Father Aidan's Sermon – Saturday 5th July 2003

So, our Bishop is calling us to celebrate life: for a day, for a weekend; to proclaim the gift of life. The readings are perfectly chosen for us by the Holy Spirit where, in the Gospel, Jesus is a prophet and the followers of Jesus are called to be prophets. However, so often prophets are not heard or a prophet is despised in his own country. So, sometimes, when we are among the people who know us, we have to be voices speaking in the wilderness. Our duty is there, as it says in the first reading, ‘this set of rebels shall know there is a prophet among them’: we have to take on our responsibilities; to speak out what we believe is the truth.

It is interesting this week, isn’t it, how we need prophets in our country: it is in such turmoil, morally. There was an outcry in parliament about hunting, the killing of a fox. How scandalous, how horrifying that is. The headlines the following day were about getting eggs from aborted babies so that we can give infertile couples fertility. You know the whole thing; you think what on earth are we doing? No one is asking why are people infertile. Back in the 60’s when I was first ordained some of the catholic mothers were saying ‘my daughter is going on the pill as soon as she starts her periods because we have to be careful now, we are living in that sort of world’. You train the body to be infertile for 10 years, 15 years and then expect it suddenly to be fertile!

What a crazy world we are living in. Always, one of the statistics of horror which greets us, is the 6 million Jews killed in the holocaust, and we rightly revolt against that. There have been more than 6 million babies aborted in England since 1967; more than 6 million. That’s the world we are living in and we get that without being a prophet. Of course the world needs us to speak out on behalf of life and one of the things we have to do is find where we fit. Some people can take on politicians and can work through parliament and work through pressure groups, trying to change the laws and that is needed too. We can support these people by signing petitions and things like that. But maybe, for all of us, the way we celebrate the gift of life is by the way we act and behave. This shouldn’t take us by surprise. The Bible says the original sin is temptation: the temptation to be in charge of the two areas that are almost against God: the beginning of life and the end of life. We become gods and we chose when we have life; we become gods and we choose when we die. It is significant that both those areas are being attacked in our society.

If it’s an atheist society in practice, then of course there isn’t really any argument either against abortion or against euthanasia if you don’t believe in God. As followers of Christ, we know that life comes from God, none of us here created ourselves it was a gift we received, from our parents, but a gift from God. Therefore, God is the creator and we are his creatures and we await his coming because he is the creator. And yet we show that so often in our lives by the way we cherish life at its weakest and, when we cherish life at its weakest, very often that is where we find there is true life, suddenly life blazes forth in all its richness as St Paul says ‘when I am weak, it’s then that I am strong’.

Some of you know Billy, Billy who comes here sometimes. I am going away with him this week on retreat with Faith and Light. Last time I was in London with Billy, we were carol singing in Trafalgar Square and beforehand we went to Westminster Cathedral for Mass. Coming out of the Cathedral, we met a lot of alcoholics, drug addicts and people wanting money and one wanted something from Billy. Billy was smoking because as soon as he got out of the Cathedral he needed a drag and this man, who was obviously under the influence of alcohol, said to Billy ‘give me a cigarette’ and Billy, knowing that this man was in real need, that he wasn’t if you like ‘normal’, gave him with immense generosity not only one cigarette but four cigarettes. Billy then sat and listened to him and he asked him who he was, he always says ‘I’m Billy Dagnam from Bolton who are you, what’s your name, where are you from?’ The man told him his story, that he had been a very successful business man, making a lot of money but then everything had gone wrong in his business and his family life and he ended up on the streets and turned to alcohol. His family had rejected him and didn’t want to know him. Billy just listened and that’s all the man wanted; Billy’s gifts helped the man.

And then Patrick. Patrick was extraordinary – it was in the 80’s that I knew Patrick. He was very ill when he was born, he had tumours behind his eyes and he didn’t speak; he was autistic and his mother abandoned him, left him in the hospital. They couldn’t do anything with him in the hospital, he just screamed, he was very aggressive; he was like a wild animal. As he grew up, he just used to sit and eventually they put him in the psychiatric ward and they used to leave him alone a lot of the time. When they took food into him, he would eat like a caged animal and he was violent and aggressive and screamed a lot. Then Mary, a single nurse from the hospital decided she wanted to adopt Patrick. So, she set about getting to know him. She began to take him his food, she began to sit with him, to spend time with him, and he crawled away from her and wouldn’t have anything to do with her and screamed when she came near. Mary persevered, however, and she eventually managed to persuade him into a buggy and took him out. On their walk, she discovered something about Patrick: she discovered he liked the sound of running water. She told me that she sat many an hour with Patrick beside a drain listening to the gurgling of the water in Islington, in London, and slowly she won Patrick’s confidence and she won his love.

When I met Patrick he was about 6 years old and she had him smartly dressed, better dressed than any other child. The tumours were still behind his eyes so he couldn’t see, or hardly see and he had the typical gestures of autism so she put rings on his fingers so that when he made these gestures he could see the gleam, the glint of light of the rings on his fingers. She taught him to walk and she taught him to wash himself and he chose his own clothes. He still couldn’t talk, when I met him, but he responded. He was enchanting. I went to Lourdes with him and I introduced him to students and it was amazing at the number of people Patrick knew. Jean Vanier, a founder of Faith of Light, was very fond of Patrick and Patrick responded very powerfully to Jean and very often, at conferences or retreats, Patrick would be sitting next to him or sitting on his knee.

Patrick was unfortunate; the tumours didn’t go. Mary would say to me sometimes ‘he is not going to live very long you know’ and you couldn’t believe it because he was so lively, he was so full of life. But he died when he was 8 years old. Patrick was the weakest of all who had been rejected, the one no one could do anything for until Mary came along. When I went to his funeral I think there were 5 of us priests concelebrating. The church was packed and the words of St Paul ‘when I am weak, that is when I am strong’ rang loud and strong.

It is that cherishing of life at its weakest which makes us prophets speaking powerfully of the gift of life.

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