That I May See Life!

Mass of Thanksgiving

5 May 2011, 10^th Anniversary

of the Installation of His Grace

The Most Reverend Edward Gilbert

as Archbishop of Port of Spain

Thursday of the 2^nd Week of Easter

Acts 5:27-33

John 3:31-36

Already on Easter Monday I heard a rumor going around that this Mass would probably be the last big function for His Grace before his retirement… Who said that? As awkward as that sounds, the news kind of reassured me because I took it as a sign of confidence in the informative process to seek candidates for his successor. To all of you who possess such confidence: God bless you and keep praying! Really, I think the reason the Vicar General called to invite the Nuncio to preach at this 10^th anniversary Mass of Thanksgiving was so as not to put the Archbishop on the spot over what to say on a landmark anniversary (10 years) or concerning how he himself judges these past years he has served as your bishop. Whether that is what we should be doing beyond simply being thankful for a moment together on this 5^th of May and whether I am qualified for the task, I cannot say, but don’t forget: as an interested party I’ve been present here in the country for more than six of these years!

The last verse of the Gospel from St. John which we just heard proclaimed goes as follows:

“The Father loves the Son and has entrusted everything to him. Anyone who believes in the Son has eternal life, but anyone who refuses to believe in the Son will never see life: the anger of God stays on him.”

According to the Gospel, Faith or Belief is that which makes the difference between whether you and I will “see life” or not, to use St. John’s words. What does that mean in the life and ministry of a bishop? How does a bishop make sure that he will “see life”, that is, the only important life, eternal life? You may have always hoped it so and, believe it or not, in point of fact it is indeed so: faith is the heart of the matter, faith and not simply good intentions will be our judgment when some day, sooner perhaps for some, we stand before the Throne of God.

What does it mean to believe in the Son of God? What is Christian faith really? We know that faith or belief works out differently depending on your walk in life. A married woman or a married man gives evidence of being a believer within the context of that vocation to marriage and family life, by the grace of their special sacrament, Holy Matrimony. A religious sister or brother must live out the charism, the founding intuition of the institute of the consecrated life in which he or she has taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Children even at a very tender age are capable of believing in the Son of God and, as a result, have special duties within their state in life as well. How does a bishop make sure that he will “see life”? How does he give evidence of Faith or Belief? How does he live out his calling? St. Augustine trembled a lot about the responsibility which was his as a bishop and hence his famous saying “with you I am a Christian and for you I am a bishop”. It is that “for you” part which can rightly get us bishops into a cold sweat.

When we read in the Acts of the Apostles about Peter and his companions standing before the Sanhedrin, we might have the impression that there was something foreign about the relationship between the apostles and the Sanhedrin, as if the chief priests, the elders and the scribes hadn’t always been a trusted almost intimate part of the lives of Jesus and His closest followers. If we thought more about that closeness or familiarity between them perhaps we would be even more shocked by the betrayal, the opposition, and all the calculating which went on for their part. Jesus, Peter and his companions were judged and condemned by people who dealt with them day in and day out. The “with” and “for” which St. Augustine talks about is very real: a successor of the apostles cannot ever really be foreign to the Church entrusted to his care; the estrangement comes from those who sit in judgment, whether they be elders or scribes.

What then is this faith in the Son of God and where does it lead us? What might we say is the principal defect of the faith life of people today, and I mean anywhere in the world not just here in the islands? What is it that bishops as watchdogs and as shepherds must take to heart, must face, must stand up against such that we can make our own the words of the priestly prayer of Jesus from Chapter 17 of John’s Gospel:

“And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent....” (Jn. 17:3)

Bishops are ministers of word and sacrament; they are called by Christ to teach, to govern and to sanctify, but their work is first and foremost teaching.

“And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent....” (Jn. 17:3)

We as bishops (and this is what made St. Augustine tremble), we have the particular responsibility as successors of the Apostles to make known to the world entrusted to our care Jesus, the only true God.

