15.11.2022
Remembrance Sunday in Castleknock and Mulhuddart with Clonsilla
Parishioners of Castleknock and Mulhuddart with Clonsilla and their Rector, the Revd Colin McConaghie, were joined by Archbishop Michael Jackson for their services on Remembrance Sunday (November 13).
In each church there was an act of remembrance for people from the parish and other parishes who gave their lives in service for the freedom of people worldwide. He said this was a legacy we should remember as we become more and more accustomed to a freedom that is always fragile and today still relies on the self–sacrifice of millions of people. “As we remember them let us honour them and let us do so in the space of a community of faith to whom they belonged and whose values they imbibed and lived out – for others as for themselves,” he commented.
In his sermon the Archbishop recalled the parishes’ contribution to the recently launched report ‘The Lord looks on the Heart part 2: International Voices from the Parishes of Dublin and Glendalough’ by the Revd Prof Anne Lodge. The report features voices of people from the parish and other parishes in the dioceses and respondents focused on why they became members of the parish, why they stayed and what they wanted to keep giving as their service and contribution to parish and diocesan life as well has what they wanted to see changing. He said he had learned a lot from the report and thanked parishioners for being involved.
He said he returned to the parishes having thought about the shift of thinking since his last visit during the summer. That shift took him from diversity to discernment, from respect to recognition and from mission to ministry. “All of this energy of movement comes together in the one word: opportunity,” he said.
He said that diversity alone was not enough and that fresh discernment was needed to enable diversity to flourish. Respect was not sufficiently defined to enable a range of people make a critical and compassionate difference but recognition is a public honouring of someone that moves from abstract to concrete. Mission, he noted, is central to church life. “Mission goes out; those who receive mission and respond to it rejoice to do so; and then these people come as fully fledged children of God and members of the church of God; and they come, like the Son of God, who inspired those who went to them, to live among us, to make their abode among us, as St John’s Gospel tells us. It is called both immigration and incarnation. And it is for this reason that I see ministry as an essential next stage of mission: ministry with and ministry from, not ministry to; mission is no longer a one–way street,” he stated.
