Gospel Joy: Following the example of Our Lady

From the very beginning of the pontificate of Pope Francis, he has placed great emphasis on Mary, the Mother of God. At the end of his apostolic exhortation "Evangelii Gaudium" he refers to her as the Mother of Evangelization, showing her role not only in the earthly life of Jesus, but also her presence and role over the centuries in the mission of Church. Jesus dying on the cross entrusted her to his disciple John, through whom he entrusted his Mother to the whole Church and all believers. Through this act Mary, the Mother of God, became also our Mother.

Te see the attitude of Mary in the reception of Jesus and the Gospel  we can consider certain passages from the Scripture that show both contemplative and active side of her life. Mary agreed to be the Mother of God - "let it happen to me as you have said" (Lk 1:38) and she "stored up all these things in her heart" (Lk 2:52). But she also "went as quickly as she could into the hill country" (Lk 1:39); and "near the cross of Jesus stood his mother" (Jn 19:25). She was also praying with the disciples before Pentecost.

These fragments can teach us Christians that our proclamation should be a result of our contemplation that is its source. We can't preach the Gospel without our personal meeting with Christ. Christianity is not a system or an ideology, we don't preach anything like that. We preach a Person. Therefore we won't be able to speak about somebody without our meeting with this person. Otherwise it will be our words, but not testimony that we will be able to give even in difficult situations. Mary was the closest to Jesus from his Incarnation and birth till his death on the cross and she is still in the heaven. Following her example we can learn how to be close to Jesus in our life. Nobody can teach us this better than his Mother. It is an interesting fact also that these two aspects of preaching are very important in our Dominican tradition and spirituality. The motto Contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere emphasizes both the contemplative and the active sides of our preaching.

Mary, Virgin and Mother

you who, moved by the Holy Spirit,

welcomed the word of life

in the depths of your humble faith:

as you gave yourself completely to the Eternal One,

help us to say our own "yes"

to the urgent call, as pressing as ever,

to proclaim the good news of Jesus.

Mother of the living Gospel, pray for us.

Gospel Joy: Loving one another

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:34-5)

These simple words of Jesus are the great charter of Christianity. The heart of the Gospel is love. Love of God and love of neighbour are the two hinges on which hang 'all the Law and the Prophets' (Mt 22:36-40). Moral rules are still important for human flourishing, but only insofar as they find their perfection in love. And love is ultimately defined as seeking the good of the other.

We cannot speak of the joy of the Gospel, then, without locating that joy within a loving heart. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis keeps returning to this touchstone of love. The word 'love' permeates the whole document. To set the tone, the Holy Father connects love and joy right at the beginning, when he speaks of 'the quiet joy of [God's] love' (§2). 

We are often tempted to think of joy and love as fleeting emotions, but we are being invited here to consider them as more permanent dispositions. Both joy and love must be understood as human activities that endure through time. Indeed, the permanence of joy and love in our hearts is only achievable when we draw on the eternal joy and love found in God. 'God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy' (§3). The Pope reiterates that joy endures; it is no fleeting feeling of a hollow happiness. Rather, real joy comes from 'our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved' (§6).

As a result, joy leads to an 'enriching friendship' with God (§8). This, in fact, brings us back to love. For St Thomas Aquinas, friendship with God is just another description for self-giving love (caritas in Latin, agape in Greek). This caritas is a superhuman love. Indeed, one of the striking points made by Pope Francis is this: 'We become fully human when we become more than human' (§8). That is, we realise our full humanity when we allow ourselves to be drawn up into the divine love, that love which seeks not selfish gain but constantly gives itself freely for the benefit of others. The self-emptying love of God is most fully revealed on the Cross, for here is 'love in its most radical form' (§12).

Pope Francis embraces Vinicio Riva

Is there not, however, a problem of priorities: does love within our community not conflict sometimes with showing love to those outside? Our Lord is obviously speaking to his disciples, and refers to the love they must show within the Christian community. Doesn't this run contrary to the strong themes in Pope Francis's preaching about the Christian priority to go and preach outside our community? The Pope says that we must firstly evangelise those who do not know Christ. Certainly, a superficial reader might imagine that he is opting for evangelisation over and above building up the Church. He quotes the now-famous Aparecida document of the Latin American bishops in 2007, saying we 'cannot passively and calmly wait in our church buildings' (§15). Elsewhere he has said: 'I prefer a thousand times more a Church that is damaged [by external encounters] than a Church that is sick from closing in on itself. Go out, go out!'

