CATHEDRAL (Shelter from the Winter Rain)

This is shelter from the Winter rain, oasis in the spiritual desert of the time in which we live, refuge from ourselves and each other. During this brief hour of our day, we look straight ahead. We are a communion of every age and generation, blend of race and colour, a procession of the beautiful moving forward in the direction of Jesus. Everything else is put aside for now. Why would we not avail of this time of respite that clears the soul, the mind, and the heart. Why would we not avail of it and give rest to our busied burdened bodies.

The Cathedral is full this Sunday morning, Feast of the Baptism of Jesus, and we are filled again with hope, peace, love, and joy.

Outside is America, as U2 sang in ‘Bullet The Blue Sky,’ the America that we have loved, admired, and imitated. The America that was a kind of mother and father and protector of the world order. America now fills us with fear, anxiety, and anger. We talk of little else and if we talk of anything else we still end up going back to America. And the state of the world. We dread that the unthinkable might happen, even as it is already happening. It is not just America of course. The major leaders of the world have left us all feeling unsafe. 

So, we need these moments in places like the Cathedral, these moments of prayer, moments that might not change the course of the world events, but they equip us to deal with them and not be overwhelmed.

We are Christians and followers of the Star that is Jesus Christ Himself. Like the Magi we have to seek that star, recognise it, rediscover it when it seems to disappear and not give up the journey until we have arrived at our destination of salvation.

The Star is hidden from King Herod as it must be hidden from the Herods of our time. And we are at risk from spending too much time in the darkness of Herod's domain when we allow ourselves to get bogged down in anger and despair. We must choose to look up again to the Light and follow the Light. Live the Light. Be the Light. And not lose sight of Hope.

That is why we need our Cathedrals. I came here early to have a time of quiet before Mass. There is great space here and a lovely chapel for the Blessed Sacrament.

This is where I received the Sacrament of Confirmation sixty years ago. We were the first group to receive it there the year after the Cathedral opened. The echo of "Come O Creator Spirit Blest..." still echoes here for me. And in our souls take up thy rest. May it be so again today.

Cathedral moments come our way unexpectedly. Cathedral of the heart, moments of exquisite quiet, that cannot be conjured up but are pure gift and spontaneous.

One is met by another kind of silence. Rare. Altogether different, yet intimately familiar. Ancient and new. Perfect, pristine stillness in which simplicity is arrived at in an instant.

Heart and breath make no sound; the entire world muted.

It is the silence of God, and it holds a call that is an invitation to enter. Out of the depths and the heights of this silence the Word emerges:

“This is my resting place forever; here have I chosen to dwell " (Psalm 132)

A divine promise. And it has come as such a delightful surprise.

I stood in the room allotted to me in Pallotti House and was met with such a silence there. 

It came to me in the small chapel upstairs in San Silvestro and when I went in search of it in a Carthusian monastery, it eluded me.

I thought to indulge my contemplative monastic desire but, on arriving, found the monastery shut, looking very dilapidated as if to say that this is not a resting place for me, not what God has in mind. 

So, I took off on the hour-long walk to the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, an oasis of extraordinary tranquillity. 

At his tomb I heard again the words, "for me to live is Christ.... I live now, not with my own life but, with the life of Christ living in me.” 

And I observed his chains and pondered their meaning and then next morning in the Holy Trinity church on Via Condotti I saw the chains of St. Felix who was called from his Carthusian hermitage to minister to the slaves of his time and set them free.

Here came unbidden the words of the prophet Isaiah 61:

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
    he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour…”

The same text would re-occur spontaneously over the following four days, culminating in Luke 4 when Jesus read it in the synagogue, applying it to Himself. And it seemed to me then that I should also apply these words to myself and accept that this is the mission of the Lord given to me. Not a permanent contemplative silence but an engagement with the sufferings of others which will from time to time be visited by the exquisite silence of God in the Cathedral of the heart.

It is interesting that St. Felix went on to build the first monastery of his new Trinitarian Order on the sight of his old hermitage. These two aspects of his life remained connected.

In the Cathedral of the sea on another bleak Winter morning, a strong, sharp shaft of rising sunlight breaks briefly through the clouds, a reminder again to keep our eyes peeled for signs of hope where there seems to be none. To see the signs and to speak of them.