Annual National Pilgrimage to Carfin
2014
On Our Obligation to Love Our Nation

Today we gather for our Annual Pilgrimage to the National Shrine of Our Lady in Scotland. We come to thank her for the graces conferred on our Church in Scotland in the past year through her motherly intercession and we commend into her hands with great trust the future of our nation, not least in these important days when we will be deciding our constitutional destiny.

In the Scripture from the Old Testament The Lord tells Ezechiel he is a sentry. He is a watchman placed on a high tower. In ancient times walled cities posted watchmen on high towers to see what was coming from the distance. From up on high they could see what their fellow citizens on the ground could not see. But the watchmen were not placed on the towers for their own good. They were there to perform a task: to see what was approaching and to give the city a warning to prepare itself. In our days The Lord has placed our Church on this high tower to look far ahead, beyond the present moment, to the horizon where we read the signs of the times and the dawn of things to come.

When the prophet Isaiah went up on his high tower and looked out on the horizon he saw glad tidings and he lifted his voice in encouragement to the people to rejoice. Shout for your King and see The Lord restoring Zion. For our God comes to reign. Good news is always an easy message to preach. Good news is rarely met with criticism or undue scrutiny. It is understandably met with warm approval.

But when Ezechiel climbed to the top of his tower he saw a different scene. The Lord told him to warn a wicked society to renounce their evil ways or they would die in their sins. This is not as easy a message to get across. Often it is resisted, attacked, misinterpreted, twisted and ultimately rejected and ignored. Because we know from experience that this is usually the case we sometimes wonder what is the good in speaking up at all and we much prefer to keep silent. But then we remember how The Lord holds us responsible for our society and for saving its lost soul and that He will hold us to account for how well we passed on His Gospel. If we do not at least try to pass on the Word of a God we will be condemned along with our fallen society. So we have no choice but to warn and correct our fellow countrymen.

But, if that is the case then it is just as important that we try to be wise and discerning about the ways we use to transmit the Gospel to our society. If our message is a tough one for our citizens to take we must try all the harder to make it as easy and simple for them as possible, as appealing and within their grasp as we can so that they feel God's grace very near and not so far away. Because we want no one to be condemned and we want to do everything we can to bring new life to the nation we love.

In the Gospel Jesus sheds a little light on how we ought to convey His call to our society to turn back to Him. In short He suggests to us that the more love and thought we put into the style and methods we use the more hope we will have of being heard. So Jesus asks us, before we try anything else, each one of us to go out, one by one, and find a lost one personally and speak to him privately as a friend. We are not immediately to condemn his lifestyle from the rooftops but, instead, walking by his side as a friend and confidante, encourage and accompany him patiently to turn back to the light. This is much more likely to succeed than any public or blanket condemnation he hears from on high. Can our Church in Scotland learn anything from these words? Maybe. Not uncommonly we hear calls from our lay faithful for our bishops to make clear, black and white, blanket condemnations through the megaphone of the media of many kinds of lifestyles. Maybe it gets the issue off our chests but has such a strategy really led to many personal conversions or any improvement in public morality? Would not a quiet word of encouragement on the ground from you, our tens of thousands of lay faithful, to your brothers and sisters in your own homes, workplaces and neighbourhoods who are a little lost, have a more positive effect?

Jesus then suggests the next step is to gather around us two or three others councillors. What He perhaps means is for us to seek a little independent advice as to what to do next. Maybe our approach has been a little limited. Maybe two or three heads looking at it will be better than one. Maybe fresh eyes might see things in a different way and could suggest other solutions that would be more fruitful. Pope Francis has asked the Church to make space for women, the elderly and the young to be given positions of leadership and decision-making in the Church. No-one can change our doctrine which is given to us by The Lord Himself but maybe the mature, the maternal, the young would come at things with a different style, language and method or put the same truth in a less threatening, more patient or contemporary way. In this digital age the medium is almost as important as the message and we all need good counsel on better ways of getting the Gospel across.

Jesus says only after all these other steps have been exhausted should we report the matter to the community, that is bring it out into public debate. You can understand why this is the last resort for The Lord because the public square is always much more contentious and unpredictable and is a forum where misunderstanding and offence are rife. What Jesus means is that we should not seek to reform our people by starting with proclaiming everything out in the open. It can too easily be characterised as harsh condemnation and can all too readily be misconstrued as us using a hammer to crack hazelnut. Instead our response to the waywardness of our culture has to be seen to be proportionate and should aim at milder interventions on the ground rather than falling into the devil's trap of the blunt sound byte over the airwaves.

Finally, only when all else has failed, are we then to treat our culture like the tax collectors of old. But care here too. How did Jesus treat the tax collector? With even greater love and even more tender pastoral concern. Sometimes a culture becomes so hardened against the Gospel that it can no longer be reasoned with. Then we have to call it to conversion. But this call must now, more than ever, sound like the voice of a mother whose heart is pierced with the most tender love for her ailing ones and whose arms are stretched out to embrace them with the most intense maternal care.

As St. Paul says in the Second Reading, the Church can never abandon our society because the Gospel binds us to the world like a mother with child bound together in one bloodstream of mutual love. Yes we have a grave responsibility to encourage our fellow citizens and leaders to uphold human dignity and the commandments of God but our real obligation is to love our nation just as much as we love our Church, and our love is proved only when our countrymen are convinced in their hearts that we mean them no harm or condemnation but only lasting goodness and life.

We gather to pray for Scotland one week away from the most significant decision our country will face in our lifetime: whether we will become an independent state or remain part of the British state. The choice is about each voter's constitutional preference. The Church has no preference one way or the other because the choice is not per se a moral one. That is to say no one who votes one way or another can be considered wrong or bad or stupid for doing so. So let's, for the remainder of the campaign, be good Christians and do away with any insults or nastiness. Instead, in a spirit of grace and charity, let's presume good faith and good reasons all around and try to keep our fellow citizens of one heart and in mutual love, irrespective of their views. The Church, as we said, has no view at all on what kind of state we will be and we will gladly accept the will of the people. These people and and their politicians are quite rightly setting their sights on 18th September and it's aftermath.

But, we have to be the sentries or watchmen for our land. Whatever the outcome of the vote, independence or union, on 19th September Scotland will still be a country and will remain so into the next generation and we'll beyond and we, the watchmen of nothing less than the future salvation of our beloved nation, are beginning to set our sights on a further horizon with an emerging new vision of what kind of society we want to be: a nation that once again puts its hope in God and the truth of the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, having been convinced of His goodness and grace by a Catholic Church of whose wise and loving care Scotland has once and for all time become convinced.

We entrust all our hopes today to our Blessed Mother. She with the Holy Spirit made Pentecost possible and will do so again for our Church and nation. It is her Son who stands before us today saying: See I make all things new!