Thursday, July 30, 2009
Pastoral Letter
My dear People,
One summer in three we receive Sunday by Sunday the 6th Chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John. This would be a good title: “The Passover Feast of the Bread of Life”. Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul describe the words of our Lord when he took bread and wine in the atmosphere of the Passover meal; John, in his account of the Last Supper does not set out the actions and words of Jesus to do with bread and wine; instead, and at its heart it is all one deed, he describes our Lord, in full awareness of his coming from the Father and going back to the Father, choosing to be a slave and washing his disciples’ feet.
That action is truly the same action as surrendering himself to his body broken, his blood poured out so that sins may be forgiven. And this is his chosen sign of who he is, what he is among us: bread and wine do not conceal him: once the sign was a baby, lying in a manger: poor, lowly: at the supper, kneeling to wash feet: bread and wine which in the words of the Jesuit poet and priest, Gerard Manley-Hopkins, “wear man’s smudge and share man’s smell”: all of this is sign: makes him known as he really is, as God really is.
But some came to him not because they had seen, read, understood the sign of Emmanuel, God with even us in our frailty. They wanted a king to provide food in abundance, plenty to consume; a king to lead us out in campaigns, to glorious successes and achievements: glory, renown, celebrity, idols and idolatry.
But he insists: - “This is working for God: you must believe in the one he has sent”. Step by step over the coming weeks we will be asked with Simon Peter to recognise Jesus the Nazarene, the child of Mary who once sung of her lowliness and hunger and poverty: at the end of August’s journey we will acclaim with Simon Peter “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God.”
A few weeks ago Christy Nolan died; I wrote to his mother and father with whose affection, labour, patience, respect, he was able to bless many from his paraplegic’s wheelchair that, in the obituary for him, the Economist described as his pulpit and his throne. One challenge in his life was communion: he had no control over his mouth. But a priest observed: Christy’s mouth always opens when he laughs. So he came with Bible, Prayers, the Blessed Sacrament, and a joke. Christy commented: So I met my servile God. That surely is the servile God made known to us by Matthew, Mark, Luke John, and Paul: the Lord who gives his body for me: pours out his blood for us sinners; kneels to wash our feet.
I have often wondered if the words from the hymn of Saint Thomas Aquinas for the feast of Corpus Christi inspired Christy. I will have to wait now to find out when with Christy I rejoice in the life of the world to come of which every Mass is the foretaste, if it was one source of his “my servile God”. Saint Thomas wrote:
“Panis angelicus fit panis hominum;
dat panis coelicus figuris terminum.
O res mirabilis! Manducat Dominum,
pauper, servus et humilis.”
If Monsignor Leo Alston were still among us he could translate those words worthily; strangely, the best I can do is do so literally, with no attempt to capture the lyricism, the beauty of Saint Thomas, theologian and outstanding poet.
“The bread of angels becomes the bread of mortals;
the bread from heaven brings to an end the foreshadowing;
O wonderful deed!
the poor and lowly servant eats the Lord”.
Besides the refreshing in body, mind, spirit, many like me thirst for in the summer months, may these August Sundays renew our hunger and thirst for our servile God.
Yours devotedly in Christ,
+ PATRICK KELLY
Archbishop of Liverpool