My dear brothers and
sisters in St Dominic,
Happy Christmas
(98/224) At the moment, as the old
liturgical year comes to an end, and once again we prepare to
celebrate the birth of Christ, I am taking part in the Synod
of Bishops for Oceania. What can the people of Oceania teach
us about this feast?
Two worlds meet in Oceania. On the one
hand there is Papua New Guinea and the small islands of the Pacific.
Our own brothers and sisters live in PNG, islands of Solomon,
of Micronesia, and of the North Marianas. In many of the languages
of these islands, the word for "land" is the same as
the word for "womb". And I have heard of how the Church
is indeed coming out from the womb on these islands. They have
the joy and pains of new beginnings. Above all, these small cultures
- there are over 700 languages spoken in PNG alone - must struggle
to thrive as they find themselves caught up in the new global
culture of the West. Satellite dishes above the Pacific bombard
the islands with images from our western world. How can such
micro-cultures, rich but threatened, survive this immersion in
the sea of a new world? They are entering a world which is rich
with all sorts of new possibilities, and yet can also bring drugs,
alcohol, and above all passivity and dependency.
Christmas is indeed the feast of new
beginnings, of the opening of a womb. God came to us in a small
and fragile child, born into a small people in an unimportant
corner of the Roman Empire. Like the micro cultures of the Pacific,
his people were threatened by the cultural imperialism of a great
and global power. Yet from that small child came blessing and
grace for all of humanity. When I hear our brother, Bishop Bernard
O'Grady, describe the people of his diocese, with so much to
give the Order and the Church, then I celebrate Christmas as
the time of God's blessing on small beginnings which can bring
grace and truth to us all. The slaughter of the innocents did
not wipe out humanity's best hope.
But Oceania is also Australia and New
Zealand. The Catholic Church has been immensely influential in
these islands in the past, but, as bishop after bishop speaks
in the Synod, one hears of the intense crisis of the Church now.
The predominant image is of the desert of the Australian outback.
There is often, though not always, a sense of discouragement
and of tiredness, as the Church faces indifference, and even
anger and rejection. The time in Christ's life that comes to
mind is not of Bethlehem, but of Gethsemane. Sometimes, I expect,
our brethren and sisters there must feel the burden of this harsh
time.
So in this Pacific Ocean, as in the Synod,
two worlds meet: the culture that dominates the planet at the
end of this millennium, and these fragile micro-cultures. Such
an encounter is happening all over the globe, and the history
of the next millennium will be determined by whether this meeting
is a curse or a blessing. Will these fragile but rich island
cultures be gobbled up, or will they find a voice and full citizenship
in the wider world? Will we receive the blessings that they have
to offer us?
In my intervention at the Synod, I asked
that the Churches work for new networks of economic and cultural
solidarity in the region, so that we do not suck these micro
cultures dry and leave them barren. In this Christmas message,
I would like to add another element. Part of what we can offer
each other is that we are living different moments of the one
story of Christ. Birth and desolation, Bethlehem and Gethsemane,
may have been separated by thirty years in the life of Christ,
but they are part of a single story, in which we find hope.
Every Advent we begin to tell the story
again. We live through its annual repetition, as we move from
Christmas through Lent and Easter, to the feast of Christ the
King. It is usually tedious to repeat a story, however good.
We know how it will end. But the repetition of this tale never
bores, because it reminds us that we are caught up in a story
whose end we cannot imagine. In the Pacific islands now it may
be Bethlehem for the Church, and in Australia and New Zealand
it may sometimes feel more like the dreary walking to Jerusalem
or loneliness of the garden of Olives, but we are all travellers,
borne along in the sweep of a story which leads beyond the present
moment to the Kingdom.
Ours has been called the "Now Generation".
The present moment may seem to be all that is, whether of joy
or pain. The past has gone and the future does not exist. Where
there is no memory, then there can be no hope. But in the Synod
Hall, we meet each other at different moments in the one story
that promises meaning to us all. We may be like the disciples,
with the enthusiasm of those who have just been called to leave
their nets behind them; we may feel rather like those same disciples,
when they cannot make any sense of this strange man who is dragging
us to Jerusalem, or we may find ourselves doubting on the way
to Emmaus. But there is a single story, and we are all part of
a drama which is propelling us to a consummation beyond our dreams.
Each Christmas we start that story again at the beginning, so
as to remind ourselves that we are on the way. The present is
pregnant with possibilities that we cannot imagine, even Gethsemane.
Happy Christmas, and may St Dominic bless
us all, and especially our brothers and sisters in Oceania, with
his courage to carry on with the joy of the future Kingdom in
our hearts. |