You know, I don’t think there is anything more important for any of us in our lives (no matter what our calling) than bringing others to know Jesus. Before the Throne of God, mothers and fathers, you are not going to be judged for failing to keep your children in the latest clothing styles or cell phones, no, you’ll simply be asked why you failed to bring them to know and love Jesus. You’ll have to explain why your partner in marriage, the love of your life, did not come to know the loving and compassionate Christ better through you. Members of teaching and preaching orders of men and women will no doubt be asked whether they fought hard enough to keep a hand in the schools, even with decreasing numbers and advancing age, whether they did all in their power to inspire youth. And bishops… well, St. Paul wrote in his 2^nd letter to Timothy about how that was supposed to go:

“I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom; preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. …always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” (2 Tim 4:1-2;5)

Your Grace, I’m the last one who is going to pretend to take the Lord’s Throne and judge you before the final trumpet sounds. Even so, I wish to invite all who can hear me to join me in thanking God for ten years of good shepherding. Many have seen the Hand of God at work in the synodal process which has busied the archdiocese for most of these ten years; many, many have been nourished by your teaching and call-in programs each Thursday on TV; although I missed you at a lot of social events planned by civil authorities, I am thankful that you privileged confirmation celebrations and parish visitations, contact with the people especially in liturgy.

“And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent....” (Jn. 17:3)

We as bishops (and this is what made St. Augustine tremble), we have the particular responsibility as successors of the Apostles to make known to the world entrusted to our care Jesus, the only true God.

          Maybe the reason for the rumor about this being the last big celebration before your birthday takes into account the fact that there are no ordinations to the diaconate or priesthood foreseen in 2011. I cannot say that fact should be laid at anyone’s door. Port of Spain has always benefitted from the wealth and generosity of priestly vocations from elsewhere. As the region’s largest English speaking diocese, however, and the mother church for the south and east as well, it is time to expect more, to hope for more. Three men are supposed to be entering the seminary next semester. May they be followed by at least three more each year for forever and a day. Let the mother church of the Antilles begin to care for itself and return the debt of generosity it owes, you owe, by sending workers elsewhere into the harvest as well!

“And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent....” (Jn. 17:3)

Bear with One Another, Forgive Each Other!

Sunday in the Octave of Christmas – The Holy Family

2010 – Year A

Apostolic Nunciature, Port of Spain

Ecclesiasticus 3:2-6. 12-14

Colossians 3:12-21

Matthew 2:13-15. 19-23

“Bear with one another; forgive each other as soon as a quarrel begins.”

You’ll find people or at least you used to find people out there who would complain about the Church placing an unattainable ideal before our eyes in celebrating the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph as a model for all Christian families. I think people who object to the Church’s proposal of the Holy Family as a model haven’t really looked closely enough at the Liturgy of the Word for this Sunday. The 1^st Reading is among other things a marvelous Old Testament piece of Wisdom literature exhorting adults to respect and care for their elderly parents (this message is always timely). Matthew’s Gospel describes anything other than an iconic or stained glass existence for the Holy Family, we experience them here in tougher times than most must face as Joseph takes Mary and Jesus, flees Bethlehem in the night and settles his family in Egypt out of harm’s way, thereby saving the Son of God from certain death at the hands of Herod.

No, today’s feast addresses families as they really are and advises us rightly how they ought to be. Look again at the 2^nd Reading from St. Paul to the Colossians:

“Wives, give way to your husbands, as you should in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and treat them with gentleness. Children, be obedient to your parents always, because that is what will please the Lord. Parents, never drive your children to resentment or you will make them feel frustrated.”

Today’s feast is very much down to earth. Granted, in our world today it is not all that easy to find the classic family of mother, father and children. Death may get in the way as do a lot of choices on the part of individuals and even couples, which don’t really point to the triumph of love.

Part of Scrooge’s nightmare in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is of that family of his employee at risk because of his miserliness. Each and everyone of us here, and not only at Christmas time, has a part to play in supporting families, whether it be our own or others. We may not be strangling a family, like dear Scrooge, through our calloused behavior or neglect; let us hope not anyway. Perhaps the greatest challenge comes not from trying to correspond to St. Paul’s exhortations regarding family but coping with those big wrongs which can mark a family history negatively for decades and keep brothers and sisters at odds for the longest time. Or how often is it that we encounter an adult son who feels wronged by dear old Dad, and yes even granted that old Dad may indeed be at least somewhat to blame for the situation, still the son clashes regularly and violently with his father over things which cannot be that important? Or that daughter who chooses unresponsiveness or withdrawal rather than engaging her mother?

Each family’s history is unique and it would be wrong to think that there’s something all-purpose to be whipped up in the blender and applied to all those wounds, imagined or real, which keep people apart. If I had one point to make it would be this, namely that the Lord knows our family trials better than we. In faithfulness to the love of Our Lord, the Church seeks to speak to real families where they are and call us to that fullness of life and love in family which is doable precisely because of Christ’s victory over sin and death.