On the other hand, we can't forget about our own community. The cliché that 'charity begins at home' echoes St Paul's insistence that Christians mustn't abandon the needs of their families (cf. 1 Tim 5:8). Tertullian noted in AD 197 that the pagans were disgusted at the evident love shown between Christians, specifically their charitable concern for the most needy (Apologeticum, 39, 7; cf. Matt. 25). But should we be surprised at this? We Christians must love our brothers and sisters in need; 'for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen' (1 Jn 4:20).

Happily, that false dichotomy between proclamation and service is easily resolved. Pope Francis on joy should be read in the light of his predecessor on love. Benedict XVI dedicated his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, to Christian love. In it, he argued that there is no dichotomy between kerygma (proclamation, one of Francis' favourite terms), leitourgia (the sacraments), and diakonia (the service of charity), and that universal love goes hand-in-hand with our special solicitude for the neediest among our own ecclesial community (DCE, §25; cf Gal 6:10). After all, we proclaim the Gospel in and through our love. As St Paul says, we need 'faith working through love' (Gal. 5:6).

Now, in Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis has enthusiastically taken up this great theme of love. Love is the fulness of the Law (§161). Our loving is a response to God, who first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10). From God's love, we receive 'a call to grow in faith' (§160), and we should respond by seeking baptism or (if we are already Christians) to renew our baptismal commitment to Christ. We cannot do this on our own steam, but receive the free gift of God's healing waters, if only we ask him.

L.O.V.E.

And this love is not a special preserve of the 'holy' or the 'saints'. Since we are all called to be 'missionary disciples' (§120), we are all called to share in, and share out, this divine love. As St John puts it so succinctly:

'He who does not love, does not know God; for God is love' (1 Jn 4:8).

And again, in case you missed it:

'God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him' (1 Jn 4:16).

Gospel Joy: Communicating the Joy of the Gospel today

“I have said these things to you, so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (Jn 15:11).

In a bar the other day, I was with somebody who had never met a friar before. At one point they said something along the lines of “he’s pretty funny, how come he’s a monk?” Now there’s a few of my brethren who might dispute the truth of the first half of statement, particularly after another bad pun. However, it’s the implicit sentiment that ought to be cause for concern. Why would somebody presume that laughing a lot and being funny were unsuitable qualities for somebody who has chosen religious life? How must the message be perceived, if the messengers are expected to be glum?

Clearly we’re doing something wrong. Perhaps the media portrays us as gloomy, perhaps they make out that our “good news” is nothing more than a restrictive set of morals? Pope Francis notes that some Christian lives “seem like Lent without Easter” (EG6). But this need not be the dominant narrative. Each one of us can change this and there are enough of us to make a real impact.

Joyful Dominicans with Pere Pierre of the Nobertines at the Monastery of
Our Lady of Sarrance, France

My favourite of the dismissals in the Revised Translation of the Mass is “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life”. It strikes me that this command is at the heart of the solution. If we radiate the joy proper to people who have just participated in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, if we allow the Gospel to sculpt our hearts, and if we do not hide our faith away, other people will surely start to ask, “How can these people restrained by this ‘rigid morality’ be so joyful? Might there be more to it?” Then we can be ready to give an account for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15), we can explain –in the words of Benedict XVI, which Pope Francis says he never tires of repeating (for they are the very heart of the Gospel) –, that: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” (EG 7).

Pope Francis is an example to us all in this. He has quickly gained a reputation for being a warm and joyful presence. Yet when asked, “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?", his response was: "I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner."

