Called and Chosen

In today’s homily, I reflect on the joyful spirit of Bishop Peter, whose penchant for humour and telling jokes has greatly influenced my life. His ability to bring lightness and laughter to those around him is a testament to the joy of our faith. I also share a deeply personal experience of encountering the living God, which has been transformative for me. It’s a reminder of the importance of staying grafted onto the vine, open to the nourishment and love that God provides. I encourage you all to welcome the Holy Spirit into your lives, allowing God’s love to change and renew us.

(00:00:00) – Over the last week, I’ve found myself just reflecting on Bishop Peter and his life and his influence. He was the bishop that welcomed me to the diocese and who ordained me. And one of the key characteristics of Bishop Peter was his ability to remember and then tell, well, jokes. He was forever telling jokes, and particularly when we travelled with him, I went with him to World Youth Day in Madrid and in Rio de Janeiro and on other trips as well. And whenever he could, he would just grab that microphone and start speaking off these, these jokes. And he would always have a little notebook in his pocket so he could, if he heard a joke, he could whip out his pocket, his notebook and, and just record that joke. And someone was commenting this week that whenever he’d just come out of a difficult meeting and was about to to go into a meeting with somebody else, they would find him sitting in the corner of his office, grabbing one of the the notebooks or grabbing one of his joke books and just kind of telling these jokes to himself.

(00:01:16) – And this guy thought, that’s kind of an odd behaviour, you know, what are you doing this Bishop Peter? And he said, well, you know, I’ve just come out of this heavy situation and I don’t want that burden to be with me when I move to the next person. I want to give my very best to the next person who deserves that. And so I tell these jokes just to lighten my mood and to bring the joy that I have experienced in God to the next person that I have to encounter. And that was a beautiful reflection of Peter, and a beautiful reflection of the desire of God for us, that we might experience that same grace. He’s longing for us to be in union with him, and he’s longing for us to be fruitful, to experience the gift of friendship. You know, we don’t have to burden under any kind of idea or any requirement that it’s simply about a series of rules and regulations that we have to keep in order to be made worthy.

(00:02:23) – There is no worthiness within the kingdom of God. He’s simply there, making himself available to us. And we heard last week of the image of the vine. And this Sunday’s gospel is a continuation of that reflection. You know, all that we need to do is remain grafted onto the vine. All that we need to do is allow his nourishment to flow through. All that we need to do is to make ourselves available to the love that is so readily available to us. In our second reading today from First John. Just four verses. And yet packed within those four verses are these nine references to love. The gospel today, even though it’s a little bit longer, again has nine expressions about the love that the Lord is offering to us and making available to us this desire, this profound sense that God wants to motivate us and to move into our lives and and our experience. Yesterday was Star Wars Day. May the 4th be with you. And it’s a special day in my life because back in 1986, it was the day that I counted as the day when I first encountered the living God.

(00:03:55) – The day when I realised that Jesus was not just a figure in history, not just someone I could read about in a dusty book. And we had the big family Bible in a library. And it rarely got pulled off the shelf because we were good Catholics and we never did that sort of thing. But when we experience that gift of being known by him, you know, and as a teenager, I had done lots of garbage in my life and lots of things that I was very filled with, with shame about, and coming into a place where I knew that I was accepted, being able to be in that place, in that room where other young people were also striving and desiring to to give themselves to God, finding in that a sense of acceptance and love broke through that barrier, that even though I’d been to mass every Sunday of my life, and we’d prayed every night and all of the things that my family had tried to do to. Offer to me this possibility of belief.

(00:05:03) – It was still just an intellectual thing, you know, and I would argue with people at school. I went to a state high school. So I was, you know, the token kind of Catholic in my grade. And I would know all of the answers for things. But it wasn’t about belief, it wasn’t about that deeper experience and deeper encounter. And on that day, back on the 4th of May and 1986, everything changed. Everything shifted because this was no longer theory. This was the gift. This was the possibility that was now slowly awakened. And one of the first commitments that I made was we were given a little New Testament. And so I said, I will read that New Testament every day until I finish it. And I did that. And that opening to the Word of God was the beginning of this new change in me. You know, I’ve had a love of Scripture ever since, and that’s only continued to grow as I’ve studied more and as I’ve pondered more, and I’ve taught more about the gift of God’s grace being available to us.

(00:06:13) – So to love is not just a concept, not just an abstract thing. We first experience it and encounter it in other people, but the love that Jesus wants to make available to us is this precious gift of friendship being brought into that relationship, being brought into that place where I know that I’m accepted. I know that in this space I can be who I am. There’s no need for pretence, no need for hypocrisy. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. There is now just this ability to let go and to let him love me. And because I am grafted to the vine, because the life of God is available, then he says to us, you did not choose me. No, I chose you, but I commission you now to go and to bear fruit. That’s what our lives are meant to be about. We allow the God of love to encounter us. We let ourselves be soaked and nourished by his love, by his friendship. And then we share that with those around us.

(00:07:27) – We allow ourselves to be fruitful within the world. And how do we experience that? The acts again reminds us that even though we might be trying to do the right things, it’s only when this rushing power of the Holy Spirit falls upon us, that’s when everything begins to change in our lives. So let’s allow ourselves, over the next two weeks as we prepare for Pentecost. To hunger and long for the gift of the Holy Spirit. To allow the God of grace to pour out his love upon us so that we can be changed and transformed by his love and his goodness. To be the fruitful people that we long for. To live the life of joy and wonder in friendship with our God.