This is a marked contrast with the situation we faced last year, and with the strict lockdowns still in place in many other countries.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought our world to its knees.

Pope Francis, in his latest book, “Let us Dream”, is challenging us to see in this global tragedy the possibility of working towards a different future, in which we are more sensitive to the needs of others.

What steps can we take to support those here and abroad who have lost friends and family members, jobs or livelihoods?

We all know that the Easter story is one of triumph in the face of what initially appeared to be an absolute disaster.

Jesus ends up rejected by his own people and abandoned by those he had most trusted.

But Easter Sunday tells a different story: an empty tomb, an encounter with someone Mary Magdalen takes to be a gardener, and a mix of fear and joy when “he showed them his hands and his side”.

The holes left by nails and a spear were startling signs that this was the dawning of a New Day in God’s work of creation.

What changes might be possible for us in a postCovid world? Pope Francis is inviting us to dream together for a better future.

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Now in Easter Week we know that the unimaginable has actually happened.

Covid-19 has shattered the illusion that we are somehow invulnerable.

We find ourselves feeling as helpless as our ancestors did when terrible plagues decimated local populations, except that this one has global tentacles.

Many of us in the post-coronavirus era will be re-examining our personal priorities. Hopefully, we will be paying special attention to kindness and compassion towards those most in need, starting with those in our own families and neighbourhoods.

This crisis will also prompt many people to ask deeper questions, because human beings innately resist the thought of personal extinction. Despite the fact that death eventually claims us all, our secret longing is that this is not the end of the story.

Even secular funerals often let slip the hope that we will one day “meet again” with the deceased.

The Easter story confirms this human yearning for some new life, with no more pain or suffering or tearful farewells.

Easter also prompts us to reflect more deeply on who Jesus is.

St John opens his Gospel with the majestic, but mysterious, prologue: “In the beginning was the Word . . . All things came into being through him . . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.”

Following his conversion, St Paul could think of no one but Jesus: “I regard everything as rubbish because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” (Philippians 3:8)

During these Easter days, it would be great if we could pray to see Jesus more clearly so that we can work more effectively as his missionary disciples when life gradually returns to normal, as it surely will over time.

— Bishop Patrick Dunn

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During Advent, a friend of mine was interviewed by a radio station wanting to know what Christmas meant for Catholics. My friend began by saying that, first and foremost for us, Christmas is about the birth of Jesus.

She was not quite prepared for the response from the reporter who then asked “Who is Jesus?”

The reporter later explained that many of their listeners might not know who Jesus was, but it seemed that she was not too sure either.

It’s a great question for us all to ponder during the Christmas season.

Jesus himself once famously quizzed his own friends on who people thought he was, before focusing the question a bit more awkwardly: What about you? Who do you say I am?

Every Christmas, in Scripture readings, prayers and traditional carols, we are reminded of the great Christmas mystery, namely that God himself took
flesh and was born among us at Bethlehem.

Not just some great religious teacher whose influence on human history has been incalculable, which most secular Kiwis will admit.

We believe something far more outrageous about the baby whose birth we celebrate at Christmas. Every Sunday we remind ourselves just who he is:

The Only Begotten Son of God

Born of the Father before all ages,

God from God, Light from Light,

True God from true God,

Begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father,

Through him all things were made.

Christmas has little to do with lavish spending or family gatherings or backyard BBQs.

These often kindly gestures have their place, but Christmas is actually about the stunning truth that, as one poet put it:

The Maker of the stars and sea

Become a child on earth for me.
—

— Bishop Patrick Dunn

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I remember two very significant visits to Notre Dame in Paris.

The first was in December, 1986. I was visiting Paris and had heard that Cardinal Lustiger celebrated Mass when he was in Paris every Sunday evening at Notre Dame and I was keen to see and hear him. When I arrived at the cathedral in the late afternoon, it was already full and a music concert was drawing to a close. To my pleasant surprise, few people left at the end of the concert, but many more arrived for the weekly Mass with the cardinal, so it was standing room only. Cardinal Lustiger preached with enthusiasm, but what touched me most was at the end of the Mass, when the recessional procession walked some way down the main aisle and then everyone stopped and turned to the statue of Notre Dame to sing the Salve Regina.

I was deeply moved by the face of French Catholicism which I encountered on that day and am pleased that we retain something of this practice at our cathedral in Auckland when we often pause to stand and face the shrine of Mary to sing a hymn in her honour, as I had experienced it on that Sunday evening in Paris so many years ago.

