ADDRESS BY PRIMATE

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28157, 21 December 1956, Page 2

ADDRESS BY PRIMATE

CHRISTIANITY AND THE HOME “The Christian Gospel is sd utterly romantic that only those who are trying to live by it can understand it at all,” said the Primate of New Zealand (Archbishop Owen) in an address to members of the Diocesan Mothers’ Union at their festival service in the Christchurch Cathedral yesterday morning.

Archbishop Owen told the women that the Christian Gospel taught that every man, woman, boy, and girl was a child of God, with an inborn capacity of actually living in friendship with God, of loving God, and of enjoying God for ever. “We ought to stop and say those words over and over again until we grasp their amazing meaning,” he said. “There is a part of us which is always looking down to the earth, and there is a part of us which looks up to heaven,” said Archbishop Owen. “If we use only the earthly part, how dull and grey and unromantic life becomes. But it is foolish to forget the other part of us, which looks up to the hills, which hopes and prays and dreams and loves, and can bring the radiance of heaven down into our hearts and homes.

“I like G. K. Chesterton’s description of a Christian home. He says that a man’s home is not only his castle: it can be his fairy castle. It can be a place where husband and wife go on planning conspiracies of happiness for each other, and for their children, and for their friends. What a romantic view of the home that is; but also what an utterly Christian view of the home. And it can be true of our homes.

“It is hard enough in all conscience to live up to that. But what a comfort it is to know that Christ knows all about the hardness, and about the glory, too.

“Christ did not say much about the romance of home life,” Archbishop Owen said. “He just lived as a perfect son in the home of His parents. Christ did not say much about the romance of having children. He just put his hands on them and blessed them and said, ‘Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Christ did not paint in glowing colours the romance of friendship. He just went and wept at the grave of a friend. Christ did not say much about the romance of womanhood. He just treated women with infinite respect. He gave to women some of His most sublime teaching. And when He rose from the dead, He appeared first to the woman who loved Him.

“Do you not feel that we all need from time to time to lift up our eyes unto the hills and pray that the radiance of heaven may flow into our hearts and homes?” Archbishop Owen said.