Mass at the Chapel of Australian Catholic University

Mass Celebrated By Archbishop Denis Hart
at The Chapel of Australian Catholic University, Fitzroy,
on Wednesday, 15th September, 2004, at 12 Noon

Introduction

My dear Friends,

I am delighted to be with you to offer the Mass, the most powerful prayer, by which Jesus Christ brings us to the Father and his help accompanies all our studies and works.

I rejoice in being so close physically to Australian Catholic University and my prayer is that Jesus and his Mother, whose feast we celebrate today, will accompany you in your studies and work.

Let us call to mind our sins, that we may walk with Jesus and Mary, whose sorrowful journey to the cross we remember today.

Homily

Dear Friends,

For nearly two hundred years the Church has celebrated this feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. It shows how Mary entered fully into the suffering of Christ and is one with us when we struggle and suffer.

It is our faith that Mary conceived and gave birth to Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. She alone was preserved from the Original Sin, which burdens each of us and which is necessarily removed by Baptism. All of her journey is a complete gift of herself to being the Mother of the Saviour.

By her saying yes to God through the angel, she immediately entered the work of God coming to save us in Jesus Christ. She presented him in the temple (Luke 2:22-35) and Simeon recognised that this was how God would come to save us all. She recognised Simeon’s prophecy, that Jesus would be a sign of contradiction and that her soul would be pierced by a sword of suffering, which came true on Calvary.

One of the great writers on Our Lady – Saint Bernard – wrote this prayer, “Offer your Son, Holy Virgin, and present to the Lord the blessed fruit of your womb. Offer for the reconciliation of us all, the Holy Victim, which is pleasing to God.”

Today’s feast, so close to the Exaltation of the Cross yesterday, shows that Mary was totally one in Jesus’ whole life and journey to Calvary and resurrection and that she remains one, praying to him for us in heaven.

This oneness of Mary with Jesus reached its climax on Calvary, where Jesus offered himself, a perfect sacrifice for God, and Mary stood by the cross suffering grievously with her only Son. This time it was a spiritual giving of herself to the sacrifice because she gave to death and to God the Father the child that she had carried.

Mary is particularly present in prayer, as in the Eucharist there is made present what Jesus did on the cross with all its power to save, to bless and to inspire.

In this place of learning and hope we ask Mary to pray for us as a mother and we remember that the essence of our spiritual life is to remember that Jesus, our God, became human like us so that we could understand. He had a human, loving mother, more generous and beautiful than any mother in the world, who remains praying for us, caring for us and leading us to Jesus.

May today’s feast of her sorrows remind each of us in our struggles and difficulties that we are never alone and her intercession is most powerful, as we pray together, “Hail Mary, full of grace …”

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.