The second very memorable visit to Notre Dame Cathedral occurred in January, 2002. I was part of the group from New Zealand that had travelled to Paris to collect the remains of Bishop Pompallier from the suburban cemetery in Paris where he had lain somewhat unknown and then forgotten for 130 years.

One of our key contact people for this visit was Monsignor Jean-Yves Riocreux, who was then the Rector of Notre Dame and is now the Bishop of the Basse-Terre Diocese in the French Caribbean. With his support, we brought the remains of Bishop Pompallier, now in a new carved casket, from the cemetery to Notre Dame Cathedral for our final night in Paris. That evening, I and other priests from New Zealand joined Cardinal Lustiger and priests from the cathedral for the weekday Mass that evening with regular parishioners and Kiwis in Paris, whom Monsignor Riocreux had also invited for the occasion.

I remember that I preached briefly in French, Māori and English, and thanked the Church in France for sending Bishop Pompallier and the first generation of Catholic missionaries to Aotearoa-New Zealand from 1848 onwards. Hymns were sung in French, but also, we suspect for the first time in that great cathedral, in Te Reo Māori.

Some of our group kept watch with Bishop Pompallier in one of the side chapels during his last night in France before we left early the next morning for the long journey home to Aotearoa-New Zealand.

My memory of Notre Dame was of its gigantic size, its great antiquity and its breath-taking beauty. I am greatly relieved that the structure has not been damaged and that the damage caused by the fire will be repaired.

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We all desire peace and harmony in our lives.  We greet our own families and friends with words of peace at Christmas and New Year. Yet often the pressures and the problems and conflicts which each one of us experiences often make it difficult for us to feel at peace.

This past year has been marked by much turmoil around the world, and these last few days have shown us that here in this country there is an abhorrent amount of violence in families and communities.

While we may feel helpless when hearing the enormity of these tragedies, we can begin with ourselves, by bringing our anxieties trustingly to the Prince of Peace.   In the words of the opening prayer of the Mass for the Third Sunday of Advent, let us ask him to “prepare our hearts, and remove the sadness that hinders us from feeling the joy and hope which his presence will bestow”.

Peace was the constant greeting of Jesus to his friends and followers. No matter how troubled and anxious we are, he promises a tranquility that will calm our hearts.  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27).

As we celebrate this beautiful Christmas season, we can bring to the Christ Child our longing for peace in our own hearts and the inspiration to help build a society that is based on reconciliation, peace and justice for our young people.

In the words of the Christmas Carol, we pray:

O holy child of Bethlehem

descend to us we pray.

Cast out our sin, and enter in,

be born in us today.

– Bishop Patrick Dunn

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It features a painting of Mary and Joseph being turned away from the inn at Bethlehem, alongside a photo that shocked the world in September, 2015, showing the body of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi which was washed ashore in Turkey.  He, and his 5-year-old brother, and his mother, drowned trying to flee the conflict in Syria.

The Christmas card quotes from the Gospel of John: “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”

Christmas reminds us of God’s love: “He gave his only Son.”  

And his Son surprised everyone by sneaking as a helpless newborn baby into what really was enemy territory.  No one expected the Messiah to arrive like this.  But within weeks King Herod was seeking to destroy him.

Christmas challenges us to reflect deeply on who Jesus is, and on why he is still seen as such a threat by the powerful.

Our most secularised first-world societies still measure time as BC, Before Christ, or AD, Anno Domini, in the Year of the Lord.  The baby born in Bethlehem has had a lasting effect on the history of humanity.

We who love and honour him as the Son of God must never forget his core teaching: “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers or sisters, that you do to me.”

• Bishop Patrick Dunn

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For some years I have been troubled by the sense of rejection they often feel with regard to the Church.

Could we find some new way to converse with the LGBT community?

A recent book from Jesuit Fr James Martin seems like an answer to prayer. (The book is titled: “Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT community can enter into a relationship of respect, compassion and sensitivity.”)

Fr Martin uses the image of “Building a Bridge” between the institutional Church and the LGBT community.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that we are called to treat homosexual persons with “respect, compassion, and sensitivity”.

Fr Martin asks how we might build a two-lane bridge between the two groups so that we could walk in both directions with these attitudes in our hearts.

Some good people fear that if we celebrate Masses with LGBT groups, or sponsor programmes to help gay friends know that they are loved members of our community, it may be seen as giving tacit approval to everything that anyone says or does within that community.

But we do not raise this objection with other groups. A diocesan Mass for Catholic business leaders does not mean that the Church supports everything that such people say or do.

Respect also means that we call people by the name they prefer.

