The following homily was delivered by Archbishop Dermot Farrell (pictured above) on 3 June, at 10.30am Mass, in Saint Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin, to celebrate the Feast of Saint Kevin.
To celebrate Saint Kevin is to remember that while we are gathered in this place at this time, we belong to a community of faith that extends across time and space. Kevin’s quest to encounter the Lord is still our quest. Kevin’s mission to form disciples is echoed in our own day, just as it was in the life and mission of Saint Laurence O’Toole, the co-patron of our diocese whose 800th anniversary we recently celebrated at his shrine in Normandy. Reflecting on Laurence with the faithful of diocese of Rouen, and the ecumenical pilgrimage group that had travelled from Dublin brought home to me how for two centuries, the mission reflex of the Church in the developed world has been a missio ad extra, a giving of Good News to others.
Today’s mission must also be missio ad intra, a mission to ourselves who are baptised, towards a renewed reception of a way of living out the gifts that have been given to us in Christ. This not possible without our own journey inwards, a journey in service and in prayer nourished by Word and Sacrament, as the Second Vatican Council taught (see Dei Verbum, no 26).
Reflecting on Kevin of Glendalough, we see once again how the invitation to know and follow Jesus is the work of the Spirit: we are called to open ourselves to the Spirit, so that our lives and our ministry may express that invitation to encounter the Lord. It is appropriate, then – indeed it is necessary – that we pray that the Spirit enlighten our minds and renew our hearts. The Novena to the Holy Spirit which today is in its third day, is not an exercise in the diocesan calendar; it is a profound recognition that we can only respond to what the Lord asks of his Church in Dublin through earnest prayer and conversion of heart, such as we see in the life of Kevin and Laurence, our patrons.
Turning aside to invoke the Holy Spirit is not turning away from our responsibility to examine, to reflect, to plan and to implement the pastoral renewal which we discern to be an appropriate response to the challenges of our time. Pastoral renewal requires all of our faculties of analysis, judgement and imagination. It requires planning and structures, formation and supervision, evaluation and learning. These indeed are the hallmarks of the journey of pastoral renewal which we have been undertaking under the title of Building Hope. In this process we have moved forward collaboratively in grouping parishes in partnership for mission; in seeking to introduce new forms of lay ministry and new and expanded programmes of training and formation; we have proposed a framework within which communities of faith at parish level can act with fresh energy to give life to the gospel and the promise and consolation of the encounter with Jesus.
The Building Hope initiative began before the Universal Synod on Synodality, but it has been immeasurably enhanced by this great movement of renewal at the heart of the Church. In particular, we have come to realise the power of Conversation in the Spirit as a way of listening respectfully and prayerfully to each other, so that what the Spirit is doing among us – the people of our diocese, of the Church in Dublin, can be heard more clearly.
To read the homily in cull, please click HERE
