Fr. Aidan’s sermon 01-06-2003: The Bishop's Easter Letter .

This week-end Fr Turner read out the Bishop's Easter Letter in preparation for Pentecost next week:

Bishop's House
Lancaster
Easter 2003

Dear Friends

We live in a changing world - we always have. We have to adapt to those changes, but, in addition to that, our faith calls us to grow in holiness and, by definition, that also means perpetual change.

Change can disconcert us in all sorts of different ways. It involves the unknown and that is always a little scary; it disrupts our plans and that can be irritating or even frustrating. In so far as our hopes were bound up with our plans for the future, the prospect of change can leave us feeling helpless. Sometimes we feel able to cope with these reactions; on other occasions they can absolutely overwhelm us.

This is what it must have been like for the disciples in the immediate aftermath of the crucifixion. They had listened to Jesus and what he had to say seemed to promise a new way of looking at the world and at life; suddenly it had all been blotted out. They "had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel", those hopes had been blasted to smithereens.

However, whether or not we see the future with hope can be very much a matter of timescale. Adjust it in this case, and the despair of the crucifixion is brought to glorious purpose in the joy of the resurrection. Change the timescale again and Jesus leaves us to ascend into heaven and we come of age as his followers when he sends the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

It is not, of course, only a matter of timescale, but also of learning to recognise God's purpose working through the events that involve us. Hope must be bound up, not with our plans for the future, but with God's plans.

This is where hope is so closely tied to faith. God has plans for the whole of creation, particularly His human creation - and they are good plans. Life is purposeful, not aimless. Whatever wicked men do to thwart those plans and return us to chaos, into whatever depths of depravity, darkness or despair our foolishness plunges us, God is always there with hand outstretched, not only to point out the path back to light and joy, but actually to walk hand-in-hand with us on that journey. We have to trust Him enough, have faith enough, to accept the hope He offers.

In a beautiful and vivid image Jesus likens us to a grain of wheat that must fall to the ground and rot away in order that abundant new life might come. In the same way, we must continually 'die' to all that has become familiar, stale and habitual in our lives in order that our hopes may blossom into life.

This can sound so intimidating until we realise that it already forms part of our experience. When we fall in love and marry, we have to die to the bachelor life. When parents start a family, they die to the freedom of putting themselves first. There will always be people who are too self-centred to be willing to make these sacrifices - or too nervous to risk them - and who, as a consequence, are never enriched by a meaningful, lifelong relationship or by the joy of children.

It may be that you have never seen these changes as the working out of God's plan for us - but that is what they are nevertheless. I like to think that God has deliberately made these parts of His plan instinctive in us precisely so that we can see from our own experience that it works.

What should then logically happen is that, having seen the transformation worked in our life by falling in love or by becoming a parent or whatever, we should then seek similar and greater transformations at every stage in our life's journey.

Why, then, are we so reluctant to do so? I think it is because we refuse to let go of an idea of happiness limited to what we know. In other words, we think of it as an intensification of existing pleasure or of our present life with the horrible bits edited out (in much the same way as some people envisage heaven as a celestial golf course or, to quote Sidney Smith, as "eating foie gras to the sound of trumpets.").

But what God promises is so much more than we can imagine. It is the joy that "passes man's understanding." However, Jesus makes it clear to us that it is only by abandoning ourselves to the will of the Father that this joy can grow in us.

Those who cling to the life they know will lose it. This 'dying to self' is not an optional extra for the Christian, but the core of what life is about. This message was - and is - so important that God Himself came to live among us and died on the cross for us.

How, then, can we go about it? How can we open ourselves to God's grace so that this dying becomes part of our life? For some, the need for fundamental change has been building up in them for a long time and will suddenly burst forth in a way that changes them forever, like St Paul on the road to Damascus. Others, like St Peter, will change bit by bit, taking on board just one thing at a time. Each person's journey will be tailored to that person's character and needs.

But the very beginning of all these journeys is faith: the faith that allows us to put our trust in God. Out of that faith grows hope: the hope that hand-in-hand with God we can move through all that life has to offer so that love becomes an ever-deepening reality for us. "And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13:13).

May God bless you always.

Patrick O'Donoghue, Bishop of Lancaster

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