Given at Westminster Cathedral on Saturday 5th October 2019 during a mass with Diocesan Adult Confirmations.
In the College where I trained to be a priest, there were lovely nuns who looked after us. They prepared meals for us; they did our laundry. Above all, they prayed for us.
The day came for one of them, Sr Renata, who’d been there the longest, to return home.
Three of us had the privilege of driving her to the station. On the way, I asked her, ‘Sr Renata, do you have a word of wisdom to leave with us before you go?’ I’ll never forget the beauty of the smile which lit up her face as she said, with great simplicity, ‘Yes: Luke 17, 10.’ ‘Luke 17, 10?’ we said, ‘What’s that?’ ‘Look it up when you get home’, she said, smiling all the more.
And so we did. We rushed to our bibles and were deeply touched to see what phrase she’d left us. It was the last phrase of today’s Gospel: ‘We are merely servants; we have done no more than our duty.’ What a beautiful parting gift; and one I remember to this day. To tell ourselves, as we prepared to embark on what we hoped would be our life’s work, ‘We are merely servants; we have done no more than our duty.’
I don’t think I have become a good servant or that I ever will be. But I do pray a prayer about service at the start of every day. I have since I was a child. Every morning, I pray the prayer of St Ignatius: ‘Dearest Jesus, teach me to be generous; to serve you as you deserve.’ St Paul tells us in his letter to Timothy, ‘Fan into a flame the gift that God gave you.’ It’s praying simple prayers like that, faithfully, daily, that fan into a flame the extraordinary gift of faith which each of us has received.
Paul says, ‘Fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid hands on you.’ ‘When I laid hands on you.’ How touching to hear him remind us that when the bishop lays hands over us in Confirmation, he is doing something that goes right back to the Apostles; right back to the origins of the Church. They confirmed by the laying on of hands and anointing.
In a very short time now, I shall lay hands on the nine people who have presented themselves for Confirmation. The words of Confirmation remind us what extraordinary gifts they are about to be given: the gifts of wisdom and understanding, counsel and fortitude, knowledge, piety and the fear of the Lord! But the essence of what is given is captured in another saying of Jesus’s, when he tells us, as he prepares to take leave of his disciples, ‘The Spirit will remind you of all I have said to you.’ And it’s often through holy people whom we encounter, like Sr Renata, that he does it: he uses them to remind us of what he had said, as she reminded us that he had said, ‘We are merely servants.’
A final thought before we proceed to confirm with the Holy Spirit these nine candidates. How is it that people like Sr Renata can suddenly come out with a phrase like that when you ask them? It comes surely from having prayed the words of Jesus long and often throughout their lives. It comes from having meditated on the things Jesus said and making them part of who she was. Now we should all be hearing a call in this, surely, to do the same. Take the sayings of Jesus; dwell on them; inhabit them; so as to fan into a flame the amazing gift of faith which Jesus put into our heart when we, each of us in our turn, also had hands laid over us and were given the extraordinary gift of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation.