Eternal Citizenship

St Mary's, Fernyhalgh, Lancashire, June 2008

‘God calls all sorts of people to his Kingdom – literally all sorts. Our different gifts, like our differing degrees of virtue and sin, are inseparable from our common citizenship of Christ’s realm. God uses us as we are, that our virtues might be properly directed, and our sins, once acknowledged, forgiven. The Holy Spirit is the infusion of many gifts, and they match and correspond to the many types of talent, expertise and experience which men and women accumulate in life. Instead of being frustrated because the world does not appear to want them, it should be our joy to realise that the very essence of calling in the Spirit is all about different gifts being employed, not in earthly advancement, but in preparation for an eternal citizenship. As usual, we bring suffering upon ourselves when we trust our own evaluation of our worth. Whitsun is an occasion of great spiritual serenity, for the simplest person with the most residual gifts now finds that the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, that things of lowly recognition in the world are loved by God in eternity’.
 
Dr Edward Norman (Canon Chancellor of York Minster, 1999-2004)
​now a layman in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham