Bishop David recently gave a talk to the South Bucks pastoral area as part of the Emmaus ‘Opening The Scriptures’ series.
Here is the text of the talk given by Bishop David Oakley on Wednesday 5 February at St Teresa’s Catholic Church in Beaconsfield.
We recently celebrated the Sunday of the Word of God. This day was instituted by Pope Francis on the Feast of Saint Jerome in 2019, and devoted to the celebration and study of Sacred Scripture. So let’s begin our reflection this evening on the words “To proclaim the Year of the Lord’s favour” by revisiting the liturgy of the recent Third Sunday of Ordinary Time.
The Old Testament books of Nehemiah and Ezra are both about the rebuilding of the second Temple in Jerusalem after the exile to Babylon. It’s worth reminding ourselves, although the Old Testament scriptures originated in ancient history with narratives passed down from generation to generation, much of what we now read in these scriptures was re-worked and written after the exile experience. The exile was never meant to happen in the mind of Israel. But it did. And when the people returned to Jerusalem they had to re-discover their identity. Had the Lord forsaken his covenant relationship with his chosen people? How were the people of Judah to deal with their experience, having been absent from Jerusalem for several decades? What should happen with the ruined temple they found on their return?
Rebuilding the Temple was not a straightforward task. The walls had been breached, the altar torn down, the sanctuary destroyed. Those who were left in Jerusalem during the exile, had not sought to rebuild Solomon’s Temple, but wanted to protect and preserve what was left of it. In fact they were so sure this was the best thing to do, they complained bitterly about the rebuilding project. Those involved in doing this had to protect their day’s work by keeping watch over it during the night – in case the old guard came to tear it all down again. The Book of Ezra speaks of two kinds of weeping; those who had tried to protect what was left of the Temple, and were hostile to the new, were weeping with tears of sorrow. Those who had rebuilt the Temple were weeping with tears of joy. Ezra tells us, the two kinds of weeping came together as a prayerful sound before the Lord. We may recognise this tension in the Church today. On the one hand there are those who wish to preserve the past and are unable to imagine the change taking place within their midst. And on the other hand, there are those who desire to renew and refresh what has been received. We have much to learn from Ezra. Can we imagine our two kinds of weeping in the Church today, coming together as a prayerful sound before the Lord?
Back to the recent Sunday of the Word of God for a moment. In the first reading on that Sunday, we joined events when Ezra is reading the Pentateuch, the ancient story of how God created his people and brought them safely to the promised land, what was known as the Law. But again, things are not so straightforward. Ezra has reworked this ancient text, producing a new vibrant version which takes account of the exile experience, and what God has been revealing to his people through their time away from Jerusalem. Things are not straightforward in the ancient story. Abraham is invited to show his faith by sacrificing his only son. This son, in turn, is deceived and gives the promise to the younger son rather than the eldest. This patriarch, Isaac, loses his beloved son Joseph, through the skulduggery of his other sons, only to discover him again in Egypt. And that’s just the summary of what becomes a very complicated narrative when you read it through carefully.
So just as the stones of the Temple are not to be preserved in their broken-down state, but rebuilt as a place of worship in the post-exile Jerusalem, using new stones where necessary – so God’s revelation is not just a word to be guarded and passed down, without any reference to what the Lord is doing in the here and now. A wonderful theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, has something to say about this:
‘whatever is merely put in storage, handed down without any fresh efforts being made on one’s own part… putrifies, like the manna did. And the longer the living tradition has been broken through purely mechanical repetition, the more difficult it may become to renew it.’
The word of God is not about buildings. Although, in passing, we might observe how easy it is for the pilgrim people of God, both in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, as well as today, to become preoccupied with our buildings. Our task is to strengthen living stones – to become communities of living temples of faith, hope and love for the Lord. And so we move to the Gospel of the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time. This is where we find the words given to us to reflect upon as the theme of this talk. It is worth reminding ourselves at this point, the re-building of the Temple presented in Nehemiah and Ezra, is the very building Jesus encountered when he visited Jerusalem. Jesus is with the people, gathered together not in the Temple but in the synagogue of Nazareth. He shares with them, a familiar word from the prophet Isaiah. How often the people had heard that word before, probably hearing it as history, words in the mouth of the ancient prophet, and describing his ministry to a broken people who needed consolation:
‘When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ (Lk 4. 14-21)
The people of Nazareth have heard what Jesus had been doing in Galilee. The power of the Spirit is in him. He teaches with authority, and his teaching touches the hearts of those who listen in a new way. His word has power, the sick are healed and the possessed are delivered of the demonic. All eyes in the synagogue were fixed on him. The people are expectant. But, as this Gospel moment develops, we begin to realise this sense of expectation is only on their own terms. They need the words of Jesus to fit in with their understanding of who God is and how God acts. The people are excited when they hear, ‘This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen’. But then they become very angry, and even violent, when Jesus opens up this word and teaches the implications of it. Maybe we too, can become blind to the vision within God’s word and what it means to proclaim the Year of the Lord’s favour.
