June 26, 2008

Lisbon's Cathedral Church of St Paul was over flowing with people on Saturday as the Lusitanian Church in Portugal celebrated the 50th anniversary of the consecration of their first bishop.

The Lusitanian Church is an extra provincial diocese to the Archbishop of Canterbury with its Anglican Communion roots coming from the Church of Ireland, the Episcopal Church USA and Igreja Anglican Episcopal of Brazil. These churches and their bishops were those consecrated the Rt Revd D. Antonio Ferreira Fiandor on 22 June 1958.

The Bishop of the Lusitanian Church, the Rt Revd Fernando Soares, to retire in the coming years, presided at Concelebrated Eucharist in the Cathedral, a once Carmelite Church and Convent in the picturesque Old Town area.

Preaching the Sermon was the Most Revd Alan Harper, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (full text of the Sermon below). The Archbishops sermon spoke directly to the fact that two persons were ordained at the liturgy, Eduardo Junior, from Angola, to the diaconate and the Revd Fernando Santos to the priesthood. Father Eduardo is the first person from the Angolan Community to be ordained for the Lusitanian Church.

The Revd Carlo Aluigi and the Revd Cesar Pereira Felix were admitted as Cathedral Canons by Bishop Soares. The Revd Canon Dr. James Rosenthal a Canon of Lisbon from the ACO, London joined the new Canons in quire.

Joining in the celebration were:
The Rt Revd Pierre Whalon, Convocation of Churches in Europe (TEC)
The Most Revd Mauricio de Andrade, Primate of Brazil
The Most Revd Joachim Vobbe, Old Catholic Church of Germany
The Rt Revd Dom Carlos Lopez Lozano, Bishop of Madrid (Episcopal Reformed, Anglican Communion)

Ecumenical Guests included bishops from the Roman Catholic and Methodist churches.

Sermon

Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland and Metropolitan

My dear sisters and brothers in Christ Jesus it is with the greatest possible joy and thankfulness that I bring you the greetings of the Church of Ireland on this day of double celebration, the 50th anniversary of the consecration of your first bishop and the ordination today of those newly called to the sacred ministry of the Church of God.

The first thing I must remind you of is the universality of the orders you are to receive. Language and culture may differ from place to place but the orders we receive are both universal and indelible. This day you cease your service in the ministry of the laity and enter the ordained ministry, a clerk in holy orders for the rest of your lives, or perhaps, one day, a bishop.

Your special ministry will be in that place or sphere to which you are appointed, but your orders make you a deacon or priest with a ministry valid throughout the world. You carry the mark and distinction of ordination both to the ends of the earth and to the grave. Esteem these things very highly, esteem them above all human things, and

shape your lives in conformity with the order and life to which you are called, ordained, appointed and sent out.

On this very special day I want to draw your attention to these words and to the question they pose afresh to every candidate for the sacred ministry:

Simon, son of John, do you love me?

The Gospel of John records these words as addressed three times to Peter. The Gospel compresses into two short chapters, a mere 53 verses, the whole record of the appearances of the resurrected Lord including the bestowal of the Holy Spirit which, in John's Gospel, took place on the very evening of the day of resurrection, in the locked Upper Room, as Christ breathed on his disciples and said:

Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

This was the occasion, by the way, when Thomas was absent. He had to wait for a further week before his personal encounter with the risen Lord. It is also, you will recall, the culminating event of the first of the two endings of the Fourth Gospel.

The second ending of the Gospel, in Chapter 21, records the miraculous catch of fish, breakfast at dawn by the lakeside and the reconciliation of St Peter with his Lord. The writer of the Fourth Gospel identifies this as the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

This third resurrection appearance is the occasion for the three-fold reconciliation of Peter. It completes the Gospel record. Many other things happened but none were of sufficient importance to be specially recorded once the full reconciliation of Peter had been accomplished. This is, then, the culminating event of the Fourth Gospel

I want first to draw your attention to a tiny detail preserved in the gospel account:-

Each time the Lord addresses the disciple whom we commonly call Peter by the lakeside, he addresses him by his old name. Three times the Lord addresses him as Simon, son of John. The name that Simon acquired later, Kepha in the Aramaic, Petros in the Greek, was given after the great moment of disclosure and affirmation at Caesarea Philippi in which Jesus first asked Whom do people say that I am? The answer came, Some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah or one of the prophets.

