REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF CEILIÚRADH: A CELEBRATION OF LITURGY
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF CEILIÚRADH: A CELEBRATION OF LITURGY CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL
It is a privilege to have been asked to officially open Ceiliúradh at Christ Church Cathedral, and I would like to say a special ‘Céad Míle Fáilte’ to all of you who have travelled long distances to join in this celebration.
Given its rich and intriguing history since its foundation a little under a Millennium ago when the Christian Church was one in Ireland, Christ Church Cathedral is particularly well qualified to host this international ecumenical festival to mark the start of the Third Millennium of Our Lord.
In and through the story of Christ Church, both today and yesterday, we see a people struggling with the often baleful vanities of self, of politics, of religion, with the ups and downs of everyday life, with its cruelties and joys, trying to bring grace and meaning to life, to confound doubt and rekindle hope. We gather in a strange mood, of celebration tinged with self-criticism, of gratitude for what Christians have accomplished and embarrassment and impatience at our many failings. Yet we are determined to make of this Jubilee Year a time for refreshening our spiritual energy for the journey ahead. Christians believe in this journey, for all its twists, turns, potholes and reverses. Mostly the difficulties are of our own making, whether individually or institutionally. But we believe there is a star to guide us, and it never loses sight of us though we may lose sight of it from time to time. These are days in which we are called to renew our focus, to realign ourselves with the trajectory of that star.
A huge amount of energy and flair has already gone in to organising this impressive and ambitious programme of events, with its lectures, worship workshops, concerts and public liturgies. It is fundamentally a call to reflection, to a thoughtful interlude away from the frenetic world of secular concerns where intimations of things spiritual can so easily get drowned out by cynicism, neglect, disinterest, lack of time and doubt, or just plain boredom.
It is timely, amidst our celebration of the Great Jubilee – particularly at an ecumenical congregation such as this – to reflect just a little on the state of the Christian Church in Ireland. Were Christ to return just at this time to conduct a stock-take, one wonders what He would make of us? We have in Ireland some of the most extraordinary showcases of Christian goodness and in my role as President I am privileged to meet them, day in and day out. Their lives rarely make headlines but if they were to stop what they are doing, this island would know an instant ice age, a huge impoverishment of civic life. Yesterday I was at a Millennium Faith and Light celebration in the company of L’Arche founder Jean Vanier. Forty years ago, Vanier a professor of theology, invited two mentally handicapped individuals to share his home and his life. Through his work and the work of his followers, rooted as it is in the Christian gospel, we have learnt the cost of love, the harsh demands it makes and the joys it brings from the most unlikely places. A week ago I was at Dunfirth Farm in County Kildare - a community of care for thirty five adults with autism, set up eighteen years ago by two sets of parents of autistic children who were worried about their children’s long-term care. You will rarely see their stories in the headlines but around the clock they are living the gospel the hard way, not in their heads but in their hearts and hands.
All over Ireland in community after community you will find individuals, families, local groups grinding away day after day at the relentless and difficult work of love. They refuse to sit back and do nothing in the face of the loneliness of the elderly, the vulnerability of the young, the isolation of the mentally ill, the fear of the terminally ill, the despair of chronically ill, the secret silence of the illiterate, the self-neglect of the drug addict, the lostness of asylum seekers, the alienation of travellers, the panic of the unemployed, the tiredness of carers, the hidden gifts of the disabled. All around them they see a litany of human needs and they take on themselves the voluntary responsibility of care for others which is the most visible sign of love at work in the world. They notice things to be done. They get up, get out and do them. And we are blessed that there are many such people and many more in all walks of life from the highest level of politics to the young trainee on the first step of life’s ladder, who do their jobs well, live their lives well. They raise good families. They teach their children to be good citizens, good neighbours. They pray. There is no shortage of signs of God’s grace at work here and some of those signs cut across denomination, creating partnerships across history’s old divide. We have a history of charitable endeavour second to none - in recent weeks alone Telethon and the Women’s mini marathon parted us in the most ingenious of ways from over ten million pounds of our hard-earned money. No-one had to do any of these things. But they did them out of care for others and they did them at cost to the self. They did them with a smile, without the remotest sign of po-faced paternalism and with a deep consciousness that every contribution, no matter how modest or small, has its own intrinsic value and integrity.
Yes, we could give the Lord a great tour of our highlights and we are entitled to be justifiably proud of them, to see in them the seeds of hope, to look to them as powerful witnesses to His commandment to love one another. But nonetheless he would notice our embarrassment, our angst. We ring bells and proclaim to the world the good news when we manage to get modest numbers of Christians of different denominations to be civil to one another, when we get them to talk to one another and especially when we get them to pray together, but we know the Lord will be less than impressed by our success to date. The scars of sectarian division are still raw in places, still pervasive despite many champions of reconciliation. His eyebrows would be raised by some of the things said in private and in public by Catholics about Protestants, by Protestants about Catholics, by white ethnic Irish Christians about people of other colours, other ethnic backgrounds, the sick names able kids sneer at the mentally handicapped, - things Christians should never say of one another or of any human being. He would be convulsed with sorrow at the abuse of children by people who dared to offer themselves as Ministers of His Gospel just as he is hurt by all those who damage the innocence of children in any way, whether in the home, the school or on the street. He would be shocked by the easy begrudgery which mocks the God-given talents and success of others instead of taking pride in them and being grateful for a world of such amazing genius and diversity. He would be shocked at how much cynicism there is side by side with so much opportunity. He knew what it was to give His best to others and to get little or no thanks so He would have some pity for the many fine people from all walks of life including politics, the church, the public service, who have built Ireland into this successful country and who now feel the ambient suspicion and distrust erode their confidence and their energy, their enjoyment of what are remarkable times. I think we could break His heart very easily here and without much effort.
