THE
P RTAL
January 2016
Rebuild
my House
Page 11
Anglican
News
T
he Revd Paul Benfield sends us part of the sermon given by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, Preacher
to the Papal Household, at a Eucharist in Westminster Abbey, London, on Tuesday 24 November 2015,
marking the inauguration of the 10th General Synod of the Church of England.
Rebuild my House (Haggai 1.1-8)
before it. It means instead allowing all of Christianity
The prophecy of Haggai begins with a reproof, but to benefit from its achievements, once they are
ends, as we heard, with an exhortation and a grandiose freed from certain distortions due to the heated
promise: “Go up into the hills, fetch timber and rebuild atmosphere of the time and of later controversies.
the House, and I shall take pleasure in it and manifest
my glory there, says the Lord”.
One circumstance makes this point particularly
relevant. The Christian world is preparing to celebrate
the fifth centenary of the Protestant Reformation. It
is vital for the whole Church that this opportunity is
not wasted by people remaining prisoners of the past,
trying to establish each other’s rights and wrongs.
Rather, let us take a qualitative leap forward, like what
happens when the sluice gates of a river or a canal
enable ships to continue to navigate at a higher water
level.
The situation has dramatically changed since then.
We need to start again with the person of Jesus, humbly
helping our contemporaries to experience a personal
encounter with Him. “All things were created through
him and for him”; Christ is the light of the world, the
one who gives meaning and hope to every human life
– and the majority of people around us live and die as
if He had never existed! How can we be unconcerned,
and each remain “in the comfort of our own panelled
houses”? We should never allow a moral issue like that
of sexuality divide us more than love for Jesus Christ
unites us.
Unity is not a simple matter. One has to start with the
big Churches, those that are well structured, putting
together that which unites them, which is vastly more
important than what divides them; not imposing
uniformity but aiming at what Pope Francis calls
“reconciled diversities”. Nothing is more important
than to fulfil Christ’s heart desire for unity expressed
in today’s gospel. In many parts of the world people
are killed and churches burned not because they are
We need to go back to the time of the Apostles: Catholic, or Anglican, or Pentecostals, but because
they faced a pre-Christian world, and we are facing they are Christians. In their eyes we are already one!
a largely post-Christian world. When Paul wants to Let us be one also in our eyes and in the eyes of God.
summa &