Bishop Greg Homeming OCD 2022 Lenten Talk 1 - St John of the Cross - Diocese of Lismore, Australia

[Music] in the name of the father the son and holy spirit one dark night fired with love's urgent longings the sheer grace i went out unseen my house being now all stilled in darkness and secure by the secret ladder disguise the sheer grace in darkness and concealment my house being now all stilled on that glad night in secret for no one saw me nor did i look at anything with no other light or guide than the one that burned in my heart this guided me more surely than the light of noon to where he waited for me him i knew so well in a place where no one else appeared saint john of the cross pray for us the name of the father the son and holy spirit welcome to the 2022 lenten talks which were all to be about saint john of the cross but before i had a chance to prepare my talks something terrible happened in my diocese terrible floods which many of you will be aware and as a consequence this evening's talk can't be held because the the cathedral is still being cleaned as as a result of the flooding which happened on monday there's no power in the cathedral so the best i can do is to be with you by this film which we're doing this morning i can't begin to speak to you about john of the cross without acknowledging first of all the people of the land on which i am which at the bunjalong people and the terrible thing that's happened to the land of lismore and indeed of the whole diocese from as far north as kings cliff mubulumba all the way south to grafton mclean yamba all the way through the middle including casino and of course as you've seen the terrible devastation of lismore which is only now becoming evident now that the waters are receding people can see that there are buildings with walls missing walls broken down by the waters and the utter and complete kind of shock and helplessness of the people this is where lent begins this year and this will be a length that we the people of the lismore diocese will never forget there'll never be a length like this again and i suppose for most of us for the first time this will be a length that will be imprinted on our memories and if only we can find what to do i believe fervently and surely to god will work through all of this for the people of this diocese and for ourselves who believe in god this set of talks will be about the great spanish saint and the co-founder of the order that i belong to the discussed carmelites called saint john of the cross i began with four stanzas of one of his poems called the dark knight which i'll explain why i chose those four stanzas in a moment but i want to begin by reflecting with you on some aspects of his life an extraordinary man books biographies have been written about him there's so many things but i want to give you not a biography this this this evening but to speak of two particular experiences that saint john of the cross had which indicate to us the kind of man he is marks his life and i believe at the beginning of lent these events are events through which he can speak to us and help us in our present predicament john was born in 1542 and died in 1591 it was a decent age for people of that time because people didn't live long he was born into a poor family his father narcisso diepes came from a wealthy cloth merchant family but because john's father wanted to marry a penniless seamstress his family disowned him disinherited him so he married simply because the love of his life was far more important to him than prestige honor money position he married her and for a while they were able to make do because he had connections but soon after the birth of the third child he died and left his wife catalina john's mother destitute for three children trying to raise three young boys based upon sowing and even today you can't raise three young boys through sowing and so john was born into poverty and yet experience must have been the extraordinary love of catalina who walked around spain carrying her children the youngest died in these treks because of their poverty trying to look after them they settled in a place called medina del campo i think it was but any historian of my order could correct me because it's a while since i read a biography of john but while he was there and a school boy because he was very bright he managed to get into a school for poor boys to one of the first jesuit schools quite a change the first jesuit schools were for poor children now the jesuit schools are generally for wealthier children he got to a poor one very bright and while he was there in order to support himself and the family he worked in a hospice for people dying of syphilis terrible place they weren't hospices like what we have today which were clean and well aired and that was full of people dying with open sores without a great amount of food and john went there and worked there and the reports we have of this young fellow he was a teenager was that he brought joy to all the people there because he would laugh with them he would feed them he would talk with them to such an extent that the owner of the hospice was willing to pay for john to go and study as a priest to come back and be a chaplain there but he decided he wanted to join the carmelites so he didn't go that way but this was the first major event of his life that i want to pause on and to ask the question john how were you able to be so different to all the other people serving