Jubilee Year of Sion Community

Sermon preached by Msgr Pat Lynch, Founder of Sion Community, on the occasion of the 25 Anniversary Mass of Sion Community - 8 December 2009 

Introduction

I greet you all this evening in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  I warmly honour you all as members of Sion Community. I wish also to acknowledge those founding members who are not present and those who have gone to their eternal reward. I give a heart rending welcome to Ann McGee who was with me that evening when this community came into being on the 8 December 1984. I greet Michelle and Peter Moran who among our founding members, have consistently journeyed with me over the last 25 years.

I cordially thank Fr Gerard Kelly our President for asking me to celebrate and preach tonight.

Called to Celebrate

If festivity were to vanish from peoples’ lives; if the overburdened consciences of us Catholics caused us to say “no” to happiness offered us seven times by the Sermon on the Mount; if Sion Community worn out by activity, were to lose the source of the Spirit of celebration; if joy and happiness faded away from us, where on earth could still be found the springboard for joy hope and communion?

It is this thirst for joy that I sense among you our young people. For you as for every generation it is strong to the point of anguish. It is this thirst for joy that us older people long for so that the struggles and aspirations that the years bring, can lift our confidence and bring us close to the smiling God who says to Mary tonight “rejoice you have won favour with the Lord”.

If the sense of festival fades with us, will we still have the energy to keep searching ever anew for evangelising the rising generations.

What give us this evening the ability and desire to be jubilant? I think that it can be described in one word S.I.O.N.

S: Start of foundation

It was a beautiful evening. The sun had just set and the weather was hot and sunny. We arrived in a chauffeur driven car to a luxurious hotel, where the tables were sumptuously set for an evening banquet. Following the banquet we then adjourned to a large drawing room where tables abounded in the form of a board meeting. We sat down, discussed, planned and financially budgeted for the inauguration of a new community for evangelisation.

Nothing could be further from reality. It was a very cold frosty December evening in Coalville Leicestershire on 8 December 1984. Anne and Pat McGee had arrived in Coalville to discuss the notion of evangelisation and our desire to set in motion a practical patenting of Vatican 2 with an Apostolate of Evangelisation. We finished our evening Mass in honour of Our Lady’s Feast and occupied a back room in the Presbytery until the early hours of the next morning. Around 2:00am we retired having exhausted all conversation but agreeing and committing ourselves to working towards the formation of a new community which we decided that night would be call Sion Community. At that stage we had no money, no personnel, no premises, no training and no opportunity for the practical outworking of this Godly dream. The next morning 9 December we went across to Melbourne in Derbyshire and organised a Parish Mission for September 1985 to be carried out by eight people. We now had a focus Mission in mind and about 6 -8 months for God to give us the right people. This he did in Sr. Agnes Anglim, Rob and Sue Coyne, Michelle and Pete Moran and not forgetting Audrey Gibbs my loyal and faithful secretary.  I only wish that Pat were here tonight to view and congratulate you all on making it a reality. We celebrate in remembering his name.

I: Initiatives

Before Jesus went back to the Father, having conquered sin and death, He gave a challenge to his followers:

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." (Mt. 28:19).

On the day of Pentecost, three thousand said “yes” to the challenge.

It was quick growth for the early Church. We could say that it has always been God’s plan for the Church to grow, at least steadily, if not in a spectacular form.

The Holy Spirit has always promoted the advancement of the Gospel with new and various strategies. Sometimes He raises up great men and women saints and mystics. He calls all into contemplative prayer. He raises up strong apostolates to challenge the current culture. He calls all the Baptized, Priests and Religious into their proper vocations. But, above all, The Holy Spirit inspires powerful evangelization which has the potential to draw multitudes of people into commitment to Christ, to each other, and to the Church. The Holy Spirit becomes a burning fire which permeates us and opens us up to a ministry of service.

The Holy Spirit being the “agent of evangelisation”, gives vision to new communities to engage in the active work of evangelisation. Sion Community is one of these. We need to celebrate.

O: Orientation

The goal of the Church's mission is to illumine all peoples with the light of the Gospel as they journey through history towards God, so that in Him they may reach their full human potential and fulfillment. We need a longing and a passion to illumine all peoples with the light of Christ that shines on the face of the Church, so that all may be gathered into the one human family, under God's loving fatherhood.

It is in this perspective that we in Sion struggle and celebrate the challenge. I am only strongly reiterating what was so frequently affirmed by the Church in “Ad Gentes”, “Evanagelii Nuntiandi” and “Redemptoris Missio”. Sion like the Church works not to extend its power or assert its dominion, but to lead people to Christ. We seek only to place ourselves at the service of the Church, because we believe that "the effort to proclaim the Gospel to the people of today... is a service rendered to the Christian community and also to the whole of humanity" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 1), which "has experienced marvelous achievements but which seems to have lost its sense of ultimate realities and of existence itself" (Redemptoris Missio, 2).

On this evening dedicated to our Silver jubilee, I recall in prayer all of you who have consecrated your lives exclusively to the work of evangelization. I mention especially the men and women of Sion who have borne witness to the spread the Kingdom of God and are now reaping its reward in heaven.

In our orientation we are called to be “the salt of the earth and the light of the world”. This must be our mission and apostolic priority, hence our call to celebrate.

N: Now & New

Few of us who are old enough would deny that our church and culture are very different now to 1984 when the Community was founded. Just last night as I surfed the web I found out that in Japan scientists have fertilised an egg from one male donor and two mothers. There are massive ethical, moral, lived and scientific differences. Not all of these are in line with Catholic teaching. You could say that we are a “generation now of decisions”. The effects of modern issues are taking their toll on us to varying degrees. There is a breakdown in the secular world. “A civilisation in decline” says Bernard Lonergan, “digs its own grave with relentless consistency”.

Now is also a time of darkness for our Church in these Isles. We see a lack of transcendental awareness and a moral inability on the Church’s part to proclaim.

Yet, it seems to me that no matter how bad the economic, moral and political disruption, people can reject the transient value system and seek the truth of God.

That is where we as a community can continue to speak into this “New Springtime” of evangelisation. Could it be true that the Lord is preparing us his followers to bring light into darkness, gloom into glory, and faith into fulfillment?

This is a great time to build and a great time to celebrate.

Conclusion

I have given us four reasons, as an acrostic, in the word S.I.O.N. why we can and should celebrate. As I grow older, the more I find my celebration in the one to whom I turn. Yet celebrating faces count even more than words. They express friendship, care, concern and conviction. Nothing can be more beautiful than the celebrating face of one who has been rendered transparent by the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

Surely, Mary’s face must have shone brightly as she exclaimed,

“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour”.

May we be guided in our missionary activity by the Blessed Virgin Mary, Star of New Evangelization, who brought Christ into the world to be the light of the nations and to carry salvation "to the ends of the earth" (Acts 13:47).

I close by congratulating and thanking you all for making the last 25 years so exciting, productive, challenging, but above all it has been and is a pleasure to know and work with you all, in building God’s Kingdom.