18.03.2012
Archbishop Begins Hong Kong Visit
Archbishop Michael Jackson is currently on a nine–day visit to Hong Kong. He arrived in the province yesterday and his first formal engagement was this morning when he preached at the Eucharist in St John’s Cathedral in central Hong Kong.
This is the Archbishop’s first visit to Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui and he is making the visit on behalf of the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission, of which he is patron. Later today he is attending a dinner hosted by Archbishop Paul Kwong. Tomorrow (Monday) he will give a lecture in Ming Hua Theological College where later in the week he will explore the possibility of a link with the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.
He will visit parishes, welfare facilities, shelters and schools throughout the province culminating with his attendance at a consecration at St John’s Cathedral. He is accompanied on the trip by Dr Kerry Houston, treasurer of the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission and the Revd Dr Alan McCormack, London officer of the mission.
For this morning’s sermon, he drew on the readings (1 Samuel 1:20–end; psalm 34:11–20; 2 Corinthians 1:3–7; St John 19:25–27) and reflected on Mothering Sunday. The Archbishop said: “Today’s Readings are tremendously tender and terrifying all in one. In both Testaments we meet mothers of wonderful subtlety and courage, of deep devotion and of utter selflessness. And it is a side of Christianity which it is important for us to remember and cherish as world–wide today we celebrate two things in one: Mothers’ Day and Mothering Sunday.
“Often the church turns up its nose at the secular use of a festival – whether it be Christmas with its presents; Easter with its eggs; or Mothering Sunday with its Mother’s Day cards and the small children who bring cups of tea and other bits of breakfast to bed to sleepy mummies. I think we are foolish to turn up our noses in this way. The glory of Christian faith and witness is that, with the greatest of ease and the deepest of compassion, God inhabits the divine and the human world with equivalent commitment. It is what we call incarnation and resurrection – linked as the Season of Lent relentlessly reminds us by crucifixion and death”.
He talked of Hannah’s desperate wait for a baby and her promise to give that child to God if He enabled her to have a child. When Samuel was weaned she kept her promise and brought him to the Temple and left him there in the service of God, visiting him once a year.
“The single–mindedness of this woman of faith is something we should never underestimate. In her son, time and again, we see this coming through as he embraced righteousness and challenged injustice,” Archbishop Jackson said.
He then moved to Mary at the foot of the cross at Golgotha. As Jesus was dying, he committed his mother to John “and so the human duty of his incarnation is carried through before he himself dies”.
“The world is full of examples of mothers who make endless sacrifices for their children. The world is full of children who die before their parents and of parents who really would die in the place of a sick and terminal child if indeed they could. This is what being a mother can and does bring for so many. But for many, life is not like that,” the Archbishop of Dublin said.
“Hannah and Mary both found themselves embroiled in what we can only call difficult parenting. In no way is any of this designed to sadden us on Mothering Sunday. It gives depth to our celebration of the mothering of the church because it gives human examples of perseverance, of devotion and of faithfulness. The Bible is in some ways a strange book. We never hear much about people laughing. This is a pity because there must have been times for both Hannah and for Mary when laughter with their children was the order of the day. Sometimes we need to fill in the picture with domestic normality if we are properly to appreciate the life of faith,” he said.
Quoting President Michael D. Higgins’s poem ‘Of Possibility’ he concluded that:
“It is for us in our generation to take the ‘shards of light and colour’ and to enlighten and enliven with the joy of the Gospel the lives of those we meet day by day”.