the dying it was a horrendous thing syphilis was one of the worst things happening at the time and i know what his answer is because being a discussed carmelite said john of the cross is a friend of mine his answer would quite simply have been because i see in each one of these dying people i see god i see jesus christ and so he went there with joy because his work there was part of his life of prayer he's worked there attending to the people that others would try to keep away from was life-giving for him because he met god in every person that he nursed and cared for even as a teenager this is quite extraordinary anyway i want to move on very quickly to the next point in his life that i want to pause on he eventually goes and joins the the carmelites not the disc house we didn't exist at that point and he does very well in the university of salamanca even as a student he's he's picked out as being very bright and the university of salamanca is one of the five oldest universities in europe together with paris oxford bologna and salamanca they're the four oldest universities in europe so he was identified as very skilled and he was ordained in 1567 and after his ordination he begins to wonder about the life that he's living only because what was already happening when he was working in the hospice was now looming powerfully within within his life he could see god he lived in the presence of god and his life was a life of loving friendship with jesus christ and while he had nothing against the carmelite order as it was in 1567 he wanted to live a life in which his life was an expression of his relationship with god i suppose that's what happens if people in people who really love each other get married they want their life to be an expression of their love and the next step then is marriage it's that it i suppose it was something like that he wanted to live a life which expressed that love so he decided that i need to have a more intense prayer life i'll leave the carmelites and go and join the carthusians saint teresa of avila who had just begun the reform of the order with the nuns heard about this and arranged to meet him and convinced him not to leave the order and join and go to the confusions but to become part of her reform which she did on the 28th of november 1568 and then began the beginnings of a wonderful movement of the carmelites in spain so many people joined the discounts and it grew strongly the authorities were worried about this and in some way wanted to stop this because it wasn't that they were bad they were concerned they were worried as as a an institution like the church which has been here for so long and very conservative and stayed is always afraid of something that moves so and so a group tried to stop the reform and so the original carmelites kidnapped him from avila and took him to the nearby town of toledo you may you would have heard of these towns and locked him up in a because monasteries used to have jail cells locked him up in the jail cell for nine months until he escaped in that time he was made to eat from the floor he wasn't wasn't given the sacraments he couldn't go to mass he was told that he'd been disobedient because he refused to come back to the main body of the order at times he was whipped suffered much more than prisoners suffered today and in that time this is the last one moment in his life that i want to pause on he never gave up and the interesting thing is while he was locked up and the the the the carmelites who is who looked after the after the prison cell in those days which was a normal thing anyone who did wrong in the church was consigned to a church prison they started to feel sorry for him because he never complained he was always polite he was always good to everyone including those who were being horrible to him and in the end um some of them said to him brother john is there anything we can do for you and he simply asked in remembering he's hardly eating much when he got out of prison he was emaciated and he said can i have a pen with some paper i want to write and they got it for him and the reason he wanted to write was because while he was in prison it's quite obvious to me he was overwhelmed by the love of god quite a part of what was happening to him physically emotionally mentally everything was being put on to try to break him and the question i want to say to him now in the prison is john why didn't you break what was happening and john's answer to me would quite simply be to me my son greg read the poetry that i wrote while i was in prison and you'll know where my soul was and you'll understand why i didn't break you will understand what was really happening while he was there he wrote 40 stanzas of his most i think perhaps his most famous poem called the spiritual canticom and i want to read to you two stanzas which are right almost right in the middle of that i'll read you stanzas 14 and 15 because john at heart is one of the greatest spanish poets certainly of the 16th centuries considered the greatest spanish poet this is what he writes i can only read you in english which is just as well because you wouldn't understand if i said it in spanish my beloved and the word beloved means jesus christ my beloved is the mountains and lonely wooded valleys strange islands and resounding rivers the whistling of love stirring breezes the tranquil night at the time of the rising dawn silent music sounding solitude the supper that refreshes and deepens