'Carry Jesus', Archbishop tells believers

|PIC1|The Archbishop of Canterbury told believers on Tuesday to carry Jesus with them wherever they go so that those they encounter will taste the joy that comes through meeting the Lord.

Dr Rowan Williams made the comments in a sermon delivered at Lourdes as part of the Roman Catholic Church's celebrations marking 150 years since a peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, said she saw apparitions of the Virgin Mary there.

He said in his sermon that true mission was marked by a readiness "to be surprised by God".

"Bernardette's neighbours and teachers and parish clergy knew all they thought they needed to know about the Mother of God - and they needed to be surprised by this inarticulate, powerless, marginal teenager who had leapt up in the joy of recognition to meet Mary as her mother, her sister, bearer of her Lord and Redeemer," he said.

"Our prayer here must be that, renewed and surprised in this holy place, we may be given the overshadowing strength of the Spirit to carry Jesus wherever we go, in the hope that joy will leap from heart to heart in all our human encounters, and that we may also be given courage to look and listen for that joy in our own depths when the clarity of the good news seems far away and the sky is cloudy."

Dr Williams encouraged Christians not to give up in their task of carrying Jesus, saying that their encounters with non-believers would bring about a "movement of life and joy".

"And if we are faithful in thus carrying Christ with us, something will happen, some current will stir and those we are with will feel, perhaps well below the conscious surface, a movement of life and joy which they may not understand at all," he said.

"And we may never see it or know about it; people may not even connect it with us, yet it will be there - because Jesus speaks always to what is buried in the heart of men and women, the destiny they were made for. Whether they know it or not, there is that within them which is turned towards him.

"Keep on carrying Jesus and don't despair: mission will happen, in spite of all, because God in Christ has begun his journey into the heart."

Dr Williams told believers that the story of Mary's encounter with Elizabeth demonstrated the way in which Jesus is always constantly and silently at work in his followers as well as those yet to recognise him, "seeking out what is deepest in us, to touch the heart of our joy and hope."

He urged them to remember "Christ who is at work unknown and silent, reaching out to the deeply buried heart of each person and making the connection; living faithfully at the heart of the church itself, in the middle of its disasters and betrayals and confusions, still giving himself without reserve".