Summer School 2005

Summer School 2004

Summer School 2003

THE MISSION OF THE LEGION OF MARY IN THE CHURCH TODAY.

A talk presented by Bishop Coleridge at the Summer School in February 2005.

Copies of all Summer School talks are availabe from 456 Queensberry Street North Melbourne 3051

Bishop Mark Coleridge.

What I have discovered over the years is that someone once called the things that are worth talking about are not many, in fact there are varying degrees of things that I would expend much energy on. So that being said, the theme that I have been given to address is the Mission of Legion of Mary in the Church Today and my question   to you is: Is the mission of the Legion of Mary and the mission of the church the same? Well, if it is not we have got a problem because you can’t walk two paths at the one time. When we talk about the Mission of the Legion of Mary as we must, to be baptised means that you are already a missionary. The missionary is to go forth to preach the gospel to those who have never heard it and that is a particular form of mission and one of the things we can see more clearly now is that there is no such thing as a non-missionary baptised person. You are all missionaries, every one of you, every bit as much although in a different way as the Columban fathers, or the Sacred Heart Sisters who go through China. You are all missionaries and even more so because you have chosen to immerse yourselves in the life and mystery of the Legion of Mary. Once upon a time we had certain countries around the world which were designated as mission counties and about 25 to 30 years ago Australia was taken off that list. We were no longer a mission country so we were taken off the list, which was deeply deceptive, as if we could sit back and say the missionary period is over now we can enjoy the fruits of the missions, we have made it. Well, I've got news for you, brothers and sisters, we haven't made it. In a sense Christian mission never makes it. Every day is a fresh start so we are not sort of sitting in triumph of tasks achieved. We have a fresh task upon us every bit as much as did the first apostles. And as Bishop I am a leader of the missionary team. I am called the successor of the Apostles, that is true, the Bishops are the successors of the twelve. But what does that mean? It means that we have to stir up the whole church not just ourselves, because if you sit back and wait for the Pope and the Bishops to do it on their own you will be waiting an awfully long time. The task of the Bishops is to stir up the great missionary apostolic energies of the whole church, every one of you, and I don't care whether you're 30 or 80, in the eyes of the eternal God age doesn't matter. Wherever you are, you are called to mission.

Last year I said to you that the Holy Father for the last thirty six years has been summoning the whole church, notice the whole church, to what he has called a New Evangelisation. In 1979 when he first used the term he said the church had to embark upon a new evangelisation, a new expression, a new way of speaking to people, new words because a lot our old words are just not speaking to people. You've got to find new ways, that's what the Pope is saying. In fact people call Pope John Paul II conservative, that is the most ridiculous description of him I can imagine, he is extraordinarily un-conservative. He rattles some people because he's found new ways and new strategies. The Legion of Mary now embarks upon this new evangelisation which is exciting, it's not just a challenge or a task, it's a fantastic adventure, it's all out there, the meadow land waiting for you. So just go out there and take others with you.

It struck me when I came back to Australia that there is a kind of depressive feel to the scenery and it's to do with the Aussie psyche.  The Aussie psyche seems to me to be a coin with two fascinatingly different sides. On one side of the Aussie psyche there is; "She'll be right, mate. No worries." You know what I mean? That's one side of the coin. The other side is; "We'll all be ruined." It's that dark sense in the Aussie psyche, that we are on the edge of the precipice. I suspect it goes back to our history. The first European settlers in this land in fact did have the sense of living on the brink of absolute disaster at any given moment because they were so distant, so isolated. The natives could attack them. The revolutionary forces of Europe could touch the Great South Land itself. There was that sense of impending doom and I think it has never left us. So on the one hand we sit down in the land of the lotus eaters and say “She'll be right” and on the other hand we are saying; “we'll be ruined.” None of this is true. She won't necessarily be right mate at all, but nor are we least of all in the Catholic Church, on the brink of the precipice and that's what I mean by a sense of excitement and challenge and newness. The task set before us for the Legion of Mary is as new as tomorrow and as fresh as Jesus Christ and is the same as yesterday, today and tomorrow. It never grows old. St Augustine said; "Ever old and always new." Jesus is always infinitely behind us and infinitely new as a memory and as a hope. Never forget the thrilling and the inexhaustible youthfulness of Christ, the freshness of Christ.

