Homily at Opening and Blessing of La Consolacion Convent, Toukley – 28 August 2019
There is a magic in every beginning, wrote the German philosopher Herman Hesse.[1] It is the magic of anticipation which lies at the heart of the experience of wonder. The future comes to greet us with expectation. As we gather today with our Augustinian Sisters Our Lady of Consolation who have now joined the mission of our Diocese, there is every sense of being at a new beginning. It is what provides our celebration today with an unmistakable joy – the joy that belongs to gratitude. We welcome them, and with them we savour all the potential of their presence and ministry. We have been looking forward to your presence for some time Sisters! Now on this wonderful occasion of your feastday – the feast of St Augustine – we are happy to join you and look forward together to all the possibility about which your presence speaks to us.
Augustine himself knew only too well that the line between the present and the future is very fine. The present continually rolls into the future, moment by moment. No one can stop the flow of time and make the present time stop still. But each of us needs to be able to somehow ‘spread out’ the present moment so that it can be calmly held and reflected upon. In Augustine’s perspective this is necessary for the mind’s more noble functions of understanding, planning, and dreaming – all of which belong to new beginnings. For Augustine, memory is especially vital. He calls our memory ‘the stomach of the mind’ (Confessions10.14.21), the place in which we can digest more fully all that God is doing for us. Ultimately it is that interior place deep within us which calls us to mindfulness of God.
“I found my God, Truth itself, in that place where I found truth. Once I learned about you my God, you lived on in my memory. Now it is there that I find you, remembering and delighting in you.” (Confessions10.24.35)
For Pope Francis, too, memory is central for our life in the Spirit. As he taught In Bolivia some years ago, “above all, be careful not to fall into a sickness: a sickness that is somewhat dangerous, or rather very dangerous to those who the Lord has called freely to follow him or to serve him. Do not fall into spiritual Alzheimer’s, do not lose your memory, above all, the memory of where you were taken from . . . Do not forget that. Ask for that grace.”[2] For Francis, the more we refuse to lose the memory of where we have been taken from, the more we grow in our sense of the gratuity of God.[3] And so, as he explains,
“It will do us good to think back on our lives with the grace of remembrance. . . Remembrance of the amazement which our encounter with Jesus Christ awakens in our hearts. . . Let us seek the grace of remembrance so as to grow in the spirit of gratitude. A grateful heart is spontaneously impelled to serve the Lord and to find expression in a life of commitment to our work . . . Once we come to realise how much God has given us, a life of self-sacrifice, of working for Him and for others, becomes a privileged way of responding to his great love.”[4]
So, dear Sisters on this day of new beginnings, in the spirit of St Augustine, remember where you have come from. Especially, remember all those who have shaped your life, your family, your community of sisters. Hold them in your heart, treasure their witness. Your future is held in your memory of them.
And treasure, all those, who have assisted you to arrive at this special day. We think especially of Bishop Comensoli who first extended the invitation to Sr Niceta, your Superior General, Lisa Poole who worked hard with Immigration to get you here, Emma McDonald our Diocesan Financial Administrator who made all the practical arrangements, Philip Greenwood who prepared the house, all the staff of the Catholic Schools Office who have prepared the way for your ministry, especially Peter Hamill, Tony Bracken, Virginia Ryan, Greg Wilson, Jo Speck, and of course our wonderful new clergy of the Parish of Toukley-Lake Munmorah – Frs Tomy and Baby, Deacon Paul – and Jan, our remarkable Parish Secretary.
As Pope Francis suggests, it is in this memory, this savouring of experience, from wich our sense of mission will grow. There is a fundamental link between memory and mission. It is a mission that demonstrates we are pilgrims in the world, wanderers who find in our memory of Christ both the highway and the goal of our journey. For Augustine, everyone is a prodigal son, a homeless tramp, a dehydrated traveler in a sandy waste. Though the savouring of our memory of God, we long to return, to return to the One who made us, a longing that is experienced as restlessness, inability to settle and rest anywhere
“You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in You.” (Confessions 1.1)
The restlessness is our response to the love of God, the movement of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Memory unfolds into longing, and longing transforms into loving – the three faculties vital for Augustine. May this loving become the manifestation of your mission and ministry. As Augustine teaches,
“Give to Christ: he freely serves you with a summons, to be paid back, you being quite astonished all the while that he ever got something back from you . . . And what did I receive? What do I pay back? I was hungry, he says, and you gave me to eat, and so on. I received earth, I will give heaven. I received temporal things, I will return eternal things. I received bread, I will give life.” (Sermon 86: 4-5)
In this new beginning, mindful of all those who have brought you to this threshold, committed to your life of service in the Lord, may you receive life in abundance.
[1]Herman Hesse, cited in Jürgen Moltmann, In the End – The Beginning: The life of hope, translated by Margaret Kohl, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 3.
[2]Pope Francis, To the clergy, men and women religious and seminarians of Ecuador today at the Shrine of Our Lady of El Quinche. Bolivia 8 July 2015.
[3]Pope Francis, To the clergy, men and women religious and seminarians of Ecuador today at the Shrine of Our Lady of El Quinche, Bolivia 8 July 2015.
[4]Pope Francis, Vespers with Clergy and Religious, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, 25 September 2015.
