Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP - 5th Sunday of Easter Year B, Padre Pio Glenmore Park Parish, 5 & 6 May 2012

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What to say to you, my dear people, in this unhappy week? Some of you will be angry, grieving, agog. I suppose I’m all those things myself. As your bishop when I heard the news my heart broke for you; as your brother in Christ my heart broke with you. I’ve been praying for wisdom on how to help all of us through this.

People have written to me who feel betrayed by the lies and hypocrisy, the repeating dumping on the Church and priests by one of our own. Others think Fr Kevin Lee a hero for opposing celibacy, authority and duplicity. Some wonder what to believe of the reports and rumours. Some feel their faith being undermined, while others are unaffected or even strengthened in their commitment.

Most of us will try to forgive and forget, hold on out of love of Christ and the Church, but also be a little diminished. It will take some time to heal. So I’d like to say a few things to you now even if I don’t have all the answers either. After Mass we can talk some more if you’d like.

1. I want to say how good it is that amidst hurt and division you’ve come together, to this church, for this Mass. You might have been tempted to throw in the towel on Church or to go elsewhere. Yet you are here, together, here together with the Lord, and that is a tribute to your generosity and fidelity. For we know, as our Gospel (Jn 15:1-8) reminds us, that cut off from the True Vine of Christ and His Church we are fruitless.

2. While we are dismayed by the way Fr Kevin left us, we honour the good work he did as the first Parish Priest of this wonderful parish. In case there is any doubt in your minds about the validity of his sacraments, please rest assured: Christ and the Church supplies for such defects and the validity of sacraments does not depend upon the worthiness of the priest.

Both married life and single life are ways to sanctity

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

According to the national census, fewer than half of Australians of marriageable age are married; a significant and growing number live alone. That presents its challenges, but the Church has always taught that both married life and single life are ways to sanctity – if lived well.

My own experience and the long experience of the Church has been that celibacy can be lived positively and fruitfully, allowing a person to give themselves completely to the service of Christ and His people.

What’s more, the Church has always recognised that the great sacraments of marriage and priesthood complement each other. Each is a lifetime’s work in itself. Marriage and celibacy have never been easy and today both are under tremendous pressure. Ironically, from both sides of the fence people imagine the grass is greener on the other.

In many ways the crisis for marriage is greater than that for single life today. Many have given up on it altogether. Or they cohabit first, marry outside religion, have few or no children, end in divorce. A much higher proportion of marriages break up today than priestly vocations fail.

In describing today’s reality I’m not blaming anyone: we all know and love people who’ve tried really hard and it just hasn’t worked. Part of the problem is our society: there’s so little back up. But it would be naïve to imagine that marriage would fix the shortages of priests or pressures on clergy. Other denominations with married clergy face shortages – plus problems of infidelity and breakdown in clergy marriages.

4. There’s the issue of abuse. Clergy child abuse is a terrible thing that we must eliminate for the future while owning up to the past and trying to help victims. But marrying off the clergy won’t fix that any more than it will answer the vocations crisis. Research shows that predators abuse whatever state of life they are in, married or single, clerical or lay, and that sadly they are to be found in all those places.

Support each other in faith and love

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

I am confident that this young parish is mature enough to withstand the present challenge. So many people contribute in different ways and I ask you to redouble your efforts to support each other in faith and love at this time. You really do make a difference in each other’s lives and in the world. You will find, like the Church in our first reading, that whether troubled or at peace yours is a resilient community.

6. I want to assure you that, contrary to the scuttlebutt, no punitive action has been taken by the Diocese of Parramatta against Fr Kevin. He has not been excommunicated. He has not been evicted. He has refused to take calls from me and the diocesan office, and has not communicated his intentions to the Church except through the media. So I was as shocked as you were and knew as little about all this when it happened.

Like many of you, I am concerned for Kevin’s welfare and now that of his wife and for all of those who have been affected by his actions over the past few days. We all know that Church law and Catholic tradition make it impossible for Kevin to remain as Parish Priest if he has entered into a marriage. But he has left his ministry and his presbytery of his own accord.

7. Finally, I would like to speak to you about the great majority of clergy and religious of our Diocese who give generous and faithful service. They are people of integrity who do not live ‘double lives’. We should have great confidence in the clergy and people of Western Sydney.

I thank my Vicar-General, Monsignor Bob McGuckin, who has agreed to administer the parish for the time being. My Episcopal Vicar, Fr Chris de Sousa, came here soon after the news broke and has been a great support.

I will stick around after Mass if you would like to talk to me; so will Fr Chris and our CatholicCare people. If you have further questions you might try the parish or diocesan office. I will try to keep you informed.

Many people have contacted me to say they are praying for you all. I have asked that this community be in the intentions of every other parish in the Diocese at all the Masses this Sunday. Please add your prayers to theirs so that, in the words of our Opening Prayer, we may yet “bear much fruit and come to the joys of life eternal”.

Go to Padre Pio Glenmore Park Parish Pastoral Visit Photo Gallery

CatholicCare Social Services - Diocese of Parramatta (CCSS) is available to anyone from Padre Pio Glenmore Park Parish wishing to speak to its counsellors about the recent news about Fr Kevin Lee.

CCSS provides confidential and professional counselling services by telephone or in a variety of convenient locations including Penrith, Emerton, Blacktown and Parramatta. CCSS can also arrange appointments to Glenmore Park if required. If no-one is able to immediately take your call, please leave a message and CCSS will call you back as soon as possible.

The number to call is 02 9933 0233.

Please visit www.ccss.org.au for information about all CCSS services.

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP - 4th Sunday of Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday), Year B, St Michael’s Parish, Blacktown South, 29 April 2012

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Many of you will know the famous image of the Good Shepherd in the Vatican Museum. A beautiful 3rd Century sculpture from the Domitilla Catacomb shows Christ as a clean-shaven young man carrying a sheep.

It was a deliberately ambiguous work. The persecuted early Church often used symbols that could be explained away. If a Roman policeman came demanding an explanation you could say: it’s a lovely pastoral scene, shepherd, sheep and pasture.

But Christians knew exactly what it was all about. It was Christ, the Good Shepherd of the Church, supporting his frightened lambs among the Roman wolves.

The young man carries the sheep around his shoulders, rather like the images of heroic ANZACs carrying their wounded mates. Carrying a sheep, even a young one, is no easy matter and you wouldn’t do it unless the sheep was injured, exhausted or needed some sort of help. The Good Shepherd comes to the rescue not only of an anxious Church, but of all wounded humanity.

This morning Christ claims this image for Himself: I am the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep (Jn 10:11-18). No romantic pastoral idyll this: lives are at risk; there are wolves and neglectful hirelings; the Shepherd will die for the sheep. Jesus’ first hearers knew whom He meant. The Prophet Ezekiel had famously compared the corrupt rulers of Israel with wicked shepherds: instead of protecting and supporting the weak they used and abused them, leaving the flock divided, lost, prey to various evils (Ezek ch. 34). God’s megaphone Ezekiel declares the political and religious rulers a bunch of no-hopers. All that is left to do is for God to sack the lot of them and come to the rescue Himself. “I myself will search out my sheep; I will gather them from all the countries and bring them to my own land” (Ezek 34:11).

So the Good Shepherd is not just a sentimental picture of a kindly young man playing with fluffy balls of wool with eyes and feet. No, there are wolves and betrayers in the background, corrupt officials, a persecuted Church and wounded humanity, little ones left prey to terrible destruction and confusion.

What does the Good Shepherd do? He gets to know his sheep, intimately; he tames them, as it were; so that when they hear his voice they come running to him; so that when they see him they flock around him. He is the great gathering force. He makes several sheep into one flock, many individuals into one family – 1.2 billion individuals at the last count. He is anxious, too, for those not yet in the flock, who will one day respond to his voice.

Another Vatican artwork tells that part of the story: the colonnade of St Peter’s Basilica, the lines of columns that surround the square in an oval shape. They were designed by Bernini as the “arms” of the basilica, the arms of the Church, extending out to the whole world to gather all to her breast. In this year of grace and faith we might recall that evangelisation is not some numbers game. Handing on the faith with fidelity, persuasion and compassion is not about empire building. It is about embrace, about the Good Shepherd conscious that there are “other sheep not yet of this fold and these I have to lead as well”. We can never be smugly satisfied with those who join us week by week or less frequently: we must always have an eye to those who are disconnected from their spiritual home and those who do not even know they have one. As I sometimes say, a little tongue in cheek, there are really only two religions, Catholics and those yet to be Catholics, by which I mean that it is our dream that all may be one, as Christ and His Father are One, and that means no one ultimately is a stranger to us, an outsider, an enemy.

No one is our enemy except one. The Bible calls him the Devil, the diablos, the great scatterer, that Father of Lies who seeks only to divide and conquer. Sin by nature has this dispersive effect. In the great story of our Fall, Adam and Eve hid from God once they had sinned, then turned on each other and on nature in their blame game, and were driven from the garden; soon their boys were fighting, and humanity was like rival bikie gangs firing upon each other’s houses so that no one felt safe. All were pitted against one another and themselves.

Six hundred years after Ezekiel preached his prophecy Christ, the Good Shepherd, at last fulfilled it. He came to the rescue of divided humanity. Look around you at the people of our Catholic Diocese of Parramatta. We are far from perfect. We have a long way to go on the road to holiness. But we do offer the world an example of the arms of the Church gathering together all of humanity. Every nation, every people, are represented here, are welcome here. The scattering of humanity is being reversed before our very eyes. It can be three steps forward and two steps back; sin keeps driving families, communities, the world, apart. But we persevere in trying to get back together for this is the work of our Good Shepherd with His Church’s arms opened wide.

Today we recognise the work of the St Vincent de Paul Society which has long gathered together some of our parishioners for prayer and inspiration and sent them out in service to the poor. They serve after the heart of the Good Shepherd. Where there are wounded lambs the Vinnies seek to carry them on their shoulders. Some have worked diligently here for years, even 30 years, without formal recognition. I know they seek no such credit: members of the St Vincent de Paul Society are the first to say they receive much more than they give. But we want to express our gratitude.

Photo: Jack Crombie.

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP - Inaugural Diocesan Mass Celebrating the Early Years of Marriage, 3rd Sunday of Easter Year B, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 22 April 2012

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You might have noticed that when priests begin Mass, they say “The Lord be with you” but when a bishop says hello liturgically he says or sings “Peace be with you.” It is, of course, Jesus’ Easter greeting to the Apostles in our Gospel (Lk 24:35-48). Every Mass, right from the beginning, should remind us of the first Easter.

Shalom, says Jesus, peace, your health, salvation, cheers. Now look at my hands and feet. Fortunately for you bishops don’t imitate that bit of Jesus’ Easter antics: I don’t show you my barnacles and scars, the tattoos by which nature inscribes our life history on our bodies. But our Gospel passage does give us the contours of every Eucharist since the first. To begin with, the disciples gather in a special place, on a Sunday. Next, Christ – now through His priest – comes in, stands in their midst, and greets them. Then, the Scriptures are recalled and through a homily our minds opened to them. Then comes the sacred meal, what the early Church called ‘The Breaking of the Bread’. It’s here, Luke says, that disciples recognise Jesus. Finally, Christ sends us forth to announce the Gospel.

No matter where we go in the world, in whatever language or rite, there is something familiar about the structure and rhythm of the Mass. For two millennia, since those first Easter Masses on the way to Emmaus and in the cenacle in Jerusalem, we’ve gathered to ‘Break open the Word’ and ‘Break the Bread’, recognising Christ there and receiving Him into our bodies and minds. But one aspect of our Gospel story today seems a bit out of place. Why the fish? Catholics know that fish is for Fridays, not Sundays! Is it an echo of the miracle of the loaves and fishes? Is it a premonition of when the fish would be a symbol of Christ for persecuted Christians? What’s going on?

Well, last week Thomas was struggling with the concept of Jesus being Risen in the Flesh (Jn 20:19-31). Lest he kept doubting that it was really Him or started idealising the Him that it really was, he was told to put his fingers into Jesus’ wounds. In this week’s passage the rest of the apostles need reassurance, and so Jesus shows them His hands and feet but also eats with them, to prove He is no phantom, no holy or unholy ghost, no fantasy or wishful thinking: look, it’s really me, with the wounds of my life and death to prove it, and I’m back at table with you, eating, drinking and being merry! So shalom, peace, cheers!

In the middle of Mass, the priest says it again: The peace of the Lord be with you always; and then we offer each other a sign of peace. In some places a bit of a farce follows: for the following quarter of an hour everyone in the room tries to touch everyone else, as if it were a school playground, and Christ who has appeared in the room, on the altar, is ignored or forgotten. But it needn’t be like that. We can turn reverently to family and friends and strangers, and wish them that same Shalom that Jesus offered. No mere G’day this, no how-ya-going? It is the Peace of Christ we offer, a peace the world cannot give, a peace that can bind together fighting spouses and even complete strangers, a prayer for peace in our hearts and homes, a blessing upon the little corners of our world, that those corners might be part of Christ’s kingdom of peace.

Today at St Patrick’s Cathedral we will celebrate the ‘newlyweds’ who’ve been married for 20 years or less, and we will pray for perseverance and peace in their little worlds. Later in the year we will invite in the long-term offenders, who’ve been working at marriage for decades now and perhaps have a major jubilee. For both groups there are reasons to celebrate.

One good reason is that marriage isn’t always easy and our culture not always very supportive. The sexual revolution of the 1960s invited sex without love, love without commitment, and both without babies. With the 1970s came no-reasons-given, divorce-on-demand and thus marriage without permanence. In the 1980s IVF enabled the flipside of sex without babies: babies without sex; and the post-moderns spread the idea that male and female are merely social constructs and not natural complements to each other. By the 1990s we had ‘de facto’ marriages, civil unions, try-before-you-buy cohabitation, sex changes, internet porn, you name it. Now in the 21st Century permanence, sexual complementarity, even children, are all viewed as optional extras in marriage. All that’s left of the old marriage idea is that the people love each other, or at least promise to.

All that social change in our lifetime has left many people confused about marriage. Some have given up on it altogether. Others do get married but cohabit first, even though this seriously reduces marital sticking power. Many marry without religious ceremony or prayer. They have few or no children. And many marriages fail and people are hurt and children grow up in broken families. In describing this reality of our times I’m not blaming anyone. We all know and love people who’ve tried really hard and it just hasn’t worked. Part of the problem is our society. There’s no back up. Any privileges or protections specific to married people have been gradually taken away. Some say it’s discriminatory to give married people a special status or help. And some people aren’t even sure what marriage is any more: does it have to be between a man and a woman? Or for life? Or be open to family? Or be exclusive? Our political leaders are talking about same-sex marriage next; perhaps polygamy will come after that. It’s one social experiment with marriage after another, at the very time when marriages are under such pressure and there’s so much confusion about marriage. So my message to our leaders and I hope yours too is: Don’t mess with marriage. Support real marriages and marriage-based families. They are the route to our nation’s future.

Today we say to the married couples here: thank God for you and for the witness of your fidelity. For all the challenges of today’s world, the married couples here today have pledged themselves to each other and to God. They demonstrate the heroic daring of two people defying time, health, circumstances, and declaring: whatever, whenever, however: I am for you, all for you, now and always. In doing so they proclaim something our world desperately needs to hear: that total, faithful, lifelong commitments between a man and a woman are possible and are worthy of special reverence and support.

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During the Divine Mercy Sunday Mass, Bishop Anthony invested John Spillane as a Papal Knight, in recognition of his many years of service to the Church in the Catholic Diocese of Parramatta. Photography: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

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Introduction for Divine Mercy Sunday, Second Sunday of Easter Year B, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 15 April 2012

In today’s Gospel we see that Christ rose with those very wounds to which He submitted for the sake of all who are wounded by sin, anxiety or loneliness, shame or suffering. Even in glory He will not abandon His solidarity with the wounded. He is marked for all eternity with the tattoos of His life and death on His hands and feet and side, with the badges of divine mercy on His body. In our time devotion to the Divine Mercy devotion is celebrated especially on this ‘Low Sunday’ which is still Easter Day. And so as we are blessed with the Easter water we join St Thomas in repenting of our failures to believe in Christ’s resurrection and God’s mercy …

Homily for Low Sunday, Second Sunday of Easter Year B, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 15 April 2012

You might have seen the QandA debate on Easter Monday night on the ABC between the arch-atheist, Richard Dawkins, and the arch-bishop, George Pell. There’s lots we might say about that debate and the recent revival of old-fashioned rivalry between science and religion. One moment in the recent show that struck me as very much a Doubting Thomas moment, echoing today’s Gospel passage (Jn 20:19-31), was when Dawkins feigned astonishment that anyone really believed in the physical resurrection of Christ. He wondered aloud if it were just a metaphor, a poetical way of talking, rather like the way that Catholics say the Eucharist is the Body of Christ when ‘everyone’ knows it’s just bread.

What can we say to a world that is both fascinated with Christianity and incredulous about our talk of the Risen Christ and His Eucharistic Body?

Well, one thing we might say is that Dawkins is right to think Christian faith stands or falls on the Resurrection. From the 1st Century Christians and their opponents recognised this. Some sought to poo-poo the whole idea by claiming Jesus wasn’t really dead when they buried Him and that He later woke up and walked away. Others alleged that the Apostles had stolen the body, reburied it somewhere and then made up the whole risen-from-the-dead story. Still others said it was mass hallucination or hysteria – though they hadn’t invented the terms yet. St Paul himself says that if Christ is not truly risen then Christian faith and preaching are in vain; indeed that would make Christianity a lie, our salvation illusory, and “we are of all men most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:12-19).

Paul’s point is still sound. Some people would like to delete from Christianity the Virginal conception of Jesus, His miracles, atoning death and physical resurrection, but keep the bits they like about Jesus as story-teller and teacher of the beatitudes. This has been called ‘Cafeteria Christianity’ or ‘Smorgasbord Catholicism’: picking and choosing according to taste. The ancient Greek word for such picking and choosing was αἵρεσις, heresy.

That won’t do for people who really know and love Christ and His Church. For them faith might not be simple, they may still have their questions, some things will clearly be more crucial than others. They won’t pretend that reading the Bible is easy or that a plain reading is always best. They know some Scriptures are in story-book form or poems or songs; some are law books or history books, wisdom sayings or prophesies; some are Gospels or epistles. Each conveys divine truth for our salvation. But to get that truth we have to consider what questions are being addressed, to whom and in what language. We have to read the Scriptures as a whole and within the Catholic tradition, not out of context. But if it’s really the Word of God we can’t just pick the bits we like or find easy and spit out the rest.

Some beliefs such as the Blessed Trinity or the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection of Christ are deeply mysterious, but by that we don’t mean impossible to understand: no, we mean they are so intelligible we will spend our whole life and more coming to understand them. Some teachings are deeply challenging, but by that we don’t mean impossible to live: no, we mean they are so noble we’ll spend our whole life and more trying realise them. To say I’m a Christian but I find it hard to imagine what the resurrection will be like for us or was like for Christ is fair enough: we keep reading and listening, praying and contemplating, hoping that we are growing year by year in understanding, while humbly accepting we’ve still got a lot to learn. But what we can’t say, coherently, is that I’m a Christian and I don’t believe Christ rose from the dead. For Christians are precisely those who believe He did, and believe therefore that the Father has vindicated Christ and saved us through Him and given Him as a witness to how we ought to live and love.

Our Easter faith is this: that one man really has come back from the dead, not as a projection of the faith of His disciples, for none had the least idea of such a possibility and all of them a strong disinclination to believe it. One man has come back, not as a ghostly phenomenon, a spiritual experience, but in flesh and blood: “Put your finger here: look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it in my side.” One Man has come back and, as we heard in our first reading, this is what Christians have believed and preached, as their central proclamation, from the beginning (Acts 4:32-35).

So Prof Dawkins hit bullseye when he thought belief in the Risen Body of Christ was the lynchpin for Christian faith. By accident he hit upon another: belief in the Eucharistic Body of Christ. Again, he thought it entirely implausible, at best symbolic language. And again, the archbishop said: No, we really mean it, we really believe it, this is our Easter faith.

When Jesus instituted His Eucharist He made it clear that we must do this in His memory, not because nostalgia is good, not because He was afraid of being forgotten. We memorialise Him in this way because this makes His broken but glorified Body, His spilt but Precious Blood, available not just to doubting Apostles, but to every generation. The Body now enthroned in glory is by Easter made sacramentally present upon every altar of the world and so (at present) to 1.2 billion Catholics. We may be blessed, as Thomas was told, for believing without seeing Christ in the flesh, but we are blessed also to receive that same Body in a communion more intimate than we could have with any human being ‘in the flesh’.

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Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP - Easter Sunday Mass of the Resurrection, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 8 April 2012

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It’s the greatest story ever told: the story of God and man. It’s a love story really. God, as St Catherine of Siena put it, was pazzo d’amore, insane with love for us, from all eternity, even before we were made. Then He made us, in His own image, male and female, made for marriage, for fruitfulness and dominion, with Godlike reason and freedom, creativity and passion. He also made this universe for our sakes, for us to live and learn in, play and delight in, a universe in which to be lovers and beloved, God’s own darlings. This same divine obsession holds each of us in being every moment. And when we ourselves love, our hearts and minds expand, our communion with God deepens, our friendships grow warmer, the world is a better place. There is something divine in every act of love, in vows of marriage or religion, in acts of friendship, in kindness to colleagues and strangers, the poor and even enemies.

It’s the greatest love-story ever told – and yet also a story of broken hearts. We turned against the very love that creates and sustains it. This fall from grace, this ‘Original Sin’, has been a recurrent pattern ever since, so that there’s nothing original about it anymore. Pride, envy, lust, selfishness and grudges have dogged our history. Almost from the beginning the greatest romance was the greatest tragedy as well.

As human beings fell from grace they experienced a breakdown of relations with themselves, each other, creation and God. If anything this breakdown is only magnified today. In our culture, proper self-regard so easily becomes self-obsession, self-serving and, when that fails, self-loathing. Loyalty is seen as weakness, other people as rivals or resources. Alliances of convenience allow us to use each other’s bodies, minds and hearts for pleasure or profit, without commitment. Our love for creation can be equally ambiguous. And there is much in contemporary culture that would dismiss our love of God altogether, reducing it to childish fantasy, ancient superstition, constraints imposed by a corrupt institution.

In this crisis of love we are both victims and perpetrators. Each of us has at some time hurt and been hurt. Each has loved not as well as we should and been loved not as well as we would. If we love well, we are at our most human and divine; but it costs, as God ‘learnt’ these three days past, when love cost Him His Son’s life.

The greatest love-story ever told is also the greatest tragedy: the story of God from the dawn of time, steadily holding out the hand of friendship, and of humanity muddling its way through, loving generously at times, middling well at others, not at all at others. God so loved us He made us, made us like Himself – and we rebelled against Him. God so loved us He gave His only Son, gave Him into our hands – and we nailed Him to a tree.

Could any love survive such unlove?

It’s the greatest romance and greatest tragedy, but there is comedy here as well. On Thursday night we saw impetuous Peter refusing to allow Christ to wash his feet and then, when he realised that without such baptism he could have no part in Christ, begging to be washed all over. We heard him promising he’d always be loyal to Christ and then a few hours later denying three times he’d ever met Him. So drunk was he from the Passover Feast and bored with Jesus’ long prayers that he couldn’t keep watch with Christ even one hour. When he woke it was to a pathetic struggle with his sword.

Comic Peter and the others are of course us. Their crises of faith, hope and love are ours.

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Crisis in the Kingdom of God (A three-part Homily for the Triduum)

Part Three: Crisis of Love for All Humanity

Easter Vigil of the Resurrection, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 7 April 2012

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It’s the greatest story ever told: the story of God and man. It is above all a love story. God, as St Catherine of Siena put it, was pazzo d’amore, insane with love for us, from all eternity, even before we were made. Our First Reading tonight (Gen 1:1-2:2) recalls how He made us, in His own image, male and female, made for marriage, for fruitfulness and dominion, with Godlike reason, freedom, creativity and passion. He also made this universe for our sakes, for us to live and learn in, play and delight in, a universe in which to be lovers and beloved, God’s darlings. This same divine obsession holds us in being every moment of our existence. When we ourselves love, our hearts and minds expand, our communion with God deepens, our friendships grow warmer, the world is a better place. There is something divine in every act of love, in vows of marriage or religion, in acts of friendship, in kindness to colleagues and strangers, the poor and even enemies.

It’s the greatest love-story ever told – and yet also a story of broken hearts. The crisis in the Kingdom of God, a crisis of all humanity, is that we turned against the very love that creates and sustains us. This fall from grace, this ‘Original Sin’, has been a recurrent pattern ever since, so that there’s nothing original about it anymore. Pride, envy, lust, selfishness and grudges have dogged our history. Almost from the beginning the greatest romance was the greatest tragedy as well.

As human beings fell from grace they experienced a breakdown of relations with themselves, each other, creation and God. If anything this crisis of love is magnified today. In our culture, self-regard easily becomes self-obsession, self-serving and, when that fails, self-loathing. Loyalty is seen as weakness, other people as rivals. Alliances of convenience allow us to use each other’s bodies, minds and hearts, for pleasure or profit, without commitment. Our love for creation can be equally ambiguous. And there is much in contemporary culture that would dismiss our love of God altogether, reducing it to childish fantasy, ancient superstition, constraints imposed by a corrupt institution.

In this crisis of love we are both victims and perpetrators. Each of us has at some time hurt and been hurt. Each has loved not as well as we should and been loved not as well as we would. If we love well, we are at our most human and divine; but it costs, as God ‘learnt’ these three days past, when love cost Him His Son’s life.

The greatest love-story ever told is also the greatest tragedy: the story of God from the dawn of time, steadily holding out the hand of friendship, and of humanity muddling its way through, loving generously at times, middling well at others, not at all at others. God so loved us He made us, made us like Himself – and we rebelled against Him. God so loved us He gave His only Son, gave Him into our hands – and we nailed Him to a tree.

The Sacred Triduum plunges us into the Apostles’ Thursday crisis of faith, when they denied and fled. It immerses us in the Friday crisis of Jesus, our crisis of hope. Finally, on this Easter night, it confronts us with the crisis of all humanity: a crisis of love. Could God still love us even when we had killed His only Son? Could any love survive such unlove?

It’s the greatest romance and greatest tragedy, but there is comedy here as well. In St Mark’s Passion last Sunday there was a cameo role we only see every three years when we hear that particular account (Mk 14:51-52). It was a hot night in Gethsemane and a young fellow followed Christ into the garden wearing little more than the Ancient Near-Eastern equivalent of his underpants. The guards grabbed him but he fled away naked leaving his clothes in their hands. It was humiliating, no doubt, but a moment of comic relief for us onlookers amidst the bleakness of that Agonising Garden.

The Resurrection of faith, hope and love

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Well, St Mark tells us tonight, that on entering the tomb on Easter morning “They saw a young man dressed in a white robe and they were struck with amazement; but he said: Don’t worry; Jesus has risen, He is not here.” (Mk 16:1-7) Is this that same anonymous youth who only a few verses before was streaking away from the scene? Is this all humanity lost and confused, denuded of dignity and hope, sinful and sick, in all the rawness of need, now dressed in a glorious white alb, like our newly baptised soon will be?Fear not, he says, for love casts out fear. Go tell Peter and the lads Jesus is Risen. Go and tell Peter, in particular, for he who denied Christ three times must now tell Christ three times how much he loves Him. If the angels sing Holy, Holy, Holy, the Church built on Peter will sing Love, Love, Love. That love, tested in the crucible of infidelity, despair and denial these three days past, is reborn tonight in the Resurrection of faith, hope and love. On them Christ will build His Church and rebuild each of us.

Crisis in the Kingdom of God (A three-part Homily for the Triduum)

Part Two: Crisis of Hope in Jesus

Good Friday Celebration of the Lord’s Passion, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 6 April 2012

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Life can be a bitter cup. Jesus knew He must drink that cup. In St John’s Passion (Jn chs 18 and 19) we see the scourging and crowning, the false trial and terrible verdict. Before our eyes Jesus is stripped of His clothes, His dignity, His friends, His very life. His cause is hopeless now and so is ours: if the greatest of us dies so terrible a death, then surely all is lost for the rest of us …

There is crisis in the air around the world at present: the global financial crisis seems unending, there’s the much vaunted environmental crisis and a political crisis over leadership and ideals. Our media are full of such rhetoric, some of it overblown. But the crisis of today’s Passion is very real indeed. Today’s physical, emotional and spiritual calamity will tear the world apart. People are sacrificed at Passover; the Son of God goes to His terrible fate; men flee in horror; graves open up; the world is plunged into darkness; and the veil of Temple is rent asunder.

Good Friday is Part II of the Crisis in the Kingdom of God. Last night we saw Part I when at Supper and in the Garden the Apostles lost faith. The Shepherd was struck and the sheep scattered. Some, like Judas, would die from this loss of faith, in God, the world, mercy, themselves. Others, like Peter, would recover and end up with deeper faith. Those apostles are us, of course: most people go through a crisis of faith or confidence or ideals at some stage in their lives, some dark night of the soul, when their heart is broken or dried up, when God seems distant and they feel rudderless. For some this lasts a short while, for others many years. And like the Twelve, we could go either way, into infidelity or renewal of faith.

That was last night. Today’s is a crisis not just of the Apostles, but of Jesus Himself. No beautiful, charismatic figure, today’s Jesus, to attract our attention and affection. No, He is “a thing despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, a man to make people screen their faces” (Isa 52:13-53:12). In our own lives many of us experience not only crises of faith but of hope. It may be depression or grief, at sickness in ourselves or in someone we love. It may be at the loss of a loved one, a relationship, a job or aspiration. Our problems seem too big, our resilience too small. We may despair of human goodness or of divine mercy. Our courage fails. Our optimism evaporates. We screen our faces.

While some aspects of our culture support our best hopes, others rob us of things to hope for. Most ‘news’ in our media is bad news, selected to scare us. The random universe of secularity, with no transcendent power and no redemption, suggests life is meaningless. People are left feeling they have no future. Some try to sure themselves up by maximising wealth, power or security. Others drop out with drugs, fantasies or other distractions. Saddest of all, some give up on life altogether.

It is said that the Chinese character for crisis represents both danger and opportunity. Certainly crises can end in either disaster or progress. What about today’s crisis of hope in the Kingdom of God? Should we anticipate something beyond the bruising red and purple? Jesus’ long psalm of lament, sung from the cross (Ps 22), begins My God, why have you abandoned me. But it ends praising the God who saves and whose story generations will tell. There are other hints of hope too: the pagan Pilate names Jesus ‘King of the Jews’, heir of the promises to David; some stand faithfully by the Cross; Jesus declares His mission accomplished, His marriage consummated; Blood and Water flow from His side, the beginning of our sacraments; two dare ask for the Body. “His soul’s anguish over,” says Isaiah, “he shall see the light and be content. By his sufferings shall my servant justify many.”

As we creep to the Cross today, we see around us the Sorrowing Mother and the young John, newly adopted by each other. We join the other women who were faithful to the end. Then there is nervous Joseph of Arimathaea and the night-owl Nicodemus. With them we hope against hope, for the Christ Himself, ourselves and our world. For the One who goes down into the tomb today joins all those we’ve loved and lost, and those unloved and unremembered. He joins all those for whom none holds out hope and those who’ve lost hope themselves. To all of these He promises life beyond the grave as He harrows hell. And if there is hope even for these most hopeless and helpless, there is cause for us all to hope as well.

To call this Good Friday might sound perverse, as if we’ve adopted the language of those who would dance on Jesus’ grave. But no, it’s is our name for this day: for tomorrow night we will sing of that “truly necessary sin of Adam”, that “happy fault, that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer” (Exultet). Only by the disaster of sin and the death of Christ death was the success of our Redemption won. Just when all seems lost, hope springs up again.

Last night we saw some survive a crisis of faith the stronger for it and all of us pray for stronger faith. Today we see some survive a crisis of hope and we too pray for stronger hope. As with Paschal faith, so with Paschal hope, we grasp what God offers and make it our whole posture in life. We call that most hopeless of days our Good Friday, for we dare to hope that tomorrow night there will be more to tell. “As for me,” sings Our Lord from the Cross, “as for me, I trust in the Lord; I say: You are my God … So be strong, my heart, and take courage all you who hope in the Lord!”

Crisis in the Kingdom of God (A three-part Homily for the Triduum),

Part One: Crisis of Faith for the Apostles

Holy Thursday Mass of the Last Supper, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 5 April 2012

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The world, we are told, is in crisis. The global financial crisis has dragged on now for four years: walk down Church Street, Parramatta, and you see closed shops and properties up for lease. Some say there’s an environmental crisis too; we’ve certainly had a lot of rain lately. We keep hearing about a ‘crisis of leadership’ in politics. Our media is full of crisis talk …

What does that word conjure up in your imagination? Images of stockbrokers jumping out of Wall Street buildings in 1929, of politicians, diplomats or soldiers with furrowed brow, or of ‘toxic debt’ oozing over our economy? How does such hyperbole make you feel? It might be anxiety or urgency, enough to cooperate to confront the threats. Or it might have the opposite effect: panic can paralyse us, overstatement sedate us, even make us cynical.

Whatever our present difficulties, for the next three days we will be immersed in a very real crisis, one so drastic it will tear the world apart. People will be tried and the Son of Man go to a terrible fate. Men will flee in horror and graves open. The world will be plunged into darkness and the veil of the Temple rent asunder. If tomorrow’s is a crisis for Christ Himself, and Easter the crisis is for all humanity, tonight’s is a crisis for the Apostles, a crisis of faith.

The Jewish Passover recalls the terrible events of our First Reading (Ex ch 12), when sacrificial lambs were slain, fast cooked and woofed down with bitter herbs, their blood painted on our lintels. As the Angel of Death smote Egypt’s first-born, we stood ready to flee. Tonight also retells the Christian Passover, when the true Lamb of God was slain, when Christ was stripped, beaten, nailed and killed, and when a permanent memorial of that dreadful sacrifice was instituted.

Tonight Jesus voluntarily takes off the cloak that will be stripped from Him tomorrow. He kneels at His disciples’ feet, subverting the natural order between rabbi and student, Christ and disciple. He models for us Christian leadership and service, priesthood and discipleship. We hear it in our Gospel (Jn 13:1-15) and soon we will see it enacted before our eyes. It is beautiful, but it leaves the apostles deeply unsettled. There are stranger things to come. He takes bread and wine and utters portentous words. This bread is My Body which will be broken, this wine My Blood which will be spilt (1 Cor 11:23-26). One of you will betray Me, another deny Me thrice before cock-crow, the rest of you will desert Me … He then leads them out into the dark praying that He might escape what’s ahead. Amidst a melee of warring gangs He is arrested.

There is a crisis in the Kingdom of God. Tonight its first citizens, the Apostles, desert. The Shepherd is struck and the sheep scatter. The Light of their world grows dim. They are en cris, their sense of vocation is evaporating, the security they felt in Jesus’ presence is dissolving, their world no longer makes sense. Their crisis of faith could go either way for each of them: death or recovery, dissolution or renewal. Judas dies from loss of faith – in God, the world, himself. Peter recovers his faith – sufficiently, in due course, to be the Rock of the Church.

‘That’s what happens’ my grandmother used to say, when the best laid plans of mice and men came to naught. That’s what happens, in every disciple’s life. At one time or another our heart is broken or dried up, God seems distant and we feel rudderless, abandoned, confused. At that time we are en cris with the Twelve at the Last Supper and in the Garden of Gethsemane and, like them, we could go either way, into despair or renewal.

The world is not always much help here. Instead of supporting our faith and ideals, secular culture can undermine or underground them. The world tells believers to live a double-life, keeping faith private as if it were something embarrassing. Our culture is in Gethsemane, as it were, for like the Twelve it’s no longer sure what to believe. The world economy is bleak, with its crisis of faith in bankers and economists, and in the certainties of endless growth and boundless affluence. There is a crisis of faith in leaders, too, and in their ability to get us out of this mess. We desperately need something to believe in, someone to cast light on our situation. We need illumination.

One of the ‘Seven Wonders’ of the ancient world was the Lighthouse of Pharos opposite Alexandria. According to the 1^st Century Jewish historian, Josephus, it could be seen 42 miles away. This same Josephus wrote of a wise man, a miracle-worker and teacher named ‘Jesus the Christ’, whom Pilate had crucified at the prompting of the Jewish leaders, but whom the Christians believed had risen from the dead on the third day. These stubborn first Christians seemed to believe that Jesus’ light could not be extinguished, and that the light that is faith in Him could be seen across the seas, beyond the grave, to the end of the world. Tonight Christ our Light, our lighthouse, institutes that greatest Sacrament of Faith, so that we might approach Him every year, every week, every day if we like, and say “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief” and receive Him into our bodies and minds.

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP - Homily for Holy Mass of the Holy Oils (Chrism Mass), St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 4 April 2012

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In this Golden Jubilee year of Vatican II, I would like to recall a priest who, like John Henry Newman, was not at the Council yet would have a profound influence on it and the reforms that followed. He was Hippolytus, a 3rd Century diocesan priest of Rome.

Like many a parish priest, legends about him abound and it is hard to sort fact from fiction. Clearly he was a good theologian: his writings in Scripture, homiletics, canon law, apologetics and liturgy all had their influence. But he was eccentric and difficult to get along with. He regarded himself as pope in his own domain and repudiated any changes he didn’t like brought in by official popes. Though he condemned papal laxity in reconciling people, he happily experienced that reconciliation himself, and ultimately died in union with the Church, a martyr for the Faith and saint.

The Second Vatican Council drew from Hippolytus the idea that evangelisation seeks to unite all humanity into one family, perfected in Christ and able together to call God ‘Our Father’. In Lumen Gentium it borrowed his teaching on the role of the bishop in regulating the sacraments. In its decree on the priesthood the Council echoed his teaching on priests as the bishop’s assistants in governing and sanctifying. And his idea that Christ’s triple office of priest, prophet and king is shared with bishops, priests and people runs antiphonally through the texts of Vatican II.

The document The Apostolic Tradition attributed to Hippolytus was rediscovered early in the 20th Century. There was lots there to excite liturgists: very early descriptions of the RCIA, the sign of the cross, veneration of Mary, ordination rites, distribution of Holy Communion, Christian burial: so much of what we do today is in continuity with the practices reported by this early priest. Our post-conciliar Eucharistic Prayer II is based on his. He also offers the earliest account of the blessing the oils: “At the hour determined, let the Bishop give thanks over the oil, put it into a vessel and call it ‘The Oil of Thanksgiving’ [or chrism] and take other oil and exorcise it and call it ‘The Oil of Exorcism’ [or catechumens].” He gives a formula for blessing the Oil of the Sick: “Sanctify this oil, O Lord, to make holy whomever is anointed with it, and as you anointed priests, prophets and kings, so give health and comfort to those who receive it.”

Renewing our priestly promises

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Yet if we do this every time we act as faithful priests, we reserve two things especially to Holy Week. One is blessing the sacramental oils. We could do that each time we use them. But instead we gather together to consecrate a year’s supply so the oils will be a sign of our unity as a Presbyterate and Diocese. And we bless them at this time so they will be a sign that the sacraments extend the graces of Holy Week all year round.

Tonight we also renew our priestly promises. We could do that on the anniversary of our individual ordinations, as some married couples do. But instead we gather together to do it, another sign of our unity as priests. And we do so at this time for this is the week that Christ instituted the Eucharist and the Priesthood.

Being a priest in Hippolytus’ day no doubt required some different skills and approaches. Yet we can pray as he prayed because at its heart the priesthood is what it always was: the priesthood of Jesus Christ, “the Alpha and Omega, who was and is and always will be” (Rev 1:5-8). Sixty years ago a bishop asked Theo Arrivoli and Valerian Jenko some questions at ordination. Fifty years ago it was Carl Ashton and John O’Neill’s turn. Twenty-five years ago Andrew Robinson, Bob Bossini and Mathew Antony also answered. In a few minutes time I will ask you, my brother priests, whether you are still resolved to do your job: as faithful stewards of the divine mysteries, faithful teachers of divine truth and faithful shepherds after the heart of Christ. But before I ask you what you’ll do, I will ask you why. The why is all-important: it inspires and shapes or undermines the what. I will ask if you are resolved to be ever more closely conformed to Christ, self-forgetful in being Church-mindful, recommitting with that joy with which you gave yourself on your ordination day. In other words, I will ask you to promise, once again, to love within the Apostolic Tradition.

Before Confirmation a child was once asked by the bishop to define Matrimony. The child nervously recited: ‘Matrimony is a condition of temporal punishment which souls suffer for a time on account of their sins.’ Embarrassed that one of her charges had confused Purgatory for Matrimony, the nun in charge was about to correct the child. But the Bishop stopped her and said: “Hold on sister, what would we know?” Yet still we prepare our people for marriage and one thing we may tell them is that love is the easiest and hardest thing in the world. Easy, because we are made for love: love fills us with delight, expands our hearts, fulfils our humanity. Yet trials will come. If priests bring glad tidings, as our readings suggest, it’s especially for those who’ve had bad news; if they heal, release, vindicate and comfort, it is because some are broken-hearted, captive or grieving (Isa 61:1-9; Lk 4:16-21). We priests are to be there when loving is hard. We must model a love that commits, sacrifices and perseveres, through good times and bad, though sameness and change, loving to the end.

Pop culture aspires to love. But it too easily reduces love to sentimentality, fleeting feelings and comfortable ‘compatibility’. Love, priests know, is an oil that heals when it recognises hurt, a balm that strengthens because it knows weakness, a wax that binds together where there is division. Word and sacraments are intimate occasions of love, of loving through labour into rebirth, through repentance to return, through commitment unto heaven.

2012 Chrism Mass Photo Gallery

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP - Palm Sunday Youth Mass, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 1 April 2012

Tonight we celebrate the 27th World Youth Day. The last time I heard St Mark’s Passion recited it was on the way to the 26th World Youth Day, celebrated in Madrid last year. I was in the company of 180 of our young people. We had just walked the Way of the Cross through the streets of Jerusalem and visited the place where Christ was crucified. Then we had Mass in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, only metres away from where Christ was buried and rose from the dead. Since most of you could not be with us, I thought I would share with you some of what I said to them then …

St Mark’s Passion is a powerful, no-nonsense telling of the story of Jesus’ last day (Mk chs 14 & 15). It’s the shortest version, but it has some unique features. One is its stark realism. Mark tells it like it is. His Jesus is no demigod, no superhero. He is indeed the Son of God but He is also very much a man. We see His agony, fear, betrayal; His arrest, torture and death in all its detail.

Amidst all this awfulness, Mark offers some light relief: the apostles, drunk from Passover feasting and bored with prayer, cannot stay awake; they put up a pathetic defence when Jesus is arrested. Peter breaks his oaths as quickly as he makes them. And there’s a young man with “nothing on but linen cloth”, the Ancient Near Eastern equivalent of his underpants. “They grabbed him, but he left the cloth in their hands and ran away naked.”

Who is Mark’s mysterious man? Some say it’s the evangelist himself. We don’t know, but this much is clear: public nudity may be all very well on some Australian beaches, as it was amongst the ancient Greeks and Romans, but it was never acceptable for the Hebrews. For them it was a symbol of degradation; ‘naked’ meant wretched, pitiable, at a very low ebb. For a man to flee starkers from the scene is not just light relief: it tells of profound humiliation, exposure, disillusionment. It is the story of humanity bereft; a chronicle of every human being when desperate and ashamed, when abandoning principles or overwhelmed by problems. It is the story of every person, weak, confused, tired, sinful, sick, lonely, in fright and flight.

Behold man: fallen mankind, broken humanity, Adam and Eve naked of power, friendship, hope and esteem; subject to Sin, the Flesh and the Devil; exposed and disgraced, destined for death; every human being in raw need of salvation.

There is, of course, another uncovering in this Passion. They stripped Jesus, dividing His clothing among them: for He must be subjected to every indignity, carrying to Calvary not just the weight of the Cross but of every human sin and anguish. He prays with each of us at our lowest ebb the psalm of hope but also of lament: My God, why have you forsaken me?

Ecce homo, behold the Man! Behold true Life destined for death; to this abyss of oblivion destiny draws Him, as it does every human being. Jesus joins Mark’s wretched youth but is stripped not just of clothes, but of divine glory, human dignity, friends, even seemingly His Father-God. He joins us at our weakest, for even in beautiful Western Sydney there can be depression, desperation and shame; some are sick, sinful, at the end of their tether; indeed, all of us are, at one time or another.

So they killed the man-God, pinning on Him every sin, wrapping Him up in a linen shroud with the aloes of every human sadness and the myrrh of every human need. Then they covered the tomb with a stone …

Yet, on the first Easter morning, they found the tomb empty and the shroud abandoned, not because Jesus remains nakedly needy for ever, but because His is the robe of divine splendour. “Sing, sing to Lord, He has covered Himself with glory!” (Ex 15:1) The Son of Man will be wrapped in majesty as in a robe (Ps 104:2), His human body drawn up into the life of heaven.

Dare we hope for new life in our struggles too? Is there a promise of Resurrection for us also? Next Sunday, when we look again into the tomb, we will see it is not quite empty. St Mark tells us that on entering the tomb on Easter morning, “They saw a young man dressed in a white robe and they were struck with amazement; but he said: Don’t worry; Jesus has risen, He is not here.” (Mk 16:1-7) Is this that same anonymous youth who only a few verses before was streaking away from the scene? Is this the same humanity, once lost and confused, denuded of dignity and hope, now no longer in flight but seated confidently in a shining white alb of hope? At Easter we will see mankind, no longer bereft but new-clothed in righteousness, radiating the promise of the Risen Lord!

That young man says to us: be not afraid, not afraid to rise up out of the tomb of your own hurts and grievances, your sins and compulsions, not afraid to face that from which you’ve been running: bring all these things to your Risen Lord ready to experience grace, redemption, new life. Be ready to be transformed like that first young disciple, ready to become a saint, an evangelist, a witness of Christ to our world!

Announcement by Bishop Anthony Fisher OP after Mass re 27th World Youth Day 2012 and 28th World Youth Day 2013, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 1 April 2012

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Today is the 27th World Youth Day. The 23rd was in Sydney; the 26th in Madrid; the 28th will be in Rio. But when it doesn’t travel WYD comes to us on Palm Sunday.

WYD was invented by Blessed John Paul II who had the heart of God for young people. His friend Pope Benedict XVI has continued this tradition. It has grown and is different each time. But every WYD is a chance for the young Catholics of the world to meet and inspire each other, in company with the successors of Peter and the apostles, the Pope and bishops. Every WYD is a chance for young people to give witness to Christ, the Church, their ideals, their hopes for a better world. So they are evangelising, just by being themselves, being themselves together, in faith.

WYD Rio 2013 promises to be very special. It may well be the biggest WYD ever, as Brazil is the biggest Catholic country in the world. It will be colourful, cultural and very spiritual. We are already well advanced in our plans. I’ll be leading some of you to the holy city of Lima in Peru, to encounter its many saints such as Rose of Lima and Martin de Porres, and to engage in a project with the poor. Then to the Iguazu Falls, one of the natural wonders of the world, to contemplate God’s gifts and spend some time together in catechesis and prayer. And then to Rio, with Christ the Redeemer presiding over its harbour. It’s very exciting, what God has in store for each person here tonight and, for some of you, that will include joining me at WYD2013.

There will be more detail on our diocesan pilgrim website soon: www.parrawyd.org   Read the blog, learn about our plans, watch out for updates about registrations. Download the Holy Father’s just published message for this 27th WYD. There he talks about the joy at the heart of Christian experience and about WYD as an immense experience of the joy of communion, the joy of being Christian, the joy of faith. Please take a look at the very wise things he has to say to us.

Tonight I invite you to decide, if you haven’t already, to do all you can to get to Rio or else help someone else get there. It will be the time of your life. It could be the key to your faith and hope and love for the rest of your life. I declare the Parramatta pilgrimage to the 28th World Youth Day in Rio 2013 now open!

Palm Sunday & WYD12 Celebration Photo Gallery

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP - Palm Sunday Morning Mass, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 1 April 2012

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The last time I heard St Mark’s Passion (Mk chs 14 & 15) recited was last year in the company of 180 of our young people. We were on our way to World Youth Day in Madrid. We had just walked the Way of the Cross through the streets of Jerusalem. Then we had Mass in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, only metres away from where Christ was crucified, buried and rose from the dead.

So we read St Mark’s powerful, no-nonsense story of Jesus’ last day. It’s the shortest version, but it has some unique features. One is its stark realism. Mark tells it like it is. His Jesus is no demigod, no superhero. He is indeed the Son of God but He is also very much a man. We see His agony, fear, betrayal; His arrest, torture and death in all its gory detail.

Amidst all this awfulness, Mark offers some light relief: the apostles, drunk from Passover feasting and bored with prayer, cannot stay awake; they put up a pathetic defence when Jesus is arrested. Peter breaks his oaths as quickly as he makes them. And there’s a young man with “nothing on but linen cloth”, the Ancient Near Eastern equivalent of his underpants. “They grabbed him, but he left the cloth in their hands and ran away naked.”

Who is Mark’s mysterious man? Some say it’s the evangelist himself. We don’t know, but this much is clear: public nudity may be all very well on some Australian beaches, as it was amongst the ancient Greeks and Romans, but it was never acceptable for the Hebrews. For them it was a symbol of degradation; ‘naked’ meant wretched, pitiable, at a very low ebb. For a man to flee starkers from the scene is not just light relief: it tells of profound humiliation, exposure, disillusionment. It is the story of humanity bereft; a chronicle of every human being when desperate and ashamed, when abandoning principles or overwhelmed by problems. It is the story of every person, weak, confused, tired, sinful, sick, lonely, in fright and flight.

Behold man: fallen mankind, broken humanity, Adam and Eve naked of power, friendship, hope and esteem; subject to Sin, the Flesh and the Devil; exposed and disgraced, destined for death; every human being in raw need of salvation.

There is, of course, another uncovering in this Passion. They stripped Jesus, dividing His clothing among them: for He must be subjected to every indignity, carrying to Calvary not just the weight of the Cross but of every human sin and anguish. He prays with each of us at our lowest ebb the psalm of hope but also of lament: My God, why have you forsaken me?

Ecce homo, behold the Man! Behold true Life destined for death; to this abyss of oblivion destiny draws Him, as it does every human being. Jesus joins Mark’s wretched youth but is stripped not just of clothes, but of divine glory, human dignity, friends, even seemingly His Father-God. He joins us at our weakest, for even in beautiful Western Sydney there can be depression, desperation and shame; some are sick, sinful, at the end of their tether; indeed, all of us are, at one time or another.

So they killed the man-God, pinning on Him every sin, wrapping Him up in a linen shroud with the aloes of every human sadness and the myrrh of every human need. Then they covered the tomb with a stone …

Yet, on the first Easter morning, they found the tomb empty and the shroud abandoned, not because Jesus remains nakedly needy for ever, but because His is the robe of divine splendour. “Sing, sing to Lord, He has covered Himself with glory!” (Ex 15:1) The Son of Man will be wrapped in majesty as in a robe (Ps 104:2), His human body drawn up into the life of heaven.

Dare we hope for new life in our struggles too? Is there a promise of Resurrection for us also? Next Sunday, when we look again into the tomb, we will see it is not quite empty. St Mark tells us that on entering the tomb on Easter morning, “They saw a young man dressed in a white robe and they were struck with amazement; but he said: Don’t worry; Jesus has risen, He is not here.” (Mk 16:1-7) Is this that same anonymous youth who only a few verses before was streaking away from the scene? Is this the same humanity, once lost and confused, denuded of dignity and hope, now no longer in flight but seated confidently in a shining white alb of hope? At Easter we will see mankind, no longer bereft but new-clothed in righteousness, radiating the promise of the Risen Lord!

That young man says to us: be not afraid, not afraid to rise up out of the tomb of your hurts and grievances, your sins and compulsions, not afraid to face that from which you’ve been running. Bring all these things to your Risen Lord ready to experience grace, redemption, new life. Be ready to be transformed like that disciple, ready to become a saint, an evangelist, a witness of Christ to our world!

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP - 2012 Commissioning Ceremony and Education Mass, St Patrick’s Church, Blacktown, Thursday 22 March 2012.

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Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for the 4th Sunday of Lent (Laetare Sunday), 18 March 2012, at Servants of Jesus Community Centre, Seven Hills, with the Bread of Life Fellowship

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Today is Laetare Sunday. In middle of this penitential season of walking with Christ to Jerusalem, to His Passion and Death, the Church, as it were, breaks out in laughter. It’s almost as if we’re unable to take the dour purple of Lent seriously: the Church is impatient, like a child eyeing Easter eggs, picking them up when no one is looking, scratching them, sniffing the chocolate. Even our bishops are dressed up like Easter eggs on this day!

Jesus Christ, crucified by us and for us, will rise from the dead, not just to say ner-ner-ner to His persecutors, but to say ner-ner-ner to Death itself, to our last enemy, and to Ignorance and Sickness and Sin, Death’s allies and so our enemies too. His says so, not on His own behalf but ours: on Easter night we will sing of Adam’s sin as ‘O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!’ (Exultet)

For try as we may to extinguish Christ our Light that Light will return on Easter night, returning as enlightenment and hope for us all. Though we may at times prefer ignorance and sin, yet He will rise up at Easter to offer us wisdom and health and holiness anew. Though in so many ways we choose death, yet Hope will spring up again and eternal life be ours!

Hence the rose-coloured vestments; hence the prayers today speak repeatedly of joy.

Not that Christianity looks at the world through rose-tinted glasses – far from it. As the Gospel reminds us: though God came to His own, they did not receive Him; though the Light came into the world, men preferred darkness; though the Word became flesh we lifted Him up on the Cross (Jn 3:14-21).

And there on the cross Christ will be stripped of everything: His divinity, His human dignity, comfort and success; stripped of His clothes, His friends, His life. For He has entered fully into the human mess of hunger, sickness, isolation, anger, failure; the mess in every family, community, church. So too must His Church in every generation, identifying most closely with those who must carry a cross.

So Christianity cannot be a rosy-eyed religion. No, ours is a brutally realistic view of the world. It knows about suffering, about victims, of injustice and war, of disability and disease, of depression whether economic or psychological, of loneliness or compulsion, of sinfulness and powerlessness of so many kinds.

Yet amidst all this back and blue, the purple of bruises, true Christians remain optimistic, rosy-hearted as it were. The wowsers take a dim view of the rosy things of the world and the flesh, of Christmas presents and Easter eggs and associated vices such as singing, dancing and smiling; they think being religious equals being dour, repressed, censorious and pessimistic. But our faith speaks in a very different language: despondent Israel in our First Reading will be redeemed, the Temple will be rebuilt, the people returned home (2 Chr 36:14-16, 19-23). Or as Paul said so beautifully in the Second Reading: though we were dead through our sins, we were brought again to life by grace, making us “God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life” (Eph 2:4-10).

Which seems to bring us to an emotional stalemate: how can we be realistic yet joyful, confident without clowning, violet yet rose? How is this possible without self-contradiction, without schizophrenia? How is it possible to be truthful yet jubilant, self-assured yet not facile, optimistic without romanticising? And where is this God who’s supposed to love us so much if there are so many people who suffer?

God so loved the world He sent His only Son: to be with us in the mess but to lead us beyond it also. The folly of the Cross ahead will also be the moment of Christ’s glorification and our redemption: the moment of revelation of His ultimate divine love, of the justice and vindicating power of God’s love; a love that keeps on loving even in the depths of betrayal and murder; a definitive love that gives itself completely, pours itself out for others rather than focussing on its own self-fulfilment, its own self-gratification, its own comfort and security.

The irony of that tree upon which the Son of Man must be lifted up is this: that it is in the very act of total self-giving, of total vulnerability for the sake of God and others, for the sake of truth, in the very act of giving ourselves away, that we are given back those very selves.

More than this: “The Son of Man must be lifted up [on the Cross] as Moses lifted up the desert serpent [on a stick]”. Now, a serpent on a cross-shaped stick, we all know, is the symbol of medicine, of doctors. Christ’s death and rising will be our medicine, for “by His wounds we are healed”, graced to be more, more than we can ever be alone. Our Catholic faith and practice lifts us up, out of our present cares and woes, only to give us back to them, redeemed, reinvigorated, with new vision and hope, ready to confront and endure and renew, open-eyed yet rosy-hearted.

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for the Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time Year B, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 5 February 2012

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Mother Teresa of Calcutta, that wonderful wrinkle-faced nun who dressed in tea-towels, was friend to the poor and blessed of God, was once asked by a young priest-bureaucrat how much time he should pray each day. She immediately recommended two hours a day!

But, he responded, she surely did not know how much he had to do and how important his work was. His ecclesiastical tasks were so demanding, deadlines had to be met and so much depended on him. Oh I’m sorry, she said apologetically, I hadn’t realised how important and demanding your work is: in that case you need to pray four hours a day!

Today’s Gospel (Mk 1:29-39) comes from the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. He’s in the synagogue with His first disciples, praying on the Sabbath Day, amazing all by teaching with authority and exorcising demons. He then moves to Peter’s house, an early Christian metaphor for the Church. Immediately He’s at work curing again, battling demons, a whole town crowded at the door.

The next day, Sunday, He gets His show on road, beginning His great preaching campaign throughout Galilee, proclaiming repentance and Good News, and bringing more healing. Yet in the middle of sentences packed with action we find the words: “Long before dawn He got up and left the house, and went off to a lonely place to pray.” At crucial points in Jesus’ ministry He retreats to the desert, the mountains, a boat or a garden, to rest and pray. Why is that? Why would anyone go to some lonely place to pray?

Most obviously, I suppose, to get away from people – the crush, the distraction, the demands. Yet that presents an immediate problem: for human beings are social animals and God is primarily mediated to us by other people, especially our Christian brothers and sisters. Our favourite prayer begins ‘Our Father’, not ‘my father’. Our greatest prayer, the Mass, is for a whole Eucharistic community to pray, preferably a bishop, priests, deacons, assistants, lectors, choir, musicians, collectors and many, many people! Jesus Himself went to the synagogue to speak to God. And even when He went off ‘on retreat’ in some boat or up a mountain or in a garden, He usually took a few favourite disciples with Him. Jesus was no loner when He prayed and He didn’t tell us to be: indeed He taught that when two or three gathered in His name, that where He is (Mt 18:20).

So what’s all this ‘lonely place’ stuff? Did 30 years in obscurity leave Jesus a bit introverted, so that one day of crowds was all he could take? Did God want us to be together, but not be too close Himself? Apparently not, since in the very next verses Jesus is back amongst the people. While some people think one day or even one hour a week is enough Jesus, He never thought that was enough of us. He gave His every moment for us. Jesus is God-with-us, God-for-us, not God away from us.

Perhaps, then, it was just that being in a quiet, more than a lonely, place allowed Him to rest; to recharge spiritual and emotional batteries. All the noise, the busyness can sap us of inspiration, of physical and mental energy. Quiet refreshes. Absolutely no one, not even the Christ, can live a life of feverish activity and generous self-giving, and maintain a sense of proportion, imagination and inspiration, without sometimes standing back from it all in quiet solitude.

Our lives risk being all out-put and no in-put. Certain kinds of work dry us up, empty us of inspiration, leave us just ‘going through the motions’ or engaged in frenetic but mindless activity. We often seem unable to disentangle ourselves from work, family, preoccupations. I once knew a young lawyer whose only way of ensuring he made time to pray was to join a religious order! Yet as he discovered, even as a religious he could make all sorts of excuses for not praying as I ought. Our important work too easily excuses neglecting our relationships, especially with God.

Often, I suspect, it’s a lack of proportion: we imagine that it’s up to us, single-handedly, to save the world, that our work is so important and we are irreplaceable; when in fact, of course, Someone’s already saved the world and it will continue along perfectly well after we’ve gone! I think it’s generous people who most often fall into that version of the activity trap.

There’s another version too. The Brazilian Archbishop, Dom Hélder Câmara, once wrote that busyness is an evasion tactic. We can’t leave work and go apart to a lonely place because we’re afraid of listening to God; afraid of what He might ask of us next if we listen too carefully; afraid to look at ourselves squarely in the mirror in case we might be ashamed and have to change.

So prayer is properly a breathing space, a time for reflection, refocusing, recharging. Yet just as in Jesus’ day, it can seem that there’s just too much to do: Mass-going, private prayer and retreats can seem a luxury. More than ever, prayer today is a countersign: in a world where people are valued and value themselves by what they have and make and do, prayer is subversive. In a world which values most those who are active, efficient, productive, and devalues the unemployed, underachievers, inefficient, prayer says: being matters more than having and doing; too much busyness is a vice; taking sacred leisure is a virtue.

We must make time for God, for others, for ourselves. We need some unemployment, some underachievement, some non-bustle. We need to find a quiet place, a few moments, minutes, dare I suggest many minutes, every year, every day, night and day, to bring our hopes and dreams, our anxieties and sorrows to God: like Job in our first reading (Job 7:1-4,6-7).

Sadly, for many of us it takes some sort of tragedy, a death in the family, or a serious illness, or a financial crisis, to shock us into making that time with God. The rhythm of Sunday Mass attendance, every week, at least gives us a regular space for that: stepping out of hustle and bustle of everyday life to spend time with God in Peter’s House the Church, not just to render to God praise and worship, but also to let Him speak to us.

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, Sunday 1 January 2012, Professions of Missionary Sisters of Our Lady Queen of the World, Holy Trinity Church, Granville

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Everyone delights in babies. People sometimes speak of ‘worshipping’ their little one, just ‘adoring’ him or her. But how do we react to being told that the little one in the crib is truly to be adored, to be worshipped with our whole being? Sometimes this is comforting, since He is familiar; sometimes it is disconcerting, since in Him God is as small and helpless as we are.

The Solemn Feast of Mary the Mother of God can help us to get comfortable with God being a little boy and a little boy being Ruler of the universe. Mary spent nine months pondering this before she brought Him forth into the world; and, as we heard in the Gospel (Lk 2:16-21), she went on pondering for the rest of her years. The more she pondered, the more she delighted in her boy as any mother would and in her God as every Christian should. Here is a lesson for us and for the two women who profess the evangelical counsels and the rule of their congregation today: that every genuinely Christian life, every religious life, no matter how busy or active, must have a contemplative element, a Marian element – time and space for pondering, treasuring, delighting in the sacred mysteries and in the particular graces we have received from God.

The ancient fathers of the Church also delighted in the mystery of this Baby. There’s was not a mother’s pride, but a more abstract theological puzzling: about this child who is His own mother’s spiritual Father, about this creature of her flesh who was the Creator of her flesh, and so on ... On this Feast we have the privilege of sharing in the wonder of both the Mother and the Fathers: that this Baby is truly God, is somehow man-and-God in perfect unity; not a cross between the two, not mixed-up, but a true man who is all God, our true God who is fully man. So too every genuinely Christian life, every religious life, must treasure the truths of our Holy Faith and seek to express them in our words and deeds.

But if Jesus is God and Mary is His mother this surely makes her Mother of God. Of all the titles under which we celebrate her through the liturgical year or seek her intercession in our litanies or honour her in the titles of our religious congregations, her greatest is surely this: Mother of God. Some Christians are still uncomfortable with this, as were the Nestorians back in the 5^th Century, but the Catholic Faith, defined at the Council of Ephesus in 431 ad, is that since Jesus is God and Mary is His Mother, then Mary is the Mother of God.

Though bishops and theologians debated it at length, it was obvious to the faithful: when the dogma was announced, the laity outside held a jubilant torchlight procession. Their devotion to Mary and her Divine Son was undoubted as must be that of her missionary sisters. But the people were delighted not just because of what this declaration said about Christ and His mother, but also what it says about us. To call Mary ‘Mother of God’ is to insist on the Incarnation; and to believe and teach the doctrine of the Incarnation is to believe and teach that the Word eternally spoken by God assumed a human voice that He might speak to us, first in cries and baby-talk and later in full human language, first in signs and wonders and finally in blood and glory. Today’s Feast reminds us that this divine Child really took our flesh, our world, our life-stories upon Himself, including being loved and nurtured by a human mother.

Like those early Christians we ought to celebrate what this says about us, about human possibilities under grace. It means our two sisters can and must in some sense give their flesh to the mystery of the Incarnation and that Christ will be brought forth in them, not as their physical child, but as the Word of God heard from their voices and witnessed in their lives. As the Church honours the Mother of God on the eighth day of Christmas, when she took up her life-long vocation of pondering the sacred mysteries in her heart and giving herself to their service, we also celebrate her daughters, the Missionary Sisters of Mary Queen of the World. In particular we rejoice in the final profession of Sr Mary Genevieve Diep Doan and the Renewal of Vows for Sr Maria Thanh Thao Doan.

Like me, Sr Mary Genevieve has two parents, two brothers and two sisters; like me they hail from Lakemba; and we welcome her family and friends who are here today. I am told that Sr Mary Genevieve first expressed her desire to join the sisters when she was two or three years old. Our Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Lazzarotto, first expressed his desire to be a priest when he was five, so he was, by Sr Mary Genevieve’s standards, a later vocation! I am also told that she inherited her devotion to God and his Church especially from her mother, her desire to help people from her father, and her knowledge of the faith from the Mary-Queen Sisters who taught her Catechism and devotion through their extraordinary Eucharistic Youth Movement. Though she still looks young enough to be a member of the youth group herself, rather than one of the instructing sisters, and indeed her mother looks young enough to be a member also, she has matured in her faith and vocation since she was three. After a long friendship with the sisters, she was received into the order in 2002 and made her first profession in 2005. Today she makes that commitment permanent and we congratulate her on her generosity to God and His Church in becoming today a Bride of Christ. Not many nuns have the Pope’s ambassador attend their profession! It is a tribute to her that His Excellency and his Monsignor Councillor, whom the sisters have served so well, are present here today.

The other sister to be professed today, Sr Maria, was born in Vietnam but much of her family now lives in Perth. It was my privilege to receive her first vows a year ago and I am delighted to hear them renewed. Though they could not be with us I am sure her family rejoice with all of us as she takes one more step towards her own final profession day, when she will join Sr Genevieve and the other sisters in giving herself for life to Mary our Queen and her Divine Son, Christ our Prince of Peace.

God in His strange mercy brought large numbers of Vietnamese people to our country after harrowing years of war, persecution and asylum-seeking. Amidst such sufferings they trusted in God and His Blessed Mother. What a gift they have been to our Church and country! What a gift to the Catholic Diocese of Parramatta and all Western Sydney and beyond! Our dear sisters are examples of a very Vietnamese tenacity and trust. We pray for many more vocations to their order and for long and happy service of God and His people by our two nuns professed today.

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, St Patrick’s Cathedral Parramatta, Sunday 1 January 2012

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A story is told about a workman on a scaffold high above the nave of a cathedral who looked down and saw a woman praying before a statue of Mary. As a joke he whispered, “Woman, I am Jesus.” The woman ignored him, so the workman spoke again, this time more loudly: “Woman, over here, it’s me, Jesus.” Again, the woman ignored him. Assuming she was deaf he finally yelled out, “Woman, can’t you hear me? It’s Jesus, up here, on the cross. I’m talking to you.” At this point the woman looked up at the figure on the crucifix and: “Be quiet now Boy, I’m talking to your mother.”

Catholic parties are longer than anyone else’s and so today is Christmas day still, a day that lasts for eight calendar days at least, and to next Sunday when the last party guests, three star-gazers, finally arrive. That’s why we prepare enough food at Christmas to ensure there are leftovers for many days and many guests. Our extended Christmas day reminds us that the baby we have been celebrating is truly one of us – hence the birthday party – and yet not just ‘another one’ of us – hence the length of the party for the Christmas Babe!

Now, everyone delights in babies. People sometimes speak of ‘worshipping’ their little one, just ‘adoring’ him or her. But how do we react to being told that this little one in the crib is truly to be adored, to be worshipped with our whole being? Sometimes this is comforting, since He is familiar; sometimes it is disconcerting, since in Him God is as small and helpless as we are.

The Solemn Feast of Mary, the Mother of God, may help us to get comfortable with God being a little boy and a little boy being Ruler of the universe. Mary spent nine months pondering this before she brought Him forth into the world; and as we heard in the Gospel (Lk 2:16-21), she went on pondering it for the rest of her years. The more she pondered, the more she delighted in her Boy as any mother would and in her God as every Christian should.

The ancient fathers of the Church also delighted in the mystery of this Baby. There’s was not a mother’s pride, but a more abstract theological puzzling: about this child who is His own mother’s spiritual Father, about this creature of her flesh who was the Creator of her flesh, and so on ... On this Feast we have the privilege of sharing in the wonder of both the Mother and the Fathers: that this Baby is truly God, is somehow man-and-God in perfect unity; not a cross between the two, not mixed-up, but a true man who is all God, our true God who is fully man. So too every genuinely Christian life, every religious life, must treasure the truths of our Holy Faith and seek to express them in our words and deeds.

But if Jesus is God and Mary is His mother this surely makes her Mother of God. Of all the titles under which we celebrate her through the liturgical year or seek her intercession in our litanies, her greatest is surely this: Mother of God. Some Christians are still uncomfortable with this title, as were the Nestorians back in the 5^th Century, but the Catholic Faith, defined at the Council of Ephesus in 431 ad, is that since Jesus is God and Mary is His Mother, then Mary is the Mother of God.

Though bishops and theologians debated it heatedly and at length, it was obvious to the faithful: when the dogma was announced, the laity outside organised a jubilant torchlight procession. They were delighted not just because of what this declaration of Mary as the Mother of God tells us about her and about her Son, but also because of what it says about us. To call Mary Mother of God is to echo the Christmas proclamation that by the Holy Spirit the Only Begotten Son of God was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man; that the Word eternally spoken by the Father assumed a human voice that He might speak the Father’s words to us, first in cries and baby-talk and later in full human language, first in signs and wonders and finally in blood and glory. Today’s Feast reminds us that this divine child really took our flesh, our nature and life-stories upon Himself, including being loved and nurtured by a human mother.

Like those early Christians we ought to have a long, long party because of what this says about us, about human possibilities under grace: including the possibility of a new start, which even the secular world aspires to, as we begin a new calendar year. That is why the Church celebrates the Mother of God on New Year’s Day, the eighth day of Christmas, the day the Word-made-flesh was circumcised in the flesh according to the Law, the day God-made-boy was given His name, Jesus. It celebrates the Mother of God on the eighth day when she took up her life-long vocation of treasuring and pondering all these things in her heart and we might join her any day, every day, in that contemplative bliss. Every genuinely Christian life, no matter how busy or active, must have a contemplative element, a Marian element – time and space for pondering, treasuring, delighting in the sacred mysteries and in the particular graces we have received from God.

St Cyril of Alexandria was the Papal legate who presided over the Council of Ephesus which declared Mary ‘Mother of God’. He was one of the bishops who fought literally tooth and nail for that title, because of what it meant not just for the Mother but also for the Son, and indeed for all whose flesh they shared. So I will conclude with some words of his in a sermon Cyril preached to the Council: “Hail from us, O Holy Trinity, who has called us all together to this Church of Mary, Mother of God. Hail from us, Mary, Mother of God, majestic jewel of the whole world, lamp unquenchable, crown of virginity, staff of orthodoxy, indissoluble temple, dwelling of the illimitable ... Hail to you, who contained the uncontainable One in your virginal womb ...”

Funeral Mass for Father John Smith, St Canice’s Church, Katoomba, Feast of the Holy Family, 30 December 2011

Catholic parties are longer than anyone else’s and so today is Christmas day still, a day that lasts for an octave of eight calendar days, and then another week as we await the last party guests, the three star-gazers from the Orient. That’s why we usually prepare enough food at Christmas to feed us for many days. Our extended Christmas day reminds us that the Baby we have been celebrating is truly one of us – hence the birthday party – and yet not just ‘another one’ of us – hence the length of His nativity celebration.

As no Sunday intervenes between Christmas and New Year this year, we miss our ordinary Sunday celebration of the Boy’s Holy Family. Instead we celebrate it today, along with the Funeral Mass of John Smith. It is not such a strange coincidence of celebrations, however, when we consider the beautiful Third Preface for the Nativity of the Lord which we will pray today. It thanks God for that “holy exchange that restores our life” that “has shone forth today in splendour”. What is this ‘holy exchange’? “When our frailty is assumed by your Word,” the prayer explains “not only does human mortality receive unending honour but by this wondrous union we, too, are made eternal.” Already at Christmas, and long before Easter, there is a glimmer of hope that we might have eternal life.

Fr John Smith moved to Australia in pursuit of a warmer climate, but by the strange providence of God and even stranger workings of bishops he ended up Parish Priest of our coldest parish, in Katoomba. Born within sound of the Bow Bells he had heard from very young the ringing proclamation of our Christmas Lord. When only 12 or 13 years old he shocked his family by his decision to enter a pre-seminary for those preparing for ministry in the Church of England. He was trained there in the Christian faith, music and classical languages, and went on to read in Cambridge. He brought that learning and culture to his priestly life, both in the Anglican communion and ultimately in the Catholic Church.

In today’s Gospel (Lk 2:22-40) Jesus makes the first of many trips to church – to the Temple in Jerusalem – so His parents can make thanksgiving to God and consecrate their newborn to Him. There they meet old Father Simeon, who has prayed all his life to see the Messiah and now, having done so, sings his Nunc Dimitis, the Church’s bedtime lullaby. “Now my eyes have seen the salvation ... the light ... the glory” he thrills. The Christmas Gospels are suffused with this light. The Word, John’s Gospel tells us, is “a light come into the darkness that the darkness cannot overcome”. Matthew tells us He was heralded by comet-light and glow of angels. Luke records Zechariah announcing the Boy as “the tender mercy of God’s dawn, giving light to those who dwell in darkness and death”. And, as Simeon sang, that dawn is not for Israel only, but for all humanity, even Englishmen, even Australians.

What is this Christmas light that is told each year in evermore elaborate displays of Christmas lights around our suburbs? We say someone is enlightened when he has the gift of seeing deeply, of grasping reality wisely. We say someone is bright when he is happy, cheery, hopeful. Fr John Smith was bright in both senses. In our Cathedral presbytery, where he was recuperating for some months after surgery, he brought to our table words – he was never short of words – both of erudition and humour. Priests are, of course, wordsmiths, as they mediate the Light of Christ to others by proclamation and preaching, by liturgical words and sacramental formulae, by words of counsel and consolation. Fr John’s words were learned but never patronising, and he would always reach out to others with compassion, with a Pastor’s love.

Fr John Smith devoted his life to the Light of Christ. That light can take you in some unexpected directions! It took John into the Anglican ministry and Naval chaplaincy, then out of both and into the Catholic Church and priesthood, “from the RN to the RC” as he used to put it; into the Diocese of Leeds and several parishes and prison ministry; then out of Leeds and England and into Quakers Hill in the Diocese of Parramatta and finally up to the Upper Blue Mountains where the presbytery and parish needed his attentions. Though he long planned retirement in Spain – and had even bought his air ticket – he has now been called to a different beach. God often has different plans for us.

In the coming year we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, what Blessed John Paul II called “the greatest grace given the Church in the 20^th Century”. On reading its Constitution, Gaudium et Spes, John realised he must become a Catholic. It was unexpected. It was a great risk. But by Christ’s light we dare walk in such darkness. We dare also to be bearers of that light to the world, relaying the light of Christmas and Easter. So we must have the courage to speak openly, in broad daylight, not always worrying what people will think of us. Nor is it enough to talk of it: our very lives must radiate with the light of Christ; we must have in us a burning heart, fire in our belly, a shining enthusiasm. Like the bushfires that Mountains people know all too well, we must desire to share our fervour, our brightness, to spread it abroad.

Today we give thanks to God for a priest who answered the call to run like a bearer of the Olympic torch – more recently he walked – to relay Christ’s enlightening truth, burning compassion, shining hope, a light for those experiencing darkness and death. We offer for Fr John that Holy Sacrifice which he taught us to revere above all else, source of our joy and worthy of all praise. As he passed on the light of Christ to us so we pray now for perpetual light for him. We pray for him with that bedtime prayer of old Father Simeon: “Now, All-powerful Master, let your servant go in peace, according to Your promise, for his eyes have seen Your salvation, the Light to enlighten all peoples.”

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Our Lady of the Rosary Church, Kellyville, Wednesday 28 December 2011

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There’s a lot of sentimentality surrounding Christmas, both in the secular world and in the Church. Images abound of a schmaltzy Holy Family with Jesus in a Franciscan crib surrounded by assorted Franciscan farm animals, carolling angels and gift-bearing shepherds and kings, all set against a backdrop of Christmas trees, santa snow and tinsel. There is a brutal realism about the Gospel, however, when in the middle of all the romance, the astonishing Good News of God-made-man for us, the angels singing Gloria, we find things not quite as they ought to be. There is suspicion about the pregnancy; the husband considers divorcing his wife; a mother nearing labour is required to travel a great distance on a rather substandard form of transport; there is no room at the motel for them; the child is delivered amidst squalor in a cowshed; and Simeon in the Temple warns the proud parents of trouble for the rest of their lives. Not much romance in all that!

Now we read of the plot to kill the baby Jesus by a bloodthirsty, power-crazed king. The Holy Family flee as refugees to a strange land. In the very midst of the Good News of peace on earth, there is murder and intrigue. The backdrop to the Light who has dawned for us at Christmas is in fact darkness. The Way has come into a world that has lost its way; the Truth has entered a civilisation of lies; the Life speaks in a culture of death which knows him not. On the opening page of our New Testament the blood of the innocent child martyrs is shed. And as the story progresses it builds to a crescendo at the climax of which the powers of this world will at last catch the One they have been pursuing ever since today. The very same One whom Herod and his minions sought to kill at His birth. The very One who is the object of our deepest longings and our darkest fears. The very One whom we will hail in turn with Hosanna in the Highest and Crucify Him, crucify Him.

Our world today is every bit as ambivalent and confused about Christ as it was at the first Christmas. There is plenty of talk of human rights, the dignity of the human person, equal respect and care. We are replete with resources, technology and know-how to help people through troubled times. Yet ours is a world where the blood of innocent children still flows: children in war, the slave trade, the drug trade; children who starve every minute in a world which has more than enough food for all; children neglected to death in our hospitals for the terrible fault of being born less than ‘perfect’ as this world sees it. Perhaps most horribly of all, there are children who are never allowed to see the light of day. It is said that as many unborn children are slaughtered each year around the world as all the people who died in all the wars of history put together. Whatever of that, the womb has become the most dangerous place for an Australian to live, more dangerous than living on the M2. In our country one in three women now has an abortion at some time in her life-time and many of those women are damaged physically, psychologically, emotionally and/or spiritually. Women whose hearts are terminated along with their children’s lives. Women whom we ll know and love. They are the second victims of the terrible plague of abortion.

To such a world comes an extraordinary gift in the Child Jesus. It is a mind-blowing thing to contemplate: the Creator-become-creature, the Word of God Incarnate, first mute in the womb, then screaming the cry of a newborn baby. The Lord of the Universe is a helpless newborn. It is no wonder that Catholics are notorious for their love of children, their respect for human life from conception until death, their love for parenthood and families. Our God, especially in this Christmas season, is celebrated precisely as a baby.

In due course He will cry out again. The Gospels recall that He cried out when He saw that His friend Lazarus was dead in the tomb. Death was no part of God’s plan for His friends. Later He will cry out once more, as He dies upon the cross. They will offer Him sedation with vinegar wine first, then a merciful death by being pierced through the heart; but He will not die by euthanasia. He lives to the end, then gives up His Spirit.

Today we also celebrate the first Christian martyrs. They were not heroic prophets like John the Baptist or clerics like Stephen, John the Divine and Thomas a’Becket, whose bloody witness also paints this week. No: these little ones were not proudly professing their faith as they died. They were simply little children, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, like babies doomed to abortion. But these ones died in the place of Christ, before Christ died for them, and so we count them saints.

In celebrating them today we do three things. First, we recommit our hearts and minds to the dignity of the human person at all stages of life from conception to death, saved by a God who became one of us in all our fragility and vulnerability, who entered into the human mess in all its ambiguity.

Secondly, we pray and we promise to keep praying and doing penance and offering sacrifice and demonstrating and lobbying and otherwise working to protect the innocent, to make our community one after the model of St Joseph, who guarded the little child and the mother too. We seek to ensure that parenthood and childhood are reverenced. We want women supported through every stage of their pregnancy and child-rearing. We seek to bring those women who are victims of abortion back from shame through repentance to healing and a new life. We seek also to protect the handicapped, the sick, frail and elderly over whom the spectre of euthanasia hangs as a euthanasia bill is promised for our parliament this year.

And last, we commit ourselves to the care of the Holy Innocents. We ask their intercession that all those children who have died without seeing the light of day may yet do so. We ask that through the blood and prayers of the Holy Innocents these little ones might see the eternal light that dawned at Christmas.

Homily for Christmas Day 2011, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta

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Some secularists hate the phrase ‘Merry Christmas’ because it has the word ‘Christ’ in it, and so try to replace it with ‘Happy Holidays’ or ‘Season’s Greetings’, claiming that public notice of Christmas offends people of other religions and that today should be seen not as a religious festival but as an end-of-year break. Interestingly, I’ve never heard people of other religions making this claim and some are even gracious enough to join us for Christmas: I know that there are Muslims and Jews here this morning and I guess there are some Hindus and Buddhists too. In fact, it seems that only those who hate all religion oppose the public celebration of Christmas in a country like this. And unless they are extremely dogmatic about it, even the secularists are usually happy to take the holidays and many of the trimmings such as the pre-Christmas parties, the carols, decorations and present giving, the turkey and Christmas pud.

Though some ideologues want to rid our national history curriculum of bc and ad, most people recognise that something special happened on this day. For Christians, of course, it is the day on which all history turns; for them everything is either before this day, bc, or after; everything that matters, matters in relation to this extraordinary event; even our own births are dated by how many years they are after His, 1960 years in my case, more or less in yours.

Today the Lord of history enters history itself, the Infinite into the finite, the Creator as a creature. The Word eternally dancing before God’s throne, the wisdom eternally thought by the Father, takes human form. “To all who believe in Him,” says St John, “He gives power to become children of God” (Jn 1:1-18) and, sure enough, we see that power at work in the lives of the great and the good and in the smaller triumphs of grace and quiet heroism even in more mediocre lives. There have been great martyrs and saints, sung and unsung, great theologians and mystics, known or unknown, great pray-ers and do-ers in God’s kingdom.

So much has happened that might never have happened had it not been for that birth in Bethlehem. We might consider how central was the Christian faith in overturning totalitarians from ancient Rome to modern communism, in the abolition of slavery and apartheid, in building a culture of human rights and fundamental values. Or the role of the Church in the invention of universities, the search for truth in science and philosophy, the promotion of beauty in liturgy, art, architecture and music. Or that the oldest and largest healthcare provider in the world is the Catholic Church and that its network of orphanages, schools and welfare institutions is unparalleled. So much happened since that Boy was born that is indeed ‘joy to the world’ as the prophets promised and angels sang on the first Christmas night.

Not everything is rosy in the Christian story. The late Christopher Hitchens loved to highlight shameful things such as crusades, inquisitions, persecutions, abuse; the failure of Christians in World War II, in Ireland or the Balkans; he even thought that Mother Teresa was a bad thing – and now her sisters are praying for his soul. Many of his criticisms were historically anachronistic; they ignored the context, the ways, for instance, that religion has been misused in political or racial conflicts or the different standards of different ages. Nonetheless it is true that many Christians, from the mighty to the lowly, have acted out of prejudice or greed rather than piety or compassion. There has been colonisation, violence, abuse. Instead of that peace and good will of which angels sang at the first Christmas, many have experienced the coming of Christians as the dawn of war and ill-will. For this we must repent, apologise, try to be better in future. For this we need Christmas again.

So it is that at Christmas we come with our gifts of worship, song and praise; of lambs and gold, incense and myrrh; with all the symbols of our technology and commerce, faith and reason, life and death. We bring to the Christmas Babe our hearts, our best efforts, our romantic dreams and visions of angels. But we also bring the darker side of human life. Shepherds and wise men shower Him with gifts, but His parents were unwelcome at the inn and a king is after His blood. Angels sing ‘joy to the world’ but blood flows in the streets of Bethlehem and the family must flee as refugees into Egypt. So all of human life is here at the first Christmas, the bright side and the dark, the joys and the heart-breaks. It has been so at every Christmas since.

“The Word was coming into the world,” says John, “and yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own domain and His own people disowned Him.” If everything hinges on this birth in Bethlehem, if the whole of history pivots around this central point, it certainly hasn’t made everything neat and dandy. For all the celebrations, whether sacred or secular, we must face the fact that the Word of God was rejected when first He came and is rejected again and again by men. We are still free to choose.

And yet, John says, “A light shines in the darkness, a light that darkness could not overpower.” The evangelist’s deep faith does not deny the reality of the darkness, only the inevitability of its victory. Likewise Isaiah’s prophesies of a time when the Lord will console Israel, rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, and the people will break into shouts of joy, he clearly recognises that for many of us, much of the time, the walls of our lives are cracked, we are downcast and don’t feel like whoopee. We too need consolation, redemption, a Saviour, every bit as much as did ancient Israel.

Definitive as it was, God’s coming at that first Christmas was not a once-for-all event like a bright comet exploding and then disappearing into a grey and increasingly inaccessible past. When Jesus came into the world and lived and died here, His disciples knew it was only a beginning: the kingdom of heaven, as He said, is like a tiny seed, destined in time to become a large shrub. There is still much for Christ and His Church to do. There are still places, hearts, lives in need of light. Let us offer our hearts as a crib for this Christ-child; offer our voices, minds and hands for His mission in our world. For “we have seen His glory, the glory that is His as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth!”

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for Christmas Midnight Mass, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, Sunday 25 December 2011.

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Years ago I visited the Dominican Priory in Berlin, then just emerging from the ashes of communism. It had a most elaborate Christmas crib, not as grand as the one at the entrance to our Cathedral in which we will lay the figure of the Christ-child at the end of Mass, but one with far more characters than ours, including figures of human beings from every walk of life and a menagerie of animals. They asked me to track down a kangaroo of appropriate size, which in due course I sent them and no doubt in Berlin tonight some child is marvelling at the kangaroo present at the first Christmas!

The more literally minded might think this a travesty. Surely there were more than enough characters in the Gospel passage we just heard (Lk 2:1-20), without having to add more. Yet the point is surely this: everyone and everything is part of this story, without exception. At centre stage, of course, is the Babe and His Holy Family, the saints who went before us and which we are called to be also, the family that represents all families, especially at Christmas. But the story does not open with them.

Rather, St Luke situates his account in history. The first two people we hear of are Caesar Augustus and Governor Quirinius. The worldly powers are here, foreign powers at that, for we cannot separate out politics and religion, private and public as neatly as some would like. We don’t have two personalities, one for Holy Days and the other for work days, one for private devotions and the other for the public square. There is only one me, with one set of ideals, however well I live them. The same me is at home or parliament, in church or polling booth, at work or leisure. And the one Jesus Christ is both human and divine. The one God came to sanctify all realms and raise them up to Himself. In due course He would stare another governor, Pontius Pilate, in the face and remind him from where all authority comes. But tonight it begins, as He makes His home in time and space, amidst history and politics. He represents all authority and connects with all races. So we must not hold back from Him any corner of our worlds.

The next person named in our story is a dead man, King David. Joseph and so his new wife and adopted son are of David’s line and so must be counted in the census in Royal David’s city of Bethlehem. Not only are the powers of the day involved in our Christmas story, but even the powers of yesterday: our history, tradition, ancestors come to the crib. David, the shepherd boy made king, is represented tonight by his descendant Joseph, by shepherds in the fields, and by Jesus Himself, the Good Shepherd and King of kings. He stands tonight not just for all earthly and heavenly authority, not just for all peoples, Jewish or Gentile, but also for all the living and the dead. David, long in his grave, awaiting release from death, with Adam and Eve and so many others, is excited that his waiting will soon be over. That his descendant, this newborn shepherd-king, will bring resurrection. And not just for patriarchs and prophets of old, but for all our deceased friends and family. As Joseph could hope for his father and his father’s father, all the way back to David, so might we have hope this night for all those we’ve loved and lost to death. We must not hold back from Him even our dead.

“And there were shepherds abiding in the fields.” If emperor, governor and king represent the bosses, the shepherds are the workers. They were the nobodies of Jesus’ day. They were the last people you’d expect at a royal birth. Yet they too were invited to the Great Party to which all will be called from the highways and byways – Jews and Gentiles, living and dead, potentates and nobodies, faithful and yet-to-be-so. All are drawn by the magnet of the crib, not just the high and mighty. Indeed redemption is especially for those who suffer: sickness or physical pain perhaps; or depression, grief, some hurt in their family; or sins of unloving, injustice, betrayal; economic insecurity, or alienation of any kind, that relegates them to ‘the fields’, the edges of human society. Even such as these are welcome, indeed most welcome, for the Divine Physician comes not for the healthy but the sick. People of every station must be brought to Him this night.

There are other creatures in this story too. Not kangaroos, perhaps, but another Australian icon, sheep, make an appearance, and the fields too, the great outback, the whole environment. And there is a spiritual ecology here as well, the things unseen but every bit as real as wool and paddocks. There’s that invisible but most powerful of forces, love: the love of Joseph and Mary for each other and their baby. There’s the hope that keeps them going through the hardships and joys of family life, work, society. Such virtues, passions and commitments are every bit as real as anything that Caesar can see and command. And there are “angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o’er the plain”, an ecology both physical and spiritual, that stretches far beyond politics and commerce and this too is brought tonight to the Christ child. So, once more, we must hold nothing back from Him, visible or invisible, our aspirations or fears, the darkness in which we walk and the great lights we have seen.

Tonight we bring Him everything. He draws all men, all things to Himself. Everything that matters to us matters to Him. God embraces our human condition and all our cares, that He might grasp them in His little baby’s fist. He embraces all of us with the wide open arms of a baby reaching for His mother or of a man nailed to a cross.

In a few moments we will genuflect at the words “and by the power of the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man” – for tonight we adore Him as the one who bridged heaven and earth. But there is another reason to kneel, like the kings who brought Him gifts: we kneel to give Him all that is ours, that earth might be joined to heaven.

Take everything I am, Lord, my hopes and dreams and little prayers, my angelic greatness and my shepherdly ordinariness, my kith and kin, my work and play, my hopes and fears. I bring myself and all my cares to Your manger. I place them by Your crib that I might enjoy Your favour too, that I might hear the angelic promise of peace on earth and goodwill to all, that I might be drawn by You to give glory to God in highest heaven.

Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP with papal knights John Aquilina and John Thomas. Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Homily for 4th Sunday of Advent (Year B) and Ceremony of Investiture of papal knights, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 18 December 2011

In the dormitory of the Dominican Priory of San Marco in Florence is one of the Renaissance’s greatest renditions of today’s Gospel passage (Lk 1:26-38). Late medieval spiritual artists distinguished various phases in this story: the ‘Mission’ of the angel, the ‘Salutation’, the ‘Fright’ of the Virgin, the ‘Colloquy’ between them, the ‘Consent’ or fiat of the Virgin and so on. In Fra Angelico’s great work we have the Salutation.

Through a window on to a medieval cloister, we look upon one of the most beautiful archangels ever painted. Angelico had the architect put a skylight above the painting so that sunbeams would shine directly on the angel; he then cleverly embellished Gabriel’s wings with silica. It has the effect of making the wings seem to flutter, as if the angel has just landed.

Gabriel has just landed and he immediately genuflects in homage, saying by his posture what he says in his words: Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with thee. In representing this moment the angelic messenger and the angelic painter give an example to the passer-by. As the friars passed by on the way to their cells they were effectively being exhorted by the fresco to pray the Ave Maria. Indeed, at this stage in its evolution the Hail Mary had only the first half of the prayer as we know it today and at the words “of thy womb – Jesus” the friars would genuflect like the angel.

As the light of a new dawn floods the scene, there sits the Virgin, dressed not in glorious technicolour as in most of Angelico’s oeuvre, but in the stark black and white of a Dominican habit. She is seated, not on a glorious throne but on a cheap three-legged friar’s stool. So she is humble as a religious – yet she is larger than life, unequivocally Queen of heaven and earth, and no mere frightened visionary: no, she is about to give her answer.

Great artists, like the Fathers of the Church in their spiritual classics, invite us into the scene. We all wait, in anxious anticipation. We all listen, hoping for salvation at last. Eve said No on our behalf; but Eva in reverse is Ave. So through the one to whom the angel says Ave can begin the reversal of what Eve and Adam wrought! All creation is hushed and awaits her response. The angels listen, the dead listen, the faithful of Israel listen, even the animals and plants and sun and moon. It is the turning point of all history. And Mary said, “Fiat. I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done unto me!”

At last humanity in her says a great Yes to God. A new future dawns for us all. Immediately the Word takes flesh of the woman and comes to dwell amongst us. Christmas is on the horizon.

The Church bids us genuflect or bow in the Angelus, when we come to the words “And the Word was made flesh – and dwelt amongst us”. The Church directs us to bow our heads on Sundays when we come to the words in the Creed “and by the power of the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man”. On the Feasts of the Annunciation and Christmas we genuflect at those words, as Angelico’s archangel did. Strangely in Australia people resist bowing their heads in the Creed: perhaps because our democratic culture is not much into bowing and scraping. Yet surely there is one moment in all history that can bring even egalitarian Australia to its knees: the moment time stood still, the moment of the Incarnation. At that moment the angel asks us also: will you have God do to you as He wills?

Often, I suspect, we say Yes, as Mary did. Most of you, most of the time, live good lives. You fulfil your responsibilities. You are merciful, generous and just. You live the 10 commandments that are key to loving God and neighbour. You come to worship God on the Sunday before Christmas when many of your peers are focused entirely on shopping or cooking or the small picture of lives. You are here: not because you are saints – though some of you are, I guess – but because you see a bigger picture than that, the reason for the presents and the Christmas dinner; and you are saying Fiat, Yes, as Mary did.

Sometimes we say No. We can be more like the first Eve than the second. Like the One who tempted the first Eve we can say: I will not serve; I won’t be accountable to anyone; I want to be the god around here. Most of us, I suspect, say Yes more often than No. But if you are aware of times you’ve said No, especially any big Noes to God, get to Confession this week before Christmas.

I wonder if more often than Yes OR No, we say Maybe. Yes, God, I’ll let you do what you want with me, as long as it’s not too hard, as long as it’s not too different to what I want, as long as you give me this or that in exchange. We are not hard-hearted or closed-hearted so much as half-hearted; rather than running hot and cold we are lukewarm. That can be in our marriages, family life, friendships, work life, studies, civic life, faith life. And Maybe can be as dangerous as No sometimes. It can be a way of saying No without saying it; a half-commitment can be a refusal to commit, like those who delay RSVPing in case a better offer comes along.

When the Archangel Gabriel genuflected before the Blessed Virgin she didn’t say Maybe, thank God. Come this Christmas, when you genuflect in the Creed; come today when you bow your head in the Creed; say Yes with all your heart and so make your heart a crib for the Christ-child.

Thanks after Ceremony of Investiture of two papal knights, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 18 December 2011

I echo Fr Arthur Bridge’s words of tribute to our two newly created papal knights. Papal Orders of Chivalry are chiefly a means by which the Pope distinguishes those who have particularly served the Church. Sir John Aquilina and Sir John Thomas, if I may call them that today, are now entitled to tie their horses outside the church, are invited to wear their uniforms to major diocesan functions such as ordinations, but are asked to leave their swords and pistols at the door.

Seriously though, this is a great tribute to two excellent men who have served God and His Church very well indeed. I add to the honours conferred by the Holy Father my own particular gratitude for the services these two men have performed.

We thank the family and friends of the two new knights who brought them along to Mass today not knowing what was to happen to them! I also thank Fr Arthur Bridge who is the Chair of our diocesan honours committee, and through him the committee for assisting me in proposing our two candidates to Pope Benedict XVI.

Also present today is Phil Fehon and John McCarthy, who are also papal knights and who welcome our two newest knights into the ranks. Also Mr Michael Digges, the Business Manager of the Diocese, and Mr Chris Maley, Chair of the Diocesan Finance Council, representing those who have worked beside our two Sir Johns in their service to the Church’ especially in fundraising, finance and administration. Congratulations!

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for Catholic Education Parramatta End of Year Mass, St Patrick’s Cathedral Parramatta, Thursday 15 December 2011

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In our Gospel today Jesus asks: what do you expect from me? From the Church? When you went to hear John at the Jordan, what were you after (Lk 7:24-30)? Fashionable clothes or ideas? Entertainment and political spin?

A few months ago I went there myself, to look for John the Baptist or at least his world, in company with nearly 180 young teachers, students and post-schoolers en route to World Youth Day in Madrid. My preconceptions about the Jordan from sacred art and imagination were shot by finding a narrow brownish creek, rather like many Australian rivers much of the time. If being baptised is about being washed clean of sins the water looked to me more likely to add some sins! But I took my chances and waded in with my young friends. And we found, as of course any Aussie farmer knows, that brown-coloured water can be perfectly clean and cleansing: you can dissolve a lot of stuff in a limited amount of baptismal water!

It was early days in our pilgrimage and we’d just been to the mountain where the first prophet, Moses, looked over the promised land, to see where the people would cross Jordan to Israel, the starting point for the Jews’ love affair with their land and its God. Now we had come to a parallel universe, as it were, where the last prophet, John the Baptist, looked out over that same promised land with new eyes, and called a new people into the river Jordan as a doorway into a new love affair, not with God’s land but with His Son. So we started to walk in the footsteps of Christ.

Last Sunday we celebrated Gaudete Sunday: in the middle of our ‘Little Lent’, preparing for Christ’s First Coming at Christmas and Second Coming at the End of Time, the Church, as it were, breaks out into laughter and joy. In our first reading today the prophet anticipates this mood with his call to “Shout with joy … Break into cries of joy and gladness!” (Isa 54:1-10) The context is the people’s humiliation. After years of infidelity to the covenant, the civic and religious leaders had been deported to Babylon. Now you might wonder: if all the bishops go off to Rome on their ad limina or if all the politicians go home for Christmas, does it make any difference? Does anyone even notice? Well for the Jews it certainly made a difference: the temple cult and the government of Judah fell into chaos. The prophet described the feeling as like being left ‘barren’, ‘widowed’ and ‘forsaken’. But his Gaudete message is: this feeling of abandonment won’t last forever; salvation is around the corner; God will take back His unfaithful ‘wife’, be again her ‘Husband’ and restore her to His ‘everlasting love’.

We all know the shame, insecurity, sheer loss in any relationship in which we have failed the other party and disgraced ourselves in the process. To feel so low and then be told all is forgiven, that we are received back with open arms as if our fall had never happened, is a tremendous relief. The whoopee of forgiveness, that leap for joy in our hearts, is what Isaiah tells of today and what I had hoped to convey in calling people back to the Sacrament of Reconciliation this year. The have-be-back feeling is at the heart of the whoopee of Christmas, the ululation of a people God loves enough to give His all, even His Son, in order to save them, to win them back.

For those of us who’ve seen many Christmases come and go, jumping for joy may seem unlikely this time round. Nor do we necessarily feel like the humiliated children of Israel, in need of any particular forgiveness, liberation or salvation at Christmas. In that case we can end up taking the meaning of Christmas from our surrounding culture: shopping, presents, parties, annual leave. Do we have anything more to look forward to, let alone to shout for joy about? What do we, individually and as a Catholic education community, need to be saved from? From what might the murky waters of the Church yet bring us hope?

In our Silver Jubilee year as a Diocese we look at our schools system with pride, as we see growing enrolments, new learning spaces and learning communities, innovative and responsive pedagogies, diverse people centred on Christ and the teachings of His Church. In the past year alone we have opened so many wonderful new or refurbished facilities; established new Catholic Out of School Hours Care services and the Loyola Trade Training Centre; run formation days, retreats and professional development for our leaders and staff; continued to work on raising literacy, numeracy and religious literacy; and engaged in the New Evangelisation in many ways, including our enormous commitment to World Youth Day Madrid.

That short list of activities is far from exhaustive, but it reflects the diversity and vibrancy of our schools. When I bless our new facilities I remind our school communities that they are involved in a great spiritual building project in the lives of their young people, one begun in the waters of baptism but crucially enriched in the years of Catholic schooling. Meanwhile our young people are also receiving not just a religious but an all-round education, delivered not just with the best of facilities and technologies but also, and more importantly, by teachers committed to the best pedagogy and investing themselves in our young people. All that is possible in part because the Catholic Education Office is supporting teachers in literacy, numeracy, Religious Education and other key areas, in assisting students with special needs, in counselling students and families, in easing administrative burdens such as fee collection and payroll services, in publications and many other services. Amongst all that you have delivered, you have cared for each other when colleagues were sick and consoled each other at the death of loved ones, such as John Hillier and Julie Toby.

And here we might find an answer to Gospel questions today, my Christmas questions: what are you looking for from life, from Christ, from the Church? What is it people need to be saved from and saved for? Families look to us to help save their young people from intellectual privation, from ignorance and confusion, and bring them to knowledge and skill, curiosity and wisdom. They ask us, too, to help them face their physical privations, whether of finance, or health or even life itself, and give them hope and purpose. They need us to raise them from spiritual poverty, from sin and indifference, and bring them to know Christ at whose baptism the Holy Trinity was first revealed. And they rely upon us to raise them from emotional neediness, from depression and despair, and bring them to that whoopee of Christmas whoopee that wants to shout for joy the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Photo: Kerry Myers.

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for the ‘Lourdes Day Mass’ with the Blessing of the Malades Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, 3 December 2011

The principal feast particular to the Order of Malta, its Australian Association, its friends from St John’s Ambulance, and the newcomers to our family such as our recent additions in Thailand is, of course, the Nativity of St John the Baptist. From an infirmary-monastery under his patronage in medieval Jerusalem our Order emerged to defend the faithful and care for the sick. I wonder if we should think of these as two goals or one?

Both are at play in our Gospel passage (Lk 1:39-47). Mary has just learnt from St Gabriel that she will bear the Son of God and that her elderly kinswoman is six months pregnant. Rather than sit back and let it all sink in, “Mary set out immediately to the hill country of Judah” to be hospitaller and midwife to Elizabeth and baby John.  So while we do not celebrate his birthday today, the Baptist is very present. He leaps for joy in Elizabeth’s womb and so sets her and us thinking about what’s coming, Who is coming, at Christmas. Micah’s prophecy (Mic 5:1-4), made centuries before, is coming to pass. “Marana tha! Come O Lord,” both the Old and the New Israel plead in Advent. “The woman is to give birth very soon” replies the Prophet, and her Boy will Himself “be our peace”.

Be it mine to practice charity, especially towards the poor and sick – so we pray in imitation of the Visitation. To this day the Order of Malta around the world devotes itself to providing pre- and post-natal care, ambulances, hospitals, dispensaries, leprosaria and disaster relief; here in Australia we care for the disabled, the substance-dependent and the dying. Our moving ceremony today in which the Malades come forward to receive the blessing of the sick brings a little bit of the medieval hospice in Jerusalem to Sydney, a little bit of the grotto and baths of Lourdes to the other side of the globe!

Be it mine also to practice charity, especially towards the poor and sick – so pray the Maltezers everyday – but first also “be it mine, Lord Jesus, to defend the Catholic, the Apostolic, the Roman Faith against the enemies of religion”. The Frankfurt-based International Society for Human Rights – a secular body – says that 80% of the acts of religious intolerance in the world today are directed against Christians. The threats come from Islamic extremists in the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia and beyond; from Hindu radicals in India; from communists in China and North Korea; and from tribal rivals in Africa. Australians have little consciousness that there are more Christian martyrs each year in the 21st Century than in any year in any previous century; that the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ has proven to be a bloody winter for Christians already so depleted across the Middle East; and that in Baghdad alone 43 of the 60 Christian churches have been bombed in recent years. Indeed, only a year ago in the middle of Mass at Our Lady of Salvation Chaldean Catholic church in Baghdad, 53 people were killed and hundreds more injured by al Qaeda-linked gunmen.

Caring for the sick and defending the Faith

Photo: Kerry Myers.

The same Gospel passage brings together John the courtly defender of the Faith and Mary the hospitaller. This is more than coincidence. Earlier this year, at our National Conference, I suggested that the dual passions of our Order, for the Faith and for the sick, should both be stirred by the looming battle over euthanasia. Our mettle will be tried here in New South Wales in the year ahead, as another euthanasia Bill is brought before our state parliament. A parallel battle is being waged this very day over the very soul and meaning of marriage and family life.

But apart from their coincidence in a Scripture passage and their occasional overlaps in some social issue, why do I say that caring for the sick and defending the Faith are two sides of the same coin? Well, Christians can talk big about life and love, about the contest between the civilisation of life and the culture of death. They offer a penetrating critique of violence and promiscuity, especially when camouflaged as liberty or love. They exhort the keeping of the Fifth and Sixth commandments of the Lord of Life and Love. They recall all humanity to the demands of reason and compassion to protect the vulnerable and relieve the suffering, to resist laws and practices that will make the vulnerable and suffering more so, and undermine basic social institutions such as marriage or healthcare.

This is our mission. However, there is a risk when we fulfil that mission that we seem mere fingerwaggers, sustainers of a heartless and judgmental ideology, defenders of absolutes that hurt rather than protect what should be Absolute. To be credible we must be seen to walk our talk. Our deeds must proclaim reverence for every human being no matter how diminished, debilitated or disabled. This makes our message more real, persuasive, fascinating than any simple declaration of principle could ever be.

