pathways, June 09
As religious struggle with dwindling numbers, increasing age and growing uncertainties about vocation, Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP will offer some hope and meaning to religious men and women in Brisbane on Saturday, June 27.
This message of optimism - in the person, the vocation, the future and God - will emerge from reassurance that a religious vocation is beautiful but will be delivered with several provisos.
He will suggest that religious life - known for profound renewals over the centuries - has been renewed when it looked at the current crisis of the Church or society, not at itself.
"So if we want to flourish, then we have to ask what is the crisis that shakes our church and society? If we respond to that, then religious life will be abundant," he says.
He sees today's crisis as a lack of hope.
Enthusiastic about, and confident in, the place and value of religious life, Fr Radcliffe will look at three ways in which religious life is a sign of hope: called to vocation through life in community for mission. In responding, here I am, one's listening to God also includes listening to each other.
"We should call each other to courage and freedom, to do things that we would not have dared to do."
Fr Radcliffe says that the central Christian sign of hope is the Last Supper.
"Jesus placed himself in the hands of these fragile disciples. God dared to be vulnerable and to give himself to people who would betray him, deny him and run away.
"In religious life, we take the same risk. We place ourselves in the hands of fragile brothers and sisters, and we do not know what they will do with us ... We are called to live this uncertainty with joy."
He says that religious may feel worried about the future or that their lives are going nowhere.
"But we can only be a sign of hope for a generation that is living through a crisis if we are able to confront our crises with joy and serenity. It can be part of our vocation as religious to confront crises in our vocation as moments of grace and new life.
"In every Eucharist we remember the crisis of Maundy Thursday night. Jesus could have run away from that crisis, but he did not. He embraced it and made it fruitful.
"So, if we encounter a moment when we can see no way ahead, and when we may feel tempted to pack and go, then this is precisely the moment when our religious lives may be about to ripen and mature.
"Like Jesus at the Last Supper, this is the moment to embrace what is happening, and trust that it will bear fruit. That is part of how our vocation witnesses to hope."
On community life, he advises against the trap of sameness or like-mindedness.
"Instead of being homogenous, like a block of vanilla ice cream, we should be like good casserole, in which it is the difference tastes that give the savour."
On mission, he says "in your care for the excluded, you are a sign of God's unfailing memory for every person" but warns that being sent rather than choosing to go is the secret: "It is being sent that makes it a sign of God's care rather than just a career option".
Fr Radcliffe will spend the day with more than 300 religious at Clairvaux MacKillop College, Upper Mount Gravatt, on
Saturday, June 27, from 10-3pm. It is the
sesqui-centenary tribute to the ministry and witness of religious in the life of the Archdiocese of Brisbane.
The day is the second Brisbane engagement for the Oxford-based former Master of the Dominicans (world leader), in a busy schedule that sees him at the heart of several days of celebration to mark the 150th anniversary of the Archdiocese, originally the Diocese of Brisbane which covered the entire State.
On Friday, June 26, Fr Radcliffe will present a public talk, Being a Christian in the 21st Century (Clairvaux MacKillop College, 7pm, $20).
On Sunday, June 28, he will preach at the 10am Mass in St Stephen's Cathedral before spending the afternoon with the pastoral workers of the archdiocese.
Monday, June 29, marks the 150th anniversary of the consecration of the first 'Bishop of Brisbane, New South Wales'. James Quinn had been named bishop-elect on April 14, 1859, and was consecrated in Dublin on June 29, 1859. News of this consecration reached Australia in August. He arrived in Brisbane on May 10, 1861.
A major liturgical event will be held at St Stephens at 10am. It will involve all the Queensland bishops, visiting bishops from other parts of Australia, priests and parish representatives. The day of celebrations also will include a dinner.
On Tuesday, June 30, Fr Radcliffe will spend the day with clergy and on the Wednesday with the archdiocesan staff. He will fly to the United States the following day.
Before visiting Brisbane, Fr Radcliffe will be in Sydney briefly.
On Wednesday, June 24, he will hold a conversation with broadcaster Geraldine Doogue at a Catalyst for Renewal forum - Sydney Congress Hall (Salvation Army Hall), 140 Elizabeth Street Sydney; 6-8pm (cost $20, at the door).
As well as being an international speaker, Fr Radcliffe is a prolific writer.
His latest book,
Why Go to Church? the drama of the Eucharist, was commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, as the Archbishop's Lent Book for 2009. As such, it was the focus for devotional reading by thousands of Anglicans, used both individually and in parish study groups.
Published in December 2008, Eamon Duffy wrote in The Tablet on December 17: "... this Anglican hospitality has elicited a beautiful and often piercing meditation on the meaning of the Mass for human living".
And his review continues:
"Naturally, Radcliffe's book is eirenically conceived. He avoids, for example, extended reflection on doctrinal positions such as sacrifice or the Real Presence, which might alienate Protestant readers. Nevertheless, this is unmistakably both a Catholic and a Dominican book...
"Despite his subject matter, however, Radcliffe disclaims any intention of writing a work of eucharistic theology or a liturgical commentary. Instead, he uses the successive stages of the Sunday Mass as the basis for an extended meditation on the Christian life.
"The Liturgy of the Word becomes the basis for an examination of what it is to have faith, the offertory and eucharistic prayer for a meditation on hope, and the communion rite from the Our Father onwards to explore our encounter with God and one another in love ...
"Throughout the book, Radcliffe lightens and enriches his writing with insights drawn from remarkably wide and eclectic reading. Some of the absences seem as notable as the presences: plenty of St Thomas, of course, plenty of Herbert McCabe, more surprisingly perhaps, plenty of Benedict XVI: but no Rahner, no von Balthasar, no John Paul II ...
"This is a challenging but never puritanical book ... (It) is a serious but never a solemn book: not the least of its joys is the gallery of Dominican eccentrics who punctuate its pages ... Best of all is the ancient Oxford lay brother who, when Radcliffe offered him Communion with the usual words, 'The Body of Christ', replied, simply, witheringly and with the accumulated wisdom of a long life lived eucharistically: 'I know'.
Other books by Fr Radcliffe include: What is the point of being Christian? I call you friends and Seven last words.
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