His joy stems neither from deluding himself that he is not a sinner, nor from deluding himself that there is no such thing as sin, but rather from a trust in the infinite mercy of the Lord. The joy of knowing that Christ came to save us from our sins. As the Holy Father says, "God's mercy has no limits if he who asks for mercy does so in contrition and with a sincere heart."  We have good news for people and Jesus commands us not to keep it to ourselves. Pope Francis tells us that we “cannot passively and calmly wait in our church buildings”; we need to move “from a pastoral ministry of mere conservation to a decidedly missionary pastoral ministry”. This task continues to be a source of immense joy for the Church: “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Lk 15:7)(cf. EG 15).

Obviously for Dominicans, as members of the Order of Preachers, we ought to be out there preaching the message of joy that God loves each one of us. However, that command at the end of Mass is to all of us, and where the clergy are commanded to go, the laity already live and work. The New Evangelisation is the responsibility of us all and we must work together to achieve it.

The view from Fanjeaux - Mission territory for St Dominic
and the early Dominicans

Let us not wait, though, until we are perfect to start telling people about the Good News: the need for the Joy of Gospel to be taken outside the Church means we don’t have time for that! Let us strive to become more perfect along the way. We will be called hypocrites when we fail to live up to the standards we strive for, and we must be humble and ask for forgiveness when this happens. As Julia says in Brideshead Revisited:  “the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy.” We must not, though, dismayed by our frequent short-comings, succumb to the temptation to believe that the difficult parts of the Faith ought to be dropped or given up on. Those who do this harm themselves and the unity of the Church in its Mission; they sell themselves short and undermine those striving to uphold the fullness of the Church’s teachings. Perfection gained at the cost of lowering our aim is a shallow victory indeed. Perhaps it is in holding to our values, but with a renewed humility at our failures, a joyful admission of our faults, knowing that as we do so we come closer to Christ, that we will be the visible signs of a contradictory joy that the world needs? Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP speaks of how we need “to labour make the Church a place of evident freedom, courage, joy and hope. Truth matters. But our words will be useless unless they are embedded in communities which show how they are pointed beyond us, to the one who has sought out and given us his Word.” That’s a challenge to all of us, but the challenge to be more joyful, more free, sounds like one worth taking on.

Gospel Joy: Being a missionary Church

Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation represents a summons of all Christians to mission and so in one way or another every section of this somewhat lengthy document is directed towards preaching the Gospel. Yet if I were to pick out one strand of thought that seemed to me to be particularly relevant, it would be Pope Francis’s warning that a crippling inferiority complex has emerged among Catholics in the scandal-hit West that threatens to suffocate the proclamation of the Gospel. In short, the Pope warns, we are in danger of being shamed into silence. 

Few people would deny, I suspect, that a perception has emerged among many Catholics and non-Catholics alike in parts of Western Europe and the United States that the Church has lost both its authority to speak and the right to be heard. In the face of such public disapproval, there can be and often are prudential reasons to remain silent for a time, there can also be good reasons for choosing our words with tact and care. But there is a vast difference between, on the one hand, a heart that responds to our own sin or the sin of our fellow Christians with humility and contrition, and on the other a heart that responds fearfully when confronted with the same issues and attempts to hide. 

The first letter of St. John tells us that ‘there is no fear in love, but love casts out fear’ (1 John 4: 18). There is a warning here and it is a warning that Pope Francis is asking us to take to heart. A fearful response to our present trials casts out the love that is necessary for true repentance and reform. A true and lasting turn away from evil and towards the Good that is God can only be driven by a deep love of God and a recognition that the faith we have been given, the life with God that we share, is something so valuable and precious that it is worth devoting our entire lives to and in the end something worth dying for.

The key to overcoming an inferiority complex and shame, then, the key to overcoming our fear, is to learn again the value of what God has already given us. If we can grasp even a glimmer of how much we are loved by God, then this will be a love that we want to share. This does not change the reality that our society may still not be ready to listen. There is much hard work to be done ahead proving our faith, proving our love, and proving our hope by deeds: by Christ-like service of our neighbour. But if we recommit to a new thirst for holiness, then this labour will not be a burden but something that we choose because we want to share the gift we have received. In this generosity and self-giving, God’s power will be manifested in our weakness.

Gospel Joy: Evangelii Gaudium (New Series!)

“The joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew. In this Exhortation I wish to encourage the Christian faithful to embark upon a new chapter of evangelization marked by this joy, while pointing out new paths for the Church’s journey in years to come” [EG 1].

