Given on 5 December 2025 for a Mass celebrating the 30th anniversary of Fr Richard Andrew’s ordination to the priesthood.
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
You wait for a number 9 Bus and then three come along at once. The Church in England has had cause to celebrate much in these last few months.
The State Visit of King Charles and the Queen to The Vatican, redolent with images and gestures that spoke of healing of memories, friendship and a desire to walk together. I think also of the celebration of the midday office in the Sistine Chapel, and the renewing of the historic link with the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls. And the open and friendly encounters with students and Staff at the Beda College in Rome.
Coupled with the declaration of St John Henry Newman as a Doctor of the Church and patron of educators. We would surely have had more than enough to be grateful to God for.
However tonight, we are blessed to be gathered to celebrate another English man whose life has been shaped by the history, music and culture of this England and by the Gospel of Christ, and the mission to bring the liberating, Good News of the Gospel to its people. What a Happy day this is.
Dear Fr Richard we know that all the clergy and laity who have served with you speak with affection and respect for you and your witness of life and faith .
In so many ways you are an exemplary parish priest. Generous, hardworking, kind and courteous. Your love of the English Hymnal is the stuff of legend.
Published in 1906 by Oxford University Press, it was a landmark Anglican hymn book that introduced a high standard of music with a broad, inclusive collection of hymns to the Church of England. Revised over the years it is noted for its
Musical Excellence: plainsong melodies, folk tunes British and American, also containing original compositions. Theological Vision: and Liturgical Focus: In many ways it could stand as a cipher for your own approach to ministry, reflected in your commitment to ensure that the Divine Liturgy is celebrated with care, respect and beauty.
The celebration of a priest’s anniversary of ordination is always a moment to thank God for the gift of a life set apart for Christ and to reflect on the journey that has brought the Celebrant to this day. Fr Richard is a person of open and generous character. As a friend remarked to me, you get what you see! “We don’t belong to a ‘blame culture’” is I believe ,one of his most repeated mantras when times of tension and difficulty arise within parish relationships. This reveals surely his priestly heart; a heart that does not tolerate evil ,yet does not condemn, always leaving the door open to reconciliation, forgiveness and renewal of life.
Fr Richard. You are slow to criticise anything or anyone. I am told that if you were to ask Fr Richard about something or someone his response would be “possibly”. One priest related to me “ In my three years of living with him, I never once heard him speak ill of anyone”. Your years of service as Dean of Hammersmith & Fulham, and the hospitality, you have shown to our Syriac Christian sisters and brothers are testimony to that reality. Thank you.
We Join Fr Richard in thanking Almighty God for 30 years of Priestly Life in the Catholic Church. On that momentous day in 1985 you and the other ‘first eleven’; were ordained Priests by Cardinal Hume in and for the Catholic Church. Since then you have served without compliant wherever you were sent. In Whitton, the Cathedral, as a chaplain and sub administrator, Enfield and Brook Green.
I welcome parishioners and friends from those days.
Fr Richard as many of you will know went to Keble College, Oxford, studied Theology and then went to St Stephen’s House, to train for the Anglican ministry.
Richard, you served the Gospel in the Church of England with Parish appointments in Streatham, Kenton & latterly as Vicar in Hayes.
You served for Seventeen years as an Anglican Parson before entering into full communion with the Catholic Church. You sometimes comment that you do not ‘count’ those years towards your priestly ministry.
Tonight, I want to acknowledge the Grace of those years and the part they played in your pilgrimage of faith and the lives you touched. I understand that your final Anglican service fell on the Feast of the Epiphany, during which St JH Newman’s Lead, Kindly Light was sung – for you, no doubt a prophetic moment, hinting that the same Light that led the Magi to the truth of life, Christ the Saviour Was and is still leading you O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent.
You, like so many like-minded people, strove to express the Catholic understanding of the Church within the Church of England and Anglican communion. As did Cardinal Newman and others in the Oxford Movement in the 19th Century.
Moved by intellectual conviction, conscience and ‘conversion of the heart’, Newman found he was increasingly drawn to full communion with the See of Rome.
Newman’s ‘conversion of the heart’ is best understood not as a sudden dramatic break with his past and all that had formed him in the Church of England, but rather a gradual interior transformation that reshapes the whole person. In Apologia Pro Vita Sua he describes conversion as “a positive, not a negative character” – a growth that adds truth to the mind rather than merely subtracting error. For Newman, the heart’s conversion is first a movement of conscience: “the conscience…speaks to the interior Master… and the individual abandons themselves to the Father.” This interior shift is completed only when “the mind is below truth, not above it, and is bound… to venerate it”. All this movement takes place with the Holy Spirit’s guidance.
The Scriptures this evening echo that experience of call and conversion, invitation and challenge.
An invitation to be Good News and humble faithful servants of the Gospel of Christ. And a challenge to help gather in the harvest. Richard Thank you for giving your life in answer to the Lords call.
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the Will of Him who sent me and to complete his work.” Jesus identifies his “food” not as the ordinary bread of the table, but as the completion of His mission. This mission has two interconnected parts: to do the Will of the Father and to accomplish His work.
This fulfilment of the Father’s Will is the, Bread of Life, that satisfies the deepest hunger of humanity. Christ alone is the Bread of Life, and only He can satisfy the soul.
Dear Fr Richard, you know that food to be; the Word and Sacrament that you celebrate every day in the Mass and in your life of service as a priest.
The “reapers” we hear of in our gospel are the disciples. You and me whom Christ sends to gather the abundant fruit of the harvest . So often We are sent to reap that for which we did not labour.
We gather in a harvest we have not planted. And so, we enter into the labour of the Saints, the Martyrs and the generations of the Church who prepared the way for the Gospel to flourish in our lives. Our call today is to lift our eyes.
We need constantly to move beyond the narrowness of our own limited vision and recognise that the spiritual harvest is always ready. We, all of us, are called to participate in the divine work, sharing the Bread of Life with those who hunger for God, fraternity and encounter.
Brothers and sisters, the fields around us are ripe. The work of Christ – to do the Father’s Will – is our food and our mission.
Speaking of the Priesthood; Pope St John Paul II observed, “the first word about the priesthood… was ‘gift,’ as in Gift and Mystery.” When a man discerns this gift, his life is no longer his own. St Paul reminds the Corinthians that preachers like himself and Apollos are only servants of Christ, entrusted with divine mysteries – the truths of salvation revealed through this stewardship extends to every baptised person: we are all called to manage God’s gifts – our time, talents, resources and faith – with trustworthiness. As stewards, we cannot not claim ownership, but, administer faithfully everything we have – speech, wealth, even life – is a gift from God. Boasting as if it’s our own is folly; instead we attribute all the Giver.
Thus, this ordination anniversary is not simply a commemoration of 30 years served, but a celebration of the ongoing presence of Christ within the priest, who continues to offer His body as a living sacrifice, “consecrated and fit for God’s acceptance.”
In the three decades since his ordination, this priest has sought to live out the renewed Eucharistic spirituality that the Fathers of Vatican II council called for :namely that the priest’s interior life is rooted in the mystery of the Cross and his outward ministry flows form that deep communion with Christ.
Like every priest, we are called to develop an interiority that rests in communion with God. Through prayer, the sacraments, and a sustained imagination shaped by the Mystery of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God.
Successive Popes have reminded us that “priestly spirituality is intrinsically Eucharistic”, and that the priest needs to “penetrate ever more intimately through prayer into the mystery of Christ”. Such fidelity over thirty years is the very “name of love… a consistent, true and profound love for Christ the Priest.”
We know Fr Richard that praying with a good companion, the offices of the Church, most especially the Office of Readings, ‘warms the cockles of your heart’ (as you are often heard to say about homely, hot food) more than almost anything else. Your spirit of priestly fraternity is another gift we have all received richly from.
As we honour this happy milestone, we can and do pray that the Holy Spirit continues to renew your vocation, that you may always be a “convincing and efficacious sign of God’s loving and saving presence.” May your life remain a living testimony that the call to the priesthood, once answered, is a lifelong journey of gratitude, prayer and service.
I know that the greatest gift for Fr Richard’s priestly heart would be that a young man or women would answer the Call to explore their priestly vocation or pathway to life as a Religious Sister or Brother serving the Lord and his people. I pray that will be so.
Thank you Fr Richard for your generosity, kindness, zeal and witness May the example of those great Doctors of the Church, of the East and West ;St John Henry Newman, St John Damascene, along with the witness of St Charles de Foucauld and the enduring truth that the priesthood is a divine gift ;inspire us all to renew our own commitment to Christ, whether as clergy or lay faithful. May the prayers of Our Blessed Mother Our Lady of Walsingham continue to sustain you Fr Richard. And may you continue to rejoice in the Grace that has marked these thirty years.
I pray as do all here tonight that you may enjoy many more years of fruitful ministry.
