Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, Mass for Vocations

1. This feast of the Triumph of the Cross and our Vocations Mass are lit up by the words of Jesus, who assures us: “Yes, God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.” The cross may look like failure and the defeat, but in fact it is the sign of the triumph of God’s love.  The Cross shows that God’s love is not remote far less only a matter of words. The Father’s love has come into our history and into our world and into our own personal story in the Son that he gave for us. The Son is the face of the overflowing love of God, and nowhere more so than in the mystery of the cross where Jesus “emptied himself, to assume the condition of a slave” and “he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.” This is the triumph of the cross, the love of God for us shown in the death of his Son.

2. This love of God precedes us and surpasses us. We did nothing to merit it or earn it. God loves because God is love and he showed this love when he gave his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away. How do we respond to a love like this, an overflowing, unsolicited, un-merited love? The only remotely adequate response can be a response of love. So Jesus tells us: Love one another as I have loved you. Love as I love. Love everyone as I have loved everyone. Love everyone until it hurts, as I loved you from the cross.

3. So the vocation of us all in the Church is to love. We are all of us called to follow Christ and the heart of that response is love; love for God, for Christ Jesus, for the Church, for our family, for other people, for the poor and needy, for the world. Love is the heart of discipleship and is the only worthy response to the love of God for us which we have seen in the cross of Christ.

4. The Lord calls some people to be priests. He invites some people to express their love of him by becoming priests. I think if you asked me why I became a priest, I think I would in the end be forced to say something about love. I would be forced to say that God loves me and my response to his love is to follow him in this way. I am not claiming that my love for God is greater than the next person’s or that the only way to respond to God’s love is by being a priest. My mother and father loved God greatly. They raised nine children. I watched them live and I watched them die. They showed me how to respond to God’s love. All I am saying is that my love for God has taken the shape in my real life of responding to a call to the priesthood. We need more priests. Probably more than anything else the Church in Scotland needs more priests so that our people can have Mass and the sacraments, the Word of God preached to them and to have their spiritual needs cared for. I have no doubt that many young men in our diocese love God greatly. I would love it and welcome it if a few of them, one or two every year, might come to me and say, “I think I want to be a priest” because their response to God’s love in their real lives is taking the form of becoming a priest. This I my dearest wish for this diocese and my daily prayer, to be able always to give you a priest for your parish, for your school, for hospitals, and for all your pastoral needs

5. The Lord also calls some people to religious life, to serve him as a sister or a brother in a religious order or institute. We have good religious in this diocese, but we could do with more. When I go to Rome, I see young sisters especially from all over the world, going about in groups, or with young people, and they are smiling and happy and apparently fulfilled And I think, “I want that for my diocese”. I want sisters working in parishes and schools with young people and children. How good that would be? We are much the poorer for the lack of them. I am not prepared to accept that God no longer calls young women to religious life. He patently does and in some places there has been a re-birth of women’s religious life. I so wish that would happen here. What a sign of God’s love they would be! What a witness to Christ’s love! How wonderful for the Church if we could have more women religious.

6. The Cross is the mystery of God’s love for us in his Son Jesus Christ. This was not the defeat of love, but the triumph of love. The Cross shows us that this is the God we need. This is the God who loves to the end and calls us to the service of this mystery of divine love.

St. Mirin’s Cathedral, 14^th September 2006