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Are you using the gifts you have been given?
The sermon of Bishop Colin Campbell (the Bishop of Dunedin) at the "Patronal Feast Day" Mass at the College on 30 April 2010.
For those of you who were at WYD 2008 in Sydney, you may remember the Pope's challenge to all the young people at the final Mass at Randwick Racecourse when he asked:
“How are you using the gifts you have been given, the ‘power' which the Holy Spirit is even now prepared to release within you? What difference will you make?”
As we celebrate this Annual Mass commemorating Good Shepherd Sunday and the namesake of our College, for you young men preparing for priesthood, it is to realise that you are called to be shepherds of the flock and to be shepherds with the mind and heart of Jesus. And that is the work of the Spirit within you. So in your work and formation here and in Holy Cross and Marist Seminaries, in your pastoral endeavours, prayer life, recreation, culture all of it- is being open to the Holy Spirit that we allow him to shape and mould us to be more like Jesus, and let me assure you, it is a life-long task.
To be a priest in the world today is no easy task-in fact, it is probably much easier in many mission areas overseas than here where there may be people cueing up to hear the Good News. What sort of a world are you called to be a Shepherd in with the mind and heart of Jesus?
In the last census the biggest growing group in the religious section was those with no religion (21%). And given the recent clergy scandals in the world one might well wonder if more people could be listening to the latter day atheist philosophers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitching as they proclaim on Wellington buses ads, “There is probably no God. So stop worrying and start living.” And here we are with our countercultural Gospel of “Christ is risen! So stop worrying and start living.”
Another big challenge is that when people as Arnold Toynbee once said, “if they try and build heaven on earth” the idea of leaving it is not a happy one. We live in a world obsessed with money, possessions and consumerism. At the 2008 Synod in Rome on the Word of God which co-incided with the Global recession, I mentioned the irony of the situation to some other bishops there; here was capitalism in free-fall, here was the world with many people who saw money as the ultimate meaning of life and here we were discussing the Word of God as ultimate meaning of life.
A book that appeared some time ago by best-selling British psychologist, Oliver James, on what he calls Affluenza- When too much is never enough. He describes it as a “painful, contagious and socially transmitted condition of debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more”. James' conclusion is that “ we have become addicted to ‘having more' rather than being and confusing our needs with our wants.” It is not an affliction for the ‘haves' and ‘have nots' but for the ‘haves' and the ‘have lots'!
This is the kind of climate in 2010 that we as shepherds of the Kingdom are preaching the Good News. And your task as future priests, pastors, shepherds of the flock of God is to nourish and sustain the flock, to bring others in and as the Gospel reminds us today to have the same mind and heart as the Good Shepherd..that they have life and life in abundance, and call them to eternal life.
(Story of little girl who was asked in class “What does it mean when we say God is eternal and we aren't?” And she replied “God always was, is and always will be. I am and I always will be but I wasn't always were.”)
And in this great task you are called to be ‘ in persona Christi' always remember that you are never alone; in times of discouragement or temptation or difficulty, remember that you have the Spirit of Christ within you to strengthen and sustain you and keep you always in the love and care of Jesus Christ, our Good Shepherd.