And that leads us to the wonderful letter at the end of the Jubilee year, which was the    great summons of the Pope to the whole Church is to start afresh from Christ. So go back to Jesus. There is no other freshness available. Everything else is tired and worn. But go back to Jesus as we must if we talking about mission and there is the freshness not going out of business, but into business, not circling the wagons, but rolling the wagons. There are a lot of people in Australia who are tempted to circle the wagons, you know what I mean? The Indians are attacking, circle the wagons. There is a sense of retiring into ourselves. Institutionally, we are shrinking, there is no doubt about that and people get anxious about that institute where we are amalgamating parishes, schools might close, the number of priests is not what it was and so on and all that institutional shrinkage. The best we can do is circle the wagons and protect what we are left with. What does the spirit say to the Church, the exact opposite. The only way to deal with any kind of shrinkage is to roll the wagons. We will never solve many of the internal problems of the Church, at the moment like vocations, like morale and many others unless we become missionaries.

This new evangelisation, let me put before you is twin mirrors and they are not hard to identify. In a sense they have never been hard to identify because the new evangelisation at its deepest sense is not unlike any of the other great evangelisations in the Church system, so there is nothing new but it is a question of doing it in a new and fresh way.

The new mission in Church, the new evangelisation, is sharing the gospel of Jesus; sharing the magnificence of Jesus with those we meet, the kind of thing that Legionaries do in their wonderfully practical and humble way.

The two pillars of Christian mission are contemplation and mission. I've already said that we don't have a Church of missionaries and non-missionaries. Let me also say we don't have a Church either of contemplatives and non-contemplatives. We say the Carmelite Sisters or the Cistercian monks are our contemplatives as if it lets the rest of us off the hook. Sorry folks, it doesn't. You in your way are called by Christ as much to be a contemplative as any Carmelite nun is or Cistercian monk. It's just that you are not in a monastery, so don't try to wriggle out of it for your own sake, for the sake of the Legion and the sake of the Church.

You are called to contemplation. Now what does contemplation mean? It means to contemplate the face of Jesus, the humanity of Jesus and the flesh of Jesus. Contemplation is to the depth of prayer that doesn't mean you have to leave the flesh behind. It is very strange and indeed pernicious that many people believe that to discover divinity you have to leave the humanity behind; to discover God you've got to fly from the flesh; and I think that is what Cistercian monks and Carmelite nuns do well, you are wrong. To contemplate the face of Jesus is to contemplate the humanity of Jesus and the flesh of Jesus and to discover that he is not way up there a million miles from our humanity but a God who is always and only in the flesh. The body is a very spiritual thing. Again Pope John Paul II talks about the theology of the body. There is a spirituality of the body and there is a spirituality of the flesh. The body is a big part of your contemplative experience in all kinds of ways, but it is also the flesh of human experience; of human events, the mess, the sweat, blood and tears, that's where God is to be found. So the challenge of Christian contemplation is to look at what is very ordinary and perhaps even very tawdry with a particular eye and to discover the heart of the ordinary look at us that extraordinary presence that we call God with us, Jesus. It's like the Church; looked at with one eye, the Church is just a pathetic mess, it always was it always will be. There was no golden age. People sometimes say; "oh it was lovely in the beginning, we got it right; then something went wrong and we've been running downhill at a great rate ever since." You only have to read the New Testament to see that from day one there was blood on the floor. The Church has always been a mess seen from one angle. But the contemplative eye, the eye of God looks at the mess of the Church and sees not just the mess but also sees the magnificence. And what is the magnificence? I'm not talking about the glories of the Vatican and its architecture and its art no, no. The glory is Christ amongst, the presence of the risen Christ, pulsating magnificently at the heart of the mess. If you don't see Him with that contemplative eye all you see is the mess and of course you walk away, why wouldn't you? But if you do see Him then somehow the mess in the end doesn't matter. I find that I have to do this more as a Bishop than I've ever had to do in my life because as a bishop you see more of the mess in the Church than anyone. I must seek to foster in myself that contemplative eye. Again keeping in mind the great claim or the great cry of Christianity that has always been found in the gospels; "We have seen the Lord." That's it. If we haven't seen the Lord we have nothing to say. The mission doesn't even get to first base.

