Archbishop's Homilies 2004

Advent Reconciliation, Deer Park

Homily given by Archbishop Denis Hart
at Saint Peter Chanel Church, Deer Park,
on Tuesday, 21st December, 2004.

...

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“Networking” is a word that we often hear nowadays. It is a new word, but it is a very old idea. People have always spent their lives in networks or communities; life would be impossible, or at least lonely and primitive, without them. We are interdependent. What we do, the way we live, the choices we make, always have their effect on others. We are good people, and most of what we do and the majority of the choices we make are positive contributions to the networks in which we live. We have already made our choice to be the kind of people who build up rather than tear down, and for almost all of us who come together here on this Advent evening, our main task is to renew our commitment to a path of life we set out on long ago.

But we also know that life does not always go as smoothly as we hope. We all fall short of our ideals and our failings have their effect on others. We hurt and wound and we are hurt and wounded. We tear the networks that connect us to one another where they are fragile and easily broken; we wear and fray them even where they are strong; sometimes we act so badly that we put walls where bridges had been. We do all this in our relationships to one another and also in our relationship to God. So we need healing and repair. Because even small troubles tend to build on one another, we can find that the wounds we suffer and the ones we inflict can go deep, beyond our skill to heal without help.

That is why we are here together this evening. We acknowledge, first of all, how deeply we are connected to one another. As the first reading told us, we can hardly nurse our anger with another and expect healing from the Lord; we cannot be merciless and expect mercy. To acknowledge together the weakness and sin that are in the lives of every one of us, to acknowledge our need to forgive and be forgiven, is not only to come into a sort of hospital of healing, but also to enter into a school where we learn to act towards one another as God acts towards us. That is the path to a better future for our whole community.

More importantly, we acknowledge how deeply we are connected to God. “The Kingdom of God is near at hand”, we heard from John the Baptist in the Gospel reading. Indeed it is: God dwells in each one of us; he has made his home in us. Gifts without measure flow to us from his generous hand. Yet we can be disconnected even from God, and oblivious to the love which keeps us in being. “Repent,” says John the Baptist. It sounds a forbidding word: but the idea it expresses is not forbidding at all, but inviting. It is an invitation to reconnect with God, with our own hearts and our best and truest selves, and so, too, with one another. This kind of reconnecting is true healing, beyond our own art. God alone can draw us on the path toward this kind of wholeness. The words we have to speak about it only give a hint of the beauty of what God wants to do for us: forgiveness, healing, reconciliation, mercy and grace.

We have only to open our hearts. Some of us here tonight will find that easy and joyful. Some will find it an anxious struggle. Some, perhaps, will find it a task that asks the greatest courage and humility. The same welcome waits for each of us: “Come to me,” the Lord says, “all you who are weary and heavy-burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Let us pray for one another, then, that as we meet the Lord in this sacrament of mercy, we may find peace and strength for ourselves and for one another.

 

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.