Address given by Rev Dr John Preston at the Reception of Sister Gabriele on 10 April 2011

Sr Gabriele, today you are taking an important step on your personal journey, your pilgrimage of faith and discipleship. At the same time, the community is welcoming you into their company as a fellow pilgrim on a shared journey.

Today you become a spiritual sister of Martha who was secure enough in her relationship with Jesus to rebuke Him for not getting there in time to save Lazarus.  Martha who recognised Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ.

Today you become a spiritual sister to Mary who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to His teaching, who brought a precious jar of ointment and anointed His feet as He sat at supper, and the whole house was filled with the perfume. Today you are invited to share in the life of that home in Bethany where Jesus delighted to go, where He gave and received food and fellowship, where He was among friends.

You bring to the community your special gifts, your love of the Scriptures, your own life experiences with their joys and sorrows. You join sisters who also have their special gifts and their joyful and sorrowful life experiences. Within the community there is opportunity to give and to receive, to help and support and to be helped and supported.

Together we hear of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, and as we hear that powerful account, we pray that we may hear Jesus call to us to come out of the tomb of our sinfulness and self-centredness. We pray that we may hear Jesus words to us. ‘Unbind her - or him’ - and that we may be freed from our sins and our rebelliousness.

Today’s readings are about life and death. Again these are readings originally chosen for catechumens as they made their final preparation for baptism and confirmation on Easter Eve. In baptism we, as it were die to our old way of life and are raised with Christ to share in His risen life. In the Easter Vigil service we will be called to remember our own baptism, to remember that we have been called to live the risen life. The religious life is a particular vocation within the life of the baptised. The religious is a kind of prophetic sign of discipleship and friendship with Jesus and a forsaking of the things that are unnecessary to live more fully the risen life. It is not an easy vocation, but when people are called by our Lord He gives the grace they need.

The reading from Ezekiel tells of a vision of God who can bring to life long, dead dry bones. The vision was originally experienced in the context of the people of Israel’s exile in Babylon, and their hope of return to the Promised Land. For us, it is a reminder of the breath of God, God’s Spirit to bringing to life our faith. St Paul reminds the Christians in Rome and us that through our baptism, we have the same Spirit that raised Jesus to life. This same Spirit can bring life to us. We are called to live in the Spirit, the Breath of God. The Gospel gives us a lovely insight into Jesus’ relationship with the Bethany family. Martha could reproach him. If you had been here . . . . Jesus could weep at His friend’s death.  Martha could remonstrate I know he will rise at the last day  but that doesn’t take away my grief! How many mourners will have felt that. There was the kind of friendship that can be honest and doesn’t have to beat about the bush. Then there is the statement of Jesus, ‘I am the Resurrection and the life!’ The resurrection begins here and now with Jesus. I think it was as a sign of this that Jesus raised Lazarus. He is a sign of our own resurrection to new life in Jesus.

Professed: 10 January 2010

May I speak to you in the name of the Father, Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Well, may I first say what a tremendous privilege to be asked to preach a very short homily at this Clothing; thank you for inviting me.

Two weeks ago the Sisters here said their goodbyes to Sister Margaret Faith. It was a celebration of a life served faithfully to the will of God, and of dedication to the life of this Community. Sister’s second name in Community was ‘Faith’ and she was true to her name; the way she placed her trust in her Saviour, and in her belief that God had called her to serve Him in the religious life. As I pondered on Sister’s name I recalled that Isaiah is the ‘prophet of faith’, and his pronouncements reminded the people of his time of the faithfulness of God even in the time of adversity, even though they doubted His direction sometimes and wandered off down other pathways. ‘For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, ‘in returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength, and therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you; and therefore will He be exalted, that He may have mercy upon you: for the Lord is a God of judgement, blessed are all they that wait for Him. And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, ‘This is the way, walk ye in it.’ When ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left.’

You see, God sees the broader picture but He gives us the freedom to view and discover the contents of that picture for ourselves. God is not a control freak. He calls us as we are, where we are, and enables us to become who we are. And for each and every one of us, who we are will be a unique and, at times, disconcerting revelation. And today is one of those unique and disconcerting revelations. The receiving of the habit of a Religious requires from the Postulant acceptance and trust that the Community has sought out the Will of God, and is manifesting that Will by clothing you as a Novice today. You have consented to this process of deliberation by accepting the habit. But don’t be alarmed - you are on a journey and this is just one of the many destinations you will arrive at on this journey. For now, today, just enjoy this particular destination. Stop, stand back and enjoy the view! It is incredibly beautiful!

Listen to the words of Revelation Chapter 7, verses nine to twelve, this is from the Jerusalem Bible translation – ‘After that I saw a huge number, impossible to count, of people from every nation, race, tribe and language; they were standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands. They shouted in a loud voice, ‘Victory to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb!’ And all the angels who were standing in a circle round the throne, surrounding the elders and the for animals, prostrated themselves before the throne, and touched the ground with their foreheads, worshipping God with these words, ‘Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honour and power and strength to our God for ever and ever! Amen!’ And to affirm those words of Revelation we have the wonderful words of today’s Gospel. ‘Jesus said, ‘If anyone loves me he will keep my word and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home in him. Those who do not love me do not keep my words and my word is not my own, it is the word of the one who sent me. I have said these things to you while still with you but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, the Father will send in my name will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you.’ I began this short homily with reference to Sister Margaret Faith, and I commend her faith, together with the faith of the Sisters present here with me now, both living and departed, they all stand together. Revelation - ‘a huge number, impossible to count, worshipping God. Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honour and power and strength to our God for ever and ever! Amen!’

