Anniversaries, when you think about it, are strange things. Forty years ago, on 5th July 1969, I was ordained a priest in St Thomas’, Muirkirk, a fact that feels deeply significant to me this morning. I have been aware of it coming for months now and found myself this week taking out photographs of the ordination and looking at them. But, at another level, I have been asking myself why we do this. Why are anniversaries so important to us? Why do they have the power to stir us so deeply that we virtually re-live the original event, feeling, in the case of bereavement, the most obvious example, the same pain and sense of loss we felt at the time. Certainly, this anniversary has stirred quite deep things in me.
Well, I think I found the answer to my question this week in a quite unexpected way. And it happened in conversation with two parishioners suffering from Dementia. And what struck me so forcibly was how utterly lost they were. They were like people wandering in a wasteland totally devoid of landmarks or signposts. Without memory, they had no idea who they were or how they had got here. It was as if someone had pressed the delete button in their minds and everything they had ever done, the relationships they had had, the whole story of their lives had been obliterated, leaving them lost and confused in a present which made no sense to them. It was a desperately sad thing to see, and as I reflected on it it became so clear to me why anniversaries are important. Memories are the glue which holds our lives together. They are what enables us to make sense of them. Without memories our lives have no structure, no coherence, no shape. And amidst the many thousands of memories stored away in our minds, the anniversaries, which mark special moments, are the landmarks and signposts, the junctions and crossroads which form the backbone of our personal life-stories. And for people of faith, they are a time, not just for remembering, but for giving thanks to God for his presence in all that happens to us. And so, on this fortieth anniversary of mu ordination to the priesthood, I would like to tell you some of the things I am grateful for today.
And we begin with today’s first reading which speaks to us of how the prophet Ezekiel was sent by God to the people of Israel to speak to them in his name. And the first thing I thank God for today is the particular form that call has taken in my own life. Or to put it another way, I am deeply grateful for my vocation to the priesthood. After forty years, I would not change it for anything. It began in Muirkirk all those years ago and through many different stages has been the most wonderful journey into the mystery of who God is; or more accurately very often, who God isn’t. Always slowly, and sometimes painfully, the God who touched my life so deeply in the spring of 1957 when I had one foot in the kitchen at home and one in the living room, has revealed himself to me as a God who is always different from and infinitely more than anything we could ever say about him. He has shown me that he is a God, not of religion, but of faith, who, as a new century begins, is calling the world to something infinitely deeper and better than anything we have known up to now and for the grace of being part of this I thank him from the bottom of my heart.
But there’s a price to pay for this, and St Paul refers to it in the second reading where he speaks first about the thorn in his flesh which keeps him from becoming too proud and then about his having to be content with insults and persecutions. It sounds ridiculous, not to mention arrogant, to compare my experience over the last forty years with St Paul’s. And at one level it is. But at another level, anyone who takes the following of Jesus seriously is bound to experience something of what Paul speaks of and what happened to Jesus himself throughout his ministry. And like Jesus’ experience in Nazareth in today’s Gospel, my version of it has its roots in my home town of Muirkirk. Mining communities have always had a tendency to be, by instinct, ‘agin the government’ and for years were viewed with deep suspicion by those in authority. And so, throughout most of my life, there has been a little Arthur Scargill inside me trying to get out. And for this, too, I thank God. Without it my whole experience of priesthood would have been so different. It’s the thing which has saved me from so many of the things in the Church which I detest and abhor and who knows where I would be without it. But it has had its difficulties. A book I read recently described the typical Israelite prophet as a man who, having met God and armed with conviction is an outspoken and merciless critic of the establishment. And in my own small way that is the kind of priest I have always felt called to be. It’s in my nature to challenge, disturb and question and I have admired so much over the years those of you who have engaged with the sometimes difficult things I say and have become part of this community’s great journey from religion to faith.
But it may surprise you to know that I have not always found this easy. I remember in those early days, twenty four years ago, watching the numbers at Mass each week fall. I often walked out of the sacristy afraid to look up to see if there were more spaces than the week before.The desire to be accepted and approved of was very strong both here and within the diocese where, on one occasion, a priest actually followed me home to say how much he had agreed with what I had said during a meeting. At the meeting itself, however, he had said nothing. But I was never seriously tempted to give up and say more acceptable things. Instead, the whole experience took me into two and a half years of counselling and psychotherapy designed to help me understand what was happening to me and why. And it was that experience that led to the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, the greatest of all the gifts I have received from God during these forty years.
So I don’t regret any of it. Looking back, it has been wonderful. God has been so good to me and I invite you to join me today in thanking him.
BIDDING PRAYERS
In the first reading this week, we heard how the prophet Ezekiel, like prophets before and after him, was sent by God to speak unwelcome truths to the people of Israel. The truth is often unwelcome in that it calls us to conversion and change when we would rather be left alone and stay as we are. But there will always be men and women whose task it is to call the world to new ways of living and we ask God to raise up many of them from among this parish community...........Lord hear us
In this week’s Gospel, we heard how Jesus, the one towards whom all the prophets had pointed, was rejected by the people of his own home town. God was in their midst and they did not recognize him. Their minds were closed. They were not open to new things. They were trapped in the limitations of their own narrow understanding. And so we ask God to open our minds and hearts wide to recognize and listen to the prophets in today’s world............Lord hear us
In the second reading, St Paul speaks about the thorn in his flesh which kept him from becoming too proud. He does not tell us what this thorn in the flesh was, but whatever it was, it constantly reminded him of his weakness. But that weakness did not discourage him. It became the place where he met the God whose power is at its best in weakness. It taught Paul that it was when he was weak that he was strong and we ask God to use our weakness to teach us that same lesson.............Lord hear us.
And we pray for priests all over Scotland. We ask God to support and encourage them at a time when, by definition, they are growing older; when there are fewer and fewer of them; and, when, as a result, many are being asked to do more and more; all of this in a world which increasingly sees them as irrelevant. And yet we also ask God, too, to stir in the hearts of men, young and old, the desire to share in this ministry for the sake of the kingdom...........................................................Lord hear us
We also think today about the increasing number of people around us who are suffering from various forms of senile dementia or Altzeimer’s disease. We ask God to touch those parts of their minds which we cannot reach and give them a deep sense of peace beyond anything the world can understand. And we pray, too, for those who live with and care for them, that God will give them the patience and understanding they need so much.......Lord hear us
This week, we have all heard the devastating news about the proposed closure of Johnnie Walker’s with all that that involves. And so we ask God to move deeply within those who make such decisions. The Company involved makes massive amounts of money every year and at a time when the world is having to re-examine its attitudes on such matters, we pray that they, and others like them, will learn to balance economic and human factors in all the decisions they make.........Lord hear us
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