CTC Community News Tolle Lege December 2019 . Community news An eventful year ends in prayer and thanksgiving On Friday 8 November, the CTC community gathered in the Knox Lecture Room for the End-of-Year Mass, which was celebrated this as a Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit. As the academic year drew to a close, this was a wonderful opportunity to come together in the presence of Christ, offering our prayers and thanks as we reflected on the events of the past year and our hopes for the year to come. Our former Master, Bishop Shane Mackinlay, joined us as chief celebrant, and our new Master, Very Rev. Dr Kevin Lenehan, delivered an apt and thoughtful homily (see facing page). The Mass was also an opportunity to present Bishop Shane with the College’s parting gift to him—a beautiful red chasuble and matching mitre. Following the Mass, refreshments were served with the generous assistance of the Student Representative Council, providing another less formal opportunity for the College community to farewell Bishop Shane and welcome Father Kevin to the role of Master of CTC. 3 2 | Tolle Lege . Homily The Holy Spirit and authentic reform In his end-of-year homily, the Master Because there is plenty of Tens of thousands of Catholics and of CTC, Very Rev. Dr Kevin Lenehan, disappointment around, isn’t there? their friends are at work around the reflected on the role of the Spirit in Both inside the church and outside. The country in prayer and conversation renewing the church, and asked how, young and the older, the committed leading up to the National Plenary as a College community, we might and the hangers-on, the disillusioned Council of the Church to meet in participate in this Spirit-moved renewal. and the furious, all wondering what October 2020 and May 2021, with His homily is printed here. comes next for the church, its parishes, the intention of discerning what the communities and agencies. renewing, recreating work of the Spirit We may not yet be feeling the relief is calling us to today and tomorrow And yet the readings of the Mass of the end of the year’s work. For in Australia. How is the Spirit at work this evening look beyond the most of us there are still exams renewing the church by making all of disappointment to the joy that to be prepared for, papers to be us more authentically the church of emerges, it seems out of nowhere, in completed, marking to be done and the incarnate, crucified and glorified the following of Jesus and his mission, results to be submitted, courses Lord Jesus? for next year to be planned and a simple gift of the good Spirit, a filling organised, new appointments to and overflowing of the heart with In a text that was very influential on familiarise ourselves with—even a energy and praise. Blessed are the the decision to convoke the Second eyes that see what you see, Jesus says Vatican Council, Fr Congar’s True and new diocese to get to know for our to his disciples (Luke 10:23). But surely False Reform (Vraie et fausse réforme celebrant, Bishop Shane! what they can see at that moment is dans l’Église, 1950, rev. 1968), four Still it is good for us as a community his inexorable journey to the capital conditions of authentic reform are of faith and learning to gather and Jerusalem and anxiety and uncertainty identified: be still, take a few deep breaths, open about the reception that awaits him 1. Efforts for reform are motivated our eyes and see each other, and and them. by charity and pastoral concern then to lift our hearts and minds to So for us who follow Jesus, the joyful for people in the lived reality of the One who has called each of us outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the their faith. They begin not with into life paths that bring us together Messiah’s recreating and renewing an organisational theory or an in this academic community. gift, is inseparable from the day-to- intellectual system, but from the And to let sink into our hearts and day journeying towards Jerusalem, to concrete realities of people of faith minds the word that God speaks the Passover from death to a new life. living out their faith in families, among us through tonight’s Scripture The disciple’s joy springs from neither in workplaces, in worshipping the confident prediction of strategic communities. Gospel-based readings. Did you hear the Lord’s word outcomes nor the naive optimism of reforms do not attempt to achieve through the prophet Joel: you will unthinking repetition of past ways. a state of purity or perfection, know that I am in the midst of you; my whether intellectual, moral or people will not be disappointed any The people of God believes that it is cultural, but strive for holiness and more (Joel 2:27). led by the Spirit of the Lord who fills integrity. the whole world (Gaudium et Spes §11). And to receive that promise as a The Lord’s Spirit is the life-principle of 2. Authentic efforts for reform seek vocation, a mission, a work of the the church, the sap flowing through to deepen the communion of Holy Spirit. How can we, individually its branches. And if there is to be the whole body of the church. and corporately as the College, authentic renewal of the church in They arise from a perception of enflesh that word of promise for Australia, it will be due to this same life- oneself and one’s community as God’s people, in all the communities principle, the Holy Spirit, flowing anew a part in relation to the whole, in which we live and serve: God is and more freely in all the branches of not the whole in itself. The fruit of in the midst of us; you will not be the church’s life, refreshing old growth the Spirit’s presence is always the disappointed any more! and stretching out in new shoots. enhancement of the common Tolle Lege | 3 . Community news The Holy Spirit and authentic reform (continued) life of the body, itself a sacrament shifting ground, and to bear the we find ourselves in the light and in the and foretaste of God’s purpose for burden of ambiguity that a pilgrim spirit of everything that the integrity the eschatological communion church exhibits. Still, it must be a of the tradition teaches us about the of all humanity and all creation. patience that knows when action meaning of the church’ There ought to be a dynamic is necessary; church leaders, says (p. 295). It means the church becoming relation between the ‘centre’ Congar, should not be too patient more authentically church. It means, (the hierarchical structure of when the good of the church above all, a recentering of the church the body) and the ‘peripheries’ is at stake. And we are surely in on Christ and his paschal mystery of where particular communities such a moment in the post–Royal dying and rising in self-giving love and live out the Christian life. Effective Commission context of Australia. generous service of others. initiatives for renewal tend to arise 4. Genuine renewal is fostered Can we as a theological community in the peripheries of the church, through a deeper connection with assist the church in its various are discerned, recognised and the living tradition of the church, communities to embody such a endorsed by the centre, and then which is nothing other than the mission of Spirit-moved renewal? In are received, consented to by the manifestation of the Holy Spirit many of our activities, we already peripheries in action. alive and active in the church do, but what else—what is the magis, 3. Authentic reform is characterised community–a more intense ‘return the more, that we are called to? How by patience with delay. This is to the sources’ (ressourcement) do we, together with the peripheries, patience not just in a chronological for the sake of a more discerning hear the challenge of the Plenary sense, as the passing of time, but and effective contemporising Council, and how do we respond? patience in an eschatological (aggiornamento) of the church’s A starting point must be that we sense. It has patience with the proclamation and mission, so that open ourselves more radically to the imperfection, the limitations, the our renewal initiatives might be Word alive and active, carried to us lack of vision and energy, the all- true developments of the apostolic on the breath of the Spirit, and that too-human frailty of the church tradition and not the distracting we become the embodiment of the from generation to generation busyness of merely external Word we receive: I am in the midst of (including ourselves)—the ability innovations. you; you will not be disappointed any to live with the struggle, to ‘sit The challenge of renewal is, as Congar more. in the fire’, to keep our feet on says, ‘to rethink the situation in which Study Tour of the Biblical Lands 14 November – 7 December 2020 Study and discover the heart of your faith Journey with us to the heart of your faith: contemplate Jesus on the sea of Galilee; walk the tunnels under the temple; follow Paul’s travels through Greece, and consider adding on Delphi and Crete. Come with us to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, plus Greece. Take this tour for credit or as an audit student in two units in Old and New Testaments: • BN2/3/9705C • BA2/3/9705C Tour leaders Dr Rosemary Canavan Rev.