Clergy Leadership Conference and Retreat for Catholic Dioceses:
Ireland, England and Wales, Scotland and USA
Sponsored by the St John Vianney Centre, Pennsylvania

Mass, St Sylvester’s Church, Malahide, January 14, 2025
Homily of Archbishop Dermot Farrell

 The Jesus who confronts us in today’s Gospel is a Jesus of power: he commands the unclean spirits and they obey him (Mark 1:27). Jesus has “authority”— in the original Greek, exousia, the executive authority of a plenipotentiary (Mark 1:22). This is the ‘ideal’ Jesus of many: a Jesus full of power, who has only to say the word, and all will obey. It is the Jesus to whom we often pray, especially in “our day of trouble.”

But this Jesus isn’t the only Jesus we find in the Gospel. The Jesus in today’s Gospel is Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, and at the beginning of Mark’s story. As the Gospel progresses, Jesus becomes less powerful: in the earlier scenes in the Gospel, the power of God in him cures the sick, drives out spirits and demons, stills storms, feeds the multitudes, and raises the dead. But as his ministry progresses, his relationship with “power” evolves: we begin to see that he has no power over his disciples, or over his human opponents. In the end, on the cross, he has only the power of powerlessness—that of which St Paul speaks so eloquently in First Corinthians: “for the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” (1 Cor 1:25)

Is this not the story of the Church, and is it not the journey of our lives? Importantly, this is the story that many of those who have inspired us, and led us in the faith have embraced. This is the story of Christ, the journey of Jesus. Should it surprise us then, that this is the road on which God is bringing us as Church? But something in each of us would cling to the way of the world, with its dreams of power and success.

You know as well as I, how we are confronted by a Church that is increasingly poor: we grow poorer in terms of numbers, finance, or impact on public policy. We wonder about the viability of certain parishes, or indeed of the pastoral models that guide our planning and action. While it makes us uncertain, such poverty is not to be feared. Rather, it is to be named, and looked at in the eye, but we fool ourselves if we think that it can be addressed solely in terms of rationalisation, greater efficiencies, or new technologies. We are called to hear what “the Spirit is saying to the churches.” (see Revelation 3:22)

Time and time again, the disciples ask Jesus to return with them to their certainties. At the beginning of his mission, Jesus goes into the desert, and “Simon and those with him sought him, and [when] they found him, said to him, “All are searching for you.” And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also; for this did I come out.” (Mark 1:36–38) They want to return to the place of success; Jesus goes forward. The Church that is close to Jesus is a Church that is in mission, it is a community that goes out.

Later in the Gospel, John comes to Jesus again, and says, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not forbid him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me. For the one that is not against us is for us.” (Mark 9:38–39) The Church that is close to Jesus is an inclusive church, a community that rejoices in a common mission that is shared. The living Church of the future will be participatory or not at all.

Leadership in the Church today is a call to discover these other ways of being church that were hidden behind structures and dynamics of power. While it is easy to blame to the past, we have to acknowledge that the temptation to control is deeply written into our human nature. Learning to embrace another future can only happen if there is leadership which is committed to such a future. Such leadership is not something infused; it is something born of a coming to see Church and our mission in a different way—less us and them, more us together: “the one that is not against us is for us,” to use the words of Jesus. It is also born of a closeness to Jesus and to the journey that was his—a journey that moves from a valuing of prominence, to a valuing of compassion, and of the capacity to travel with people where they find themselves. We do this already, but to what extent do we value it as a characteristic of leadership? Leadership in this poorer Church that is being given to us, involves above all being inspired by person of Christ, being inspired by his gospel, and by the great witnesses—women and men—to his way, the way of “him who though he was rich became poor for our sakes” (see 2 Cor 8:9)—not just materially poor, but poor in terms of status, of possibilities, of culture, of attractiveness.

Let me be clear: this is not a justification of the multiple injustices that lead to the degrading living conditions so many of our sisters and brothers, in this city and beyond. No, the poverty of Christ is a call to live in another way, to rejoice in new things, to hope with another horizon.

My friends, our Church has long come into a new time, a new time of the Lord’s life with us, and a new time of our life with each other. But that life, the life that God is now giving, will be hindered in its growth in our time, not in God’s time, but in our time, without people to witness to it, to embody it, to live it, to put flesh on it (see John 10:10, the Parable of the Mustard Seed [Mark 4:30–32], and the Parable of the Seed that Grows Secretly [Mark 4:26–29]). Is this not what the people in the Capernaum saw in the Jesus who came into their synagogue? They saw someone who was alive in what he was about.

Every life is characterised by growth and change. We all change, and most of the time we grow. Wonderful and all as it is, growth comes at a cost. There are times in our families when the independence of a child, their move away from home can leave an emptiness, a sadness, even a loss. We look at old family photos, and sometimes long for the easy days of childhood. With Christ it is no different. The Gospels are the family albums of the Church: with images of the young, vibrant, powerful Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, but also with images of the mature Christ in the last hours of his life, and images of his glory at the end of time. As his ministry progresses, Jesus leaves one power behind to embrace another: though he was in the form of God, says St Paul, Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant… (Phil 2: 6–7) Will it not be the same with his Church? Will our Father not take the Mystical Body of Christ along the same route as he took his Son? From power to powerlessness, from our life with its mystery, wonder and weakness, through death, to life in the Resurrection.

As Pope Francis constantly reminds us, a poorer Church is not necessarily an impoverished one in the quality of its love and devotion to God and to our sisters and brothers. Paradoxically, a church that acknowledges its poverty, is a Church that has a better chance of being freed from a self-sufficient vision of pastoral ministry, of renewal and of preaching the gospel. God’s ways are not our ways. Maybe the big projects we envision are not what is needed; what is important is what God gives us to share. If I hear the recent Synod’s final Declaration well, is this not what the Synod means when it calls “the Church to be more participatory and missionary so that it can walk with every man and woman, radiating the light of Jesus…”? (Final Synodal Declaration, “For A Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission” 28).

“Do not be distressed. You seek Jesus, the Nazarene, the crucified. He has been raised. He is not here. Look! The place where they laid him!” (Mark 16:6) Send us your Spirit, Lord, that we may again have the hope, and the inner strength, to return to Galilee and see him there (see Mark 16:7).

+Dermot Farrell
Archbishop of Dublin