The Bishop of Whitby, the Rt Revd Paul Ferguson today preached on Ephesians 3.14-21 and John 15.9-17 at the Order of the Holy Paraclete Centenary Service at York Minster. His sermon follows...
"If evidence were needed, the size of today’s gathering and the range of places from which people have come to be here are ample proof of the place that the Order of the Holy Paraclete has in the hearts of so many. Sister Dorothy Stella and all the Sisters of the Order, whenever you gather for prayer, whether it is in Whitby or in a branch house, whenever any of you is travelling, you may be few or even alone: but what you see here is a truer representation of the deeper reality, of how many are in a more profound sense with you in prayer. And this is only in the earthly realm. It is impossible for any of us who have had contact with the Order to be worshipping here without vivid memories coming to us of Sisters, wonderful servants of God, who have died. We praise God for them, and pray that they may rest in peace and rise in glory.
So today is a day of celebration, thanksgiving for the past and looking to the future: and we come together in this assembly of Sisters, tertiaries, friends and families, former pupils, all of us whose lives have been touched by the Order and its members.
We are able to read about the Order’s activities, but so much of what it has meant to the wider church and public can never be written down: just one example being the way in which thousands of people have turned to the Order’s houses at times of great spiritual and emotional testing and turning, in order to find a space for prayer, for retreat, in need of hospitality, quiet, a simple change of scene, spiritual advice or godly common sense — and the effect of even a short while with the Sisters has been a blessing for a very long time. Sisters, we thank God for you, both for the way you each bring your personal gifts and character to following God’s call on your life and also for what you are as the corporate body of the Order. For over the last hundred years the Order of the Holy Paraclete has responded imaginatively to different situations, challenges and opportunities, and continues to do so — and I hope that will always be your pattern. Perhaps it is the strength of the structure of community daily prayer that actually makes it more possible for religious to recognise the temptation of putting trust in anything other than God’s call to which you make a prayerful human response — tradition for you really is the gift of the past to the present and the gift of the present to the future, not a resistance to change or clinging to organisational props.
So with that in mind let’s look at the readings that you have chosen for this eucharist. The first, from the Letter to the Ephesians [3.14-21], starts with a reminder of the theme of God-given unity that runs through the letter: every family in heaven and on earth takes its name from the Father. The lines that follow are about being formed by him through the Spirit. Among the key words are riches, glory, strength, power, faith and love. Reading this today isn’t triumphalist rhetoric, familiar churchy words jammed together to get a nod from the audience. Rather, this is a proclamation of how God takes fallible, frail and vulnerable people, gives us his gifts, invites us to recognise his gifts in one another, and gives us what we need, individually and together, to be his witnesses and to do his work. This has nothing to do with our achievements, and really nothing to do with physical age or strength. It has everything to do with formation, and whatever our personality or circumstances, the extent to which we will let our life be a life transformed by the dwelling of Christ in our hearts through faith and trust, the extent to which we have let the Christlike love in which we claim to be rooted and grounded work on us. This passage of scripture speaks to all God’s people, but today we celebrate how being a religious order offers a special model of how to accept the wonder and promise of formation in Christ.
And so to each of us, there is the question: How are we still making ourselves open to God’s moulding and shaping of us? — how open are we to the possibility that God’s call on us will contain very significant surprises? Again that is why the prayer at the end, about the power at work among us, God being able to accomplish far more than all we can ask or imagine, mustn’t be for us a form of words that familiarity has robbed of its force. How easy it is to lock our idea of God up in our restricted imagination. It’s only any use our having said ‘Thanks be to God’ at the end of that reading if we believe both that God can do more than we can imagine, and also that we can be formed and equipped to be part of that miracle.
The gospel reading [John 15.9-17] is a little different in its emphasis, we might say complementary. Jesus tells his disciples that they must love one another. Then he says: ‘You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.’ Now this reading comes from a scene that we only find in John’s Gospel, where Jesus speaks with his disciples on the night before he dies. We sometimes call this the Farewell Discourse, and some of you will know that one of my hobby-horses is that I believe we make a mistake whenever we picture this scene as a long sad goodbye, as I fear we are sometimes in the habit of doing. Instead it speaks to me more strongly as Jesus giving his disciples a positive, inspiring programme for their future work in God’s mission. So, like the passage from Ephesians, it is saying how they must be filled with Christ-given joy and love. And the purpose of that is not for themselves, but for the good of the world to which they will go in Christ’s name.
Around this Gospel passage there are verses where Jesus speaks about the source of the strength that they will have, the Holy Spirit, and he uses the word for an advocate, one literally called alongside, in Greek parakletos. ‘I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to be with you for ever; the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you; When the Paraclete comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf; it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.’
Whatever might have prompted the choice of the name of the Holy Paraclete for the order in 1915, I would want to suggest that there is renewed significance that we can draw from it in 2015, as each part of the global church family must seek God’s guidance for working in a changing world. The name Paraclete is linked with the idea of the Spirit who brings Christ’s truth to his people, the Spirit who is with Christ’s disciples engaged in his mission. Paraclete is a name to be treasured by those who want the Spirit to be with them as they go where God sends them: by those who trust Christ’s promises as they move into the future that God has in store.
So our Bible readings today set out a vision of people who are formed in Christ, full of God’s gifts, chosen, appointed, sent with the assurance that the fruit of their work will be long-lasting. That has been the story of OHP so far and we pray confidently that that will be its future. We pray that new candidates may come forward to explore whether God is calling them to the religious life. We pray for Sister Carole, taking the mantle of Prioress. Sisters, please continue to be a sign for the wider church and the world of the transforming power, ever new, of God the Holy Paraclete; a living icon showing that what Mother Margaret started is still an inspiring and empowering force in the future mission of Christ’s church. Please pray for us, as we surely will for you."