Wednesday Week 7 of Ordinary Time
Honorary Doctorate for Peter Prendiville

Homily

Most Rev Timothy Costelloe SDB
Archbishop of Perth

Wednesday 26 February, 2025
The University of Notre Dame Australia, Fremantle

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As I was reflecting on what I might share with you this evening in this homily, it struck me that two contemporary realities which are claiming our attention at the moment have some light shed on them by the short passage from Saint Marks gospel which we have read during this liturgy.

The first contemporary reality is, of course, the very thing, or better the very person, we have gathered tonight to celebrate - Peter Prendiville. In particular, we are acknowledging and celebrating and giving voice to our gratitude for the extraordinary leadership which you, Peter, have demonstrated, particularly in relation to the life of this university, but also in relation to so many other aspects of the life of the Church and of our wider society.

The second reality is the grave situation in which Pope Francis finds himself in relation to his declining health. While there are some signs that the situation may have stabilised a little in recent days, this current crisis reminds us that the Pope is an elderly man with declining health. None of us knows how much longer we will have him with us. Our Mass together this evening is also an opportunity for us to acknowledge and celebrate and give voice to our gratitude for the leadership which Pope Francis has demonstrated, not only for the Church but in the wider world – and of course to pray for him.

If we take seriously the claim of Jesus to be our Way, our Truth, and our Life, then His style of leadership, and the fundamental principles of leadership which come to concrete expression in His leadership style, become very important for us. And it is precisely in the gospels that we encounter the face, and the style, of Jesus the leader.

In recent years we have come to understand more clearly than was perhaps true in the past that the four gospels, in different but complementary ways, pick and choose from all the sources available to them, certain elements about the life of Jesus which they then weave together in order to present a particular theological understanding of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, guided always in this endeavour by the Holy Spirit. Each gospel, then, presents the truth about Jesus but no one gospel on its own expresses the full truth.

In the case of Saint Mark’s Gospel, one of the central truths about Jesus which takes centre stage is His constant fidelity to His disciples in the face of their infidelity, their closed-mindedness, and their struggle to really understand the truth about God which Jesus revealed in all that He said and in all that He did.

That this is a central concern of Mark‘s gospel is reflected in tonight‘s gospel passage which begins Mark’s extended treatment of the way in which, as Jesus sets out on the long journey which will eventually take Him to Jerusalem and to His death, He turns from His preaching to anyone who would listen to a more focused concentration on what is now His main concern: the formation of His disciples who will, of course, constitute the leadership of the community which will form after His death and resurrection.

The first thing Jesus does is to explain to His disciples that their idea of what the Messiah, the long-awaited leader of the Jewish people, should be was fundamentally mistaken. Rather than being a powerful and all-conquering hero, the Messiah must go to Jerusalem, be handed over to His enemies, and be put to death. It is probably hard for us to understand how disconcerting and disorienting this must have been for the disciples. Everything that they had presumed about leadership was being turned on its head. The next thing Jesus does is to call a little child forward and point to this child as one who, more than others, must be welcomed and honoured within the community of disciples.

Given that children in the time of Jesus had no social status or value outside the bounds of their own immediate family, Jesus is again turning everything upside down. He tells the leaders of the community He is forming that they must put aside their own ideas of self-importance and adult status and instead make the little ones, the insignificant ones, the ones who in a sense cannot do anything for them, the centre of their concerns.

And then, as we hear in tonight’s gospel passage, Jesus reminds His disciples that, precisely because they are His disciples, their main concern should be that good is being done and that people’s lives are being enriched, rather than being concerned about whether or not they are the ones who are receiving the credit.

This evenings gospel passage, short and simple though it is, points to the existence of a certain jealousy and sense of entitlement in the disciples who resent anyone else “muscling in” on their territory and taking over what they believe to be their own prerogatives. Here too, however, Jesus turns everything on His head. He is inviting us not to get so caught up in our own importance, or even the beauty and wonder of the gift of faith we have received, that we disparage or even resent, the clear signs of the presence of God’s Spirit at work in the world in people of all faiths and in people with no explicit religious faith.

In the kingdom of God leadership is all about others and never about us. Tonight, we give thanks for all the ways in which you, Peter, have embodied this style of leadership – and we pray for Pope Francis who also embodies this style  of leadership so clearly, that he will feel the Lord close to him at this time of suffering and crisis.