Fourth Sunday of Easter – 11 May 2025

We have a new pope. We have, I am sure, all been captivated by the scenes of Pope Leo XIV struggling with his emotion on the balcony of St Peter’s as he was presented to the world. Now, we wait in anticipation to understand the way in which he will exercise his ministry.  It was a remarkable choice – not the person everyone expected to come out on the basilica’s balcony. No one really knew who to expect but this choice was perhaps one of the least expected. And yet, as we come to learn the story of Robert Prevost we begin to realise the wisdom of the conclave to deliver such an outcome. It truly is an extraordinary choice which, I believe, should give us great confidence in the Church’s processes.

Elections have been uppermost in our minds these last weeks – not only the election of our pope, of course, but also our historic national election which is still undergoing a great deal of interpretation. It makes us think how do we know our choices our right?  And even further, how can we tell the difference between right and wrong with confidence?  It is true that God’s revealed plan for us through the Scriptures and through the living Tradition of the Church provide us with the foundations of knowing what is right and wrong.  However, our human experience is so complex that often we are faced with situations and issues about which we cannot appeal to a source of authority, and we are left to wrestle within ourselves about what the right course of action might be. 

Here of course we must attend to our conscience.  Certainly there is an authority in conscience, and in the end we must follow our conscience.  However, one of the great difficulties today is the way that we can appeal to conscience as if it were some autonomous faculty deep inside us, preserved from any external shaping.  This is not the case.  For conscience is shaped by the quality and nature of our relationships.  It is, perhaps, impossible to think how conscience can be formed without the experience of relationships which are grounded and sustained.  Indeed, the more mature and the more enriching our relationships, the greater formed our conscience will be.  The less inserted we are into the fabric of relationships the less formed our conscience will be.  Conscience emerges out of our profound sense of responsibility for the other.  Take away relationship, we take away meaning, we take away our sense of morality.  Our capacity for morality is in direct proportion to our experience of relationship, of bonding, of community.

However, this presents as a great conundrum in our current social experience because we know just how under pressure our relational life can become.  A number of years ago I was asked to do an interview for a television documentary inspired by the insights of the CSIRO scientist Richard Eckersley who had done a great deal of research on the very high rate of youth suicide which he, and more and more others, ascribed to the loss of the meaning in life that innately emerges from the experience of stress in relationships.  In such a context many people, and particularly our young people, seek to ‘go it alone.’ 

This tendency to seek ‘to go it alone’ this has placed a great stress on the experience of community itself.  However, where community breaks down, so does the life of spirit for community is faith’s hearth.  If there be a crisis of morality today, if there be a crisis of meaning and of faith, then it is because of the fragmentation of community.  It is only in community with each other that we develop our sense of morality, that we piece together meaning, that we are sustained in the adventure of faith, and ultimately that we know if something is right or not.

I think this brings us to the heart of today’s gospel.  Jesus hears the voice of the Father, and we hear the voice of Jesus, the one true voice of rightness, only through our profound attachment to him. The more we are led into relationship with him the more we know his voice, just as Jesus knows the Father’s voice because of his total self-giving into the Father’s embrace and love.  We are not to go it alone. We are to go on with him, through him, in him. It is our relationship with him and with one another that disclose to us the source of what is right.  Cut adrift from this relationship both vertical and horizontal at one and the same time we cannot know for sure that what we want is right or wrong, that the course of action upon which we embark is right or wrong, that the outcome of our decisions are right and wrong.  It is our living relationship with Christ and his followers in the community of the Church that shapes our conscience to know if something is right or wrong.

We are bombarded by so many opinions today.  Everyone has an opinion about everything.  The voices form a great cacophony.  It is so easy for us to find ourselves being led this way and that depending on whoever has the loudest voice at any one time.  Yes, the argument on this issue sounds quite reasonable; the argument on another issue presents us the most fair-minded response.  As followers of the Risen Christ we do not derive meaning or morality from the hundred and one opinions that swirl around us. We derive the rightness of something from that which our relationship with the living Christ discloses to us, the One whose life is borne by the community of the Church, a living fabric of relationships in which we find the truth of ourselves most fully.

As Pope Leo preached to the cardinals yesterday

“It is essential to [be] first and foremost in our personal relationship with Him, in our daily commitment to conversion. But also as a Church, by living together our belonging to the Lord and bringing the Good News to everyone (cf. Vatican II, Lumen gentium, no. 1).

I say this first of all for myself, as the Successor of Peter, at the beginning of this mission of mine as Bishop of the Church in Rome, called, in the famous expression of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, to preside in charity over the universal Church (cf. Letter to the Romans, Greeting). He was brought in chains to this city, the place of his imminent martyrdom, and wrote to the Christians living here: “Then I shall truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world no longer sees my body” (Letter to the Romans, IV, 1). He was referring to being devoured by wild beasts in the arena. And that is exactly what happened. But his words also point, in a broader sense, to an indispensable commitment for anyone who exercises a ministry of authority in the Church: to disappear so that Christ may remain; to become small so that He may be known and glorified (cf. Jn 3:30); to give oneself entirely so that no one may be deprived of the opportunity to know and love Him.”

Yes, finding the truth of ourselves in Christ Jesus, we find the truth or otherwise of the situations of our life