MASS AT MAMERTINE PRISON
Thursday 18 September 2008
We have all preached that there can be no Easter without Good Friday, no Resurrection without the Cross. This place is a reality check about what that actually means.
Tradition tells us that Paul spent his last days and hours here in this prison. It was a squalid place, a place of fear, humiliation and despair. The Roman writer, Salllust, decades before the birth of Christ described this place – underground, hemmed in by stone walls, oppressive: “Neglect, darkness and stench make it a hideous and fearsome to behold”.
It was a scene far removed from the beauty and magnificence of the great Basilica of St Paul which we visited on Tuesday. That was a scene of beauty and wonder. How can we relate the two – the magnificence and the squalor?
Saint Paul clearly understood the contrast between the agony and desolation of Calvary and the unconquerable power of God: “We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block for Jews and foolishness for Gentiles, but to those who are called, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God” (I Cor 1: 23, 24).
Both sides of the contrast are necessary. The squalor, the fragility and vulnerability and tragedy of human life on its own, would lead only to despair. The magnificence on its own would lead to complacent, illusory smugness.
Pearse's poem, The Wayfarer, points to how we can understand it: “The beauty of the world hath made me sad, this beauty that will pass.” Pearse was entranced by the beauty he described, but the sense of loss was already present. The squirrels, the rabbits, the ladybirds, the playing children, even the fields “will pass and change, will die and be no more”. And it is that very ache of the transience and fragility that characterises poetry and art and all of human life. We are a poignant quest for lasting beauty and truth. If we fail to see that transience, we live in an illusion.
Our lives are full of things and people who mean so much to us – our families, our friends, the people we serve and know, the beauty of the world and of the work of human hands. Our lives are full of plans and hopes and pet projects; there are things we think of as our strengths and our successes.
But even the most profoundly positive experiences, our most cherished hopes and achievements are fragile and flawed, they will “pass and change, will die and be no more”. The more we value the things that are good and important to us, the more their vulnerability makes us sad.
In our ministry, in our families, in the world around us, we have seen how death, illness, the dashing of hopes, the breakdown of relationships have broken people's hearts – and have broken our own hearts. Sooner or later every relationship is broken by death, every plan fails or just runs out of steam.
But our hopes are not doomed. That is what is proclaimed by building a magnificent basilica to mark the grave of a man who ended his life “chained like a criminal” and beheaded by a Roman executioner, but “The word of God is not chained” (2 Tim 2:9). The Word made flesh was bound and scourged and crucified. Our celebration is taking place in the Capella del Santissimo Crocifisso, the Chapel of the Most Holy Crucified One, who is also the Risen One.
The reason why the great Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls is not just empty magnificence is precisely because it is built on the grave of an executed man. It is a monument to a glory which can look death in the face, a glory which is beyond all impermanece and imperfection. Like every Christian church it is a place of the presence of the Crucified and Risen One.
The challenge to our priestly ministry and to all Christian living is clear. We live in times not of our choosing; we live in a Church that is quite unlike the one in which many of us originally committed ourselves; we live with challenges that would have been unthinkable to previous generations in Ireland – the marginalisation of religion, the decline of vocations and religious practice, scandals, a world that seems deaf to the deeper questions, climate change, terrorism, energy shortages...
It is hard to rid ourselves of the feeling that if things are not as we imagined or hoped, if our plans are obstructed or not implemented, if our priorities are not shared, if our interests are not being advanced, that this must be a disaster for the future prospects of the kingdom of God! But “God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God's weakness is stronger than human strength” (2 Cor 1:21).
Saint Paul's writings are full of references to hardships and trials. The great apostlle of the Gentiles, whose life had such a profound and far reaching influence on Christian history, suffered floggings and imprisonment, shipwreck and danger, resistance and hostility (cf 2 Cor 11: 23-29). He also wrote profoundly about the Holy Spirit.
The two themes, suffering and the Spirit, are closely linked. He wrote that we can endure sufferings and come to the hope that does not disappoint, “because God's love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5: 3-5).
In this place we are called to a reflection on our own expectations and on our own, often very flawed assessment of ourselves. We are all familiar with the reflection, 'Footprints', which suggests that it is when we feel most alone that the Lord is carrying us. Similarly I think that it is often when we think we are achieving nothing, when we feel complete failures, that the power and wisdom of God are at work through our weakness and foolishness. That is the Way shown in the glorification of the Crucified One.
At yesterday's audience, Pope Benedict made a very Pauline statement. He told us how he had reminded the young people of Paris last week of 'two treasures of Christian faith, the Holy Spirit and the Cross': “The Spirit opens the mind to horizons beyond itself and enables it to understand the beauty and the truth of God's love revealed precisely in the Cross”,
+Donal Murray