To bring the sick into a cathedral and declare them “our lords the poor and sick”, to bring them forward to the altar and beg grace from the Almighty for them, to accompany and assist them however we can: such deeds sing themes like Mary’s Magnificat which we sang as our psalm (Lk 1:46-56). They tell of a “mighty God, who works marvels for us”, including marvels of healing; “whose mercy is for every generation”, not a counterfeit mercy that kills but a mercy that invests Himself, ourselves, in those who suffer; a “God who protects Israel”, His little ones, even as their lives draw to a close. It tells of a God who, as Mary sang, “fills with good things those who are starving” for food or friendship or care. So it is that we sing “My soul glorifies the Lord” in the company of the sick and suffering.

So our hospitalling informs our defence of the Faith and the Faith informs our care of the sick and the spiritual journey of every member is demonstrated, in St James’ words today (Jam 3:13-18), by wisdom in service, spirituality in action. As this Apostle put it: “If there are any wise or learned ones among you, let them show it by their good lives, with humility and wisdom in their actions.” It is a rather different wisdom to the view that suffering is completely meaningless; that it must be eradicated no matter what, pushed out of sight, out of mind, eliminated if needs be by eliminating those who suffer. “If symptoms persist,” we used to say, “see your doctor”; if suffering persists, we might have added, see your loved ones, your priests, your God. Now the world says such people should ‘wind things up’ and hurry on right out of here.

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for the Solemnity of Christ the King, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 20 November 2011

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It was only in the totalitarian 20th Century, in which crueller things were done by the rulers of the earth, on a larger scale and with more devilish refinement, than ever before in human history, that Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King. Against the pretensions of Fascists and Marxists, he reasserted that reverence for God and His law, and for the dignity and rights of the person, are supreme over the state, its powers and interests. The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ Universal King proposes some higher values than those which so often reign in this world.

Yet so far the 21st Century doesn’t look much better. It’s true we’ve avoided world wars lately: various political and economic relationships made that unlikely for now. It’s true that the Cold War is over and the arms race has slowed. But our 11-year-old century has already seen 9/11, our young soldiers return from Afghanistan in coffins, the ‘Arab spring’ has meant even worse persecution for Christians in that part of the world, and the US President has recently visited Australia to ratchet up our joint security against real or imagined enemies.

The ‘Wonder-Counsellor, Prince of Peace’ born at Christmas is recalled at the end of each liturgical year as a now grown-up Prince who separates sheep and goats (Ezek 34:11-12,15-17), judges who has served and who has neglected to do so (Mt 25:31-46), those who in the year past have truly made Him their King and those who have not.

We’ve come the full circle, as it were, liturgically, and are confronted once again with the questions: who or what really rules in our world, our lives, our hearts? From whom do we take our direction? Is it Jesus Christ or is it Barack Obama or Julia Gillard or the media or pop heroes or our peers? What are the sovereign values in our lives: are they Jesus’ values of nourishing the needy, liberating those who are trapped, loving those who are unlovely, or the values of ‘the world’ such as accumulating wealth and power, always getting my own way, sacrificing for no one, committing to nothing? What are the ruling passions in our lives: are they faith, hope and love, or are they greed, envy, grudges, control, the very things that lie behind both the world wars and the more local family feuds?

Every day we Christians pray to God “Thy kingdom come” but do we really mean it? Do we really want Christ to rule our feelings, character, relationships, our decisions and our destiny? Calling Him King is easy in the liturgy. It is easy to ask Him to conquer the dictators and the nursing home arsonists. But do we really want Christ to conquer us? Of course – you might say – of course I love God and want to know and serve Him in this life and be with Him forever in the next: that’s why I’m here today and quite regularly. Most of us could say that, I guess. But to ask Christ to be your King is to trust totally in His providence and there’s the rub ...

Now, there is one view of providence that is not much better than superstition: it’s the idea that I can just close my eyes and walk across the M2 and God will protect me. Or that when I bump into someone I was thinking of, it must be because God organised things that way. Or that whatever mess I make of my life God is somehow to blame and it’s up to Him to fix it. Coincidence and human irresponsibility are not providence. Providence, as Christians understand it, is God’s continuing creative and re-creative activity. God doesn’t just make the world and then go away on holidays, leaving us to our own devices. No, at every moment He continues to sustain the universe, to hold each one of us ‘in the palm of His hand’, even those who’ve never heard of Him or who reject Him. He is present and active with His creative power and redeeming love, not just at the start or the end, not just when we are noticing. In a sense God can’t help Himself: having made us immortal beings yet subject to hunger and those other needs in our Gospel, He has committed to us for the long haul, all the way to heaven.

So, St Thomas Aquinas teaches, providence refers to God’s constantly knowing and actively caring of us (STh I 22). Knowing that we can trust divine prudence is the context for all we do. It does not make us puppets: as our Gospel passage makes clear, we are free to serve or not. We are not so depraved as to be beyond good choices nor so noble as to seek only them. But for those with faith, providence is our spiritual oxygen, in which we can breathe with confidence. As human beings we are called out from among all the creatures to be the ones who are free and rational and loving enough to pursue the good and reach for the stars. As Christians we are called out from among all humanity to be the ones who are priestly, prophetic and kingly enough to serve Christ in the little ones and reach for heaven. As individuals we are called out from among all other Christians to serve God in some particular way, as priests, spouses, religious or however. All talk of vocation, then, is really talk of providence, of God’s knowing, guiding hand, and our willingness to fall into step with it.

So providence says Christ is Universal King, who knows and cares and makes and saves all that is. But providence also says that God acts sometimes very specifically, very specially, in our lives. He is the local boss, as it were, not just the cosmic one. We pray for that intervention at times. Sometimes we see it before our very eyes. Sometimes we can’t see it amidst the apparent mess and meaninglessness, but later we look back and realise that it makes sense after all and God was there gently guiding all along.

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher for 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A), St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 30 October 2011

When a man is ordained deacon, the bishop hands him the Gospel Book and says, “Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you now are. Believe what you read; teach what you believe; and practice what you preach.” The challenge to every generation, from the time of Christ until kingdom come is: are we receptive to the Gospel of Christ? Do we believe and practice what He teaches? Can people read the Gospel by reading our lives? Are we authentic or are we like the Scribes and Pharisees whose hypocrisy Jesus criticises today (Mt 23:1-12)? These questions are every bit as confronting for us as they were for Jesus’ first hearers. Many people are scandalised by what they see as the ungenerous hoarding of wealth of time by some people in the Church or the abusive behaviour of some clergy or the unwelcomingness of some congregations. They think we fail to practice what we preach.

Yet for all our failings many still believe, still want to trust, are still willing to worship with us. Some years ago, before I was a bishop, I was feeling rather low about all the revelations of clergy misconduct and so I joined a ceremony of repentance and prayer for the victims of abuse being held in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne. I had been kneeling for only two minutes when a teenager approached me and asked me to hear his confession. Then another, and another after that, and so on until I had missed the service altogether. I might have been disappointed, but this was in fact exactly what I needed: what God and those young people were telling me, in no uncertain terms, was that lay people, including young people, despite some terrible betrayals, still want to trust the Church, still love her Lord and value His priests.

I’m just back from the visit the Australian bishops make to Rome every five years or so. It is called the ad limina apostolorum because it is a pilgrimage to (the threshold of) the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul. It’s a kind of ecclesiastical audit, a chance for the universal Church to reflect with the local dioceses on how things are going. Bishops report on every aspect of their dioceses. We also interact with the Vatican departments concerned with doctrine and morals, with bishops, priests, religious and laity, with liturgy, family, healthcare, migrants, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, the New Evangelisation and much more. We meet with the Pope, once in small groups so he can hear from us individually, and once as a body of Australian bishops so he can address us together.

There is much, I think, that we can be proud of as a diocese and as the Church in Australia. I was able to talk about strengths of our diocese such as its ethnic diversity, its young families and young adults, its strong parish life and much else besides. The Pope and his team were astonished to hear that we have parishioners from every country on earth and that we have nearly 80 active youth groups and ministries in our diocese, including a group of several hundred young adults who meet in a pub each month to talk theology!

Above all, I was able to tell the Holy Father and his collaborators about the wonderful people of Western Sydney, many of whom are devoted to God and His people, and week after week bring Him their hopes and fears, their hearts and lives, their family and friends, to offer with the bread and wine at Mass that He might transform them also. But we are not smug, as Scribes and Pharisees are wont to be: many Catholics in our region have very little contact with the Church from week to week; many come only very rarely to our churches. We face a very real challenge today to bring those people closer to God and His Church, to re-evangelise and welcome them home.

But even as we do our best to be a Gospel-preaching and Gospel-living people, to be welcoming and supportive, the Gospel reminds us that we never really live up to its demands. There are always ways we could do better, ways in which we live less authentically than we should, that we dress in the phylacteries of Christianity and the tassels of social respectability, while all the while, deep in our hearts, harbouring pride and greed, lust and avarice, envy and anger, or whatever.

Years ago, when I was a young Aussie backpacker, I went to Mass in a tiny Greek Orthodox church in the Aegean Islands. Mass had already started and they were singing Kyrie Eleison. Though I didn’t know much about the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, I guessed it had just started because I knew we used to start Mass with the Kyrie. After about an hour of carry on, however, which included many Kyrie Eleisons, I began to wonder whether this Mass was making any progress at all: were we still at the beginning and, if so, would the Mass go for very many more hours? I took a break outside for a while and returned to find them singing Kyrie Elieison again. But just as I was about to give up they distributed Holy Communion and Mass was over.

What I learnt only later was that the Orthodox plead for God’s mercy not just at the beginning but all through Mass. In their view a quick Confiteor at the beginning just isn’t enough to make people worthy to approach the altar. Later still I realised that we do the same in our Mass too. The glorious Kyrie Eleisons we sing at St Patrick’s Cathedral here in Parramatta or the rather simpler Lord Have Mercies of the average parish are only the start of it. Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us, we sing next in the Gloria. With a humble spirit and contrite heart ... wash me, O Lord, from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, the priest prays quietly at the Offertory. To us, also, your servants, who, though sinners, hope in your abundant mercies ... admit us, we beseech you, into the company [of your saints ... granting us your pardon, we pray in the great Eucharistic Prayer.

In the Our Father we pray forgive us our trespasses ... and deliver us from evil. The priest continues: Deliver us, Lord we pray, from every evil ... that by the help of your mercy we may be always free from sin ... Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church. And the people respond, three times as if they were saying the Lord have mercy again: Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us, just before receiving Communion. So the Orthodox aren’t so peculiar after all!

All Christians understand that we should not be smug or hypocrites. To the extent that we fail to preach what we believe or to practise what we preach, we are weak like the rest of humanity. But that is no excuse: we should be examples of holiness, of sinners becoming saints. So we are ashamed of our hypocrisy and we ask God to heal us: Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.

Listen to the Bishop’s homily

Homily for 27th Sunday (Year A), St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 2 October 2011

It’s rained a lot lately. Only a few years ago Australia was suffering a terrible drought and children growing up in some places didn’t know how to respond to rain. The talk at the time was that we might remain in drought forever. That proved too pessimistic, but it took the drought to shock us all into appreciating just how precious water is.

Our ancestors also interpreted drought as a sign. Hence Isaiah reports God’s warning that He will make Israel into a wasteland, where only weeds and thorns grow, and will command the clouds to rain no more (Isa 5:1-7). This is not an act of divine vengeance: it is a loving God’s attempt to shock Israel to her senses, to bring her to open her eyes and see how wonderfully generous God has been to her all along.

“What more could I have done for My vineyard?” the Divine Vigneron cries out in our first reading. I’ve given you this wonderful creation, the gift of life, your human dignity, your uniqueness and talents. You have constant signs of My loving providence. And all you give Me back is sour grapes!

In the Gospel Jesus takes this thought even further (Mt 21:33-43). God sent His prophets and saints into His vineyard, to guide us. He even sent His own Son, to call us to love and justice. What did He get in return? A cross for His Son and vinegar to drink, more sour grapes. Whatever He does for us, we take it for granted or even complain; we refuse to render back to Him what is due. We block our ears to the message and then, when it is too challenging, we kill the Messenger.

We can all, no doubt, sympathise with the Vineyard Owner this morning. We all know the experience of ingratitude. We do our best and those who benefit are often unappreciative. Of course, our sense of injustice can be rather mixed-up; sometimes it might be more about our own niggardliness, manipulation and jealousy than genuine injustice. We might do good for someone expecting to gain some emotional advantage from our patronage and their indebtedness – like a child who tries to buy friends by giving them things.

But God isn’t like that. When He seeks our gratitude it is for our sake. When we give God His due in reverence, worship, thanks, it is our gain, not His. The gratitude due to God is traditionally called pietas or piety. Piety is not a virtue much in vogue today. When people hear the word they probably think of little old ladies and old-fashioned devotions. Yet what the word actually refers to is a grateful reverence to God as the source of our being and all that we are and have, and if old ladies are good at that it is to their great credit!

We have all, at some time or other, seen some natural or human wonder, perhaps the angel-host of the milky-way at night, or a newborn baby, especially our own. At those moments we may have had the experience of open-mouthed awe, wonder, humility, delight in the goodness and beauty and sheer undeserved gift of it all. Even people who rarely lighten the door of a church from year to year know that experience; even those who join us only once a year, at Christmas time, when the cosmic vision of angels and the earthly hope of a newborn babe coincide.

Well, that emotion and instinct, that choice and habit of pietas is at the heart of all true worship: pure wonder, gratitude, exhilaration at the grace of it all, of our birth and rebirth, of our lives in this glorious if broken world, of the heaven we taste from time to time on earth and are promised in abundance in the world to come.

That pietas should extend from God, the planter of vineyard, the source of all being, to those who’ve tended His vineyard, who’ve mediated that being to us: those who’ve gone before us, marked with the sign of faith; those giants upon whose shoulders we stand; those who made our Church and country and made us heirs to so much that is good in our institutions, traditions, values and beliefs; those who have passed on life and love and truth and beauty to us: our ancestors, our elders, our countrymen, above all perhaps, our parents and grandparents.

Traditional cultures are much better at piety than ours. On Friday 30 September I opened our new Aboriginal Catholic Services Centre in Emerton. It is a place all of us in the Catholic Diocese of Parramatta should be proud of. It is one of the most beautiful purpose-built facilities for Aboriginal services anywhere in Australia. It was a great celebration and the culmination of a dream of the Aboriginal elders of this region. The ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’, as they call them, were our hosts that day and they were rightly acknowledged.

Western cultures have much to learn from Aborigines and other traditional societies about reverence for elders. In contemporary Australia many older people are ‘warehoused’, put away out of sight and mind. There is even periodic talk of euthanasing them. That is unthinkable in traditional societies, where elders are honoured for their wisdom and experience; where, above all, they are shown piety, simply for being the elders, the ancestors, the origins, therefore deserving honour and reverent thanks.

There are various ways we can respond to this indebtedness to parents and elders and country. But how on earth do we render thanks as we ought to God? Our thanks seem so pitiful when we consider all we’ve received, from the entire cosmos to the present moment. How do we respond to all that? Even if I give myself to God daily, hourly, every minute – and how many of us can say that we do that wholly and consistently? – it would be like a drop in the ocean compared all we’ve been given and received.

Like a parent who gives her child not only Christmas gifts, but even the things that child gives to their siblings and back to the parent, so God gives us even the gift to give to Him. God gives us the only opportunity, the only language, the only thanks-giving remotely adequate to the task: Jesus Christ; He is what we render back to the Father.

Sometimes people wonder why we bother coming back, time and again, to Mass. Well here’s one good reason, among others. Listen to our Greek neighbours in bars and restaurants: when they say thank you their word is Ef-haristo. That’s modern Greek. In ancient Greek it was pronounced Eucharist-o. While much of the Mass is seeking, asking, begging, for this or that, it is also our greatest act of offertory, of giving, of returning. That is why we call it The Eucharist, the great big Thank you.

With Aunty Janice Kennedy (from left): Uncle Ray Leslie, Bishop Anthony, Uncle Ben Taylor-Cuiermara, and CatholicCare’s Chaplain, Fr Phil Medlin CSsR. Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for the Opening & Blessing of the Aboriginal Catholic Service (ACS) Centre at Emerton, Friday 30 September 2011

Uncle Ray Leslie (our Master of Ceremonies), Aunty Janice Kennedy (Assistant Senior Manager of Aboriginal Catholic Services) and all the excellent staff and volunteers of ACS, Uncle Brian Boney (who conducted our Smoking Ceremony), Uncle Ben Taylor-Cuiermara (Nyungar Elder from Western Australia), Aunties Gloria Matthews, Jenny Ebsworth, Janice Brown, Rhonda Randall, Daisy Barker, Margaret Farrell and other elders of the Aboriginal Community in Western Sydney, our Aboriginal dance group, all members of the local Aboriginal community and their guests here today;

Mr Ed Husic MP (Federal Member for Chifley, representing Minister Kate Ellis and the Commonwealth Government), Mr Michael Chan (from DEEWR) and Mr Francis Vella (who assisted with the grant process);

Mr Otto Henfling (Executive Director of CatholicCare Social Services Parramatta) and the many staff of CatholicCare, as well as many other friends representing local Aboriginal agencies and from the world of social service;

Fr Ed Dooley SJ (Parish Priest of this parish of the Holy Family), Fr Paul Bird CSsR, Redemptorist Provincial and other Redemptorists, here today to support Fr Phil Medlin CSsR (Chaplain to CatholicCare), Reverend fathers and religious sisters;

Leaders and representatives of the Chancery, the Catholic Education Office, our Diocesan Social Justice Office, MacKillop Services, Marist Youth Care, Campion College, Sydney Technical Institute, Wilmot Public School, Blacktown Council, the Western Sydney Area Health Service, the Parish of the Holy Family at Emerton and other Church and community organisations;

Mr John Gatt and Miss Alicia Gatt (from Peaceplan Designers) who designed this centre and Mr Ben Bartlett (of Linden Construction) who actually built it; and all of you here present today:

Let me begin by echoing the words of acknowledgment of the original custodians of the land upon which our new centre is built and of all the lands in our Diocese of Parramatta – the Burramuttagal people of the Dharug nation. As an ‘elder’ of the Catholic Church I am honoured to be welcomed by Aboriginal elders today and I wish in turn to acknowledge your elders and people, past and present.

We have apologies today from Bishop Kevin Manning, Emeritus Bishop of Parramatta, who first backed the building of this centre when he was the local bishop, and who is now Administrator of the Diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes; from a number of civic leaders such as Richard Amery, David Bradbury, Greg Donnelly, Alan Pendleton; from a number of parish clergy: all those who could not be with us today but join us in spirit we carry in our hearts.

Building on the foundations of prophets and elders

Photo: Alphonus Fok & Grace Lu

Well, the previous verses of the same letter of St Paul make it clear that the context is one of alienation, of people feeling left out, even of their own land. What Christ does, Paul says, is break down the dividing walls of hostility and reconcile us to each other and to God.

So why does Paul have to remind the people in Ephesus to behave as one family, clan, people – the household of God? Presumably because they were not behaving that way, or not always. New walls of hostility or rivalry were emerging, new distinctions and separations.

The project of reconciling human beings to each other and to God is not complete, not this side of the grave anyway. We can never tick the box on justice and reconciliation and compassion as if we’ve done that and can move our attention elsewhere.

No, the building project is an ongoing one. Certainly, Christ’s death and rising is once and for all; but our response to that is gradual and fragile and sometimes contradictory.

And so in our small ways we try to build. We build on the foundations of the prophets and apostles, our ancestors and elders. We build centres like this one which we open and bless today, conscious that what really matters is the spiritual building project that is going on within each one of us and between us, a project that is never finished even if externally things look new and beautiful and hospitable.

Christian discipleship, leadership and service

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

The river has been there a long time: the Indigenous people of this district for perhaps tens of thousands of years; the Catholic community for 223 years; and the relationships, sometimes tense, sometimes, thank God, loving and caring.

The river has been there a long time and will, please God, long flow into the future. So this new Aboriginal Catholic Services Centre in the grounds of the Holy Family Parish, Emerton, is not the first place or the last place for various interactions between the Aboriginal people of Western Sydney and the Catholic Church.

The addresses, the personalities, the kinds of service and care that go on in them have changed over time and will change into the future. And the challenge from St Paul is never to imagine we’ve ticked the box and finished with reconciliation, justice and charity: that is a project that will continue, in various forms, until kingdom come.

But this is an important marker event. For one thing, it means that the works of the Catholic Church within the Aboriginal community will no longer be conducted in ‘borrowed premises’, as it were. They now have a home. Not just any old home: a purpose-built, genuinely beautiful home, a home you can be proud of.

Several of the women have said to me that it is even better than they had dreamed. That dream was a long one of the Aboriginal Catholic community and its friends. Now you have it: a centre conceived by Aboriginal people for Aboriginal people. Others helped, including the Commonwealth and State governments with their substantial grants, the diocese and parish with its land and other contributions, the architects and builders with their craft, CatholicCare with its oversight and planning for future services. It is already a sign of that godly collaboration for which we all dream.

So today is an historic occasion and a cause for great celebration. But in this life joy is often mixed with sorrow and I want to acknowledge the hurt felt by some by the provision, or lack of provision, or changes in the provision, of various kinds of care by the Church in Western Sydney for Aboriginal people over the years.

This, of course, is in the context of wider neglect and damage done to Indigenous people in our community over the past two centuries. There were and always will be different views on how and what the Church should do with and for Aboriginal people, who should lead and serve in that work, where it should be done and so on.

‘One holy temple in the Lord’

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Despite any tensions or concerns we all recognise that today is an historic occasion and a cause for great celebration. Indigenous people are a very significant group within our Diocese, the largest urban population of Aboriginal Catholics, equivalent in numbers to a whole parish.

While they are centred here in Mt Druitt and Blacktown they are also to be found throughout the Diocese from Rydalmere in the East to Mt Victoria in the West, from Kurrajong in the North to Greendale in the South.

The Indigenous people living in the Diocese of Parramatta are not passive recipients of care but active agents of Christian discipleship, leadership and service in Western Sydney and I think we are very fortunate to have these women and men – and children – involved in the work of ‘building a house where God lives’, as St Paul described our work this morning.

I am very excited and pleased today to be with you for this opening and blessing, for the laying down of this marker in the long and ongoing history of God’s work amongst the Aboriginal people, the Catholic people, the Catholic Aboriginal people of Western Sydney.

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for 46th Annual Maltese Festa for the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary under the titles of Our Lady of Victories of Xagħra and Queen of Peace, Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish, Greystanes, 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A), 24 September 2011

Sulpicius Severus told the story of a man who sought admission to an Egyptian monastery and was told by the Abbot that obedience was the chief rule of that house.

To test the young man’s resolve the Abbot took his staff, a dried out old stick, and thrust it into ground. He told the novice that his job would be to walk several miles each day to the Nile to draw water and bring it to irrigate the stick.

A year passed and though the novice was exhausted from lugging water in the scorching sun the stick remained unchanged. Another year of attentive irrigation, and still nothing.

Finally, in the third year, when the man’s obedience had been sorely tried, the stick sprang to life – as Australian farmers know can suddenly happen to an apparently long-dead fence post.

All three readings today extol the virtue of obedience. The first (Ezek 18:25-28) praises the man who renounces sin and obeys God’s laws. Like a spouse Israel was to love, honour and obey her God, sacrificing not only animals but personal preferences for the sake of family, people, future.

In our Gospel (Mt 21:28-32) Jesus asks who the real disciple is: the one who pays lip-service or the one who actually does what God asks?

In our epistle (Phil 2:1-11) St Paul sings to us what was possibly the first Christian hymn, about Jesus emptying Himself to assume our human condition, giving Himself into the hands of sinful men, and then subjecting Himself to the Father in obedience even unto death, death on a cross.

Christ’s obedience parallels that of Sulpicius’ novice: like the novice Christ in His third year of public life was to see new life come from the dead tree, in His case from the Cross.

Obedience is an alien virtue for people today. Our age honours doing your own thing as its highest value. It makes Frank Sinatra’s I Did It My Way a favourite life-summary to be sung at funerals.

The spirituality sections of our bookshops are stocked full of books on how to be satisfied with yourself, how to fool people into thinking they are your friends so you can influence them to do your bidding.

And amidst the new agery in the few surviving philosophy shelves in our bookshops, we get mostly Freddy Nietzsche, the 19th Century proponent of the Superman, the man without limits, who obeys no one, who never lets the needs of others, especially the weak, get in his way.

Today we celebrate Our Lady’s birthday. The Malteze and Gozans celebrate her especially as Our Lady of Victories of Xagħra and Queen of Peace because it was on her birthday in 1565 that the Knights of St John of Malta and the Maltese people finally liberated Malta from the Muslim invaders. The liberation of Malta from the Axis powers also occurred on Our Lady’s birthday in 1944.

Whatever of her military adventures, Our Lady was a model of obedience. She did not imagine she was a superman, self-sufficient, relying only on her own resources and will.

No, though she was, in fact, the finest flower of our race, she was a woman whose fiat, whose yes to God’s will, was so total it generated the Son of God in her by the power of the Holy Spirit. Not I Did It My Way but I Did It God’s Way. “Do whatever Jesus tells you,” she instructed us at Cana and she instructs us still.

Our Gospels and the chronicles of our Church record many heroic stories of people who left everything to follow God’s will for them. Mary was one; so were the apostles and early disciples. Paul was one, and his obedience brought him many adventures, including being washed up on Malta’s shores (Acts ch 27) where the Acts of the Apostles recall that the natives showed the first Christians unusual kindness (Acts 28:1-2).

For many Maltezers and Gozans the trip to Australia must have been similarly adventuresome, with little idea where or what they were coming to, but a deep Christian trust in God’s providential care for them and obedience to His will.

Such trusting and amenable souls as these challenge us to see that genuine freedom is not self-seeking licence, genuine authority is not self-assertive power. Rather, freedom is found in serving others and authority in compromising our wills for the common good.

If any age needed that testimony it is surely this one, with its deep individualism, its trivial conceptions of freedom, its reduction of conscience to doing your own thing.

If the wisdom of the modern world is that it is sexist for brides to promise to love, honour and obey, it is a great pity; what was sexist was not the promise of obedience but the failure of husbands explicitly to promise the same – for marriage and family, like Sulpicius’ monastic life, like all genuine Christian life, is about mutual submission by all parties to a way of life, a new identity, a person. Indeed, anyone who has ever loved, knows how much letting go of our own wilfulness is necessary for a relationship to work.

When Jesus returned to Nazareth after His finding in the Temple, He subjected Himself to His parents (Lk 2:51). When He let His Mother or the Syro-Phonecian woman or lepers or the crowds persuade Him to revise His plans; when He prayed ‘Father take this cup of wrath from Me, but let Your will be done not Mine’, when He taught us also to pray ‘Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done’, He was not renouncing His human dignity, as the Nietzscheans claim.

Christian obedience does not deny the importance of human freedom, human rights and taking responsibility. The dignity of free will and conscience is precisely in personally choosing and seeing through the good.

But the risk with Me-generation ‘My way’ talk is that it makes little space for co-operation between people or for a divine will wiser than our own. Instead of ‘not my will Father but yours’, instead of ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord’, we end up saying, as Satan did, ‘I will not serve’.

On this celebration day for Our Lady of Victories and of Peace, Our Lady of Xagħra, we recall that Christian faith never turns freedom into a fetish, autonomy into an absolute. We renounce the cult of My Way, the mechanisms of domination, self-protection and self-promotion.

For though He was God, Jesus did cling to His equality with God: He emptied Himself, being born of a woman, born a subject of the Law; and He was humbler yet, assuming the condition of a slave, even to accepting death, death on a cross; and for this obedience God has raised Him on high. Now that is a much better song for any Christian celebration!

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for the ‘Celebrate the Journey’ Mass for major Wedding Anniversaries, 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 18 September 2011

A man lies dying. He’s a hardened sinner and he refuses to repent. His wife and children beg him to receive a priest and the Last Rites. He refuses. At least he has the integrity not to feign a death-bed conversion. But is it integrity or stubbornness? He’s not sure. He wants to go out with no regrets, singing I did it my way. So he resists every prompting of grace, whether it’s the tears of his family or the unease of his conscience.

The man’s breathing is laboured; the end is near. He sees what looks like a ghostly presence hovering above him at the ceiling. Just one of those dying man’s illusions, he tells himself, like out-of-body experiences and seeing bright lights down a long corridor and welcoming faces. Superstitious nonsense: if you’re going to believe in ghosts you might as well believe in the Holy Ghost. So he tries to keep his heart hard, closed, impenetrable. His breathing comes to its climax with one last breath, then a long peaceful exhalation. As he breathes his last he momentarily lets down his guard; a chink appears in the armour around his heart; the Holy Spirit swoops down through that crack and fills his heart with love and repentance. He is ready for God.

Australians are a fair-minded people, no respecters of personages. We believe in giving everyone a fair go and in a fair day’s pay for fair day’s work. All this is very Christian. So what on earth is going on in the divine vineyard this morning (Mt 20:1-6)? Some people, especially the Jews, have laboured for God under the hot sun all day long and now these Jonny-come-latelies, mostly Gentiles, get the same pay. The shop-stewards and industrial commissions wouldn’t stand for this! Consoling as it is that God will always have us back, and our wayward children and friends too, it can still be a bit galling when professional sinners, after a life of debauchery whose pleasures we may secretly envy, return to God, are absolved of all wrongdoing and gets front-row seats in heaven! In this tenth anniversary week of 9-11 who could believe that an Osama bin Laden could repent just before the special forces got him and share heaven with a Mother Teresa? Sure, God’s ways are not our ways, as our First Reading reminds us (Isa 55:6-9). But sometimes His accounting seems plain ramshackle.

Yet who we to audit the Book of Life? None of us deserved life, our natural talents and opportunities. None of us deserved salvation, the innumerable supernatural graces we receive. Friendship, we all know, comes unmerited, unexpected, unmeasured. Sure, we can work for it, open ourselves up to its infinite possibilities, cooperate with it and respond to it with equal affection. But we can never force it, never demand it. Spouses know that. Parents know that. None of us deserved our beloved or our children or the many years we’ve had together.

Grace is like friendship; indeed it is friendship, friendship with God and through God with others. By definition it is undeserved, unmeasured, unexpected: it is God’s sovereign generosity lavished upon us all. That’s why in our Eucharistic Prayer today we ask God not to do us justice: “admit us, we beseech you, into the company [of your saints], not weighing our merits, but granting us your pardon, through Christ our Lord.” Not weighing our merits, but giving us much more than we deserve: thankfully God far exceeds our pusillanimous accounting. That means we may be surprised whom we see in heaven!

Does all this make your fidelity to marriage, your generosity with each other, with each other’s in-laws, with your children and grandchildren, your forgiving each other as often as Peter was told to last Sunday, your efforts to keep communicating, your little acts of kindness, your total gift of yourselves to each other and to God, all worthless? Is justification, in the end, arbitrary, so that nothing we do by way of acknowledging or responding to God, our own professions of faith, our prayers and penances, our good works can contribute even one iota to salvation. As the parable shows, the Divine Vigneron doesn’t care, doesn’t even notice!

Well, let’s look more closely at that parable. First, we note that all those rewarded by the Master did in fact respond to his call to come into the vineyard, whether in the last few minutes or for many hours. Some respond rather late to God’s gracious invitation, but respond they must if they are to join Him: God won’t force anyone into the Church on earth or in heaven. The invitations may be innumerable but in the end we must say Yes.

Secondly, we notice that the response is a lived one: we must not only say yes to God but also live yes to God. For however long or short a time we are given in God’s vineyard we have some work to do there. Whether it’s the domestic grind, the complex task of loving well, the challenges of family or work, the making of time for prayer amidst the busyness of modern life, all our acts of lovemaking of one kind or another: we all get grapes to pick in the Lord’s vineyard; we make our contribution to the divine harvest. And when we do, it really is good, good in itself, good for us and others; it really merits God’s gratuitous promises. We might not deserve heaven but God does, and if He chooses to associate us in His work of salvation, He makes us merit that salvation, He makes us deserving.

There’s a third reason why living a good married life matters. Not only must we say yes to God and live yes to God: we must also die yes to God. Osama bin Laden had every chance to repent, right up to the moment he breathed his last. If he finally said yes to the God of Love that would have meant heaven for him, though one suspects after a rather long purgatory! We don’t know. But this much is clear: if we devote our lives to hatred and violence, or to debauchery and abuse, or to materialism and envy, we become so ingrained in living outside the Lord’s vineyard that it will be almost unimaginable for us to change course at the end. Christian marriage and family life, on the other hand, is a school in virtue, a school in generosity and peace-making. Christian marriage prepares you to say yes to God, right to the end, not ‘No’ or ‘Maybe’ or ‘Only on my terms’.

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for the Mass for World Youth Day Returnees, 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 11 September 2011

Ten years ago today – half a life ago for some of you, only yesterday for others – 19 terrorists in four hijacked planes took down the twin towers of the World Trade Centre and with them three thousand souls, while the rest of the world looked on powerless and appalled. People rarely seen in churches came in droves, looking for somewhere to put their numbness and grief, their fears and prayers. World leaders, reporters and others unaccustomed to using religious language naturally slipped into it, as human beings do when trembling before the wonderful or the terrible, when stuttering to speak the unspeakable or when trying to exorcise what can only be demons.

One man named Michael memorialized his brother Matthew by recalling the story of Christ’s Transfiguration, for such he believed his brother had suffered as he was vaporized in the heat of more than 1100°C in the tower fires. For the deceased, obviously, everything changed; but for the survivors like Michael the world would also never be same.

Perhaps that is true for all of us. For September 11 did more than tear innocent people from their families and friends, or double the security at airports and monuments, or turn up the rhetoric about wars on terror a few notches. 9-11 demonstrated the naked vulnerability of the mightiest nation on earth and therefore of us all, our insecurity even in peace-time, our impotence in the face of fanaticism without respect for life or limb. “Remember the last things,” says Ben Sirach in our First Reading this evening, “remember dissolution and death” for these must surely come, even to you (cf. Sir 27:30-28:7).

Here we are a decade later and so much remains unanswered. How are we to regain reverence for life after a century of bloody wars, unthinkable abortion rates, spiralling youth suicide and now terrorist acts on a diabolical scale? Are we doomed forever to wage unholy wars upon each other in the name of race or religion or nationalism? Do young people, like those just returned from World Youth Day give cause to hope for something better?

“Lord, do I really have to forgive someone as many as seven times?” Peter asks (Mt 18:21-35). His accounting is natural enough: we all know how hard it is to forgive our loved ones, let alone hostile or negligent strangers, let alone the recidivists who keep harming us. If we’ve been wounded we may nurse a grudge. We bandage it with hatred and self-pity or pick it over on a regular basis.

We all know how easily and endlessly the evidence accumulates, once we’ve got it in for someone: every little thing they do becomes further proof of their wickedness; even their mannerisms start to disturb us and we attribute all sorts of foul motives to them. Icily polite concord can be hard enough with such people; genuine reconciliation can seem impossible. It can be terribly hard to fight back the waves of anger and retaliation; very hard indeed to swallow our pride and make those tentative first gestures towards reconciliation.

Yet the alternative is lethal. Hatred fuels an endless cycle of revenge. It also enervates those who hate, it eats them up. As our First Reading put so well: “Resentment and anger are foul things… vengeance only calls for more vengeance… a man nurses his anger against another and cherishes resentment” and so ruins himself. We see well enough what a spirit of unforgivingness, of security-seeking and revenge-seeking, can do to people: a decade after 9-11 Palestine, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan seem as insoluble as ever and no one imagines it’s a safer world.

His name will continue to resound throughout the world

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Clearly our world today needs more than justice-by-hitting-back or peace-based-on-fear or even live-and-let-live. What our world desperately needs is justice informed by mercy and peace built on reconciliation, respect, ultimately on love. As Abraham Lincoln once observed: in the end the only way to destroy your enemies is to turn them into friends! The crucified God makes it possible for us to break the endless cycles of resentment and hatred: this is the only way to disarm evil and brutality; this is our only hope for a future less bloody than our past. And your young Catholic faith is the secret to that.

After 9-11 some said religion is the cause of all the divisions in our world. Don’t be cowed by such talk. No doubt some people in history used religion for such purposes and some still do. But the twentieth and bloodiest of centuries was the most atheistic in history and it was the anti-religious ideologies such as Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, Pol Pot with his killing fields and the like that did the most terrible harm. The 9-11 bombers didn’t care what religion their victims were. Certainly no true Christian could do such a thing; no faith worthy of the name kills innocent people with abandon.

Your faith tells you to forgive again and again, to make strangers into neighbours, neighbours into friends, friends into brothers and sisters. Your faith allows you to join people of every nation, tribe and tongue in one Mass of young humanity, one Mass of Jesus Christ, united in praising God. Your faith calls you to care for the needy, to teach the ignorant, to mend the divisions, to evangelize those far from God. For as the Holy Father told us at World Youth Day: “Christ’s passion urges us to take upon our own shoulders the sufferings of the world, in the certainty that God is not distant or far removed from man and his troubles.” On the contrary, He became one of us in order to suffer with us, bring us consolation and hope, encourage us to help those less fortunate. He came to unite divided humanity into one family.

So many times in the history of Europe and of the world young people on the march meant violent conquest and bloodshed. But in Madrid we saw more than a million gathered with the opposite notion in their heart. They would conquer hearts and cultures rather than territories, and they would do so not with arms but with love and truth and reconciliation.

Photography: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP, Annual SRE Mass, Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, St Patrick’s Church, Blacktown, Friday 9 September 2011

Does being a Christian make any difference to the way we live? After all, don’t many non-Christians, even non-believers, live just as good lives as many Christians? If something is good, it is surely good for every human being, not just Christians or anyone particular group.

Yet when St Paul talks today of his experience of conversion (1 Tim 1:1-2,12-14), it is clear that for him it meant the complete upside-downing, inside-outing of his worldview and values. “I used to be a blasphemer and a persecutor of Christians,” he says, “but the grace of Our Lord filled me with faith and love”; having been shown mercy I now preach and teach that mercy myself. For St Paul, one of the first Christian catechists, the Damascus experience was so radical he would spend the rest of his years talking about leaving behind the old man and putting on the new; being liberated from old way of life and embracing the new one; being grafted onto Christ, imitating Christ, living through Christ and with Christ and in Christ; being, if needs be, a fool for Christ by this world’s standards. For Paul this meant confronting law-abiding Jews and philosophically-minded pagans, as well as young Christians with the radically good and radically new Good News.

Yet if we Christians do have something different to offer, we need not deny the wisdom in other religious traditions or in the natural morality of human beings, some of which we can draw upon ourselves and much of which is the common ground upon which we live and work with people of all sorts. Once the foundation of Christian faith was laid, St Paul himself did not hesitate to build up human norms and virtues in his new Christians. Though he thought Jesus’ Way was something very new, he readily assimilated whatever was true from the heritage of the peoples he taught.

Of course, in some ways his task was easier than ours. At least the surrounding cultures were essentially religious ones. Everyone believed in God, perhaps too many gods, in the afterlife, in the requirement to pray and live a good life. In our contemporary culture, on the other hand, God is marginalized and much of what is offered instead for our valuing is unhelpful, even harmful. The messages coming from our industries, polities, academies and media can be corrupt; the reigning ideologies of consumerism, individualism and relativism wrong-headed; the practices of the age hard-hearted or soft-headed, such as credit beyond our means, consumption beyond our credit, sex and drugs as recreations, inappropriate incarceration of some troublemakers and detention of some strangers. And so Christians today are increasingly counter-cultural, contra mundum, as this world goes.

Yet we are never really against the culture or against the world, because we adore the Maker of our world and Lord of our history, and we appreciate all He has given us, including our natural environment and human achievements, the great philosophies and institutions, technologies and traditions, the family and workplace and community. If Christians greet the world with a critical mind and the eyes of faith, it is so they can live well in the world, not escape from it, and purify that world and bring it to God.

True Christian morality, we know, has a profound and persuasive echo in heart of every person, believer and non-believer alike, because it marvellously fulfils our heart’s desires while infinitely surpassing them. Even in the midst of difficulties and uncertainties, every person sincerely open to the truth can, by the light of reason and the hidden action of grace, come to recognize what is right. And so however much some people differ from us and sometimes persecute us, Christians in the end have no enemies, except Sin and Death. Other people, however misguided, are still the image of God for us, still intended by God to be our neighbours, friends, brothers and sisters, fellow saints. There are, dare I say, only two religions – Catholics and still-to-be-Catholics – and the still-to-be’s are like catechumens with their foot already in the door, already joined to us, as long as they are seeking the truth with a sincere heart and living as good a life as their lights reveal to them.

So why bother with evangelisation and catechesis and SRE and the rest? Aren’t all beliefs equally worthy and all morals equally sincere? If those without Catholic faith can be saved, isn’t ignorance bliss? Shouldn’t we just leave them to their own devices, to follow their own lights and find a path for themselves?

To which Paul might answer this morning: how could you know the grace and peace and mercy of God the Father, how could you experience the faith and hope and love of Christ Jesus His Son, and not want to share them with others? Can ignorance of God and His ways, of His plan for humanity and His providential care, of His Incarnate Son and His redeeming friendship, of His Holy Spirit and His spiritual gifts, of His Holy Church and her Word and Sacraments: can ignorance of such things be bliss? Surely such ignorance is a deprivation, a terrible loss? And so, says Paul this morning, God chooses people, sometimes the most unexpected people, and calls them into His service, and gives them the faith and hope and love they need to pass on the Faith.

At World Youth Day in Madrid, which I was privileged to attend with nearly 300 young people from the Parramatta diocese, the Pope confronted the post-modern question: Do we really need foundations for our lives? He observed that “There are many who... believe they need no roots or foundations other than themselves. They take it upon themselves to decide what is true or not, what is good and evil, what is just and unjust; who should live and who can be sacrificed in the interests of other preferences; leaving each step to chance, with no clear path, letting themselves be led by the whim of each moment.”

Christians, the Holy Father argued, have an alternative approach to life. We know “that we have been created free, in the image of God, precisely so that we might be in the forefront of the search for truth and goodness, responsible for our actions; not mere blind executives, but creative co-workers in the task of cultivating and beautifying the work of creation.”

“God is looking for a responsible interlocutor, someone who can dialogue with Him and love Him,” the Pope continued. “Through Christ we can truly succeed and, established in Him, we give wings to our freedom. Is this not the great reason for our joy? Isn’t this the firm ground upon which to build the civilization of love and life, capable of humanizing all of us?”

This is the task of the CCD and its SRE teachers: bringing responsible interlocutors to God, young people with big questions, searching minds and open hearts, laying foundations for their lives and giving wings to their freedom, so they might build with Christ a civilization of life and love for Western Sydney. What an exciting project is yours! Thanks be to God for your contribution to that adventure.

Photo: Shelly A Barnes

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for the Funeral Mass of Rev Fr Rod Bray, St Margaret Mary’s Church, Merrylands, 2 September 2011

There’s a lot of sin in Merrylands, if the number of confessions is anything to go by ... Or perhaps there’s a lot of healthy self-examination, of contrition, and of reconciliation with the Father.

The efficient cause of that lies before us in the sleep of death. At almost any time and right up to the start of Mass Fr Rod Bray ensured that the sacrament of mercy was available to his people.

I well recall, when still newly Bishop of this Diocese, visiting Fr Bray in hospital and being mightily edified to see a queue of penitents waiting to make their confession to him on his sick bed. It was a very Curé of Ars sort of scene.

When I celebrated Mass for his 50th anniversary of ordination to the priesthood I wondered aloud how many absolutions he had given since Cardinal Gilroy anointed his hands all those years ago? How many tongues received from those hands the Body and Blood of Christ (Jn 6:51-58), how many foreheads the waters of Baptism or oil of the sick, how many hearts the sign of the cross in blessing? How many times, through those hands, did bread and wine become that most precious Sacrament? 20,000 times!

How many lives, too, did he join in matrimony, how many hearts did he counsel with wise words, how many souls did he commend to the dust and to God? Hundreds of thousands, I guess, a countless multitude, that ‘many’ described in the new words of the Consecration.

His journey to God started when another priest, 73 years ago, poured water in the name of the Blessed Trinity; and when a good Catholic family, a parish and a generous adolescent heart offered him to God for whatever God had planned for him.

He’d been lucky enough to have a Dominican education at St Martha’s in Strathfield, and so was dedicated to Veritas (truth) from an early age. From here he progressed through St Patrick’s College, Strathfield, St Columba’s Seminary, Springwood, and St Patrick’s Seminary, Manly, to ordination to the sacred priesthood on 15 July 1961.

After ordination Fr Rod went as a missionary priest to Aitape in Papua New Guinea for the best part of a decade. In due course he served in Tempe, Blacktown, Mt Druitt, Mt Pritchard and eventually here in Merrylands since 1979, from 1980 as Parish Priest.

He served as diocesan director of the Pontifical Missionary Society and as Chairman of the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. He gave a half century of priestly service; was an inspiration and support to the vocations of many others; and was a truly missionary pastor, whether in PNG or in deepest darkest Merrylands.

Not all that long before Fr Rod was ordained, Blessed John XXIII published his second encyclical, Sacerdotii Nostri Primordia, to celebrate St John Vianney, the patron saint of Parish Priests.

It describes a priest remembered fondly for living modestly and chastely, for preaching the truth fervently, for celebrating the Holy Eucharist devoutly, for giving the example of his own prayer and penance, for providing sound catechesis for his flock, for inspiring vocations and motivating others to serve the Lord – and of course for spending so many hours in the confessional.

Pope John wrote that even “when he was completely worn out and broken ... the penitents came to his bed to confess ... For those who remained stubbornly unrepentant, rivers of tears flowed from his eyes. ‘My friend,’ he said to one, ‘I am weeping because you are not.’ And yet, what great kindness he displayed in restoring hope to the souls of repentant sinners!”

So many lines in that encyclical seem as well to describe the Aussie protégé as the heavenly patron. The Curé of Merrylands even died at the same age as the one of Ars.

Fr Rod loved being a priest. He never lost his sense of awe at what Christ did daily through him. He prayed and read about the priesthood. He retold the story of the founder of the Schönstatt movement, Fr Joseph Kentenich, who when put in solitary confinement by the Nazis, declared: “Lord, I give to You my health, my sanity, my future. If there’s any problem with that, it’s Your responsibility.” On being released after a month of terrible cramped darkness the Gestapo agents expected he’d be insane. “Gentlemen,” he declared “I thank you! In all my life till now I’d never had the opportunity to make a 30-day retreat.”

“The learned will shine as brightly as the vault of heaven, and those who have instructed many in virtue, as bright as stars for all eternity,” says Daniel (Dan 12:1-3). The prophet was doing penance, we notice, when he received this message from the Lord, with its promise that those sleeping in the dust would awake, whether to everlasting life or to everlasting disgrace. For even as they instruct many in virtue the priest and prophet are themselves men and they too need God’s redeeming grace.

There’s a lot of sin in Merrylands, if the number of confessions is anything to go by. But as St Paul reminds us in our epistle (Rom 5:5-11), Christ died for sinful men, to save us, to justify us, to reconcile us to the Father, so that we might be filled with hope, with joyful trust, with spiritual love.

So He gave His priests power to loose sins (Mt 18:18). Where communion with God and His Church has been ruptured, His priests bring healing through Penance and Reconciliation. Of course, this is God’s action, not ours; only God forgives sins. But His priests mediate His grace. And the grace is a grace of Easter.

“Peace be with you,” says the newly Risen Lord. “My peace I give you. Those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven” (Jn 20:22-23) – because of My death, because of My resurrection. My flesh gives life and confession readies you to receive My body and blood.

Every time we experience the disgrace of sin, it is a little death. Every time we experience the grace of forgiveness, it is a little resurrection. Confession, like Baptism, is a sacrament for Eastering souls. It is an intimation of that day when tears and follies will be wiped away; that day when we will see God and become like Him.

We call such Eastered souls ‘saints’. They await the resurrection as we do, with full confidence in Christ’s power to save through His Church and in that love that the Spirit pours into our hearts. Fr Bray wanted that for the people of this parish of Merrylands, of this Diocese of Parramatta and of the Church beyond.

Homily for 97th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A), St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 28 August 2011

Around the time of World War I a little girl was born in Alexandria in Egypt of Italian and Romanian parents. She was taken, as a war refugee, to China. She grew up in Shanghai and eventually met a Spanish Basque sportsman who was in Shanghai to play his sport. He spoke no English and she no Spanish, so they courted in Italian and taught each other their languages after they married.

They raised two daughters in war-torn Japanese-occupied China before fleeing again as refugees, this time from the communists, in the late 1940s. They emigrated to the Philippines, where the younger girl undertook her secondary schooling in Manila. Then they came to Australia, where she married an Anglo-Celt, then the typical Aussie, before her parents moved on to North America. That girl is my mother and I am pleased she and my father are here at Mass today.

So I am the product of refugees, in a nation of migrants, in what is very possibly the most multi-ethnic, multicultural diocese in the world. In a sense I sum up the contemporary Australian mix that our recent census will reveal: with my European ancestry but with all the other continents of Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia amongst the adopted homes of my ancestors. I celebrate this with pride on this day, the 97th World Day of Migrants and Refugees.

Our Gospel this morning (Mt 16:21-27) opens with Jesus foretelling that violence awaits Him in Jerusalem. The Prophet Jeremiah predicts Jesus’ fate: He will be a laughing stock, the subject of insult, derision, violence and ruin, imprisoned in body and on fire in soul (Jer 20:7-9). Such prejudice and violence are the motors for the mass movement of people across our globe today, as always. Sadly, for many it is not just what they leave behind but also what they meet on arrival in whatever new land they manage to get to.

As globalisation increases our sense of interconnectedness and fosters increasingly multi-ethnic societies, Pope Benedict reminds us of our shared heritage: “If the Father calls us to be beloved children in his dearly beloved Son, he also calls us to recognise each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.” Hence his theme for this World Day of Migrants and Refugees: one human family. It invites an inner journey for each one of us, whether we are migrants, the children of migrants, or have a longer link with this land: so that we more willingly welcome those we see as ‘strangers’ and invite them to be our brothers and sisters.

Last Sunday, I concelebrated at the Papal Mass to close World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid. An estimated 1.5 million young people joined the Holy Father and the Bishops at the Cuatro Viento Airforce Base, rejoicing in the unity which Christ brings between every nation on earth. Our Church is Catholic only because it is universal, because it brings into such a unity the diversity of man.

When my mother arrived in Australia olive oil was only available in pharmacies as a medicinal item, garlic was hidden under the counter at green grocers to avoid offending the blue-eyes, and good wine and coffee were unavailable in a country where sweet milky tea and draught beer were the approved drops.

Contemporary Australia owes its existence to migration. All of us, with the exception of the Indigenous, can trace multiple stories of migration over the past 223 years. One out of five of us are migrants and another one in five the children of migrants. This has changed more than just the food and drink of our country: it has changed the literal face of our nation and Church, as we look around at the faces in this cathedral church today.

When I attended the recent ordination to the episcopate of Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen, who fled Saigon as a boat person, went through seminary with me in Melbourne, though as a Franciscan not a Dominican, served as Parish Priest of our own parish of Our Lady of the Rosary, Kellyville, I saw another face of this trend. Had Australia been less receptive to the boatpeople in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s he might never have made it.

No one should pretend it is easy. It is far from clear what the best migration and refugee policy is for a nation like ours. The Church has no quick fixes to offer. But we know this: Christ was a refugee from the moment He and His parents fled Herod’s killing fields in Bethlehem, to the time when as an adult He said ‘the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’, until the time when that holy head rested in a tomb after His short pilgrimage amongst us.

He came to unite strangers into His Church. He came to expand our sense of neighbour, to expand our hearts so that we welcome former enemies as friends, former strangers as neighbours, former neighbours as brothers and sisters. So we Christians can never be satisfied with the culture and politics of suspicion, division and exclusion. We must be proud and not ashamed of our ethnic mix; welcoming and not fearful that the mix may change again.

Sadly the issue of refugees has become particularly divisive in our country over the past decade or so. Too little do we celebrate the achievements of the 700,000 refugees who have come here since World War II: people like entrepreneur Frank Lowy, medical scientist Sir Gustav Nossal, lawyer and young Australian of the year Ms Tan Le, and the new auxiliary bishop of Melbourne, Vincent Nguyen.

Instead the focus is on Pacific and Malaysian ‘solutions’, mandatory detention and other deterrents. Meanwhile, the incidence of suicide and self-harm in our immigration detention centres is at epidemic proportions, as traumatised people – in Jeremiah’s words ‘imprisoned in body and on fire in soul’ – gradually go mad.

Whatever our political persuasions, we must all take these issues seriously, be better informed and take positions that uphold the dignity of all. A litmus test for us Christians might be: if this were happening to a member of my family would I approve?

As Pope Benedict observes, the right of states to regulate migration flows and defend their own borders is subject to the prior duty to guarantee the dignity of each and every person. From the earliest times here in Parramatta the Church has ministered to migrants and refugees.

Fr James Dixon, who celebrated Mass only metres away from here in 1803, tended mostly to Irish convicts, as did many of our first priests. St Mary of the Cross MacKillop gave much of her attention to the children of migrants, as did many of our religious. And Caroline Chisholm assisted the newcomers and advocated for their needs, as did many of our lay faithful.

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP - Youth with a Mission: Homily for Mass for the Spread of the Gospel, Parroquia Sta Teresa y San Jose, Pza de Espana, Madrid, Friday 19 August 2011.

Listen to audio version of Bishop Anthony's Homily

“How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” says Paul today (Rom 10:9-18), quoting the prophet Isaiah (Isa 52:7). Jesus and His apostles were pedestrians: as far as we know, apart from His Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem (and possibly the flight into Egypt), Jesus never rode a donkey or horse. He and His crew criss-crossed the Holy Land on foot, covering great distances on poor roads, often in searing heat, sand, dirt. It might have been beautiful to hear their footsteps and know they were coming, but were their feet beautiful? More likely they were calloused, broken, dirty, disfigured, smelly – like those of a pilgrim rather than a foot model in a shoe advertisement!

On one occasion a woman washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, anointed them with precious nard. You might say that on that day, at least, Jesus’ feet were beautiful. But even this pedicure was in preparation for His death and burial. On Good Friday His feet would be nailed horribly to a cross, mangled and torn as He tried to support Himself while He bled and suffocated to death. Even when He rose from the dead and Mary Magdalene and the other disciples tried to cling to His glorious feet (Jn 20:17; Mt 28:9-10), but those feet were still tattooed with the nail-holes of the crucifixion (Lk 24:39).

What happens if the rubber of the preacher’s sore and pongy feet does not hit the road? “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved,” says Paul. “But how will anyone call on Him if they have not first believed in Him? And how can they believe in Him if they haven’t even heard of Him? And how can they hear of Him if no one preaches Him?” So Paul’s point is: without witnesses, people miss out, miss out on hearing the Gospel, miss out on knowing the Lord, miss out on His saving power.

On our way to World Youth Day in Madrid, I travelled with 180 pilgrims through the Holy Land. One of the many places we were privileged to visit was Tabgha, the place where Christ multiplied the loaves and the fishes. Little has changed there to this day and the rock on which He blessed the bread is still there incorporated into the altar. In front of it is an ancient mosaic of four loaves in a basket and two fishes. It is an image much reproduced on plates and cups and tea towels and other tack for Catholic consumers. Why are there only four loaves in the mosaic basket rather than the five the Gospel tells us there were (Mt 14:13-21)? Because the fifth is the loaf you bring to the altar for Mass!

Unless your generation is willing to invest itself in Word and Sacrament, to take the Gospel to the world and bring the world to the altar, to offer the sacrifice at the altar so as to sanctify the world and inspire the preacher: unless you make this your own work, the Church will die. Four loaves in a mosaic basket might keep the devotional goods market in business but it will not grow the Church. The Church needs the fifth loaf that is you. Whatever your limitations Christ will then multiply that loaf. And the Church needs your feet to be on the road, bringing people the Gospel Good News.

So is this evangelisation thing just a kind of colonialism, trying to extend the Catholic version of the British empire to every corner of the earth so that we can colour in more and more territory of the world map in our colours of white and gold? No, it’s not about spiritual colonialism. It’s about love.

If you’ve ever been in love, you will know the desire to sing it from the roof-tops. Love so expands and fills the heart that it overflows and requires to be shared. To have fallen in love with Christ is to want to share that experience with our families, friends, and ever-expanding circles of people. Faith, hope and love are not for storing like grain; they are for sprinkling like seed in all directions.

That’s why we say the preacher brings Good News. Not just any old news. Not just anxiety-manufacture called ‘the news’ on TV or in newspapers. No, the really good news is that getting to know Christ and to call upon His name will save us – from sin and death, from sickness and suffering, from loneliness and confusion. And anyone who loves another wants them saved from such things.

If the new evangelisation to which the Church is calling us today is to happen, two things are essential. Some people must get behind that project 100%. They must be our evangelising priests, religious and lay missionaries. But we can’t leave it to them either. There is too much to be done, a great multitude to be fed spiritually, corners of our world only lay people can get to. And so every Christian must be a missionary, with his feet on the ground whatever ground he is on, and his mind and mouth fixed on bringing in souls to salvation. We must all surrender our few loaves and fishes and ask Christ to multiply them.

“Go to the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature,” Jesus commands us today (Mk 16:15-20). As He returns to the Father this is His last charge to us. The spread of the Gospel is the work of ordinary folk, such as the fishermen of ancient Galilee or the young people of contemporary Asia, America, Africa, Europe and, of course, Australia. Along the way they may do extraordinary things, like handling our Ancient Enemy the serpent and casting out his demons; like resisting the ‘poisons’ in our culture and speaking instead ‘new languages’ of life and love; like laying on healing hands and bringing hope. These extraordinary signs should be ordinary among us, because we are brothers and sisters of the One who was “taken up into heaven and took His seat the right hand of God”.

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP - In the name of Jesus Christ: Homily for Votive Mass of the Holy Name of Jesus Parroquia Santa Monica, Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Thursday 18 August, 2011

It was at Antioch that they first called us ‘Christians’ (Acts 11:26). It was not a compliment. It was intended to humiliate us. It meant: these guys are so dumb they worship a human being called Jesus Christ who is really dead but who they think is alive (Acts 25:18-20). To be called a Christian was mockery; it could also be lethal.

Human beings give meaning to their world by naming things. Adam’s first task in the Bible was to classify the animals (Gen 2:18-20). He also named his wife, Eve (Gen 3:20). Names help us make sense, communicate and control; they give us power for stewardship over creation or destruction of it, for building relationships or tearing them down. We might tell children that “sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me”, but they know all too well how being called a nasty name can wound us.

Naming God is more complex, as Moses discovered (Ex ch 3). God was long elusive about the best name for us to give Him. This was not a divine game of hide and seek, rather it reflected the fact that our minds cannot fully grasp God and if we imagine we’ve got Him all summed up and tamed then we’ve got the wrong God. Our God is name-less, not in the sense that He is not personal, available or self-revealing; but in the sense that He is not one of us, not a creature among others such as Adam and Eve could classify. The people of the Old Testament struggled to find words that could express their special relationship to this God who was revealing and concealing Himself from them. Sometimes they glimpsed Him and His will for humanity. ‘Watch this space,’ He said to them, ‘There’s more to come.’

In the fullness of time that more did come. God revealed Himself as fully as is humanly possible: He took flesh and, as we heard in our Gospel passage (Mt 1:18-25), this meant He at last had a proper name. It was given not by Joseph (as was Jewish custom), not even by Mary, but by God’s messenger: for if names give power, none would have power over Christ unless He gave it to them.

The angel recalls that He was to be named Emmanuel – God with us – but explains that an even better name would be Jesus – which means God not only with us but saving us. Thus Joseph takes Mary home as his wife, takes the child in her womb as his, and names the boy-God Jesus. The name matters: it tells us not just by what tag we shall identify Him but also what we can expect from Him. Jesus is man living among us and God saving us.

To speak His name with reverence and love is not only to recall events long past, but to invoke His presence here and now, whatever we are up to. We begin our prayer and liturgy, and perhaps driving and football and other activities, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Jesus’ very last words in Mark’s Gospel were: “In my name you will cast out demons, speak in new languages, survive great dangers; you will lay hands on the sick and they will recover.” And so when a paralytic at the Beautiful Gate asked Peter for alms, he said, “Silver and gold have I none, but I’ll give you what I have: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk” and the man did. This is the background to our first reading today (Acts 4:8-12): Peter’s discovery that nothing has greater power than the name of Jesus Christ.

Not that the name is Harry Potter style magic. Something much more wonderful than fantasy, more powerful than magic, more special than special effects is promised to us. “If you ask the Father anything in my name He will give it you,” Jesus promises (Jn 16:23; cf. Mt 18:19-20). So the Church concludes all her prayers with words such as “Through Christ Our Lord Amen.” With this name we call upon God, we bless and profess, we cast out evil, we make well. This is God saving; this name is our salvation.

‘Salvation’ might sound a bit heavy, a bit preachy, a bit crusader. Another word for it might be ‘safety’: being made well, free from harm, enduringly happy. How on earth do you get that? What technology could effect it, what money pay for it, what security system guarantee it? All we need do is call out the name of Jesus and mean it. That word, which names God, also names us, as ones who need saving, who need Christ saving, who need Christ.

When our persecutors started calling us Christians, it was intended to humiliate us and stigmatise us as criminals. Some of the Jews, first, then the crazed Emperor Nero and some Romans, declared our Church a criminal conspiracy. To bear the name Christian was to bear the name of a crime punishable by death. So did we repudiate that name and go for one more comfortable? No, we proudly call ourselves Christian, whatever the risks.

Firm in the Faith by the Power of the Holy Spirit

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit,
Parroquia San Antonio, Madrid, Wednesday 17 August 2011

At the altar of the Navicella in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome is an image of the encounter described in today’s Gospel (Mt 14:23-33). St Peter has started walking across the water but finds himself sinking. It’s as if he is a child learning to swim and the parent or swim instructor is using the old trick of moving further away as he makes his progress. Then he panics. He stretches out his arms towards Christ, saying, as we know, ‘Save me!’ Christ opens wide His own arms to lift Peter to the safety of His embrace.

It is a marvellous image of the Church represented by its first Papa or Pope: apparently sinking at times, yet turning to face Jesus and so being steadied; anxious yet secure in Christ’s embrace. It is an image also of each one of us on life’s pilgrimage: sometimes we feel we are sinking, but rather than giving into despair we reach out to Christ who saves us. Today’s Gospel story is ours: we are Peter, with our feet still in the water, with present difficulties and future trials, anxious at times, but safe now and forever.

It is easy for us to be down on Peter in this story: after years of walking with the Lord, seeing and hearing Him, how can he lose faith just because of a little wind on the water? No doubt Peter and the lads were all too wary of Lake Galilee’s sudden mood swings, her sudden squalls and even fierce storms. More importantly, they were spooked – literally – so that they thought they’d seen a ghost and so cried out with fear. Jesus calms them, as He has calmed storms on their lake and in their hearts before. Peter then declares with his typical impetuosity: ‘Lord, if it’s you, bid me to come to you across the water and I will.’ Before we judge Peter for his lack of faith we might ask what gives Peter the courage to jump in after the ghostly figure says, ‘Come’? Would you try walking on water in response to a call from what you thought might be a ghost? Of course not. But then Peter knows this is no ghost; he knows this is the Risen Christ. Peter has the faith to walk on water and he does it, at least for a while; so we should not hold his wavering too much against Him.

Yet waver he does. Instead of remaining focused on Christ he looks down and takes fright. He doubts and starts to sink. Peter’s faith is ours: faith strong enough to move mountains or walk on seas, all the way to Christ and with Christ; yet faith subject to the winds of fortune, to the waves that rock us from time to time. Life may already have been and likely will at some stage in the future be like that for you. Even World Youth Day pilgrims, now planted and built up in Christ, firm in the faith, return home with their particular foibles and weaknesses and to the challenges of their particular life, whether at home or school or college or work or friendships or country. These can shake us like the wind and waves frightened Peter. When the waters rise up to drown us, what can we do?

The popes – from Papa Peter to Papa Benedetto – give us the answers our little faith requires. Peter cries ‘Lord, save me’: that most primitive of cries, that most honest of prayers. For salvation comes from Christ alone: Peter knows that. His faith may be weak at times, exasperatingly so; but he knows where to go when his confidence is low. ‘Lord, to whom else should we go? Only you have the words of eternal life.’ (Jn 6:68) Not me, Lord: I can’t save anyone, not even myself. After his epic walk on the water Peter knows only God can save: without the Father we are orphans, without the Son we sink, without the Spirit our spirits are powerless.

Our faith, your faith, is real, like Peter’s; strong even enthusiastic like Peter’s; but weak like Peter’s sometimes also. Belief means sometimes being desperate and humble enough to throw open our arms and cry out, ‘Lord, save me!’ In response to such a cry, our loving Saviour will always put out His steadying hand.

So this strange Gospel scene is about more than ghosts and water-ballet. There is all the drama of real life here: trouble and hope, faith and faithlessness, fear and favour. Finally, there is adoration. All in the barque of Peter, that is the Church, kneel and confess: ‘Truly, you are the Son of God’. Some Eastern Catholics have the practice of praying, again and again, almost hypnotically: Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner. It is a profession of faith and also need. It is both creed and prayer. Say it enough and it gets into your arteries and confirms your faith. Jesus prays for and strengthens Simon Peter, ‘Rocky’, our Papa (Lk 22:32; cf. Mt 16:15-19); Peter, in turn, confirms his brethren; the Church is steadied and has something to offer. Our mission, all Jesus ever asked of us, is this: to go tell everyone in need about My power to save.

Thus with Christ you will not drown – but you might get wet feet! Though saved we are still mortal, bodily, relational beings, with all the complexities that implies. Jesus does not save us by quarantining us from ordinary life; quite the reverse: He joins us there, sharpens our appreciation of the realities, gives us the means to respond. That communion with Him, that appreciation of reality, that power to respond is called ... the Holy Spirit.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for Solemnity of Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop Sea of Galilee, 8 August 2011

Here we are on the Sea of Galilee. It is the site of so much of Jesus’ life.

For one thing, this is really the place where He established the Church as His legacy. Here it was that He met the fishermen Peter and Andrew, James and John, and called them away from their fishing to become His disciples, His apostles, His fishers of men (Mt 4:18-20). Peter’s fishing boat became the symbol of the Church. Those first disciples in the boat followed Jesus’ directions and caught a miraculous haul of fish, new Christians of every nation, and dragged them in to become in turn fishers themselves (Lk 5:1-11; cf. Jn 21:6). We are all called by Christ into that same barque of Peter, the Church, into His fishing business.

Imagine yourself here in those days. He calls you to Himself. His words are electrifying, His presence is magnetic, His invitation is irresistible. Tell him, yes, that you will throw your lot in with Him and His apostles, that you will be a man or woman of the Church. Bow down before the Lord as did the first Christians in Peter’s boat in our Gospel passage and join them in proclaiming “Truly, you are the Son of God” (Mt 14:33).

The Sea of Galilee is the birthplace of the Church. Secondly, this was a place where Jesus healed and worked wonders. Near this lake He fed a multitude, multiplying loaves and fishes (Mt 14:13-21). The lake itself could be mysterious, misty, stormy at times. Yet when His disciples were terrified Jesus demonstrated His divinity by commanding the storm to be still (Mt 8:23-27). As we heard in our Gospel passage (Mt 14:22-33) He even walked upon the surface of the water of this lake and for a time Peter followed. At Capernaum He healed Peter’s mother-in-law (Mt 9:1; Jn 6:59). Here at the lake He healed a leper (Mt 8:1-4) and many others (Mt 14:34-36; 15:19-31). So many miracles were worked here. And Jesus is ready to do this again, in you. Imagine yourself here in those days. Bring Him your anxieties to calm, your hurts to heal, your hopes to multiply, your ideals with which to work wonders.

The Church was born here. Many people were reborn by Christ’s healing power here. Thirdly, this lake was the centre of His preaching ministry. It was here that He boarded Peter’s boat so He could speak to the multitudes, as if from a stage, without being crushed (Mt ch 13). From within the Church He spoke to those outside it. He wanted to reach out to outsiders, not just to keep company with the insiders. He wanted us to have a similar heart for evangelisation, for sharing the Gospel with people yet to receive it. Here He gives us the Sermon on the Mount. The beatitudes. The parables. So many teachings, so much wisdom, so much to think about, so much to share with others.

If Jesus preached from Peter’s boat in Galilee, preached the Good News to those yet to recognise Him as Lord, He also taught those who had already begun to attach themselves to Him. We recall that after the Resurrection He hosted a barbie at the lakeside for His apostles. ‘Peter do you love me?’ He asked. ‘Do you love me more than the run-of-the-mill people who love me?’ ‘You know I love you Lord.’ I love you to bits. I know I’m a sinful man. I’ve betrayed you. But I am heartily sorry, because you are so good, and with your help I will sin no more. With your help I will live and die for you.

‘Yes, you will, my friend,’ Jesus replies. ‘But first you must shepherd my people, including my young people, my lambs.’ Being shepherd of the lambs was a task for popes, the chief shepherds, along with all bishops, priests and religious. Eventually Peter’s successor would answer Jesus’ charge by summoning the young people of the world to World Youth Days – feeding hundreds of thousands, even millions of young sheep.

‘So, Peter, be my bedrock for the Church,’ Jesus said. Be solid, reliable, in times of confusion and change. Imagine yourself here, hearing Jesus’ words for the first time, being persuaded by those words. Now He tells you to join in the preaching yourself. Be fishers of men. Christians ‘teach and advise each other in all wisdom,’ Paul reminds us. ‘Let the message of Christ, in all its richness, find a home in you.’ (Col 3:16) Then proclaim it out loud, sing it with all your voice.

A Church Jesus founded here, to preach and to heal. Disciples He formed and fed here, so the Church might know its sacramental and charitable tasks also. Christ speaks to each one here. Calls us into the boat again. Forms us to preach and teach, to minister to the physically and the spiritually hungry, to give Him praise in our sacred meal, the sacrifice of the Mass. Ordinary Aussies can be saints.

After all, at least one has been! Today is the first time Mary MacKillop has been celebrated as a saint on her feast day. We’re a long way from home but we want to recall her here. She may not have been the first Australian saint; nor, dare I hope, will she be the last. In fact I hope and believe there are some right here. God makes saints, many of them, in every generation. The Church identifies a few for our imitation and intercession. It is our job to be them. So Paul in our second reading (Col 3:12-17) called you God’s chosen people, His saints, His loved ones.

Mary MacKillop was a woman of deep faith. Her faith in God and man was tested again and again but did not waver. Her response was always to persevere and to forgive. She loved the Church. She loved it because she loved our Lord and loved His little ones and the Church is their meeting place. For Christ and His little ones she established her Josephite order, her schools, orphanages and refuges.

Many were impressed by her extraordinary trust in God, in His loving providence, even and perhaps especially in the face of adversity. Jesus said to the apostles in our Gospel today, spooked because they thought they’d seen a ghost, ‘Courage! It is I! Be not afraid!’ We can imagine Mary MacKillop saying, ‘I’m not afraid Lord, not when I’m with you.’ She kept her eyes fixed on Him and on the horizon. ‘We are but travellers here,’ she said, words carved on her tomb in North Sydney. MacKillop devoted herself to people’s needs in the here and now – but it was with a view to the future. She knew we are all pilgrims. She trusted that that pilgrimage was to a better world.

Religious life is supposed to be a sign of that. That’s why religious wear distinctive clothes, and take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. That’s why they never marry or have children. Not because fashionable clothes are bad, or children are bad, or marriage and sex are bad, or having money is bad. Not at all. The Church insists that all these things are good. But some things are even more important, such as God and the things of God, such as getting ready for the really real life, eternal life.

Through all her trials Mary MacKillop remained a faithful religious and daughter of Mother Church. She never jumped out of the barque of Peter, even when some tried to push her out. And when she was canonised last year, it was with several other religious. I think that says something important for contemporary Australians: that if we want saints, we have to encourage some people to give their all to God by religious consecration. To literally leave their boats and families behind. Of course you don’t have to be a nun or a brother to be a saint. But holy nuns and brothers are a huge encouragement to the rest of us. They build up the prayerfulness and missionary zeal of the Church, our contemplative and active sides, and inspire us all to a bigger love. Have you thought deeply about your own vocation? Might you be suited to being a full-time fisher of men – and women, youth, children?

Maybe someone here is being called, right now, by God to the priesthood or religious life. Listen carefully. Have courage! It is Christ. Be not afraid.

Homily for Mass to Celebrate Jubilarians of the Catholic Diocese of Parramatta, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 2 August 2011

Today we celebrate 60 years of priesthood for Bishop Bede Heather, 50 years for Bishop Kevin Manning and Fr Rod Bray, 40 for Fr John Boyle, Fr Ted Tyler and Fr Joe Sobb sj, and 25 years for Peter Lamont and Remegio Jamorabon mi.

It is the first such occasion on which we will use the new translation of the Preface for Priests – the longest of the Prefaces of the Roman Rite. (Who knows where I will wander as I try to sing it …) I thought it might be interesting to reflect together upon that new text, or should I say that new translation of an old text.

We begin the new preface with recalling that it is not only “doing well” as we used to say, but now that “it is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation” to thank God, that is to celebrate the Eucharist.

You might say that is just more flowery language. But it does point to something important: that the offering of the Eucharist, which some of you have now done daily for 50 or 60 years, is not just a matter of us ‘being good’ or ‘doing well’ but something much more wonderful and much more mysterious.

In the Mass the work of our salvation is being accomplished in each of us. As we give thanks we are being drawn into God’s saving work. It is us giving back to God, but it is first and foremost God coming to our rescue. That we receive salvation and return thanks goes to the heart of what we are as Christians, what we are made for, our salvation as sinners made to be saints.

We next recall in the Preface that “by the anointing of the Holy Spirit” the Father made His only Son “High Priest of the new and eternal covenant” and that by His “wondrous design” He was “pleased to decree that His one Priesthood should continue in the Church”.

We are all of us very conscious, when at the altar for the Eucharist or to join lives in matrimony, or at the font or the lectern, or in the pulpit or the confessional, or at the bedside of the dying or the graveside of the dead, wherever it is, whatever it is that we are doing, it is Jesus Christ, the High Priest, whose priesthood we are exercising, a priesthood He designed to continue in the Church through us.

That is an awesome thing – awesome in both senses of causing us to tremble and causing us to delight. To be Christ to others, for decades, is an awesome privilege and responsibility, and the People of God in the Diocese of Parramatta give thanks today that these men were willing to assume that office.

We need more, of course. Not that any bishop ever thinks he has enough. But after our recent meeting about pastoral planning for the future of our Diocese, we are more aware than ever of our need for new priests if we are to continue Christ’s priestly work amongst us and build more and better ministries.

Christ’s will is clear, “that His one Priesthood should continue in the Church”. If that is His will, then young men are indeed being called. They may or may not be listening; they may be experiencing a great deal of interferences from the culture around them and even from their loved ones, which makes it hard to hear God’s call; they may not recognise it since, as we all know, God talks to us in many ways. So we need faithful and happy priests like yourselves to keep inviting and inspiring newcomers to our presbyterate.

The Preface next recalls that God’s people are a priestly people: “For Christ … adorns with a royal priesthood the people He has made His own”. We are mere men. We are called out from among mere mortals. Of course all mere mortals are images of God, however clear and glorious or indistinct or tarnished at times.

And like all Christian men and women we are blessed to have received in Baptism and Confirmation the royal priesthood of all God’s people, which conforms us more closely to that divine image. It is on our nature as human beings, on our supernature as Christians, that grace builds on nature, and grace upon grace, as we are raised to being deacons, priests and bishops in Christ’s service.

But being part of the royal and priestly people is not all. No, the Preface reminds us, “with a brother’s kindness [Christ] also chooses men to become sharers in His sacred ministry through the laying on of hands”.

What does this manhandling add? The first task the Preface recalls is that we are “to renew in His name the sacrifice of human redemption, to set before [God’s] children the paschal banquet”.

It is interesting that the text puts this first, before describing the triple munus of Christ, His Church, His baptised and His priests. Before we recall that we are called to lead, to preach and to sanctify, we are pointed towards the Eucharist, ‘the source and summit of the whole Christian life’ as the Second Vatican Council so memorably described it.

It is from the paschal banquet that we draw our inspiration to lead and teach and sanctify; it is for the sacrifice of human redemption that we draw people to the Church in all these ways.

And many ways there are. The prayer goes on to describe these men we celebrate today as leaders – men who “lead [God’s] holy people in charity” – as feeders – men who “nourish them with the Word” – and as buttresses – men who “strengthen [God’s holy ones] with the Sacraments”.

It is, of course, the Eucharist that makes sense of that long sentence – long sentences are the stuff of the new translations because they are the stuff of the ancient prayers of the Church!

It is the Eucharist that makes sense of all those other things we do including our long-winded utterances. Priests are first and foremost the Breakers of the Bread. They bring the God-made-man whose Body was broken on the Cross and whose Blood was spilt for the salvation of the many, the multitude, the polloi. They bring that Body and Blood to the many, that they might be healed and inspired and raised up in this life and to the next. They thereby make those disparate individuals, with their many and varied needs, into the Body of Christ that is the Church.

A last thought in that theologically very rich Preface for Priests. “As they give up their lives for you and for the salvation of their brothers and sisters, they strive to be conformed to the image of Christ Himself and offer you a constant witness of faith and love.”

The liturgy describes your lives as a giving up for or over to Christ. It is a testimony to generosity, to self-sacrifice, to self-donation. All true love is this. It is a giving of self to another, for another. In the process we are changed. In giving our lives to Christ and for Christ, we are giving ourselves over to be made alteri Christi, other Christs, conformed to His image.

Church of Our Lady of the Angels of the Portiuncula.

It’s the feast of Our Lady of the Angels of the Portiuncula.

A 4th Century church near Assisi, it was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, long abandoned and lay ruined. Then a young man named Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone, who was into conservation of nature and of church buildings, saw it.

He moved in so that he could do one of those household renovations such as we see on reality TV programs these days, only he had angels as his co-workers.

Since 1216 a plenary indulgence has been granted visitors to that place on 2 August and this has been extended, under the usual conditions, to anyone who visits any Franciscan church on this day, including this one in Dundas Valley.

In the centuries which followed St Francis’ labours the tiny chapel was surrounded by clutter. It was a Dominican pope, St Pius V, who in 1566 ordered that the shanties be removed, and a grand basilica with three naves and a circle of chapels built over the cell of St Francis. So the Dominicans have been helping the Franciscans for centuries now and in various ways ...

Tonight is the feast of a church but also of angels and saints. First, of Our Lady under her title ‘Queen of angels’. Only because of her protection and that of the angels did Francis credit his intense experience of our Lord and have confidence that his friars could rebuild the Church, not just some old Umbrian chapels.

Francis and Clare are especially associated with that chapel and so this feast. There it was that St Clare took her vows. There it was that Francis heard the Gospel story of the disciples being sent out two by two, without money, spare clothes or other security, preaching repentance and God’s kingdom. “That’s what I want,” he told the priest, “that’s my heart’s desire.”

There it was, therefore, that Francis discovered the ‘Franciscan’ charism. There, too, is the spot where the saint, during a temptation, is said to have rolled in a briar-bush, which was then changed into thornless roses. And there it was, in that same blessed chapel, that the Holy Deacon Francis died in 1226.

The Holy Deacon Francis. From Apostolic times the Church has held in great veneration the order of deacons. In our Old Testament reading (Numb 3:5-9) we saw a premonition of them in the Levites who were put at the service of Aaron and the priests.

In our Gospel (Lk 10:1-9) we glimpsed them in the 72 sent out ahead of Christ and the Twelve. But it is especially in our second reading (Acts 6:1-7) that we witness the origins of that clerical state to which St Francis himself belonged.

The history of these ‘ecclesiastical table-waiters’, as they have been described, is fascinating and convoluted, but it begins with that story of the apostles, so caught up with admin and the VdP work that they were neglecting the Sacred Liturgy and the Preaching of the Word. So they decided to ordain men of good repute, wisdom and Spirit for the practical tasks, so the apostles and bishops might focus on Word and Sacrament.

The Acts of the Apostles devotes three chapters to the stories of the first deacons (Acts chs 6 to 8). St Paul sent greetings to them and gave instructions on the virtues to be cultivated in them (Phil 1:1; 1 Tim 3:8-13).

For several centuries deacons ministered in close cooperation with the bishops, assisting at the Eucharist, in preaching and in charitable works. Amongst their members were saints such as Stephen and Lawrence, Philip the Deacon, Prochorus, Vincent of Zaragossa, Romanus the Melodist and Ephrem of Syria, all in the first millennium. But the most famous deacon of the second millennium was, of course, St Francis of Assisi.

So the Church invites us to consider tonight what it means for this man, our brother, already conformed to the image of St Francis by his humble and guileless temper, his Franciscan formation and vows, now to join Francis in the Order of Deacons.

From an early age young Ruben would celebrate ‘Mass’ at home, donning a colourful piece of material and using cut-up paper hosts. His family was his congregation and I understand he would preach to them long and learned homilies. Now he will draw on more adult learning but also upon the strength of the Holy Spirit. He will help bishops and priests as a minister of word, altar and service.

As a servant of the Word he will proclaim the Gospel to believers and non-believers alike. As a servant of the Altar he will prepare the sacrifice and give the Lord’s Body and Blood to the community of believers. He may also give benediction of that most precious Sacrament, preside over public prayer, baptise, assist at marriages, take viaticum to the dying and lead the rites of burial. He will perform works of charity in the name of Church and in such a way that people recognise him as a disciple of the One who said He “came to serve, not to be served” (Mt 20:28).

Bishops, you might have noticed, wear some pretty strange clothes. There are millennia of accumulated aesthetics and symbolisms behind that. They don the alb of all the baptised to recall that they are Christians. They wear a stole over both shoulders and a chasuble for they are priests. But they also wear a dalmatic, the vestment of the deacon, to remind them and us that they are still deacons, called to service of the word, the altar and the poor.

In due course it is our hope that Ruben will be ordained a priest and so further deepen his vocation: but as the bishop’s vestments remind us, Ruben will always remain a Christian and a deacon like his Holy Father Francis.

So, my dear brother, embrace this new office wholeheartedly. From an early age it was your wish to ‘save souls’: now preach and teach the Catholic faith, not some fancy of your own or something to tickle the ears of your hearers.

World Youth Day 2011 Commissioning Mass. Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for the World Youth Day 2011 Commissioning Mass, 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A), St Patrick’s Cathedral, 31 July 2011

“Planted and Built Up in Jesus Christ, Firm in the Faith” (St Paul)

Just over a week from today, on St Mary MacKillop’s Feast Day, 8 August, some of us will be at Tabgha, the very place where Christ multiplied the loaves and the fishes in the story we have just heard (Mt 14:13-21).

Little has changed there to this day and the rock on which He blessed the bread is still there. It’s now an altar. Many churches have been built over that rock over the centuries.

We’ll see an ancient mosaic pavement of the flowers that surrounded the people who sat down for the picnic with Jesus and of the birds that were ready to take the scraps had they not been collected afterwards.

Near the altar there is another mosaic of four loaves in a basket and two fishes. Why only four loaves rather than the five today’s Gospel tells us there were? Because the fifth is the loaf you bring, you bring to the altar for Mass!

Feeding 5,000 men – to say nothing of women and children or those hungriest of creatures, young adults – has never been easy. For the last World Youth Day in Sydney in 2008 I had to arrange 3.6 million meals, including 215,000 meat pies, 360,000 lamingtons, 100,000 litres of milk and endless Tim Tams and Vegemite – and I had no miraculous powers. Fortunately, I had thousands of helpers and God was there amongst them doing His thing, multiplying their efforts.

I also had the challenge of pilgrims who came hungry for answers to their questions, for nourishment for the void within. They were curious about the mysteries of God, the universe and themselves, and how these would relate in their identity and destiny in the future. They wanted more than sausage rolls.

The next WYD is only days away and the prophet Isaiah (Isa 55:1-3) reminds us that our God is One who wants to give us food and drink, even if it will be paella rather than vegemite.

The food queues won’t always be easy – there are hardships on any pilgrimage – yet as Paul assures us, no hardship is so big that it can come between us and the love of God (Rom 8:35-39).

As we set out on that adventure we go to be sated by more than rich food or sights and sounds. We go to rediscover the God who feeds us through word and worship, through song and stillness, by fellowship and fraternity, by moving and staying put.

For some the greatest moments will be in the big events such as the Papal Arrival and the Papal Mass, for others in the more private experience of Reconciliation or Adoration. However, wherever, it is, God will work miracles in some of you.

The only miracle of Jesus that is reported in all four Gospels and in two of the Gospels twice is the first World Youth Day held in Tabgha for 5,000 or so people. Obviously the early Church attached great significance to this event. Why? Perhaps because it is the only of Jesus’ signs in which He directly associated His disciples. He worked it through them.

Jesus gives His disciples three simple commands today. First, He says, “Give them something to eat yourselves”. These words are, of course, for us. We are soon to meet people from every nation on earth. Many come from countries far less affluent than our own. Millions more would wish to be with us but can only dream of ever raising the funds to do such a thing.

We are very privileged. We are grateful. But we know that with that comes the responsibility to share. Right now Caritas is running an appeal for the victims of the droughts in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania and Sudan – the worst droughts in 60 years. Ten million people are in need of food, water and basic facilities. Half are children.

Australians can be generous in times of crisis, such as after floods or tsunamis. Yet our foreign aid is pathetically small, something like half of 1% of our annual income. We are also doing all we can to push asylum seekers away, as if there were no more room to share in this most empty of continents.

Yet our honest response to such challenges can be like that of the first disciples: “What can we do about it? The need is so great.” We are so puny besides numbers like 10 million starving people.

Jesus’ answer is very simple: start where you are, with what you’ve got, even if it’s only some bread and fish. Don’t say the problem’s too big or I’m too small, I don’t have a social work degree, or billions of dollars, or political clout.

You’ve got what it takes to help: you have a heart and hands and a God by your side whose love triumphs over any trial. During our pilgrimage I bet you’ll have a chance to help someone. Someone who’s lonely or searching or sick. Someone whose faith is shaky, or their self-confidence or hope. Give from the little you’ve got, says Jesus.

Now Jesus gives us a second direction: “Bring what you are ready to give to Me first to multiply.” Be generous, then, open your hearts and hands – and leave the rest to God. What makes our giving into works of divine charity is that God’s receives your bread and fish, your time and talents, given in service to others and makes them really fruitful.

World Youth Day is you doing your bit. You’ve saved and scraped to get there. You bring to God your faith and talents and dreams. Now ask Him to multiply them on this pilgrimage. As you get ready in the days ahead ask Him to do what He wants with you. Ask Him to make you be all that you can be in the years ahead. The Church needs that. Western Sydney needs that.

“Give of yourself,” Jesus asks, “and let God multiply your efforts.” Thirdly, He says, “Now distribute your offering and my blessing to the world.” In Western Sydney, thank God, we’re not subject to the deprivation of East Africa. But people can be poor in other ways.

A lot of young people are time poor, relationship poor, communication poor. For all the SMSes, they are lonely. For all the internet info, they are confused. For all the Facebooking, they feel faceless. Their hunger is emotional and spiritual more than nutritional.

You don’t have to go looking in ‘deepest, darkest Africa’ for a mission: right here, in the Diocese of Parramatta, there are many people who are spiritually homeless or who don’t yet know their home is right here with Christ. Jesus’ disciples must distribute His words, His food, His life to the crowds.

So three simple directions point us on our way to WYD in Madrid. Start where you are, with what you’ve got, even if it’s only five loaves and two fish worth of faith. Don’t say there are too many people to be evangelised, I haven’t got a theology degree or a clerical collar, I don’t know the Catechism by heart and I’m not yet sure what I think about some of these things.

You’ve got the only qualification you need: your Christian vocation. Now be generous, open your hearts and hands, bring what you are and what you have to God and let Him multiply your efforts. Then be ready to share what you are, what you have, with others in spiritual need.

As we celebrate the Eucharist together it is a premonition when all of us will be together again at the Cuatro Vientos Air Field for the Final Mass. It will be a bit bigger: they’re predicting up to two million young people, 24,000 volunteers, 14,000 priests, 744 bishops and one very happy Pope.

But it will be the same Jesus Christ who comes to feed you with the Bread He once broke and blessed and raised to heaven, the Bread that is His Body and Blood given for the life of the world, given out of love for you young people.

Final Mass to be at Cuatro Vientos Air Field.

They’re predicting up to two million young people, 24,000 volunteers, 14,000 priests, 744 bishops - and one very happy Pope.

Bishop Anthony Fisher's Homily for the 16^th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, and St Bernadette’s Parish, Castle Hill, 17 July 2011

In October 1571 the whole of Christendom was in terror. The Turks were at the gates of Europe and the West was about to fall to the Muslim empire.

St Pius V, the great Dominican bishop who continued to wear his white Dominican habit when pope and so introduced the custom of popes dressing like Dominicans, had taken on the reform of more than ecclesiastical haberdashery.

With gusto he had taken on the reform of the Church itself, the clergy and bureaucracy, the seminaries, the liturgy and catechetics. He was no wimp! But by October 1571 he had done all he could and disaster was imminent.

His counsellors were meeting to discuss the evacuation of the Vatican and, of course, the Vatican finances. It was high anxiety time. Yet the Pope was serene and seemed uninterested in the talk.

Just before 5pm he jumped up and stared out the window. A few moments later he relaxed and turned back with his eyes shining: “Leave us for now,” he said, waving toward the ledgers and plans strewn across the table. “All will be well; for now we must go to church to give thanks to God for He has given us a great victory.”

The officials took note of the strange incident and minuted the exact time. A fortnight later a messenger galloped into Rome from Venice with historic news: the Christian fleet, under the command of Don John of Austria, had defeated the Turks at Lepanto.

The tranquil patience of St Pius V was well-founded: for the battle had been won at very moment he declared we must give thanks to God.

“Do you want us to weed out the darnel?” the servants ask in today’s Gospel (Mt 13:24-43). Do you want us to fix things up, sort out the good guys from the bad, get rid of the trouble-makers, do this ‘kingdom of God’ thing more efficiently? Should we get rid of the thorns and just leave the wheat in the areole above the altar?

The Lord responds sagely: sometimes it’s better to wait, even until judgment day. Even if you could sort things out – and often you can’t – things don’t have to be perfect just yet. Be patient.

“The virtuous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father,” says Jesus this morning and patience, as Gregory the Great put it, is the root of all virtue.

What is this patience so beloved of our Christian tradition? As Christians we naturally look first to God: patiently enduring the confusion and infidelities of His people; calmly waiting for us to come back to our senses, come back to Him; giving us every chance, right up till ‘harvest time’, the last day.

Though patience is not a virtue we commonly associate with the young, we might reflect upon the patience of the young Jesus, waiting and preparing through a long childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, before assuming His public role at 30.

We recall Him enduring the uncomprehending crowds, their moodiness – for Him, then against, mostly just wanting the special effects, eventually baying for his blood.

We think of Him so patiently revealing Himself, step-by-step to those around Him, including His rather obtuse apostles, telling them stories like this one about wheat and weeds, and gradually unpacking things for them.

Yet when people hear the word ‘patience’ they may think of a tactic, like that of a black widow spider ready to pounce on her prey; or else of a kind of sleepiness or inaction, the loser who just lets people walk all over him; or, thirdly, the eternal romantic who doesn’t notice or respond even when the enemy is at the gate.

None of these is Christian patience. Were patience a strategy of deception it would be no virtue. Self-serving trickery does not build up human character or human community. Untruth never does.

Nor is inattention to evil or acquiescing in its reign Christian patience. For one thing, Christian virtue always looks reality fair and square in the eye.

If Jesus was a very patient man it was not because He engaged in any make-believe that everything was honky-dory. He knew hardship and sorrow first hand. He called sickness and death, hypocrisy and sin by their proper names. And He went into battle against them.

He turned over money-changers’ tables. He ordered storms to desist and devils to depart. He healed and preached and made lives better. There was nothing lazy and sleepy, nothing rosy-eyed and self-deluding, nothing strategic and self-serving about His patience.

The master’s response in our parable to the questions about whether we should weed out all the darnel does not deny for a moment that there is darnel, that there are real problems, that there is wickedness in human communities, human projects, human hearts.

He does not deny that there is a real difference between good and evil, between those who choose the way of salvation and those who reject it, between wheat and weeds.

Likewise, when God entered into the human predicament as man He took no short-cuts. There was no skipping tracks on the DVD to the glorious ending. God entered into our fun times but also our mess so that He might transform the real thing, from the inside.

That meant recognising that for us, at least, there are many situations where patiently enduring is the only physically or morally available option. Some things have no quick fix or take a long time to be sorted. But in the meantime real growth can happen within.

So Pius V waited. He awaited news of the great battle and so of the future of Christianity. He called Christians to join him in praying, night and day, that patience prayer the Rosary, imploring God’s help through His Blessed Mother, to keep them safe. After all the diplomacy and preaching, even the Pope could only watch and wait.

Such counsel can be unwelcome in a modern culture that expects immediate solutions for every discomfort and rails like a petulant child when that doesn’t happen. It might also be unwelcome to young people who are impatient to grow up, to take their place in the world and in history, to make things better.

Consumers expect a comfy ride through life; hairy-chested go-getters wait for no one. Yet Christian patience is real comfort and real strength. St Thomas Aquinas grouped it with courage: the ability to endure despite hardship and sorrow. It’s the stuff of heroes, of martyrs, those who see what’s true and good and beautiful and hold on to it despite the waiting.

Bishop Anthony with newly instituted lector seminarian Thomas Bui. Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

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Homily for 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A) and Institution of Thomas Bui as Lector, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 8 July 2011

Introduction

“Thomas grew up in Vietnam and is lucky enough to have an older brother who is a Dominican priest. Fr Thao (Jerome) lives in France for, as Thomas was to find, the Communist government in Vietnam can still be hostile to the Catholic priesthood.

“After studying English at university and philosophy in the seminary and working for World Vision amongst the poor, Thomas came last year to our seminary. Today we join him in prayerful support as he undertakes this step in his vocation.”

Bishop Anthony's Homily

In HMAS Watson, the naval base on the South Head of Sydney Harbour, there is a small war memorial chapel to St George the Martyr. Sometimes Catholic Masses are celebrated there and often weddings.

The wall behind the altar looks out to the Pacific ocean as it enters the harbour. It is a breathtaking view, no doubt a welcome distraction during long sermons! In brick and glass it says that “The heavens proclaim the glory of God and the earth shows forth his handiwork” (Ps 19:1). The Creator is seen in His creation, as our readings recall this morning (Isa 55:10-11; Ps 64).

Part of the Catholic genius over the centuries has been the ability, rather like a boa constrictor, to swallow, digest, incorporate into itself and expel the unnourishing remains of a whole menagerie of other animals: ideas, cultures, methods, customs, languages.

In modern times, for instance, Marxism, psychology, feminism and evolution have been prominent amongst secular movements opposed to Christianity but also to some extent ‘baptised’ by and even built into it - with various degrees of success...

In recent years the passion for the natural environment has spawned a whole industry, not just of secular apocalyptic and moralising, or of political policy and counter-policy, but also of ‘Green’ spiritualities.

Some of this talk is either overly-romantic or overly-alarmist; some of it eclectic or nonsensical; some of it better or worse science, politics or religion; some flirting with a pantheism that makes nature into god.

But serious-minded Christians are also now reflecting rather more than in the past upon the implications of the natural sciences and human technologies, the philosophy and politics of the environmental movement, the morality of the endless exploitation of the earth, and so on.

Pope Benedict, for one, regularly speaks about the importance of careful stewardship of creation. I remember a few years ago concelebrating a Mass with him in Loreto in Italy when one of the journalists breathlessly reported that this pope is so green he even wears green vestments! Perhaps that journalist had only ever been to Mass at Christmas and Easter ...

Our epistle this morning (Rom 8:18-23) is a favourite of creation-centred spiritual writers. In an often anthropocentric religion, this text celebrates the cosmos; in Scriptures full of male imagery, these verses compare creation to a woman in travail; in a Church often focused on sin and redemption, we hear about beauty and blessing.

Such contrasts can be overdrawn. But there is something in this cosmic imagery, as in the pastoral imagery of today's other readings, to suggest that celebrating the beauty of creation and taking responsibility for it is right for believers.

We didn’t need the Prime Minister or the Greens to tell us this: deep down Christians have always known it. The skies, earth and seas and all within them proclaim the wonders of God to us, so that as St Thomas Aquinas put it: “to slight the creation is to blaspheme the Creator”.

Whether it was monks with their herb gardens or friars with their Br Sun and Sr Moon, there’s always been a green side to us. Today’s anxiety about environmental degradation, deforestation, resource depletion, carbon pollution and challenging climates speak to something deep in the Christian soul and find voice in our Scriptures and tradition.

Of course, human beings can swing from one extreme to another. Nowadays rather than neglecting environmental matters we may exaggerate them, so they become the be-all-and-end-all of our ideals and worries, they make and break governments and the careers of scientists and journalists.

We can sentimentalise the natural world so that we care more about baby seals than baby humans, born or unborn. We can angst about the level of the sea while shutting our hearts to the boat-people upon it. We can talk as if human beings, for whom this beautiful world was made, are intruders, even pollution. We can obsess about the natural world while paying little attention to our social ecology.

Which brings me back to our epistle, which offers a corrective to both extremes of undervaluing and overvaluing the material world. The whole of creation, not just human beings, is valued as God’s handiwork in our Scriptures. They even talk as if the crickets and the wind join us in our hymns (Dan ch 3; Ps 148).

But for all its poetry Christianity does not romanticise nature. Paul today talks of creation’s captivity, its brokenness, suffering and moaning, its own need for renewal. The natural realm is no paradise: there only the fittest survive and there is no compassion for the weak and desperate.

Nature is no model of virtue. Just look at the cockatoos stripping the palm trees in Prince Alfred Park some days ‘just for fun’. The redemption of the universe will never be achieved by the universe itself: it comes from outside, as it were, from divine grace, in collaboration with human action.

So the secret to a right relationship between humanity and the environment is for humanity to be like Christ, at home and responsible in God’s world, a world of great wonders and immense beauty but a world in need of human creativity and management, divine creation and ordering.

So many of Jesus’ parables, such as the one we heard today (Mt 13:1-23), reflect His at-homeness with nature and mankind's role in it. So do the stories of Him up the mountains, on the lake, in the bush.

Once known and loved in God we can neither exploit creation with callous disregard nor overvalue it and turn it into another idol alongside materialism and consumerism. Attitudes of domination of creation and by creation both distort relationship. For as Paul reminds us so well today, we are one with all of nature but above all with grace: if creation is groaning for renewal so we too groan inwardly as we await our bodily glorification – the restoration of the cosmos which is our Christian hope.

ooo

My dear son Thomas (Bui), In Jesus Christ the Word of God, spoken by the Father from all eternity, was spoken in time to us. In Christ the divine Word took human flesh. Through Him all things necessary to us were made known and then entrusted to the Church to be proclaimed to all the world, from Jerusalem to Quang Tri in Central Vietnam, from Rome to Parramatta.

As a reader and in due course a preacher of God’s word, you will assist in this mission, and so today you assume a special office as lector within the Christian community. You will be given a responsibility in the service of the Faith, which is always rooted in the word of God. From today you may proclaim that word in the liturgical assembly, catechise children and adults, and prepare people to receive the sacraments worthily. You will also bring the message of salvation to those who have not yet received it. Thus with your help men and women will come to know God our Father and Christ whose Word He spoke to us so that we might have eternal life.

Homily for Memoria of St Maria Goretti, Virgin and Martyr, Catholic Moral Theologians of Australia and New Zealand Annual Conference, St John of God Retreat House, Perth, 6 July 2011

You may have missed yesterday’s celebrity gossip: that Paris Hilton’s stalker, James Rainford, was arrested again. Paris is, of course, the celebrity heiress to the Hilton hotels fortune, a model and media personality, who keeps 17 dogs, has designed an apparel line for them and is rumoured to have paid to have herself cryo-preserved with them when her time to die comes. She is famed for her 2003 sex tape, her regular arrests and prison terms, her multiple fiancés and of course, her beauty ...

Young Paris once attended New York’s Convent School of the Sacred Heart with Lady Gaga. They were not, perhaps, the school’s most spiritually outstanding students – and in any case Paris rarely stayed in any particular school for long. Perhaps her most lasting contribution to Western civilisation will be the quote that made its way into the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations: “Dress cute, wherever you go: life is too short to blend in.” (This is advice Fr Norm Ford has always followed meticulously.)

Today the Church celebrates another Catholic girl who was stalked by a man, but it was in the days before AVOs and authorities were around to assist. Maria Goretti’s story is one many Catholics, priests and theologians included, seem more embarrassed to tell than that of Paris Hilton. Why, I wonder?

Is it that people think her cult macabre or saccharine, like that of most child-virgin-martyrs? Do they think her cause wrong-headed, given that it was so quick and was favoured by Mussolini?

Some feminists have even claimed that Goretti’s cult reinforces misogyny and violence against women. Sara Adland, for instance, says Goretti’s is an example of how rape is both “eroticised and normalised in patriarchy”. If it is bizarre of the Catholic Church to ask women to prefer virginity to sex, it is plain outrageous to praise them for choosing death rather than sex!

Of course, to outsiders – and many insiders – preferring death to recanting your faith, or to eating idol meat, or to publicly recognising a bigamous marriage, or to proclaiming a king supreme over the Church, or to revealing a confessional secret – may all seem weird.

But Maria’s story seems especially hard for many moderns to swallow and the cultural phenomena that make her choice incomprehensible may well be precisely why she was given to the 20^th Century as its first saint – and a counter-hero to those offered in contemporary pop culture.

Unlike Paris, Maria did not come from money. Born of impoverished northern Italian peasants in 1890, her father died of malaria when she was nine, leaving her mother to support the six children. Though yet only 11 years old, she was subject to the attentions of her stalker, a 19-year-old neighbour, lust-crazed by pornographic books. After her many refusals he fashioned a stiletto and required her to choose between becoming his ‘lover’ or dying.

Though the story, so far, is a perennial one, there is also something very contemporary about it: if we think of the child abuse and sexual violence the world over of which we are now so much more conscious, even in our Church; if we think of the ongoing challenge to provide children and young people with safe environments; if we consider the struggles of poor single mothers in our own community; if we reflect upon the informative but also corrupting power of the media; and if we think of girls around the world trafficked and exploited in sexual slavery; or of other women, in Africa and elsewhere, left to fend for themselves and to feed and defend their children as best they can, after the loss of their men to war, infidelity, AIDS or – as much today as in Goretti’s day – to malaria.

So at knife-point Maria had a decision to make. It’s precisely at this point that her story is least well understood. Maria did not choose between life and virginity; it was not that she thought herself better dead than soiled. Some might take such a prophetic stance. But it would also be reasonable for a woman or child in such a situation to acquiesce, after putting up what defence they reasonably could.

Though a model of purity, Maria’s reason for refusing to submit to Alessandro’s desires was not primarily about maintaining her honour; even less was it about hatred of sex or the body, or being ‘spoiled’. No, it is absolutely clear that Maria’s concern was for the young man. As he assaulted her she cried out, not with pleas for herself but for him; “No, Alessandro,” the girl pleaded, “no, you must not! You will go to hell.”

Less than 24 hours later she was dead from her wounds. As she lay dying in hospital her thoughts were, once more, not for herself but for her sorrowing mother and siblings and her not-yet-sorry assailant. As she received the Last Rites she told the priest, “Yes, for the love of Jesus, I forgive him ... and I want him to be in paradise with me.”

After years in prison the murderer repented, sought and received forgiveness from Maria’s mother, entered the Capuchins and was present with her mother at the girl’s canonisation.

It was, you might say, the first World Youth Day, as 500,000 mostly young adults gathered with Pope Pius XII for her 1950 canonisation, the first to be partly in the vernacular. Pius named her Patron Saint of Modern Youth.

It is a story to humble and awe our proud, sophisticated world. In a century in which more terrible things were done to more human bodies than in all previous centuries put together: in that same century, the best thinking was done by theologians about the body, marriage, sexuality and the rights to life and security. In a century of gas chambers and killing fields, of torture and mass abortion, of the globalised sex trade, porn and the rest: from that very century a small girl’s voice speaks for innocence and altruism.

Happily, most adolescents need not bear witness unto death to Catholic morality, as St Maria did. But many must resist pressures from adults or peers, from media or other agents of a morally corrupt culture, giving testimony to a cheerful chastity and to Paul’s thought (1 Cor 6:13-20) that we are not merely our own property but Christ’s and should dedicate our bodily life to God’s glory. For some young people – and older ones too – fidelity to this part of Catholic moral teaching does involve a kind of martyrdom, even if no stilettos are involved.

In Veritatis Splendor Blessed John Paul II offered the three styles of moral teaching: in chapter I, an imaginative Scriptural story-telling and exegesis; in chapter II, a more analytical, philosophical approach; but in chapter III he offers the saints and especially the martyrs as lived examples of morality. The alluring beauty of their life dramas complements the persuasive clarity of the moral theologian’s writing and teaching.

Those moralities that would deny any act is always wrong, the Pope suggested, have trouble making sense of characters such as John the Baptist, Thomas More, Maria Goretti and the Ugandan martyrs, whose lives and deaths give such eloquent testimony to moral absolutes; of the ancient wisdom that there are things we should rather suffer than do; of the possibility, under grace, of very ordinary people demonstrating extraordinary moral courage.

Such martyrdom, he suggested, “bears splendid witness to the holiness of God’s law” and to the dignity of the human person “on whose face is reflected the splendour of God”.

Martyrdom rejects the pragmatism of doing evil to achieve good or the revisionism that characterises evil acts as good because of consequences or other meanings.

Martyrdom is also “an outstanding sign of the holiness of the Church” and her most powerful evangelising act, speaking to the confusion of individuals and communities with the beauty and clarity of real human examples (VS 91-93).

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A), St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 3 July 2011

Just over 20 years ago when I was still a student for the priesthood, my Student Master was asked to say Mass at home for a dying man. His family gathered around his bed, having carefully prepared the room for Mass. It had been a long, wearying illness and death when it came would be a merciful release for him. So even as they joined in our greatest act of prayer they were uncertain what to pray for. People often are in such situations.

Fr Joe used the prayers and readings of the Mass for the Sick. The Gospel was the very one we have just heard. He read Jesus’ beautiful invitation: “Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Mt 11:25-30) At that point, with a deep sigh, the man died. They each embraced him a last time and Fr Joe continued with a Requiem Mass.

Don’t we all want to hear such consoling words as we die, hearing the One who is gentle and humble of heart calling us to Himself? Even in this life, don’t we crave such acceptance from those around us, from our families, friends, colleagues, Church and God? We all need spaces and people we can turn to, to have our burdens taken away. However weighed down we feel, however much we’ve let down the side or messed up, love promises we’ll still be appreciated, affirmed, even rewarded. It’s an emotional ‘Get out of jail free’ card. As the 1970s saying went: ‘Love is never having to say sorry.’ Right?

Wrong: Gospel love isn’t like that at all. People who don’t care how we behave are people who don’t care. People unconcerned about whether we hurt ourselves are people unconcerned about us. A ‘love’ that cannot be disappointed in us is a love that thinks we’re not up to much. As I once saw on a coffee mug: “The best way to avoid being disappointed with me is to lower your expectations!”

Jesus did NOT say: ‘Come to me and I’ll take all your burdens away. If you labour under many demands, I’ll make sure you have none. I’m an anæsthetic for your life, a coma for your soul.’ No: He says I will lighten your load, ease your yoke, but yoke and load still there are. He lightens our burdens by sharing in them, not by pretending them away. Love faces the facts about us and our responsibilities honestly, and assists.

Love also makes its own demands: anyone who has truly loved and been loved knows there are compromises of will required. You don’t always get your own way in a friendship or, perhaps more accurately, what ‘your own way’ is changes to being a joint way. To love someone is to want the best for them, wanting them not only to have the best, but be the best they can be, and being willing to play a part in making that happen. The more someone loves us, the greater will be their hopes for us, because they know better than anyone what potential we really have. That means we will probably disappoint them from time to time. Love does require saying ‘sorry’.

In today’s Gospel our divine lover, Jesus Christ, offers to transform our load, not only by lightening it, as any friend would, but also by en-lightening it. Christ teaches us, gives us wisdom to see which of our imagined burdens are real and which unrealistic, which appropriate or inappropriate, which necessary and which unnecessary, which soluble or to be endured. So before calling us to come to Him for consolation today, Jesus first reveals Himself and His Father and the relationship between Them and invites us to learn from Him, from Them: that we might have high hopes for ourselves and each other, even in the midst of challenges; not unrealistically high hopes which generate impossible expectations; but aspirations not too low either, for these do injustice to the children to whom God has revealed Himself. Jesus shows us the extent of human possibilities, our potential, under grace.

If they truly love us, our family, friends, Church and community, then like God they love us even when we are mediocre, even when we fail. But they don’t accept that as the last word about us. They don’t just say to us: I’m OK you’re OK, come as you are, stay as you are.

No: they love us, foibles and failures and all; but they never accept that the rot in the apple is the apple. They love us for who we are and for what we can become. They have high enough hopes for us, confidence enough in us, to hold us up when we’ve lost hope in ourselves, when we’re selling ourselves short.

And our real friends, including God and His Church, are willing to communicate that; willing to tell us, one way or another, not just what’s great about us, but also when we are letting ourselves down, becoming less than we could; and also when we are letting others down, being less than we should be for them and with them. That’s real love.

Sometimes we crave just to be patted and told all is honky-dory, but not to be challenged in anyway. Sometimes we want to be loved with no strings attached. In those cases we should get a cocker-spaniel. If we want the ‘I will give you rest’ bit without the ‘shoulder my yoke and learn from me’ bit it’s not God’s love, the realest love of all, that we are looking for. It’s not even true human love. Real love lightens our loads by facing up to their reality and helping us sort them out. Real love makes its demands, not to burden us further but to inspire, direct and so liberate us; not to put us down but to build us up.

Homily for the Feast of Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, St Nicholas of Myra Parish, Penrith, 28 June 2011

In his Easter Wednesday audience this year (20.04.11), speaking to thousands from Opus Dei study centres around the world, including a good many Aussies, the Holy Father said: “Dear friends, I hope that these days in Rome will be an opportunity for all of you to rediscover the person of Christ, as well as a strong ecclesial experience, so that you will go home motivated to witness to the heavenly Father’s mercy. Thus will all that St Josemaría Escrivá hoped for be brought about in your life.”

Tonight I’d like to reflect with you upon this triple charge to the children of Josemaría, which the Pope summed up by quoting the Way: “How I wish your bearing and conversation were such that, on seeing or hearing you, people will say: This man reads the life of Jesus Christ.” (The Way, 2)

Rediscover Christ in the Gospels

St Josemaría wanted all people – young and old, married and single – to seek and find Christ, to love and follow Him. But where are we to seek Him? In his letter, Verbum Domini, Pope Benedict joined the founder in identifying the Scriptures as a privileged place of encounter with God.

By His Word God creates our cosmos, communicates His mystery, responds to our questions, sings the love song that is His only-begotten Son. In His Word is the wellspring of personal renewal and of life eternal.

That Word became flesh. The Incarnate Christ is the Word of God ‘abbreviated’ – made small enough for us to see and hear. The Crucified Christ is the Word of God ‘exhausted’ – giving His all and holding nothing back. The Risen Christ is the Word of God ‘extended’ – to all time and space.

The Holy Spirit, in turn, inspired the sacred authors so as to ensure that the Gospels reliably record His saving words and deeds. This makes them ‘the soul of theology’, ‘the perfect norm of life’ and ‘the pattern of the saints’.

St Jerome wondered how a Christian could live without the daily bread of the Scriptures, “by which we come to know Christ himself, who is the life of believers” (Epist. 30, 7) “Every saint,” said Pope Benedict, “is like a ray of light streaming forth from the Word of God,” and amongst the examples he gave was “St Josemaría Escrivá in his preaching of the universal call to holiness.”

Meditating on the life of Christ allows us not only to discover Jesus but to become His eager followers. Get close to our Lord in the Gospels, St Josemaría counselled; enter imaginatively into each scene as one of the characters.

“In this way... you will be captivated like Mary, who hung on every word that Jesus uttered or, like Martha, will boldly make your worries known to him.” (Friends of God, 222; cf. Furrow, 672) Thus do we accompany Christ, imitate Him, become identified with Him. “Our Lord is then reflected in our behaviour, as in a mirror” (Friends of God, 299) and we learn to grow in service of God and neighbour.

Experience Christ in the Church

So Pope Benedict told the members and friends of Opus Dei to rediscover the Person of Christ in the Gospels; he also hoped you would have a deep ecclesial experience of Christ. The Gospel reading for today’s feast is the miraculous haul of fish (Lk 5: 1-11). As a child I loved this story of Jesus calling His disciples to be fishers: I imagined our surname gave my family a head-start!

Josemaría could recite this passage by heart. During the Spanish Civil War, fleeing the assassins of so many priests and religious, he found himself in a place so remote there was no bread or wine, no missal or lectionary.

So he daily recited by heart a so-called ‘dry Mass’. For the Gospel he often recited our passage from St Luke. He would have liked this story because it was one of working men, turning their work into an opus Dei, aware of their own unworthiness but willing to be led by Christ. He was moved that Christ would make use of the ‘boats’ of ordinary lives and make them into the lives of fisher-saints.

Of the various boats on the lake, it was of course Peter’s that Christ chose to board. The barque of Peter is a symbol of the Church. Christ speaks from that boat. The Church is the home of the Scriptures, the place where they were written and guarded as a canon, are authentically interpreted and proclaimed to the world.

The Scriptures did not descend from heaven: they were written by members of the Church, inspired by the Holy Spirit. They did not come with a table of contents: the Church decided which should be part of the canon. For Josemaría as for us, there could be no choice between Scripture and Tradition, Bible and Church. Sola Scriptura, sola ecclesia.

Indeed the Gospels are not so much catechetical materials as liturgical texts. That’s the context in which St Josemaría recited today’s passage from memory, for he was convinced that when the Word of God is proclaimed in the Liturgy the Paraclete enlightens our minds, strengthens our wills and makes efficacious our actions (Christ Is Passing By, 89).

By going to daily Mass, if we can, opening our hearts to hear the God’s Word by prayer before Mass, mulling over what we have heard during Mass and contemplating its treasures after Mass, we make the readings the basis of our prayer. We listen to Christ speaking from the boat.

Witness to Christ in the Scriptures

Rediscover the person of Christ in the Scriptures and in the Church, the Pope exhorts your movement. Lastly, witness to His mercy so men may read the Gospel in you. In the 1930s St Josemaría worked tirelessly to bring young people to a personal relationship with Christ and ask them to be Christ’s witnesses, drawing others to Him. He urged labourers and students, farmers and professionals, to be Christ in the world.

At the end of one meeting the saint gave a young man a book on the life of Christ with the words: “May you seek Christ: may you find Christ: may you love Christ.”

Some years ago I rather impishly suggested that the real author of another, less-reliable book that referred to Christ, the Da Vinci Code, was probably Fr John Flader, whose day job as adult educator and spiritual director was only surpassed by his nightlighting as albino assassin and author of racy novels.

Nothing could have been better calculated to draw attention to Opus Dei that these conspiracy theories spiced with gnostics, templars and Mary Mag in drag at the Last Supper. Since then the Oppies have been accused of colonising and controlling most Church agencies, political parties, academies and even the sports and entertainment industries!

Though I’m not sure how many tens of thousands of members, co-operators and friends Opus Dei now has, the fact is that there is no master strategy for world domination, but something much more scary to secularist conspiracy theorists.

Opus Dei want everyone on earth to encounter Jesus Christ, in His Holy Word and Holy Church and so become his Holy Members. It wants all people to be saints!

The call to witness to Christ in ordinary life is a call the Bishop of Parramatta, for one, hopes spreads like wildfire here. Make Western Sydney your mission field. Put out into the deep yourselves. Pay out your nets for a great catch of Westies. Be fishers of men – and women, youth and children.

Bishop Anthony Fisher's Homily for Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, Year A, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 26 June 2011

Today we celebrate the Body and Blood of Christ, but as the popular name of the feast – Corpus  Christi – suggests, the focus tends to be on the Body of Christ and we can neglect the rich vein of Catholic devotion to the Precious Blood.

Why would devotion to the Precious Blood have declined at the very time when Catholics have far more opportunity to receive it than did their ancestors? Is it that, as the saying goes, ‘familiarity breeds contempt’, or at least indifference?

One reason might be our modern squeamishness about anything as biological-sounding as blood. Also, we moderns don’t much like talk of sacrifice, especially blood sacrifice.

Since the 1970s the focus has often been on the Eucharist as a sacred meal and a celebration of God’s presence among the assembled faithful – which are certainly important aspects of the Mass.

This change of emphasis undoubtedly helped make the liturgy more accessible. But at the same time we have experienced a decline in Mass attendance, prayer before the tabernacle or the Blessed Sacrament exposed, and signs of reverence such as genuflections and silences.

Many people now neglect personal preparation for the Eucharist by regular sacramental confession, fasting and quiet prayer before Mass; and others fail to make some thanksgiving afterwards.

Apart from a decline in signs of Eucharistic reverence there can be a certain snootiness regarding all spiritual sacrifices, such as Friday abstinence or giving up the cost of a movie to have a Mass said for a deceased loved one.

Around the same time that many Catholics gave up on spiritual sacrifices, the idea of sacrifice in general was waning in our society. The Depression and World War eras were over; the consumer generation was expected to buy up big; denying yourself things was almost treasonous.

People stopped talking of dying for country as ‘the ultimate sacrifice’ and compromising your preferences for the sake of marriage, family or workplace was just wimpish. The self-help books and gurus such as Oprah told us you don’t have to give up anything.

In spirituality this was known as ‘cheap grace’: getting what you want from God without any contribution or commitment on your own part. Of course in one sense grace is the cheapest thing of all: by definition it’s free; we don’t deserve it, have no right to it, it is pure gift.

But we can forget what it cost Christ to win salvation for us – His very life-blood – and that we must dispose ourselves to being transformed and then be willing to respond to God’s challenges and empowerments. That can come at a personal cost in terms of conversion, perseverance, spiritual blood, sweat and tears.

Sacrifice might not be much appreciated these days, yet anthropologists tell us that all religions require some sort of sacrifice. In the worship of almost all religions something is destroyed or transformed, such as animals or grain, in some act of offering to God, usually by a cultic priest, and with some religious goal. Thus the priests of ancient Israel spilt the blood of animals in expiation for sins, for reconciliation with God, and as a source of blessing, especially for those who offered the sacrifice.

After Christ’s surrender of Himself, His Body and Blood, His humanity and divinity, on the Cross, Christians realised that this was all-sufficient. The Mass merely re-presents and extends to us the Sacrifice of Calvary, when the Body of Christ was broken and the Blood of Christ was spilt, Christ’s most tangible act of love in which He gave everything He was for the salvation of the world.

For the salvation of the world. You may have noticed that in the new translation of the Mass, at the consecration of the chalice, instead of “for you and for all” the priest now says “for you and for many”. Have we reduced the buying power of Christ’s sacrifice? Where once it was big enough to cover everyone, does it now only cover some? Clearly not!

The phrase “poured out for many” comes from the Gospels of Matthew (26:28) and Mark (14:24) and so is more scriptural than our old translation. It is closer to what Christ actually said. That matters, especially at the consecration, when the priest is not making up his own words but acting in the person of Christ. But does it mean that Christ only ever intended to die for some people, for example for Christians or for good Catholics?

Not at all. St Paul teaches that Christ died for the salvation of all (e.g. 2 Cor 5:14-5; cf. Jn 11:52; Tit 2:11; 1 Jn 2:2). It would be heresy to think that Christ’s Precious Blood was incapable of redeeming anyone. But we must also recognise the reality of free will.

If not everyone disposes themselves well to receive the graces of the Eucharist, so not everyone avails themselves of the redemption. We are all free to say yes or no to God and some say no. Christ died for all, but sadly not everyone is interested.

What’s more, the word “many”, in Latin multi, in Greek πολλοί, is opposed not to “all” but to “few”. In saying His Blood would be poured out for many, Christ means not just for a few. It’s for lots, for a large group, a multi-tude, the hoi polloi, that number beyond counting who will one day surround the throne of God.

So there’s been no devaluation of the currency in the new translation of the Mass! We are just being clearer that Christ’s sacrifice is real and is offered for all, that it’s up to us to embrace it, but it’s not compulsory and some may not.

Which brings me back to the question of sacrifice. Our age needs to recover its sense both of spiritual sacrifice and of more mundane self-denial for the sake of others. As a Church we must always seek really to value the food that Christ taught us is His Body and the drink He says is His Blood (Jn 6:51-8). Hence our search for a more accurate and more worthy idiom. Hence, also, our personal efforts to take an active part in the music, the ritual, the prayers and the postures.

Likewise our community must encourage acts of self-sacrifice, not just by soldiers or firemen but as part of ordinary life. God-made-man puts Himself, His humanity and divinity, His body and soul, His Flesh and Blood, into the hands of sinful men, in total self-giving.

Homily for Vespers and Benediction for the Nativity of St John the Baptist, Patron of the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, and Vigil Prayers for the Reception of Postulants, St Mary’s Cathedral Crypt, Sydney, 24 June 2011

Light for those who dwell in darkness

This is one of the great images for Christ in our Gospels and in our liturgy. It is was chosen by Zechariah to describe the Lord in his great birthday blessing, The Benedictus, which first he sang on this day, more than two millennia ago, when John was born.

Jesus is enlightenment for the lost or confused, warmth for the hard-pressed or despondent, belly-fire for the indifferent and lethargic, brightness for every dark soul, a light even the crypt could not extinguish.

John, Zechariah prophecies, will be His herald, His prophet, His candle-bearer, will go ahead of the Lord, to prepare His way, to point to the One who is the Light of men, to pursue that light so men and women might receive it.

And as the theme of our conference draws to our attention, the Order of St John must, in turn, put on the armour of light, guard that light faithfully, and relay it to generations to come, including I am pleased to say, our 39 postulants.

Light in darkness

‘Tenebrism’, the dramatic use in art of darkness to contrast with light, ‘the oscuro of chiaroscuro’, was the great contribution of one of our Order’s more colourful members, Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio.

Some years ago I reflected with some of you upon some aspects of his life, but since then I’ve been privileged to see more of his works in Malta and elsewhere, and to learn more about his life in the Order. His radical naturalism and dramatic sense, his bright faith and dark temperament, all put to paint, made him one of the Order’s great communicators of the light of faith in a sometimes dark world.

Caravaggio burst upon the scene in 1600 with his great Matthew cycle for the French Church of St Louis in Rome. Thereafter, he never lacked for commissions or patrons yet, in the words of one of his biographers, ‘he handled his success atrociously’.

He was regularly imprisoned for crimes such as throwing stones at soldiers or artichokes at waiters, for brawling in defence of his mistresses or his vanity. He vandalised his own apartment and once killed a man over a disputed tennis score. He ultimately had a death warrant issued for him by the Pope and fled the Italian peninsular for the spanking-new city of Jean de la Vallette, the French Grand Master of our Order.

Valletta proved a haven for Caravaggio to paint masterpieces including The Beheading of the Baptist for the Cathedral of St John, which he signed with an 'F' for ‘Fra’ or confrere, in return for which he was admitted in 1608 as a Knight of Magistral Grace. His membership was not long or glorious: within a few weeks he was amputated from the Order as “a foul and rotten limb” and consigned to one of our dungeons. A warning to our postulants!

In celebrating a birthday we mark a new beginning, a fresh gift we rightly reverence from its very origins. The only birthday the Church marks with a Solemnity, apart from the Nativity of our Saviour Himself, is that of His precursor, the Baptist. It does so because John’s Advent denotes the beginning of our salvation.

The Order of Malta also celebrates this day, in particular, because in a sense it marks our Advent too: for it was from a mediæval hospice-infirmary and religious community dedicated to the Baptist in Jerusalem that our confraternity, under the guidance of Blessed Gerard, emerged.

The story of John the Baptist is pregnant both literally and metaphorically for the Order. In Luke’s Gospel the Mystery of the Annunciation elides with that of the Visitation: the newly pregnant Mary, rather than resting on her laurels or taking time to let the mind-blowing news of the Incarnation sink in, immediately goes to help her elderly and pregnant kinswoman.

Mary’s response is that of the hospitaller: she sees a crying need and flies to give aid. Be it mine, says the Virgin of Philerme with us, to practise charity towards my neighbours, especially the poor and sick.

But more dramatic than the Virgin’s leaping over the hills to her cousin is the leaping of today’s hero, John the Baptist. The fœtal John jumps in the womb at the approach of the embryonic Saviour and His mother.

According to one tradition, the unborn John here assumed a kneeling position in the womb, with his hands joined in adoration as if he were attending our Benediction tonight; according to another tradition, John did cartwheels for joy. Neither would have been especially comfortable for his mother!

But either way, John could already foresee the Light coming into the darkness; already he was Christ’s herald, like a knight going before his Lord telling all to make way. Already he was preaching the faith. Be it mine, says the unborn Baptist with us, to practice and defend the Catholic, the Apostolic, the Roman Faith against the enemies of religion.

Luke’s Gospel goes on to show how John’s vocation touched all around him: his family, neighbours, the surrounding hillbillies. Eventually he went out into wilderness, like those first pilgrims, soldiers, monks and hospitallers in the Holy Land at the beginnings of our Order.

He goes bush to encounter Christ once again, revealed at the Jordan as God the Father’s beloved Son and God the Spirit’s anointed One. This points to a third aspect of the charism of our Order told in the life of that boy whose birthday we celebrate today.

The encounter between John and Jesus at the Visitation graces John, his mother, his aunt and the onlookers. The encounter at the Jordan serves graces the apostles, the other onlookers and all those baptised ever since.

All Christians ever since, including our members and our postulants, are called to the truly happy, truly blessed life. Truly happy, Jesus tells us in the Gospel passage we heard tonight (Mt 5:12), are the poor in spirit, the thirsty for justice, those persecuted for goodness, those grieving for loss. Truly blessed are the meek and merciful, pure and peaceful.

By grace, even those of great wealth and comfort can be graced with compassion for the poor, the victims, the grieving. By grace, even those of great worldly importance or influence can be graced meekness and mercy. By grace, even those with great experience and maturity can recover something of the innocence of children.

Our Order’s third goal, along with defending the faith and caring for the sick poor, is of course the sanctification of the members, and so we join Blessed Gerard and all our Order’s saints and beati, in resolving to be forgetful of myself, [seeking] a spirit of deep and generous Christian devotion, striving ever to promote God’s glory.

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 19 June 2011

Introduction

We say it every day and every time we pray: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit – in the name of the Most Holy Trinity; in the name of our God, three Persons in One. It is the start and finish of every Mass, of every prayer, of every Christian action. God is our start and finish. Today we celebrate the Most Holy Trinity as the culmination of the mystery of Easter and Pentecost and the start and finish of every Christian life.

Today, Alfredito Dalogdog will be officially received as a candidate for Holy Orders of the Diocese of Parramatta. I welcome him, his relatives and friends. I welcome Fr John Hogan, the Rector of our Holy Spirit Seminary, the members of the seminary faculty and the other seminarians. I ask you to pray that Alfredito may be a faithful herald of the mystery of God and that many more young men will join him in that great adventure.

Bishop Anthony’s Homily

The Most Holy Trinity: if ever there was a theological Sudoku puzzle with degree of difficulty ‘maximum’, surely it is this!

Last Sunday we saw the first efforts of Christians to plumb that mystery. Just as the Holy Spirit had overshadowed the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Annunciation and filled her with grace so that God-made-man was conceived in her, so we saw that same Holy Spirit came down upon the Apostolic Church at Pentecost and fill her with grace so that the members of the newborn Church were brought forth in her.

We saw people, whose diverse languages and backgrounds had previously divided them, given a new identity – united in professing one faith, received from the One Lord and passed on in one long Apostolic tradition to this day.

Many languages are needed because no one language is up to it. But the central mystery of our faith was articulated in Greek in St Paul’s blessing: we believe in “the grace of Our Lord [and God] Jesus Christ, the love of God [the Father] and the fellowship of [God] the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor 13:13).

Despite the many languages of man, every generation struggles to find the right way to speak of the God who is Three-in-One, a divine unity and yet a community of divine persons. Great philosophers and theologians have given us the language of ‘persons’, ‘processions’, ‘essences’, ‘Godhead’ and ‘relations’, but even with their help the Church took centuries to formulate her creeds and still to this day must periodically revise her liturgical language to try to make it express the mystery more accurately and more beautifully.

And it all began on that first Pentecost day. With the vision of the risen Christ impressed upon their eyes and the firepower of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, the first disciples began to reflect upon the central truth about God that Jesus had taught them, the truth told in this morning’s Gospel passage, that God is love (Jn 3:16-18; cf. 1 Jn 4:8).

As they reflected upon and sought to tell the world about the God-who-is-love, they realised that He was the God-who-is-love even before there was anything as lovely, as loveable, as us to love, even before there was anyone, anything in the world to love, even before there was a world. So unless God was spending all eternity just loving Godself, God must have an internal life, Persons who love each other.

As they contemplated and communicated to the world the God-who-is-love-from-all-eternity, the disciples of Christ realised that like all true lovers, the three Persons of the Holy Trinity receive their deepest identity largely from each other. The One whom we call the Father is forever that One from whom the Other is begotten: that’s what makes Him The Father. The One we call the Son is forever the One begotten of the Father: that’s what makes Him The Son. Put another way, He is forever the One spoken by the Father: that’s what makes Him The Word – who in time took flesh as Jesus Christ. And at Pentecost it became clear that there is a third, the One who is the love of the two for each other, from all eternity, a love so intense, so real, so personal it is itself a divine Person, the very One who in time was poured into the hearts of us all.

Every generation struggles to find the words to speak of God and each is in turn shaped by that language. Amongst the recent changes in the translation of the Mass, one of the strangest is the rendering in the Creed of the words ‘consubstantial with the Father’. Some people say it’s much harder to understand than the words ‘of one being with the Father’ that we used to say. But if we’re honest, we probably didn’t understand those words very well either. What are these words trying to convey?

Well, once upon a time there were some Christians, called Arians, who thought Jesus was a very special man, of similar stuff to God, but created by and subordinate to God. This heresy never entirely goes away. Many people today talk about Jesus as if He were a very special man, an inspirational teacher, the writer of really good greeting cards and calendars.

Of course, He was an inspiring teacher; but He was so much more than this: He is inspiration itself, He is God. Not made of similar stuff, like the Arians said, but the same ‘stuff’ as God the Father: ‘homoousios’, ‘consubstantialis’ or, as we now put it, ‘consubstantial with the Father’.

So we’re not just tinkering with words: we are going to the heart of what we believe about Christ, the Trinity, our Christian identity. Arians ancient or modern do not really believe Jesus is God, do not really believe in the Trinity, do not really believe that Baptism makes us children of God the Father, saints of God the Son and temples of God the Holy Spirit.

Modern Arians think Baptism is a special naming day, but that’s all. It doesn’t change anything, not substantially. If even Jesus was not truly of one substance with God, how could we expect to be raised up to being God’s adopted children? But God so loved the world He gave His only Son precisely so we could be raised up with Him.

Dear Red, today you stand before the Church in Parramatta as one recommended to us for admission as a candidate for holy orders. Unlike the old guys like Fr Hogan and me, you won’t have to learn to say Mass all over again: you will only ever celebrate our new translation.

But your task is the same as mine: to conform yourself to Christ, who through the Church reveals the Trinitarian God and the love of that God that is to be the pattern of your life. Your words must be the Church’s words. Your faith must be the Church’s faith.

You have now spent several years with your formators discerning your vocation. Those whom God chooses to be sharers in the ministerial priesthood of Christ, He prompts and helps with His grace. At the same time He entrusts us with the task of testing your aptitude.

Now you are in the final straight to ordination, when you will be marked with the singular seal of the Holy Spirit for the ministry of God and the Church. When the time comes for you to be associated with our ministry, you will build Christian communities by the preaching of the Word and the celebration of the sacraments.

Homily at the Mass for the Institution of Acolytes, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 14 June 2011

“Can he be fair dinkum?” the Apostles must have wondered – or at least some ancient near-Eastern equivalent. “Be perfect like God,” He says (cf. Mt 5:43-48). A simple commandment that!

People love the Sermon on the Mount, but they often miss its contours, remembering only the more charming bits such as the Beatitudes. Fair enough, since the Beatitudes are the very opening words of the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 5 of Matthew’s Gospel.

There Jesus suggests that though the world may not value them highly, the truly happy, beautiful, Blessed people are the little ones, the low-spirited, heart-broken, justice-hungry; the merciful, pure-hearted and peacemaking; those persecuted and reviled for their faith and morals. The world may not glorify them, but their reward from God will be great. And in demonstrating these qualities His own will be light to the world and salt to the earth. 

But how? How will we light up the world and bring savour to all human activity? How will we demonstrate that we are meek and pure, peace-loving and justice-hungry people?

In His great sermon Jesus says it’s all very well not to commit acts of violence, adultery, perjury or rancour, as the Old Testament teaches. But there’s more to it than just no doing some no-noes. “What I say to you is: don’t even harbour a grudge against your brother, don’t even harbour lust in your heart for your sister, don’t lie even when you’re not under oath, don’t seek revenge at all!”

Now He makes some even more extreme demands: love your enemies, pray for your persecutors, be perfect like your heavenly Father! Can He really mean this stuff? Can He really expect us ordinary people to do these things? Well, it’s quite clear from the rest of the Gospels, the rest of His story, that right to the end Jesus really did mean it: this is exactly how He lived and died; He loved and forgave and prayed for His persecutors right to end, even as they tortured and executed Him.

Which is all very well for Him, you might say: He could be perfect like God because He is God. But for us it can seem impossible at times, especially when we are wounded or angry, nursing some grudge or self-pity, facing temptation or some recurrent weakness.

But Jesus has demonstrated for us the kind of loving and forgiving that is possible by God’s grace. And He gives us that grace, that empowerment, that strength in many ways.

One of those ways Christ helps us to live better and to love better is, of course, the Holy Eucharist. The recently beatified Pope John Paul II gave us the term “Eucharistic amazement” (Homily for the Feast of Corpus Christi, 2003) by which he meant the ‘immense and grateful wonder at the Sacrament in which Christ wanted to concentrate all his love’.

The great theologian Karl Rahner once asked regarding the Eucharist: “Is this not something colossal?” Blessed John Paul II’s response was: yes, it is absolutely amazing, awesome, gob-smacking. Though “we are constantly tempted to reduce the Eucharist to our own dimensions; it is we who must open ourselves up to the dimensions of the Mystery” (MND 14).

As the Second Vatican Council put it, the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life: all we do flows from it and to it. The Church may in some sense ‘make’ the Eucharist, but it is first the Eucharist that makes the Church. It is in the Eucharist that we find and develop the capacity to stretch ourselves beyond what we thought possible for us. It is surely the school for training in loving.

So, my dear brothers, soon to be installed as acolytes, Paul in our First reading (2 Cor 8:1-9) exhorts us, exhorts you, to excel in everything – in  faith, in knowledge, in words, in earnest, in good works, above all in loving.

It’s a good recipe for every Christian life, but especially for men such as yourselves whose hands and heart will be so closely connected to the Blessed Sacrament and whose minds and feet will stand so close to the altar of that Sacrament.

The giving to which Paul is calling his readers will be not so much financial as personal: you will give your time, your energy, your piety, your love. And in giving from your heart you will find your heart expands.

Yours will be a special role in assisting priests and deacons in their service of the Eucharistic mystery, and so you must open your own hearts to that mystery too. You, in turn, will assist in bringing others closer to our Eucharistic Lord and through Him to the God and Father of us all.

The ministry of acolyte to which you will soon be ordered is an ancient one, long a minor order associated with the stages towards priesthood, but since the Second Vatican Council opened up to men whose primary vocations are to marriage or to a single life of service in the world. The Council thereby adapted an ancient ministry to contemporary needs.

Your role will be to assist in liturgical celebrations, especially the Mass but also from time to time in some other sacraments and public worship. Sometimes you may be called upon to expose the Blessed Sacrament for adoration, to distribute that Sacrament to the faithful at Mass or to carry it to the sick and housebound. You may assist in leading and training other ministers at the altar.

Because you are specially called to this ministry, you should strive to live more fully by the Lord’s sacrifice and be moulded more perfectly to its likeness. You should seek to understand the deep spiritual meaning of what you do, so that you may offer yourselves daily to God.

In performing your ministry, keep in mind that, as you share the one bread with your brothers and sisters, so you form one body with them. Show a sincere love for Christ’s mystical body, the Church, and especially for the weak and the sick among God’s people.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for Fifth Sunday of Easter (Year A) Shrine of Mary, Mother Thrice Admirable, Queen and Victress of Schœnstatt, Mulgoa, 22 May 2011

Photo: Patrick Lee

But when Jesus spoke the words of today’s Gospel to the apostles (Jn 14:1-12), they did not know that. The death and resurrection of Jesus had not yet taken place. Jesus knew it was coming and He had given them plenty of hints. It worried them. They had to have great faith to come to terms with the message of Jesus and to believe they had a future in Him.

In the Gospel we have just heard, we see something of their struggle. They don’t know where Jesus is going, where they are going, where the Church is going. They’re not even sure they are going anywhere.

Now Thomas was not the sort of person to live by dreams and speculations. He liked hard facts. We remember on the first Easter day how he said: show me the evidence before I’ll believe you really saw Jesus risen from the dead. Thomas liked things clear and factual and didn’t leave things to chance. If he were alive today, he would not leave home without a SAT-NAV. He wants to know the destination before he sets out on the journey and he wants directions, a map, a GPS. He wants to be sure of the way. He’s that kind of guy.

But this morning he finds Jesus behaving not like a German Schœnstatt sister giving careful directions, but rather more like an Irishman. The Irish are famous for giving unhelpful directions. If you ask them how to get to Parramatta they might scratch their head and say: Parramatta, to be sure. Well, I wouldn’t start from here. Well, when Thomas asks for directions and Jesus responds, “I am the way” Thomas must have thought Jesus was having an Irish moment. It’s a big ask to do as Jesus is effectively asking: to put aside all your carefully planned routes and human guarantees and put your trust in Me.

Unfortunately we’re not told how Thomas reacted. Did he look at Jesus in amazement? Did he say anything? We don’t know because immediately the narrative switches to another apostle – Philip. Unlike Thomas, Philip wasn’t going anywhere. But like Thomas he had a request to make. If Thomas was later to say: “I want to see Jesus, with His wounds” Philip had an even more breathtaking petition: he just wanted to see God! “Master, show us the Father, and that’ll be enough!” (Jn 14:7) 

Like Thomas, Philip probably thought Jesus was being deliberately opaque with His answer. “You’ve already seen God,” He says. “To have seen the Son is to have seen the Father. Like Father, like Son. Don’t you get it Philip?”

Well, he didn’t get it, not yet. We post-resurrection Christians know that God so loved the world that He sent us His only Son; that by the power of the Holy Spirit His Son took flesh of the thrice-admirable Virgin Mary and became man; that Jesus is fully divine and fully human, one with God and one with us; that so one with us was he that he was willing to die with us and for us; but that so one with God is He that death could not contain Him and He has risen from the dead; that the human face of the love of God will smile on us for all eternity if, in Peter’s words today, we “set ourselves close to Him” (1 Pet 2:4-9). Philip was still learning all that. In the meantime he is as confused as Thomas.

We often think of Martha and Mary as two women who show us two temperaments, two Christian vocations, but also two sides of every Christian personality. One sits by and contemplates the face of Christ. The other gets to work offering hospitality, living the Gospel. Thomas and Philip are a similar pair. One wants to sit still and stare at God the Father. The other wants to get going on the road to God’s kingdom. Both are right. But both are wrong. Because you need, we need, to be both.

In this beautiful place, this Schœnstatt, we hail the Blessed, Blessed, Blessed Virgin, mother of the Holy, Holy, Holy Lord. She is thrice-blessed, thrice-admirable. In the story of Christianity, she is the first of all Christians and so occupies a pre-eminent place in the history of our salvation. She is the greatest of all disciples, and so an example to each one of us. And she is the completion of all disciples, for we look to her as the first raised body and soul to the heavenly life of the Resurrection.

Now, in her earthly life did she stay at home or did she go on the road? Was she a contemplative or was she active? Just as with her divine Son, so with the mother neither answer satisfies. She was at prayer at the Annunciation, looking upon the face of God in the Holy Scriptures. She was on the road at the Visitation, climbing hills like these behind us so she could visit her needy cousin and dance and sing with her. Again at the Nativity she is still, in adoration of the divine Child who is also hers. But as the story goes on she is backwards and forwards, between home and exile, between tranquillity and challenge. She follows her Son who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. She stands still at His cross and sits still in the cenacle, that she might receive the Spirit given up from the Cross and given down at Pentecost that will lead the Church across the world.

The recently beatified Pope John Paul II gave us the term “Eucharistic amazement” (Homily for the Feast of Corpus Christi, 2003) by which he meant the ‘immense and grateful wonder at the Sacrament in which Christ wanted to concentrate all his love’. This afternoon, we will engage in a form of Eucharistic prayer, united with Mary who held forth the Son of God, like a monstrance, for our adoration. Like Philip we will sit still to adore God; like Thomas we will go on procession, on the way; like our Mother we will both contemplate and act. She is truly the Mother of Christ and so she is the Mother of God; she is truly the Mother of Christ, and so the Mother of His body the Church. Thrice mother, thrice admirable, pray for us.

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for the 25th Anniversary Mass of the establishment of the Diocese of Parramatta, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 19 May 2011

Introduction

It is with great joy that I welcome you all tonight to this celebration of the Silver Anniversary of the Diocese of Parramatta. It was on this day, 25 years ago, that Bishop Bede Heather took possession of the Diocese and I welcome him back warmly tonight.

I also welcome his successor Bishop Kevin Manning: though in supposed retirement he now administers the See of Wilcannia-Forbes where he has a 9½ hour drive from his cathedral to his presbytery. That certainly gives some perspective on the distances we have to go from Warragamba to Kenthurst and Mt Victoria to Harris Park!

We are also very pleased to have with us tonight His Eminence, Cardinal Cassidy, the President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, as well as Bishops Julian Porteous and Terry Brady of our mother archdiocese of Sydney, and Bishop Peter Ingham of our neighbouring diocese of Wollongong.

Bishop David Walker is ordinary of our ecclesiastical twin, the Diocese of Broken Bay: while there is some doubt about which twin is the elder, we’ll each have our own views as to which of the 25-year-olds is the more beautiful or intelligent!

I acknowledge with gratitude the presence tonight of many religious and civic leaders, including the Lord Mayor of Parramatta, John Chedid, the state Member for Parramatta Geoff Lee, the Vicars-General Monsignor McGuckin and Fr Williams, the Dean of the Cathedral Fr Hoekstra, the Episcopal Vicars, deans, parish priests, clergy and laity of the Diocese. Also with us are Provincials of several religious congregations and representatives of those orders.

Also with us are many current and past heads of agencies or staff of the Chancery, members of diocesan committees, representatives of our schools and parishes, including this Parish of St Patrick: you are all most welcome.

We welcome in a special way the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto, with Fr Frank Leo. His Excellency’s presence emphasises that our 25-year-old Diocese is in communion with the See of Peter and His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI and through that link in communion with 1.2 billion Catholics in thousands of dioceses throughout the world.

His Excellency has brought with him some special news as a present for us from the Holy See which I invite him now to present.

Bishop Anthony’s Homily

For what we have received

When Governor Philip established Parramatta he intended it to rival, if not outstrip, the coastal settlement. Here, thankfully, was fertile land, fresh water and room aplenty for a better-planned settlement than the chaos already developing in Sydneytown.

Many of the first ‘Westies’ were Catholics. Already in Philip’s time they were petitioning for a priest and catechetical materials so they could pass on the faith of their Fathers. By proclamation given in Parramatta in 1803, Governor King briefly permitted Mass to be offered here. But a rebellion by the Irish soon after convinced him that Mass did the convicts no good. Only later was it permitted as a regular feature of Western Sydney life.

In due course, pastoral care was extended far and wide by the wonderful priests of Western Sydney. By the end of the 19^th Century parishes had been established in Parramatta, Windsor, Penrith, Richmond, Granville, Rydalmere, Katoomba and North Parramatta. In the 20^th Century many more were added in our region, including six new parishes in 1970 alone. Meanwhile, a network of convents, schools, hospitals and other ministries ensured the care of bodies and the cure of souls.

Well over 50 religious congregations have laboured here, including Mercies, Marists and more. St Mary MacKillop personally established schools at Penrith and St Marys, and her Josephite daughters built and staffed many more.

Pope Benedict – who visited our Diocese in 2008 – praised Mary’s “perseverance in the face of adversity, her plea for justice on behalf of those unfairly treated and her practical example of holiness”.

Generations of us have reason to be grateful to her and her daughters, as do other religious, “for the network of schools that they established here and for the witness of their consecrated life.”

Amidst the Australian tendencies to secularism, pragmatism and indifferentism, “the Catholic community continues to make an important contribution to national life, not only through education, healthcare [and welfare], but especially by highlighting the spiritual dimension of the questions that feature prominently in contemporary debates.”

For what we have received and are about to receive

“Always be thankful,” says St Paul tonight. “Sing to God with thankful hearts … Give thanks to the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Col 3:12-17) Tonight we especially recall the decision to make Parramatta a diocese in its own right in 1986. “The bishop shall locate his See in Parramatta, the principal city of the region,” directed Pope John Paul II, “and there he will place his Chair, in the Church of St Patrick, to which we grant the honours of a Cathedral”.

Bishop Bede Heather was appointed and, as the priests here know, finding a permanent chair proved more difficult than it might sound. But whichever chair it was, Bishop Bede sat lightly in it as a man for the people of Western Sydney. In addition to a bishop we soon we had an Act of Parliament, Vicar-General, Financial Administrator, Chancery, Education Office and the rest.

Pope John Paul II decided to check up on our progress personally only a few months later. He journeyed 50,000km through Bangladesh, Singapore, Fiji, New Zealand and the wilder parts of Australia to get to Parramatta.

He danced with Sydney youngsters; answered questions from Melbourne tiny tots; encouraged central Australian Aborigines; and cuddled a Brisbane koala: but the highlight was when he was mitred with a hard-hat at a Seven Hills Factory.

He told our workers that he was one of them and admired their dedication to ordinary work; but, more importantly, that Jesus the Carpenter was one of them and through His Church He offers a wisdom about work, as about all aspects of life, for them and for our world.

Since then the Diocese has been hard at work, establishing five new parishes and 10 new schools, a new cathedral, CatholicCare, the Institute for Mission and much more. Bishop Kevin Manning did much to establish and consolidate these things. Much more is undoubtedly ahead of us, with the most multicultural diocese in the world projected to double in population in the next 25 years and with the youngest median age of any diocese in Australia meaning there is abundant youthful energy.

For what might we hope in this old yet young diocese? Paul’s hope for the young Colossian church was that they might be “God’s chosen people, his saints, his beloved”. Tonight this re-echoes in the young Church of Parramatta: be God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved.

Evangelisation and formation

“Let the message of Christ, in all its richness, dwell in you,” Paul says. “Teach and advise each other in all wisdom.” How is that to happen? How are “the little ones” to hear what the educated and clever so often miss? (Lk 10: 17-24)

Education has been and continues to be a major feature of our Diocese, with so many schools leading the way in infrastructure, IT, pædogogy and increasingly in catechesis. Alongside education two words that must mark us in the years ahead are: evangelisation and formation. The Gospel must be proclaimed, in season and out, as Good News for a hurting humanity, with joy, humility and gratitude, and with a willingness to confront the hard things too.

By word and deed we must give testimony to Christ in a society that has long known Him, still today half-knows Him, and deep in its heart will always crave to know Him. We must always be ready to give an account of our hope. And we must be formed for that task, intellectually, affectively, morally, spiritually. Let Christ remake us in His own image, for His great project of making eels into saints.

Devotion and service

Eucharistoi ginesthe says Paul three times in our short epistle – three times he summons us to be thankful. Interspersed are calls to hear the Word of God, to sing psalms and hymns in response, and to receive Christ. This is, of course, a description of the Mass, by which the Son speaking in us gives thanks to the Father.

We join the angels in heaven as they sing Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of angel hosts; but we add to their triple-holy Paul’s triple-thanks: Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you Lord, God of Eucharistic hosts. Filled with spiritual joy like Christ in our Gospel we cry out in thanksgiving to the Father.

But singing in church is not enough: we must also make of our lives outside an inspired song. “Be clothed in sincere compassion, kindness and humility, gentleness and patience, forbearance and forgiveness,” says Paul. Then put on the overalls of love, the chasuble of charity. Many people in Western Sydney thirst for justice and charity. The Church is and must be there for them. In leading and serving, our Diocese declares to all in need: God is love and we are here to show God’s love to you.

Happy eyes and ears

St Mary MacKillop has a particular link to our Diocese, not just because she laboured amongst us in this life, but also because she interceded from heaven to bring about a miracle for one of our parishioners. No wonder our priests and people overwhelmingly asked for her as our patron.

I thank His Excellency, the Papal Nuncio, and through him the Congregation for Divine Worship on behalf of the Holy Father, for agreeing to our petition. Through the intercession of this woman who was not afraid to be a saint, we pray for many more saints in our Diocese and in our land in the years ahead.

Saints are, of course, the truly beautiful, truly happy, truly blessed people. Happy, Jesus tells us, are the poor in spirit, the thirsty for justice, the persecuted for goodness, the grieving for loss. Blessed are the meek and merciful, the pure and peaceful. Beautiful, indeed, the children of God, His chosen, holy and beloved. In tonight’s Gospel Jesus adds another beatitude: “Happy the eyes that see what you see, that hear what you hear.”

The tapestry of John Paul II displayed on the facade of St Peter's Basilica at the Vatican during the Beatification Mass on Sunday 1 May. AFP PHOTO/ALBERTO PIZZOLI

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Homily for ‘Divine Mercy Sunday’ and Beatification of John Paul II, 1 May 2011, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, and Our Lady of the Rosary Parish Church, Kellyville

Thomas can hardly be blamed! Odds are we’ve all wondered from time to time about the Resurrection, especially when a loved dies or we must face our own mortality. For Jesus Christ to rise from the dead is incredible enough. Is it just wishful thinking to expect the same for ourselves?

Well, this much is clear. In making us, God made us bodily beings, so much more than phantoms or ghosts; in some sense, more even than angels. The French say the angels weep when a champagne cork is popped: for they have no bodies, no mouths, and so will never taste champagne! So much that is so good about this life is so because we are spiritual beings in the flesh. Pope John Paul II reflected a great deal about this, in his famous talks on the ‘Theology of the Body’.

Bodily life comes with its downsides of course: temptations of the flesh, hunger, ageing, pain, death. John Paul was a physically fit man and a great communicator, yet he was perhaps most eloquent when silenced in the prison of his decaying body. So did he, should we, pray to be released from our bodies in death?

No. By giving us bodies God gave us sensation and perception, concreteness and presence, passion and intimacy, voice and vocabulary, locality and recognizability. For such as us to rise less than bodily would be an impoverishment, indeed vandalism, and God is no vandal. If we live after death, then however transformed we shall be, for it to be truly us who are raised, us who will live-after, then like Jesus we must rise in our bodies. Life beyond the grave could only be a truly blessed life for us if we are to be all we properly are now and more, not less.

Our Easter faith is this: that one man has come back, not as a projection of the faith of His disciples, for He came when none of them had the least idea of such a possibility and all of them had a strong disinclination to believe it. One man has come back, not as a ghostly phenomenon, a spiritual experience, but in flesh and blood: “Put your finger here: look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it in my side.” (Jn 20:19-31) One man has come back, as Peter says, so that we might have a sure hope of inheriting a place in heaven, still with our eyes, able at last to see Him face-to-face, still with our hearts, able at last to be filled with joy (1 Pet 1:3-9).

One man has come back, and that man is the compassion of God with arms outstretched to all. He rises with His wounds to show He will never abandon His solidarity with the wounded. He is marked for all eternity with the tattoos of His life and death, with the badges of divine mercy on His body and from those wounds flows hope for the world.

Which makes it fitting that we celebrate this day not only as ‘Low Sunday’ of the Easter Octave, but also as ‘Divine Mercy Sunday’ and, this year, as John Paul II Sunday. The whole world looked on as John Paul II was dying and buried in the Paschal week of the Christ whose Vicar he was. Even journalists and others who did not believe in Christ were caught up in the drama of his Vicar’s death. Why was that?

First, I think it was because his dying was so public, which challenges an age that makes death as hidden and private as possible. Second, because it was protracted, which confronts a people who want dying to be brief and are increasingly willing to hurry it up. Third, because it was distressing, which threatens a culture that avoids pain at any cost and denies suffering has meaning. And finally, John Paul’s death was revealing: like that of Christ, it fascinated an age crying out for spirituality, for meaning in death, for hope and for reasons to hope.

Karol Józef Wojtyła died after a most extraordinary life, including 27 years as global pastor and teacher. With his dying he taught what he taught in his living: that human, bodily life is precious; it is divinely created, divinely redeemed, destined to bodily resurrection; that from womb to tomb such human life should be reverenced and never attacked.

In his dying and in his living, John Paul taught us not only reverence but also hope. His first words as Pope were Jesus’ Easter words, ‘Be not afraid!’, and they were repeated many times. Whatever our situation he says be not afraid. Christ rises with his wounds for you, victorious over death and every cause for fear.

The Church has been led by many great popes. Some were great scholars, who taught our faith and developed our understanding; others were more men of prayer and piety. Some were great evangelizers, taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth, opening wide the merciful arms of Christ’s body to more and more people; others stayed at home, as great administrators and reformers of the Church internally. Some rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty; others reached out to the poor and marginalized. Some brought comfort and consolation; others were signs of contradiction and confrontation.

John Paul II was all of these kinds of pope: his teachings fill shelves longer than all his predecessors put together and including much of enduring significance; yet he is famed not just for his intellect but also his deep prayerfulness, his devotion to Christ, to His Blessed Mother and the saints, many of whom he formally recognized. It was especially fitting that John Paul died on this Feast of Divine Mercy and is beatified on it also, for he encouraged such devotions in response both to the over-intellectualising and under-reasoning characteristic of secular cultures.

John Paul’s pastoral journeys took him to every corner of the earth, including to our own diocese within months of his creating it. He exhorted us all to join in the adventure of a new evangelization, of places and people formerly Christian but in need of hearing the Gospel anew. At home he sought to revolutionize the internal operations of the Holy See and its relationships with the rest of world.

His diplomatic activities helped bring an end to the tyranny of communism in Eastern Europe and to the Cold War. An untiring peacemaker, his efforts on behalf of the little ones brought him into contest with the powers of this world. As a voice for the poorest of the poor, for the unborn, marginalized and dying, for human rights, for the cradle of such life and rights – marriage and the family – his words were not always welcome, even among some believers. Yet he was also a great unifier, working tirelessly to reunite East and West in the Church, North and South in the world, bringing peoples into dialogue, apologizing to those we have hurt, befriending especially the young who promise a better future.

John Paul II led the Church and world confidently but humbly from that twentieth and bloodiest of centuries into a new century, with an assurance we are not doomed to repeat the holocausts and genocides, the massacre of innocents through abortion, terrorism and unnecessary starvation, the world wars and terrible dictatorships which he had experienced firsthand, and all the rest that went wrong in the century past. With Easter hope, with Christian vision, with Divine Mercy, safety and affluence can be shared, human dignity can be respected and God can be honoured above all things.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for the Easter Morning (Year A)
St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 24 April 2011

Why in the middle of the morning, with skylights to bring in the Australian sun and electric lights galore, do we have many candles burning here in the cathedral? It is a protest agains the climate warriors, a sign that we don’t take our carbon footprint seriously here in Parramatta? Or is it that bishops are by definition old and nearly blind, and so need lots of extra light to see by? Why do we light candles every Sunday, but especially today?

Well, partly all this light is to recall the dawn of creation, when God said ‘Let there be light’ and there was light. So God’s first creative act was a big bang of energy in that darkest place that is outer space, after which would come time and matter and life.

So too at the dawn of the new creation. Deep in that darkest of places – that ‘inner space’ that is the tomb – there was a similar explosion of light, a big bang of energy after which would come a new sense of time and history, a new meaning for all earthly matter, and eternal life to replace merely mortal life.

Though no one was there to witness either eruption of light, both are revealed to us; and at the second, there were people nearby. Tell us, Mary, what you saw along the way? I saw the Living in the tomb! I saw Christ’s glory as He rose! – tells our Easter sequence.

Easter is bathed in light. Last night we had the Easter fire, the entry of the new Paschal candle and each of us carried candles. The Exultet celebrated divine light entering the darkness of human history and the hearts of every abandoned soul. It called upon Mother Earth to “rejoice in shining splendour”, the reflected glory of her bright king: “Christ has conquered! Glory fills you! Darkness vanishes forever!”

Next, the Easter song told Mother Church to exult in glory, for she too luxuriates in the shining light of her Risen Saviour. And finally it summoned each of us to join in song and prayer.

Whether you are here regularly at St Patrick’s or elsewhere, or less regular at Mass but rightly want to join in the Easter celebrations, we all have times in our lives when we crave some light, some enlightenment for our murky minds, some warmth for our cold hearts, some radiance for our tired souls.

There are many times in our lives when we need ‘resurrecting’, some ‘rebirth from the dead’. There are small resurrections, perhaps, from the darkness of lacking inspiration, or from depression or loneliness, from sickness or suffering. Many are the times we pray to be raised out of our tombs.

And just as each sickness and grief is a portent of that deep darkness into which we will all ultimately enter at our deaths, so each recovery and joy is a promise of something better beyond the grave, possible by God’s grace.

How often in our lives have we experienced some gift of light and warmth which has come as pure grace, from outside ourselves? Each of these is, of course, an omen of that great rebirth into the light which is to come at our resurrection.

And so we reach out to the light. That’s why we talk of people ‘rising’ from the dead. It’s not just that dead and lying down people are suddenly alive and walking about. It’s because death is “being down”, lying prone and inactive, in the depths, in the darkest of dark places; whereas the basic posture for all living things is rising upwards. From the smallest grasses to most enormous tree, life seeks the light, the source not just of biological energy and growth, but also of brightness of heart.

I remember when I lived in England for a few years and we only had a few days of summer but many months of winter, how people’s moods sagged in the long dark months. In the Arctic Circle there is so much darkness-induced depression during winter that people are given prescriptions by their doctors to go and lie under a sun lamp or go on holidays to somewhere warmer.

