Life Illumined
What Will We Do About 2030?
The lord mayor of Trondheim, Kent Ranum, convened a meeting in the city hall today, gathering people from all sectors of society to reflect together on the “National Jubilee” of 2030. What is it about? What form will it take? I was asked to give an introduction. Here it is:
I am grateful to be part of this conversation. I am enthused by the thought of 2030 as a national initiative, a swashbucklingly memorable event. I am as convinced as anyone of the general excellence of Trondheim, its food and ale, its technological and academic competence, etc.
Yet since today I have been asked to provide a perspective in my capacity as Catholic bishop, I’d like to fix my focus rather differently.
The word ‘Catholic’ means ‘universal’. This universality has a temporal and a spatial aspect. Permit me briefly to say a word about each.
Measured against the scale of the daily evening news, a thousand years are a long time. In a perspective of eternity, a millennium passes quickly. I am keen that we do not consider 2030 merely as a temporal destination, but as part of a historical process, indeed, as upbeat to a formable future.
Geographic universality is intrinsic to the life of St Olav. He traded and fought in England; went to Spain; was baptised in Normandy; travelled round Sweden; visited the Reign of Kyiv. In this respect he was an exemplary European.
We have heard it said that the year 1030 and Olav’s death on Stiklestad constitute a milestone in our nation’s history. This is true enough. But the events we commemorate point no less towards our nation’s integration into a much vaster context.
When Olav’s body was exhumed and found incorrupt one year and five days after his death, on 3 August 1031, and Bishop Grimketel pronounced him a saint, Olav, and with him Norway, became part of a global, transcendent communion. This took place before the tragic division of the Eastern and Western Churches in 1054. St Olav is among the last saints to be recognised and celebrated in both Orthodox and Catholic tradition.
Immediately the pilgrim throng began to arrive. It was made up of more than just Norwegians. Remember the story told by Archbishop Eystein in the Passio Olavi from the mid-twelfth century of two Spanish brothers from Galicia who tramped to Trondheim to pray before the relics of St Olav. The two represent a great flood of pilgrims pouring north until this movement was brought to a violent end at the Reformation.
With mysterious swiftness, during the course of a few generations after 1030, monuments and churches to St Olav cropped up throughout Christendom, from Byzantium in the East to the North of England in the West to the Holy Land in the South.
The cult of Olav facilitated the establishment in Trondheim of the metropolitan see in 1153. Trondheim became the heart of a vast province embracing not only all of Norway, but Iceland, Greenland, Shetland, the Faroe Islands, the Orkneys, and the Isle of Man. The city became a European capital, a seat of learning, a cultural hub.
It is important to bear in mind these elements, I think, when we plan ahead to 2030.
I have talked of pilgrims. What is a pilgrim? They come in many shapes and sizes. For some the journey as such matters most, the goal of it less. For others the trip has a touristic aspect. Most, however, set out animated by faith, as part of a process of conversion, to present their petitions, hopes, and needs to the Lord through the intercession of the saints.
We see clear signs that the pilgrimage route to Trondheim at Olsok [the feast of st Olav on 29 July] is attracting international attention. This year’s pilgrimage of Catholic youth was covered in Spanish, Polish, American, Italian, English, and German media. That says a lot. I have been forewarned that large groups intend to participate next year. A momentum of this kind is encouraged by the millennium; but not limited by it. If the Catholic culture of pilgrimage to Trondheim keeps picking up, it will keep on growing steadily. In that case 2030 will mark, not an end, but a beginning.
Catholic pilgrims turning up here will want, first of all, to pray before the relics of St Olav. They will look for sacramental confession, processions, adoration, pilgrimages to regional sites associated with the saint, decent and economical B&B, as well as care for sick and needy, who are never lacking where pilgrims gather.
Is the City of Trondheim prepared to receive this movement? This question is an important one. If the answer is yes, we must be prepared to embrace the saint Olav, deplored by a public discourse almost wholly set on discrediting him; we must be prepared to recognise the Catholic aspect of our city’s heritage, which may seem strange, perhaps, to certain locals. The question is whether we, as Norwegians and Trondheimers, are willing to practise a certain dispossession with regard to the heritage of St Olav, which does not strictly speaking belong to us.
Indeed, pilgrims coming from afar will feel, rightly in my view, that St Olav, and therefore also his city, is theirs. Will we give them a cordial welcome on these terms?
Thank you.
