Dear friends, What a great joy it is for me to be with you this - PDF document

Dear friends, What a great joy it is for me to be with you this evening. I truly feel blessed among women and particularly women disciples who often embody the spirit of Christ in a way my species does not. I do not mean to be condescending. Rather it is my belief that male disciples need to learn from female disciples the core Gospel value of powerlessness. Perhaps the privilege of maleness in our patriarchal Church and our still male-dominated society makes us blind to the power we enjoy. We male disciples need you to alert us to this blind spot just as we need coloured people to tell white people that race matters, or gay people to tell straights that gender matters in ways we do n’t always appreciate experientially. Though I come from a humble background, I have other privileges such as being male, heterosexual, ordained etc… which incline me to certain ways of thinking, judging and acting. I need to learn from the wisdom of otherness. Several years ago, the Austral ian Democrats came up with a slogan “keep the bastards honest”. They no longer exist and perhaps that’s why we are where we are politically (!). I actually think that the one of the primary functions of religious, female religious in particular is to keep the leaders and the rest of the Church honest. Religious seek to renew the Church’s vigour by the radical commitment to the Gospel. Against the tendency to domesticate the radical Gospel spirit on the part of the mainstream, religious who dance to a different drum beat, hold the rest to the dream. They keep the flame of the Gospel burning bright. In this sense, they are doing the greatest service to the Church not primarily by their institutional ministries but their radical witness at the margins. It is for the sake of the Church and for the sake of the Kingdom that they are called to be that still small voice. Yet undeterred by their smallness, they raise their prophetic voice; they speak for the voiceless and make them count. Like the prophets of old, religious stretch the boundary and expand the normative. Like Jonah, they challenge the exclusivism of the system and call it to measure up to God’s inclusive and u niversal love. Like Jeremiah, they keep one eye on yesterday and the other on tomorrow; they reframe the harsh reality around us into a hopeful future to unfold. They do so not by repeating the practices and customs of yesterday but by reimagining the charismatic spirit that drove our founder in the first place. The words of Ezekiel in the vision of the valley of dead bones describe what religious do. “ I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you that you may come alive ”. That is their IPA Assembly Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen September 2017

prophetic mission. They put fresh sinews, fresh flesh, fresh skin to the Gospel that it may come alive again for our people in our time. Religious are to incarnate the spirit of Jesus, faithful to the past but also creative to the present and courageous to the future. They are to be agents of the Gospel, leaven and yeast for the world. The boundary breaking spirit of Jesus spurs them on to go against the prevalent culture. When the prevalent culture, often legitimated by dominant religious system, treated poor women and children with disdain, religious embraced them; when it rejected certain groups of people like Jews, blacks, LGBTIs, religious reverenced their dignity; when undocumented migrants, refugees and the poor were discriminated against, religious walked with them and took up their cause. In the book of Exodus, there is the story of creative and courageous women that are often overshadowed by the more dominant men. Puah are Shiprah are less known than Moses and Aaron. But the choices and actions of these women are no less heroic. These two Hebrew midwives preceded Moses and Aaron not just in years but also in stature and agency. They gave rise to that movement to freedom called the exodus. They were up to the task of reframing a harsh reality into a vision of hope. They did so by refusing to accept the impossibility of changing the status quo and by showing faithfulness to God in delivering new life. The Word of God tonight speaks of a time of gathering, waiting and deepening. The Acts of the Apostles tells the story of Pentecost where the scattered disciples gather, wait and deepen their sense of identity and mission. Together, they discern their future in the midst of the crisis of Jesus' crucifixion. It was this vulnerable trust that prepares them to receive the fresh energy and direction of the Holy Spirit. Tonight, we also gather, wait and deepen our commitment. The crisis of diminishment allows us the precious opportunity to learn the power of vulnerable trust. In fact, the time that we are living in can be likened to Holy Saturday. It is the day we experience God’s concealment . It is a liminal interval, a time in which one stands between the old and the new. Yet we must learn to listen in silence and stillness. Liminal time is a time for mysticism and not activism. Our task is to live contemplatively the creative tension between the pain of the present and the hope of the future. Only then we can begin to discern and act according to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. IPA Assembly Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen September 2017

In the Gospel, Jesus prays for those who through the words of his disciples come to faith in him. “With me in them and you in me, may they be so completely one that the world will realise that it was you who sent me.” He speaks of an intimate relationship of love between him and his follower that manifests the very love of God. These words of our Lord have a special significance for religious, because they manifest the essence of God by the witness of their vowed life. Just as Jesus is the living parable of the Emmanuel, religious are the eloquent sign for today’s world of the presence of God’s kingdom. Religious are never about immortality, quantity and numbers. The purpose of our existence lies not so much in our works but the sign value that we are. As catalysts for its renewal, we often occupy a precious yet precarious place, a liminal space rather than a centre stage. There on the margins, we explore new frontiers and possibilities. Our job is to inspire and to keep the fire of the Gospel burning for the sake of the Church and of the world. Dear Sisters and friends, Throughout history, women disciples have played a critical part in forging the new future out of the hopeless present. Puah and Shiprah catylised the exodus by their civil disobedience. Esther did it by her courage in going to see the king unsummoned. Ruth and Naomi too exemplified the power of vulnerable trust. Nano Nagle, of course, started a new and hitherto unheralded group of women who enfleshed the Augustinian charism in a creative way. The Church owes it to women disciples to find fresh expressions of the Gospel spirit. Even now as your numbers diminish, the wisdom accummulated and distilled by generations of faithful discipleship lived at the margins will guide us to a future to unfold. I am convinced that if the Church has a bright future, it is due to the example of many female religious who are like those early female disciples, Mary Magdala, Mary wife of Clopas and most of all Mary of Nazareth. We ask you to continue to be for the Church the icon of the inclusive, compassionate and all embracing Christ. Be for us the example of living the Gospel of Christ suffering, dying and rising again. Then we can be certain that the loving God will take care of the rest. He will bring about renewal and transformation even if he takes us through a season of extensive pruning. Using the words of St Paul, we thank our God every time we think of you. As we pray for you today we pray with gratitude. For we are sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Amen. IPA Assembly Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen September 2017