All life seeks the light and raises up its head to see the light: and so this morning we raise up our heads to see the light of Christ, the dawn from on high, the new big bang that promises us such a future also.

Christ Himself turns towards that great light which is the Almighty Father. He rises up out of His dark tomb towards the light of new life, rises up out of this world in His Ascension to heaven, taking with Him His human nature and ours, so that we too, in due course, might enter into Lux perpetua, lux æterna, everlasting light.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for the Easter Vigil (Year A)
St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 23 April 2011

Easter Vigil 2011. Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

What is the darkest place you have ever been? I remember a confessional in inner-city Melbourne provided especially for priests in the Blessed Sacrament Monastery. It was like a bank – safe, secure, private and anonymous. You couldn’t see your hand in front of you. I had a similar experience deep underground at Jenolan Caves, when the guide turned off the lights. The darkness was so deep it was hard to comprehend and very disorienting.

In the first reading tonight we heard the story of the Genesis of Creation (Gen 1:1-2:2). In a time before time, before God created the heavens and the earth, there was a formless void, a deep darkness over the dark deep. And God said “Let there be light” and there was light. So God’s first creative act was a big bang of energy in that darkest place that is outer space, after which would come time and matter and life.

So too at the dawn of the New Creation. Deep in that darkest of places – that ‘inner space’ that is the tomb – there was a similar explosion of light, a big bang of energy after which would come a new sense of time and history, a new meaning for all earthly matter, and eternal life to replace merely mortal life.

Though no one was there to witness either eruption of light, both are revealed to us; and at the second, there were people nearby. So Matthew tells us of the discovery “towards dawn on the first day of the week” of the angel of the Lord with a face like lightning, a robe white as snow, whose energy as his message paralysed the soldiers but filled the women with awe and great joy (Mt 28:1-10).

The Easter Vigil is the climax of the liturgical year, the greatest of Christian ceremonies, and it is bathed in light. The Easter fire, the entry of the Paschal candle and the singing of the Exultet all celebrate divine light entering the darkness of human history and the hearts of every abandoned soul. It is the illumination of creation and of the Church.

So the Exultet tells Mother Earth to rejoice in her “shining splendour”, the reflected glory of her bright king: “Christ has conquered! Glory fills you! Darkness vanishes for ever!” Next, the Easter song tells Mother Church to exult in glory, for she too luxuriates in the shining light of her Risen Saviour.

Thirdly, the song summons each of us, holding candles sharing the Paschal light, to join in song and prayer. The light is for all creation, all the Church and all of us. This is the Night promised from days of old in Holy Scriptures, when “night will be as clear as day. It will become my light, my joy!”

Eusebius records that in 4^th Century Milan, the Emperor Constantine “transformed the night of the sacred Vigil into the brilliance of day, by lighting throughout the whole city pillars of wax, while burning lamps illuminated every part, so that that mystic night was rendered brighter than the brightest daylight.”

For those early Christians it must have been especially meaningful that after dark centuries of terrible persecution they could now step out into the public light to celebrate Christ’s resurrection and theirs.

In other places the Paschal candle sometimes assumed massive proportions. In Rome it was the size and mass of a man. In Westminster and Canterbury it was 300 pounds in weight. In Norwich and Durham the candle was so high, special apertures had to be cut into the high vaulted ceiling to forestall fire. In 19^th Century Seville an 8ight metre Paschal candle sat upon a several metres high pedestal and weighed the best part of a tonne. The candle was lit by climbing a ship’s mast mounted with steps and a platform.

Here at St Patrick’s Cathedral our candle is more modest in scale, but light we have in proper abundance, not just to celebrate this Night of Nights, but to reflect the fact that we need that light every bit as much as those ancients did.

Many are the times in our lives when we crave some light, some enlightenment for our murky minds, some warmth for our cold hearts, some radiance for our tired souls. There are many times in our lives when we need ‘resurrecting’, some ‘rebirth from the dead’.

These are small resurrections, perhaps, from the darkness of lacking inspiration, or from depression or loneliness, from sickness or suffering. Many are the times we pray to be raised out of our tombs. And just as each sickness and grief is a portent of that deep darkness into which we will all ultimately enter at our deaths, so each recovery and joy is a promise of something better beyond the grave, possible by God’s grace.

How often in our lives have we experienced some gift of light and warmth which has come as pure grace, from outside ourselves? Each of these is, of course, an omen of that great rebirth into the light which is to come at our resurrection.

Tonight our cathedral parish is especially privileged to celebrate the Baptisms of Chen, Claire, Montyn, Danielle, Kartik, Jacqueline with Noelani, Charmaine with Christian, Xiuling with Chloe, Alan and Lixin.

The Easter Vigil was from ancient times the preferred time for Baptism because it is a celebration of a person being Eastered, joined to Christ in His Life, Death and Resurrection. As St Paul said in our Epistle: “When we were baptised in Christ Jesus, we were baptised into His death … we went into the tomb with Him and joined Him in death; so that as Christ was raised from the dead, we too might live a new life” (Rom 6:3-4).

At Baptism ordinary human beings experience that big bang of light that occurred at the creation of the universe and at its recreation at Christ’s resurrection. To see our friends and family and fellow parishioners Eastered is a great joy. We join Mother Earth and Mother Church in rejoicing. We assure you of the welcome of this parish, of the Universal Church, and of the whole communion of saints.

It is a great joy, but a lesson, also, to us all. The Baptisms we witness are testimony to the action of God’s light in the lives not just of our catechumens but of the rest of us. The Exultet, once again, explains what this night means. This is “our Passover Feast”, when God “first saved our fathers, freed the people of Israel from their slavery, and led them dry-shod through the sea.”

So too, this night, our brothers and sisters are washed clean of sin by Baptism and restored to grace and innocence. Without Adam’s sin we would not have needed Baptism and so might never have had a Redeemer. And so the Exultet dares calls the Fall a “happy fault”, a “necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”

“Night truly blessed, when heaven is wedded to earth, and man is reconciled with God.” Alleluia! Christ is truly Risen!

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for Good Friday (Year A)
St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 22 April 2011

Two planks of wood, known as the World Youth Day Cross, were given to the youth of the world by Pope John Paul II a generation ago. That cross has made its way to every corner of the world and in 2007-08 went to every part of Australia.

Something like half a million young Australians came into contact with it. They took it into Parliament, to Uluru, the Barrier Reef, Aboriginal and rural communities, to schools and universities, shopping malls and sporting stadiums – everywhere of importance to them. Here in Parramatta it came up the Rivercat, was escorted by God’s Squad bikies, and visited many places in our Diocese.

There were so many moving scenes of young people at the foot of that cross – touching, kissing, holding it; carrying, kneeling or standing silently before it; crying, smiling, praying. It was a portent of the great outpouring of grace that was to come to our country and for the young people of the world at World Youth Day here in Sydney. Now it is making its way around Spain as a prelude to the following World Youth Day in Madrid later this year.

Well might we ask: what is it that draws those young people to the cross? What is in their minds as they kneel so reverently or as they come from all around to touch it, to be with it?

When I am lifted up, said Christ, I will draw all men to myself. Lifted up to heaven, to be sure, but first lifted up upon the cross. In chapter 12 of John’s Gospel, Jesus entered triumphant into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Now was the hour for Him to be glorified, but His soul was troubled.

He realised how that glorification would come about: Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but ‘dead’ and buried in the ground it germinates and “bears much fruit”. Only when I am lifted up will I draw humanity to myself; only when I am cast down into the earth will I bring them new life. And so, John reports, Jesus “cried out” a cry of exasperation, pleading with them to believe in Him.

It is not the first time Jesus yelled with all His might. The first sound which God-made-man made to us was not a word, or a sigh but the scream of a new-born baby. He yelled again when His friend Lazarus died, crying out with a cry deep enough to raise the dead (Jn ch. 11).

Around 3pm on Good Friday, St Matthew told us last Sunday that “Jesus cried out in a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani – my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? And then, crying out in a loud voice, he yielded up his spirit (Mt 27:45-50).

Jesus is God crying out in a human voice. God in the depths of our anguish, fear, fury, suffering. Crying out at the injustice, the loneliness, the pain. Jesus is Emmanuel, God-with-us, com-passio, with us even in those most inarticulate, desperate moments, when all we can do is cry out. Jesus Christ is, forever, the Cry of God.

Here is a hint, I think, about the drawing power of that cross. Young people – and people of all ages – bring to the Cross of Christ their needs and anxieties, their griefs and fears, that there Christ Himself might articulate those cries for them, that there they might know that God is with them and for them.

But Christ is more than this; He is not only a cry of desperation. He is also the Logos: God’s reason, argument, explanation, com-unicatio, spoken by God from all eternity.

In the beginning of Creation, God spoke and there was light, and matter, and order, and life, and humanity. In the beginning of the New Creation God spoke again, and “the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us” (Jn 1:14).

God-made-one-of-us didn’t just cry. Jesus is God, speaking to us with gentle consoling words, with hard challenging words. He preached, He invited, He commanded. His word attracted, converted, cured.

Young people – and those not so young – come to the cross not only to hear the cry of God but also the reasons. We all, but especially when we are youthful, search for meaning, for purpose. What is my life for? What, who, can I love? To what, to whom can I entrust my whole life?

And even from the cross, God speaks His words. Today you will be with me in Paradise. Forgive them Father. I thirst. This is your Mother, this your son. Into your hands I commend my spirit. It is accomplished.

Right to the end Jesus gave us the words of God. Words that save. And in due course He would speak again, at His resurrection, in His Church, in her scriptures and tradition, in her preaching and doing. Jesus Christ is, forever, the Word of God.

We come to the cross to hear the Cry and the Word, the compassion and the communication of God. But His first night was the ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’. Though those with ears to hear heard angels, He came unannounced into the silence of the night. And He slipped away alike on the night before He died, back out into the quiet.

At His trials, though He said a few telling words, He mostly said nothing. “Like a lamb to the slaughter house,” they said, “harshly dealt with, he never opened his mouth.” (Isa 53:7; Acts 8:32) In the end He sighed and “bowing his head he gave up the ghost” (Jn 19:30 KJV).

Jesus is the cry of the human heart and of God’s heart. Jesus is the language of the human mind and of God’s mind. But He is also the ineffable mystery – that wholly other, wordless, soundless, silent, awesome, inscrutability of God and man.

Now the Word of God is mute. Struck dumb. Silent. God is dead. No more loud yelling. No more quiet whispers. No more consoling words. Suffering and death are beyond words. So, ultimately, are human beings and their God, and that joining of man to God we call salvation. And so we go down into the silence of the tomb, into the depths of the earth. Nowhere is quieter. Nowhere more silent.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for the Mass of the Lord’s Supper (Year A)
St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 21 April 2011

Feet. Not the most glamorous part of the human body. Many people are embarrassed at the thought of exposing them in public, especially in the middle of the Church’s most solemn liturgy, that of the Triduum.

Yet feet were an important symbol in ancient times. Feet were the only part of the Unseen God sometimes seen from below by those blessed with such a vision (e.g. Ex 24:10; 2 Sam 22:10; Ps 18:9; Ezek 43:7; Zech 14:4). The response of people like Moses and Joshua was to take off their shoes and bare their own feet out of reverence for holy ground (Ex 3:5; Josh 5:15; Acts 7:33).

The mighty, of course, could afford the vulnerability of being bare-footed, as their slaves would dress and undress their feet for them as required and even carry them about (cf. Acts 13:35). Devotees kissed the feet of their gurus, priests had them washed for them, and victorious leaders even tread upon their enemies’ prone bodies (e.g. Ex 30:19-21; 40:31; 1 Kings 5:3; Josh 3:13; 10:24; Isa 49:23; Ps 2:12; 8:6; 47:3; Lk 17:16; Acts 10:25; Heb 2:8).

The Jews looked forward to their enemies being made into God’s footstool (Ps 110:1; cf. Mt 22:44; Rom 16:20) and the early Christians, for all the forgiveness talk, relished the thought that the same would become of their enemies too (Acts 2:35; Heb 1:13; 10:13; 1 Cor 15:25-27; Rev 3:9). So bare feet represented both sacred and secular power.

Washing feet was a symbol of many things: reverence, subservience, but also plain hospitality. People arrived, often on foot, their feet tired, dusty, sandy. The welcoming thing was to wash their feet or at least offer them the wherewithal to do it themselves (e.g. Gen 19:2; 24:32; 43:24; Jud 19:21). When Abraham famously offered hospitality to three angels at Mamre, he first offered them water to wash their feet (Gen 18:4). St Timothy said that older widows could be enrolled as ‘nuns’ only if they were full of good works, kind to strangers and the afflicted, and “washed the feet of the saints” (1 Tim 5:9-10).

In the chapter immediately preceding the one we have just heard from John’s Gospel (Jn 13:1-15), Lazarus’ and Martha’s sister Mary washes and anoints Jesus’ feet as a sign of affection but also of His Passion to come (Jn 12:1-8; cf 11:2). Judas, we remember, was annoyed by the money wasted and perhaps by the attention, both of which he coveted for himself. The other evangelists admit that not only Judas but the other disciples felt that way (Mt 26:6-13; Mk 14:3-9).

Luke tells of a similar incident in which a woman of ill-repute washed Jesus’ feet when His Pharisee host failed even to offer Him water to wash His own feet (Lk 7:36-50). The point was, visitors deserved better, especially those who had walked many kilometres preaching the Gospel.

St Dominic Guzman, founder of the Order of Preachers, walked literally thousands of kilometres, through Spain, France, Italy and beyond, preaching the Gospel, establishing houses of friars or nuns, never staying long in any one place. Roads were often poor and he refused to ride on a donkey or horse: he wanted to live as the poor lived, and to be an itinerant preacher as Christ had been.

The Dominicans take as their text on his feast day the words of the prophet Isaiah, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news” (Isa 52:7; cf. Rom 10:15). They like to joke that while it might have been beautiful to hear Dominic’s footsteps and know he was coming, his feet themselves would have been calloused, broken, dirty, probably disfigured and smelly, certainly a long way from the feet of a foot model used for a shoe advertisement!

Tonight Jesus washes His disciples’ feet, as we hear in our reading and see in the mandatum ceremony. Like the feet of those thousands of pilgrims who will walk across Europe to Madrid later this year for World Youth Day, many of those apostles’ feet were, I suspect, tired, gnarled, pongy, sore.

Thus Jesus tells of His love for them, of the hospitality of God, of the kingdom He promises, of His reverence for their new priesthood, of the service they must give. Like Mary He also prepares them for burial, for that martyrdom that will come of having feet made beautiful by preaching the Gospel. The mandatum, the mandate or direction He gives, is to do the same in turn: what I have done, so you too should do.

It’s not the last time He will say this tonight. The priests of old were ordained by washing and anointing their hands and their feet (Ex 29:1-9; 30:19-21 etc.). And both feet and hands will feature this night. Having washed His disciples feet Jesus put His clothes back on and returned to the Passover meal.

He took bread and wine in His sacred hands. Looking up to heaven to His Almighty Father, He gave thanks and praise. With His hands He broke the bread and gave it to His disciples. With His hands He took the cup and gave it to His friends.

He was handing over to them the Passover gifts, but so much more: He was handing Himself over to them. Take this from my hands: it is My Body; it is My Blood. As God in Jesus Christ had done from the very moment of the Incarnation, He was placing Himself into the hands of sinful men.

Now and for all time, His Body and Blood will be truly present under the species of bread and wine. And just as He mandated that they should imitate what He did with feet, so He tells them to imitate what He is doing with His hands: Do this in memory of me.

The Dominicans, I mentioned, have a thing about feet, at least Dominic’s beautiful feet, but also about hands. At their profession, their vows, when they give themselves away, they place their hands into the hands of their superior, in place of the Master of the Order, in place of Holy Father Dominic, in place of Christ the Lord.

It is, of course, a traditional gesture of fealty, of submission in holy obedience, and it is used in the Rite of the Ordination as well. Hands and feet, a friar or a priest is given over to God.

Later again tonight Jesus will be taken in hand, this time by soldiers. He will be bound hand and foot. The authorities will literally wash their hands of Him; the soldiers will slap Him with their hands and kick Him with their feet.

Tomorrow He will be stretched out and nailed – hand and foot – upon the cross. Though twisted and gory, people will be drawn to look at those hands and feet: they will look upon the one they have pierced (Ps 22:16; Zech 12:10; Jn 19:37).

And when He rises at Easter the Lord will say “See my hands and my feet” (Lk 24:39) – wounded but glorious. No wonder Mary Magdalene will try to cling to them and at the Ascension so will all His disciples (Jn 20:17; Mt 28:9-10).

On this holy night, we pledge once again to use our hands and feet as they were used on that first Holy Thursday: to tell of reverence and love, of worship and praise, of service and sacrament.

Bishop Anthony Fisher's Homily for the Chrism Mass (Year A),
St Patrick’s Cathedral, 20 April 2011

Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP with Prelate of Honour of His Holiness, Right Rev Monsignor Robert McGuckin VGR EV, and Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice 2011 recipient, Fr Eric Burton. Fathers David Scott and Les Campion were also announced as Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice recipients at the Chrism Mass.

In Stella Gibbons’ comic novel Cold Comfort Farm (1932) Amos Starkadder, the hellfire preacher of the Church of the Quivering Brethren, welcomes his parishioners in these terms:

“Ye miserable, crawlin’ worms. Are ye here again then?...And what good will it do ye? You’re all damned! Damned! Do you ever stop to think what that word means? No, you don’t. It means endless, horrifying torment!...You know what it’s like when you burn your hand, taking a cake out of the oven, or lighting one of them godless cigarettes? And it stings with a fearful pain, aye? And you run to clap a bit of butter on it to take the pain away, aye? Well, I’ll tell ye, there’ll be no butter in hell!”

Our words Christ, Christmas and Christian all come, of course, from the Greek word χρῖσμα (chrisma) – the word for ointment, anointing, chrism.

Χριστός (Christos) is the one to be or who has been anointed. Jesus is described in our First Reading (Isa 61:1-3,6,8-9) and our Gospel (Lk 4:16-21) as ἔχρισέν (ekrisen) – anointed – with the oil of gladness to bring Good News to those in any kind of poverty, liberation to those imprisoned by history, vice or addiction, sight to blind eyes and insight to hearts without vision. Jesus Christ, Jesus Anointed, is the divine ointment, extending from the first Christ-mas through every Chrism-Mass to the end of time, butter for hurting souls.

Far from delighting in maximising people’s torments in this world or the number tormented in the next, the Anointed One extends His thumb with its sacred oil to bring catechumens from being lost to saved, to bring the infirm from pain and suffering to care and cure, to bring the unconsecrated into the realm of those confirmed and consecrated as forever God’s own.

In addition to consecrating the Sacred Chrism tonight is also the occasion on which the clergy and faithful of the diocese gather around their bishop in their most visible display of unity all year. It is a public statement of our oneness and we rightly make this statement just before entering the Triduum. We dare proclaim our unity, while aware there are fractured, both within and between us – even as we are aware that it has always been so, for we are about to witness one of us betray Our Lord with a kiss, another of us deny Him three times, a crowd of us cry for His crucifixion. Our Lord prays his priestly prayer that they may all be one, as you Father and I are one – and we argue amongst ourselves about who is the greatest, who is faithful and who is the traitor. For all our protestations of love at that Last and First Supper, as soon as there is trouble we scatter in all directions.

How often in history have Christians talked unity but then demonstrated discord and enmity? So each year every diocese makes this last goodwill gesture before plunging into the Lord’s passion, death and resurrection. We do so aware that pride and sin, ambition and ideology, ancient nursed grudges and newfound tensions, can all rupture the peace between us and within us and be a countersign to our world. Yet we also do so with great confidence, not quivering as did Starkadder’s flock, because we know that Christ’s chrism is at work for us, in us and through us.

Tonight, too, we priests remind ourselves that the great gift of the priesthood is not an individual possession – not my priesthood, your priesthood and his priesthood, added together to make a great big priesthood. No, there is only one priesthood: the priesthood of the Anointed One, Jesus Christ, who made this line of kingly priests to serve His God and Father (Rev 1:5-8), a priesthood exercised by Him in every Holy Mass, in every absolution, in every anointing at baptism, confirmation, ordination or infirmity. Whether instantiated in a priest offering Mass alone, a whole deanery of priests offering Reconciliation to a region, or a whole diocesan presbyterate gathered as tonight: it is this one single priesthood we demonstrate. And in doing so we aspire to be dispensers of Christ’s chrism, God’s healing balm for a broken world, agents of His process of redeeming, reintegrating and reconciling.

The Chrism itself tells this in various ways. In a world now so large that the bishop can no longer perform all the Baptisms and Confirmations, he is present in the priest ordained by him and with his Chrism, and present too in the Sacred Chrism used at every baptism and Confirmation, as a sign of the unity of the diocese. Through the bishop’s communion with the Pope and bishops of the world, that diocese is, in turn, part of the one family of the Church universal, the anointed ones of God.

With the Sacred Chrism I will also bless tonight the Oil of Catechumens and Oil of the Sick, so that from this Mass, through the signs of oil and perfume, a message goes out to the world: to those who seek membership of the Church and those already in the Church, to infants and adults, to the sick and the well, to youth contemplating their vocation and seminarians on the brink of ordination, to all of these the message is: God’s anointed is with us, Jesus the Chrismed One is right here, in the Diocese of Parramatta, in the Gospel good news preached here to the poor, in the healing brought to those who suffer, in the silver anniversary Year of the Lord’s Favour soon to begin.

For all our worthy attempts at reintegrating our fractured selves and relationships through prayer, fasting and alms we are mindful that the Lenten way is only effective by the power of Easter. At the fraction rite in every Mass we recall that men once broke the Body of Christ, hoping to rid themselves of this captivating and demanding person by breaking Him on a cross: but now that very same broken body is received to restore unity where we could not ourselves. Only because the Lord is risen can we give and receive the Easter sacraments, be anointed with the oil of gladness and anoint others in turn.

As the sacred oil goes out from this chair tonight to every corner of our Diocese, with it goes a promise of healing, liberation and hope: the perfume of prayer and praise offered by the priests of God; the gifts of a people many and diverse but united in one mission: to bring the healing balm of Christ to our world.

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It was with great joy that I received this week past a communication from the Holy See, which I am now pleased to share with you.

Ordained priest by Cardinal Gilroy on 22 July 1950, he served in the parishes of Fairfield, Rockdale, Earlwood, Dee Why, St Mary’s Cathedral and Balgowlah. On 8 February 1970 he was appointed founding Parish Priest of North Rocks and remained Parish Priest until his retirement earlier this year after 41 years as parish priest. The Holy Father is pleased to award to Fr Eric Burton the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice.

Also ordained priest by Cardinal Gilroy at that Mass, he served in the parishes of Naremburn, Lewisham, Cairns, Granville, Auburn, Lane Cove and Hoxton Park. He was appointed Parish Priest of Granville on 1 June 1975 where he served until his retirement. The Holy Father is pleased to award to Father Michael Leslie Campion the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice.

A third priest ordained by Cardinal Gilroy on 22 July 1950 served in the parishes of Katoomba, Lakemba, Haberfield, Lithgow, Dulwich Hill, Strathfield, on the staff of St Patrick’s Manly, and at St Mary’s Cathedral. He appointed founding pastor of St Paul’s Winston Hills on 10 February 1970 where he remained until retirement. The Holy Father is pleased to award to Father David Roy Scott the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice.

Go to Chrism Mass 2011 Photo Gallery

Homily of Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP for Passion Sunday (Palm Sunday), Year A, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 17 April 2011, 6pm Youth Mass

We have just begun the holiest week of the year, when the Church celebrates her most solemn liturgies in recollection of the greatest events in salvation history. One big feature of this week of celebrations will be processions.

We have just had a solemn entrance procession, re-enacting Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, with hundreds of excited youth from all around our diocese, carrying their palms and songs, their youthful exuberance and the flags of many nations in procession through our streets to this cathedral.

During Holy Week many will join confession queues, as many have done in the Second Rite of Reconciliation services in deaneries over the past week or so. On Wednesday night there will be a procession of oils into St Patrick’s Cathedral for consecration for our use in the year ahead.

On Maundy Thursday night we will take the Blessed Sacrament in procession out of the main body of the Cathedral, into the darkness of Christ’s last night. On Good Friday we will come forward in procession to the cross. Our most dramatic procession of all will be on Saturday night, when we bring our new Paschal candle just lit from the Easter fire into the Cathedral, assisted by the whole community of light and song.

Now, that seems to be a lot of walking about. Why all this to and fro, this standing, kneeling and sitting, up again and off for another walkabout? Do we have spiritual ants-in-our-pants? Are we unable to keep still, even for a few moments? Well, one thing it clearly is not about is just getting from A to B: if I wanted to get from the sacristy to this chair there are quicker and easier routes than going via Prince Alfred Park!

Processions are, of course, an element in most ceremonies, not just of every religion, but also of many secular occasions such as the Opening of Parliament. Many of you will experience the bridal march or the academic procession when receiving your degrees. Catholic culture from early times included many marches – for funerals, big feasts, the Blessed Sacrament, local saints – decorated with smells and bells, banners and books, song and dance, relics and rose petals.

In England, on Rogation Days, they used to mark out the parish limits by walking all around those borders, reading the Gospel, singing, beating out the boundaries with sticks, and flogging the boys so they would always remember where the boundaries were. Happily for our altar servers we don’t do that here in the Cathedral parish any more, but even here, every Sunday we have a grand procession with cross and candles and the rest, if not quite as grand as our wonderful procession tonight!

There are two things we might reflect upon every time we process into church or to Holy Communion: first, that these processions are symbols of God’s great procession to us. From the dawn of creation to the end of time, God has come to us and will come to us, again and again. Most dramatically He comes in Jesus Christ.

In our Second Reading tonight (Phil 2:6-11) St Paul sang his great hymn about God emptying Himself of glory to take on our life, to become our servant, to suffer all we suffer, even to die with us and for us. And having descended from the heights into the depths of human tragedy, He emerges victorious and is raised up again to the heights, refilled with His divine glory.

The procession of God to humanity is like an entrance procession, as God returns week after week with His offer of salvation, insight, healing, hope. Today we hear of the climax of that great procession of God to us, as Jesus makes His way to His Passover in Jerusalem, along the Way of the Cross to Golgotha and the Tomb, that He might share with all of broken humanity their suffering and cares and promise them new life.

God comes to us, then, in a sort of liturgical procession. But secondly, we come to Him. As we process into Mass or up to Holy Communion on any Sunday, as we creep to the cross on Good Friday or follow the Paschal Candle into the Church on Easter night, we rehearse the procession of our own lives to God.

In the first Gospel we read in the park tonight (Mt 21:1-11) people accompanied Jesus on His solemn entry into Jerusalem waving palms and throwing cloaks in His path; in the second Gospel, the Passion which we just heard solemnly recited (Mt 26:14-27:66), we saw the disciples make their convoy with Jesus to His Last Supper, from the Last Supper out to the Garden of Gethsemane, and then some of them with Him to trial and death and burial.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for 5^th Sunday in Lent (Year A), Installation of Rev Brendan Murphy SDB as Parish Priest of Our Lady of the Rosary, St Marys, 10 April 2011

Around the time that Lazarus died so did Princess Tou Wan of China. The discovery in 1969 of her tomb and that of her husband caused a sensation: for the Chinese nobility of Lazarus’ day believed that jade and gold could gain a person eternal life and so they had dressed the couple in suits of more than 2,000 tiny plates of thin jade, sewn together with gold thread, and had surrounded them with a staggering treasury of gold objects.

Eternal life and youth have been the dream of every culture in history. The ancients sought it through various rituals and potions, monkey glands and animal horns, embalming and treasure. The moderns try cosmetic surgery, transplants and stem-cells. A recent film, Never Let Me Go, powerfully tells of the proposal to clone twins of ourselves to be cannibalised for spare parts.

Whatever the technique these are all examples of mortal creatures desperately fearful of the inevitable, hiding from death, pretending it away, keeping it from our children, our conversations, our consciousness, seeking to postpone our end indefinitely and its early warning signs of ageing.

So, dare those of us without jade and gold hope for life beyond the grave? As we walk this Lenten way with Christ, dare we look beyond the tomb to an Easter for ourselves too? Well, today Jesus gives us little preview ...

The story of Lazarus (Jn 11:1-45) is not another dream of extending our lease on mortal life. No: Jesus gives Lazarus a new lease of life not to feed our fetish for more earthly life, but as a sign of His own life-giving power through His impending death and resurrection. He declares Himself the resurrection and the life: the only One who can share with us divine, immortal life.

It’s the resurrection of the body we are promised, yes, but it is more: the resurrection of our heart and soul too. The ancient Fathers of the Church read this passage as a promise not just to the physically dead, but also to the emotionally dead: those numb with grief or fear, those stinking in the grave of jealousy, hatred or self-pity. We all come to Christ needing our emotional hearts renewed as much as our physical ones. We come asking for hope, for some cause for hope, and for consolation.

There is a promise, too, made not just to the physically or emotionally moribund, but also to those whom Paul described in our Second Reading (Rom. 8:8-11) as spiritually dead, whether from the lethal blow of mortal sin or the sleeping sickness of many lesser pecadillos, which incline us, like the apostles who complacently said before Lazarus died, “She’ll be right. He’ll get better,” when things were or are more serious.

Sin, you see, like Ratsak given in one large or many smaller doses, is death: to our love of God and neighbour, to our own character, destiny, soul. After such poisoning we rot away in the sepulchre of our iniquities, so oft repeated and long accustomed we fail any longer even to notice them. So bound are we by selfishness and pride, that even if we wanted to we could not escape the shackles on our own. We can be so tied up by personal history and habit and lack of faith or imagination that we are mummified like Lazarus and cannot break free.

In Lent Jesus comes to us and to all who are trapped in the graves of sin, despair and death. We are the Lazarus whom Jesus loves, whose passing He grieves so deeply, for whom He moans and sighs and shows His most human side. We are the ones who provoke the shortest and most moving verse in the New Testament: “Jesus wept.”

Jesus weeps for us in the confines of our mortal fears, our mortal sins, our mortal deaths. He prays for us to His Father. He declares war on our last enemy, Death, in all its forms. He declares Himself our champion, our resurrection and our life. He is the power of God saving, mightier than any earthy death. Whoever believes in Him, even if dies, has eternal life.

Christ calls us to rise up and go forth from our spiritual or emotional or physical tombs; to allow Him to forgive us our sins, console our broken hearts, bring new life to our dried-up bones. He brings His disciples with Him so they might continue this task, of weeping and moaning, of binding and loosing. “Peace be with you,” Jesus says to His Easter Church. “Whose sins you forgive they are forgiven. Whomsoever you unbind on earth shall be unbound also in heaven.”

Lazarus, of course, was only resuscitated. He was doomed to die again and in the meantime to suffer pain, sadness and sin like rest of us. Like us all he still had to look forward to the general resurrection, for the glorification of his body and soul. Like the rest of us, he could only hope for that day, when every tear will be wiped away, when we will be released from the binding cloths of sadness and fear, jealousy and depression, sin and temptation, compulsion and vice. But in the meantime Lazarus glimpsed life eternal in getting his new lease of life and so might we, every time we receive that periodic raising up of our hearts and souls that is the gift of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

The Church exhorts us this Lent to give up on any vain hope of keeping ourselves young and eternal through jade and gold and the rest; to let her loose the mortal bonds of our vice and guilt in Confession; to start afresh like Lazarus who heard those wonderful absolving words: “Unbind him and let him go free!”

ooo

Tonight we install Fr Brendan Murphy SDB as your Parish Priest. In his priestly service it will be his task to sanctify, including to absolve, his people and celebrate God’s mercy with them. His Salesian brothers have also shared in that ministry of mercy here for many years now. It will also be Fr Brendan’s task to preach and teach, and to lead and serve you.

He will be responsible on my behalf for the worship, evangelisation and service of this parish. But he cannot do this all by himself. Together, priest and people, can do far more than any one of you could do alone.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for Mass at Wollemi College, Werrington, 6 April 2011

Introduction

I’m delighted to be here today to celebrate the Eucharist with you. Although your school has been operating since 2004, this year is a coming of age because for the first time, you have a Year 12 cohort. We pray for them, especially, and for their families at this rather high-pressure time of their lives.

At the end of this year, having graduated an HSC class, you will be a thoroughly grown-up school. At the other end of their school career, I welcome the boys who are new to Wollemi, the boys in Year 3, and their families. I hope the others are being kind to you and showing you the ropes.

Bishop Anthony's Homily

In four months’ time there will be a census. Your parents will have to fill in a form as will every household, giving information about all sorts of things that will, in turn, help demographers, planners, government and business – and the Church – to know more about who we are and where and what we need. People will be asked what religion they are. Some will leave it blank. Some will write ‘no religion’. Most will give a Christian religion of some sort. Maybe one-third of people in Western Sydney will say ‘Catholic’ and that will make us the most Catholic part of Australia.

Or will it? Maybe it’s all just words … Maybe people don’t really mean it when they write those things on the census … I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Apart from our religious self-identification the census will gather information about all sorts of other things such as our family structures, ethnic background, incomes, geography, you name it. It will help build up a rich picture of modern Australia and allow sociologists to drill down and get a picture of each neighbourhood, even each household.

But it won’t get to the bottom of who we are as human beings, what really makes us tick, what our deepest needs are. It takes God and Church, poetry and music, philosophy and theology to do that. It takes Scripture, which is all of those things.

Our first Scripture reading this morning, from the prophet Isaiah (Isa 49:8-15), is a powerful piece of writing. Even a non-Christian who thought it was just a bit of ancient literature would surely be bowled over by its imagery and energy. There is aspiration, imagination, movement in every sentence.

Clearly, the audience is people who are hurting in some way: they are trapped people, looking to be liberated; dispossessed people, wanting their lands back; homeless people, needing protection from scorching sun and cyclonic wind; desperate people, dreaming of a world with no more starvation and thirst; orphaned, forgotten, unloved people, for whom God’s promise of parental love is a huge relief. Think of the victims of the recent floods, earthquakes, tsunami and nuclear spills: for what do they hope? Think of yourself when you are sad or depressed or lonely: what do you crave?

Everyone in Isaiah’s reading is on the way to somewhere better, to a place with no more tsunamis or thirst, terror or tears. God is making all things new, people are gathering from all around, the atmosphere is electric with joyful expectation. You could say it is raining joy! There’s a cyclone of hope! God is inviting us to the biggest and best party of all time. Even if women might forget their own babies, Isaiah says – something the Jews thought almost impossible – God will never forget His children. We might struggle for a time, but in the end He will defend us: He will never ‘defriend’ us!

We know this is true because God sent Jesus and it is because Jesus died and rose for us that we can have new life. This is the life we hear about in this morning’s Gospel passage (Jn 5:17-30). The promise is not just for the afterlife: God wants us to taste happiness even now.

But there’s no automatic entry! You can’t gate-crash His party. The Gospel tells us that the person who believes in God, who listens to the words of His Son and honours His words, will have eternal life. Listening with faithful ears, believing with an open heart, this is a dynamic thing: it requires a response, it demands action on our part. Christianity is for jumping with joy after the hard times. It’s for players, not for mere viewers. It’s for get-up-and-go disciples, not for pew potatoes.

Which brings me back to the national census later this year. If you were filling in the page for yourself, what religion would you write? What answer do you give every day by the things you say and do, by your attitude, your relationships? What difference does it make that you are a Wollemi boy? What difference will it make that you are growing up in a good Christian home and will graduate from here with a God-given mission to change your little bit of the world for the better? What difference will it make that you have heard the Word of God who is Jesus Christ at Mass, in religion classes, from your teachers and your friends, in your everyday school and family life? Will life after the HSC tell Christ’s story in some way? Will Catholic be more than a tag you are given or give yourself at census time?  

Last weekend I launched my first Pastoral Letter as Bishop and it suggest one response you can make to Christ’s Easter words. A pastoral letter is a letter addressed to everyone in the Diocese and especially to you. I’ve put it in writing, as a letter, in the Catholic press, in dvd format, on the web, as an MP3 file, on YouTube, you name it: whatever way you connect, you can find it.

There I suggest that there are three phrases we all need to say and say often: I’m sorry … I forgive you … I love you. We have to use these phrases in our relationships with family and friends and God. And so what I ask you to do this Lent is what I know your school chaplains ask you often: to head off to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. You see: it’s exactly what the doctor ordered for sad Israel. It’s exactly what Jesus offers us as Easter Lord.

What was the first thing He said to the lads that first Easter after He rose and came to meet them? Was it: ‘Hey guys I’m back? Thought I was gone for good, didn’t ya? Tricked ya. Don’t worry, be happy. You can’t keep a good man down.’ Not precisely.

His first words were joyful, Alleluia words, but they were serious too: “Peace be with you: whose sins you forgive they are forgiven.” That was their Easter egg. Something much better than chocolate. The chance for a new life. The opportunity for absolution.

For those who feel trapped and in need of liberation, who are thirsting for something mere drink never satisfies, who feel out of place or out of sorts or out of grace, those dispossessed of heaven by their own stupid choices, those crying out for hope: to all of them the Sacrament of Reconciliation is the chance to be Eastered. The chance to rise from the tomb of sin, shame and regret. It’s the Sacrament of Liberation and the chance to put the worst behind us and break out like Isaiah into shouts of joy.

Of course, there’s much more to a life of faith in Jesus Christ, to listening faithfully to His word in school and living it out of school. Confession is just one of the treasures He offers. But I pray it is one you and your family will be committed to by the time you leave here. You certainly receive every opportunity!

Who sinned, who’s to blame to this man’s disability (this gospel, people asked). It is about as silly as asking who’s sin caused the Queensland flood, or the earthquake in Japan or Christchurch. But Jesus is patient with them because they’re right to think that there is a spiritual dimension to all this.

There’s a kind of spiritual blindness that needs healing as much as any physical handicap, and healing begins with the recognition of need.

To have lasting happiness in this world and the next, there’re three short phrases we need to say and say often “I am sorry”, “I forgive you” and “I love you”. Married people know that, friends know that. Our nation has say sorry to the indigenous people. Our Church has too for its many failings, especially those for some pastors.

But why do we really need to say sorry, isn’t it enough to feel sorry? Human beings give meaning to their world by naming things. Their first task in the bible was to name the animals. Adam also named his wife, Eve. Jesus named Simon, Peter and in turn Peter called him, the Christ, the son of the living God. From the time we first learn to talk, we try to describe our experiences, thoughts and feelings.

Naming gives us a measure of understanding and control, our parents also tell us the names of things to be wary of, like fire and traffic. Moses is told the names of things to avoid: idolatry, impiety, violence, adultery, lying, stealing, lust and envy. These names are the basis of our ten commandments.

Some people say all guilt is neurotic or a waste of energy; that we should cast off that yoke, follow our own impulses, learn to love our foibles. It’s true that self-esteem is important and that self-hating guilt is pathological. Bad guilt hangs around unrecognized or undealt-with; but repentance moves us to reform our lives. If only mass murderers, child molesters, family breakers, pension-fund thieves and the smug rich experienced repentance, they might do something about it. That’s why Christ’s first public word was:

Repent.

Repent, he says to us still. Don’t just feel bad but change. Don’t go on a guilt trip – head towards the sacrament of liberation. And that begins with naming it out loud, telling it like it is. Owning up to sin, ‘putting it out there’, is an act of self-knowledge and responsibility, recognition not just of what we’ve done but of what it’s done to us. It takes courage and humility, but it’s the beginning of healing. As St Catherine of Sienna said it’s only by weeding the garden of our souls that we make space for virtues to flowers.

The Miserere – Psalm 51 – is a great prayer of preparation, penance and thanksgiving for Reconciliation.

The sinner wants mercy, cleansing and new spirit. All God asks of him is a humbled, contrite heart.

Naming the wrong we’ve done is coming to God with a humbled heart. Asking help to turn a new leaf and sin no more is a contrite heart.

Now’s the time to rediscover the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Some worried about being judged in the confessional. But confessors are not there to wag fingers. Our soon-to-be-beatified Pope John Paul II still made his weekly confession as a bishop: he simply went to his local parish church and got in the queue with everyone else. The fact is: priests are sinners too. We all need Confession.

So people shouldn’t be embarrassed about telling their story to a priest. Priests are humbled and inspired by penitents. They want to help them start afresh – with an encouraging word, some spiritual advice, a penance, and best of all, those breath taking word: I absolve you from your sins. God’s response to those words is awesome. “What the Church forgives, I forgive”. Just give me that humbled, contrite heart; and the healing and the spiritual growth can begin.

In our Gospel passage, Jesus cures a blind man who gradually comes to see the world for what it is and Jesus for who he is. Ultimately he says, “yes lord, I believe” and worships him. There are many such stories of healing and growth in the Gospels, perhaps the best known are the Prodigal Son, and the woman caught in the adultery. In each case, misery meets mercy. In each, the sinner is received back joyfully and given a new start. In each, there are resistant, resentful onlookers.

But why so public? Can’t we just leave things as private matters between us and God? Jesus knows we

are inclined to self-delusion and rationalization and that we are unlikely to own up to our failings unless we name them to another person. He also knows that we might never accept that we are forgiven unless it’s said out loud to us by God’s church. Bodily beings need such physical, audible, sacramental signs of grace. That’s why he instituted a sacrament of Reconciliation.

In another story, Jesus told a weeping woman “your sins are forgiven”. Those who overheard him, murmured “who does he think he is, forgiving sins”. The woman was the only one with an inkling of who he was, Jesus is the compassion of God, God saving, God forgiving. Jesus’ recognizes because she had been forgiven so much, this woman loved much. And because she had loved so much, much could be forgiven her. Now her most precious friendship of all – with God – is restored and she can grow in holiness.

That’s why people sometimes cry when they are forgiven: because they know they are alive and free, to go and sin no more, to live and love well again, to forgive others in turn. Absolution expands our hearts.

It enables us to love bigger and better, to grow spiritually and emotionally. It overflows in thanksgiving to God. At last we can love back the One who loved us so much he submitted to torture and death on the Cross for our forgiveness.

After the cross of repentance and absolution, comes new life, new love. The ten ‘words’ or commandments name not only past wrongs but future goals. Reverence for God, family, life, persons, creations, relationships. It’s a pattern for the good life, a life lived with a passion, sometimes hard, sometimes joyful, but ultimately the most fulfilling.

The Church exhorts us to seek sacramental Confession whenever we have done serious wrong; to be reconciled to God and our brothers and sisters before taking our Easter gifts to the altar. Jesus’ first gift to the Church at Easter was the power to forgive sins. It is a power closely connected to that rising from the dead to which we look during Lent. That’s why Catholics go to Confession around this time, we need to hear Jesus say to us “Your sins are forgiven, go in peace and sin no more.” Next he says, “Now come celebrate with me at the table of the Lord”. Only after Confession and Absolution of any serious sin can we approach Holy Communion, only then are we ready for the Wedding Feast of God’s kingdom. “Let’s party” says our Easter lord to the sinners raised from the tomb of sin. “There’ll be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous”.

“Come back to me with all you r heart” God pleads with us this Lent. Mercy and Reconciliation are

beautiful themes to consider in this year when our diocese of Parramatta celebrates its 25th anniversary, and more than 200 years of Catholic presence in Western Sydney. Every jubilee is a season of mercy, of waiving old debts, giving thanks for blessings received and looking forward with hope. Our silver jubilee is no exception.

So I ask you, especially in this year of Lent and this year of jubilee, to avail yourselves of this wonderful gift of confession. In the coming days, I’ll personally lead a Second Rite of Reconciliation service in very Deanery of the Diocese, and there’ll be plenty of confessors there to help, I hope to see you there.

May God bless you and your loved ones in the holy season of Lent and Easter and throughout this Jubilee Year for our Diocese.

Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu

Recently before attending meetings in Rome I had a short holiday in the heavenly village of Taormina in Sicily. On my first day I attended Mass at the Salesian church of St George, so-named because an English family funded its establishment and that of its religious community.

Mabel Hill is still celebrated in the village for her support for poor women and for her role in getting the Salesians to come to care for the poor children in what was then a very depressed part of Italy. Flags of Don Bosco and Mabel Hill together were on display all around the town. That day they celebrated one hundred years since the opening of the church and the coming of the Salesians.

That night I was treated to a street procession which included carrying the statue of Don Bosco and a small relic of him around the streets, complete with brass band and a choir, hymns, rosary, prayers to the saint, a rather long homily and finally, to everyone’s relief, fireworks. So I’m lucky enough to be blessed with his relics twice in a few weeks.

No doubt on this occasion there also will be a rather long homily, but I’m not sure if fireworks are planned!

What was it about this man and his religious family that so impressed people than even Anglicans in Sicily wanted to promote his mission? Our reading from St Paul’s Letter to Philippians (4:4-9) was chosen by the Church because it captures something of Don Bosco’s spirit. “I want you to be happy, always happy in the Lord; I repeat, what I want is your happiness.” But what is real happiness and what is the secret to achieving it? In our reading St Paul suggests that real happiness is the experience of the presence of the God of peace. Paul is being especially Jewish here, for Shalom, divine peace, is the greeting and blessing that his people always gave each other. How is that happy peace to be attained? Paul identifies tolerance, prayerfulness, gratitude, a mind set on the true and good and beautiful, and behaviour in imitation of Christ and His apostles.

Giovanni Melchior Bosco was born of poor Piedmontese parents in 1815 and lived 72 years. He was little more than two years old when his father died, leaving his mother to support three boys. His early experience of the struggles of families in poverty and as a shepherd boy were a premonition of his eventual vocation as a shepherd of poor boys. A bright youth with an appetite for study, he studied for the priesthood for Turin. As a young priest he was appalled to discover poor children in dreadful conditions in gaol, with little ahead of them but the gallows. A contemporary of St Mary MacKillop and driven by a similar compassion for poor children, he resolved, as she put it, ‘to never see a need without doing something about it’. He devoted his life to the rescue of these young outcasts.

On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1841, while Don Bosco was vesting for Mass, the sacristan drove from the church a noisy and uncooperative urchin. Don Bosco heard the boy’s cries and recalled him, and in the friendship which sprang up between them was sown the first seed of his ‘refuge’ or ‘oratory’: a place for street kids to experience that Pauline life patterned after Christ and His apostles, tolerant, prayerful and grateful; a place where they might fill their minds with beautiful things, however ugly was the slum of their daily life. Soon enough dozens of lads were drawn to join them and received the priest’s instruction and pastoral care.

John used many strategies to draw in these boys, many of them hardened by neglect and survival of the fittest: brass bands, sports, magic tricks, little presents, workshops and night schools, excursions to the countryside, whatever worked, as long as it showed these ruffians the love of Christ. Many priests and lay collaborators were drawn to join him and their society ultimately became the Salesian order. With Maria Domenica Mazzarello he founded the Salesian sisters. By the time he died in 1888 there were already 250 Salesian houses around the world, caring for 130,000 children and graduating 18,000 apprentices each year. Today they are the largest religious family in the world, if you include both the men and women.

In our contemporary world we might easily read Don Bosco as an heroic social worker. He was that, but he was much more than that. He was a Christian, after the spirituality of Francis de Sales. The children in his oratories learnt not only woodwork but also catechism; not only how to talk civilly to one another but also how to talk to God in prayer; not only how to live in charity but also how to become apostles of charity themselves. Don Bosco’s project was a religious one, and devotion to the Mass and the Eucharist outside of Mass, to Confession and to Our Lady are key to his spiritual legacy. Turin today boasts not only many institutions for the poor which he started, but also the splendid basilica to Our Lady Help of Christians which he built himself and where is his tomb. He probably didn’t choose Our Lady Help of Christians because she was Patron Saint of Australia – I’m not even sure he knew where Australia was – but it is another link we have to him.

Tonight Don Bosco is here in Australia, in the land of Our Lady Help of Christians, or at least major relics of him are. To many people – some Catholics amongst them – the cult of relics can seem macabre and superstitious. And it could be, but need not be so. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§§1674-75) notes that “The religious sense of the Christian people has always found expression in various forms of piety surrounding the Church’s sacramental life, such as the veneration of relics, visits to sanctuaries, pilgrimages, processions, the stations of the cross, religious dances, the rosary, medals, etc. These expressions of piety extend the liturgical life of the Church.” Relics connect us with the saints. They increase our determination to emulate their virtues. More than any picture or writing, they bring us close because they were actually part of the saint’s earthly life. Any ordinary person understands why you might want to keep a locket of a loved one’s hair or a jumper that they wore. But holy relics are not just mementos of graces past but also conduits of graces present.

Some thought him a saint. Some thought him mad. Some thought he consorted with undesirables. Some plotted against him. But such had been the lot of his divine Lord and so he persevered. He maintained his equanimity, that happiness or Shalom, divine peace. He maintained a quite extraordinary sense of the dignity of every young person, however degraded their condition or behaviour, and a determination to raise them up to more and better. He never lost confidence in them, or in what they could be under the influence of divine grace. With such confidence we can build truly happy lives too and ask our saint’s intercession for the young people who are struggling in Western Sydney today.

Go to Reception of the Relics of St John Bosco Photo Gallery

Bishop Anthony’s Homily for the 2^nd Sunday of Lent (Year A), Filipino Chaplaincy, St Michael’s Church, South Blacktown, 20 March 2011

Filipinos know about Lent. I understand that blessed palm leaves are placed in windows and doorways; in some places there is a commemoration of Jesus’ last words or a Passion play called the Sinakulo or a dramatic Way of the Cross or a marathon chanting of the Passion. Some of you have the custom of visiting several churches on Holy Thursday night.

The media all around the world, including here in Australia, delight in showing images of flagellants and people crucifying themselves. Hopefully, there will be no crucifixions here today, but such customs go to the heart of Filipino identity and have much to teach staid Australians about the drama appropriate to Catholic identity.

Today’s Gospel passage follows immediately upon the story of Jesus asking His disciples “Who do people say I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” Lots of answers are given, but in the end Simon gets it right by calling Jesus “The Christ, the Son of the living God”. Jesus responds by renaming Simon as “Blessed Peter”, the rock upon which He will build the Church.

Matthew tells us that from that time Jesus began to prophesy His forthcoming passion, death and resurrection and to invite His disciples to join Him: “If anyone wants be a follower of mine, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Me. Anyone determined to save their life will lose it; but anyone willing to lose their life for my sake, will save it.” So Jesus explores the mystery of His identity and ours, the mysterious connection between life and death, suffering and hope.

This is the context for Matthew’s story of the Transfiguration (Mt 17:1-9). Jesus goes aside to pray, as He will on His last night. He takes His most intimate friends, the same three sleepy disciples who will witness His agony in the garden. So we already have a premonition of Holy Week. To prepare them – and us – for that terrible time, He grants us a vision of Himself as victor over death. Having just heard the answer to the questions “Who do people say I am?” and “Who do you say I am?” we are about to hear the answer to the question: “Who do I say that I am?” and “Who does God the Father say that I am?”

Jesus’ face and garments flash like lightning, God’s power and glory shine forth, penetrating His entire being. Moses and Elijah, representing the law and the prophets, appear as witnesses: Jesus is the consummation of the Scriptures, of revelation and its promises, the true mediator between heaven and earth.

And from the mystery of the cloud God speaks also: “This is my Son, the Beloved Son, the favoured One.” In a language we can barely grasp, God reveals to us Who this is. And for a few moments He lets us see His radiance shine out; He demonstrates that He did not become less God by becoming human.

What are we to make of all this? The first disciples could make little sense of it; even rock-solid Peter gibbers. Then they “fell on their faces, overcome with fear”. The mystery of Christ, of God-made-man, the mystery of the human and the divine, of suffering and hope, is beyond them, as it is beyond us all. Peter’s babbling is understandable enough. But the Father says to Him, politely but firmly: “Stop all the talk and listen: listen to my beloved Son!”

It’s a strange direction given that Jesus isn’t saying much. All He says on the mountain, in our hearing at least, is “Stand up, don’t be afraid” and then, on the way down from the mountain, “Shut up about all this until after my resurrection”.

Yet what Jesus is doing here, having confirmed His identity as clearly as He possibly could, having answered for us conclusively the Who-Am-I question, is now answering the Who-are-you question, the question of our Christian identity.

We are a ‘be-quiet’ people, a people who know that there are times to stop the babbling and listen, listen especially to Jesus. Amidst all the noise of modern life, the streets of the Philippines, the workplaces, the TV and radio channels even, are hushed a bit in Lent, so we can hear, contemplate, worship.

“Be quiet until after my resurrection,” He says; but also “Stand up, don’t be afraid”. We are to be the ‘stand up’ people, people who stand for God, stand up for our Catholic faith, stand by those in need.

We are to be ‘get up’ people, with the get-up-and-go to really demonstrate our faith in our lives, even in the public sphere, as Filipinos are want to do, with street processions and all the rest. We are not afraid to proclaim Him because we have received the gift of courage and we have glimpsed His glory and ours.

