In 2003 I remember being part of a group welcoming a touring icon of St Richard of Chichester at Haywards Heath station. It was our diocesan patron’s 750th anniversary and I was responsible for organising a great service in Worth Abbey as part of the Icon’s itinerary.
St Richard in his lifetime was seen as a representation of the living Lord Jesus. All our devotion to him is to the Christ in him. His prayer for us is Christ’s prayer. All prayer to the Saints is prayer to the Christ in them.
Through his teaching, miracles and charity St Richard shared in the newness of Jesus and brought the Lord’s mission and empowerment into the 13th century. His enduring legacy is that of the Lord himself as we invoke his prayers today.
The Lord Jesus has an unalterable newness as we engage with him day by day through scripture, sacrament and the saints as well as through prayer and the disciplines of Christian life and fellowship.
New every morning is the love our wakening and uprising prove.
Yes you and I are in our conscious beings evidence of the love of God in Jesus Christ for through Christ all things were made including you and I.
We were made, as in the end of Richard’s famous prayer, to know, love and follow Jesus Christ.
In Jesus Christ we gain not ideas, doctrines, rules but Life - and here it is in our midst at the eucharist. Life that connects us with God and one another, with the church and with the cosmos!
To be made new with Jesus we need to seek Jesus. We need to choose to empty our pride for this quest to be effective.
On the feast of our diocesan patron we are rightly called afresh to know, love and follow Jesus Christ in imitation of St Richard.
As our patron brought the light of the Lord to the 13th century we are called to bring the same to Sussex in the 21st century - and the main obstacle to this lies within us in our lack of repentance and faith.
Today’s a day to admit shortfallings and turn with all our hearts to the One who is author and perfecter of our faith and can make us new. Let today’s eucharist draw forth fresh allegiance to Our Lord and be a loosening from more of our shortfallings.
As a near contemporary of St Richard expressed it – and I advise you to take this saying to heart - It is not what you are or have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes but what you would be.
What would you be today? Would you be new with the unalterable newness of Jesus, filled with his Spirit? I hope you would, since that would give our diocesan community of faith what it most needs from you at the prayers of St Richard.
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