The contemplation of God with us, a kind of x-ray-vision that sees Jesus, as says; "We have seen the Lord." Now, did any of you see the apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae? An apostolic letter the Pope wrote for the Year of the Rosary. It is a document of great beauty and simplicity, but I would like to touch on chapter one with you and it is called 'Contemplate Christ with Mary'. This touches the very particular charism of the Legion of Mary. You are called to be contemplatives but I suspect where you rest at the heart of the Church is a particular style or avenue of contemplation and I think the Pope might have touched the pulse of it when he talks about contemplating Christ with Mary. In other words its pondering the face of Jesus, the humanity of Jesus but with the eyes of Mary and those eyes see glory.

The transfiguration is really an icon of mystic contemplation, the churches of the East seem to have when the disciples are with Jesus on the mountain and His glory shines forth and they saw His glory. Now that's what I mean by contemplation. A prayer with Jesus; the perception of the glory of Jesus. Who would see that better than her? Who would love Him better that Mary, the love of x-ray vision. A spouse looks at his or her spouse and sees something that no-one else sees. A parent looks at his or her child and again sees the glory that only that kind of love can see. It's like a transfiguration. That's what we are called to do in a deeply un-transfigured world, a world that lurches from disarray to disarray but that is the same as the disciples found walking on the dusty roads of Palestine with Jesus. On the mountain they go and they see the glory but they only see the glory remember because He showed it to them. And prayer is an opening of the gift. It's not something you can claim for yourself. All you can do is open the door for the One to enter and the One to enter is the One shining like the sun, who is the glorious Christ. The glory on the face of Jesus, that's what Paul said and that's what we have to see.

How better to do that than through the eyes of Mary for she knows Him and sees Him as no-one else does. No-one has ever contemplated the face of Christ as faithfully as Mary. This is what you have to understand, it is not simple for Mary. In one sense it is a very complex experience. A questioning look in her eye. “My Son why have you done this?” So now questions are asked of Christ. A penetrating gaze, one capable of deeply understanding of Jesus even to the point of perceiving His hidden feelings, and anticipating His decisions, mothers are like that.

Again joining in the joy of the Resurrection when she sees the One who was crucified rise glorious from the dead. The look of Mary there, the Easter eyes of the mother, a gaze radiant, and then finally a gaze of fire because she sits at the heart of the apostles at Pentecost. This, the gaze of Mary, is a very complex human deep thing, questioning, penetrating, sorrowful, joyful. It was prayer before contemplation which is the word of mission.

The contemplation of Christ with Mary what does it mean? 'It means a few things. Mary's contemplation, the Pope writes, is above all the remembering. Let's look at the Rosary in particular. Now one of the great enemies of spiritual life is amnesia. We talk a lot these days about dementia and alzheimer’s but there is a spiritual dementia that in a sense is even worse than the disease. A forgetting. You have a look in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy, one of the prime words for sin is to forget. At the very epicentre of Christian worship we echo the words of Jesus; "Do this in memory of me". In other words, don't forget. So the Mass is the prime antidote against amnesia or dementia. And that's why the contemplation of the Rosary, and it's a wonderfully contemplative prayer, is a kind of remembering. The past is never ever gone. There is a kind of remembering born of contemplation that makes the past, present now. I am talking about the great things God has done. There's nothing vague about God. God has done everything in Jesus and that's what we remember when we pray the Rosary or read the scripture or the gospels. It's making those things present now. That's the way God works. It's not once upon a time, the Christian life is never once upon a time. So remembering what God has done and Mary is the woman who remembers, the woman of the great remembering. She treasures things and stores them up in her heart as the woman who never forgets and therefore a woman for whom the past is always present. Because the past is present, so is the saving power, the great deeds of God are here and now in the act of prayer. It's an extraordinary thing, but prayer breaks up tired old notions of time, that past is past and once upon a time. No it's not. Prayer breaks all that up.It's the way God has provided for us to allow the power that happened back there to explode in the now.