I have friends who call themselves respectively “Jim” and “James”, and it is a simple courtesy to use the right name. We no longer use the word “negro”, and Fr Martin argues that official Church teaching should similarly avoid the word “homosexual” because it is no longer favoured by the LGBT community.

Compassion calls us to “listen” to people.

What is it really like growing up as a gay boy, or a lesbian girl, or a transgender person?

Deeply embedded in Catholic Church teaching is the call to stand by all who feel marginalised or threatened.

Sensitivity prompts us to be alert to the “feelings” of others, but we cannot know their feelings unless we are their friends.

Devout Catholics may say that our first responsibility is to tell people to stop sinning.

But that was generally not the approach taken by Jesus. He was more often the butt of criticism for dining with sinners and clearly enjoying their company.

When Jesus noticed Zacchaeus looking down with interest from the tree he had climbed on the main street of Jericho, he did not first tell him to stop sinning. Instead he invited himself to the home of Zacchaeus for a meal.

For Jesus it was most often friendship first, and conversion second. We all listen most intently to those we love and those whose company we enjoy.

If the institutional Church is going to be sensitive in its use of language, we may need to move away from the phrase “objectively disordered”, which the Catechism itself uses to describe the homosexual inclination. Saying that one of the deepest parts of a person is “disordered” seems needlessly cruel.

When considering movement from the LGBT community towards the institutional Church, keeping with the bridge image, Fr Martin tries to spell out how they too might try to walk with “respect, compassion and sensitivity” towards the hierarchy and the teaching authority of the Church.

LGBT Catholics also have power, especially with the western media who are often more sympathetic to their cause than to the Church.

Despite the sense of pain or rejection which some may feel, Fr Martin invites them to resist the temptation to mock or ridicule those who may have hurt them deeply. That was never the way of Jesus.

Fr Martin concludes his beautiful book with a selection of Scripture passages accompanied by questions for reflection both for gay readers and for their friends. It is well worth reading.

— Bishop Patrick Dunn, Auckland.

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Auckland Bishop Patrick Dunn

Back in 1994, Archbishop Thomas White was the Pope’s ambassador in Wellington and he suggested it was often appropriate when possible to hold the ordination of a new bishop on the feast of one of the apostles.

So began my annual celebration with St James, although he and I did have a longer association. James is my second name, given in memory of an uncle, who died in an aircraft crash during World War II.

The Feast of James each year is a reminder to me that I have been called to be in a special sense a successor of the apostles. I know it is a high calling, but what attracts me most about the apostles is their ordinary humanity.

St Therese of Lisieux once commented that she could only be inspired by saints whom she could see had feet of clay, just like herself.

James and his brother John were fishermen on the Sea of Galilee.

They must have been a feisty pair. Jesus gave them the nickname “Boanerges” or “Sons of Thunder”. They were the two who wanted to call down fire from heaven when Jesus was rejected by a Samaritan village. They [and their mother] wanted the top spots when Jesus came into his kingdom, which predictably annoyed their companions.

James and John, with Peter, seem to have comprised our Lord’s “inner circle”. These three witnessed the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, the raising of the daughter of Jairus, the transfiguration, and the agony in the Garden.

One gets the impression that Jesus loved this ambitious trio, and they in turn loved him. Peter boasted that he would remain faithful even if all the rest ran away. James and his brother had no doubt they would be able to “drink the cup” that Jesus must drink.

Yet through all the bluster, Peter does emerge as a worthy leader, John left us his majestic fourth Gospel, and James was the first of the Twelve to shed his blood for Christ.

On reflection, what I admire most about James was his courage in leaving the familiar shores of the Sea of Galilee to accompany Jesus wherever that mission might lead.

Twenty-three years ago I experienced a similar upheaval and was asked to walk a different path, serving now as a bishop. As with every calling it has had its ups and downs.

“What is the best thing about being a bishop?” Children often ask this question. I think it is the “big picture” view of the diocese that I get from my work. I love the rich diversity of our parishes, communities and schools, and the wonderful priests and people who bring them to life.

“What is your biggest worry?” My greatest concern is the lack of priestly vocations coming from the Church in New Zealand.

The leader of our Youth Ministry Office returned from a meeting with Pope Francis in Rome earlier this year with two key thoughts spinning in her head: “Take a risk”, and “Be courageous”.

I sense that my friend St James would echo those words, as I do myself. To young men especially I would say that we all have feet of clay, but Jesus still calls us to play our part in making disciples of all nations, and New Zealand desperately needs priests. Take a risk! Be courageous!

Auckland Bishop Patrick Dunn is the publisher of NZ Catholic.

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