Vigil Mass at Our Lady’s Church, Craigieburn

Mass Celebrated By Archbishop Denis Hart
at Our Lady’s Church, Craigieburn,
on Saturday, 7th August, 2004, at 6.30pm

Introduction

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I am delighted to be here with Father Peter and you to encourage the communities of Craigieburn and Roxburgh Park in faith and in love and service of Jesus Christ.

We are a people of faith, which guarantees the blessings that we hope for and makes us live by present unseen realities. In this special time of prayer we are one with our God, that we may learn more of him and serve him and see him in our sisters and brothers.

As we call to mind our sins, we might well pray, ‘Lord, increase our faith’.

Homily

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In the last fifty years many people have come to live in Australia as a land of promise to achieve a better and more secure lifestyle for them and for their families. As a result our country has become a microcosm of the world, a family of many nations, living together in harmony as brothers and sisters.

It is my strongest contention that this has been an immeasurable enhancement to Australia as we grow and are enriched by so many cultures. Many people have come here because of the importance of faith for family. Like the Jews of old, being enslaved in Egypt, not knowing what the future would bring. Many knew the fear of losing another family member to sickness or to an early death. Others knew the fear of having to surrender a child to Pharaoh’s service. Yet what does shine through in the Scriptures was that the people of God believed. They prepared themselves as Moses instructed them and by faith in God’s power they followed Moses into an unknown future, which was in fact to be their own land.

Faith had also been Abraham’s defence against the insecurities of life. Today’s second Reading, the Letter to the Hebrews, stresses the faith of Abraham. But let us remember that faith is not a thing that Abraham possessed. It was and is a relationship with God that changes the life of the believer.

First Abraham and Sarah took the risk of following God, to leave their home and go to a foreign land and they risked this because a city designed and built and God. They began a family in old age. Even in offering Isaac to God this same faith was shown. Jesus reminds us that faith does involve the taking of risks, but it does provide a surety. This might well be explained in the words of Pastor C. H. Dodd, who described faith as “that attitude in which acknowledging our complete insufficiency for any of the high ends of life, we rely utterly on the sufficiency of God … it is that moment out of which the strength for action comes, because in it God acts.” Yet in the second Reading the heroes and heroines that they had known; Abraham, Sarah and others had faith in God and responded to God’s call.

The real message of today’s Gospel is that everything we have is a gift from God, which he wants us to use watchfully, evaluating according to his vision of things, trusting that he will always be sufficient for us, knowing that God’s plan for our life is the only thing that will bring true happiness.

Faith is the ability for you and for me to keep focussed on him in prayer and that is why I want to encourage you to deepen the life of prayer in this parish by prayer before the Blessed Sacrament as well as the public celebration of the liturgy, by good use of the Rosary, by the work of prayer groups so that it will be openness to God’s plan, which will inspire the vision which you will have with Father Peter for this growing and expanding part of Melbourne.

Saint Matthew’s words, “Be watchful and ready. You know not when the Son of Man is coming”, are true not only of the ultimate and permanent call of death. It is true always of the many ways in which God offers us opportunities in our life. May the celebration of the Eucharist always nourish us to see our God working, strengthening, guiding and our response will be, ‘Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief.’

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.