As we continue “Archbishop Mark Coleridge’s Reflections on 50 Years of Pastoral Service” series, this week, Archbishop Mark shared how prayer has been his lifeline during tough times.
He reflected on how spending an hour each morning in silent prayer has become essential for him, allowing him to appreciate solitude, stillness, and silence on a deeper level. Alongside prayer, the unwavering support of his community has also been crucial, providing him with strength and love that he finds incredibly uplifting. Embracing the mystery of the Cross, the Lord’s death and resurrection, in both his daily life and ministry helps him fulfil his calling and guide others to do the same.
Watch the Archbishop’s reflection here:
Ep4 – The Mystery of the Cross
A number of things, as the years have unfolded I’ve become more and more dependent on prayer. That can sound a little bit platitudinous perhaps but it’s not at all, in my own sense of it. Because what I mean is, I’ve come to discover that prayer is like breathing. It is a matter of life and death. Particularly as a celibate priest. Where you don’t have the opportunity to debrief perhaps in a way that is given to those who are married. There are dangers in this, but prayer is a kind of, it’s like breathing;
I often think it’s like charging the iPhone. If I don’t charge my iPhone it just doesn’t work. So I put it on the charger every night and I put myself on a different kind of charger every morning. And as the years have gone by I’ve moved more and more in the direction of spending about an hour each morning in prayer. But prayer understood as a listening, not as a gabbling to God, babbling like the pagans, but as a listening to God. And sometimes listening to God is listening to God’s silence. And going more deeply into the experience of prayer is also acquiring a love of things like silence and stillness and solitude. And I’ve come to see that if you don’t acquire a love of solitude, you’ll never really learn what community is. If you don’t acquire a love of stillness you’ll never learn what it is to really move in the Lord. And if you never acquire a love of silence you’ll never discover what it really is to speak the word of God.
There’s a great deal I could say about prayer, but when I look back on my seminary years we were taught the Ignatian method of meditation and that was very structured, but as a beginning of a journey into the experience of meditation, it was unique and uniquely helpful. But as the years have gone by, the structures have fallen away, I sometimes think it’s like those rockets that go up and bits fall off the rocket as it goes higher. As I’ve gone deeper into the experience of prayer over the years it’s as if bits have dropped off, the structure becomes less important. As the experience of encounter becomes more central. So that’s the first thing I would say that has sustained me. In the most fundamental way, the experience of listening to God and of just being in the presence of God and coming to learn that prayer isn’t just one of many activities in my life, but prayer is a way of life. I think that’s been one of the fundamental learnings as I’ve gone through the years.
But the support of others too it has been absolutely essential. Particularly in moments, you know, raw moments of need. Not to just tough it out or try and do it on my own. But to have the freedom to say, I need help. And to go to the right people in seeking that help, that’s been fundamentally important to me. But also the faith of the people. There’s an astonishing mutuality in the priestly ministry as there is in the Episcopal Ministry. I mean I serve the people, the people serve me. But drawing upon the faith, and not just the faith, but the sheer good-heartedness, I guess, the love of the people. Is an extraordinary strength in tough times.
And the Catholic people’s love of the priesthood and the priest is a mysterious and wonderful thing and I’ve seen it time and time again through the years. That very often what a priest sees in his own life is only a fraction of what there is and the people sometimes see more in the priest than the priest sees in himself. Now, if you allow the people to accompany you, to support you, to nourish you, that becomes a huge resource particularly in times of trouble.
So there’s some of the things that have sustained me through dark times and the question is not whether in the priesthood or the episcopate you’ll experience dark times, you will certainly experience dark times. The question is what you make of the dark times or what you allow the Lord to make of the dark times. That’s the critical question. What you allow the Lord to make of your dark times, of your weakness, of your woundedness. Don’t tell me what strengths you’ve got, what successes you’ve had, and you know, all that stuff. Show me, in your life where there is an experience where the Lord has allowed your weakness to become strength or your wound to become a fountain and so on, or death to become life.
And that’s where you’re living the mystery of the Lord’s cross because when the priest is ordained by the bishop the bishop says, put into practice the mystery you celebrate. Other words, that you, at the altar the priest celebrates the mystery of the Lord’s death and resurrection. Put into practice in your life that mystery, don’t just do it at the altar, do it in your life. And then if you do that, you’ll be able to help the people to do it in their life and that’s the ministry.