I remember very clearly the Saturday I was ordained at St Paul’s Cathedral. There had been a retreat for all the London ordinands and then on Saturday morning we all had to, for the very time, wear clerical shirts, and then board a bus which took us to the Cathedral. I remember there was an atmosphere of suppressed hysteria on the bus, a bit like a school trip where the children have eaten too many sweets but know that they should be quiet.
We were led to the chapel in St Paul’s Cathedral crypt where we had to wait for the Bishop to arrive and deliver ‘The Bishop’s Address’. We sat waiting, strangely silent given that there were 34 of us, and then the Bishop arrived. He swept up the aisle in his cassock, bowed at the altar, turned around and said ‘You all look gorgeous of course’. And we all burst out into an easy, grateful laughter.
Now, as I look to the future I wonder if, as minor canon at St Paul’s I will say the same thing ‘you look gorgeous of course’ to nervous brides whose marriage ceremonies I will be celebrating in that very same crypt chapel.
Advent is a season when we look both forward and back as I have just done; we look forward to the coming of Jesus at the end of time, or as our gospel reading says when ‘all flesh shall see the salvation of God’, and we look backwards to the time when Jesus was born 2,000 years ago and lived among us.
This year Advent coincides with a time when I find myself also looking in 2 different directions. I am looking forwards to when I start work as Minor Canon at St Paul’s, and I am looking back over the time I have spent living in this community, serving here as curate and learning to be a priest. As I have done this I have begun to think that the clergy might be described as an ‘Advent people’ as a lot of our time is spent reflecting on the past and anticipating the future.
Being a priest and officiating at the rituals which mark major points of transition in our lives means engaging with people as they look back over their past or seek to move forward into the future. As a brand new deacon one of the first things one does is take a funeral. A lot of time is spent with the family and friends of the person who has died and listening as they look back over the past that they have shared with the deceased. Often mourners are also concerned with the future or the after-life. ‘What sort of life is my husband, wife part of now?’
It is only when one becomes a priest that we can celebrate weddings and of course in marriage preparation one listens to the future hopes that a couple have for their life together. But I always ask couples how they met because it is often the chance encounter which has brought them together, and which holds a special place in their collective memory.
In baptism parents are often looking forward as they seek to protect and nurture their child in the years to come, but the key factor in baptism is looking back to the life of Christ with whom a child dies and rises in baptism.
Our capacity to look back and look forward is part of what makes us human. We are who we are partly because we hold the memories of those events and people who have shaped us and made us who we are today. The past doesn’t simply sit in the past, static and distinct, rather the past is a fluid thing, changing in meaning and significance as we carry it with us into our present experiences. How we look to the future also changes how we live in the present; with joyful anticipation or with a sense of dread?
So perhaps in this season of Advent it is worth exploring how we think and feel about our past and our future considering what might be a distinctively Christian way of doing so.
Looking back and remembering can be a wonderful thing; we will have memories which we look back on with great fondness and gratitude. Personally I will never forget some of the conversations I have had here as a curate, or the experience of going to the Holy Land on pilgrimage where we sang ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ ourselves beside the Syrian Sea; a hymn I shall never be able to sing without being reminded of our pilgrimage.
But equally I know that for all of us there are memories which are painful, times which are difficult to forget because they seem to have no purpose or meaning and they stick out as calling for attention. These memories can resurface unexpectedly or they preoccupy us because we are waiting for some sort of resolution.
Equally, looking forward to the future might provoke mixed emotions. The future is of course uncertain. I don’t know, for example, what my life as a minor canon will look like. I know it will involve an earlier start than I am used to here, I sense it will be stimulating and invigorating and no doubt a challenging place to work but I don’t know what relationships I will have or how these will colour my daily experiences.
We might look to the future with tremendous hope and optimism, believing that things can only get better. Or we might feel blighted by past experiences and so fear the future, believing that we can never be free from the effects of the past.
In our first reading today the prophet Baruch looks back to the time when the Israelites were sent into exile. This falls into the category of a painful memory, a time of lamentation and mourning which the Israelites found it hard to make sense of. It was an event which preoccupied the religious imagination of the prophets who made sense of it by pointing to the disloyalty of the Israelites to their covenant with God. But Baruch looks forward to the time when God will not only bring their time in exile to an end, but will do something entirely new. ‘Your children gathered from west and east at the word of the Holy One’ … ‘For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground. These words are echoed in our gospel reading when the coming of Jesus is imagined as the time when ‘all flesh shall see the salvation of God’.
