in the way the service
had been conducted.)
In this age of ecumenism and (in many places)
liturgical muddle and liberal theology, we must stand for principles that
matter. There IS a danger of losing aspects of our heritage that are precious
gifts of God. But we must also accept with grateful humility – as I said
earlier – that within different Christian traditions and cultures the
Holy Spirit has inspired ways of praying and living that are also gifts held in
trust for the whole Church – indeed, I believe, held in trust for this moment
of history when Jesus wants us to be one. Furthermore, we just need to accept
that not all Christians are going to find exactly the same expressions of
worship equally helpful. So, in parishes like ours, we look forward to an even
wider spectrum of Eucharistic and other worship to help people where they are
in their walk with God, and to help them use their gifts and talents in ways
that give glory to God. That does not mean getting rid of anything or dumbing
down the worship we love so much; it means adding to what we already have so as
to hold an even greater diversity of people together, and to reach out more
effectively and in new ways into the subcultures around us.
FINALLY, OUR WORSHIP WILL PROPEL US INTO THE WORLD IN
THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT TO LIVE AND WORK FOR GOD’S GLORY. I know that there
are times of depression and stress when we drag ourselves along to Mass in
order to receive the grace we need just to get through another week. (I’m not
knocking, that, because in my own life sometimes that’s the best I can do!) On
the other hand there is a sense in which we’ve not really understood anything
about the Christian life if Holy Communion is just our shot of religious
inspiration for the week.
Dr Eric Mascall wrote that
“. . . Every time the Eucharist is celebrated, the
full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction which Christ
offered throughout his life and on Calvary, and which is now a perpetually
efficacious reality in the heavenly realm, is made a present and active power
of redemption and sanctification in our world of time and space, and by their
sharing in it the members of Christ’s Body the Church are sent out to their
life in the world renewed and strengthened for their share in the work of the
world’s transformation.” (The Christian Universe, Darton, Longman & Todd,
London, 1966, p. 163)
We are inspired and blessed when we come to Mass, but
God expects us then to go forth, filled with the Holy Spirit and nourished
by the Bread of Life, to be a blessing to those around us in the Monday to
Saturday world. We are called to be signs of his holiness and love in real
life, and not just when we worship together here. We are called to go into our
world laughing with those who laugh, weeping with those who weep (Romans
12:15), and giving ourselves away for others, especially the poor and the
powerless, allowing the ministry of Jesus to be continued through us.
So many of our heroes in the Catholic Revival took up
this mission; they strove against social injustice and institutionalized evil;
they worked tirelessly for a renewed world which includes a more just and
equitable sharing of wealth and other resources, in which all are valued
equally. We must do the same. And that’s exactly why quite a few people from
here share in the round-the-clock roster at St Laurence House. Many of the
young people and others who live at the House or hang around it (some of whom
have been homeless since before becoming teenagers!) have nowhere else to go.
But they feel loved and accepted by YOU, and for some of them that is a
completely new experience. You love them with your love, but also with the love
of the Lord, and I know that is sometimes hard work, sacrificial hard work. It
can be messy, dirty, confronting and disheartening. Sometimes it is tragic. But
you persevere out of love for Jesus and these precious ones for whom he died,
who are “at risk”, and they gradually come to know his love for themselves,
even sometimes becoming part of our gathering at the altar.
There is no such thing as the “social gospel” over and
against the “spiritual” gospel. The real Gospel is social! It demands that,
filled with God’s love, we roll up our sleeves and get involved in the real
problems around us, bringing the light of Christ to bear on them.
So, “renewed” Christians, open to God the Disturber in
our day, cannot help but to be disturbed by the destruction, suffering,
unemployment and emotional breakdown happening everywhere as we enjoy our
relative affluence. It is the Holy Spirit who keeps pouring the love of God
into our hearts, and that love constrains us to care for those around us. If we
don’t see things in that way, we need to re-examine the reality of our walk
with God and the authenticity of our worship.
Some sixty years ago, Frank Weston, Bishop of Zanzibar
spoke these words to thousands of people like us at a great Anglo-Catholic gathering
in London. They have since become well-known. I conclude with them tonight, for
they express very powerfully what I believe with all my heart is imperative
fin the daily life and ministry of those who encounter the Lord in the glory of
Catholic worship:
“I say to you . . . that if you are prepared to fight
for the right of adoring Jesus in his Blessed Sacrament, then you have got to
come out from before your Tabernacle and walk, with Christ mystically present
in you, out into the streets of this country, and find the same Jesus in the
people of your cities and your villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the
Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum . . .
“. . . If you are Christians then your Jesus is one
and the same: Jesus on the Throne of his glory, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament,
Jesus received into your hearts in Communion, Jesus with you mystically as you
pray, and Jesus enthroned in the hearts and bodies of his brothers and sisters
up and down this country. And it is folly—it is madness—to suppose that you can
worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the Throne of glory, when you are
sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children.
“. . . You have got your Mass, you have got your
Altar, you have begun to get your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and
hedges where not even the Bishops will try to hinder you. Go out and look for
Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who
have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And
when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their
feet.”
