Sacre Coeur Carol Festival

Homily Preached by Archbishop Denis Hart
at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral Melbourne
on Wednesday, 7th December, 2005, at 8.00pm     

Homily

My dear young friends,

At World Youth Day in Germany in August, Pope Benedict spoke about the joy and hope that come from following Jesus Christ and living according to the Gospel.  But, he also said, in our world today there is “a strange forgetfulness of God”.  In our culture it often seems as though the world would be just the same without God.

We live in a materialistic culture.  Hour by hour we are invited to connect with things we can buy and own.  Jesus invites us to something deeper: to connect with the deepest part of ourselves, to connect unselfishly with one another, and to connect with the God who has made his home among us and will never leave us.

Even in our wealthy part of the world there is a strange restlessness, the Pope said, a sense of emptiness, a feeling of uncertainty about what we should hope for, and whom we can trust.  Deep down, we all sense we are on a journey, and we do not want to be going in circles or feeling our way in the dark.  We want a sense of direction and purpose; we want a light to shine on us and to illumine our way.

In these weeks you will have all followed the news about Nguyen Tuong Van, who was executed in Singapore on Friday.  Many who did not know him came here to pray for him and farewell him.  From what we heard, even in the unimaginably dark and lonely and frightening experience Van went through, he came to know for himself that there is a light “which shines in the darkness, and darkness cannot overpower it”.  Those are words we heard in the Gospel reading just now and which we celebrate at Christmas.

It has been moving in these weeks to witness something of the Church in action here and in Singapore: there were many who stood by Van and his family.  They comforted him and prayed for him; a chaplain stayed with him; a convent of sisters gave his mother and family a place to stay.  There were others who spoke up about the Church’s teachings on life and death, the possibility of redemption and the need for forgiveness.  They spoke about how justice must be tempered with mercy, about the call to solidarity with all those who suffer, about having compassion for those whose lives go wrong.  We want to be a Church like this: a light in the darkness, especially for the poorest and the most lost.

We want you to be a part of that Church, to help create its future, to be life-long disciples of Jesus, “the real light that gives light to everyone”.

At Christmas time it always seems especially easy to think of love and kindness and generosity to all.  Christmas gives us a glimpse of what we can be like and of the world we can make if we stand in the light of Christ.  It is a great challenge, but also a great adventure.  I want to invite you to be a part of it.  If you are followers of Christ, I promise you that you will be the leaders of a better world.

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.