Annual Clergy Mass

By the Most Rev Timothy Costelloe SDB
Archbishop of Perth

Aquinas College, Salter Point
Monday, 21 September 2015

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Some of you will know that I am a great fan of the work of JRR Tolkien, the author of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien, who lived in the United Kingdom and who died in 1973, was a member of the famous literary group at Oxford University, the Inklings, which also included among others CS Lewis. In fact it was Tolkien, with his deep and passionate commitment to his Catholic faith, who eventually brought CS Lewis to the Christian faith. At one stage Tolkien himself considered a vocation to the priesthood and his eldest son, John, became a priest.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is shot through with Catholic themes. For those who know where to look you will find references to the Eucharist as food for the journey, to Mary as a guide and protector along the way, and to the mysterious workings of Divine Providence. It is this latter idea, the working of divine providence, which I would like to reflect on with you this evening.

At one crucial stage early in the story of the Lord of the Rings, Frodo, who has been entrusted with the task of trying to destroy the Ring of Power, the symbol of evil, expresses to his friend and mentor, the wizard Gandalf, his crippling fear that he was not up to the task. "I wish the ring had never come to me", he says. "I wish none of this had happened." Gandalf replies with some very wise words. "So do all who live to see such times but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world besides the forces of evil."

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." Whenever I reflect on these words I am reminded of the story of an encounter between Saint Francis de Sales and St Jane Frances de Chantal. Jane was a wealthy young widow with a number of small children. She was deeply committed to her faith and was a woman of prayer. She would often seek out Francis for spiritual direction and she confided to him that she experienced within her a deep desire to live the religious life. This desire was strong and persistent and she was confused as to what God was really asking of her. Francis was a wise guide. He said to her that it might well be the will of God for her that she should at some stage become a nun, but if she really wanted to know what God was asking of her all she needed to do was look around her. God's mysterious providence had placed her in a position where a number of small children needed her, their mother, to care for them. Whatever about the future, God's will for her was clear. She must care for her young family.

In the fictional story Frodo had to decide how to respond to the reality he was faced with. It was no good dreaming about an alternative world. He had to live, and live well, in the real world in which he found himself. In the true story of Jane Frances de Chantal she, as a woman who deeply desired to do God's will, had only to sit down, look around her, see where God had placed her, and respond to that reality with simplicity, fidelity and self-sacrifice. Whatever her heart may have seemed to be telling her the real challenge for her was to read God's will in the concrete reality of her daily life. Her children needed her.

It is of course the same for us. As men of God, as ordained ministers or people aspiring to the ordained ministry, and indeed simply because we are Christians, at the heart of our lives we can hope to find a deep desire to do God's will, a deep desire to be obedient, as Jesus was obedient. As we look back over the journey, unique to each one of us, which has led us to this chapel tonight, we should do so with the instinct of faith. There is a mysterious work of God's providence, glimpsed in the concrete realities of our lives, which has guided our steps. It is true that at times each one of us may well have done our level best to thwart God's plans, either through deliberate choices or through the neglecting of God's inner promptings. But even this has not frustrated God's plan. Indeed, in mysterious ways, God may even have used our obtuseness to lead us forward to the moments of grace which have set us back on the right path again. – and brought us here this evening.

As we celebrate the feast of Saint Matthew we might reflect that this was the pattern of his story as well. We don’t know much about him but we do know he was a tax-collector. What circumstances led to this choice of career we don’t know, although we might wonder why someone would choose what was apparently such a hated profession among the Jewish people. Perhaps it was a family tradition, perhaps it was a matter of greed, perhaps it was the only job available. We simply don’t know. But what we do know is that in God’s providence Matthew was in the right place at the right time to be called by Jesus. However our call came to our consciousness we might say the same thing about ourselves: I was in the right place at the right time, and through God’s grace I was able, somehow, to say “yes” – and I am hopefully still doing my best to keep saying “yes”.

Pope Francis has often reflected on this call of Matthew in the gospel story. As we know his own motto, “miserando atque eligendo”, which we might somewhat loosely translate as “because of his mercy he chose him”, expresses Francis’ own conviction that he is a poor sinner on whom the Lord has looked with mercy, just as he looked with mercy on Matthew. Again we might say the same about ourselves. It was not because of our stunning talents, or our extraordinary competence, or our unsurpassed holiness, or our obvious worthiness, that the Lord called us to the ordained ministry. It was because he looked on us with mercy, and chose us, weak and fragile as we are, to show that God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

In our moments of struggle, and discouragement, and confusion – and we all have such moments – this can be the source of our strength and our sometimes faltering fidelity. And equally, in our moments of seeming success, it can be the source of our groundedness and the humility without which we cannot really serve the Lord.

Tonight we will draw strength from each other: from the deep humanity we see in each other, from the remarkable fidelity which marks our lives in so many ways; from the courage which keeps us going in the face of difficulties. May we also draw strength from the understanding and generous forgiveness we offer to each other and receive from each other in our moments of struggle and failure – and most of all may we draw strength from the words which ring in our hearts as we trace the workings of God’s providence in our lives: do not be afraid for I am with you. I have called you by your name. You are mine.