love i'll read that to you again and ask you does that sound like someone who's being deprived beaten starved mental psychological pressure placed upon him does that sound like a man crying out from prison asking the questions that i would ask where are you god why aren't you helping me why is this happening to me why are they doing this to me why doesn't someone come and help me that's what most people would do so i'll read you what he's writing and you ask yourself the question does this sound right my beloved is the mountains and lonely wooded valleys strange islands and resounding rivers the whistling of love stirring breezes the tranquil night at the time of the rising dawn silent music sounding solitude the supper that refreshes and deepens love you can't hear any suffering in that what do we hear john of the cross while in that prison for nine months unlike what most of us would do who would enter into ourselves in despair in anger sometimes in in desperation in depression he enters into himself and doesn't find any of this he enters into himself and finds exactly what he found when he was in the place where he was looking after the people dying he enters into himself when he finds jesus christ exactly what he found in the institution where he was caring for the dying he enters into himself and finds god and so has a way through the nine months eventually those jailers give him some rope which he ties to the bars of the window manages to get out and jumps down a long drop and escapes when i was in toledo one of the carmelite members of the community took me for a walk one night he said i have to take you to see what to to see one of our most beautiful relics that the order has we walked on and we stopped outside a wall he said what can you hear so i can hear the river this is where john's prison cell was and that's what he heard every night and in the listening of the breezes and the waters they spoke to him of god why am i giving you these two moments in john's life for our first lenten talk i have been to the evacuation center here in lismore i've spoken to people and i know where people are feeling helpless at this moment of the tragedy that's that's happened despairing with no hope without strength to do anything further the people of lismore have had enough and i can understand that i see that in them we can't go any further bishop what is there for us where's god why why is why is god allowed this what's happening with and the only answer i can give you for the first lenten talk this year is the person that these talks are going to be drawing from i can only give you john of the cross if he was here now he would see in every person despairing person that he met he would see jesus christ and he would say to everyone suffering if only you could turn within yourself and find god if there's anything facing us that will bring us down it is the lack of hope it is the inability to see god i'm not saying i'm not going to be so spiritual to say god's out there god is i believe that but i wouldn't be so arrogant to say to you your problem is you can't see god but john of the cross says that is the way forward and when i cannot see god in myself and cannot see god around me i lose hope and so in this first lenten talk john of the cross identifies for us in this terrible tragedy the thing we need most of all yes we need money yes we need all these things and we're doing things to try to attend to this but if we and our people lose hope even if we can find the money and the resources and the people to help we have been broken and we are dead john of the cross says to us from his own experience don't go that way you can't go that way i am saying to you jesus is there see him first of all in the people that are suffering yes you're suffering but when you see someone else suffering it will take the focus of yourself you're despairing you don't know what to do so is the other person see look at them and turn your eyes away from yourself until you can then look into yourself and find the god that you can see in the other person that you want to help when you see god in the person you want to help you're doing the work of god and when you can then see that you will find god within your own heart and soul and when you find god there everything that's happening will be the power of god working in and through each of us and what would the final outcome of this lent be yes working with a tragedy which might take years to to move through but each of us will be a better person each of us will have the purifying grace of god and each of us would have grown one small bit in holiness i look forward to seeing you next week perhaps in the cathedral if not this way in the name of the father the son and holy spirit

Channel: Lismore Diocese

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Keywords: catholic, mass, lismore, diocese, bishop, greg, gregory, homeming, nsw, new south wales, australia, holy, bible, christian, liturgy, eucharist, communion, preaching, homily, nuns, priests, carthages, carmelite, australian, covid-19, closed, church, clergy, monastery, lockdown, celebration, hymns, professional, quality, cathedral, phillipines, united kingdom, united states of america, new zealand, england, sisters, deacons, lay people, parish, parishioners, friendly, worship, worshipping, community, jesus, christ, easter, spiritual

Id: hYt56O8Dz0M

Length: 23min 18sec (1398 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 02 2022