The installation of our new Archbishop, Timothy Costelloe SDB, is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to reawaken in our otherwise busy minds the remarkable history of our Church and the story of our salvation.
Archbishops and bishops, you see, are the direct successors of the 12 Apostles on whom Christ founded the Church.
The Apostles are the ones who accompanied Jesus as he spent three years teaching the Jewish people the true meaning of their history; the purpose of the lives of their great leaders and teachers like Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Moses; and the remarkable connection between God and their prophets.
The Apostles are also the ones who believed Jesus in all that he said and did, even when they thought he was getting it all wrong and was going about things the wrong way – like letting the Jewish leaders kill him.
Who can forget the faith of the Apostles when almost everyone else left Jesus after he promised to give them his flesh to eat and his blood to drink for their eternal life?
Turning to the 12, Jesus demanded, “And will you also leave me?” Peter answered for all of them, and they all stayed: “Where shall we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life.”
That is a wonderful answer because what it really means is: “I don’t know what you are talking about … but I know who you are.”
It is also a great answer for us when we can’t understand what is going on, when we don’t know why the Church teaches what she does, or why God allows life to be what it is: We don’t understand … but we know who you are.
These are the men to whom Jesus gave the power to consecrate the Blessed Eucharist, the power to forgive sins, the power to bring the Holy Spirit to others and the power to consecrate others like them to carry out his ministerial and sacramental role as priests.
These are the men he commissioned to go into the whole world and preach the Gospel, teaching everything he had commanded them, and to whom he said, “He who hears you, hears me, and he who despises you despises me”, a message he repeated when he blinded Saul on the road to Damascus and asked him, “Why do you persecute me?” – not ‘my friends’ or ‘my Church’ but ‘me’.
Days later, he reinforced the total unity between the Church and himself by sending the Church to heal Paul’s blindness, to teach him, and to baptise him.
The bishops of the Catholic Church are the successors of these remarkable men, called forth by the Lord to be teachers, governors and sanctifiers of the particular churches given into their care.
They have the same weaknesses, the same strengths, the same uncertainties, and the same great faith that enables them to consecrate the Eucharist, to forgive sins, to proclaim the Gospel in its entirety, and to know that those who hear them hear Jesus, and those who ignore them ignore Jesus, and this last fact brings them great sorrow.
Not enough of us spend enough time reading Church history, but those who do can recognise that Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah are forerunners of the Apostles and that the bishops of the Catholic Church are their successors.
They face the same infidelities and aggression as the prophets.
They suffer the same apostasies that the Israelites inflicted on Moses and they watch the same failures of leadership in today’s world as the ancient Israelites suffered from their kings.
From the very earliest days of the Church, there have been individuals and groups trying to persuade the people that they know how to do God’s work better than the Church; that they know ‘what Jesus really meant’ better than the Apostles did.
From the beginning, there were emperors and kings who persecuted them and their people, and others who decided that they could change the Church’s teachings to suit themselves. Henry the Eighth was a memorable example, but was far from being unique.
But none of this has diverted the Bishops of the Church and the Church herself from their task. As Bishop Costelloe reminded us this week: “The gift of faith in Christ … is a precious gift which we are called to offer to the people of our time.”
That faith, so admirably expressed by the Apostles, has been the foundation of the vast works of mercy that the Church has introduced around the world over the last 2,000 years.
The faith of the Church has been the foundation of the remarkable sanctity we have seen in thousands upon thousands of Catholic saints on every continent on earth … many of them famous in their own time through their works, their teaching and their miracles … many of them unrecognised in their own lifetime, but whom God chose to reveal to us later.
Sanctity (holiness, friendship with God) is one of the four marks of the Catholic Church, and to those who pay attention to it, sanctity is the most beautiful achievement of human history.
The installation of a new Archbishop in the world’s most isolated capital city is an enlightening and heart-warming reminder that we are deeply immersed in this wonderful story which is the meaning and purpose of humanity.