From a homily preached by Fr Ian Hellyer in the parish of Our Lady of the Angels, Saltash (St Boniface is the patron of the Diocese of Plymouth)
St Boniface, a Devon man who
hailed from Crediton, was a Benedictine monk, bishop and martyr, but perhaps
most of all remembered as one of the most effective missionaries of his time.
He is largely responsible for the conversion of Germany to the faith, and today
is greatly revered in Germany – many of whom make a pilgrimage to Crediton
today.
The story
of St Boniface, and especially his missionary exploits, is immensely impressive. There is so
much to it I thought I couldn’t possibly do justice to it in the homily! In
this diocese today we could do with people with this kind of faith, passion and
drive to evangelise the many people who today do not know Christ and His power
to save.
So what
can we learn from St Boniface as an exemplary missionary to help us become
better missionaries ourselves? I want to share 3 things:
- Zeal for souls: St Boniface had a tremendous zeal for
the salvation of souls. He longed for those deceived by false gods, for
example the god Thor, to come to know the truth of Jesus Christ our
Saviour. He had such drive because he believed that if they did not come
to the Truth they would lose their souls. And what is true for him then,
is necessary for the evangelist or missionary in our own time, including
us here in this parish. If we do not believe that someone’s salvation is
on the line unless they receive the grace of Christ, if we don’t believe
that, then of course we won’t have much motivation to make any missionary
efforts. And I think this is one of our great problems. What has crept in
to our mindset today is what is called ‘universalism’. This is the error
of thinking that everyone will be saved no matter what they do or believe.
The effect of universalism is to remove any motivation to evangelise. We
do not see any universalism in St Boniface at all. He knew that salvation
was not automatic! To be saved we need a saviour and the only saviour is
Jesus Christ, true God and true Man. But we today have gradually accepted
a false notion of God’s love that portrays God as such a nice chap that He’ll
let anyone through the pearly gates! It is a false notion not least
because salvation is not a question of “letting people in”! The way to
eternal life is through saying “yes” to Christ and His grace, and “no” to
everything that opposes Christ including the Devil. So God is not the one
stopping us from entering eternal life – it is in fact the consequence of us freely choosing to go against
God. Every sin we commit is a “no” to God. Every refusal of God’s grace is
a “no” to God. You see, God is not a despot who forces us to do what He
wants, against our will – which is what universalism is actually implying!
Universalism justifies its all-inclusive salvation by God’s love, but it
totally neglects that human beings are blessed with free will (part of the
mystery of being made in God’s image). Love does not force – Love desires
and is willing to sacrifice but it does not force. So God does
indeed desire that all men be saved. And God became man to sacrifice
Himself totally on the cross in order to redeem us. The way to salvation
is opened before us, but that does not mean God will violate our free will
and force us in! Universalism is an error and is particularly effective in
making us non-missionaries. The temptation to be universalist is always
there whenever we feel uncomfortable about sharing the gospel! St Boniface
was no universalist – yes God loved the pagans in Germany, God desired
they come to salvation, but it had to be through their own free will to
accept grace and cooperate with it. That is what St Boniface went to share
with those people, and he did so with tremendous effect – thanks be to
God.
- Prayer: to be effective
missionaries like St Boniface, we need to deepen our prayer life. That
might seem the opposite to what we need to do! Surely being missionary is
about going out there and evangelising people, sharing the Good News in
appropriate ways to those who will listen? But there is a danger here
also. The danger here, if we overcome the error of universalism is that
being filled with zeal for the salvation of souls we fall for what might
be called ‘activism’. This can be thought of as thinking that it all
depends on my actions. This sort of error is thinking that evangelisation
occurs through our human effort! We have zeal, we have desire for people
to know the grace of Christ, and we press on with ideas we come up with to
attract people to the faith. The error here is not that we have a desire
for the salvation of souls (that’s good) but that we misdirect it. The
error is forgetting that evangelisation can only occur through grace, through God’s initiative; that it is
the work of the Holy Spirit to evangelise. So the importance of prayer for
a missionary or evangelist is to properly focus everything upon God. We
must cultivate through a deepening prayer life dependence upon God.