With these stirring words, Pope Francis begins his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Guadium, The Joy of the Gospel, and so we likewise begin our new series exploring the themes and challenges which the Holy Father presents to the Church on the “proclamation of the Gospel in today’s world”. We will consider how we, as a Church, communicate the most powerful, inspiring two thousand year old story of Jesus Christ, in the modern age.  How do we preach God’s love to a world that appears so unreceptive, to an audience seemingly deaf to our words? These are fundamental questions for us Dominican Students, belonging to an order whose principal task is to preach, but they are also of the utmost importance for all Christians.

Well, Pope Francis is leading by example! Many people - who, hitherto, have had little interest or regard for the Church - have expressed new-found enthusiasm, admiration and an openness to what the Church is saying as a result of what one friend has called Pope Francis’s “leading with love”. What a dynamic, joyful witness we have in St. Peter’s successor!

Lest this Evangelii Gaudium be misunderstood as an exercise in Public Relations or some sort of political manifesto, let us be clear at the outset of this series that at the heart of the Pope’s message is an invitation to us, to “all Christians, everywhere”, to “a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ” [EG 3].  Miss this, and frankly, you miss the point.  Everything that the Holy Father addresses is rooted in Jesus Christ and His inestimable love for us.

We invite you to join us over the course of the next month as we reflect upon the concerns which the Pope exhorts us to consider, take to heart, and act upon; "For if we have received the love which restores meaning to our lives, how can we fail to share that love with others?" [EG 8].

The Dominican Seminar: Evangelii Gaudium

Fr. John Farrell OP lectures on Evangelii Gaudium

The annual Dominican seminar which gathers together Friars, Sisters, and Lay Dominicans from all over the country for study, prayer, and general good humour was once again held at Hinsley Hall in Leeds last weekend. This year the focus was on the Pope’s recent summons of all Christians to a renewed commitment to mission in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, an appropriate topic indeed for the Order of Preachers. 

The opening lecture by Fr. John Farrell OP very much set the tone for the whole weekend. In the course of an overview of the document’s major themes, Fr. John posed a simple but, for me at least, unexpected question: when Jesus miraculously multiplied the loaves and fish to feed the five thousand (Matthew 14: 13-21; Mark 6: 31-44; Luke 9: 10-17; John 6: 5-15), at what point did the multiplication actually take place? In answer, Fr. John suggested that the loaves and the fish were multiplied as the disciples gave. A mountain of food did not suddenly appear as soon as Jesus said the blessing. Rather, the loaves and fish multiplied in the disciples’ hands as they handed the food on. 

Sr. Hyacinthe updates us on a new catechetical initiative.

In some respects, then, the miracle of the ‘feeding of the five thousand’ is a sign of the Apostles’ future destiny when they would be sent out to the four corners of the world to preach the Good News. We can easily imagine how ridiculous the disciples must have felt approaching the crowd, having sat them all down for dinner, with only five loaves and two fish. Nevertheless they made a start, they gave the little they could, and Jesus multiplied what they gave so generously that there were twelve baskets of left overs. After his Resurrection, Jesus once again commanded the Apostles to go and feed his people: this time with the Word of God. The disciples were sent to preach the Gospel to all nations. Again, on a human level they were manifestly ill equipped for this mission. Yet they made a start, they did what they could, and once again God super abundantly multiplied their efforts as the Holy Spirit blew through the Apostles’ words and deeds. 

Now we have inherited this mission to preach the Gospel to all nations. Like the Apostles we are called to announce that the Kingdom of God is at hand, to preach Good News to the poor, to feed the crowds spiritually and sometimes materially also. At times this can seem like a hopeless task. The weight of the world’s poverty, its injustice, its violence, its indifference and sometimes hostility, all of this can create a sense of overwhelming inertia and rob us of hope. We can be tempted to think that it is not worth even trying to preach the Gospel or work for justice because our resources are so paltry and the task so great. But we must not succumb to this temptation: it is not all hopeless. 

Relaxing in the evening.