So remembering Jesus with Mary; learning Christ from Mary. Who could teach us more about Christ than the one who knows Him best? What fools we would be if we didn't learn from her? No-one knows Him better. So it's up to us to learn from her to read Christ, to discover His secrets, to understand His message, but also to bring to Christ with Mary our questions. She is the woman with questions, "How can this be done to me?" so part of praying this way is to bring to Christ your questions, just as Mary brought her questions. You don't have to have all the answers, bring all your questions, whatever they are, come as you are. Then we conform to Christ with Mary, more and more becoming like Jesus so that conduct is shaped according to the mind of Jesus as we come to know Him better, as we come to learn from Him we become more like Him. So two friends who are constantly in each other’s company after a while they are like each other. If you enter into this experience of the deep company of Jesus as Mary does, then there is an osmosis, you become more like the one in whose company you spend the most time. That's what I mean by giving it all to Christ with Mary. She shared her life from the moment the child stirred in her womb right through to the bitter end she becomes more and more like the One whom she bore and the same is the call to all of us.

Again the Pope writes; “The Rosary mystery transforms us to Mary's side as she is busy in the home at Nazareth.” This enables her to train us, in other words Mary moulds us, shapes us as she did Jesus. That's what I mean by contemplating Christ with her.

Praying to Christ with Mary. The power of her intercession brothers and sisters, you know it and so do I. She joins in our prayers and gives them a whole new charge of power, so contemplating Christ with Mary is allowing her and her intercession to be a part of our praying, the kind of intercession that you see at the marriage feast of Cana. That's the kind of power I'm talking about.

Finally, and this takes us to our mission, Proclaiming Christ with Mary. She who speaks of the Son from the knowledge above that has taken her to the depths of this reality we, who in those same depths, are called to proclaim Him with her. From the womb of contemplation comes forth the mission and the figure that focuses for us better is Peter. So when I talk about two pillars of the Church's mission and hence the Legion's mission, contemplation and mission, think of it as Mary and Peter. These are the two poles of the Church's life, there is a Marian dimension to the Church and there is a Petrine dimension to the Church and the Church's mission so you are the Legion of Mary that is true but marching along with you is the figure of Peter. So let's just ponder Peter for a moment and see what it tells us about our mission, the mission of the Legion.

Peter's call begins in a serious way. I want to turn to the text of Luke chapter 5, the people are pressing about Jesus, a great crowd of people want to hear Him, so Jesus asks Simon Peter if He can borrow his boat so He can sit in that while He preaches across the water. Now Peter has been washing the nets after a night of fishing and he caught absolutely nothing. So what does Jesus' request mean. He's got to stop working. By the way he's not listening to Jesus. He's got too much work to do. "Can I borrow your boat?" asks Jesus. "Yes" he says because Jesus has just cured Simon's mother-in-law. Jesus then says to Simon; "Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch." Now, what do you think Simon's reaction to those words might have been? Peter is a professional fisherman. The rabbi might be a good speaker but he doesn't know the lake. He's not a fisherman and now he has got to throw the nets over again.   Simon answers, "Master, we have fished all night and we have taken nothing." In other words, I know and you don't. "At your word I'll put out the nets.” I'll keep you happy. I'll put them out and then drag them in." And when they had done this they pulled a huge catch of fish. Well, surprise, surprise. So who in fact knew the truth of the lake? Jesus. Peter thought he knew, thought he was the expert. Jesus in fact knows and is in fact the expert. Now, this is your life by the way. You are Peter. When Simon Peter saw the huge catch, he fell down on his knees and said; "Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinner." And what does Jesus say to Simon? "Simon do not be afraid. From now on it is people you will catch. From being a fisherman you will be a fisher of men."

Why does Peter say; "Leave me Lord because I am sinful?" What he has seen is the power of Jesus, the knowledge of Jesus, in that sense the holiness of God. What he thinks is that the holy God can have nothing to do with sinners. The holiness of God can only deal with human beings who are sinless. And what does Jesus say? "The holiness of God is shown not just by a great catch of fish but what is the supreme side of the holiness of God, the otherness of God, is to embrace the sinful. Just as the two men look at the lake and see different things; the two men look at Peter and see two different things. He was wrong about the lake and wrong about himself. Jesus is right about the lake and right about Peter. He is sinful. So are you and so am I, that's never the issue. The issue, and this is where the mission begins to take off, is that the all holy God who can bring babies from barren wombs, who can bring fish from a lake where there is nothing and who can bring a man from the tomb, this is the God who embraces the sinful, just as He embraces all our debt, all our enemies and so Peter's missionary life is born.

