BishopBlogging
BishopBlogging
Bernadette and the Archbishop
I received a call from a high official in the French Foreign Ministry yesterday: “what was Rowan Williams doing in Lourdes? Did Bishop Perrier invite him?” I had heard little of the visit, other than that it had happened at the invitation of Bishop Perrier (the local diocesan). This led me to give a little dissertation on Anglicans and Mary, ending with “nous les anglicans n’avons pas peur de Marie.”
It’s true that we are not afraid of St. Mary the Virgin, as the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Consultation document Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ makes clear. Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, however, we are not required to join in the veneration of any saint, even the mother of Our Lord.
There has been some reaction from that part of our church that considers itself to be primarily a Protestant church, but they are not a majority. On the other hand, those Anglicans who regularly pray the Rosary are also a minority. Most of us direct all our prayers at the Holy Trinity, usually Jesus Christ, I suppose. In any event, Anglicans should not pray to saints asking for their direct intervention, but rather for their prayers. The prayer, “Hail Mary” (Ave Maria), for example, does this: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners…”
So what was Archbishop Rowan doing at Lourdes? The Pope had just been there, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the shrine. I am still unsure how the invitation came about, but it is no secret that the Archbishop is a High Churchman. In other words, someone who is not embarrassed by Marian devotion. The great popularity among Roman Catholics of the shrine—mostly known as a place of healing—is a good reason to accept an invitation for an ecumenical celebration. And it must be remembered that the shrine is not primarily a sort of sanitarium of the miraculous.
As a little boy, I saw the film The Song of Bernadette. I remember being impressed by the story (even if she was a girl), for two reasons: one, she encountered great opposition from the church, and two, like me, she was asthmatic. Looking back, I felt that God must know how I suffered, if God knew how she suffered.
Like Joan of Arc, Bernadette Soubirous is a mysterious person indeed—and both stories have meticulous historical records to back them.
Don’t write to me, please, Gentle Reader, to complain that I do not believe in Original Sin. I do. Indeed, I say rather often that the Church itself is often the best proof of its existence! But I am more of the Eastern persuasion that Original Sin is something we are born into, as a generic condition of the human race, and not a personal individual flaw for which we are guilty though not personally responsible.
But these things are really not important, as they concern Bernadette herself. As Archbishop Rowan made clear in his fine (and evangelical) sermon, the point of her life is that she brought and still continues to bring Jesus Christ much closer to the lives of a lot of people. Even to a little boy, through a hagiographic film, as I lay gasping for breath.
Is this not what all of us are to do?
25 septembre 2008/ being the feast of Sergius