Episcopal Ordination of Peter A Comensoli

8 June 2011 - Address by Ordinand

 

You know that game of coordination when you try and pat you head with one hand while making circles on your tummy with the other? Well, walking around giving blessings while carrying a crosier and wearing a mitre is a bit like that. Rather demanding on the coordinating skills, may I say. I’m finding the hat a particularly strange sensation; it’s going to take a bit of getting used to.
Amongst all the intriguing aspects of tonight’s ordination, I am sure you noticed when His Eminence invested me with the three symbols of the apostolic ministry: the hat, the staff and the ring. But, did you notice what he said when he placed the mitre on my head? In fact, he said nothing; it was done is silence. And this is only appropriate, because it is the least significant of the symbols.

We might say it distinguishes the place of a bishop within the communion of the Church gathered in worship, just like vestments are worn by priests, and just as all of you are suitably dressed for the occasion. The mitre adds some distinction and dignity to the liturgical occasion, but it gets taken off when not needed.
Of course, the pastoral staff, or crozier, has a more significant symbolic value. It is, as His Eminence said, the sign of a bishop’s role as shepherd for God’s people. And may I be one that is after the heart of Jesus. Yet even the staff is not an essential sign of the apostolic ministry. An auxiliary bishop, for example, carries it only in certain limited circumstances, and as you will have noticed, none of the other bishops have their crosiers with them tonight. Like the mitre, the crozier has its value, but it too gets put aside.

It is a strange thing, however, that it is the hat and the staff that are the most obviously different things about me this evening. The two symbols that get taken off or put aside are the two things that stand out and will attract most of the ‘oohs and aahs’. Yet, the one truly essential symbol of the apostolic ministry, the one that is always to be wore and never set aside, is the one thing that probably gets least noticed, if not missed altogether. It is the ring.
Such a small, seemingly insignificant thing is a ring. Most people wear one, and mostly it is ‘just there’ with you all the time. Yet, the ring I’m now wearing is the really significant sign of all that has happened tonight.
Remember those words that Cardinal Pell said to me as he put it on my finger: “Take this ring, the seal of your fidelity.” This little band of metal is to be the sign of my fidelity to Christ and his Church. It is a seal of faithfulness not to be broken.
Yet, may I be so bold as to say that the words his Eminence spoke, and which I am now to take on as my own, are not really the first words that need to be heard about this ring. First and foremost are some words of Jesus: “take this ring, Peter, as a seal of my faithfulness to you; it is the sign that I have always remained with you and always will.” So, amongst all my own infidelities, both from my past and, no doubt, into the future, the Lord nonetheless has said to me tonight: you are mine, and always will be.
What the Lord once said to the people of Israel, he has repeated here tonight: “I will not abandon you, because my heart will not let me.” (Hos 11) The ring of a bishop is the sign, first and foremost, of God’s own heart: he will not let us go, he will not abandon us to our own unfaithfulness. I am to wear it now not because I have been faithful to God, but because God has been faithful to me.
I am to wear it as a witness to you that even a sinner like me has received that love of which there can be no greater (Jn 15). It is to be worn as a proof to you that God will love you to the very end. This little ring is the answer that the Apostle Peter said we need to have ready when we are asked about the reason for the hope that we have (1Pet 3).

For whatever mysterious reason God had in making a choice of me as a bishop, I am now his witness for you of his fidelity to us all. So in this ring is not only the seal of God’s love for me, but also the seal of our communion in the Lord. Here, in this ring God carries my family who have loved and nurtured me and put up with me; carried here also are my friends from all parts and places of my life, and from all the years of my life; carried here are the priests and people of Wollongong, whom I sadly leave tonight, along with the priests and people of Sydney, whom I gladly join tonight. In this ring God will always carry in his heart those who have loved me, and those whom I have loved.
So, a bishop’s ring is a wee thing, but a mighty symbol: it is the seal of God’s abiding love present in a bishop’s apostolic ministry to God’s people, no matter how well or poorly he exercises it. It is a constant witness to his call to serve God in his people. As St Irenaeus has put it: “God did not call me for any service I might render him; God called me because he knew that in his service I would be happy.”
Hats will be taken off, and staffs will be put aside. But the ring is always to be worn.