Now, his journey from this moment on, remember this is your life, is a fascinating and complex journey. Because later on in the journey when Jesus will begin to talk about His death, Peter will say; "It can't be like this. We have to have power, success. You can't be strung up like a criminal." What does Jesus say to him? "Get behind me, Satan" Get behind me where the disciple belongs and follow me. So Peter had to follow a very strange path, over the mountain he goes and glimpses the glory.

The glory does not last forever and down he comes and he has to go into the darkness of another mountain, the mountain of Calvary. This is a strange journey Peter could never have foreseen but such is the mission. It will take you onto the bright mountain and it will take you onto the dark mountain and in the end the challenge will be, on the dark mountain. Can you even in the darkness of Calvary see the glory of the cross? John talks to us about that. Interesting, Mary is presented on Calvary only in John's gospel. But here is she, the mother on the dark mountain but still able to see the death as glory. That is the acid test. Can you go onto the dark mountain wherever it is, with the eye of the mother that looks at the brutal, massacred Son and see the glory? That is the ultimate test. Beyond the dark mountain and the betrayal. Remember that Peter is commissioned beyond betrayal. You betrayed Jesus and I betrayed Jesus and that can be very disheartening. But Peter is the great sign of hope of the mission because he is sent out. Indeed he is confirmed in his unique position as the leader of the apostolic team, beyond betrayal. So your betrayals and mine are not the last word. The last word belongs to Christ who said; “Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs.” Then in the end Peter will be taken onto another dark mountain where he will die the death of the master. “So when you grow old,” Jesus said to Peter, “someone else will put a belt around you and take you where you would rather not go.” With these words He indicated the kind of death Peter would suffer.

So I will say this to you in the Legion of Mary. Your yes to the mission will be a yes to a kind of death. There can be no mission without a kind of martyrdom. That might sound strange but I don't mean necessarily that you will be crucified or that you will put against the wall and shot, but there must be a martyrdom of some kind if Peter's story is true. In what way could I be called to be a martyr? The word martyr means 'witness', a witness unto death. You must die. It is only a question of how you die. No death, no mission that is worthy of Jesus. If you die, then it will be true of you what Paul said of himself in one of his letters. In the first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul said; "So being affectionately desirous of you and really wanting to be with you, feeling for you as a mother does for her children, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves." So this is not just giving something, speaking a word then somehow detaching or doing someone a favour then walking away. At the heart of it this is a death, there is the gift of your very self. And again, of whom is this more triumphantly true than the mother of Christ. She didn't know it when she said ‘yes’ at the start. She signed a blank cheque. Beyond all of this is the gift of yourself. But at the heart of Christian tradition that gift of the whole self in prayer to give your own self as part of the mission and say yes to the death. None of this will ever happen unless the Holy Spirit surges upon us.

We cannot do it and to recognise our impotence is liberation. Sometimes people think  Christian life is like finding a great high mountain on the top of which sits God shrouded in mists of majesty. You struggle up that huge, high mountain and finally you arrive bruised and bloody, battered and broken, and fall at the feet of God who takes one look at you and says; "Not good enough." And down you go and try to make your self presentable. You can't, so don't try. What is the truth? There is a high mountain and we've got to get to the top. But God comes down from the mountain to get us. God doesn't expect us to do the impossible. He comes down to get us. We are the lost sheep and God comes to take us up the mountain. So the Holy Spirit breathes over the waters of chaos. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God. "Oh breathe on me breath of God." Lead me out of the waters, the emptiness of sin. This is the Holy Spirit looking over the emptiness of Mary's womb. At Pentecost you've got the human energy, this fearful heart of a locked room, in other words in that emptiness, that darkness the Holy Spirit moves again.

We here today, lay before God our own emptiness, our own fears, the chaos of our lives, so that over that emptiness again the Holy Spirit moves. So unless that happens, the dark emptiness just stays dark and empty. But when the Holy Spirit moves over us, sweeps over us, then from our emptiness will come forth the new creation; the baby which is Christ. We will break forth from the closed, locked room of our fears to do what the Legion of Mary does so prominently and so thoroughly and that is to share with each other; to share with other people the truth that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.       ***

Summer School 2004       

Summer School 2003