This is an edited version of a homily preached at the reception of Eva and Kees Vlaardingerbroek into the Catholic Church on April 23, 2023, at Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Gregory’s Church in London.
Hearing the words of Jesus in the Gospel today: “You foolish men, so slow to believe,” we are reminded that they are addressed not only to those who heard Him speak in person, but to so many in contemporary society. He addresses the privileged, the so-called sophisticates, the elites, those educated into advanced imbecility. On Easter Day we who are baptised spoke important words, words which, despite the saying, are not cheap. Words have the power to build up and affirm as easily as they tear down and destroy. The baptismal promises, made once for most of us as babies by our parents, affirmed our belief in the life, saving death, and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. They also affirmed belief in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. These were more than words. They were, in fact, vows, which one should never take lightly, for we will be held to account for them.
In this beautiful church, the headquarters of the ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, in a few moments, two adults will proclaim the same powerful words, and be confirmed in the Catholic faith. When we, who may be cradle Catholics or converts from long ago, see adults embracing the Faith, we should see it as a ‘shot in the arm,’ comforting us in our own commitment—remembering that the etymology of comfort is to be “strengthened greatly.” Catholics ought to be grateful for the gift of faith they already have. Those who are not yet Catholic might question why these two adults are taking this step; it is because the pursuit of truth has led them to this point.
Kees and Eva, father and daughter, will take the names of St. Christopher and St. Joan of Arc, real names and real patrons. It is no surprise that Eva has chosen a female warrior for Christ to be her heavenly patron. It is a particular joy to receive two Dutch people into the Catholic Church: Holland might be the only country in Europe more secular and hostile towards the Church than England! They have come from the Dutch Reformed tradition, with a long line of Reformed Ministers in the family. It is important to be reminded, especially in this ordinariate church, that nothing of the past which was beautiful, true, and good is rejected. However, as the great convert St. John Henry Newman said, “to be deep in history is to cease to be a protestant.” What convinced you, Kees and Eva, making your journey separately and now beautifully united, is what has convinced all who proclaim the Creed and make those baptismal promises: the pursuit of the truth, because the truth, which does exist, will set us free.
It is not a triumphalist statement to say that you have found the truth. It is actually a moment of great humility—although a little bit of triumphalism can strengthen the spirit. It means that something greater than ourselves is acknowledged and recognised; one bows to the truth. It is also not a statement of triumphalism to say that the truth exists and can be found and followed. Indeed we follow the One who proclaimed Himself to be the truth.
The idea that there is no truth, or that truth can only be expressed as “my truth and your truth,” is what Vaclav Havel meant when he said that life under communism is like living in a “contaminated moral environment.” He wrote: “We have become morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought.” That is the world of today, the world of cancellation, fear, and silencing. However, in truth, even if we are imprisoned, we will really be free. Chesterton, speaking more than 90 years ago, called the contemporary scene an “age of prejudice:” how much more so today? The virtue of ‘tolerance’ is extended to all except orthodox Christian believers. Christianity, and Catholicism in which subsists the fullness of the truth, offers to a world infected with lies, the inoculation of the truth. The Church offers the cure for the true pandemic, the virus of lies.
Pontius Pilate, the archetypal politician and spin-doctor extraordinaire, a man of his times then and now, dismissed the truth, when the Truth was standing in front of him. The truth exists. The denial of that is prejudice and intolerance. Catholics make the bold claim, which may be freely rejected, that the fullness of the truth is found in the Catholic Church. Proclaiming that will have consequences; it always has and always will.
The truth, as St. Paul said, must be proclaimed with love—Caritas in veritate—but it also must be spoken and lived. It will be at variance, to a greater or lesser degree, in every society and at every time. In our own time, the living and proclaiming of the truth, puts us at odds with much of what our contemporaries believe it means to be human.
Eva and Kees, you come from a country that is now euthanising children—a practice which is probably not too far away from this country. We are called to live the teaching of the Catholic Church on life, from conception to natural death, human sexuality, and God’s plan for men and women. In a world contaminated by falsehood, coming to the Faith, to the voice of Christ, is like a refreshing draught of water on a sweltering day. We come to Christ, who St. Ignatius of Antioch called the “mouth which cannot lie.” Speaking that truth through the dogma of the Church, which Dorothy L Sayers called the “drama,” is, she continued, the “most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man.”
You two new converts are entering upon a great adventure in hard times, perhaps in Dickensian terms the “worst of times.” That is a sign of its authenticity. If we are committed to the Faith, we must be joyous, but also realistic. Fidelity to Christ, in Holland or in England, will cost.
There are particular challenges in every generation, and certain times in world history of greater or lesser darkness, winter or spring. We only need to think of the immense suffering believers endured under the two atheistic systems of the last century.
It is quite likely, however, with the advent of artificial intelligence, government surveillance, and other attributes of the total control society, that hard times for believers are ahead.
We happy few are on an adventure, the “long defeat,” as Tolkien called it, but a battle worth fighting and a quest worth embarking upon.
Describing an epic Anglo-Saxon poem of a battle between the English and the Vikings in 991 AD, the historian Eleanor Parker tell us that, although the English knew they had lost and would all die, she says the poem deals with “courage in the face of disaster, how we choose to act when we know death is near.” That is actually what it means to be a Christian—how we choose to act when we know death is near, because death is daily before us, as St. Benedict said. The failure to proclaim the Gospel message of life and death was sadly exposed in the Church during COVID.
The boat you are boarding may be leaking, some say heading for the iceberg, but She will not sink. Newman described the experience of becoming a Catholic as like coming into port after rough seas. For us, we may have to head out of port back into those seas. We have the sacraments, most especially the Eucharist and Confession, as our fortification for the journey. As one of the warriors said in the poem, knowing death was coming, “courage must be the firmer, heart the keener, mind must be the greater, as our strength diminishes.”
We are not abandoned by God, whether it is an epoch or belief or unbelief, a time of light or darkness. We are called, as has been said before somewhere, to have a clear eye and a ruthless glance. As the Spanish philosopher, Ortega y Gasset wrote—although he was an atheist, we can read it with the eyes of faith—the person with the clear head, is someone who “instinctively, as do the shipwrecked … looks around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life.”
Christ and His Church is the salvation for the shipwrecked. Clinging to Him will keep us afloat in a shipwrecked world. The order He brings gives the martyr the ability to lay down his life, the sorrowful to find hope, and the grieving to find peace, a peace the world can never give.
