Given at the Proclaim 16 Conference Mass in Broken Bay Diocese, Australia, on 2 September 2016.
Jesus is preparing his friends for his departure. He tells them, ‘the time will come for the bridegroom to be taken away from them.’
I like the slightly irreverent story of how when Jesus ascended to heaven, the first person he met was the Archangel Gabriel. Looking back over Jesus' shoulder at the motley group of disciples left on the hillside, Gabriel asked the Lord, ‘Is that it, or is there a contingency plan?’
‘No,’ replied the Lord. ‘No contingency: they are my plan.’
They were his plan. That was the awesome reality which must have dawned on them as he took leave of them.
They were his plan. And the words we hear on the lips of the psalmist today must have spoken very deeply to them; because the psalmist speaks of trust. And they knew their need to trust like never before.
It must have strengthened them to pray together these very same words which we pray today and make our own: ‘If you trust in the Lord, he will grant your heart's desire; trust in him and he will act.’
The need for trust is reflected as well in the words which we hear from Paul, in the words he addresses to the people of Corinth. He reminds them they are Christ's servants; stewards entrusted with the mysteries of God. And what is expected of stewards, he reminds them, is that each one should be found worthy of his trust.
This Gospel is a favourite of Pope Francis'. And he uses it to urge us also to trust, trust in the Spirit. He challenges those who say, ‘The old wine is good.’
He tells them, if what they're saying is, ‘It's always been done this way’, and stop right there, then they're closing their hearts to the surprise of the Holy Spirit. No: new wineskins for new wine means, says Pope Francis, that we need to allow time-honoured habits to be renewed by the Holy Spirit.
I do think he's saying something which is very important for us to hear as we gather here for Proclaim '16. Because what we're about is nothing if not inviting the Holy Spirit to renew our way of being Church; letting the new wine of the Holy Spirit course once more through our veins so as to help us find new ways of bringing people to Christ.
And it's significant Pope Francis speaks of time-honoured habits. We might just reflect on that phrase for a moment: time-honoured. Because it means honoured by time.
Many are the habits, the ways, the methods, the practices of our Church life which you can think of which go to make up what it means for you to be parish, which have indeed been honoured by time; and which are truly precious in the eyes of Lord. They don't necessarily need changing; but they may need developing.
The plan which the first disciples had to embrace has come a long, long way; and there's doubtless a great deal of evangelising activity taking place already in your parishes which is good and fruitful. But the message we need to hear is that we must let it be renewed, developed, revivified, magnified by the Spirit. And what this Gospel tells us specifically is that patching up won't do.
A patched-up life, Pope Francis is quite clear, is a half-life. A patched-up approach to evangelisation is a half-hearted one.
No: if we're content just with patches, then we're not being fully open to the Spirit. Being open to the Spirit means being open to the possibility that some of our ways of doing things do need a radical overhaul, a thoroughgoing reassessment and a strategy for development and change.
I like the work of Fr James Mallon. Many of you will have been inspired by his ‘Divine Renovation’. He gives a good example of how the Spirit may be calling us to renew a time-honoured habit, when he takes something which is at the very heart of our lives and of the parish's life: the Sunday Eucharist.
He makes a point which rings true for my experience and, I suspect, yours, that eighty per cent of our people we only ever see at the weekend. Eighty per cent. And yet we spend about twenty per cent of our week planning for the weekend. Aren't we missing something here?
Imagine what a difference it would make, he says, if, instead of giving twenty per cent, we gave eighty per cent of our week to preparing for the weekend! Admittedly, that would leave only twenty per cent of our time for everything else.
But what a difference it could make to our principal activity: the weekend Masses! How much more hospitable, inspiring they could be; attractive, life-giving, community-building, transformative, if only we had the time to prepare them?!
This was brought home to me just in these last few weeks. A lecturer in a Catholic university told me the young Catholics who attend his courses in sacramental theology are wonderful; positive, enthusiastic, keen to study. Many of them wish to teach in Catholic schools. And yet none of them goes to Mass, he said. They want the Church but not the Mass; and he's at a loss to persuade them otherwise.
Most of us here, I would wager, are people who believe the Eucharist to be at the heart of the Church. We hold fast to the view that ‘the Eucharist makes the Church’. And it distresses us to see the number of young people, and the not so young too, who've been sacramentally initiated and yet don't frequent the sacraments.
It makes me wonder: if we could put something even beginning to approach eighty per cent of the parish's energy into preparing for the weekend, might they not experience something at our Eucharists which does help them to desire the Mass so much more?
These days we have together are for imagining all such kinds of possibilities; for thinking big; asking ourselves how the Spirit may be calling us to renew time-honoured customs in a way which helps people meet Christ in our parish. Because this is what the Lord means when he says, new wine, fresh skins. He means we need to prepare the way for the new life which the Spirit waits to pour into our parishes.
See, judge, act. This is what that means in essence: take stock, reflect, and plan. Having reflected on the structures you have already in place, choose strategies for their renewal and be open to the creation of new structures should your assessment suggest it.
The first disciples had to accept that they were his plan. And now, mysteriously, in these first decades of the third millennium, we find we have received something of the responsibility which they shouldered so effectively.
I do believe that the Lord, if he were to look down with Gabriel today on this group of disciples gathered here in Broken Bay, would have no hesitation in saying, ‘No: there's no contingency plan. They are my plan. And I trust them. I trust them to rebuild my Church.’
And as he has trust in us, so we need also to trust in him.