The Lord then asked, But whom do you say that I am? And it was Simon who replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the most high God! For this unequivocal and inspired declaration of the divinity of Jesus, Simon was told that he would now bear a new name: Peter, because his bold declaration that Jesus Christ is the Son of God would become the rock upon which the Church of God was to be eternally founded.

Now, however, after a three-fold denial of his Lord by Peter, in the courtyard of the High Priest, on the night of the arrest of Jesus, the risen Lord reverts to the old name, Simon: the name by which Peter was known before his denial. At a time when rock like steadfastness was required of Peter, his courage and perhaps even his conviction had failed him. Only a new, three-fold, affirmation could fit him to resume the name he had once deserved but so recently had forfeited.

In order to "recover his good name," as we say in English, Simon was asked not about what he believed but about whom he loved: do you love me? Indeed, at the beginning he is asked, Do you love me more than these? Are you confident and committed enough to declare that your love for me surpasses that of anyone else? It was necessary now for Simon to examine himself to see whether he could affirm the totality of his love for the Lord. This is not, you see, any longer about belief, about who we say the Son of Man is. It is about the totality of our commitment to loving the Lord.

You will have noticed that I have moved from speaking in terms of Simon Peter to speak now of us, of you and me. The Lord's question is transferred now from Simon Peter to us. How confidently can each of us proclaim the totality of our love for the Lord? Is that love burning with great fervour not only on this day, the day of your ordination, but is it sufficient to retain the glow of ardour over the years and decades that lie ahead with all the doubts and assaults of criticism that will beat against us?

The question of love is important because of what is required for the future. Each question about the reality of Simon's love, and therefore each question about the reality of our love, is followed by a direct instruction:

Feed my lambs...tend my sheep...feed my sheep

The question of love is related directly to the question of pastoral care. Pastoral care in the Church is empty if those who offer it do so not out of love for their Lord and not out of love for those their Lord loves, but merely out of duty. Love and pastoral care are totally enmeshed.

The shepherd knows his own sheep; the sheep know and will respond only to their own shepherd. He calls them by name; they recognize his voice. The sheep do not recognize and will not respond to the voice of a stranger. With their own shepherd as guide the sheep come in and go out to find pasture. The good shepherd is prepared, when necessary, to lay down his life for the sheep. On Calvary that life was laid down. Through that laying down of his life the Good Shepherd became the gate through which his sheep could come in and go out to find pasture for eternal life [John 10].

For the love of his Lord, Peter must now care for and feed the living flock, the Church. He will feed them with the Bread of Life and offer them drink from the Cup of Salvation. He will watch over them and defend them; he will lead them into deeper understanding and deeper relationships with the Lord and with one another. It will be impossible to do this without love. He will need steadfast love for, and trust in, his Lord. He will be called upon to love the sheep of the Lord, not for their own sakes, and not because they are all equally lovable, but because the Lord loves them. The ministry of Peter will not be offered, cannot be performed, and must not depend on the love that Peter has for the sheep. It must grow out of the love that Peter has for the Lord.

These things apply in equal measure to those of us who are called to the pastoral ministry of love and leadership, of feeding and tending in the Church of God. That is why you also must search deep within your hearts to ask, not once, not twice but three times, "Do I truly love Him?" "Is my love for Him sufficient to enable me to feed His sheep at His table in the Holy Eucharist and tend His sheep in the dangerous pastures of a sceptical and hostile world?"

The question is not, "Will I be good at it?" or, "Have I the gifts for it?" or even, "Am I fully trained and equipped for it?" The question is, "Is my love for the Lord sufficient for it to overflow in love for those whom the Lord calls me to love – even the ones I find it impossible to like?"

If your answer is "Yes Lord, you know that I love you" then the final words of the Lord to Simon, (now again to be known as Peter,) are words also to you: "Follow me," for you are ready now and enabled by grace to become shepherds of Christ's flock and fishers of men, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

ACNSlist, published by Anglican Communion News Service, London