In this homily from Sunday, July 29, Archbishop Costelloe lays out his hopes for Perth’s seminarians.
When I became a bishop one of the gifts I was given was a book entitled “Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops.”
Along with what I learnt when I went to what some people irreverently call “Baby Bishops School” in Rome soon after my consecration in Melbourne, this book has become a very important source of reflection and guidance for me.
There is a specific section devoted to the Seminary in this book and it begins with these words:
Among diocesan institutions, the bishop should consider the seminary to have primacy of place and he should make it the object of his most intense and assiduous pastoral care, because it is largely on seminaries that the continuity and fruitfulness of the Church’s priestly ministry depends.
These are certainly words for a bishop to ponder. They are words which ought to inform any decisions he makes about his seminary and they certainly remind him of just how important his seminary is.
For myself I think I can say that I really needed no reminder.
Most of my priestly life, apart from the first few years when I was a religious education coordinator in a large secondary Boys College in Melbourne, has been involved in the formation of young men for the priesthood, mainly in the Salesian Congregation of course but also in the diocesan seminary in Melbourne and its associated teaching arm, Catholic Theological College.
And then, of course there were the four years I spent teaching theology at Notre Dame University in Fremantle.
In all of that time, although I did not perhaps use the precise expression, I have always understood that, as the Directory puts it, the continuity and fruitfulness of the Church’s priestly ministry depends largely on the work of the seminary.
This evening then I want to assure you all that I have this seminary very much in my thoughts and prayers. And by that of course I mean that I have you, the seminarians, very much in my thoughts and prayers, as I do the rector and staff and the many benefactors and supporters of St Charles.
There are so many things that I would like to say to you this evening that I hardly know where to start. I would like to talk to you of the importance of the life of prayer that your time in the seminary should help you to establish and deepen.
I would like to speak of the necessity to devote yourselves as fully as you can to your philosophical and theological studies, not just because you can’t get ordained without them but much more because they will help you to be the faithful pastors that the Church needs you to be. I would like to talk to you about fidelity to the Church’s liturgy and of the importance of making sure that it is Christ, rather than yourselves, who shines through when you celebrate the liturgy.
I would like to talk about the pastoral sensitivity you will need to develop if you are to really be the Good Shepherds to Christ’s flock that he needs you to be. I would like to talk to you about developing a real love for the Church, the Body of Christ, not so much as you would like it to be but as it is, with all its beauty and all its fragility.
I would like to talk to you about just why it is that the Church requires so many years of formation for men who are seeking to be ordained as priest, and about the humility you need to accept that you are in formation because you need to be formed.
You are not yet all that you need to be if you are to be the priest that both you and the Lord want you to be.
I would like to talk to you about all these things, but I keep reminding myself that, God willing, I have many years ahead of me as archbishop of Perth and what I can’t say today perhaps I can say tomorrow.
So instead of talking about all these things tonight, things which I hope to come back and talk to you about in the future, let me simply direct you to the second reading from today’s liturgy.
In that reading, from the letter to the Ephesians, Saint Paul could have been speaking directly to a community of seminarians, although of course what he says is valid for any Christian community.
I hope I am not being pretentious if I say that I would like to make Paul’s words my own as I speak to you tonight.
And so, with Saint Paul, I say to all of you who are part of the seminary community that I implore you to lead a life worthy of your vocation.
I beg you to bear with one another charitably, in complete selflessness, gentleness and patience. I urge you to do all you can to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together.
I ask you to remember that there is one Body, one Spirit, just as you were all called into one and the same hope when you were called
If you do all this then the words of the psalm will make sense to you: how good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.
We are living through the Year of Grace and we are being invited to “start afresh from Christ” and “contemplate his face.”
These are words which come from Pope John Paul 11, and they form the heart of his vision for the Church in this third Christian millennium.
In the same document in which we find this invitation, Novo Millennio Ineunte, the document which inspired the Bishops to proclaim this Year of Grace, we also find the Pope’s reflection on what the Church is called to and how we might become all that God is asking us to be.
As a commentary of St Paul’s words in today’s liturgy I offer you Pope John Paul’s reflection and ask you to make it a source of reflection and action for your life in the seminary as you move into the future.
To make the Church the home and the school of communion: that is the great challenge facing us in the millennium which is now beginning, if we wish to be faithful to God’s plan and respond to the world’s deepest yearnings.
But what does this mean in practice? Here too, our thoughts could run immediately to the action to be undertaken, but that would not be the right impulse to follow.
Before making practical plans, we need to promote a spirituality of communion, making it the guiding principle of education wherever individuals and Christians are formed, wherever ministers of the altar, consecrated persons, and pastoral workers are trained, wherever families and communities are being built up.
A spirituality of communion indicates above all the heart’s contemplation of the mystery of the Trinity dwelling in us, and whose light we must also be able to see shining on the face of the brothers and sisters around us.
A spirituality of communion also means an ability to think of our brothers and sisters in faith within the profound unity of the Mystical Body, and therefore as “those who are a part of me”.
This makes us able to share their joys and sufferings, to sense their desires and attend to their needs, to offer them deep and genuine friendship.
A spirituality of communion implies also the ability to see what is positive in others, to welcome it and prize it as a gift from God: not only as a gift for the brother or sister who has received it directly, but also as a “gift for me”.
A spirituality of communion means, finally, to know how to “make room” for our brothers and sisters, bearing “each other’s burdens” (Gal 6:2) and resisting the selfish temptations which constantly beset us and provoke competition, careerism, distrust and jealousy.
Let us have no illusions: unless we follow this spiritual path, external structures of communion will serve very little purpose.
They would become mechanisms without a soul, “masks” of communion rather than its means of expression and growth.
Here at St Charles we are trying to form priests who will really be men of communion!