Archbishop Jackson speaking at Dublin & Glendalough Synods
The Diocesan Synods of Dublin & Glendalough took place online yesterday evening (Tuesday 20 October 2020). In a first for the dioceses, members of synods did not enjoy the hustle and bustle of the Synod Hall and joined Synod from their own homes in every corner of Dublin & Glendalough as Covid–19 restrictions mean large gatherings cannot take place.
Gathering as the Synods of Dublin and Glendalough in the middle of a global pandemic and on the eve of the country embarking on Level 5 restrictions, Archbishop Michael Jackson posed a question in his Presidential address: “What is left, what remains?” His answer was: “Everything.”
Speaking to members from Taney Parish Centre, the Archbishop looked at the impact of Covid–19 on the well–known and well–loved words from 1 Corinthians 13: 13 – “There are three things that last for ever: faith, hope and love; and the greatest of the three is love.”
Turning to faith he said that over the past months many will have found themselves digging deep for faith in themselves, coming to terms with faith in public health advice as they were hemmed in by external regulation. Faith leads to a particular type of decision making and faithful decisions were the fruit of sustained prayer, he stated.
“We continue to pray that we make the right choices individually and nationally. We grow in faith as we see the future begin to unfold before our eyes and, what is more, unfold and flourish in other people. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we see ourselves developing a sense of public confidence once we realize that we are making these decisions of faith about things outside the religious sphere as much as about church things. Our decisions matter for the common good. This was a gift to us in the darkness itself because the churches were effectively closed. We were on our own with God,”
The Archbishop suggested that hope did not just relate to the future but could be found in the present. The absence of gathering hit churches hard, he said – gathering is the heartbeat of religion. Being apart and the reopening and then closing of churches again was hard on everyone. But people need to keep finding and sharing hope. “We need to keep making a ‘go’ of whatever it is we can do at any given time. We need constantly to find hope and to share hope and to give hope in the present,” he said. Archbishop Jackson said. Hope and purpose are also to be found in our neighbours and in our communities, he added.
The word ‘love’ in the time of Covid–19 became the love of life: our own life, the life of others the life and the wellbeing of everyone we know and those we do not know, the Archbishop said. There is also love for a Paradise Lost: loss of live and the world as we knew it. But he pointed out there was also Paradise Regained in the area of ecology. But there was also a reminder that while one thing is happening others continue – people die as a result of disadvantage and poverty; domestic violence and abuse continue or increase during lockdown.
The Archbishop looked to the love of the unknown. He said that while Covid–19 could never be described as an adventure in the conventional sense or an adventure that anyone would wish for, it was an adventure into the unknown. “At its simplest, we are learning that the language of fighting and conquering it simply is not going to hold. In another phrase of which we are probably now already tired, we are going to have to live with it. We are told that we need to learn to respect the virus. We had not budgeted for this – emotionally, institutionally, psychologically or financially. But we have to live with most things, ourselves included in the unknown present and future,” he said.
So what is left? “It is for us to get going, to get moving and to get gathering in whatever ways we can and whensoever we can. It is for us to get serving, get meeting and get equipping ourselves and others for the work of God in new circumstances – without a doubt – but this present and this future are both in our hands. What we do is our gift for today and tomorrow and our gift for everyone,” he answered.