So what does it mean to be filled with the power of the Spirit? For sure, this is the only means for us to proclaim today the Year of the Lord’s favour. Through the Holy Spirit, God’s word becomes alive for us in a new, immediate and impactful way. We can expect this word to do what it says for ourselves. Our poverty to live the Gospel, hears good news; our captivity to patterns of sin, is liberated; we see in new ways, where we are presently blind, and we are freed from our fears and anxieties, to proclaim the Gospel to the women and men of our own time. In other words, because we are disciples of Jesus, we too, filled with the Spirit are sent out as missionary disciples.
We need to understand the challenges we face in proclaiming the Year of the Lord’s favour in this Jubilee Year. Living our faith in this present moment belongs to a rich and developing tradition. This is certainly true when we consider the Eucharist as the source and summit of our parish life. This is the encounter with the Lord, above all others, where we touch the graces of the Lord’s favour. And what is the catalyst for this developing tradition into which we are immersed today? In his Principles of Catholic Theology, Joseph Ratzinger suggests, the seat of all faith is the “memoria Ecclesiae”. This is because the notion of memory brings together being and time. Memory is at the heart of the Eucharist: Do this in memory of me. Christian faith is certainly about remembering, the continual calling to mind what the Lord has done for us. For Joseph Ratzinger, the theologian who became Pope Benedict XVI, this remembering in faith is best expressed within the ministry of catechesis. This is how he puts things, ‘the Church’s creed has been developed, above all, from the existential context of the catechumenate, and it was in this context that it was promulgated.’
Catechesis then, is not about the transmission of intellectual statements of faith, constantly needing to be updated. Catechesis is about bringing others into our faith experience of the saving events of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Of course, there is a great caveat hanging over all this: have we ourselves come to personal appropriation of these mysteries within our lives? Only the Holy Spirit can enable this to happen. In the words of Joseph Ratzinger, the Church ‘came into existence because someone lived and suffered his word; by reason of his death, his word is understood as word par excellence, as the meaning of all being, as logos.’ So being a Christian means, ‘the life embraced the word, and the word formed the life.’ Again, in words which echo von Balthasar, Ratzinger suggests, ‘What we Christians must learn from Christ is, therefore, neither revolution nor traditionalism but something quite different: that we are to read Scripture from the Father’s perspective, that is, from the perspective of a concrete relationship to God.’ This is why Jesus can say, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ (Jn 2.19.) We now meet the living God, not in a building, but the living temple which is the person of Jesus Christ.
Authentic Christian experience takes responsibility for the witness of the community of faith. This is because the community of faith exists before theological reflection. In the words of Henri de Lubac, ‘the mystery of the Trinity has opened to us a totally new perspective: the ground of being is communio.’ We tend to view things through the prism of individuality. We feel the existential burden of being on our own. And yet this is not what baptismal life is about. We are immersed within the life of the Blessed Trinity, precisely so that we may experience that life within a real setting of communion. As an aside, I experienced something of this very recently in my round of pastoral visitations. I wondered what it would be like to visit the Catholic community in a place where they do not gather for liturgical celebration in their own church. They use the local Anglican church for Mass and the sacraments, as they no longer have their own chapel. I encountered a relatively small community. They are very much together, with virtual prayer group meetings to intercede for the needs of the community. They have a WhatsApp group that seems to involve more or less everybody. There is a definite sense of service to each other, with everyone having their role. One chap makes fabulous sausage rolls and has that task every time they come together for a social gathering. They are an outward looking community and very much engaged with mission in a variety of forms and settings. They are an example for me of what a parish may look like when the focus is on the living stones rather than a building.
