St Mary's

Today is the first day of Advent – Advent is the season of anticipation and of waiting. It is also a strongly feminine season – for obvious reasons – so at SMX we usually have women doing the four homilies of Advent. And speaking of which – I am reminded of a little chap who was in my class when we were preparing our Nativity play – “I know how Mary had her baby,” he announced. Mum told me she had a “miraculous contraption” – be quite a good idea really. Anyway, Advent it is – and I see an analogy between the season and where we are as a community.

We are a community that has been thru turmoil and is now in a sort of hiatus. We are in waiting – but what are we waiting for?

I think we are waiting to find out who we are. All the questions that people ask me, whether it is about our liturgy, our future, our governance, can be reduced to the question “Who are we?” Because once we are sure of who we are – what we will become and how, where and with whom we will become it, are simply resultant on who we are.

In the past we didn’t have to probe this question – we knew who we were – we were part of the Catholic Church – often we were a very unruly part and often we railed against numerous aspects of this church we belonged to. But we knew who we were.

We have been through a period of deconstruction. This has really happened over a number of years.

We began (with the help of the boys – Peter and Terry) to think about our beliefs and we discovered much of what we thought we believed was actually quite unbelievable. Together we realised it was OK to acknowledge the serious doubts we had about most things we believed about God and Jesus.  So we deconstructed dogma.

Then we had to celebrate our liturgy in a way that sat well with our new thinking – so we deconstructed our old form of liturgy.     We did this so well we deconstructed ourselves right out of the church. But we had a liturgy which we could all be a part of, and in which we could be authentic. And one we came to love and were willing to defend.

So now we are rediscovering ourselves. And we are asking questions and talking about this. Perhaps these questions and discussions are the chorus to the verse – the important part – who we are becoming?

I’d like to reveal who I think we are now – I have heard us described as an ‘Intentional Eucharistic community’. For me this is a very good description.

Firstly, we are Eucharistic – as we celebrate the liturgy of the word and of the table.
The word – The homilies (especially those of Peter and Terry) – are especially important, because they help me find out who I am becoming and inform me about things in which I’m interested.
The readings – these support the homily. They may be from Scripture, but need not be. I don’t believe the Scripture is the word of God (as Holloway says –problems arose when people began to believe that God writes books) and I do believe there are inspired people writing today and what they are saying is more relevant to my life and thinking.

Then we have the liturgy of the table – this ritualised meal is equally as important to me. It is in this ritual that I discover the reality of the numinous. It is in the Eucharistic liturgy that I touch the sacred. As we stand around the table, say, and sing those words, I feel so blessed to be a part of it. This is what it is to be Eucharistic.

But we are more than even that. We are intentional. And our most important intention – even more important than the fact that we choose to be here – and the thing that gives us our authenticity and integrity – is our intention of being part of the reign of God here on planet earth – right now.

We are a community who is engaged in this world with the intention of doing what we can to make it more just. This is to do with our mindset. As Peter and Noel said last weekend, it’s about our orthopraxis. What we believe is important, but not as important as what we do. We believe in justice and we do what we can – in big or small ways – to help it thrive. We must be the ones who stand up in our workplaces and give lie to the popular press image of the ‘refugee problem’. We have to be the ones who stand with the people society shuns – stand up for the boat people. We have our own Micah oganisation, and we must support it, we need to get behind the ‘Common Ground’ concept.

The third part of that descriptor is the word ‘community’. I would like to suggest that it is through the small groups that we can develop as a community and so discover who we are. Every person who is interested in the question of who we are and where we are going can and should have the chance to talk about it. . As Spong said in that first reading –“It is not enough to know the truth of this mystical path; it is essential that we actually begin to walk it.”   But we need to walk this mystical path with others. People we know well and trust. People we talk to at more than a casual ‘once a week at mass’ kind of way.

So- those of us who want to be part of this unfolding story – let us all find ourselves a group to belong to. I think in this instance it isn’t just for the usual ‘joiners’ to be a part of – it is for everybody. We do have a number of these clusters (the St Mary’s name for small groups) already getting together. In fact, I can see people here today who are part of one. Please, could the people who are part of a cluster stand up?

We do need to get together and discuss the things that matter to us. We say we would like to be a democratic community. Having a voice is what democracy is all about. But we must be an informed voice. That means we do need to keep reading, listening to the homilies, thinking and talking about what we read and hear – thus educating ourselves.

Also, we must be strong as a community – we need to forge ties that strengthen us – and we can only do this when we know each other better. As Bob (a member of the Camp Hill Cluster) said to me, ‘We can only really do pastoral care in a community as geographically diverse as ours through the small groups”.

In the Gospel reading Jesus is spoken of as saying “Knock and it will be opened, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find”. These are all calls to action – let’s do our knocking, and asking and seeking together as we create little clusters of St Mary’s people all over Brisbane. Clusters who are supporting each other and lighting little fires of justice everywhere. And, incidentally, having lots of fun doing it.

Finally, I would like to unpack the final verses of today’s epistle:
There are three things that last: faith, hope and love; and the greatest of these is love.

The first is faith – or maybe trust -
Tony summed it up for me, saying
“ Well, it’s like this. I go to the TLC every Sunday – I know that there will be a really good liturgy, that there will be an interesting homily, and that I will feel welcome there. I trust the people who make all this happen.”
As Tony said – we must have faith in those people who make it happen

Hope – we keep being optimistic about our future as a community – we are on a good thing here – lets not get niggly about little things that irritate us – keep the big picture in mind.

Love – we get to know each other better, we tolerate each other’s odd ideas, we help out where we can, and we laugh and have fun together.

There are three things that last: faith, hope and love; and the greatest of these is love.