The disruption of the arson at the Cathedral has shown us that we are resilient people and that we can adapt to change.
This is good because change is the only constant in life.
If we had planned sharing churches there would have been a riot.
Instead, we have shown that we can move easily between churches although everyone has the inconvenience of time, travel, and the disruption of regular patterns.
Palmerston North is a small city and we are very lucky that between Feilding and Foxton on a usual Sunday, we have Masses in 8 churches.
In other parts of the diocese and of the church priests and parishioners travel many kilometres for Mass.
In some parts of the world, the priest visits each parish once a month or once a year. Worse, in some parts of the world, consecrated hosts are delivered by ship to inaccessible islands or parachuted into remote communities.
Perhaps one day the College of Bishops might address this singularly important question: Is the celebration of the Eucharist central to the life of the Church?
With the disruption we have seen again how we can move between places.
The traditional parish structure of one priest, one parish, and one parishioner group is no longer our reality. Now we have the “trans-parishioner” who moves between parishes and masses, and the “trans-priest” who ministers to multiple communities. Together, this creates “the trans-parish model” where everyone identifies with more than one parish.
This model is a missionary one, where the mission is not in the parish office, but out on the road. It is a more campervan model than a hotel one where customers book into stay.
It is a disrupted model that brings its own challenges.
The call to mission is not new and Ascension is an example of it.
The angel’s jibe, “Men of Galilee why are you standing here gapping into the sky” could be reframed:
“Why are you still standing here gapping into the sky and not about the Master’s work?”
The Apostolic Command (Matthew) was not to go and build edifices, safe devotions and introspective worship but to go out and proclaim the good news (Mark).
For too long, baptism (which means immersion or being dipped in water) has been a cultural practice or a private family affair, robbed of its deeper meaning, which is the conversion of the heart and the acceptance of the Vocation to Christianity.
Baptism symbolises conversion and the call, it doesn’t replace them.
For many centuries, the Church’s liturgy did not have an Ascension Sunday and it didn’t treat it as a special or separate event.
Rather, it always sees it as part of the Easter/Resurrection narrative of revealing the incarnation of God in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God.
When we see Ascension as separate from the larger Easter narrative, it becomes a special moment when we wonder about the Second Coming and forget to look around at the reality of life and the needs that are in front of us all.
So we end up “looking into the sky” wondering about the eternal verities and forget to look around.
The Easter/Ascension narrative prepares us to become the People of Pentecost, who are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to engage with the world as it is.
Fr Joe