As we continue “Archbishop Mark Coleridge’s Reflections on 50 Years of Pastoral Service” series, this week, when asked if his relationship with God has changed over the course of his life, Archbishop Mark reflected on a seminary experience, which awakened him to the truth of grace.
He realised that grace is a gift to be received, not earned. By embracing grace as a gift led to a personal and powerful connection with Jesus, where he finds encountering Jesus within the flawed Church sustains his faith for fifty years and beyond. “And you only have to glimpse Him there and that’s enough to sustain you through at least fifty years and more, into eternity.” Archbishop Mark said.
Watch the Archbishop’s reflection here:
Ep3 – The Great Awakening
That is an enormous question. It’s one of those questions, it’s so simple to ask, it’s more complex to answer. But I think for me the great awakening came during my seminary time. I think it was on a retreat. When I awakened to the truth of grace. Because you see I think I grew up basically in a world, a Catholic world, that was what they call Semi-Pelagian where I thought you had to be a good boy in order to earn God’s love and Jesus was the example of what the ultimate good boy was so you had to imitate Him to be a good boy, to earn God’s love and get into heaven.
Now, what I came to see on this retreat was it’s not like that, you don’t have to earn anything. You’ve just got to receive a gift, that’s what grace talks about. Because if you live in the world of earning anything you’re going to be imprisoned in the world of entitlement. And you won’t inhabit the world of gift. Jesus is not once upon a time giving good example to me to do now. Jesus in fact is a presence and power who is God’s extraordinary gift to me in the here and now. And the experience of Christianity is the experience of encountering Him.
Since that moment of awakening, and it wasn’t quite as dramatic as I’m suggesting, but since that, I came to that sense of what grace is all about. I think my sense of Jesus has become much more powerful, much more personal. He’s not back there as I say giving good example, he’s here and now empowering me to do things I can’t do on my own and doing all of that is a gift, I don’t have to earn it, I’ve just got to open to it, I’ve got to say yes to it in faith.
But the other thing is I’d have to say that as you get to know the real Jesus more and more, and I think I have through the years, you come to see that He’s a far more mysterious and haunting and wondrous figure than anything that you had imagined. An Australian poet who in fact taught me many years ago at the University once described the Jesus of the gospels as being as direct and as distant as lightning. And that absolutely communicates the truth of Jesus to me, He is like that, as direct and as distant as lightning. That He’s not gentle Jesus, meek and mild, there’s a dark and stormy side to the crucified and risen Christ and that’s the other thing that it’s the cross and resurrection that make all the difference. But he comes at me, out of nowhere sometimes. But I am at a point now where I just, I can’t even imagine life without the encounter with the real crucified and risen Jesus. The one who scars shine like the sun.
So yeah, he is how do I say it, he is my life. Without that experience of encounter, which is a daily thing, you know, it’s constant. To say pray always means to encounter Him always. But the other thing I’ve come to see too is that you can only encounter Him at the heart of the Church. Now the Church can be a dreadful mess. But to love the Lord is also to learn to love the Church. Now some people would say, well how the hell can you love an institution like the Catholic Church with all its faults and failings its wounds and its weaknesses? Well you can, if at the heart of it all you see this extraordinary presence of the Risen Christ. And that has been my experience of the Church.
And I would say fifty years later that I have learned to love the Church which is not in any way a sentimental claim, it’s simply a statement of why I haven’t walked away. As a bishop I have seen more of the mess of the Church than just about anyone else. And at times as a bishop you see so much of the bad stuff you think, there is only the bad stuff. It can give you a very jaundice view of reality. But every now again you will see the magnificence at the heart of the mess and the magnificence is the Risen Christ. And you only have to glimpse Him there and that’s enough to sustain you through at least fifty years and more, into eternity.