On this Holy Family Sunday, I want to invite you to join me in turning families and their hurts, turning them all over to the Lord, your relatives and friends and mine. Ultimately, in most cases an increase in the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity would improve things exceedingly. Psalm 127, our responsorial today kind of sums it up, “O blessed are those who fear the Lord and walk in his ways!” Reverential fear is owed to all our family and to God out of love on our part for that significant other. This is so, because in faith we fear to offend the one we love and we hope always, always to be forgiven for falling short of an ideal which is terribly, terribly real, by the grace of the Lord Who gives us strength.

“Bear with one another; forgive each other as soon as a quarrel begins.”

Life in Christ

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
7 October 2007, Annual Family Day
St. Benedict’s R.C. Church
La Romaine, Trinidad



“See how he flags, he whose soul is not at rights, but the upright man will live by his faithfulness.” So we heard from the prophet Habakkuk in the First Reading.

No doubt about it, at least as far as I can see there are lots of hardworking people in this world who have every right to be tired or even exhausted sometimes. But there are also lots of people out there lamenting for no good reason. They are the ones the prophet Habakkuk is describing or quoting in the First Reading: “How long, Lord, am I to cry for help while you will not listen; … (W)hy do you look on where there is tyranny? Outrage and violence, this is all I see, all is contention, and discord flourishes.”

This may be true. The world may sometimes look that way, but I am sure the prophet would simply like to tell his fellow Israelites to get over it. You see, there are those folks who lament for no good reason, in the sense that their outcry is unrealistic. They expect too much from life here on this earth. They want success in their career life, in their personal life, sometimes even without trying. They try to be clever and get ahead using all sorts of shortcuts. As young people, they find it more than frustrating in school when fellow classmates and their teachers don’t seem to notice them and so they cry. At some point when they are older, that significant other person in their lives has to be there and make everything right or even better for them, and if things don’t work out, they cry. Many people pretend too much from the here and now, whether they just sit there waiting for the goods of this world to fall into their laps or they exhaust themselves in their search for fame and fortune. Miss T&T this and Mr. Handsome that are often to be seen in the newspapers. Are they truly happy? Maybe for today, yes, but I doubt if they can live from such an experience for a lifetime. Most sports stars end up retiring about half way through their life expectancy. We call it a tragedy if they fail to find a new project in life and just sort of settle back at age 40 to live from their memories. I am not saying that we shouldn’t achieve or that our achievements in life don’t have their importance. Life must be lived to the full. We cannot or should not simply resign ourselves to accepting our lot – to languishing or wasting away. But there’s more to it than that and we cannot fail to remind ourselves that what we refer to as retirement or old age is not the last chapter of the book, a time to draw conclusions. The sunset years, as they are called, are another part of an ongoing saga that finds its continuance in Heaven. Life is open-ended. What I am saying is that true joy is elsewhere. Life goes on beyond the grave. God made us for Himself and for eternity.

Certainly, life is tough sometimes and there is room for tears. In fact, in the Salve Regina (the Hail Holy Queen), that prayer many of us learned as children and which in most parts of the world is the concluding prayer of the rosary, we describe the world as it is. Life on earth is a “valley of tears”, we say, from birth to natural death. True happiness, equal to who we are as created and loved by God, is not to be found here on earth, cannot really be found in stockpiling goods, material or interpersonal. The investment has to be elsewhere. It has to be with God Himself. If one remains faithful to the Lord, everything will make sense, even death, otherwise not. For the man or woman whose soul is at rights, for the person who is faithful, God in Jesus Christ is present as Savior. Every tear will be wiped away later, in Heaven, in Glory, but even here on earth, in uprightness we will move from strength to strength. We will be fearless, strong in adversity, tireless in fulfilling our calling in life.

There must be an investment, a response on our part however. No one has it made without getting involved, without effort. This is true for one and all: bishops, priests and faithful. St. Paul encourages the young bishop Timothy with these words in today’s Second Reading: “… fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you. God’s gift was not a spirit of timidity, but the Spirit of power, and love, and self-control.” I could say to each and every one of you today, as individuals, young or old, as families, functional or dysfunctional, “Do the same! Fan the flame of that candle which was lit for you on the day of your Baptism and which we light again each Easter! The priest said to your parents and to you, ‘Keep the flame of faith alive in your heart!’” Invest in your baptismal grace; let your light shine forth for all to see!

In a sense this is what Jesus asked of the apostles in the Gospel scene today. “Increase our faith!” they said to Jesus. And Jesus comes right back at them: “Were your faith the size of a mustard seed you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you”. Truth to be told, today’s Gospel isn’t the easiest one to explain to folks. Jesus is coming down hard; he’s confronting his listeners and saying, “Get with it! You haven’t the foggiest idea as yet of what is possible in your life once you let me in”. What really is the message of this Sunday? Let Jesus in! Let Him into your life!

