WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY
ST. CANICE’S CATHEDRAL
18TH JANUARY 2004.

Preacher: Bishop Laurence Forristal

My dear people,

I am very pleased to be here in St. Canice’s Cathedral to speak to you again at the beginning of our Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. I am grateful to Dean Lynas for his invitation and warm welcome. It is a sure sign of the goodwill and peace that exist between our communities here in Ossory.

Last year, on this occasion, I was delighted to welcome Bishop Peter Barrett to Ossory. He was not yet consecrated at that time. I must say that I have found Bishop Peter to be very caring and enthusiastic in all his dealings with me. He has certainly built on the trust and respect that are the hallmark of all our ecumenical co-operation in Ossory over the past number of years. It is a hopeful sign for the future.

I suppose I can tell you that all this past year I have been working and praying subtly for his conversion – not to Roman Catholicism - but to hurling, particularly of the Kilkenny variety !! In that context, I was somewhat baffled when I met him after the Kilkenny-Tipperary match in August. He had an unusual amount of sympathy for Tipperary. Only slowly did it dawn on me that he is Bishop of Cashel and Ossory. He had to keep an eye on the constituency.

Each year the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church offers a theme for our consideration and prayer during this Week. Perhaps this is just as well. I have been coming here for the past nineteen years. Were there not a different theme each year, by this stage you would know exactly what I would say even before I would open my mouth.

I suppose it is the feeling some clergy get when they spend a very lengthy period in the same parish. They are left without an unspoken thought.

This year the theme for our reflection is peace. It is taken from St. John’s Gospel – “My peace I give you”

Peace is a very relevant topic in to-day’s world. We may have got particularly interested since, what the American’s call, 9/11. But conflict and war go back much further. Some of us who grew up during World War II remember also Korea, Vietnam, Israel and Palestine, Suez, India and Pakistan, our own conflict in Northern Ireland – and we are only mentioning a few since 1945.

It is a sad but true fact that there always has been conflict and divisions in the world – between nations and within nations. There have also been divisions and conflict between Churches and within Churches.

There was a conflict at the time of Christ. Some of his apostles sought the best places in his future kingdom. St. Peter and St. Paul clashed. A Council had to be called in Jerusalem about 50 AD to resolve Church problems.

That was only the beginning. Down the centuries we have had huge battles about doctrine and heresies. We have had the East-West divide in the 11th century and the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

So the picture we see in the world and among religions and Churches is one of division and conflict.

That is the reality now. It was the reality at the time of Christ. And, yet, Christ prayed that we would be one as he and the Father are one. He also left us peace, “My peace I give you”.

The scholars tell us that when Christ was leaving us peace, he did so in the sense that he bequeathed us peace. It was as if somebody was leaving us something in a will. He was going away, but he was leaving us peace as our inheritance.

If we get an inheritance, we would try to use it as the testator wished. I know this does not always happen – but this is what we should do. So, we should work for peace – in the world, in our country and community, in our Church and between our Churches.

I have said we must work for it. Some say that, as Christians, we must not merely think and pray about peace; we must do peace. Christ, in his Beatitudes, blessed those who made peace, “Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called children of God”

It is helpful to listen to the whole passage which contains this year’s theme.

“My peace I give to you,
my own peace I give you,
a peace the world cannot give, this is my gift to you.
Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid”.

So, the peace we are speaking of is not just the absence of war. It is the peace of Christ. Christ was at peace with the Father; but he also faced conflict, suffering and death. All the time he remained a man of peace.

We, too, will come up against problems and conflicts, but we must not be overwhelmed or overcome by trouble or fear. Christ asked us to pray and work for unity. That prayer presupposes that there is disunity. But our means of dealing with this must be peaceful.

In our Eucharist or Mass in the Roman Catholic Church, before we exchange the Sign of Peace, we have a prayer which, I think, sums up much of how we look on peace.

“Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles:
I leave you peace, my peace I give you.
Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church,
and grant us the peace and unity of your kingdom
where you live forever and ever”.

Finally, may I remind you that the Diocesan Ecumenical Service this year will take place in this cathedral on Friday night next at 7.30 p.m. The preacher is Fr Tom Lawlor, PP, Leighlinbridge, in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin. He has been very involved in ecumenical matters in that diocese and I am sure he will have something to say to us. I presume that, even though I am a visitor here myself, I may be permitted to invite you to it.

Click here for pictures from Christian Unity Week in Kilkenny