Dear Friends
I just want to share this passage of
Archbishop Mark Coleridge's homily at his intallation ceremony to the Archdiocese
of Brisbane, Australia 11 May 2012.
It is just BEAUTIFUL............. AWESOME
Through the years, the glimpse I had
then has become a dazzling vision of the truth of the Cross, which is why I
have as my episcopal motto the words we have heard today from John’s Gospel,
Sanguis et aqua, Blood and water: “One of the soldiers pierced his side
with a spear, and at once there came forth blood and water”.
In offering this great symbol, the
evangelist looks back to the passage from the prophet Ezekiel that we have
heard proclaimed. The prophet sees a stream of water flowing from the
inner sanctum of the Jerusalem Temple, the Holy of Holies; and we have echoed
his words in the Vidi aquam chanted as I entered the Cathedral. The
stream becomes a great river flowing east into the Judean desert and down to
the Dead Sea. Wherever the water goes, it turns death to life. The
desert becomes a garden, and the Dead Sea teems with life.
In the Gospel of John, the Temple
where the glory of God dwells is no longer the sanctuary of Ezekiel’s
vision. It is the body of the dead Christ; and from the side of that new
Temple there flows another river – not just water, but now blood and water,
flowing out into the cosmos, turning all death to life. St Paul speaks
the same truth in different words: “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2
Cor 12:10). There is no weakness that cannot become strength, if we allow
the power that raised Jesus from the dead to touch us at that point of
weakness; and that power is the self-sacrificing love of God.
This is the vision that has come to
me in deeply personal ways through the years. But what is most personal
is also most ecclesial; what is true of me is true also of the Church.
The great Christian teachers speak of the Church, the Bride of Christ, as born
from the wounded side of the Lord. St John Chrysostom says that “it was
from his side that Christ formed the Church, as from the side of Adam he formed
Eve. As God took a rib from Adam’s side and formed woman, so Christ gave
us blood and water from his side and formed the Church. Just as then he
took the rib while Adam was in deep sleep, so now he gave the blood and water
after his death”.
According to St Bonaventure, the
soldier with his spear was made to breach the wall of the new Temple “so that
the Church might be formed from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of
death on the Cross”. He goes on: “Flowing from the secret abyss of
our Lord’s heart as from a fountain, this stream gave the sacraments of the
Church the power to confer the life of grace, while for those already living in
Christ it became a spring of living water welling up to life eternal”.
Bonaventure concludes: “Press your lips to the fountain, drawing water
from the wells of your Saviour; for this is the spring flowing from the middle
of Paradise, dividing into four rivers, inundating devout hearts, watering the
whole earth and making it fertile”.
 |
| Archbishop Mark Coleridge |
