Mass for Stella Maris Church, Beaumaris

Celebrated By Archbishop Denis Hart
at Stella Maris Church, Beaumaris,
on Saturday, 1st July, 2006, at 7.00pm

Introduction

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I am delighted to be with Father John Dupuche and each of you as we celebrate this Mass.

My visit is intended to encourage you in faith and to enliven you as Christ reminds us that faith has power even deeper than death to overcome all obstacles and to bring about newness of life.

We have been called to walk in the light of Christ and to be kept in the radiance of his truth.

Let us call to mind our sins, that our darkness may be transformed into light as we walk with Christ.

Homily

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today’s Mass challenges us to stop and think. We are called to walk in the light of Christ, freed from darkness and in the radiance of truth.

Other views say, ‘eat, drink and merry, for tomorrow we die’, or ‘vanity of vanities that all things are vanity’. (Qoheleth 1:2) From Abraham, to Moses, to Qoheleth, there was frustration. But new realisations about life after death came even before Christ. The prophet Daniel, “Many of those who sleep in the dust shall awake; some shall live forever; others shall be in everlasting horror and disgrace. But the wise shall shine brightly like the splendour of the firmament and those who lead many to justice shall be like stars forever.” (Daniel 12:2-3)

Perhaps the most telling words are those in the Book of Wisdom. “God formed humankind to be imperishable” or as we often read at funerals, “The souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God. No torment shall ever touch them.”

In the second Reading today Jesus became poor for our sakes and in the Gospel when Jesus said to the child of Jairius, “Little girl get up”, we have a beginning of our Christian faith. Death is not the end. Saint Paul says again and again, “Death will give way to victory” and “I live by my faith in the strong Son of God, who died and delivered himself up for me”.

As people of Christ, as we seek to deepen our awareness of him. We are invited above all to walk in the light of his resurrection, radiant by the truth that God loves each of us uniquely, as if we are the only person in the world, that God draws us through this life to an ever opening vision of eternal life, which will never perish or waste away. God loves us; he sustains us if we live his truth to continue our search and to show to the world the reason for the hope that he has given us.

As witnesses to the resurrection we do point to eternal life, imperishable, and it is for that that God has made us. He formed us to be imperishable in giving us life. As human beings of body and soul he gave us an eternity, which will never fade away.

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.