Archbishop's Homilies 2008

Mass for World Youth Day pilgrims

MASS CELEBRATED BY ARCHBISHOP DENIS HART FOR THE PILGRIMS FROM WORLD YOUTH DAY
IN SAINT PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL, MELBOURNE, ON SUNDAY 5 OCTOBER 2008 AT 3.30PM.


INTRODUCTION

My dear young friends,

Welcome to Saint Patrick’s, our church, where together we praise Jesus, acknowledging the wonderful events of Days in the Diocese and World Youth Day.

I am tremendously encouraged by your youthful enthusiasm as today we remember that it is Jesus whom we seek in our life.  It is he who will give us light for our world, will lead us beyond our hopes and desires and help us to make a new world and to discover his plan for each of us.

As we call to mind our sins, let us ask the Lord for pardon, light and strength.

 
HOMILY

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Where were you when, the first man walked on the moon, when the disaster of 9/11 happened, when Pope John Paul II was shot, when the Pope was at Randwick in 2008?  Perhaps you could make your own list of special events in your lives because I know that for me being with Pope Benedict in Sydney was a wonderful, electrifying moment.  I was lucky to travel around Australia with Pope John Paul in 1986, but I will never forget the joy and exuberance that welcomed the Pope in Sydney, and yet the silence and wonder that accompanied us as he led us in Eucharistic Adoration.

Pope Benedict said these words at the Randwick Mass:  “I have come to confirm you my young brothers and sisters in your faith and to encourage you to open your hearts to the power of Christ’s spirit and the richness of his gifts.” … At each Mass the Holy Spirit comes anew, invoked by the solemn prayer of the Church, not only to transform our gifts of bread and wine into the Lord’s Body and Blood, but also to transform our lives to make us in his power one Body one Spirit in Christ.”  Later in his homily the Pope went on to say that in today’s Gospel Jesus proclaims a new age has begun in which the Holy Spirit will be poured out on all people.

In today’s Gospel the stone the builders rejected which became the cornerstone shows us that it is not how this world looks at things, but the true reality of how Jesus looks at us and looks at our lives.  When we say we believe in Jesus Christ as Lord of our life, things immediately change.  The Pope said the same thing of the Holy Spirit, that he would touch us and lead us in his way.  Pope Benedict said to a young seminarian in Bressanone recently:  “I think that the most important thing is that we ourselves remain within the radius of the Holy Spirit’s breath in contact with him only if we are continually touched within by the Holy Spirit if he lives in us will it be possible for us to pass on him to others.”

What does it mean to make Jesus the cornerstone of our life?  It means that we are built on the strongest foundation.  God knows us.  God loves us.  God values the gifts that we are.  He leaves us free as to how we use them, but if we make him the centre of everything then his truth, his love will guide us along ways that we did not expect.

My prayer for the young people of Melbourne is that World Youth Day will not only be a single event, a moment that we regard like some of those great moments I mentioned at the beginning, but in fact the beginning of a new turning to Our Lord and a growing in the life that he brings.

Saint Paul said:  “For me to live is Christ and I count everything else as so much rubbish.  If we see Jesus as the Lord of our life, then we see him as the filter through which we see everything.”  Friendship, we think immediately of love one another as I have loved you and that brings reaching out to others, coupled with beautiful respect and encouragement.  Even in our moments of suffering we can see beyond the here and now. 

In his address to young seminarians Pope Benedict was even more explicit:

“Faith teaches us that we are God’s creatures made in his image and likeness, endowed with an inviolable dignity, and called to eternal life.  Wherever man is diminished the world around us is also diminished; it loses its ultimate meaning and strays from its goal.  What emerges is a culture not of life, but of death.  We know that in the end – as Saint Ignatius of Loyola saw so clearly – the only real ‘standard’ against which all human reality can be measured is the cross and its message of an unmerited love which triumphs over evil, sin and death, creating new life and unfading joy.  The cross reveals that we find ourselves only by giving our lives away, receiving God’s love as an unmerited gift and working to draw all men and women into the beauty of that love and the light of the truth which alone brings salvation to the world.”  (Benedict XVI, Homily, St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, 19th July 2008)

The challenge then is to make Jesus Lord of our life, to accept our cross as he did, to see it as leading on to a new life, to be ambassadors of life and truth and to keep on asking the Lord to show us the path that he has for us.  We can make a difference.  We can bring light to the world if Jesus shines in and through us.  I have every confidence in each of you as I walk with you on this journey, encouraging you to pray to Jesus, to be faithful to him, to show his goodness to others and not to be afraid of where his call might leave you, to say, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.  You have the words of everlasting life.’  One thing I can promise you, you may not lack struggles and challenges, but you will be gifted with the greatest happiness and peace possible because that is God’s gift to each of you, whom he loves, understands and cherishes, made in his image and likeness, born to enrich the world with your gifts and with his truth.  May the Holy Spirit fill your hearts with love and confidence and walk with you always.


+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne