Dear fellow pilgrims on life’s journey, we
inhabit a remarkable century, the 21st, which despite the current economic
distemper, is witnessing momentous advances in every domain of human knowledge
and endeavour, with new discoveries and new applications in science and
engineering, in computing and cybernetics, in medicine and biotechnology, in
the social sciences, arts and humanities, all of which manifest the limitless
self-transcending reach of human experience, understanding and judgment and the
cloud of burgeoning possibilities for human deciding, undreamt of by those
who’ve gone before.
Indeed, even as we speak, Curiosity is roving
among the sand dunes of Mars, in anticipation of a manned space voyage to the
red planet. With all these exhilarating developments, the Catholic Tradition
must engage, the old with the new, in a mutually enriching critical
conversation.
Yet the ordination of a bishop, as Successor of
the Apostles, in communion of mind, will and heart with the Pope, as the chief
shepherd, teacher and high priest of the diocese entrusted to him, who, like
the Master, must lay down his life for his flock, reminds us that human needs
ever remain essentially the same: the need to love and to be loved, the need
for a purpose and vocation in life, the need to belong to family and community,
the need for mercy and forgiveness, for peace and justice, for freedom and
happiness, and most profoundly, the need for immortality and for the Divine.
All these fundamental desires, hard-wired into
the human heart, theology expresses in the word ‘salvation’, and we profess
that every child, woman and man on this planet can find that salvation. There
is a Way – and it’s the Truth! It’s the true Way that leads to Life, real life,
life to the full, a life that never ends. There is a Way, and it’s not a
strategy, a philosophy or a package deal. This Way has a Name, because it’s a
Person, the only Person in human history who really did rise from the dead, a
Person alive here and now: Jesus of Nazareth, God the Son Incarnate. He alone
can save us.
He alone can give us the salvation our spirits
crave. He alone can reveal to us the Truth about God and about life, about
happiness and humanism, about sexuality and family values, about how to bring
to the world order, justice, reconciliation and peace.
This message of Good News, and the civilisation
of love it occasions, we Catholics must now communicate imaginatively, with
confidence and clarity, together with our fellow Christians, and all people of
faith and good will, to the people of England, this wonderful land, Mary’s Dowry.
We must offer this salvific message to a people, sorely in need of new hope and
direction, disenfranchised by the desert of modern British politics, wearied by
the cycle of work, shopping, entertainment, and betrayed by educational, legal,
medical and social policymakers who, in the relativistic world they’re
creating, however well-intentioned, are sowing the seeds of a strangling
counterculture of death.
My brothers and sisters, today, the feast of Our
Lady of Ransom, of England’s Nazareth, let’s go forth from this Mass with
joyful vigour, resolved in the Holy Spirit, to help bring about the conversions
needed – intellectual, moral and spiritual – for everyone we meet to receive
Jesus Christ, the Gospel of Life… Please pray for me to the Lord Jesus, whose Heart
yearns for us in the Blessed Sacrament, that I might be a humble and holy,
orthodox, creative and courageous Bishop of Portsmouth, one fashioned after the
Lord’s own.
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