Like the apostles who attempted to feed a crowd of 5000 with five loaves and two fish, we must have the courage and the faith to do what we can, to give what we can, to love where we can, to witness to the truth where we can: because we do not preach the Kingdom of God by our own strength but by God’s strength and he has already won the victory through the cross of Jesus. As our Lord multiplied the loaves and fish in the hands of the disciples he will multiply our efforts also: Jesus continues to feed his flock and gather in lost sheep through the labours of his disciples. We are fed, and we feed others, when we share in Christ’s sacrifice and offer our lives for many. We ought, then, not to be discouraged by the size of the task, but rejoice that we have been given the honour of working with Christ to serve our brothers and sisters. 

The rest of the weekend was largely spent unpacking these themes, with friars, sisters and lay people speaking about the various projects they are engaged in, sharing thoughts and ideas, with plenty of time for socializing also.

Credo exhibition in Paderborn

Credo: The Christianisation of Medieval Europe

Although he rejected worldly power (Jn 18:36), Christ is the true King over all the nations (cf. Rom 15:12), the King of Kings (Rev. 17:14). On this great feast of Christ the King, it seems relevant to reflect on the way in which Christianity has spread to incorporate the different cultures of the nations. Here is one part of the story, the evangelisation of Europe, as told in a remarkable exhibition earlier this year: Credo - The Christianisation of Medieval Europe.

Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe. This famous statement by Hilaire Belloc is wrong in many ways – if the Faith is Catholic, how can it be purely European? – but it touches upon a fundamental historical fact. The Catholic faith is built upon a series of extraordinary events on the edges of Europe that subsequently, and apparently against all odds, dominated the Roman Empire and built an entire civilisation, what we call 'Christendom', on European soil. How this remarkable story unfolded was the subject of a major exhibition in Paderborn earlier this year, entitled Credo: The Christianisation of Medieval Europe.

Paderborn was an apposite location. This has long been a strongly Catholic city in North Rhine-Westphalia; it was an Imperial city under Charlemagne, and refuge for Pope Leo III; and in recent years has mounted two other great medieval exhibitions ('Charlemagne 799', and 'Canossa 1077'). I travelled from Oxford to see this Credo exhibition (and visit family in the area), having been alerted by an article in the Tablet. The exhibition was impressive for its impressive variety of treasures and artefacts, from the Mediterranean to Greenland, over more than a millennium of fascinating history. The depth of coverage was superb. But, above all, the exhibition told a compelling story.

That story began with the inculturation of Christianity from its very beginnings. In Part 1: Lux Mundi, visitors were treated to objects, both ordinary and precious, that revealed a two-way process of adaptation. Christianity had to adopt and appropriate pagan symbols and practices, but in turn transformed them in radical ways and left a new mark on the wider culture. Pagan notions of the vita felix (happy life), pastoral scenes of good shepherding, and so on, were quickly seen in a newly Christian light. And yet Christianity was unusual, almost unique, in rejecting the polytheistic cults of the  Roman Empire. A beautiful papyrus of Romans 8:27-35, dating from the 2nd century(!), was one of the first marvels to greet us, testifying to the great faith of the early Christians in the face of persecution: If God is for us, who can be against us?

2nd-century papyrus of Romans 8

Three centuries later, however, Christianity had become tolerated and promoted after Constantine's conversion in 312. After his vision of the Christian symbol 'Chi-Rho' (short for 'Christ') and subsequent victory at the Milvian bridge, Christianity came fully out of the shadows. But only with the edict Cunctos Populos, issued by the Three Emperors in 380, did it become the official state religion. The great Ecumenical Councils (on which, see our Godzdogz series Councils of Faith) hammered out the doctrinal structure of Trinitarian faith and a great outpouring of theological and spiritual works came from the mouths and quills of the ancient Church Fathers. The exhibition included the oldest Latin manuscript of the Bible (5th century) and early copies of St Jerome and St Augustine. These classical scholars and saints witnessed the terrible decline of the Roman Empire and looked instead to the Catholic Church to preserve all that was best in it. Rome was 'the brightest light in the world'; and 'if Rome perishes', asked Jerome, 'what is safe?'