Even in the face of our own Calvaries, then, we have reason to hope: for we have received a prophecy of the ‘divinisation’ of our nature, the transformation of our own bodies, the promise of glory through grace in this life and resurrection in the next.

Having made this dramatic revelation, both of who He is and of who we are, Jesus comes down from the mountain and returns to daily life, work, destiny. He returns to that more mundane kind of glory, which He demonstrated in His constant faithfulness and obedience to the will of the Father, the glory with which He was crowned in the very nakedness and abandonment of the cross.

“Take up your cross and follow Me, join Me on my Lenten way,” He calls again to His disciples. The transfiguration, the resurrection is promised you, but there are no shortcuts to glory.

And so, as we come down from the high mountain with Christ, we are confronted with our own identity as Christians. How do we radiate the light of Christ to other people? How do we co-operate with him in transfiguring the world by our Christian presence in it? When do we stop and listen amidst all the hubbub? When do we speak up for Him, amidst the secularism and indifference? When do we stand up courageously for what is good and true and beautiful?

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for the First Sunday of Lent (Year A) and Conferral of Ministry of Acolyte on Alfredito Dalogdog and Galbert Albino, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 13 March 2011

Last Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday. The name refers to being ‘shriven’ or absolved in Confession. In Francophone places it’s called Mardi Gras, which means the last day for eating fat. In others Carnival, which means farewell to meat.

Here in Australia many call it Pancake Tuesday which, like Mardi Gras and Carne-vale, points to the ancient custom of using up all our meat, butter, eggs and sweet things the day before Lent so we can begin a strict fast for the 40 days that follow.

We say 40 days, but the mathematically smart kids here will tell me that there are 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. But it does compute: the six Sundays of Lent are not counted because every Sunday is a mini-Easter, a commemoration of the Resurrection.

But why the 40 days, however they are counted? Obviously, our 40 days mimic those we heard of in this morning’s Gospel (Mt 4:1-11). We join Jesus in fasting, prayer and almsgiving, and so face up to our demons as He did. He in turn was mimicking Moses, who spent 40 days with God on Mount Sinai, so that seems to be a good length of time for a retreat with God.

We know that Jonah gave Nineveh 40 days to repent and so that seems a good length of time to spend being tested. And we know that God made the rain last 40 days and nights in Noah’s time (rather like this last few months in northern Australia!) and so that’s a good length of time to spend in preparation for the waters of Baptism. 

That’s why, in the early Church, the catechumens, who were in the final straight in their preparation for Baptism at Easter, kept a strict fast for 40 days. Like the Ninevites they repented, like Moses they spent their days with God, like those in Noah’s day they contemplated the water, and like Christ they prepared for their ‘public life’ beyond Baptism. I always think parishes like this one who have someone to baptise at Easter better understand what both Easter and Lent are about.

Anyway, in due course this practice was extended to all Christians, not just those preparing for Baptism and those accompanying them. It gives us all a chance to prepare better for Easter.

Lent is, then, a time to abstain from meat on Fridays and for 40 days to renounce some other pleasures, like chocolate or wine, or in modern times perhaps SMS texting or the internet; a time, also, to give to the poor, especially through Project Compassion; and a time to offer extra prayers and devotions, especially to make our at-least-annual Confession, our return to baptismal innocence.

Though many Protestants also fast during Lent I recall a Protestant minister, a few years back, recommending that people fast from fasting in Lent. He was being deliberately provocative, but his thought was that all such Catholic practices are worthless because they are built on the illusion that we can save ourselves by doing them.

But that, of course, is to miss the point altogether. We are not trying to save ourselves; we are making a Lenten space for God, for only our Easter Lord saves us. For if Easter is about salvation, Lent is about sin; if Easter is about life, Lent is about death. It is because of the Lent in our everyday lives that we need Easter.

It is sometimes said that Christians are Easter People. Certainly the Resurrection is the central event of our lives and identity. But without the cross and the tomb, without acknowledging the sin and death that leads to the cross and the tomb, without walking the 40-day Lenten journey with Christ to the grave and beyond, the Resurrection would just be divine fireworks, a spectacular with little relevance to our ordinary lives. The fact is: we are not an Easter People so much as a Lent and Easter People.

The first sin, the story of which is told in our First Reading this morning (Gen 2:7-9, 3:1-7), was certainly original. No human being had tried that before. Sadly it was far from the last. Adam and Eve’s sin left us all damaged and it was the prototype for all sin.

It had three essential dimensions. Like all sins ever since, it was an offence against God: Adam and Eve knew what God wanted for them and they did the opposite. Sin is also, always, an attack on our neighbour, often directly when there is a clear victim of our violence or infidelity or theft; but even the most ‘private’ sins damage the communion of the Church.

Sin always has a social or relational aspect and so today we saw how Adam and Eve drew each other into it and then blamed each other for it and its consequences. Lastly, by sinning, we always damage ourselves, we make ourselves less than we could be and should be. We degrade the image of God in us.

Sin damages our relationship with God, our neighbours and ourselves. And that is why God has given us three Lenten antidotes. Fasting is about seeking reconciliation with ourselves; almsgiving is about reconciliation with each other; and prayer about reconciliation with God. Three balms for three messes in the human heart. 

By fasting we seek to cooperate with God in getting a handle on our passions. We face up to our self-indulgence and obsession with comfort, the sin or mess in our relationship to ourselves. We come to terms with our own weakness and our internal division of the heart. We try by some token of self-denial to co-operate with God in His project of healing our hearts.

By almsgiving we seek to work with God in facing up to our selfishness, our unwillingness to share our comfort with others. We seek to come to terms with the injustice and the unlovingness of a world in which so many starve or are otherwise neglected.

We aim to deal with the sin or mess in our relationships not just to ourselves, but to others. We try to turn a little generosity into the beginning of a whole new way of sharing and to cooperate with God’s project of healing our relationships

Finally, by prayer we cooperate with God in addressing the neglect of the spiritual element in our lives, our unwillingness to share our time and space and minds and wills with God. We come to terms with the spiritual indifference and practical agnosticism of so much of our daily life – the fact that while we say we believe, we often live as if we do not.

God helps us to deal with the sin or mess in our relationships, not just to our selves and to each other but to God Himself. We try to turn a little prayerfulness into a whole new way of communicating better with the One who loves us most and who wants to heal our relationship with Him, even if it costs Him death on a cross.

Dear sons in Christ, Alfredito and Galbert, as acolytes you will have a special role in the Church’s ministry. The source and summit of the Church’s life is the Eucharist. It is your new responsibility to assist the bishop, priests and deacons in carrying out their Eucharistic ministry and, as special ministers, to give Holy Communion to the faithful at Mass and outside it to the sick. 

Because you are specially called to this ministry, you should strive to live more fully by the Lord’s sacrifice and be moulded more perfectly to its likeness. The Lenten practices of self-sacrifice, charity and prayer are especially apposite for you. You should seek to understand the deep spiritual meaning of what you do, so that you may offer yourselves daily to God.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for the Rite of Election, First Sunday of Lent, Year A, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 13 March 2011

Introduction

My dear brother priests, RCIA sponsors and team members, relatives and friends of our catechumens and, especially, dear catechumens:

What a day of joy it is for the entire Diocese of Parramatta as we enrol those who have been elected by God and their Catholic community, and have elected themselves, to be baptised this forthcoming Easter.

Today you enter the final straight of your journey. Today we contemplate together the greatest day of your life which is ahead, when you will be initiated into the family of God and become a new creation and a member of Christ's body the Church.

On behalf of the catechumens and the Diocese I thank all those who have contributed to bringing you to this next stage: those who have inspired you, taught and formed you, led and accompanied you. They surround you excitedly today, excited that you are soon to be their brother or sister in a new way.

Bishop Anthony’s Homily

Last Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday. The name refers to being ‘shriven’ or absolved in Confession. In Francophone places it’s called Mardi Gras, which means the last day for eating fat. In others Carnival, which means farewell to meat.

Here in Australia many call it Pancake Tuesday which, like Mardi Gras and Carne-vale, points to the ancient custom of using up the last of our meat, butter, eggs and sweet things so we can begin a strict fast for the 40 days that follow.

Why 40 days? Obviously, our 40 days mimic those we heard of in today’s Gospel (Mt 4:1-11). We join Jesus in fasting, prayer and almsgiving, and so face up to our demons as He did. He in turn was mimicking Moses, who spent 40 days with God on Mount Sinai – a good length of time for a retreat with God. Jonah, too, gave Nineveh 40 days to repent and so that seems a good length of time to be tested. And we know that God made the rain last 40 days and nights in Noah’s time (rather like this last few months in northern Australia!) and so that’s a good length of time to spend contemplating the waters of Baptism.

The reason we spend 40 days Lenting is that from ancient times the catechumens, who were in the final straight in their preparation for Baptism at Easter, prayed for 40 days and kept a strict fast. Like the Ninevites they repented, like Moses they spent their days with God, like those in Noah’s day they contemplated the water, and like Christ they prepared for their ‘public life’ beyond Baptism.

In due course this practice was extended to all Christians, not just those preparing for Baptism and those accompanying them. It gives us all a chance to prepare better for Easter. But, dear catechumens, Lent begins with you and is first and foremost your time.

It is sometimes said that Christians are Easter People. Certainly the Resurrection is the central event of our lives and identity. But without the cross and the tomb, without acknowledging the sin and death that leads to the cross and the tomb, without walking the 40-day Lenten journey with Christ to the grave and beyond, the Resurrection would just be divine fireworks, a spectacular with little relevance to our ordinary lives. The fact is: we are not an Easter People so much as a Lent and Easter People.

The first sin, the story of which is told in our First Reading this morning (Gen 2:7-9, 3:1-7), was certainly original. No human being had tried that before! Sadly it was far from the last time we sinned. Adam and Eve’s sin left us all damaged and it was the prototype for all sin.

It had three essential dimensions. Like all sins ever since, it was an offence against God: Adam and Eve knew what God wanted for them and they did the opposite. Sin is also, always, an attack on our neighbour, often directly when there is a clear victim of our violence or infidelity or theft; but even the most ‘private’ sins damage the communion of the Church.

Sin always has a social or relational aspect and so today we saw how Adam and Eve drew each other into it and then blamed each other for it and its consequences. Lastly, by sinning, we always damage ourselves, we make ourselves less than we could be and should be. We degrade the image of God in us. Like Adan and Eve we are rightly ashamed.

Sin damages our relationship with God, our neighbours and ourselves. Its fullest cure is Baptism and you look forward to the washing away of your sins, both original or inherited and personal or chosen. Should you ever sin again – and I hope you will not – then there are further sacraments of healing for you, especially Reconciliation and the Eucharist.

But because sin has three particukar effects – wounding our relationships to God, our fellows and ourselves, God has given us three Lenten antidotes. Fasting is about seeking reconciliation with ourselves; almsgiving is about reconciliation with each other; and prayer about reconciliation with God. Three balms for three messes in the human heart.

By fasting we seek to cooperate with God in getting a handle on our passions. We face up to our self-indulgence and obsession with comfort, the sin or mess in our relationship to ourselves. We come to terms with our own weakness and our internal division of the heart. We try by some token of self-denial to cooperate with God in His project of healing our hearts.

I trust that in your journey as catechumens you have grown in self-knowledge and so are aware of the wounds in yourself and the need for healing and for the ongoing project of growing in virtue.

By almsgiving we seek to work with God in facing up to our selfishness, our unwillingness to share our comfort with others. We seek to come to terms with the injustice and the unlovingness of a world in which so many starve or are otherwise neglected. We aim to deal with the sin or mess in our relationships not just to ourselves, but to others. We try to turn a little generosity into the beginning of a whole new way of sharing and to cooperate with God’s project of healing our relationships. Once again, in your time as catechumens you will have experienced the importance of the community of faith and the need for each one of us to contribute to its holiness and unity.

Finally, by prayer we cooperate with God in addressing the neglect of the spiritual element in our lives, our unwillingness to share our time and space and minds and wills with God. We come to terms with the spiritual indifference and practical agnosticism of so much of our daily life – the fact that while we say we believe, we often live as if we did not.  

God helps us to deal with the sin or mess in our relationships, not just to ourselves and to each other but to God Himself. We try to turn a little prayerfulness into a whole new way of communicating better with the One who loves us most and who wants to heal our relationship with Him, even if it costs Him death on a cross. In your catechumenate you have been participants in a school of prayer and you must continue to develop habits and depths of prayer in the years ahead. 

As you now enter the final straight of your preparation for your Easter union with Christ, my hope for you is that you will always remember how close Christ wants to be to you, how much He is interested in you, how much He loves you, and so you will long continue to deepen your knowledge and love for Him and His Church.  

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for 9^th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A), St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 6 March 2011

No one in our part of world at the moment could hear our Gospel passage (Mt 7:21-27) without thinking of the recent floods, cyclones and earthquakes. So many buildings were lost, and lives and possessions with them, and in Christchurch, at least, it was precisely because that city is built on sand that an earthquake near the surface was so deadly.

Yet Jesus is not offering advice on architecture or town planning, on climatology or seismology this morning. His wisdom is not about bricks and mortar but about what is the best foundation for a life, what is solid and reliable enough to inform our character and choices and those of our children. And His answer, echoed many times through the Bible, is that the Word of God is the only sure foundation for a life.

Moses, in our first reading, tells the people to fasten God’s words to their hearts and heads and hands so as never to forget them (Dt 11:18, 26-8). This led to the practice amongst some pious Jews of wearing tefillins or phylacteries: little leather boxes containing parchment scrolls inscribed with verses of the Bible and tied to their foreheads and arms during morning prayers.

Jesus, likewise, tells us to rely on God’s word, but the Word to which He is referring is Himself and the Sermon on the Mount which He has just finished preaching. Make the Word of God, make Me and My life and words and deeds, the rock-solid basis of your life, He is saying.

These are alien thoughts for our post-modern culture, words far from welcome. Sometimes it’s just that what the Bible says, what Jesus says, is hard to understand, hard to work out how it applies. But even more often I suspect that we are afraid that if we look too hard at our world or ourselves, with the eyes of faith, we might not like all that we see; that if we listen too carefully to what God’s Word requires we might not like what we have to do ...

The Word of God, the Letter to the Hebrews teaches us, “is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Heb 4:12)

God’s Holy Word interrogates us, cuts us to the quick, regarding injustices in society, institutions and policies. Perhaps most confronting of all, it shows up the light and shade of our own lives; the proud bits and the sordid secrets, our generosity and our selfishness, our good and bad ways of relating, our fidelity and our unfaithfulness to each other and to God.

Jesus is saying to you, right now: you are a very gifted person, with so many opportunities, and often so generous; but then He asks: how well do you use your gifts and privileges? How much more generous should you be to God and your neighbour? Are you a living enactment of the Sermon on the Mount or does your life tell some more mundane, more sordid story? Are you merely paying lip-service to me with your “Lord, Lord” talk or are you really trying to do the Father’s will?

Yes, the Word of God can be subversive, it can threaten our comfortable compromises, our desire to pick and choose what we believe and how we live; and so we can be very resistant. Yet Jesus says to us today: build your life on anything less firm and come storm or quake you’ll fall down. But build your beliefs and values and relationships and choices on Me and My words and yours will be a sure foundation.

Our age has lost confidence in God’s Word, as it has in its capacity to know anything much for certain. One by one, our social institutions have given up on being guardians and proponents of truth. Our universities now commonly deny the very existence of truth; our governments too often sideline it; our corporations are economical with it; our activists relativise it; our advertisers spin it; and our friends fib about it.

As Pope Benedict said here in Sydney at World Youth Day, there is something sinister about the separation of freedom from truth, the notion that there are no absolutes, no objective reality, just experiences. That way, only moral and intellectual confusion lies, he said, “a lowering of standards, a loss of self-respect, even despair.”

A priest once told his congregation, “Next week I plan to preach about the sin of lying. To help you prepare I ask you all to read the Gospel of Mark Chapter 17.” The following Sunday, just before he delivered his sermon, the priest asked for a show of hands: “How many have read Mark 17?” Many hands went up. The priest smiled and said, “Mark has only 16 chapters. I will proceed with my homily on the sin of lying.”

To care about fair-dinkum facts, the absolute reality of things, and what God tells us to do about them, may be counter-cultural today. It can take guts to switch on the lights when everyone’s living in comfortable obscurity, a world of blurred edges, with no demanding black and white, only grey.

It can take courage to say and live by True and False, Right and Wrong, when those around you are conveniently agnostic, carefully anonymous or deeply cynical, when they won’t commit themselves, won’t declare their hand.

It can take guts, yet Christians know that the Gospel, God’s Word, is ‘Good News’. The past century, more than any other in history, showed what Bad News it is when people abandon the rock of God’s Word and build their lives on systems of propaganda and lies – lies like Nazism, Communism, genocides and military dictatorships which killed so many and are still doing so in some places today.

Or there are the lies we tell ourselves, like happiness through infidelity in relationships, through aborting our babies, through dosing ourselves up on drugs or fleeting entertainments, through abandoning our unemployed, sick or elderly people, through excluding foreigners or dumping them forever in camps, through warring with our enemies, through self-indulgence of a thousand different kinds. To build a life on such things is to build on moving sands and the results can be catastrophic.

So we return to Mass each week to hear the One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, the One whose words liberate from falsehood, superstition and fear, from the mirages created by government, commerce, fashion or ourselves. We try to make time each day to read the Holy Scriptures for it is the Word of God that releases the heart from unnecessary anxiety, heals unauthenticity, frees us from all the lies that hold us back, that push us down and make us less that we could be and should be.

Bishop Anthony Fisher's Homily for Institute for Mission, Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit and Commissioning Liturgy, 4 March 2011

When recently preparing a reflection for our school leaders on the meaning of spiritual formation I Googled ‘formation’ and the first three references that came up – out of approximately 149 million – were Wikipedia entries on aerobatics, geology and soccer. Their immediate application to the work of our Institute for Mission and its new graduates may not be obvious, but might be instructive.

The reference to ‘formation flying’, the disciplined flight of two or more aircraft under the command of a flight leader, points us to the fact that ministry and thus formation for ministry is very much an up-in-the-air or spiritual activity: something focussed upon God and the things of God.

By this I don’t mean that it is about being a religious high-flyer whose spectacular manoeuvres thrill the crowds. No, our readings and prayers tonight make very clear that if formation is to be more than clever aerobatics it requires engagement with the Holy Spirit and reception of His gifts (1 Cor 12:4-13). He is the flight leader for this formation. Without the Spirit of the Lord upon us, as He was upon Isaiah the prophet (Isa 61:1-3,6,8-9) and Jesus the Christ (Lk 4: 16-22), we cannot bring Good News, healing, hope.

As people engaged in pastoral activity, in formal and informal settings, much of your work will be helping others to identify the Spirit’s gifts in them, to understand the tasks to which He is calling them and to have the courage to respond generously.

Such discernment must be guided by the Holy Spirit. As Jesus still tells us: “many crave to see what you see, yet never notice it; need to hear what you hear, but never get it” (cf. Lk 10:23).

Only those with the trusting, open hearts of God’s children receive such spiritual sight and insight. Only those who, as Paul puts it, have the spirit of God rather than the spirit of the world will understand these things (1 Cor 2:12).

So much for the aeronautic: how about geological formation? If all Christian ministry must be heavenward in its goal, it must also be down-to-earth in its enactment. Isaiah proclaims good news not in the abstract but to the poor, hope to the heartbroken, liberty to those trapped physically, psychologically or spiritually.

Those named ‘priests of the Lord’ and ‘ministers of our God’ are given not just recognition but a very tangible task to do, a program of vigorous action: for there are many in our parishes and world today who need ‘the oil of gladness’ from you.

What’s more, given the diversity of faith backgrounds, experience and maturity amongst our people, it is more important than ever that those who minister to them can offer something substantial. Simon was called ‘Peter’ or ‘Rocky’ because his faith was rock solid and ours in turn must be solidly grounded on the Scriptures and Tradition of the Church, not merely on personal experience or passing fashions.

Sound knowledge of the faith goes hand in hand with good formation: you can’t be well formed in faithful discipleship if you do not know the Master to whom you are discipled or the ways He has called His followers to live and breathe and have their being.

Let me be very direct here, as I was with our education leaders. There is a kind of Christianity lite that reduces our faith to moralising, moral life to eco-justice, Scripture and Tradition to fables, and Christian identity to human kindness and good citizenship. It merely echoes our secular world.

But full-cream Catholicism should deeply challenge and convert our culture and ourselves, again and again, always calling us to more and better – to the communion of saints with the Holy Trinity in this life and the next.

There is a version of Jesus, for instance, offered in our culture in which He is a special person, an inspiration, a friend, all of which is true. But pastoral ministers must be ready to proclaim that He is also the Creator made creature, the mediator of eternal life, the sole Redeemer and guide to saving truth, the judge of the living and the dead. A cosy therapeutic Jesus may be an easy sell but it sells short both Jesus and those to whom we bring Him.

Or think of the way the Eucharist is sometimes portrayed as holy bread in a sacred meal which celebrates the community who attend. Again, that’s true as far as it goes. But why shy away from saying the love of Christ in the Eucharist is so total He willingly gives His all – His Body and Blood, His humanity and divinity, for us – and this is so much more wonderful to be part of than a nostalgia trip with holy bread as a souvenir.

Cosy prayer spaces with nice-smelling candles, tulle and gum-nuts may have their place, but they are no substitute for the confronting stone of altar and tomb which speak of the ‘the great mysteries’ of innocent suffering and sacrifice at the core of real love.

So our Institute does not shy away from what you might call the hard or even geological Mysteries of the Faith and neither, I am hopeful, will you in your future roles.

We have tried to give you a formation both broad and deep, within the confines of the possible for those of you juggling many lives: keep nourishing your souls and enriching your minds with the Catholic Faith in all its fullness in the years ahead. Read, study, pray, contemplate.

Back to Google and its third kind of formation: the placement of footballers on a pitch. Happily it does not really matter which code – teamwork is essential in them all!

This Institute has offered you a mini seminary or convent experience of being formed within a community. Your Diocese, parish and family continue to offer such a setting for both giving and receiving spiritual gifts.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for the Annual Education Mass, St Patrick’s Church, Blacktown, 3 March 2011

I like to pray for my teachers. Amongst those I pray for every day are Josephite Sr Paul Michael who taught me in Kindergarten, Miss Tierney who taught me in First Class, Mercy Sr Mary Eucharia from 2^nd, Mrs Gow in 3^rd, Sr Mary Paschal rsm from 4^th class, Patrician Br Columba in 5^th and Mr Wyard in 6^th. (In those days lay teachers didn’t have first names and religious didn’t have surnames.) Then there are all the secondary school teachers to pray for. I’m not sure what became of them all, but given my advancing years many of them have, I expect, already gone to God.

One who I know is still alive is Jesuit Fr Paul Gardiner, who was one of the postulators of the cause of Mary MacKillop and who I saw at the celebrations in Rome last October. He once gave us a course on the philosophical proofs of the existence of God.

Now you might be thinking: that’s just the sort of abstract topic that's a major turn-off for young people. Actually, at 15, I loved it. I thrilled at the thought that my Catholic faith had some philosophical backbone; that you didn’t have to be completely irrational to believe Catholic things; that we don’t suspend our reason, like in science fiction or horror films, in order to take part in the worship of God and the living of the Gospel. Quite the opposite.

We actually use all our faith and all our reason and the two inform each other in all sorts of creative ways. Fr Gardiner showed us that there are very good reasons to believe that there is a God, such as the fact that there is anything rather than nothing in the universe, that there is a certain order or sense to things in that universe, certain rhythms or laws of nature, a simplicity and complex beauty, and much else that point to a First Cause behind the chains of causality, a capital-B Being behind all being.

Our first reading today (Sir 42:15-25) was written by a philosopher named Sirach who was as much influenced by pagan Greek philosophy as by Jewish mysticism. He makes the same point as Fr Gardiner did, if rather more poetically. Most of the time the mystery of creation inspires curiosity and delight. Sometimes, such as in time of flood or earthquake, it might inspire awe and fear as well. Either way there are so many signs of the Creator in creation.

“Let me remind you of the works of the Lord, and tell what I have seen,” says Sirach the cosmologist, the teacher. Look up to the heights of the sun and stars, look down into the depths of the earth and sea, look around the humanity community and within the human heart. Look at the wise order, the wisdom of things, the dazzling beauty of them. Don’t they all point to something greater, to something, Someone, behind it all?

As we move into the second decade of this century – and some history teacher here will no doubt tell me I’ve missed the boat by a year – there is much to think about in Catholic education. As we enter a new decade our motto “Education for the 21^st Century” is already ageing.

But our Scriptures remind us that some things are perennial, and Sirach’s text gives us the very starting point of all education: human wonder at things, outside and inside ourselves. In a way it describes our students, who can, like young Anthony, thrill at some insight teachers bring them, as they explore the mysteries of God, creation and themselves.

If our first reading describes our students, our Gospel is for our teachers. The beautifully crafted passage from Mark recounts the healing of the blind beggar, Bartimæus (Mk 10:46-52). It’s often used in Penitential services because of its moving depiction of human need and Divine Pity.

But today I want to draw your attention not to Jesus and Bartimæus but more to the disciples in the story, Jesus’ minders as it were, and what they said. Jesus stops and tells them to call Bart to Him. They say to the man, “Courage, get up, He is calling you.” And that is what I say to you today, especially to our beginning teachers and new principals: “Courage, get up, He is calling you!”

This simple phrase presents three fundamental elements of Catholic education: it is a vocation, for “He is calling you”; it requires energy, busyness, “get-up”-and-go; and, yes, it requires courage to be a teacher in the Catholic school system of Parramatta.

Some of you may remember the series Yes, Minister, and its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister. The word ‘courageous’ possessed explosive power in Sir Humphrey-speak, because it translated into ‘sure to lose you votes’ and even ‘guaranteed to lose you government’, and would reduce the once-resolute Minister to a quivering mess.

I wonder how often our pollies in the lead-up to the forthcoming election have been dissuaded from engaging in too much idealism by minders who talk of how courageous it would be.

But we must be ready for the hard things because they matter, because our students matter and because the mission, the trans-mission, of the Gospel depends on it.

Many Church documents speak of teaching as a vocation and you may be rather tired of such Church-speak at formation days, Church publications and of course bishops’ homilies. Ho-hum, there he goes again, telling me teaching is a calling, a religious vocation, which basically means: I’ve been co-opted into the Church’s semi-volunteer workforce and will now be underpaid and overworked for God!  I know, they promise my reward will be in the next life ...

Well I hope today is different. I’m not going to go on about vocation. I just ask you to hear the Gospel. Remember this one verse this year and mull over it: “Courage, get up, He is calling you.”

Of course, a call demands a response: a yes or no or maybe. And the fact that you are here today means that you are in the ‘yes’ or at least the ‘maybe’ category! Teaching demands energy and passion – get up – for your subject and your students but, in a Catholic school system, it demands that such get up be translated into commitment to the evangelising, catechising and whole-person educating mission of the Catholic school.

If the Catholic school provides every resource and opportunity and learning gain, but is not a place of encounter with Christ, it has failed our children. It leaves the man blind and begging in the most crucial aspect of his life. Bringing about the encounter with Christ and His Gospel, in many ways and places and times, is the business of everyone in the school: not just the leaders or old-timers or award-winners, but every member of staff has a vital role to play. So don’t hold back amongst the ‘maybe’ category, but be like Bartimæus who threw off his cloak, jumped up, ran to Jesus and ultimately followed Him along the road.

Many of our young people already have eyes and ears and hearts and minds alive with wonder – wonder-full – and ready to meet Christ, to discover God’s plan for them and for this wonderful creation of which they are part. With your help they will embrace the mission given by Baptism to be stewards and explorers, poets and co-producers of this creation.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for the ‘Red Mass’, Opening of the Legal Year St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, 31 January 2011

Seven years ago at the Red Mass here at St Mary’s Cathedral, I suggested that, however unlikely it sounds to our culture, the law can be a path to sanctity. I noted that after the religious and clerical vocations, the law was the most common amongst the saints. I listed dozens of examples, going back to  the earliest Christian centuries through to modern times, of lawyer-saints, true friends of God and mankind! But our first lesson today from the Book of Kings (1 Kings 3:4-15) reminds me that we should include in that long bar roll some figures from biblical times, including the most famous of the judges, Solomon.

This morning we heard the story of Solomon’s prayer for wisdom in governing, which included at this time wisdom in judging legal cases. A custody case was to win him renown as a wise judge (1 Kings 3:16-28) and to this day ‘the wisdom of Solomon’ remains part of English usage. But he was much more than a one case wonder. Solomon went on not just to make good laws and implement them judiciously, but to build the temple in Jerusalem, develop foreign trade, avert major wars through careful diplomacy, and ensure a long period of peace and prosperity for Israel. Indeed, later in the Book we are told that “The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart.” (1 Kings 10:24)

But that’s not the whole story! As time went by, power went to Solomon’s head and he gradually lost touch with his God and his people. He ceased to speak with divine wisdom and relied instead on that human thinking that Paul warns can be so fickle (1 Corinthians 2:1-10). He took 700 wives and 300 concubines into his royal harem! Many of these lured him away from the ways of God and Israel and towards the gods and interests of the pagans. His insatiable lust for foreign women was matched by a lust for power, told in the huge number of his war horses, and a similar lust for wealth, as he accumulated a personal fortune and failed to share it with the poor as justice and God’s law required. There was violence too: despite oaths to the contrary he killed his own brother and others he considered rivals.

Here is a warning to all of us who have experienced the power of the law and the weakness of our own natures. Like Solomon we can forget that Spirit who scrutinises everything, even the depths of God and the human heart. We may read innumerable words of men but fail to heed the Word of God. We can cite endless judgments but forget the Final Judgment to come. We might, like the negligence lawyer in our Gospel passage today (Luke 10:25-28), be so concerned to big-note ourselves that we pretend not to know who our neighbour is and what the law requires.

Jesus Christ, the new and incorrupt Solomon, proclaims a law of love, law as a liberating and dignifying force. In his address inaugurating the Vatican’s last legal year Pope Benedict XVI noted the widespread tendency “to oppose justice and charity, as if the two were mutually exclusive” (Pope Benedict XVI, Address for the Inauguration of the Judicial Year of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, 29 January 2010). Jews and Christians have always taught that “the resolution of conflicts and the pursuit of justice through legal and rational means ... is indispensable for a truly humane and harmonious social order” (Pope John Paul II, Address to the Members of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, 22 September 1989) and thus an example of love for our fellow man. Ensuring legitimate authority and just laws is thus part of both fairness and friendship. What’s more, as the Pope went on to explain, law can be a place where the highest human values and virtues are exemplified: not only justice and mercy, but prudence, courage and more. “Love for God and for neighbour (can and) should inform every (legal) activity, even the most technical and bureaucratic,” the Pope said, for ultimately the lawyer or judge “is always dealing with people, beset by problems and difficulties.” Justice without charity forgets people; charity without justice degenerates into sentimentality; but if both are found in the practice of the law the common good is served and lawyers are the friends of God and humanity.

Of course as the story of Solomon shows us, those with legal power can go astray. Instead of justice and mercy, prudence and courage, they can demonstrate less-admirable characteristics. So democracy is not infallible, as the soon-to-be-Blessed John Paul II reminded us in his great encyclical Evangelium Vitæ, the Gospel of Life. Law, he said there, can never substitute for morality or cure-all immorality (EV 70). In the past few months bills to legalise euthanasia have been introduced or foreshadowed for every Australian federal and state parliament, and we may stand on the verge of legalising, somewhere in this country, the killing of those who suffer by those who are comfortable, of the vulnerable by the powerful, of the sick by those professed to heal them. Hopefully lawmakers and practitioners will join health professionals and others in resisting this turn against the common law, medical ethics and the safety of the suffering and vulnerable – contrary, then, to both justice and charity.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for 4th Sunday Year A, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 30 January 2011

Between 1788 and 1850 more than 162,000 convicts were sent to Australia in 806 ships. The first 11 of these ships are known today as ‘the First Fleet’ and these set out in May 1787 with 759 convicts, their Marine guards and a few civil officers, with some family members and supplies. Searching for water and fertile land, they tried several landing spots before settling at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788.

That landing is commemorated every Australia Day with a public holiday, citizenship ceremonies, honours awards, fireworks and fun. But it was not at all clear at the time that it would be a success. Sydney Cove proved no more hospitable than Botany Bay, which is why Parramatta was founded later that same year on land more amenable to farming. In due course Australia’s oldest public building, Old Government House, was built in Parramatta Park, grain was successfully planted by the convict, James Ruse, at Rose Hill and sheep were grazed on Macarthur’s farm named for his wife, Elizabeth, at Harris Park.

But if the land eventually proved more welcoming, on the first Australia Day it seemed hot and harsh. While Lord Sydney would not allow the Irish convicts a Catholic priest, he did appoint an Anglican Chaplain, the Rev’d Richard Johnson, who chose for his text for the first Christian service in Australia, a verse from Psalm 116: “How shall I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me?” No doubt some joined him in thanking God for surviving the gruelling journey, and for bringing them to a land of promise. But for most of them it must have sounded rather ironic, especially for those in chains, dragged unwilling and for life to a harsh land at the end of the earth, where they might well starve or thirst to death.

Today Jesus seems equally ironic when he declares ‘happy’ those who are broken-hearted, victims, persecuted and denigrated (Mt 5:1-12). Even the gentle, merciful and peaceful often have much to fear rather than rejoice in: consider the peacekeepers in Afghanistan, trying to support a struggling democracy and rewarded with gunfire – as the story of Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith VC demonstrates. Indeed, we might ask: are any of those Jesus calls ‘happy’ happy very often? Would any of us count ourselves ‘blessed’ if we were poor, grieving and persecuted? Is Jesus just playing with us, being sarcastic, not really meaning what he says? And if so, why do we love the beatitudes so much, why are they possibly the most popular passage in all of Scripture?

Last Sunday we heard Jesus begin His preaching ministry with a call to repentance, to abandon our old way of life. Now we hear his Sermon on Mount in which he proposes his new way of life. What is this Christian alternative? Jesus addresses a crowd. His audience are not just individual believers, on a private spiritual journey, making their own path to God. No, they are those He has gathered around Him and, we are told, there are lots of them.

The people are there to hear Christ, as we are every Sunday. Not just to enjoy one another’s company, but because there is much to hear, much to learn. So much in fact that Jesus’ sermon will be read over the next six Sundays until Lent.

So Jesus goes up a mount, as Moses had done centuries before. It is no coincidence: Jesus intends to evoke Moses with his 10 commandments and the whole Law of God. But instead of 10Cs Jesus opens his lesson with 8Bs.

The eight beatitudes are not, of course, a replacement for the 10 commandments. As the Sermon goes on Jesus is quite explicit about this: “Don’t imagine I’ve come to abolish the Law ... no, I’ve come to fulfil it ... Not one jot, not one tittle, shall pass from the Law until its purpose is achieved.” (Mt 5:17-8) So the commandments are not on the way out for Christians. But something new is on the way in. Whereas the commandments are mostly don’ts, the beatitudes are do’s. They are positive attitudes, for those who’ve experienced true conversion, for those who want to join Jesus in the kingdom of God.

Moses’ commandments tell us not to kill: in the weeks ahead we’ll hear Jesus call us to turn from all arrogance and anger. We are not just to avoid murder: we are to be meek, to be peacemakers.

Moses tells us not to commit adultery or covet each other’s wives. The new Moses, Jesus Christ, commands us to be pure of heart, to root out from our fantasies and habits any impurity that turns others into sex objects.

Moses teaches that we must not steal or covet each other’s goods. The beatitudes call us to be ‘poor in spirit’, free from the consumerist obsession with material things; to seek our true reward not in earthly treasures but in heaven.

All-in-all Jesus seems to be saying: this is what all the Law is about: put nothing, absolutely nothing, ahead of God in your life; love Him with your whole mind and heart and strength.

The question is: will this really make us happy? Would we really call a person of the beatitudes blessed?

Yes, if we let Jesus teach us not just new rules for life, but a whole new conception of what life is about, what happiness really is, who are the really Blessed. If we measure ourselves by what we own and have and control, then few at the first Australia Day could possibly have called themselves blessed. But if we rejoice in the fact that we always have new opportunities to flourish, to make the most of our situation, with love and fairness, then we may indeed be happy.

Not happy in the sense of happy-clappy, or of person on a high from drugs or mania or passing endorphins. Not happy in the sense of rosy-eyed, ignoring all that’s wrong in world outside us or the world within.

No, happy in a much more important sense: happy in the sense of a person who can give thanks for the good and true and beautiful where it is. Happy in the sense of one who seeks to do the good, to speak the true, to advance the beautiful in themselves and the world, even at the cost of some low spirits or persecution.

Such a person will, for example, be able to thank God for the abundance of “nature’s gifts of beauty rich and rare”, even when the land is harsh, or the water in the wrong places, or their own situation difficult, their family in a mess, their body in pain – all because they can see so much that’s good already in our land and families and selves and so much more that’s possible under grace.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for Joint Staff Mass, Catherine McAuley, Parramatta Marist and Teresa of Calcutta Primary, Feast of St Thomas Aquinas, Morley Centre, 28 January 2011

It is wonderful to be here and to celebrate the Eucharist for you, the combined staffs of Catherine McAuley Westmead, Parramatta Marist and Teresa of Calcutta, and what a formidable combination you are! Into this fearsome mix of Irish Mercy, French Marist and home-grown Aussie traditions, I throw the Dominicans in the person of Thomas Aquinas whose feast we celebrate today and whose many titles include Patron Saint of Catholic Schools. Thomas was a Neapolitan but lived for long periods of his life in France and is buried there, so he qualifies as an honorary Frenchman; he didn’t make it to Ireland, however, and probably knew very little of those wild women on the fringes of Europe who would eventually engage in the spiritual conquest of Australia …

A few thoughts, though, on my brother Tom. When baby Tommy was once in the bath he refused to part with a piece of paper on which were written the words ‘Ave Maria’. Rather than give it up to his mother he swallowed the parchment. This was probably the beginning of his weight problem, but at the time people thought it evidence he would grow up to be a theologian. And so he did: arguably Thomas was in fact the greatest theologian the Church has ever had. In his canonisation process the witnesses had little to report concerning extraordinary penances, sensational miracles or heroic deeds. They could only repeat, unanimously: that Thomas was a pure, humble man, with a passion for contemplation and teaching.

A passion for contemplation and teaching. Thomas was undoubtedly greatly gifted with that faith-informed wisdom described in our first reading (Wis 7:7-10,15-16). But he knew that to be alive and explicit, faith requires more than warm inner feelings or smug certainty or apparently godly activism: it needs right things to believe in and right reasons to believe them. Faith should call forth humble and studious docility to knowing God more and more, and learning about God and the things of God more and more, through asking, reflection, study, even argument.

Thomas was a kind of intellectual gourmand: he wanted it all, not just the Scriptures or the Fathers or the wisdom of the Greeks, but all of them; not just knowledge of the visible world or of the spiritual world, but both; not just dogma or ethics or rational philosophy or affective mysticism: he sought and devoured them all.

His was as a mixture of, first, natural intelligence and a passion to know the whole of reality; secondly, the gifts of the Holy Spirit; and, lastly, his own choice under grace to apply his wit and passion and gifts in the hard slog of study and teaching. It was to produce the greatest theological synthesis ever known. For faith and reason, philosophy and theology, the arts and sciences, were for him the most exciting of all pursuits because they were the most inclusive and rewarding. Contrary to the judgment of the so-called ‘new atheists’, who think we have to be able to observe, measure and control a thing before is interesting or true, and before it can be taught, Thomas argued that because of its sources and subject matter, religious education is the most fascinating kind of education and based on the most certain science of all.

If faith and morals were his favourite food, Aquinas’ favourite form of exercise – indeed his only form of exercise – was the religious relay race, passing on the baton of revelation and reason to enliven other people’s faith; and this he did with great enthusiasm, clarity and courtesy as a teacher. Always fair to other people’s views, he never allowed what was fashionable or ‘pc’ to limit him in passing on the truth he had discovered: in the words of our first reading, he could not conceal Wisdom’s riches (Wis 7:7-10,15-16)

But enthusiasm for teaching and a passion for our discipline is not enough. In our Gospel passage (Mt 23:8-12) Christ warns great teachers to be humble and St Thomas was a truly humble man: not with that 10^th Century counterfeit of humility – a masochistic kind of self-reduction, denying self-esteem and self-fulfilment – nor its 20^th Century antidote of self-will, self-importance and self-reliance. No, he taught that humility enables us to know ourselves for what we are, and in relation to God and others; it requires us to esteem God’s gifts to us, as we do the Giver, so that we have a true sense of proportion; it then moderates and directs our aspirations, so that we extend ourselves appropriately.

As with so much in St Thomas’ teaching, and that of any good teacher, he lived what he professed, he personally exemplified what he taught. Even as he wrote the greatest theological tracts in history he kept returning to the Scriptures, the tradition and the great philosophers, to prayer and contemplation, to brother friars and sister books for new inspiration. He was always docile to truth wherever he found it and respectful of other people’s ideas. He couched his findings in commonsense, simple language, avoiding any hint of intellectual snobbery. He remained ever open to learning more and teaching better.

St Thomas, following “the One Teacher who is the Christ”, asked many searching questions. This is the lot of good teachers: we welcome the questions and the answers we receive, whether from our own minds or from our students. Sometimes we are surprised by what comes: for try as we may, we can never quite anticipate the range of our students’ questions or answers! St Thomas arranged his great theological work, the Summa theologiæ, around the questions people ask, the sorts of answers that have been or might be given, the objections one might anticipate and then his best attempt to answer.

And for Thomas the great question and the great answer were the same: Jesus Christ! The whole of Catholic education is, in a very important sense, an introduction for the Question of Jesus and a series of answers. The Catholic school is charged with providing opportunities for an encounter with that Rabbi-Father-Teacher who is the Christ and we do this by providing experiences in which faith and reason, culture and life are enriched and harmonised. Anything less is a disservice to our students and a failure to offer the formation they need as they enter more deeply into the three life-long mysteries: the mystery of God, the mystery of creation, and the mystery of ourselves.

If our students do not meet Christ in the liturgy, in the curriculum, in their other activities, in the teacher-student relationship, and amongst their peers at school, if they do not encounter Him in church, the class-room, the lab and the playground, how have they been equipped to answer the big questions of life? Catholic education will not make the questions go away – heaven and St Thomas forbid! It will not make everything neat. But it will give our young people a safe place to explore, a secure place to question and answer, a sure path to look for fulfilment. And so with St Thomas we might pray:

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for Campion College Summer Camp,
19 January 2011

Good morning and welcome to your first full day of Summer Camp! I hope that those of you who went on the excursion yesterday and attended the movie night are well recovered and fit and well for the day’s activities. Year 12 is soon to start for you all and one of the mantras you will hear from your parents and teachers throughout the year is ‘There is life after the HSC’. Though there might not be much consolation in that at the time, it is true that there is light at the end of this particular tunnel. And for some of you that light at the end of the HSC tunnel might be coming to study here at Campion College.

I am sure you will get a sense of why that’s such a good idea from your experiences here today. Campion has many features such as its excellent curriculum in the liberal arts, its smaller than average class sizes, its sense of community, its common faith and values, its focus on thinking, communicating and leading, and so on. But in case no one mentions it, one good reason to come to Campion is that it is in the Catholic Diocese of Parramatta. This Diocese is the youngest in average age and fastest growing in the country. It is full of youthful energy. It has many young families and big families. It has people from every nation on earth. The Catholic Church is alive and well here, and includes amongst its activities Theology on Tap where hundreds of young people gather every month at a pub near St Patrick’s Cathedral to hear a presentation on some theological topic and to discuss it freely. Meanwhile, in the Cathedral, there is regular Eucharistic Adoration for young adults. And there are many other activities in our Diocese just for you.

So there is life – including spiritual life – after the HSC. But my main message for you today is a different one: that there is life before the HSC and you are called to live it to the full, right now. In the post-Christmas-New Year period, in Rotterdam, there was a Taize gathering of students and young adults from every continent praying for world peace and reconciliation. There were Catholics, other Christians and young people of non-Christian religions, in particular a significant contingent of Muslim youth. Brother Alois, the abbot of Taize, addressed them every evening during the evening prayer. On the last evening, he challenged the thousands of young people to adopt an apostolate. At this point I could do a Who wants to be Millionaire? question and ask was the apostolate he thought you young people should adopt: (a) prayer; (b) social justice; (c) joy; or (d )charity? I am told that when in doubt contestants on Who wants to be Millionaire? head for (c). In this case that would be joy, and that would be the correct answer. Brother Alois’s challenge to young adults was to take up the apostolate of joy.

Starting from today and every day through to the HSC and beyond, your apostolate is to be that of joy. Why? The passage which we heard in our First Reading (Heb 7:1-3,15-17) about Melchizedek, king of Salem, a priest of God Most High, gives us a clue. Now Fr Mel is a strange figure, with no beginning or end, with no real homeland or family, but who offers bread and wine to God rather than an animal sacrifice, and in all this he is a figure of Christ. The whole Letter to the Hebrews presents us with the ground of our hope, our High Priest Jesus Christ, the one who keeps His promise and is the cause of our deepest happiness. At the climax of that letter the author declares “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let’s rid ourselves of every burden and attachment to sin and persevere in running the race that lies ahead of us, while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our Faith. For the sake of the joy that lay before Him, He endured the cross, He despised the shame, and is seated now at God’s right hand.” (Heb 12:1-2) Why would you put yourself through studies, friendships, Church and all the other struggles of life at your age? For heaven’s sake, says the Letter to the Hebrews, for joy’s sake.

Joy is not a permanent high, like someone charged by some drug or personality disorder to engage in a hyper display of jollity. People who are constantly in need of another high or constantly pretending they are on one may well be deeply dissatisfied inside. On the other hand there can be a deep joy even in enduring the Cross, as our faith recalls. So joy, flourishing, a deep internal contentment, are not the same as what our culture calls happiness and it does not come cheap. Only by taking on the good but sometimes hard things in life do we achieve joy.

What’s more, joy is not something you can attain directly by your own efforts; indeed no matter how hard people try they never capture it. Joy happens upon you. It comes upon you as a gift of the Holy Spirit at Baptism and Confirmation. It is recharged by that Spirit when we pray to Him. And it is renewed every time we seek the truth, live the good, experience the beautiful.

Those of you who are switched on to liturgical things will have noticed that bishops and priests wear rose vestments twice a year, on a particular Sunday in Advent and in Lent. These are the Joy Sundays and the prayers emphasise that although we are in a penitential season of preparation we can’t help but already feeling joy at what is to come. In fact in season and out of season we have cause for joy as Christians. That is because we are a people who know forgiveness. Through the coming of Jesus, His death and resurrection, our sins are forgiven, as our daily prayer, the Our Father, reminds us. We forgive as we ourselves have been forgiven. The experience of forgiving and being forgiven in human relationships brings us great joy. How much more profound is the joy of those who know they have been forgiven by God.

A few weeks ago Bishop Joseph Grech died, aged only 62. He was the Bishop of Sandhurst (Bendigo), in Victoria, but had a special brief from the Australian Bishops for Youth Ministry. Bishop Joe was a man who beamed with Christian joy and he had some great sayings when he was speaking with young people, such as “God don’t make rubbish” and “Go for the lot!” A spirit of joy enables us to grow in the realisation that every human person is a marvellous creation of God. It enables us to grasp the Good News, to proclaim it convincingly to others, and to go for the lot. Hear again from the Letter to the Hebrews when you are struggling with your studies ahead and with the big decisions about your adult lilfe: “At the time, all discipline seems painful rather than a cause for joy, yet later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness in those who’ve been trained by it. So lift up your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees ... Strive for peace with everyone, and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” (Heb 12:11-14)

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year AFirst Profession of Sr Maria (Doan Thanh Thao)St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 16 January 2011

Introduction

Regular attendees at St Patrick’s Cathedral will have noticed that our numbers are even greater than usual today because we are celebrating a very special occasion: the first profession of Sr Maria (Doan Thanh Thao) in the Missionary Sisters of Mary Queen of the World.

Sr Maria was born in Vietnam but much of her family now lives in Perth. Her mother, Loan, is with us today and we welcome you, Mrs Vuong, and rejoice with you in the happiness you and your family must feel as your daughter takes this step towards life-long consecration to God.

Sr Maria will make that step on holy ground, the dedicated space of our cathedral, of course, but also an important place in the tradition of religious life in Australia. It was here, in St Patrick’s Parramatta, that the first religious profession in Australia took place.

Sr Xavier Williams, a young Irish Sister of Charity, made her vows here on 9 March 1839. She lived to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of her Profession in 1889 in Hobart, so that is a good omen for Sr Maria. I congratulate Sr Chanel Dinh and the Missionary Sisters of Mary Queen and thank them for allowing us all to witness the profession ceremony.

Today we are also very aware of the suffering of many people due to the floods in Queensland, Northern New South Wales and Victoria – as well as Brazil. There will be a collection for the Society of St Vincent de Paul flood appeal later in this Mass. But I ask you also to keep in your prayers those who have died in these flood, those who are grieving the loss of loved ones, homes or possessions, and those who must now face rebuilding their lives.

Bishop Anthony’s Homily

We’ve all got something embarrassing in our past, and in my case it is I was once – a lawyer. To be honest I quite enjoyed it. I remember well the first time I appeared in court. It was a legal aid case and I was there to hold the hand of a young man who’d got self into trouble and was pleading guilty.

All he had going for him were a few character references from people willing to testify that he wasn’t such a bad egg as might appear. It’s interesting that we are willing take seriously people’s testimony about each other.

Like a frame around Christmastide, St John the Baptist preaches to us again this morning (Jn 1:29-34). In Advent we saw him as a strange, terrifying herald, preparing the way of the Lord, forewarning that His coming was imminent.

Today he’s back, no longer predicting something in the future, but now identifying something already present: Behold the Lamb of God. Behold the One who was, who is to come. Behold One more important than me, more important than any of us. Behold the One who baptises with the Holy Spirit, the Chosen One of God.

John is the witness. Like someone in court he points Jesus out from the line-up of could-be messiahs. “That’s the one, the one I was talking about. It’s hard to recognise him, sure. I didn’t recognise him at first myself. But I’m sure he’s the one.”

So today’s message is a forensic one. Like characters being interrogated in court, witnesses are being called to give their testimony to who this new guy Jesus is.

God the Father, through His prophet John, says Jesus is the long Promised One. The Holy Spirit also bears witness, coming down and anointing Jesus’ head as the Christ.

John the herald points Jesus out to us. He in turn is reported by the evangelist in this ‘new testament’ or testimony, this new record of evidence. And then the Church hands on this Gospel to us, to hear and to pass on to our children, from generation to generation.

The Good Friday trial of Jesus Christ has already begun and it continues to this day. Witnesses are still being called. Interrogators still ask their questions. Who is this God anyway? Who is Christ? Who are we?

What does it mean to be a witness to Christ today? Faced with the rise of atheism and indifference to religion in the modern world, the Fathers of Vatican II turned their minds to our response. Confident as they were in the power of truth, beauty and goodness to persuade, allure and inspire the human person, their principal remedy was this: tell people the truth! Tell them about Christ and about His saving message. Demonstrate a perpetual preparedness to “give people a reason to hope”. Teach the Faith.

More than this, the Council Fathers said, Church teaching “must prove its fruitfulness by penetrating the entire life of believers … and moving them toward justice and love”. The martyrs, they noted, give the most luminous witness to the Faith; but ordinary Christians too are “called to be witnesses to Christ in all things in the midst of human society”. We all know how much more powerful is the case for virtues like courage, unselfishness and charity if seen in action rather than merely heard in theory.

In the gift of religious life, lived with fidelity and joy, we receive such witness. Sr Maria will today say to God and before us all: “I vow to God chastity, poverty and obedience, for one year, according to the Constitutions of my order to whom I willingly surrender myself.” The words are powerful and the living out of those words even more so.

To promise chastity or celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God can sound strange to modern ears. Because of the failures of some to live celibacy or because it seems too hard, we rarely hear about its upsides – though I’ve occasionally heard talk of ‘celebrity celibacy’.

And who would want to embrace poverty, in a world where there’s too much of it and where it can grind people into destitution and starvation. We don’t hear any of the victims of the recent floods celebrating on TV that at least it has given them a chance to experience some evangelical poverty! As for obedience: take my word for it, nobody wants to be obedient!

But those who have fallen in love with Christ, those who are inspired by the Holy Spirit, those who are on the path to holiness, operate under a new logic, one that sees that the vows are the way to perfect love.

In our first reading (Isa. 49:3-6) the prophet declares: “I was honoured in the eyes of the Lord, my God was my strength. He who formed me in the womb to be His servant now makes me a light to the nations.”

Sr Maria knows something of that honour and light and strength. Responding to invitations from her grandmother, her mother and Sr Miriam she has discerned her vocation and thinks this is her way to be God’s servant. She tells me that she has found great joy and deep peace in this vocation.

