“My soul is thirsting for the living God. When shall I see Him face to face?”

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Perhaps those words capture why we are gathered this evening: we too want to see God. This day, we celebrate St Thérèse Couderc, the Cenacle family, and, with particular joy, 200 years of the Congregation of Our Lady of the Cenacle. As we do, I wonder what we will see of the living God in all our lives.

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So let’s begin by asking: What are we really celebrating after 200 years?

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The Sisters chose Of clay and gold as their bicentenary theme. It draws on kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing what is broken by joining the pieces and highlighting the cracks with gold. But before there is gold, there is clay: something formed, and able to be formed again. This reminds us of a simple truth: God is not finished with us. He is still forming us, making something new.

 

And that is where today's readings begin.

Moses says to God: “Show me your glory.”

The Psalm gives us the same longing: “My soul is thirsting for the living God.”

Isn't this what lies beneath our searching?

Beneath all our desires is a deeper desire: to know God, to love God, to be close to God. Perhaps this is where the Cenacle story begins too: with that thirst for God, that desire to know Him, encounter Him, and allow Him to form our lives. Because what does God do with people who thirst for Him? He takes our clay of life and faith and begins to form it.

St Paul then helps us understand the kind of people God chooses to form. He says: “Consider your own calling.”

God does not necessarily choose what the world considers impressive. He chooses what is foolish, weak, little, nothing — so that the power, the glory and the fruitfulness are His. This is one of the great lessons of St Thérèse Couderc's life. She helped to found the congregation, yet was later set aside from leadership. She could have become resentful.

Instead, she learned to keep her life turned towards God.

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She expressed this so beautifully in this way: “It is not about abandoning or devoting ourselves to God. Rather it is to die to everything and to self. It means that my concern with self is to keep it always turned toward God.”

Perhaps that is what it means to allow God to form our clay. Not always asking: What do people think of me? Have they recognised me? But asking: Where is God in all this? What is God doing in me? How is God asking me to become like Christ?

Thérèse learned to keep turning towards God. That is the clay placed back into the hands of the Potter. It is also where kintsugi becomes so beautiful.

What is broken is not thrown away. The pieces are gathered, the cracks acknowledged, and something new is made. The Christian message is not: “You must be perfect.” It is: “Let God work with you as you are.”

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Bring Him your strength and your weakness, your joy and your disappointment, your successes and your failures. Bring Him your clay. Because God desires to make something beautiful with our clay. In the Gospel reading, Jesus takes us deeper still: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.”

The grain must fall. It must let go. It must surrender.

And this was the secret of Thérèse's life: not losing herself, but allowing God to transform her, until she could say, “Lord, my life is in your hands.”

Two hundred years later, we are still here. The prayer of one woman became part of a religious family. Her surrender became mission. Her hiddenness became witness.

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So perhaps, as we celebrate this bicentenary, the deeper question is not simply: “What have the Cenacle sisters accomplished in 200 years?”

but: “What has God done with the clay that was placed in His hands?”

So much.

And yet, celebrating 200 years is not simply looking back.

If God has been forming the Cenacle sisters for 200 years, then He is not finished. They and their associates are still being formed. So are we.

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So the prayer of this bicentenary cannot only be: Lord, thank you for what you have done. It must also be: “Lord, what do you want to do with us now?”

Why? For each of us can bring before Him what needs to be placed again in His hands: Something beautiful. Something broken. Something unfinished. Something we do not yet understand. And simply say: “Lord, this is my clay. Take it. Form it. Re-form it. Make something beautiful with it.”

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And this brings us to the Eucharist. We do not simply remember Thérèse this day. We enter into the mystery she lived. We come before the Lord with what we are. In a sense, we bring our clay. Christ gives us something infinitely greater: He gives us Himself.

• We bring our clay. He gives us His life.

• We bring what is unfinished; He gives us His life.

• We bring our brokenness; He does not throw us away.

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And so: We receive His life so that our lives may become a gift.

This is the movement of the Eucharist. We come with our clay. We receive Christ. And we are sent. We trust that the God who made the cross the instrument of salvation can take the fragile material of our lives and make something beautiful with it.

So we leave this Eucharist celebrating what God has done over 200 years, and asking:

“Lord, what will you do with us in the years to come?”

We do not know. But we know the One in whose hands we are.

And that is enough.

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For 200 years, God has been faithful.

And the story is not over. The clay is still in His hands. The Potter is still at work.

 

Amen.