If there is a fair amount of angst among the faithful, if there is deep concern at the disillusionment within the Christian church and at the cynicism directed at it from outside, then that is hardly surprising. How we cope with that angst, indeed how we see it, is crucial. Left to fester that angst drains energy and leads to paralysis. Seen as a sign of discomfort with things as they are, a restlessness to move beyond shallow historic or contemporary vanities to a landscape of profound mutual respect, today’s angst becomes the radical energy, the fuel which can drive tomorrow’s change. It becomes a sign of courage rather than a symbol of discouragement. It is the nervous energy of a people getting ready for the big push towards a more humanly decent society.
Every generation of those who dare to believe in a God who loves unconditionally each human being, has faced its own Gethsemane. As Gethsemanes go, ours is by no means the worst. In fact more than a few of our ancestors would swap with us any day. We live in times of unprecedented economic prosperity. Our people know a level of success and self-confidence no other generation has ever experienced. Those whose dreams are still on hold face a future more promising than the past ever was. The world of medical science and healing care are in a remarkable dialogue and a phase of discovery which, please God, will help us to both live well and die well. These could be and should be times of deep gratitude. But above all they should be times for avoidance of complacency for there is still so much evidence of brokenness and so many people in need of a hug, a word of encouragement, a friend. ‘Mol an Óige’ – says the old Irish proverb – ‘agus tiocfaidh sí’: Praise the young and they will flourish. Although we have a spontaneous and natural culture of celebration, we have not always had a culture of praise and what is true of the young is true of all of us of whatever age. We each of us know it to be true that a word of praise can give us such strength and such heart. A word of criticism can leave us tormented by self-doubt. Are we capable of creating an Ireland of praise and not back-biting - where we encourage the talents and giftedness of our people, take pride in their accomplishments, compliment them, encourage them and see their blossoming as contributing to the good of all?
This Millennium wind at our backs is capable of bringing us on the most remarkable journey Ireland has ever gone - to a landscape of prosperity, peace and tolerance which this island’s many Christians could and should take heart from. It should bring out that deep-rooted joy in life for which we are famous.
There is no shortage of good people in Ireland who are doing their utmost to live in love, to bear witness to tolerance and forgiveness, to light the proper pilgrim course of Christ’s Church. They are not saints for the most part. They have their faults and failings, their own struggle to live good lives but mostly they manage. Equally there is no shortage of people who hate easily, who are jealous-natured, who treat even their own children with contempt, who make lousy neighbours, bullying colleagues, who pick on the weak, who delight in menace, who break all the commandments, who make us frightened, ashamed, angry, ready to give up. Yet these are the very people, the ones we find it almost impossible to reconcile ourselves to, these are the very people Christ insists He can build a bridge to if we trust Him. These are the very people He asks us to love and to forgive because in doing so we reverse the spiral of damage they inflict and we release a new energy, a new grace, we learn the cost of and the formidable power of love. He calls us to be unafraid of change, to find new ways of looking at each other, new ways of relating to each other, a new language for our dialogues. But the goal is old, as old as humankind and the vision too is timeless, transcending the bleakest of wastelands humanity has created out of malice, greed and violence.
For many people who share that vision and that goal, their own personal journey in faith and trust has been very difficult. They have had to confront their own inherited prejudices, strip away their own disabling baggage in order to prepare for a journey into the future very different from the past. The Peace Process in Northern Ireland is one powerful example of what can be built when people join that journey. Mostly it is travelled and built by people who have all the frailty and weaknesses of human beings, people who have found it excruciatingly difficult at times to bend their hearts entirely and humbly to God’s will.
Humility requires all of us, particularly those who are in powerful and influential positions, to recognise and insist that we are all fellow and sister travellers on this journey, each equal and equally loved in the eyes of God, each with our own particular gifts and talents to contribute to a world which is at its core and at its best, a colossal celebration of diversity.
The words of Thomas Merton in The Seven Story Mountain come to mind:
“……we are travelling and in darkness.
But we already possess God by grace.
Therefore, in that sense, we have arrived and
Are dwelling in the light.
But oh! How far have I to go to find You
In Whom I have already arrived!
The belief that we already possess God by grace – or at least have the capacity to possess God by grace if that is our will, our choice – is a truly remarkable and encouraging thought as we embark on the uncharted waters of this new century, this new Millennium, creating our own future, writing our own script. That is why we gather in celebration, not just a birthday to mark the past but to lay down a marker which says emphatically that we believe in the future and in our ability with God’s help to reduce the hurt and add to the sum total of love in the world. We have come a long way and we have much to celebrate.