When Habakkuk talks about the “upright man” he’s describing someone certainly who is morally decent, but not only that. Uprightness is connectedness with God (which implies holiness of life and much more). Connectedness with God comes through being prayerful and fully inserted in the sacramental life of the Church. I used the word “lament” to describe a certain kind of calling upon the Lord in prayer. In a sense that is just high-flown language for crying and complaining. “How long, Lord, am I to cry for help while you will not listen; … (W)hy do you look on where there is tyranny? Outrage and violence, this is all I see, all is contention, and discord flourishes.”

What is it that is unsatisfactory about praying to God that way, if that is how we feel? OK, in a sense there is nothing wrong with it and that sort of prayer can certainly be a part of our lives. I repeat: a part of our lives! What is wrong with the lament which meets Habakkuk’s disapproval in our First Reading is that it ends up as a way of approaching life and God. Granted, in crying this way I suppose we are on speaking terms with God, but there has to be more to life and relationships than our crying. Not all speaking terms are good (the nagging wife, the subdued, forever complaining or ungrateful husband, the whimpering child). In our case the prophet Habakkuk judges such lamenting as negative and less than promising. Even in human terms or relationships the complainer, especially the chronic complainer, is at best a burden. It’s not just a matter of pulling our fair share or of being constructive in our relationship with God, but rather God wants us to open our hearts to Him and not hold Him at arm’s length with our crying and dissatisfaction, as the children of Israel did in the desert, as they did during their exile even after God, through the Persian Kings Cyrus and Darius, had brought them back to the Promised Land and had given them help with the task of rebuilding the Temple.

What is the message for this Sunday, for this family day in St. Benedict’s La Romaine, for the harvest festival? Well, in a very brief word, it’s that true happiness here and now and forever rests in living uprightly before God. Uprightness is engagement, is contact; it is connectedness with God. The verse from Psalm 94 for today’s Mass is: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” The message would be, “don’t harden your heart, but rather open your heart to the voice of God”. Psalm 94 can be used every day to open the Divine Office by those of us who have the duty to pray the Liturgy of Hours, “O that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as on that day at Massah in the desert when your fathers put me to the test; when they tried me, though they saw my work.’” Not all of us are brilliant. Not everybody can be classed a genius or an Einstein. All of us, however, can be attentive to others, can be alert to the needs of family, schoolmates, friends and neighbors, of fellow workers, doing so motivated by love of God’s law and eagerness for Him to be at the center or heart of all we say and do.

The Gospel today also talks about our duty. They tell me there was a time when living your faith, practicing your faith, praying in the morning, praying before meals, praying at bed time and examining our conscience each day were things folks just did. That is how a Catholic lived. They tell me there was a time when folks had no doubt that Mass on a Sunday morning, every Sunday, was where they belonged, that sin was real and a person needed to go to confession. That was (and might I add still is and always will be) what it means to be Catholic. A priest says those things now and people thank him after Mass and say, “O, Father, it’s been so long since we’ve heard that!” Really? Or are our hearts maybe becoming hard? Have we stopped our ears so as not to hear the voice of God? Why do we chase after the fleeting fancies of this world? “Increase our faith!” the apostles say to Jesus in today’s Gospel. And Jesus comes right back at them: “Were your faith the size of a mustard seed you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you”.

We certainly need to pray for an increase in the virtues of faith, hope and love. The apostles had that much right. We also need to confess that maybe we’ve been turning our backs on God; maybe we’ve been keeping Him at arm’s length for some reason. Maybe we’ve been lamenting (to use the fancy word) instead of getting on with life, loving God and all those people He has given us to share life with.

The message for all of you here in St. Benedict’s La Romaine this Sunday is a positive one. It’s a pat on the back for all those couples, those parents who live their faith because they recognize that God first loved them and chose them for Himself. They live their faith for themselves and for the sake of their spouses and children. The message of this Sunday is an encouragement for all of you who are connected with God: you are on the right path. Uprightness is not a preachy thing; it is a way of being, of being connected with God, as absolutely essential as eating, breathing and sleeping is for our lives. This Sunday’s message is also a positive nudge to get you going if you are lukewarm in your faith. If God in Jesus ends up taking a back bench to almost everything you consider more fun or more urgent in your life, well, you’re lost.

“See how he flags, he whose soul is not at rights, but the upright man will live by his faithfulness.” So we heard from the prophet Habakkuk in the First Reading.