13 June 2008

It is good to be here with you this evening celebrating, on this feast of St Anthony, God’s saving message and proclaiming the presence of his kingdom by our unity and joy. Celebration, unity, joy – these are three important traits of being a Christian. They always have been, but they are even more important in this day and age. We Christians are people of celebration – we can celebrate anything and at anytime. I don’t mean this glibly, I think it is a really important issue for us to call to mind and live out. Our God is always with us, he never leaves our side; he walks with us everywhere and so no matter what happens to us, we know his providential love surrounds. Good, bad or indifferent, we can celebrate because our God is with us, and that is something to rejoice about.
Unity is the gift the Lord gave us, through his apostles, at the Last Supper. In a world of disruption, disharmony and division, unity is the sign of the presence of the Spirit of God. It is the gift that we use to witness God’s presence among us to the unbelieving world. Hence the imperative placed on us to do all things, to maintain unity within the Roman Catholic Church, and to restore it with the other Churches.
And Joy shows clearly to all that we believe, we hope and we love, that our foundations are strong; no matter what comes our way, our roots are planted deep in the very life of the Trinity and nothing can shake us.
Lord, your love lasts for ever.
Lord, have mercy.
Your truth is firmly established as the heavens.
Christ, have mercy.
You are our Father, our God, the rock who saves us.
Lord, have mercy.

The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest. I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Say to all you meet, ‘The kingdom of God is very near you.’

We have all of us heard these sayings before. They are nothing new. The trouble is that because we have heard them so often the words lose their impact. It is also very easy to forget that these words are addressed to us personally today at this Mass. We are called to fulfil our part in God’s plan for providing labourers in his harvest of Salvation, and we also are called to be proclaimers of this same message of salvation. Both sound rather daunting faced with our present climate of apparent hostility to the Gospel and antipathy to the mission of the Church. What can we do about it? The problem is well beyond us!
As you can imagine, over the last few months life has changed for me a little bit. The phrase I used at my ordination was, ‘Over the last couple of months I have passed through a rainbow of emotions – from the darker hues of apprehension and genuine fear to the brighter colours of joy, happiness and exhilaration’. Those feelings have continued as I now enter more fully into my new ministry.
For several months I had realised that my name was being bandied around in connection with the vacant See of Middlesbrough. However, I have always felt that God’s will is what is staring you in the face, and so I focused on the work which I knew God was asking me to do at Ushaw, in the seminary. However, a short phone call at the beginning of last November disturbed all that. When I knew I had to face a new situation one way or another, I decided to drive back home. It was half term, so I drove first of all to Fernyhalgh, near Preston. That was a place where we had been taken to as children and it has remained an important feature in my life. For those who don’t know it, it is a shrine of Our Lady that goes back hundreds of years. All my major undertakings have begun and ended there. It was from there I went out to Kenya; each parish I have been sent to I began the journey from there and returned there as I left to take up the next task. So it seemed only right that as I knew my time at Ushaw was, in all likelihood, coming to an end, I should place that task back into the hands of Our Lady at Fernyhalgh and ask for all the help for whatever lay ahead.
I then drove to Harpurhey where I was born, a quick visit to Moston cemetery where my parents and most of my family are buried, Droylesden where I grew up and then Openshaw from where the family came, Clayton, and finally Audenshaw where my sister and bother-in-law still live. Why? Because this is where I come from, this is very much what has made me to be the person I am. And whatever God was going to ask me to do, it was partly because of who I am and where I came from.
These are the places where I first learned about the Kingdom of God being very near. I don’t think anyone ever used that expression; in fact, I am very sure they didn’t, but this is where I took it all in, almost by osmosis, because that was what my family, friends and others around me were living. This is where I first felt that the Lord of the harvest was calling me to come and labour in his harvest. Again, I don’t think anyone used that expression, but in all sorts of ways I was being shown that and told that in and through family and friends. I don’t think that my parents, my family and my friends would be comfortable with the title of “disciples”, “witnesses” to the Kingdom, but that is what they were and are in so many ways.
The path that has led me to this point and given me the privilege and grace to stand here in Salford Cathedral presiding at this Mass with my brother Bishop and priests and with you all, has wound its way from St Willibrord’s Clayton, St Clare’s Blackly, to Durham and Spain, through Great Harwood, Higher Broughton, Radcliffe, Kisumu, Patricroft, Whitefield, back to Spain and Durham again and finally arrived at Middlesbrough. It’s not a miracle, but a pilgrimage and you can never go on pilgrimage by yourself. You walk with others who give you example, strength, support, witness.

‘The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest. I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Say to all you meet, ‘The kingdom of God is very near you.’

A challenging task, a daunting mission, but most of you have been doing it and haven’t noticed. Keep on asking the Lord of the harvest, keep on encouraging labourers to go out and work; carry on with your mission like lambs among wolves and remember to preach by your lives that the Kingdom of God is very near.
We are on this pilgrimage together. It hasn’t finished yet. It took you all to get me here. I certainly need help, support and encouragement now and in the future.
Let me use the words of St Augustine to sum up what I would really like to say:

Let us sing Alleluia here below while we are still anxious so that we may sing it one day there above when we are freed from care. How happy will be our shout of Alleluia there, how carefree, how secure from any adversary, where there is no enemy where no friend perishes….Here praise is offered to God by people who are anxious, it is offered in hope, it is offered there by people who are enjoying the reality, here it is offered by people who are pilgrims, there by people who have reached their own country.

So brethren, now let us sing Alleluia…. Sing as travellers, sing along the road, but keep on walking…go forward in virtue, in true faith and right conduct. Sing up and keep on walking. Alleluia. Amen