Bishop Erik on the millennium 

At the solemn Mass on the feast of St Olav in Nidarosdomen this summer, Bishop Erik remarked that the National Jubilee, as a national event, is supposed, ‘to home in on “social sustainable strength in society”, leading up to a resounding Hurrah! for the existence of our nation.’ He pointed out that Catholics in Norway must look for more and seek ways to anchor the anniversary at greater depth: ‘Let us hold firm to what is palpable and real in the legacy of St Olav and leave it to the secular authority to bask in fantastical abstractions. The National Jubilee is said to “value difference”. The state quite naturally construes difference horizontally. To follow the vertical axis open towards heaven, to understand and communicate St Olav’s life and death as an encounter with the categorically Other, the Source of life, is our task, our responsibility.’

The Inaugural Conference

Mission2030 wishes to contribute to the new evangelisation of our country in the time leading up to 2030. Mission2030 will be launched at an Inaugural Conference on 13 April at St Olav’s cathedral in the Trondheim. The title of the conference is:

What is the meaning of ‘mission’ in the year of our Lord 2024?

The speakers will be Ulf Ekman, Sr Anne Bente Hadland OP, Pål Johannes Nes, Anne Samuelsen, and Bishop Erik Varden. The conference will conclude with a panel discussion. In addition there will be Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, various exhibitions, and good fellowship. 

We invite everyone with a call to mission to join us in our cathedral in Trondheim that day. 

We intend to arrange a similar conference each spring in the years leading up to 2030. These are the topics we have in mind:

Pope St John Paul II and the Call to New Evangelisation 

Christian Faith and Charitable Action

Literature and Good News

Preaching through Beauty

To Follow a Call

Life and Faith ‘according to the Scriptures’

Other initiatives and projects will be announced as planning advances.

Stiklestad

Stiklestad is the place in which St Olav died a martyr’s death. For us as Catholic Christians, Stiklestad is not just a memorial site; it is a sacred place, a place of pilgrimage. St Olav is for us a living presence, an intercessor we meet in prayer. The Catholic Chapel at Stiklestad is beautifully situated on a hill in the middle of the site. It is a symbolic gathering place for the Church in Norway, adorned with gifts from Marie Knudtzon, the foundress of Lunden Kloster, and from Sigrid Undset. One of the main ways in which we can get ready for 2030 is by gathering at Stiklestad to pray. St Olav died on a Wednesday. Since the Middle Ages it has been a national custom to commemorate the saint on Wednesdays. Starting next Olsok, the feast of St Olav, 29 July 2024, the prelature will organise, through the parish of St Torfinn in Levanger, regular Wednesday services in the Stiklestad Chapel. To realise this purpose, necessary restoration work must be carried out. The prelature has begun work, but we still need to raise 3 million NOK in order to complete it. Would you like to contribute to make the chapel at Stiklestad a worthy, functional place of prayer in preparation for the millennium of St Olav’s death? 

From Bishop Erik Varden’s sermon for Olsok 2023

The proclamation of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ began with the exclamation: ‘He is not here!’ The corpse that on Friday was laid in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea could not be located on Sunday. Unrest broke out. John movingly describes the frenetic distress of Mary Magdalene. Into this chaos the Risen One enters and says, ‘Peace be with you!’ What had happened to Jesus in death altered the disciples’ perspective decisively. The resurrection introduced a new hermeneutic. All that had happened before was re-read and re-interpreted in the light of this total newness: certainty that God had wrought a wondrous death-defying work in his Anointed. The previous history could only be truly seen in the light of Jesus’s victory over death.

We see a certain parallel in the story about Olav. What happened to him in death permits us to grasp the significance of his life. The first witness to this fact, remarkably, was one of his assassins, Tore Hund. When the Battle of Stiklestad was done and Olav’s forces scattered, the peasant army remained victorious. Tore then went over to the king’s dead body to arrange it — he was honourable enough to wish to perform this act of reverence. When Tore cleaned the blood away from Olav’s face, he said later, it was indescribably beautiful: ‘His cheeks were red as if he were asleep, and his face was much brighter than before, when he was alive.’ Olav’s blood touched Tore’s hand and flowed into a wound he had incurred. ‘There was no need later to bind up that wound, so quickly did it heal.’ That same evening something similar happened by the shed in which Olav’s body had been laid out. A blind man tripped and fell where the women had chucked out the water used for washing. When he touched his face with moist hands, his sight was restored. Thus it went on. People came in droves to pray before Olav’s remains. They found comfort and healing. It happens to this day. We have in our midst some who have been healed of grave illness after praying before St Olav’s relics.

A year after Olav’s death his body was exhumed. The English Bishop Grimkjell was there, likewise the Danish King Svein and his crotchety old mother Alfiva, Olav’s sworn enemy. A lovely perfume spread abroad from the coffin. When it was opened people saw again this striking thing: Olav’s red cheeks. He looked as if he had just fallen asleep. His hair and nails had grown. Once again an enemy becomes a paradoxical witness. Snorre recounts the indignant grunts uttered by the queen when it was found that Olav’s hair, cast into the fire, did not burn. Mysteriously, Life was active in this man who was dead.