This much is incontrovertible, that the Church preserved much of the ancient learning in its monasteries from the barbarian onslaught. Through the Church, this civilisation of ideas permeated to the farthest corners of the Empire: I saw one copy of Pliny's Natural History from Northumbria. After Augustine's mission to England, familiar to a man of Kent like me, there followed the less well-known story of Canterbury's blossoming into a major centre of manuscript illumination. One magnificent specimen on show was the Codex Aureus ('golden book') with its alternately purple-dyed pages.

The Codex Aureus of Canterbury

Britain, indeed, saw a marked inculturation that showed great ingenuity in the adaptation of pagan customs to Christian belief. Triangular plaques typical of pagan votive offerings would be inscribed with Christian emblems, as found among the Water Newton treasure. Among the priceless objects of this hoard, I saw what are believed to be the oldest liturgical silver vessels in the Christian world. And in the royal tomb at Prittlewell, discovered only in 2003, gold crosses had been placed over the dead man's eyes, where pagans would have put coins. As far as I could see, the exhibition did not mention the Green Man motif, which is so typical of Christian inculturation in pagan Britain. But it did have an intriguing gold medallion in Animal Style II, from 7th century France, showing the Cross and the Alpha/Omega signs embedded in an obviously pagan aesthetic.

The gold medallion of Limons

After the collapse of Rome, a most remarkable thing happened. The faith that had spread to the edges of civilised Europe now began to trickle back, through the missions of zealous Irish and British monks. The Northumbrian St. Willibrord became the 'apostle to the Frisians' (i.e. the Netherlands) and founded Echternach Abbey (Luxembourg) in the 8th century. This roaming archbishop got much use out of his exquisitely carved portable altar, which was on display. A similar relic, the 'Cadmug Gospel' in Irish minuscule lettering, belonged to St Boniface on his missions to the German peoples. St Columbanus the Younger took twelve companions from Ireland and converted the Frankish nobility, founding many monasteries along the way, including Bobbio as far south as Italy. St Ansgar, born in northern France, became the 'apostle to the North' after being sent by the Emperor Louis the Pious to evangelise Scandinavia; he baptised the Danish king Harald Klak in 826, two centuries before the saint-king, Olaf Haraldsson, would abandon his career as a Viking raider and enlist English clergy to bring Christianity to the remote reaches of Norway.

King Gunnar in the snake-pit

Throughout this period, Christianity learned to adopt the semiotic references of the pagan world. In Scandinavia, the old runes were very common in Christian art. But it was also the symbolic content that penetrated the culture. These pagan appropriations are not entirely coherent and harmonious. To take one example, a rectangular baptismal font (Sweden, c.1100 AD) portrays the semi-mythical king Gunnar in the snake pit as a sort of holy protomartyr; but in Norway, Sigurd the Dragon-slayer is shown on a 12th-century church portal as a prefiguration of Christ. Unfortunately, this juxtaposition is a little awkward if the Nibelungenlied is anything to go by, in which Gunnar (Gunther) conspires in Sigurd's (Siegfried's) murder!

The evangelisation of Europe was not always an easy or happy process. Part 2 of Credo, entitled In Hoc Signo, besides describing the Eastern missions of Saints Cyril and Methodius and showcasing the riches of Byzantium, also focused on the more political aspects of Christianisation. Emperor Charlemagne forced the Saxons to the font, offering them 'baptism or death'. The missions to Scandinavia coincided with the formation of its kingdoms and the Church's fortunes often oscillated according to the whims of kings. Prophetic voices abounded, of course, and I was impressed with Alcuin of York's bold objection to Charlemagne that Christians should be 'preachers, not plunderers'.

Europe did adopt the Faith, and the Faith owes much to its European cradle. But the story does not end there. Sadly, more plundering was to follow with the colonisations of the New World; and again there were protests from prophetic preachers, such as Bartolomeo de las Casas OP. In the present day, the Church has reached the ends of the earth and continues to incorporate and enrich the cultures of the nations. The kingdom of God may not be of this world, but the gospel of Christ is certainly for this world. In our confused and conflict-ridden situations, it may be hard to believe in the kingship of Christ. But the faith of the missionaries that was made so tangible by this Credo exhibition is still alive and flourishing, and it calls us to be new bearers of light to the dark and barbarous corners of the world – including Oxford.

Christ the King