The Church is a sovereign work of the Lord, and must always be open to the creative and saving realities of divine revelation. So in a very real way, proclaiming the Year of the Lord’s favour involves the relationship between the biblical events of revelation and the unfolding tradition. Our pilgrimage of hope is about event and action, more than it is about words and intellectual ideas. Knowledge is not the real fruit of a Jubilee Year, but rather, a love which is the fruit of encounter with Jesus. The Gospel tells us, the demons know who our Lord is – what they lack, is understanding, and even more, a deep personal commitment which alone brings about true life. Pope Benedict XVI made some remarks to the International Theological Commission which may be helpful here, ‘Whoever has discovered in Christ the love of God, infused by the Holy Spirit in our hearts, wishes to know better the one who loves him and whom he loves. Knowledge and love sustain one another in turn.’
Contemplative prayer is described by St Teresa of Jesus as a companionable close sharing between friends. There is another place where we encounter Jesus, as Pope Francis constantly reminds us, in the faces of those whose lives are poor and broken, those on the margins. Let’s try to put these two things together then, the contemplation of companionable intimacy in prayer, with the action of social justice. Some of you may recall the haunting words of Karl Rahner half a century ago now, ‘The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.’ This prophetic observation is still worthy of our attention today. And if we place this mysticism within the context of proclamation of the Lord’s Year of favour, then existentially, we disciples find ourselves living a spiritual experience of hungering and thirsting, more than a sense of self-fulfilled contentment. Because that was the experience of Jesus, the Bread of Life. He hungered for our salvation, he thirsted for justice and righteousness. The Old Testament manna was daily food for a journey, just as the Eucharist is food for a pilgrim people of God. All too often, Christians seek a settled and rigid life, a life that does not change in a pilgrim manner, a life that tries to hold on to something and, in this settled way, does not sit comfortably with the eucharistic verbs; take, bless, break and share.
I sense this is an important point and demands a spirituality of hope to bring it to new life. To put all this another way, proclaiming the Lord’s Year of favour demands an understanding of the Christian life that is fluid rather than static. This brings to my mind, St Teresa’s journey into the interior castle. Discipleship takes us on a pilgrim journey, both challenging and exciting, as we journey into the depths of our own human reality and discover the Lord at the heart of our being. This is so contrary to the dynamic at work with our Western societies today. My occasional observations into social media suggest there is no sense of hope in our society. Life is polarised and firmly set within the concrete of particular attitudes and perspectives. It is certainly rigid. Proclaiming the Lord’s Year of favour takes us out of our tribal echo chambers, and enables us to meet with those who have different views about things.
And lest there be any confusion, this spirituality is certainly not about changing things for the sake of change. This is rather, about the restless yearning of the heart exemplified by little Therese of the Child Jesus. From the moment she believed the condemned criminal Henri Pranzini had turned to the mercy available to us from the cross, to the burning desire to bring alive, the trust and confidence of the young missionary, Maurice Belliere, Therese embraced her mission to proclaim the favour which the Lord was certain had manifested itself in his ministry.
And so, to bring these reflections on the prophetic words used by the Lord to announce the fulfilment of the coming reign of God in our world: to proclaim the Year of the Lord’s favour, to some conclusion. Accompanying this Jubilee Year, Pilgrims of Hope, Pope Francis has issued his fourth Encyclical Letter. It’s called Dilexit Nos and is about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. After speaking of the dangerous dualism caused by the heresy of Jansenism, the Holy Father writes:
‘I would add that the heart of Christ also frees us from another kind of dualism found in communities and pastors excessively caught up in external activities, structural reforms that have little to do with the Gospel, obsessive reorganisation plans, worldly projects, secular ways of thinking and mandatory programmes. The result is often a Christianity stripped of the tender consolations of faith, the joy of serving others, the fervour of personal commitment to mission, the beauty of knowing Christ and the profound gratitude born of the friendship he offers and the ultimate meaning he gives to our lives. This too is the expression of an illusory and disembodied otherworldliness.’ (DN 88)
I am so taken by these words, you may hear them again in a forthcoming pastoral letter. In the meantime, let us be convicted of this truth, poor though we are in the life of grace, we are called to a friendship with Christ that produces the knowledge that encourages us to find ways to proclaim the Year of the Lord’s favour. For only in and with Jesus, will we discover what we need for the renewal of the body of Christ, in order to produce the fruit of his kingdom.
