Travelling light
IT’S said that to set out on pilgrimage is to throw down a challenge to the everyday life that you take too much for granted. With this in mind, more than 50 of us from Southwark’s Church of England diocese and Roman Catholic Archdiocese set out for Rome and Assisi together. Led by a bishop and a dean from each, the first challenge was to make sure that we all kept to time on a very busy daily schedule.
There were some beautiful moments: praying together in the catacombs and at the grave of Pope Francis, attending an audience with Pope Leo, laughter over a sundown Campari and soda, and, for me, the privilege of preaching in St Peter’s, near to the tomb of the saint himself.
We were fortunate enough to be in Assisi during the period when St Francis’s relics were exposed for devotion. We filed past in silence and looked down on the tiny skull and skeleton of this spiritual giant. When contemporaries called him “the little poor man” of Assisi, they weren’t kidding.
We made our way into the hills to see where Francis and his friends hung out together, and where he made his bed in the caves. It became clear why the last pope took his name — a reminder to a world trapped in envy and competition that, at our end, as Francis preached, we can take with us nothing that we have received, only what we have given.
Saints now and then
I WAS pleased to be near Pope Leo for a few moments, and could sense both the humanity and the steel that appear to make up his soul.
I’ve been impressed and grateful for his bringing of the gospel into the public square in dark days, and for his speaking the words that so many fear to: “I am not afraid of the Trump administration.” In the church of St John Lateran, I was moved to see the Pope’s cathedra chair — distant, solitary, lonely. It spoke so eloquently of what is asked of our church leaders in a world of instant combat and a culture of contempt. Bishops, like all of us, bruise easily, but we don’t always notice because they already wear purple.
Now, though, is a time for us all, urgently and authentically, to speak and embody the values of the gospel at every level of our society. Pope Leo is reminding us of this vocation of the baptised, and I thank God for him. When so many are trying to be examples of power, he is, instead, showing the power of example.
The words of Fr Rupert Mayer SJ, who was part of the Roman Catholic resistance to Nazism in Munich, and who suffered imprisonment for it, seem embedded in Pope Leo’s heart: “I am a priest. I speak out.” How moving to know that Fr Mayer died, preaching in his pulpit of protest on All Saints’ Day 1945, after the collapse of the Third Reich.
Look back in humour
IT WAS a delight to go to Cork to preach at the farewell service for the Rt Revd Paul Colton, who has served there as diocesan bishop for 27 years. The extraordinary service was filled with fantastic music and enormous affection for Paul and his wife, Susan. Over the years, I have led two of his clergy conferences, and have always been thrilled at the riotous and earthy humour of the clergy, as well as their hearty dollop of bashful integrity and honesty of speech. I always feel better after being with them. Church of England clergy can sometimes slip into being very nice to one another in a rather horrible way — competitive when together, and so jaundiced that everything starts to feel a bit yellow.
In Cork, I recalled that, when Paul was made bishop in 1999, the euro had just arrived, as had DVD players. Bluetooth was introduced, along with Viagra, and, perhaps connected to that, 1999 was named the International Year for Older Persons — news that went down a storm with the congregation. Paul himself has remained remarkably perky. As for a blessing on his final day? One priest offered, “Don’t let the door hit you on the arse on the way out!”
Carpe diem
A FEW days later, I was speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival. Just as I was about to begin, I saw a man slip in and discreetly take a seat on the back row. I recognised him immediately: Peter Fanning, the man who had taught me English at school 40 years ago, and the person who instilled in me a deep love of poetry and literature. I owe so much to him, and, after the talk I was, at last, able to tell him. As he asked me to sign one of my books, I felt tears well up, for there never would have been such a book without his passion and brilliant teaching.
The Japanese say that one day with a great teacher is better than 1000 days of diligent study. I experienced that at school — as, presumably, the disciples did with Jesus all those years ago on the shore. The poet Robert Frost used to say that he did not see himself as a teacher but as an “awakener”. Whoever has awakened a love in your heart, please make sure that you thank them, before it is too late.
Pre-ordained?
THINKING of school reminds me that, in a recent study, 29 per cent of British adults aged 50-65 feel “‘traumatised” by the memory of school PE lessons, with 40 per cent recalling having been picked last for teams. I used to be a rower, but, these days, my narrow waist and my broad mind have swapped places.
But I always preferred the theatre to the river, and Peter Fanning directed me as Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Years later, the boy who played Feste knocked on my door to ask if I would marry him to his fiancée. As the clown in the play then, so now in his professional and successful life, he was good-looking, colourful, bright and playful. I hadn’t changed much, either — still in black and white, looking solemn and missing only the yellow stockings. Just when are our lives marked out, I wondered? And what about now? The future certainly isn’t what it used to be.
Harping not on hierarchy
TONY BLAIR said that, when you begin as Prime Minister, you are at your most popular and least effective; when you leave, you are at your least popular and most effective. I suspect that that is true of most jobs. As our own Bishop of Southwark prepares to retire, however, I am conscious that he is as popular and as effective as he ever was. As T. S. Eliot observed, most of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. With its hierarchies and processions, the Church is a place that makes it easy for many of us to feel somehow superior — and then to manifest that in ways that are very far from Nazareth. A bishop who is resistant to all this is a real blessing, and I hope that the next one will model Christian formation in the same way. It was Ignatius of Antioch who said that, when the priests and people of God are fitted to the bishop “as the strings are to the harp”, it is in “their concord and harmonious love that Jesus Christ is sung”. Amen to that.
The Very Revd Dr Mark Oakley is Dean of Southwark and Whitelands Professorial Fellow at Roehampton University.