6th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 13 February 2022
With fondness, I recall being at the First Profession of Sr Sophie Boffa as a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth. As signs of her consecration, Sophie was presented with the Constitutions of her Religious Order, her Religious Veil as a sign of her dedication, and also the small cross that she wears as a member of her Religious Congregation. In giving her this cross, her Religious Superior declared to Sophie, “Receive this cross. May it remind you of your weakness and brokenness and that you live by the Father’s strength within you.”
The words struck me especially, because what Sophie undertook on Saturday morning was, in the eyes of society, something quite perplexing. Why would someone as intelligent and gifted dedicate her life in such a way? Where would the public accolade be in what Sophie professed on that morning? Indeed, I was struck by a certain fragility in the entire event. As Bishop Long pointed out in his homily, whereas once such an occasion in the Church would involve up to 20 young women, and on annual basis, now there was but one person so committing themselves – the first in a number of years. Further, the event we celebrated seemed lost in the vast anonymity of western Sydney in which the Religious community is situated. And yet, we gathered in the beautiful chapel of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth conscious that something quite powerful was occurring. What St Paul wrote when he said, “When I am weak, then I am strong” kept coming into my mind.
Our Christian life is always marked by this paradox. Our life in Christ is not known by strength of status or by the quantity of number, but rather in the recognition that there is something at work, more powerful than ourselves, showing itself actually most clearly in our abandonment of the quest for strength.
Those with disabilities have also taught me this. I recall being in Canberra for meetings once, and at the end of a long day’s discussion being invited to the Ainslea Football Club to celebrate Ronnie’s 55th birthday. Ronnie was an intellectually disabled member of one of the several L’Arche Christian communities in Canberra. These are communities founded by the French Canadian Jean Vanier – communities in which those who live with disability live others in the spirit of the gospel’s hospitality. There were about twelve of us invading the Club’s restaurant, a mixture of disabled and less manifestly handicapped people, and we must have made quite a sight. We certainly made quite a noise singing ‘happy birthday’ to Ronnie as he was presented with a cake, aglow with sparkles and has he was given the gift of some gardening tools, for gardening was Ronnie’s great love. Ronnie’s delight and gratitude were very powerful. His acceptance of me as a complete stranger was also very powerful. At the end of the night, he very simply put his arm around me as a way of thanking me for being there with him on his birthday.
Moments like these – like Ronnie’s gentle hospitality to me in that Canberra club or the self -dedication of Sophie Boffa on Saturday morning – are ones of genuine Christian power: they are moments which change one’s perspective on life. And they highlight the meaning of what Jesus shares with us in the Gospel today.
In the Gospel we are constantly presented with two forms of power. In fact, some commentators suggest that the underlying question reverberating through the texts of the gospels is one about power. What is the nature of genuine power? Who truly has power? In different ways, but especially in this version of the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Luke, we see power presented on the one hand as superiority, as control, a kind of taking possession; and, on the other hand, power as gratitude and welcome, the capacity for suffering and empathy, grief and tenderness, the capacity of self-giving. It is almost that at the outset of the gospel’s proclamation a kind of battle is presented: a war between our instinct to dominate, control, and possess, and another capacity altogether – that which can, participate and give of oneself. Which will win? Which power will we seek to exercise?
In the midst of the struggle, Jesus stands and teaches that the power of life does not come to us through our strength, but ironically through our weakness. The power that humanises us does not come through what we have achieved, or by what we have consumed or acquired. The power that most fully humanises us resides, rather, in our openness, in our relationships, and in our dissatisfaction with the present.
It is a paradox we never quite seem to understand. But Ronnie understood it quite clearly. As Sophie Boffa did in her Profession of Vows on Saturday morning.
In the end, whose power do you think endures . . . the politicians’ or Ronnie’s and Sophie’s?
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