The Holy Spirit is a wonderful Person. As I listened with my headphones on, on Sunday morning to the service on the radio, one of my favourite hymns was sung. We don’t sing it, sadly, because it’s in the Methodist hymn book. And whenever I worship with my Methodist friends I always hope they’re going to sing this hymn. I think you’ll know it but I’m going to bore you and read the verses to you because the words mean so much to me – it’s from ‘Lamentations’ actually. ‘Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee, thou changest not, thy compassions may fail not, as thou hast been, thou forever wilt be. Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest, sun, moon and stars in their courses above, join with all nature in manifold witness, to thy great faithfulness, mercy and love. Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth, thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide, strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, blessings all mine with ten thousand besides. Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see, all I have needed thy hand hath provided, great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.’

When I entered community a few years ago, when I arrived at Alton there was a letter from the Sisters at Tymawr. And there was just this card inside this envelope, I’ve still got it. And the words have meant a great deal to me because they talk about community. And I’ll just finish with those words if I may - ‘Many lovers came together to love One only, their Beloved, who made them to abide in love. And each one had the Beloved for his precious possession.’ Amen.

Readings: Old Testament: Hosea 2:19,20 New Testament: Philippians 3:7-14

Gospel: Luke10:38-42
“Now as they went on their way He entered into a village and a woman named Martha received Him into her house and she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to His teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving and she went to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone. Tell her then to help me”. The Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful, Mary has chosen the good portion. It shall not be taken away from her”.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Yesterday, the first letter I opened was from our Brethren in Three Rivers, Michigan, the Abbey of St Gregory and the Prior of that House was writing to me about a Vocations Month and complaining bitterly about how few young men offer themselves - only 7! and of that 7, two of them fell out of the list very quickly, one found that he had to go and work to raise money to get himself through the next part of his course at University; the other one had a similar sort of excuse. By the time it came for Vocations Month to start there was one left and I read this long, long essay on why Monastic Houses in the Western world are failing. And, I got to the end of it and thought to myself, there is no sign of hope at all; and of course, it’s true, because Society has changed. It has changed radically since even I entered Community 40 years ago. And we are a Society where the individual counts, the Community doesn’t any longer. This is how Society is.

What is the place today for you and I as Monks and Nuns. Your Community has a history of 140 years, mine is about 120. We came into Community and we were taught were we not, many of us anyway, you push your will aside, push your wishes aside and make sacrifice to the whole Community of yourself. And it is very difficult for us to come to terms with things as they are today, we find them difficult. The consequence of those difficulties will be that we get smaller.
Now that is not to say we haven’t got something to give to the Christian Church and to the world, something deeply important.

So what has a Community, Christian Community, of consecrated celibates got to say to the world today? Our main vocation isn’t going out nursing the sick, it isn’t necessarily going out preaching the gospel any longer, it isn’t getting involved in ‘Doing’ any longer. I remember coming to this Community as a Novice when it was in Bournemouth and having a Novices’ Conference and the ‘in’ thing in those days was ‘being’. We were so busy ‘being’ most of us didn’t actually know what they were talking about. So, after 40 years in Community one begins to see that there is something to be said, to be simply a silent sign to the Church, because the Church needs that sign more than anybody else, because we are constantly backing off telling people the gospel and what that implies and the responsibilities that it has and as a consequence people are turning away.

In Europe, the Holy Father, the last Holy Father not the present one, decided that Benedictines should enter into Inter-Faith Inter-Monastic Dialogue called DIM because it had come back to the Vatican that a lot of young people particularly in places like Germany and France were turning to Buddhism. He wanted to know, they wanted to know, Why? So he said that the Benedictine confederated families should get together and enter into Dialogue with men and women of other faiths, monastic men and women of other faiths, and it has been interesting but it didn’t take us very long to realise what had attracted each other. The thing that was attracting them was that the Lama, the leaders of the Hindu religion, the Jews, Muslims, knew what they believed and weren’t afraid to say it and live it. Then when I found myself among Christian monks and nuns who were present there was no real dialogue going on because we were not actually entering into it ourselves and one felt sometimes that it was because we were unsure of our ground. The young people see in the Lama, the Hindu leaders, the Muslim leaders, men and women who speak with authority and sadly all too often the Church hasn’t those sort of men and women who will speak with authority; speak as prophetic voice to the people of God and the world.

Now I want to suggest that that is what you are doing as Nuns; you are speaking to the world with the authority of your prayer-life behind you and that is an essential; your life is prophetic, it is saying in effect “don’t look at me, look at God” this is how things are, don’t lose heart because you are getting older, so am I. Remember that your presence is an essential part of the beating heart of the Church, without you something is not there, something that is valid and of great value. Your Sisters in the past, like you, have given their whole heart to the Church and to Christ, so have you, the fact that you are not able to do just as they did, so what! The very fact that you live together and stay together is an essential sign to the Church because in a world where there is no stability the Church needs that prophetic sign of stability and although I know you don’t take my vows, or the same vows that we Benedictines take, Stability is there and it is an essential sign of the Church in the world.

Today should be joyful not sad, that Monk out in Three Rivers Michigan should be joyful not sad because as long as there is only 7 of them they are a sign to a Church, the American Church, which is in a sad mess. A sign of stability, of men and women who are prepared to cling to the cross because that is all we have.

It is an essential thing for us all that we are here today to be followers of Jesus, to cling on to Him even when things don’t seem to be going our way. It is at the end of the road He knows what is best for us and the essential thing is that we hear that voice saying “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the Kingdom of God”. Put together your faithfulness, your stability, your love for one another, and you have a wonderful, almost an icon, of living the Gospels.
As we allow ourselves to be aware of God’s movement in our midst, we are living signs of God’s presence in the Church and the World.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.