09.07.2022
Hope – A short address for Eid at Croke Park by the Archbishop of Dublin
The Muslim festival of Eid al–Adha was celebrated at Croke Park, Dublin, this morning (Saturday July 9 2022). Archbishop Michael Jackson was in attendance and prepared the following short address.
All of our Faith Traditions offer memorable phrases. One from my own tradition of Christianity is: Hope is in the things not seen … (The Letter to the Hebrews 11.1).
This phrase points any of us and all of us, if we accept the invitation to engage, to the finding of hope in the invisible future. The future is built, likewise, out of our lived experience. Such grim reality is also part of the architecture of hope. Hope such as this stands on a foundation of values that are often understood only when they are threatened or swept aside as, for example, in time of war. The people of Ukraine, with whom we stand in solidarity today and for whom we hope, are enveloped in a time of war. And their memory is of things no longer seen – family, home, pets, land and sea like no others precisely because these things are theirs.
Hope is fed by insight and inspiration as well as by memory and history. Insight and inspiration come from our faith. Memory and history come from our lived experience and the experience of others. Our history we make together, in the past and in the present. Our inspiration we harvest from a variety of differing sources, known and unknown, held in common and garnered individually. A society is formed in hope when history and inspiration interact with one another around the values of tolerance, respect, inclusion leading to compassion, provision and diversity. Our society, like all others, has a long way to travel. We all need to want to travel together in this journey of hope.
In being privileged to participate today in EID, I make a plea that we pledge to make history together and that we offer to one another for sharing, sources and streams of inspiration and insight from the richness of our traditions. Our aim is to build a shared society of hope.