The thought that has developed into this week’s homily started two weeks ago, the day I went on holiday. In the second reading that morning, and again last Sunday, we heard St Paul speak of how, in any Christian community, there are a variety of gifts, but always the same Spirit, and all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord. He went on to explain that the particular way in which the Spirit is given to each person is for a good purpose. Called to be signs of the kingdom and make the teaching of Jesus a reality in society through all the circumstances of history, it would be no use if we were all the same. To build a house you need brick-layers electricians, plasterers, joiners, plumbers and many others, and to be a living sign of the Kingdom of God in the world, the vocation of every parish community, large or small, an even greater variety of gifts and talents are required. And as one of the bidding prayers said that day, it is utterly inconceivable that, having called us, God would not give us in abundance the gifts we need to fulfil our vocation. It’s a complete impossibility and a contradiction in terms. Everything we need is here. All the gifts we require are present in this community, and only when the gifts of every single person in the parish, without exception, are first recognized and then harnessed and directed towards the task on hand, will we be the people and the parish we are called to be. More than forty years ago the Second Vatican Council challenged the whole Church to understand this and respond to it for the sake of the men and women who share this moment in history with us, and it’s a challenge I have thought a lot about over the last two weeks.
Going away as I did, three months to the day after arriving in West Kilbride, the holiday has been an opportunity for me to reflect on my experience so far. And I have to say that I have felt optimistic and excited about it. Even before I came here I had heard very positive reports. Fr Willie McFadden, who supplied here at Easter, spoke to me several times about how impressed he had been by you. The Bishop, when he asked me to come, spoke of the parish in glowing terms, a message I heard from others, too, when the appointment became public. And my own experience since late October has more than confirmed this. Many expected that, after twenty four years in one parish, moving would be a difficult and even traumatic experience for me. But it hasn’t been that way at all. I came with a real sense that the move was God’s doing and nothing has happened since to change my mind. Above all, I have a deep sense that this is a parish filled with the gifts of the Spirit Paul spoke of and filled, too, with men and women who are ready to move on to the next stage of the Church’s great journey through history and begin to embrace and become the kind of Church envisaged by the Second Vatican Council and so much needed by people today. There is, of course, resistance to this too. How could it be any other way? But that doesn’t worry or discourage me. It has always been thus.
So why am I telling you all this today? Well, the first reason, obviously, is that a few days away provided me with an opportunity to look back over these three months and reflect on them. And the second is in this morning’s Gospel, where Jesus reminds us that no prophet is ever accepted in his own country. It’s the old ‘Ah kent his faither’ syndrome. The ‘Who does she think she is? She was in my class at school’ way of thinking. Rubbing shoulders with each other as we do, and sometimes not seeing eye-to-eye with each other on certain issues - as happens even in West Kilbride – it’s so easy to lose sight of the goodness in the people around us and not recognize the gifts God has given them. And that is why I am telling you today how wonderful you are and inviting you, in your turn, to look around and see it for yourselves in each other. There are prophets in this Church and I invite you to recognize them.
But if what I am saying is true. If you are so wonderful and if the parish is so full of potential, what does it all mean, where is it leading, and what implications does it have for us now? Well, the simple but very profound answer to these questions is that God is inviting us on a great journey into the very heart of who he himself is. He longs to share his life with us and through us reach out to the men and women who share this moment in history with us. But if I could identify one thing above all others at this point it lies in what St Paul says in today’s second reading. ‘When I was a child’ he says, ‘I used to talk like a child, and think like a child and argue like a child, but now that I am a man, all childish ways are put behind me.’ And in this we have the single biggest challenge to men and women of faith today. Quite simply, if we are to be of any use to the world at this time and have anything authentic and meaningful to say to it about God, then, like Paul, we must grow up and put childish ways behind us which means learning to let go of the often infantile ideas we have in our heads. We have to be willing to open up our minds to new ideas, new insights and new ways of thinking about the Scriptures, the Church, God, prayer and all manner of things connected with what it means to be a Catholic in the world of the 21st century. Failure to do so, clinging to inadequate, half-baked ideas which have neither changed nor developed since we were children, which the Church herself has long ago moved beyond and which we just keep repeating to ourselves regardless of whether we even believe them, is a complete failure to rise to the challenge of the time through which we are living. And what I have found so encouraging in the short time I have been here is the sense I have, rightly or wrongly, that there are many of you who are not only ready, but willing and able to engage with these sometimes difficult questions.
So am I right or am I wrong?
BIDDING PRAYERS
In the first reading this week God tells the prophet Jeremiah how he knew him before he was formed in his mother’s womb, how, before he came to birth, he had consecrated him and that he has appointed him a prophet to the nations. But every single word of this is true of each one of us here. God has called us, consecrated us and appointed us, too, as prophets to the age we live in. And so we pray for the grace and courage we need be everything we are called to be at this moment in history..........Lord hear us
If we are to be prophets to the men and women of the 21st century then our faith must be modern, up-to-date and relevant to the times we are living through. Our Catholicism must be a modern Catholicism which reflects where the Church is now and not where it was fifty years ago. It must be a Catholicism rooted in the Scriptures, in the Second Vatican Council and in modern Church documents. What used to be is not enough today and we pray for the grace to embrace the implications of this truth.........Lord hear us
If we are to be a modern Church then we must embrace the concept of Adult Education in faith. One of the reasons why so many people have given up on religion over the years is because the general level of education in faith after 1945 did not keep pace with the educational advances taking place in society at large, leaving many feeling that faith had no intellectual credibility in the modern world. And so we pray for the wisdom to move beyond this unfortunate stage in our history.............Lord hear us
The philosopher, Bertrand Russell, remarked that the irony of the modern world is that the stupid are filled with certainty and the intelligent are filled with uncertainty and doubt. Certainty where there is none is the refuge of those who cannot believe in a God is beyond our comprehension and who can never be fully described in human language. And so we pray for the grace to let go of old, false certainties from our childhood and, having let go of them, enter a place where God is able to astonish and surprise us.......Lord hear us
The people of Nazareth were unable to accept Jesus for the simple reason that they had known him all his life. He was one of them. His family still lived in the village. He had sat with them as they had listened the words of the ancient prophets. But now the one whom those prophets had spoken of was in their midst and they could not recognize him. And so we ask God to open our eyes to recognize the prophets among us here in this parish and rejoice, without envy or jealousy, in each other’s gifts.......Lord hear us
To work together as a parish community is not easy. We are called by God to be a prophetic people but that does not mean that we cease to be human. Within any Christian community there will always be tensions, disagreements and personality clashes. But love, St Paul tells us today, is always patient and kind. It does not take offence and is never resentful. It is always ready to excuse the faults of others and delights in the truth. And so we ask God to pour this kind of love into our parish..........Lord hear us
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