For the mission to evangelise people is not our mission but God’s mission.
It is God’s work not ours’! We must pray not only so that we do that which
God wants us to do but also that we do not get in the way of what God is
doing! Our own ego, our desire for success, our longing to be seen to be
effective can all get in the way of the mission of God! A life of prayer
focuses us upon God, not only during times of prayer but throughout our
whole lives. You see there is a danger also for us to conclude when we
read a life of a saint like St Boniface, that his success was because he
happened to be one of those people with special gifts. We might conclude
that we do not have those gifts so we cannot do the sort of thing St
Boniface did. But that is a false conclusion! St Boniface was successful
not because of his ordinary human abilities but because of the grace of
Christ working through him. And the very fearful truth is that the same
grace that filled St Boniface is available to us! It is not a question of
him happening to have the right sort of gifts – all necessary gifts for
the work of evangelisation come from the Holy Spirit who builds us up in
the grace Christ won for us on the cross, flowing from the love of God the
Father. All of us are called to be part of the mission of God to save
souls, not in our own strength, but in the strength of the grace of Christ
in us, that comes from our baptism, our confirmation, our reconciliation
to Christ when we repent of sin, and our receiving of Christ’s Body and
Blood in a state of grace at the Mass. To be effective evangelists today
we do not need people who are great in the eyes of the world, we need
people who are humble, who do not think they have much to offer Christ,
who are painfully aware of their weakness and failings, but who are
willing to offer themselves to Him to be filled with His Life, His grace.
We are called if you like to be humble foot soldiers in the battle for the
salvation of souls. Christ is our commissioned officer giving us the orders
– there are some Saints who are our NCO’s – but all the rest of us are
foot soldiers. We have no idea really of how this battle is to be won, but
what we need to do is our little bit in the battle. And we will only be
like that if we pray, if we cultivate in us a dependence on God.
- Faith: And so finally we need to
operate by faith. We need to let go of all human ideologies and human
strategies for effectiveness, and fall before the wisdom of God which is
the folly of the Cross. If you think about it, no human ideology, no human
strategy, could have come up with the solution to humankind’s deepest most
profound problem: death, sin, and evil. Yes we can easily see we need a
mighty saviour to save us from death, sin and evil. But what strategy
would we have come up with? We
certainly would not have come up with God incarnating (becoming man) and
sacrificing Himself on a cross. So we do not need clever ideas! We do not
need even to be successful! What we need is faith in Christ crucified. We
need faith in God’s strategy for the salvation of souls – the death
of Christ on the Cross and His Church of humble foot soldiers. Outwardly
the cross was the very opposite of effectiveness! Outwardly the cross was
the very opposite of success! But in the wisdom of God it was the folly of
the Cross, of the sacrifice of Christ, that redeems us and makes it
possible for all men to be saved. So the missionary does not need
wonderful human strategies as if he were about to build a business or
something. We do not need anything like that. It is God’s business not our’s!
What we need is faith – nothing can replace faith. And the good news is
that we have been given faith in our baptism. We need to cooperate with
that gift already given us. We need to practice living by faith, trusting
in God’s strategy and not judging things by human standards.
So my
brothers and sisters, let us call on the prayers of our wonderful patron and
exemplar St Boniface. Let us ask him
to pray for us in our own time that we be renewed in our calling to be
missionaries of our Saviour Jesus Christ – that we be filled with a holy zeal
for souls and leave aside the error of universalism. Let us ask St Boniface to
pray that we deepen our dependence upon God through a deepening of our own
prayer lives, so that growing in humility we may not get in God’s way but
become disciples that He can use for His mission. And finally let us ask St
Boniface, and indeed Our Lady of the Angels, to pray that we grow in the faith
given in our baptism, the faith of Jesus Christ crucified and risen.
Amen.
St Boniface, Principal Patron of
the Diocese of Plymouth
First
reading Acts
26:19-23
Psalm 116
Second reading Romans
5:1-5
Gospel
Acclamation Jn10:14
Alleluia,
alleluia! I am the good shepherd, says
the Lord, I know my own sheep and my own know me. Alleluia!
Gospel John 10:11-16
