Sermon preached on the Occasion of Bishop Andrew’s Installation and Enthronement in the Bishopric of Cork

in the Cathedral Church of Saint Fin Barre, Cork by

The Right Reverend Andrew Orr, Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross

My favourite story for a day like today is an old one, and apologies to Youghal parishioners who have heard it before (although originally about a Rector).

Just before his retirement, a bishop goes to visit one of the oldest members of the diocese, a lady approaching her hundredth year.

“Well,” she says, “the next bishop won’t be as good as you.”

“That’s very kind of you, but you can’t know that for sure,” he replies.

“I do know it,” she says. “There have been eight bishops in my time, and each one was worse than the last.”

Like most parish rectors, I have stood in various vestries and looked at my predecessors’ portraits hanging on the walls.

Here in St Fin Barre’s, my predecessors’ names are literally carved in stone. And if that isn’t hard enough, their portraits cover the walls of the dining room in the See House. There is nothing like that to make one feel the immense weight of tradition and one’s inadequacy for the task. But I’m sure I’m not the first to feel that.

To understand what it means to be a bishop in this unique place, I want to take the example of two saints. One is Fin Barre himself, patron of this diocese. In the sixth century, Fin Barre sought out the isolation of Gougane Barra. Like many of the great Irish saints, he realised that before we can speak to the world on behalf of God, we must first learn to listen to God in the silence. He retreated to that tiny island in a mountain lake to cultivate a life of prayer.

But the story of Fin Barre doesn’t stop there. The light which Fin Barre received in the silence of Gougane Barra could not be hidden under a bushel. True prayer always compels us towards community and neighbour. Fin Barre left the solitary lake and went downriver, along the River Lee, to the marshes where he founded a monastery. Around that monastery people gathered, not just to pray, but to learn, to work and to live together. That small community grew into a great centre of learning, giving rise to the famous proverb: “Where Fin Barre taught, let Munster learn.”

This tells us something profound about our identity as a diocese. The very city and community of Cork were born out of a monastery. They were born out of a community that prayed together, worked together and studied together.

Our world is increasingly fractured, fragmented and lonely. People are deeply connected digitally but profoundly isolated spiritually. The Church must be, first and foremost, an answer to this isolation. We are called to build communities where people are known, loved and held in prayer.

Community building is not easy, which brings us to our second saint, Saint Francis of Assisi, whose feast we celebrate today. If Fin Barre reminds us of the scholarly and learned basis of faith, Francis reminds us of its radical, joyful and inclusive simplicity. Francis was famously told by Christ from the crucifix at San Damiano, “Go and rebuild my Church, which, as you can see, is falling into ruin.”

Francis initially thought this meant repairing the physical walls. But he soon realised that Christ was calling him to rebuild the human community, what St Peter describes as the living stones. Francis did this by breaking down barriers. He embraced the leper, preached peace across lines of conflict, cared for the whole of God’s creation and lived in solidarity with the poor. He showed us that Christian community is not a closed fortress protecting itself from the world, but an open circle with what my predecessor liked to call fuzzy edges, expanding to include the marginalised, the ones who feel the Church has rejected them, the broken and the searching.

How do we achieve this? How do we find our way through the complexities of leadership and modern life? The answer is in the reading we heard today from the Book of Proverbs:

“For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; discretion will watch over you, and understanding will guard you.” (Proverbs 2:10-11)

Notice where wisdom goes first. Into the heart. Not so much the brain, but the emotions, the soul. When wisdom settles in the heart, leadership is less about corporate management (always a danger for bishops) and more about spiritual discernment.

We will face many decisions together as a diocese. We must navigate changing demographics; we have to grapple with the Church as an institution, which is often frustrating, and with a society which is increasingly secularised. But the promise of Scripture is that when we seek God, discretion will watch over us, and understanding will guard us. I know I don’t have all the answers. You can’t outsource your thinking to anyone else. The wisdom that guarded Fin Barre in his hermitage, the wisdom that guided Francis in the streets of Assisi, is the very same wisdom promised to us today.

Also, this wisdom is not meant for the bishop alone; it belongs to the whole body. True wisdom recognises that the bishop is far from the only place where the Holy Spirit works. The Holy Spirit has been poured out upon all of you here today: clergy and lay people alike. And we need to recognise that wisdom can be found far beyond our walls: in other churches, other faith traditions and in all people of goodwill. And perhaps especially in those who feel far away from the churches, like the LGBT communities, and whose prophetic voices we must learn to hear.

Community building cannot happen without prayer together. When we pray as a community, our individual agendas fade away. We stop looking at each other with suspicion or division, and we start looking together at Christ. In prayer, our hearts are aligned with His heart. In prayer, we find forgiveness, tolerance and even acceptance.

In a week when the spectre of communal strife, which we all thought had begun to fade, rears its ugly head again in Portadown, we remember the prayer ascribed to St Francis which the two Archbishops of Armagh have asked us all to pray this weekend:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is error, the truth;
Where there is doubt, the faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

And may this Diocese of Cork, Cloyne and Ross once again become a beacon of faith, a sanctuary of prayer and a vibrant, loving community where all are welcome.

Amen.