Last year, I attended a conference at St. Mary’s university called “Towards Healing and Renewal of Our Church”. To be truthful, I had some reluctance about going. The reason for this was because the purpose of the conference was to explore what we have learned from the sexual abuse crisis encountered in our church. My feeling was that I just wanted to leave all that stuff behind, and get on with the business of being church, and building church. From speaking to many others, I knew they wanted the same thing. Nevertheless, despite my feelings, I found myself at this conference on a nice sunny weekend.
I carried this reluctance about being there until the Archbishop gave his opening address on Saturday morning. The Archbishop started his talk with a question, the very question I was asking myself: “Why are we bothering with this at this time? And then he proceeded to answer his own question. Because all of us here care for the church. We love the church, and we want to continue with its healing and transformation. With its healing comes a promise of new life, new possibilities.
When we enter into the life of the Church, we enter it being painfully aware that the world is not exactly the way it should be. We see at times it is not just. We see at times it is not loving. We see at times it is not as pleasant as we would like it to be. It’s as if we are constantly waiting to become that which we are not, and to change what is necessary to accomplish this. So we come into the Church carrying all of these struggles and fears, but also hopeful and with an expectation that with God, anything is possible.
From Jeremiah, we hear the prophet say to the people: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the House of Israel." Strangely enough, not very many people were banking on God’s promise when Jeremiah uttered these words. This was a time of great turmoil for the Israelite people. It was a time when the Kingdom of Israel was torn apart, practically being wiped off the map with the Northern Kingdom separated from Southern Judah, and Judah itself on red alert because of the invading Babylonians. The question that was probably foremost on the minds of the people at that time was: "How many of us will be left to be the recipient of God’s promise?" But even at this darkest moment, Jeremiah knew the power contained in a prophecy of hope, a hope that would be subsequently fulfilled.
One could draw some parallel between Jeremiah’s time and today. As we view our TV news headlines, we are witnessing some of the unspeakable carnage caused by suicide bombers and wars, or the number of massive natural disasters, all taking countless lives and leaving mothers and children displaced and homeless. So we need to hear today Jeremiah’s message of hope expressed some 2600 years ago. And that message is, despite what we may be experiencing in our world, that Christ, the just shoot of David, has indeed come into the world, and is present through His spirit in the midst of the carnage and pain. He has been born among us – Emmanuel – God is with us – and he does not give up on us despite all that we may encounter, or despite all the ways we may fail. These can be comforting words during disturbing times.
St. Paul also echoes this as well. “Our God is in our midst. May He make you increase and abound in love for one another, and for all. May He strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before Him." St. Paul is reminding us that the virtue of love makes us whole, makes us a new creation. God is not distant, a controlling policeman in the sky. God is with us. God lives here, in the love within an affirming family and in our faith community of which we are all apart. With God, all things are possible.
The gospels call us to a firm faith, a faith that requires us to believe that Christ’s light can shine through any darkness, that Christ’s light can conquer any fear. When His light and love come into our world, then nothing can hurt us because we are assured of the presence of Christ, a presence with the power to change and transform the darkness we see around us. The Church is there to remind us that the Kingdom of God is among us, expressed constantly in acts of heroism, of patience and understanding, in honest and unselfish service, and in the thousands of instances where people are striving and committed to justice and peace.
What the Archbishop said in his opening remarks at the conference on Healing and Renewal, applied equally to us as we enter this New Life that Christ promises. Why bother? We bother because we care. We care for the Church. We bother because our love for the Church and its message of hope leads to a healing and transformation of our hearts, and moves us towards doing good, and correcting the injustices we see around us. We bother because we experience the possibilities that come from knowing Christ and living by His Spirit.
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