Homily at the Mass for the Opening of the Year of Faith,
Leeds Cathedral - 11th October 2012 - Mgr John Wilson - Diocesan Administrator
When the bible speaks about the ‘heart,’ it’s referring to the inner reality of
who we truly are – who we really are before God, before ourselves and
before the world. In our hearts reside our deepest thoughts, our deepest
feelings, our deepest longings and motivations. The heart, we could say, is
the hearth, the crucible, and the beacon of our faith: “If your lips confess
that Jesus is Lord and if you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus
from the dead, then,’ says St Paul, ‘you will be saved.” That which falls
from our lips flows from our heart, the very core and centre of our being.
In his Letter for the Year of Faith our Holy Father Pope Benedict affirms
that we cross the threshold of the ‘door of faith,’ when ‘the word of God is
proclaimed and the heart allows itself to be shaped by transforming
grace,’ (PF1) that grace which is the gift of God’s love and mercy in
Christ.
Faith is, of course, informed by reason, but our ongoing act of faith, our
‘choosing to stand with the Lord so as to live with him,’ (PF10) always
remains essentially an affair of the heart, never something exclusive or
private, but something intensely and deeply personal. There is, wrote the
philosopher Blaise Pascal, “a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every
person which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the
Creator, made known through Jesus.”(From the Pensees)
“If you confess with your lips and believe in your heart... you will be
saved.”
It’s with a joyful sense of expectation that the Year of Faith unfolds now
before us. Surely it has to be a year when the heart, what Pope Benedict
calls ‘the authentic sacred space within the person’ is opened afresh to
Jesus Christ:
 opened afresh to the riches of His Gospel through a determined
rediscovery of the Scriptures;
 opened afresh to the teaching of His Church, especially in the
documents of the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism;
 opened afresh to the evangelising service of His people by the public
proclamation of faith and the practical witness to charity and justice;
 opened afresh to His love for every person, whatever their belief or
non-belief, and to entering into dialogue to build the common good;
 opened afresh to the reality of His presence, particularly in our daily
prayer and in the Sacraments of the Eucharist and of Confession.
This Year of Faith invites us to blow gently with the Holy Spirit upon the
embers of belief wherever we find them, rekindling the flame of faith in
the hearth that is the heart.
This Year of Faith calls us to discern the Lord’s words and ways, to enter
into prayerful conversation with Jesus, sifting through our life with Him,
in the crucible that is the heart.
This Year of Faith compels us to stand beside the poor and the
marginalised, to defend human life and dignity, to put our faith into action
and ignite the beacon that is the heart.
‘We want this Year,’ said Pope Benedict ‘to arouse in every believer the
aspiration to profess the faith in fullness and with renewed conviction,
with confidence and hope.’ (PF9) For our Diocesan family - clergy,
religious and lay faithful - this Year is an opportunity to reach within and
to reach out, to realise anew that ‘there is nothing more beautiful than to
be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ... to know Him
and to speak to others of our friendship with Him.’ (Pope Benedict,
Inauguration Homily, 2005)
I read in the newspaper last week the story of a postbox at Birmingham
New Street Station that had not been emptied for 23 years. Although it was
decommissioned in 1989, people had still continued to use it. When
workers recently opened the door they found letters and postcards destined
for addresses at home and across the world, all lying under a thick layer of
dust. Having now rediscovered the contents, Royal Mail is trying to
deliver each item of post to its proper recipient.
The rightful destination for God’s message of love and forgiveness in
Jesus, his love letter, is the human heart – your heart, my heart, the heart of
every person. Let this Year of Faith encourage you to dare to hope and
believe again and anew. It is Christ Himself who is calling and sending us
today; and He will never abandon us. The message of our Catholic faith is
something to be proud of; something to cherish, something to celebrate
and to share. Tonight’s liturgy will beckon us: ‘Lift up your hearts.’ As we
step out into this Year of Faith let us together ‘lift them up to the Lord.’
2