The Most Rev Patrick Kelly

Archbishop of Liverpool

On the occasion of Bishop Drainey’s Episcopal Ordination

12 noon on the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul, Friday 25th January 2008, in the Cathedral Church of St Mary, Coulby Newham, Middlesbrough

A prayer for deep conversion, Come down O love divine, formed the space for this ordination of Terence Drainey. ‘O let it freely burn – true lowliness of heart – and o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing’.

And at the heart of the prayer that today ordains him, and that from this day will overshadow him, since it will abide in the pleading of the Son at the right hand of the Father, is a prayer rooted in Psalm 50, the Miserere, ‘Have mercy on me God in your kindness’. For the words that all the Bishops will pray with one heart and voice: ‘pour out upon this chosen one that power which is from you the governing Spirit,’ find their source in these verses of Psalm 50:

‘A pure heart create for me, O God,
Put a steadfast spirit within me,
With a spirit of fervour sustain me.’

And so it must be for the ordination of a successor of the apostles, witnesses to the Lord’s resurrection. For on Easter Day, not only did the Father raise his Son, our Lord; the same Son, our Lord, raised up the ones he had chosen, who deserted, denied and doubted him, He forgave them and as forgiven sent them to forgive.

And our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, by whose mandate we accomplish this day’s deed, is Bishop precisely of that Church founded uniquely on the preaching and witness unto death of forgiven Peter and converted Paul.

So, Terry, you are entrusted with the deepest good news for all nations: because you are formed by the Holy Spirit, by daily conversion of heart, you are established as witness and bearer of the absolute assurance of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Because, in fidelity to the first Easter Day you are certain the death inflicted on the Lord by sin and for the sake of sinners, has been conquered, the root evil sin is overcome. No other evil can harm us mortally now; no snake serpent, the false accuser of the sisters and brothers of the Lord, no poisonous word, no venomous deed, can destroy that word from, with and in the Lord with which you may begin every celebration of the Lord’s Supper: ‘Peace be with you’. That healing word you may speak to people of every tongue.

It will be blest and a blessing that your first weeks in this Diocese of Middlesbrough shall be Lent and Eastertide.

Let St Paul have the last word:

‘Now I remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which you also stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you: unless you have come to believe in vain.

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve – Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace towards me has not been in vain.’