Timothy Radcliffe warns against fragmentation

Below is the sermon preached by Timothy Radcliffe at the Mass of the Holy Spirit in Bien Hoa, Vietnam, before the election of a new Master of the Dominican Order.

Information about the Dominican Chapter is available at www.capitulumgeneraleop2019.net.

Is it unfortunate and indeed not acceptable that the 'management team' of the Irish Province of the Dominican Order is releasing no daily information on the chapter.

Timothy Radcliffe's sermon
The disciples are locked into the upper room because they are afraid. Jesus breaks through the wall, breathes the Holy Spirit on them, and sets them free to go on mission. We are like them as we pray for the Holy Spirit today. We are not locked in Bien Hoa by fear, even though we are advised not to go out! But each of us has fears that can imprison us and stop us going on mission.

What are our fears? It may be a fear of failure. If we embark on some ambitious project, will it fail? It may be the fear of leaving our comfortable and safe homes and going on mission to some dangerous place. We might be afraid of exploring difficult questions to which we do not have the answers. When Yves Congar was asked if his answers were right, he replied that he did not know, but the questions were right. Let us not fear difficult questions. We might be afraid, especially in the West, that our Provinces might not survive. Some older brethren are afraid of the young friars and their dreams. 

So we pray to the Holy Spirit that we shall be freed from fear and leave our locked rooms to preach. We pray for what a previous master, Vincent de Cougesnogle called ‘le courage de l’avenir’, the courage of the future. If we do so, of course we shall be vulnerable. An English Dominican, Herbert McCabe, often said: ‘If you love you will be hurt; you may even be killed. But if you do not love, you are dead already.’ Yes, we shall be wounded. We may be killed, like blessed Pierre Claverie in Algeria. But the Risen Christ shows the disciples his wounds. If we do not dare to be vulnerable, we shall never do anything.

We are also praying for the Spirit to guide us in the election of a new Master of the Order. He need not to be the bravest person who will liberate us. It is the Holy Spirit who will do that and not the Master of the Order! His main role is to support the Provinces and the brethren to whom the Spirit calls to some courageous mission. There will always be people who will try to squash some new initiative because it is risky; it might not work; we are already doing too much; it might be misunderstood. It’s not safe. The Master’s role is to resist that fear. We have hundreds of wonderful young friars who want to do something a little crazy. We must be realistic but never discourage them. The first thing that the angels said to the women after the resurrection was: ‘Do not be afraid.’

Often the brethren want our superiors – Priors, Provincials, the Master – to be solvers of problems. A provincial once showed me his archives and said: Those files are about 10% of the brethren, and they take 90% of my time. But, if a superior sees himself as a problem solver, he will find that more and more of the brethren are problems. A survey of Canadian hospitals found that the ideal hospital would have no patients. Some provincials might think that the ideal province would have no brethren since then there would be no problems.

The disciples in the upper room probably thought that Thomas was a problem. Why wasn’t he there, locked up with everyone else? Who gave him permission to go out into the dangerous world? If he gets hurt, he will probably expect us to look after him? Who will pay for his medical treatment? But it was this problematic disciple who first confesses the divinity of Christ. Of course there are problems which must be resolved if possible, but the main role of our new master and our provincials is encourage what Bruno called ‘apostolic creativity.’

Jesus says ‘Peace be with you.’ Our preaching springs from this peace. Thanks be to God, the Order is largely at peace. We may have tensions, even sometimes conflicts, but we remain one. The first duty of the Master is to care for the peace of the Order. This Bruno has done wonderfully.

That peace is destroyed when people are locked in small rooms of ideology. All over the world, people are retreating into small rooms and locking the doors. Conservative or liberal, traditionalist or progressive. The algorithms of the media lock people into bubbles in which we speak to the likeminded. The good and the bad; us and them.

Bruno has pointed out in his new book that this is exactly how the Cathars thought. Everything was black and white. There was the good God and the bad god. The pure and the impure. Dominic’s preaching began in calling them out of these mental prisons into the spacious creation of the One God who made everything. We need a Master today who prevents the Order from fragmenting into parties, and who loves the spacious truth of Catholicism.

The gospels said that disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. All of our preaching springs from that joy. Without joy, we are wasting our time. May the Lord give us a joyful Master.