The salvation of God, properly seen, is entirely unexpected. Unexpected both in how it happens- through the life, death and resurrection of a young man in a remote outpost of the Middle East, and that it happens at all.
We as humanity both yearn for the bridging of the gap between us and God but cannot believe that God bridges this gap through his grace, meaning we are loved and redeemed not through our actions or worthy deeds but simply because God calls us to him.
It is this fact alone which changes the way we as Christians look at our past and anticipate our future. Our memories- be they joyful or painful, can always be laid bare before God who seeks to show us his presence in all things and at all times, whether we were able to discern this at the time or not. This doesn’t mean difficult memories are denied but that they are redeemed.
Equally our futures are to be seen in the light of the ultimate future, when Christ shall reign and ‘all flesh shall see the salvation of God’- and every mountain and hill shall be made low, a phrase that has a particular resonance for me as I climb the hill from West Hampstead everyday.
So how does all this mean we live in the present? When we read about the hills that will be made low and the valleys filled we might be all too aware that in fact no one has a smooth, easy path to God. So where do see signs of the salvation of God? As Christians we look primarily to Christ and we see Jesus in surprising places- in the manger, on the cross and in his eating with sinners. We also see Jesus in the sacraments and in our coming together in his name and in the person sitting next to us in the pew.
As one commentator writes:
“Perhaps when we begin to see Jesus in each other and in ourselves and treat one another (and ourselves) as we would treat Jesus; more of the world might have a glimpse of God’s salvation.” (Stoffregen)
It is this and my encounters with you which has formed me as curate and for which I am profoundly grateful.
Thank you.
I would like to end with a poem which paints a slightly whimsical picture of a priest who encourages his congregation to see a glimpse of God in the person in the pew next to them:
The 12 O’Clock Mass, Roundstone, County Galway, 28 July 2002
On Sunday 28th of July 2002 –
The summer it rained almost every day –
In rain we strolled down the road
To the church on the hill overlooking the sea.
I had been told to expect “a fast Mass”.
Twenty minutes. A piece of information
Which disconcerted me.
Out onto the altar hurried
A short, plump priest in late middle age
With a horn of silver hair,
In green chasuble billowing
Like a poncho or a caftan over
White surplice and a pair
Of Reeboks – mammoth trainers.
He whizzed along,
Saying the readings himself as well as the Gospel;
Yet he spoke with conviction and with clarity;
His every action an action
Of what looked like effortless concentration;
Like Tiger Woods on top of his form.
His brief homily concluded with a solemn request.
To the congregation he gravely announced:
“I want each of you to pray for a special intention,
A very special intention.
I want each of you – in the sanctity of your souls –
To pray that, in the All-Ireland
Championship hurling quarter-final this afternoon in Croke Park,
Clare will beat Galway.”
The congregation splashed into laughter
And the church became a place of effortless prayer.
He whizzed through the Consecration
As if the Consecration was something
That occurs at every moment of the day and night;
As if betrayal and the overcoming of betrayal
Were an every-minute occurrence.
As if the Consecration were the “now”
In the “now” of the Hail Mary prayer:
“Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”
At the Sign of the Peace he again went sombre
As he instructed the congregation:
“I want each of you to turn around and say to each other:
‘You are beautiful.’”
The congregation was flabbergasted, but everyone fluttered
And swung around and uttered that extraordinary phrase:
“You are beautiful.”
I shook hands with at least five strangers,
Two men and three women, to each of them saying:
“You are beautiful.” And they to me:
“You are beautiful.”
At the end of Mass, exactly twenty-one minutes,
The priest advised: “Go now and enjoy yourselves
For that is what God made you to do –
To go out there and enjoy yourselves
And to pray that, in the All-Ireland
Championship hurling quarter-final between Clare and Galway
In Croke Park, Clare will win.”
After Mass, the rain had drained away
Into a tide of sunlight on which we sailed out
To St Macdara’s Island and dipped our sails –
Both of us smiling, radiant sinners.
In a game of pure delight, Clare beat Galway by one point:
Clare 1 goal and 17 points, Galway 19 points.
“Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”
Paul Durcan
(From The Art of Life)