Mass for the Salesian Formation Community at Clifton Hill

Mass Celebrated by Archbishop Denis Hart
for the Salesian Formation Community at Clifton Hill,
on Friday, 10th October, 2003 at 5.00pm

Introduction

My dear Brothers in the Lord,

I am delighted to be with you because of the great esteem which I have for the unique Salesian contribution to the Church and to our Archdiocese and because I know that the Religious of our Archdiocese are particularly dear to me in the universal dimension of their witness to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. You do proclaim, as today’s first Reading tells us, “The day of the Lord is coming. Yes, it is near.”

The justice of the Lord as judge is linked inextricably with the truth in which we are formed, which will bring us life and peace. That is why we will rejoice in the Lord and be glad.

Let us call to mind our sins, that our life may praise the Lord with all our heart.

Homily

“If it is through the finger of God that I cast out devils, then know that the kingdom of God has overtaken you.” (Luke 11.20)

Dear Friends,

This Gospel extract is a very modern construction. The world of today has a remarkable capacity to misjudge religious people. In this little sentence Jesus shows the power of the kingdom of God and the hope that we have to bring to the world.

In Catechesi Tradendae are these words. “At the heart of catechesis we find in essence a person, Jesus of Nazareth, the only Son from the Father. To catechise is to reveal in the person of Christ the whole of God’s eternal design reaching fulfilment in that person. But catechesis is not just knowing about Jesus, it aims at putting people in living communion with Jesus Christ. Only he can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Holy Trinity.” (Catechesi Tradendae, 5)

When Jesus took a human nature he communicated life to us. It is what the second letter of Peter speaks of our “becoming partakers of the Divine nature.” (2 Peter 1:4)

Or, as the Catechism sums up in 460, “For this is why the Word became man and the Son of God became the son of man: so that man by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving the Divine Sonship might become a son of God.” Saint Thomas Aquinas goes on to say, “The only begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature so that he, made man, might make men gods.”

In Gaudium et Spes the Council showed Our Lord’s new way of being human. “With human hands he worked, with a human mind he thought, with a human will he acted, with a human heart he loved.” (Gaudium et Spes, 22.22)

Allowing the kingdom of God to overtake us, becoming the Church, means receiving a participation in the Sonship of Jesus. “Make our hearts like unto your heart.” Or as Saint Paul wrote to the Galatians, “Becoming the Church means that Christ is formed in you.” (Galatians, 4.19)

It is as if the Lord reaches to us and shows in his earthly life the invisible mystery of his divine Sonship and redemptive mission. It is by redemption that the kingdom of God overtakes us:

1. Christ is revelation of the Father.
2. His whole life is a mystery of redemption.
3. In all that Jesus is and does, he is the head of the new humanity, which is his Body, the Church. (Colossians 1.18)

In drawing us into that kingdom Christ lived for us and for our salvation. In all of his life he presents himself as our model and he enables us to live in him all that he himself lives and he lives it in us. Pope Saint Leo the Great said, “The mysteries of Christ’s life are the foundation of what he would henceforth give in the Sacraments through ministers of his Church, for what was visible in our Saviour has passed over into his mysteries.

Saint John Chrysostum gives concrete expression to the words of Saint John of the Cross, “If Christ is wholly mine, then his heart is mine, as are his spirit, his body, his soul, all his faculties.”

And as the Catechism says, “Consider that our Lord, Jesus Christ, is your true head and you are one of his members. He belongs to you as the head belongs to its members; all that is his is yours: his spirit, his heart, his body and soul, and all his faculties. You must make use of all these as of your own, to serve, praise, love, and glorify God. You belong to him as members belong to their head and so he longs for you to use all that is in you as if it were his own for the service and glory of the Father.” (CCC 1968)

In a specially Salesian and loving way, with thankfulness for the Salesian presence in our diocese, I invite you to take this challenge.

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.