Of course all three vows demand renunciation, the giving up of something good – but only with a view to something else that is also good. We make no shrines to loneliness, destitution or apathy. Rather we religious seek a positive good, that is: a life that gives shining testimony to a spousal love for Jesus Christ, to total dependence upon God the Father, and to constant openness to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

Religious also offer us glimpses of a total reliance on providence, of a new kind of family life that images our eternal family life, and of a willingness to compromise self-will. Mary, Queen of the World did that. John the Baptist did that.

Next Sunday’s Gospel (Mt. 4:12-23) will mention John the Baptist again, if only fleetingly. It opens with the words “Hearing that John had been arrested Jesus went back to Galilee.” There is a little hint there of what we all know: that John’s witness would ultimately cost him his life.

Christians must be ready to give their all. Before our eyes today Sr Maria will undertake to do just that. Hopefully, she will never be called upon to give the ultimate witness, the witness of blood, as have hundreds of Vietnamese martyrs.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for Christmas Midnight Mass 2010,
St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta

People had forgotten what God looked like. In the story at the Genesis of the Bible, Adam and Eve walked in the garden with God, they were His intimates, His friends. They joined Him in the great project of caring for the earth and filling it with human beings, each one an image of God in the world.

The ancients knew God, could see and understand His words and deeds all around them. Yet as we read the Bible, we see humanity gradually falling away from God, at a greater and greater distance from Him. They were no longer His friends. They covered themselves up, covering also their eyes and ears. They were afraid to look on the face of God; they trembled at His voice. Eventually, they seemed to lose the very desire to see and hear Him. More and more they lived as if there were no God, no law of God, no divine plan for them, no image of God in them.

God became remote to them, abstract, a puzzle, sometimes an embarrassment or even a problem. We, too, can so easily forget what God is like. He might be a refuge in times of disaster or an explanation for the inexplicable or someone to blame when things go wrong. But if we are not careful, we can live, most of time, as practical atheists, as if there were no god.

People had forgotten what God looked like, and time and again we forget. There was only one thing for God to do. On this night, 2010 years ago, God took on a face. He became that most familiar and lovable of all things to us, a newborn baby.

A baby: the face of a baby has a unique power to convert. Even the hardest hearts, even those most stubbornly determined not to smile, not to delight, not to hope, find in the face of a baby something irresistible. As they look upon the face of a baby they find themselves, despite themselves, grinning, ogling, aspiring.

Conversion by a baby is universal and it is different to conversion to an idea. The Christmas story is a scandal to all ideologies: for them to say that God is real and relevant and can be seen is a ridiculous claim; that He is seen as a baby, a blasphemous one. But Christianity not only asserts God can be seen in this baby, but insists that it matters very deeply that we see Him there. Even the ox and the ass of traditional Christmas cribs kneel with the rest of cast. Together they are all answering the call of our recessional hymn here at St Patrick’s, the call to all ye faithful, Venite Adoremus, “Come let us adore Him”.  And they are not worshipping an abstraction, a theory, even a ‘deity’ amongst the many on offer in our world. No: they were adoring the One true God in a child and this child has the power to melt hearts of stone, to break open closed minds, to enlighten every darkness, to turn sinners into saints.

Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and kings, in due course the apostles and the crowds, are all given ‘the Beatific Vision’, that is, they look upon the face of God. And now everyone can believe in this God and His promise that one day they too will see Him face-to-face, because people just like us have already done so.

Those first witnesses to the Incarnation must have sensed the extraordinary privilege it was that in their time and place God had become one of them, the Creator a creature, part of their world, their creation. Maybe they thought themselves uniquely privileged, for few would ever see Him so closely. But the light from this child’s face was refracted and is refracted still, from the faces of Mary, Joseph and the shepherds, the faces of so many others down through the ages. The gaze of each reflects to us God’s presence, still amongst us, still one of us. Through their eyes we see Him as a mother does, as a step-father does, as a worker does, as a wise person does, as a leader, as a follower, as a sinner, as a saint. The Creator did not become a baby just so a few people could experience a buzz of excitement, but so that every human heart might be touched, every eye filled with light, every ear with music, every mind converted.

People had forgotten what God looked like and tonight they remember: God is a God with them, God for them, God amongst them, God surrounding them, God within them; a God who heals and transforms and saves every human mess, a God who joins heaven to earth and God to man, so that we on earth might taste the heavenly banquet.

Which brings me to a last point about this Christmas babe. To look on Him is to see the face of God, a God completely Other, completely unlike ourselves, who took on our human nature so as to raise each of us up to Himself. To look upon this babe is to see the face of God. But it is also to see face of humanity, to see ourselves. People had forgotten and so often forget what God looked like, what God is and so they needed and still need the Christmas babe. But they had also forgotten what the human being looks like, what the human person is and can be under grace, and so, once more, they needed this baby.

We so easily forget the nobility of the human person, the greatness we are made and destined for; the extraordinary gift it is to share intelligence and freedom and creativity and love with God; the astonishing privilege it is to be an image of God in the world. But, like God, human beings can become an abstraction, a puzzle, an embarrassment, even a problem to us. We can think less of ourselves and of others than we should.

We live in a world in which human life is cheap. Thousands die in wars each year, millions of starvation, tens of millions by abortion. Recently, bills were introduced or foreshadowed for every parliament in Australia to allow euthanasia, the supposedly merciful practice of the young killing the elderly, the healthy killing the sick, the powerful killing the vulnerable. As well as the sick and elderly, there are those who suffer emotional violence or humiliation or are degraded in other ways. Others are exploited or neglected, left lonely and unloved. Christmas is for them also: for the crib is made of the same stuff as the Cross and for the same Saviour.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for 4^th Sunday in Advent, Year A, 19 December 2010, 70^th Anniversary of the establishment of the Parish of St Oliver Plunkett, Harris Park

In his last will and testament, Mr Jack McCreedie, wealthy merchant, amateur astronomer and no friend to Catholics, decreed that none of his Harris Park property should ever be associated with Popery. However, in 1926, when his home and land went up for auction, a group of Catholics led by the Parish Priest of Granville, raised the money to buy it for the Church.

It became known as Mary’s Mount and a convent of nuns was installed there, and soon after a hall that would function as both the school and the church of Blessed Oliver Plunkett, an Irish martyr. By the time Blessed Oliver was canonised in 1976 and this church became Saint Oliver’s it was a distinct parish of its own. The anti-Catholic McCreedie had comprehensively failed to impose his will from the grave and a rather different Will was clearly operative. A carpenter discovered a bottle in the fireplace in which there was a parchment wrapped around statues of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Mother, perhaps dropped down the chimney many years before, when the Catholics of Harris Park first aspired to have a place of their own, an Inn for the Holy Family of Nazareth. Who were this family honoured now for 70 years in this parish?

Like Mr McCreedie, St Joseph was ‘a man of honour’, our Gospel (Mt 1:18-24) tells us this morning. When he discovered that his betrothed was pregnant, and he knew it was not by him, he decided to do the right thing: to protect his good name, he would divorce her; but to protect her good name, he would do so quietly, without making a fuss. Reputations mattered to him.

Yet God’s messenger asked him to jeopardise his honour, his reputation, to open himself to mockery as a cuckold, an old fool, whose pretty young wife had cheated on him. Why? Because this child was to be like no other. Mary’s child will not be like other children, consummating their parents’ marriage and being their child. No, this child is Emmanuel, God-with-us. This child is Christos, God-for-us. This Child will take all that is most sinful and shameful about humanity and somehow redeem it.

This extraordinary promise was hinted at in our first lesson this morning, a strange little prophecy of Isaiah to Ahaz (Isa. 7:10-14). Now Ahaz, son of Jotham, king of Judah, was quite a star to have in your family tree. Around 735BC he ascended the throne, aged only 20, and reigned for 16 years. He apostatised and committed idolatry, sacrilege, theft and treachery. He ignored the Law and the Prophets and adopted every fashionable abomination, even child sacrifice. He even consigned some of his own sons to the flames as an offering to the diabolical gods of his pagan neighbours. So horrible was he that there was universal rejoicing when he died in his 30s and there was no state funeral.

So what is the angel of God up to when he mentions the prophecy of Isaiah to Ahaz, the startling sign that a Virgin will conceive and bear a son, who is God-with-us? Is Gabriel just putting Joseph’s mind at ease, explaining the inconvenient pregnancy of his bride-to-be, by showing him that God’s been planning this for hundreds of years now? Or is he also reminding Joseph that humanity, all humanity, even Joseph, needs such a Saviour and giving him a sneak preview of what kind of Saviour He will be?

On Christmas Eve we’ll meet Ahaz again, when his name is read out amongst the genealogy of Jesus Christ. He was one of Joseph’s more colourful ancestors! So when Joseph heard this little echo from Isaiah’s prophecy in the angelic dream, he would have known very well that these were words first spoken to his great-great-great-great … grandfather, the notorious child-burner and idolater. And if that is part of righteous Joseph’s family story, it now will also be, by adoption, that of Jesus.

As Paul reminds us in the Second Reading, Jesus was by adoption a descendant of David and his seedy line (Rom. 1:1-7). So from conception the unborn God enters into the mess of human failure, bringing from the inside redemption, healing, hope to all those touched by sin. And if God did this in Jesus, so in some measure must his step-father today: innocent though he is, he must risk calumny and ignominy for the sake of One who will render holy the whole human family.

What would have happened if Joseph had refused? What if he had indeed privately divorced the pregnant Mary? Even with Joseph’s protection we know Jesus was born into slum conditions and barely escaped murder by evil men. Had Mary been alone she could never have shielded Him from such tyrants and would have struggled to support Him. Advent is sanctified primarily by Mary’s pregnancy, but also by Joseph’s goodness and his protection of Mary and Jesus. If he must join the infant Saviour in placing his reputation into the hands of sinful men, he will also join Him in the work of salvation.

We tend to shy away from ‘Saviour’ talk today, or else reduce it to relief work (saving lives) or strategy (saving our global financial system) or finance (saving money) or sport (saving the cricket team from complete collapse). But the angel is quite clear to Joseph and so to us: it is the Christmas Saviour, and only He, who will save us from the consequences of our sin. He will save us from this world and point us towards another.

Now to do that, such a Saviour would have to know both this world of human folly and the eternal heaven to which human beings are called, where sin shall reign no more. And He could only really know both worlds if He were of both worlds. Put simply: He would have to be both human and divine, both born of a woman yet begotten by God. And this is precisely the great Advent sign that Isaiah and the prophets all the way to Joseph dreamed of: God in a crib, on a cross, in human flesh, making the human race His own, saving that human race from itself.

Yet what none of the prophets but Joseph saw was the dream come true. By this time next week we’ll have unwrapped the Christmas Present, the One wrapped in swaddling clothes who explains what all the other presents, decorations, shopping and cooking are for. As our ancestors who built this parish testified by their very determination to get this site and church and school: the suffering purple of the Woman-in-travail will soon be replaced with the white and gold of new life and hope. A Virgin has indeed conceived and a just man has taken her into his care. Together they will bring forth a Son, the One for whom all creation groans in anticipation, in the long Advent to end of time: God-with-us!

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for Graduation Mass, Campion College, Toongabbie, 14 December 2010

Relics were big business in the Middle Ages! They were important to the economy of the village or town associated with the relic. If the town had a relic, people would come on pilgrimage and they would need food, a place to sleep and so on. Their generosity also helped keep many monasteries and churches afloat. And most importantly of all, it helped bring the pilgrims closer to God and His saints on earth and in heaven.

Of course there could be an ‘unholy’ rivalry between towns for possession of a relic. A high-level dispute took place in the city of Poitiers in the 6^th Century. St Radegund, abbess of the monastery, procured a relic of the Holy Cross. This greatly upset the bishop, Maroveus. He was determined to have the relic in the cathedral, but Radegund was equally determined to have it in her abbey and would not part with it. Maroveus was so peeved that he refused to officiate at Radegund’s funeral and the bishop of the neighbouring diocese, St Gregory of Tours, had to come to Poitiers to bury Radegund. Now Radegund is revered to this day as a saint, whereas Bishop Maroveus has gone to that obscurity reserved for most bishops! Her monastery of the Holy Cross still exists with its community of nuns outside Poitiers.

It’s probably a safe bet that Toongabbie will not be materially richer for receiving tonight a relic of St Edmund Campion, but you will certainly be spiritually enriched. Relics are sacramentals; they put us in touch with the power (virtus) of the saint. They inspire us to emulate the virtues and holiness of that person whose life they celebrate. And more than any picture, any icon, they bring us close to that saint because they were actually part of that saint’s earthly life. Any ordinary person understands why you might want to keep a locket of a loved one’s hair or a jumper than one wore. But holy relics are not just mementos of graces past but also conduits of graces present.

Pope John Paul II’s famous Theology of the Body helped a new generation to come to terms with their bodiliness and the life to which we are called in our bodies. He showed how sexuality can be a sign and way to make a total gift of the self in marriage or in consecrated life. But there is so much more yet to be said about the body, in philosophy, literature, ethics, in sacramental theology, ecclesiology, eschatology. The relic of St Edmund Campion was once associated with that man; it points to the future when his immortal soul will once again inform his body, now glorious, in the resurrection of the dead. It recalls against the dualists that we are our bodies and against the materialists that we are more than our bodies.

Your patron, St Edmund Campion, is one who lived today’s Gospel to the full. His radical surrender of himself to Christ led to martyrdom. Radical surrender to God – or in today’s language, the total gift of the self – is the message of today’s Gospel (Lk 14:25-33).

Our passage recommends human prudence. If someone would build a tower – or a liberal arts college – he had better sit down first and calculate what resources he’d need to complete it; he’d better do the ancient near Eastern equivalent of a feasibility study. If a leader is marching to war against another king, or indeed engaging in a culture war, he’d better calculate his forces or in more contemporary language, have a strategic plan. Christians may be inspired by the Holy Spirit but that does not mean they cast aside reason in favour of intuition or prudence in favour of foolhardiness.

That said, St Edmund’s was not the wisdom of this world. His was that un-commonsense that is human reason informed by supernatural wisdom. The insight of faith enlightens, deepens and converts. Above all, it teaches us to rely on God. Hence the paradox of Jesus saying builders must do their feasibility studies and generals have their strategic plans, but disciples be ready to give away all their possessions, all their neat preconceptions and plans. After so much practical advice Jesus might seem to be counselling impracticality; but what He is really doing, of course, is revealing that higher wisdom, who is Himself, and what clinging to Him might cost.

For most of us life does not involve the drama of martyrdom or melodrama of renouncing all possessions for life. Of course there are costs for standing up for your faith, especially in the sort of culture that recently endorsed same-sex adoption, has banned Christmas pageants in some schools and is on the precipice of legalising euthanasia. All of these are examples of what Paul in our epistle called ‘the philosophy of our age’ and what St Edmund saw as the battle for our souls and for our culture and community. You may well suffer for bringing your faith and reason, so well tutored in this College, to bear on such matters and many others in the decades ahead. As your heavenly patron, whose body is with us tonight, said: “I am [simply] a Catholic man and a priest; in that Faith I have lived, and in that Faith do I intend to die. If you esteem my Religion treason, then I am guilty; as for [any] other treason, I never committed any, God is my judge.”

As for dispossession, St Edmund told the Privy Council that because his vows as a Jesuit required him to engage in “a special kind of warfare under the banner of obedience” he had “resigned all my interest or possibility of wealth, honour, pleasure, and other worldly felicity”. Of course, even those in vows of evangelical poverty tend to accumulate various comforts and securities, too many books or attachments of other kinds. Gospel renunciation is a life-long stripping away of layers of attachment until we are before the Lord, completely reliant on Him like St Edmund at the last.

Today our graduates place their dreams and hopes for the future in the hands of God. You will leave here fortified by your studies and the example of the faith community here at Campion. Hopefully, your faith has been strengthened – it has certainly been well nourished here. You face further study or the beginning of your new working or home life firm in the conviction that your faith rests “not on human wisdom but on the power of God”, as St Paul put it in our First Reading (1 Cor. 2:5).

Anyone who saw MasterChef or its pint-sized spin-off, Junior MasterChef, will remember teary-eyed contestants exclaiming “I really want this” and then facing elimination because they couldn’t plate up on time or the texture of the sauce wasn’t smooth enough. It is a relief to know that our relationship with God does not depend on caprice or luck or our own extraordinary efforts, but merely on our cooperation with Him. And as today’s readings, and our patron saint, teach us: the best cooperation is surrender to God’s love, His wisdom, His way.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for 3^rd (Gaudete) Sunday of Advent, Year A, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 12 December 2010

Poor old John. Today we see him languishing in Herod’s dungeon, awaiting a brutal and senseless death, full of shadows and forebodings; assailed by doubt, impotence, loneliness; feeling wasted (Mt. 11:2-11). John believed that he had been called to herald the long-awaited Messiah and that he had done so: but this Messiah is not acting at all the way John had expected.

He had liked the early Jesus, who seemed more ‘religious’. He had submitted to John’s baptism in Jordan as any ordinary sinner or as a neophyte joining God’s people. He had then gone fasting in the desert and wrestling with the Devil. He had come back inveighing against sinners and hypocrites, calling all to repentance. He seemed to be bringing about the revolution for which Israel longed. Now, that’s the way a prophet is supposed to behave!

But lately he’d heard some disturbing stories. Jesus and His disciples seemed to be forever at parties and, instead of abstaining from drink like John always had, they were getting a name for themselves as gluttons and drunkards. They were supping with all sorts, including tax collectors (the enemies of Israel) and sinners (the enemies of God).

Jesus’ message had become far too lame: instead of smiting those enemies He’s full of talk of loving them, doing good to those who harm you, forgiving again and again. They seemed to be having far too much fun for genuinely religious people and didn’t seem to care what laws and customs they broke. They’d been John’s disciples once, but now these so-called apostles were being corrupted.

Moreover, John is now in prison for standing up against Herod’s bigamy and incest, his state-sanctioned adultery. He is, as it were, the first martyr for Christian moral teaching. But what’s this he’s hearing? That a woman caught in the act of adultery was brought to Jesus for judgment and He’d let her go. That another one, a Samaritan no less, who’d had five husbands and was now living in sin with a sixth man, had met Jesus at a well, drunk what John hoped was water with Him, and they’d had a long spiritual discussion. A third one had anointed His feet with expensive ointment. If eating with taxmen wasn’t bad enough, this Jesus was associating with various loose-livers.

John is deeply troubled as he awaits his own death and wonders if it was all for nothing. So he sends his spies to see what this Jesus is up to and to demand some explanation.

Jesus does not respond as He might. He could have said: tell cousin John not to worry; I am the One; it was all worth it. No, He tells the reporters to tell Him what they see and hear for themselves. “Tell John all the marvels you see. Isaiah’s promise (Isa. 35:1-6,10) is being fulfilled before our very eyes. The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and even the dead are raised.”

Wouldn’t that be enough to convince him, all those signs and wonders? Actually, it wouldn’t. Signs have to point somewhere. Miraculous cures tell us about God’s power and should increase our faith and diminish our doubts. But as the people of Jesus’ day demonstrated, God-power can be addictive; once people have seen one miracle they just come back asking for more.

So Jesus doesn’t just say: testify to all my cosmic fireworks. No, He wants them to know and love the God whose power He brings. So He adds a final miracle to the report: “Tell John that the poor have the Gospel preached to them.” It’s the miracle of preaching that increases faith and casts out doubt. And it’s the miracle of His preaching that brings us close to God.

Had Jesus just come with signs and wonders, we might have thought Him a prophet, a miracle-worker, a Messiah. Had we known about the Trinity, we might have thought He was the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, the fiery power of God. But what shows that Jesus is the Incarnation, not of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity but of the Second, is that He is Preaching. Jesus is the logos, the idea, the argument, the communication, the Word of God the Father, the love song sung by the Father from all eternity. Jesus is a living, breathing, divine homily.

All that precedes and accompanies His preaching, the spectacular raisings and the more private healings, are all pre-evangelisation, they till the soil so that people will receive the seed of God’s Word, they open eyes and ears and hearts to make them more receptive to the Gospel. And these are the very miracles Jesus offers to John the Baptist and his disciples. “Tell John what you see and hear, tell him that you now can see and hear. Blessed is he whose mind and heart are not closed to me, who does not lose faith in me.”

It is John and his disciples who are cured of blindness and deafness, for none are so blind as those who will not see, none so deaf as those who refuse to hear. It is they who are cleansed of leprosy of the soul and raised out of the deadness of heart. And if they needed it, such pious people, such manifestly good people, the practising Catholics of their day, then so do we.

In an age when people like to make up their own truth and values and call it conscience, and when they resist being taught by any authority, even God; in an age when there is so much bustle and noise that it is hard to sit quiet for a moment and listen to the Church: in such an age we need the miracle of seeing and hearing Christ’s coming. That’s why we return, Sunday after Sunday, to hear the Good News for the poor, to receive the miracle of the One who is God’s preaching, into our minds and hearts, even into our mouths and stomachs.

Today is Gaudete Sunday. We prepare for Christ’s coming to us and our coming to Him, at Christmas, at the end of our lives, and especially at the end of all Christmases, all lifetimes. The Advent Church is imprisoned with John’s forebodings and wears the colour of his bruises. And yet today we break out, as it were, into laughter. It’s almost as if we are unable to take the dour purple seriously, that we are Jesus’ partygoers making jolly even before Christmas, before the kingdom come, rather than John’s wowsers who abstain from everything that makes you smile.

It is to offer the miracle of preaching, of new sight and insight, of new hearing and heart, for those most in need of Good News, that God speaks His Word to us in Jesus Christ and Christ speaks His word to us in His Church. So that even when we feel like John, locked up in his prison of depression and doubt, we can be rosy: realistic yet hopeful, strong yet loving, joyfully persevering to the end. Not because we are not truly religious people, as John had feared, but because Jesus has changed forever what truly religious people are.

Knife-sharpeners, maidens and philosophersBishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for Mass for Parish SecretariesSt Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 9 December 2010

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for 2^nd Second Sunday of Advent, Year A, St Patrick’s Cathedral Parramatta, 5 December 2010

During the week before Christmas the Church sings a great series of ancient Advent acclamations known as ‘the O antiphons’. At Vespers each night the Church prays to Christ to come, hailing Him with a different title each day.

In the Middle Ages these were collected into an Advent hymn, which was translated in the 19^th Century as O Come, O come Emmanuel. So on 17^th December we cry out O Sapientia, O come, thou Wisdom from on high. On the 18^th we name him O Adonai, O come, thou holy Lord of might. On the 20^th he is invoked as O Clavis David from which comes our verse O come, thou Key of David, come. On the 21^st we greet him as O Oriens, O come, thou dayspring, come and cheer. Next we sing O Rex Gentium, O come, desire of nations.

Finally, on the last Advent night, in the antiphon O Immanuel, the Church calls on Christ to come and save her. It is the plaintive cry of all humanity longing for its Saviour, the cry of every human heart as empty as an O, hungering for redemption.

Now the antiphon for 19 December is taken from today’s beautiful first reading (Isa. 11:1-10 ): O Radix Jesse, O come, thou rod of Jesse’s stem. We recognise that the prophet Isaiah’s talk of “a shoot that springs from the stock of Jesse” refers to Jesus’ genealogy, which stretches back to Abraham, through Jesse of Bethlehem, David’s father. In calling Him shoot of Jesse, we mean He is descended from King David, heir to promises made to David, He is the eternal king, the fulfilment of the hopes of Israel.

But our text tells us more about Him and so more about our Advent hopes. First, that the Spirit of the Lord rests on Him and that His coming means an outpouring of that Spirit’s seven gifts – of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and God-fearing. John the Baptist it is who identifies Jesus as that person, the One who will baptise with the fiery Holy Spirit (Mt. 3:1-12).

Secondly, the effects of the coming of this Rod of Jesse, the Prophet tells us, are just desserts for the wicked, vindication for the innocent and, above all, harmony in a violent world. Isaiah’s images of peace are especially romantic: “The wolf lives with the lamb, the panther lies down with the kid, calf and lion feed together.... cow and bear make friends, calf and cub snuggle up. The lion eats straw rather than killing for meat and the children play safely with snakes.”

These are beautiful images, of a world of no more violence, where nature cooperates as it should. That, I would suggest, is a universal longing. Every civilisation has prayed and searched for such deep harmony and even our secular culture has such dreams, as we see with its concern for world peace, ecology, climate and species preservation.

The question is: how is such harmony ever to be achieved? Again Isaiah gives us a hint: “a little boy will lead them,” he says, “the shoot of Jesse, a signal to the peoples.” “Who is this shoot, this little boy long promised?” Israel asked. He is “the One my successor, more powerful than I, whose sandals I’m unfit to carry,” says the Baptist. He is the Christmas babe.

John it is who points out that coming Boy. Now John, to be frank, was not a cathedral parish sort of guy. He was something of an ancient beatnik, living in the streets or on the beach, dressed in homespun camel-hair and eating a very strange diet indeed. And if his dress and eating habits left something to be desired, so did his conversation: it seems to have consisted largely in calling people snakes and hypocrites and telling them to shape up or they’d burn in hell.

So he was not perhaps the first person you’d invite to a Christmas party. Yet this strange, terrifying figure is our Advent saint. John is the climax of centuries of waiting for the Messiah. He speaks the language of the prophets, by then long silent. He calls, like they did, for repentance, for turning back to God and urgently. He convicts the whole world of being in sin’s power and declares Christ the Lamb of God who will take away the sin of the world.

That’s why John was a Baptist: for baptism was then customary for Gentile converts to Judaism, giving them an Exodus experience of passing through the Red Sea. John’s message was that not only the pagans but Israel too needed to be baptised, washed clean of the sin of the world. He was, we might say, the first Catholic, by which we mean universalist, for he was the first to affirm, with all possible vigour, that Israel and the Gentiles were as one before God. He was the first to identify that the Rod of Jesse, the cross of Jesus, would be the ensign for all peoples. He was the one to realise that God can raise up children for Abraham from these very stones on the river’s bank.

All are sinners and so all need a Saviour, John insists, not just those bad guys in other countries, other communities, other families, out there somewhere. His call for repentance, to get to know ourselves and face up to our foibles and failings and our need for forgiveness: this is the Baptist’s call to every age and even to the people of Parramatta. If we don’t believe we are damaged by nature and by our own choices, that we have our limitations, then we don’t believe we need a Christmas Saviour. And that means the inn of our hearts will be closed yet again when Joseph and Mary come knocking this Christmas.

Homily for the Ordination of Rev. Br. Paul Rowse OP to the Priesthood
Parish Church of Mary Immaculate and St Athanasius, Manly,
Memorial of St John Damascene, 4 December 2010

“It was you, Lord, who drew me forth from my father’s loins and formed me in my mother’s womb; you brought me to the light of day, a naked boy … You fed me the spiritual milk of your Word and sustained me with the solid food of the Body of Christ … Now Lord you have called me by the hands of your bishop to minister to your disciples. Why, indeed, in your providence, you acted so, I do not know. You alone know that … Put the right word on my lips. Grant me a clear and ready tongue by the tongues of fire of your Holy Spirit that your presence may ever protect me … Let your good Spirit guide me in the right way and may my works be in accordance with your will. Let it be so, right to the end.” So said St John of Damascus whose Statement of Faith we read at Matins on this his feast day.

John Damascene’s beautiful words about his vocation echo those of the young Jeremiah in today’s first lesson (Jer 1:4-9), at first begging to be excused from his calling because of his youthfulness. Even some very gifted and generous young people can lack the self-esteem or the courage to throw themselves head-long into the adventure of the Gospel, to leap into the uncertainties of the surf and make a total gift of themselves to God and His people in a priestly or religious vocation. They feel unworthy to be a voice for God. But the immediate lesson of those opening verses of Jeremiah’s book is that no Jew, no human being, is alone: God is with him. No minister of the Word is alone: the Holy Spirit is with him. And one man plus God is worthy indeed!

“Go now to those to whom I send you,” said the Lord to Jeremiah, “and say whatever I command you ... for I am putting my words in your mouth.” God’s words, notice, not your own opinions, not the latest theological novelties, not the spin of the PR people, not the morals of the market, bureaucracy, media or focus group. Brother Paul knows very well that his work of holy service will not be his own doing: it will be the Lord Jesus who prays to the Father in him and offers the Father praise through him when he celebrates Mass. It will be with Christ’s power that he blesses the people and ministers to them the sacraments. It must be God’s Word for which he is a mouthpiece, “stating the truth openly in the sight of God” as his name-saint Paul counsels in our second lesson (2 Cor 4: 1-2, 5-7). “For it is not ourselves that we preach, but Christ Jesus as Lord.”

Like the Prophet Jeremiah, Brother Paul’s vocation began early. When aged about five or six, he visited his great aunt Kath and uncle Ian at their new flat in Fairlight. Walking down their driveway for the first time, Paul spotted a fishpond and promptly dipped his finger in a pond and made the sign of the cross. We can imagine his delight when he graduated to Manly Swimming Centre as a schoolkid, with four huge pools for the dipping! Who knows how many pagan children he baptised there and how many others were exorcised with his holy water. But throughout the years that followed Paul’s childhood his sense of calling deepened and there would be more sacraments for him to dispense in the future.

How and where he was to pursue that maturing vocation was not always clear. At a time when he was particularly uncertain, Paul used to walk from Wynyard Station, to his work as an ESL teacher in East Sydney, past St Mary’s Cathedral. He would visit the Lady Chapel there, placing his vocational decision under Mary Immaculate’s mantle. He had first learnt to trust her in another church also dedicated to Mary Immaculate. Here it was, at Mary Immaculate Manly, that Paul was baptised, confessed, communicated and confirmed, served at the altar, learned to pray the Rosary and will now be ordained. Our Lady was never far from him, gently goading him onwards in the sacred priesthood of her Son and towards preaching as a friar of that Order of the Rosary of which she is a special Protectress.

But why does the Protectress of the Dominican order prompt most of her sons to embrace the priesthood? Perhaps it’s because their vocation is fundamentally Christological, Eucharistic and Ecclesial and so priesthood is a logical state for them. Maybe it’s because of the natural coincidence of theological interests between priests and friars. It could be that Dominican friars are normally clerics for the simple reason that they are preachers, not just by baptismal grace or congregational charism, but also with the graces of holy orders and the preaching authority given clerics by the Church. Thus the Fundamental Constitution of the Friars Preachers provides that “Having been made co-operators with the episcopal order by priestly ordination, we have as our special function a prophetic task, which is to proclaim everywhere by word and example the Gospel of Jesus Christ ...” (LCO 1.V).

All of which is clearly true, but it misses one crucial reason that the friars preacher are mostly priests. “Christ, my God, you humbled yourself to lift me, a straying sheep, onto your shoulders and fed me true doctrine by the hands of your shepherds,” John Damascene said. Preaching and reconciliation are intimately linked in that thought, as they were in the order from the earliest times. The general preaching mission was granted the order by Pope Honorius III in 1217 and the general mission to hear confessions extended only four years later. St Dominic was honoured in the liturgical calendar as ‘Saint Dominic de Guzman, Confessor’, which is the liturgical word for ‘priest’ and means that he both confessed the Catholic faith in his preaching and absolved sins as a Father Confessor. Faculties to hear confessions are given considerable attention in the Dominican Constitutions and are a precondition to holding most offices in the order. For the order was founded not just for preaching but for preaching and the salvation of souls.

When Dominic and his sons preached they brought people to tears, and not just because of the length or tedium of their sermons. No, they brought people to tears of compunction and contrition and then of gratitude for God’s mercy and sheer love for God, creation, humanity. The faculty to hear confessions rounded off the Ministry of the Word: once the Word of God has been proclaimed by the preacher the child of God returns to the Father through the preacher’s absolution. We are healers of sinners, not just scolds; reconcilers of heretics, not just inquisitors; friars reconciler not just friars preacher.

Dear Paul, as you entered the order I was departing its regular life and you gave me my first pectoral cross as a fraternal reminder of both where I was going and where I had come from. I have known you since the beginning of your Dominican vocation; it is a great privilege to be with you at this next stage. Today your family, friends and brother friars join in offering you up for transformation into a new person, a sacred person, a friar preacher become friar reconciler, what St Thomas Aquinas called “a steward and conduit of the divine mysteries”. The People of God invite you to share in the most crucial aspects of their lives: their births, marriages and deaths, their sins and sufferings, their aspirations and communion, their moments of touching the sacred and times of feeling God’s absence and their own desolation. Do your part in the work of Christ the Priest with genuine joy and love. Sharing in the work of Christ, the Head and Shepherd of the Church, and united with your superiors and the bishops, seek to bring the faithful together into one family and to lead them effectively, through Christ and in the Holy Spirit, to God the Father.

You have told me that you aspire to be like the theologian St Thomas, but less spherical; a Scripture scholar like St Jerome, but more user-friendly; a witness like St Peter Martyr of Verona, but with fewer headaches. However spherical the ‘earthenware jar’ of your body may become, whatever tasks the order gives you in which to invest ‘the treasure within’ in the years ahead (2 Cor 4: 1-2, 5-7), we pray that you will have many brother friars as co-workers in the vineyard of the Lord. Happily Father Timothy Aihora of our province was ordained priest in Honiara only last week and we remember him too in this Mass. I also ask any young men present who are free to do so, to discern their vocation with prudence and embrace it with generosity and passion.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for 1^st Sunday of Advent, Year A, andInstitution of Candidates for the Clerical State, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 28 November 2010

Paradoxically, as the secular year winds to a close and we all begin to wind down with a view to the Christmas celebrations, the long hot days ahead and our summer holidays, the Church winds herself up as her new year already begins.

As the secular world indulges in a frenzy of shopping and an orgy of office parties, Advent Sunday calls us to quiet, penitential preparation. As the city is dressed in its finest Christmas decorations and gaudiest lights, the Church dresses herself in the dour purple of penance and funerals.

Just when the world is recommending over-indulgence followed by snoozing, the Liturgy counsels: ‘Be on your guard! Stay awake! You know not the hour.’ (Mt. 24:37-44) Why, we might ask, is the Church calendar so out-of-synch with real life? Or it is that ordinary life is out-of-synch with real life, the really real life, the life of God.

God’s time is clearly not man’s time: God exists in eternity, which means for Him and those most closely united to Him there is no ordinary time. Advent reminds us that the passages and changes and timescales that matter to the secular world are not the ones we Christians should focus on …

The early Christians lived in daily expectation of Christ’s return. We may smile fondly at their over-literal interpretation of Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel, but maybe they were on to something. We tend to picture Jesus’ second coming as some infinitely distant event with little to do with us.

But, in fact, just like the 1^st Century Christians, we live in ‘the middle ages’, that brief space between Jesus’ Resurrection and His return, that time between when He was raised up and when all the rest of creation will be raised up with Him. It might seem a long time, 2000 years or more, but for the Eternal One it is as the blink of an eye. And when He comes at the last it won’t be arranged to fit neatly into our secular calendars and routines, say on the Australia Day weekend.

An earlier generation called today ‘Stir Up Sunday’, from the words of the old collect (opening prayer): “Stir up, O Lord, Thy might, we beg Thee, and come.” For Anglicans, the thought of a stirred-up God was unseemly, so they changed the prayer from one of rousing up God to one to rouse the people: “Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people that, richly bearing the fruit of good works, they may by you be richly rewarded.” The reference to stirring and rich fruit reminded housewives this was the last chance to stir up the Christmas pudding before it would be hung to wait for the big day ahead.

For Aussies, amidst the parties and the summer, the call to stir up our wills was a helpful reminder that people must be wary of sluggishness, not slow down spiritually as the heat builds up, not suspend the practice of faith as the silly season takes over. Advent tells us to keep our eyes on the New Jerusalem, for our long pilgrimage is almost over. The Lord’s unending Day is dawning.

Perhaps this Advent message makes Christians sound like kill-joys to the rest of the world. There’s that old bishop Paul in our Second Reading (Rom. 13:11-14) carping away like an old prude about “drunken orgies, promiscuity and licentiousness”, but surely we’ve got to break out occasionally, Australians might say.

Pastors and liturgists can carry on all they like about November being too early for Christmas parties and decorations, but who wants the God-police looking over their shoulder all the time? It can’t hurt to start Christmas a bit early with office parties and finish a bit late with beach holidays. Indeed you might say this shows how seriously Aussies take the Solemnity of the Nativity, since they draw it out into a festival that lasts for weeks before and after, a novena and an octave and more!

Well, our Advent wisdom seems to be: jumping straight into the Christmas parties won’t do; without a good Advent, you won’t make a good Christmas; without appropriate spiritual preparation Christmas might amount to little more than abandoned wrapping paper and torn paper hats.

Today Larry and Ruben enter a new stage of their journey. Following a period of discernment, formation and testing, they have offered themselves for priesthood. In many ways this is a shocking decision, a radical, counter-cultural move, a kind of Advent gesture. It shakes us all up to see two young men ready to give their lives in this way to God and His people.

Having investigated and assisted their spiritual, intellectual and human development, their love of God and their determination to serve God’s people, the Church today accepts them as candidates for the clerical state. You, the People of God assembled here, will with me their bishop be the witnesses to their declaration.

In the years ahead for them, as deacons and then priests, they will adopt the characteristic Advent posture, pointing away from themselves and towards the Christ who is coming. By Word and Sacrament they will shake up our slumbering world.

St Anselm once asked ‘Why did God become man at Christmas?’ and he answered for the whole Church: ‘To redeem us; to change us; to save us from our sins.’ Advent says we must not continue just as before; everything changes because God has been stirred from His heavenly torpor and is on His way to meet us at Christmas. Everything changes, not for Him but for us. But we will only be ready to receive the Christmas Babe if we wake from our slumber and smugness. If the divine child comes and we are spiritually asleep, He might just find all over again that there is no room for Him at the inn of our homes, our lives, our hearts, that they are locked and the householders asleep.

Come, O Come, we cry out to Emmanuel, our God, in our hymns, readings, prayers, our deepest yearnings. Wake up, O Lord, and come to our aid!

Come, O come, He cries back to our slumbering souls. Wake up, O children, lest like those in Noah’s day you miss the signs of the flood around you.

Homily for the Vigil for Nascent Life, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 27 November 2010

Tonight is the Vigil of Advent Sunday. The ancient People of God and all who have died are hushed as they listen in to the conversation between an angel and a young woman. Will she say yes, when people have so often said no to God? Will she give her fiat to the long-awaited Saviour taking flesh of her flesh?

In Advent that woman of yes, who gave her fiat to salvation not just once but with her whole life, is heavily pregnant. With her new husband she journeys to his ancestral seat, for the Roman census and to bring forth her child in Royal David’s City.

In Advent all creation is in travail, awaiting the return of that Christ and the consummation of the world.

So this is a time of expectancy, of pregnant pause, of patient waiting. Our secular world wants to jump right to Christmas, with its parties and decorations, with Jesus already in His crib surrounded by schmaltzy animals, carolling angels, gift-bearing kings and Santa with his reindeer. Already the Christmas lights are flashing in Westfield and on people’s verandahs and lawns.

The Gospel does not jump so quickly to the birth or romanticise it once it comes. Mary, we are told, and Joseph too, are afraid and ashamed. There is suspicion around the pregnancy. As labour approaches the mother must go on the road. On arrival all motels and caravan parks are full. She must give birth without bed or kinswomen. God-made-man is delivered in a squalid cowshed. When they get Him to Church, old Father Simeon warns the proud parents of danger ahead. Not much tinsel and romance in all that!

There is more and worse. There is a plot to kill the baby, hatched by a power-crazed king. The family must flee as refugees to a strange land. In Advent creation is pregnant with hope of new life but there are those who would terminate that hope.

At Christmas the angel host sing joy and peace, but on earth there is intrigue and murder. The Light will dawn for a people who walk in darkness. The Way, the Truth and the Life will come for a world that has lost its way, into a civilisation that too often heeds lies, into a culture of death, not life.

On the very opening page of our New Testament the blood of innocents is shed. And at the climax of that story the powers of this world will finally catch up with the One they’ve pursued since that first Advent. Instead of Come, O Come, Emmanuel, they will chant Crucify Him, crucify Him.

Our world today is every bit as confused as it was at that first Christmas. There’s plenty of talk of human rights, human dignity, equal respect and care. We’ve got the resources and know-how to help people through troubled times.

Yet the blood of innocent children still flows: children in war, trafficked as slaves or in the drug trade; children abused where they should be safe or starved when there’s plenty of food; children neglected to death in hospitals for daring to be born less than ‘perfect’ as this world sees it.

Perhaps worst of all, many unborn children never see the light of day. More die by abortion worldwide each year than died in the First World War and we repeat that year after year after year. The womb is a more dangerous place to live than on the M4.

In our country as many as one in four women now has an abortion at some time in her life and many are scarred physically, psychologically, emotionally or spiritually: women whose hearts are terminated along with their children; women we all know and love. They are the second victims of the slaughter of the innocents.

To such a world comes an extraordinary gift: the Word of God mute in the Advent womb, the Incarnate Creator whose first sound is the cry of a newborn baby. The Lord of the Universe is a helpless unborn child, then an equally helpless infant and, ultimately, an equally helpless young man dying on a cross.

If Christians, especially Catholics, are notorious for our love of children, for our respect for human life from conception until natural death, for our love for parenthood and families and the frail elderly and dying it’s no wonder: their God was once such a defenceless human being!

The Holy Father has asked us tonight to celebrate with him and the Church throughout the world a Vigil for nascent life. In our own country at this time the threat to life is being extended to the other end of the life-cycle.

Bills to legalise euthanasia have recently been introduced or foreshadowed for the Commonwealth and almost every state and territory parliament. We’re so used to killing the vulnerable in this country that some now want to expand the field of state-sanctioned killing.

In celebrating our Vigil tonight we do three things. First, we recommit our hearts and minds to the dignity of the human person, at all stages of life from conception to natural death, saved by a God who became one of us in all our vulnerability.

Such commitment is essential because if one of the great tests for the soul of the generation just past has been the killing of unborn children, so one of the great new challenges for the generation ahead will be the pressure to legalise the killing of the sick and elderly. It is a battle for our civilisation and for our very souls.

Secondly, we pray, here tonight before our Eucharistic Lord and promise to keep praying and doing penance and lobbying and otherwise working to make our community one modelled on that Advent saint, Joseph, who protected the little Child and His mother and who in due course had the best of natural deaths, indeed became Patron of a Happy Death.

We seek to ensure that parenthood and childhood, chronic and terminal illness, disability and old age, are all reverenced. We want women supported through every stage of their pregnancy and child-rearing. And we seek to bring women who are victims of abortion back from shame to healing and new life. We want old and dying people loved and honoured and protected. And we seek to build a community where killing is unthinkable as a solution to our problems.

Homily for the Solemnity of Christ the King, Year C, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 21 November 2010

Homily for Ordination of Rev John Watkins to the Priesthood
St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 6 November 2010

Photo: Alphonus Fok & Grace Lu

During the filming of a movie in France in which he played GK Chesterton’s famous Father Brown, Sir Alec Guinness returned to his lodgings still dressed in his cassock.

Before he got there a young child ran up and took him by the hand saying, “Walk me home Father!” The trust the little boy showed came from knowing that a Catholic priest should be a second father. Guinness was so moved that he decided Catholicism deserved further examination. So began his conversion.

In his diary he wrote: “Continuing my walk … I reflected that a Church that could inspire such confidence in a child, making priests, even when unknown, so easily approachable, could not be as scheming or as creepy as is so often made out. I began to shake off my long-taught, long-absorbed prejudices.”

Such faith in priests has sadly been betrayed at times, sometimes terribly. Yet still we crave for spiritual fathers. This morning the young man is called John; this afternoon we will call him Father. It is a title of respect, but not, I hope, of distance: indeed, it should be one of endearment and trust.

Yet it is a strange thing to find people your parents’ and grandparents’ age, including bishops, priests and all sorts calling you Father and holding your hand to their forehead for a blessing. Strange because it makes you seem older than you are or feel you are; older, and more responsible. Strange, also, because it makes strangers seem to be your intimates; willing to call you Dad, as it were, and so make you family.

At Baptism Christian mothers give thanks for the safe delivery of their child – and Christian fathers give thanks that they did not have to go through it themselves!

In a sense, for us priests, the labour pains begin only after we have brought forth a child of God from the font. Pouring water and the names of God over the baby, the priest consecrates this child to God for the life ahead. Anointing the baby’s ears and mouth, the priest prays this child will hear and, in turn, proclaim by word and deed the saving truth of Jesus Christ.

Calling that baby to return in due course to the altar to complete initiation through First Holy Communion and Confirmation, and to return thereafter regularly for Confession and Eucharist, and less regularly for marriage, holy orders, anointing of the sick or Christian burial, the priest offers this child a life of encounters with Christ and the surest path to eternity. At every point he is Father to this baby, sharing in the parents’ hopes, the Church’s hopes, God’s hopes for this child, and in their responsibility for its upbringing.

John was little more than a child himself, an altar server, when his parish priest and fellow parishioners suggested his call might be to the priesthood. Though his family’s custom was to serve in the uniform of the armed services, he was already destined to serve in another way, with the helmet of salvation and the armour of light, that is, the priestly vestments.

Christ came as the new Adam, the new spiritual father and head of the human race. He made the Church for Himself as His bride and for humanity as its mother.

When he does those things most central to his priestly identity Fr John will stand in the person of that new Adam, in persona Christi. Priests of Christ exist to raise the children of God to full stature and, like the Good Shepherd, willingly lay down their lives for their flock.

So, my dear son John, how will you care for God’s children, pasture His flock, feed His lambs? Two ways, in particular, lie before you now. I have already mentioned the Sacraments of Faith: know what you are doing and imitate the mystery you celebrate there. Remember that you are chosen from among God’s people and appointed to act for them in relation to God.

The other nourishment you must offer them is the Word of God. Our readings today declare your duty is to speak not your own opinions, not what you imagine your hearers might prefer to hear, but the very words God puts into your mouth (Jer. 1:4-9), the knowledge of God’s glory (2 Cor. 4:1-2, 5-7), the truth for which Christ consecrates you (Jn 17:6, 14-19).

You must hold fast to the mystery of faith, which you preach and express in action what you proclaim by word of mouth. Make of your life a Gospel wherein all may read the Word of God.

Today you offer yourself to God. Your family, friends and diocese join in offering you up for transformation into a new person, a sacred person, a spiritual father. The people of God invite you to share in the most crucial aspects of their lives: their births, marriages and deaths, their sins and aspirations, their moments of touching the sacred and times of feeling God’s absence and their own desolation.

Do your part in the work of Christ the priest with genuine joy and love, and attend to the concerns of Christ before your own. Sharing in the work of Christ, the head and shepherd of the Church, and united with your bishop, seek to bring the faithful together into one family and to lead them effectively, through Christ and in the Holy Spirit, to God the Father.

Like the young Jeremiah in our first reading you are humbled and awestruck by your calling; like him, therefore, you must rely on God’s grace. “It is not ourselves that we preach,” Paul reminds us, “but Christ Jesus our Lord”. It is not our own power that is the treasure in these clay pots of our bodies, these earthenware jars of our lives, but God’s power that can do such great things in us.

Trust in that power, my son, and pray constantly for it. Lean also on your fellow priests and faithful who stand by you this day. We pray that you will have many brother priests as co-workers in the vineyard of the Lord – and so I ask the young men of our Diocese to discern their vocation with prudence and embrace it with passion.

Likewise, we need many more holy religious and I trust that the recent celebrations of St Mary MacKillop will inspire renewal and regrowth for religious life in our Diocese and beyond.

Recently, I was asked by a parishioner: Did I enjoy the ordination of Mary MacKillop? She was not being provocative and I knew what she meant. It is interesting to reflect on Mary’s views on the priesthood. St Mary of the Cross was a realist about bishops and priests: she suffered active opposition from some, passive resistance from others, but support from others again. She knew their strengths and weaknesses.

Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily, All Souls’ Day, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 2010

At the examination before Confirmation a child was once asked by the Bishop to define matrimony. The child nervously recited from memory: “Matrimony is a state in which souls suffer for a time after death on account of their sins.”  Embarrassed that one of her charges had given the definition for purgatory when asked about matrimony, the nun in charge of the class was about to correct the child But the Bishop stopped her and said: “Hold on Sister, what would we know?”

Where on earth, some non-Catholics ask, did Catholics get this idea of purgatory? It starts with the feast we celebrated yesterday: the fundamental Catholic belief in the Communion of Saints, by which we mean all members of the Church. Church members come in three classes.

The saints in First Class, as we might call heaven, or the Church triumphant as it was traditionally called, are those who did God’s will and were so united to Him in this life that we are certain they are now are with Him for all eternity in the next.

The saints in Economy Class, as we might call life here on earth, or the Church militant as it was traditionally called, are those still engaged in the battle of good and evil, in our world and in their own hearts. We call them saints because they are children of God doing their best to follow His will, to unite themselves to Him and build up His kingdom on earth. St Paul used to talk this way when he wrote to the faithful as ‘the Saints in Rome’, ‘the Saints in Corinth’ or ‘the Saints in Parramatta’.

Now like on good flights there is another class as well, the saints in Business Class, as we might call purgatory, sometimes called the Church Suffering or the Church Penitent or the Church Expectant. They are all those who have died and are in the process of being readied for heaven.

Catholics believe these are not three churches but one, all on the same plane, with the same pilot, Jesus Christ, on the same flight to the same destination, heaven. What’s more, we passengers are intimately connected, whatever class we are presently in, a connection we call solidarity or, better, communion.

The faithful on earth commune with each other by sharing the same faith and sacraments and practices, by following the same authority and assisting each other with prayers and practical assistance. We also commune with the saints in heaven by honouring them, imitating them, praying to them, and seeking their intercession for us.

That’s why there’s been so much talk in recent weeks of St Mary MacKillop as a model for our lives, as someone in heaven we can talk to in an Aussie accent, and as someone we might ask to pray on our behalf for the graces and miracles we need.

Not only can we commune with the saints on earth and the saints in heaven: we can also commune with the saints or holy souls in purgatory. How? By remembering them, praying for them and even to them, and offering our Masses and good works for them.

Even some pre-Christian cultures knew this. In our first reading from the Old Testament Maccabees (2 Macc 12:43-54 ) we are told Judas Maccabeus made prayer and sacrifice in atonement for the dead, so that they might be delivered from their sins; in many cultures there is the practice of communing with, and praying for, ancestors.

Even today in some countries people put out cakes on All Souls’ Day for their deceased loved ones or visit their remains at cemeteries or offer Masses for them.

In Mexico El Dia de los Muertos is a national holiday with special foods, parades and parties, joyously cleaning up cemeteries, decorating graves with flowers and photos.

This might seem strange to us, who tend to grieve the dead, but it is a very Catholic instinct to know that if our family members or friends have made it into purgatory, all is well: after all, purgatory is the antechamber to heaven!

Some people, we know, are not ready for heaven when they die, yet they are not beyond salvage by God. They have not chosen against Him forever by a stubborn will or terrible unrepented deeds or a bad course of life. Sure, they still need some realignment of heart, still have some venial sin unforgiven or some punishment deserved or some attachment to more serious sin forgiven but needing purification. 

But the joyous doctrine of purgatory means we may still hope for them. Our Scriptures encourage that hope and our prayers for the dead. In the words of the Book of Wisdom: they might suffer some time of trial on earth or some purification after death, but they will see God and be in peace. As Jesus says to us in tonight’s Gospel, ‘He will not lose his own’ (Jn 6:37-40).

Some of you may have lost a loved one recently, or at least in the past year: I know that present tonight are Monique, Elise and Nicholas whose parents drowned earlier this year and I am sure we are all praying with them and for them.

Some of you grieve someone lost in earlier years but still missed terribly. And there are nearly two centuries of faithful departed of this parish and district to remember.

We remember our dear departed tonight with gratitude. We pray for a heavenly reward for them. And we have the deeply consoling knowledge that our care for them can stretch even into the grave, as we offer this Mass for their salvation.

The Bishop of Parramatta, Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP, and Josephite Sisters from the Catholic Diocese of Parramatta at the Mass of Thanksgiving for the Canonisation of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop. Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu.

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Bishop Anthony Fisher’s Homily for Mass of Thanksgiving for the Canonisation of Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop, St Patrick’s Church, Blacktown, 31 October 2010

A woman of faith

In all probability Mary MacKillop was not the first Australian saint; nor, dare I hope, will she be the last. God makes saints, many of them, in every generation. The Church identifies a few for our imitation and intercession. It is our job to be them.

Mary was a woman of deep faith. She so closely united herself with God in this life that the logical next step was eternal union with Him in the next. I trust many Australians have done likewise, before and since, so that the Australian accent will not be entirely unfamiliar in heaven.

Not that Mary helps much in this regard, as hers was a weak Scots accent inherited from her Scottish émigré parents. They also passed on their faith to her, the faith that was to be the keynote of her life. And they helped cultivate her character.

Mary MacKillop was what we call in ordinary people ‘stubborn’ and ‘uncompromising,’ but what in saints is called ‘inspired’ and ‘resolute’, qualities shared by Judith in our first reading (Judith 8: 11-17, 28-31).