Archbishop of Sydney

His Eminence,
Cardinal George Pell
Cardinal Priest of the Title of S. Maria Domenica Mazzarello

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Home > Our Archbishop > Homilies 2003 > Article	Printable Version

Third Sunday of Easter

St Mary's Cathedral - 4 May 2003
Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; Jn: 2:1-5; Luke 24:35-48

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
4 May 2003

Welcome Cardinal Stafford, President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, who is here to speak to university students and lay groups. I am very grateful for the learning and encouragement he has imparted to all those who hear him.

Welcome also to the Order of Saint of Lazarus a an international and Christian order, going back to Crusades at the end of 11th century. It is a military and hospitaller order; soldiers and carers from the leprosarium at Jerusalem founded by Gerardo Sasso before the capture of Jerusalem in 1099.

There was another military branch of the Knights called Templars a who were religious, unmarried and simply soldiers.

Naturally there is no military dimension to the Order's work now. We only support works of charity, in many places throughout the world.

It is one, somewhat unusual form of Christian service. To understand the Crusades, we have to see them in a vastly different world.

Crusades from Western Europe were designed to free the Holy Land and support fellow Christians in Eastern Europe, including modern Turkey. What we now call Istanbul was the Christian centre of Eastern Byzantine Empire; Constantinople. The break between eastern and western Christians had only occurred in 1054 and hopes for renewal were strong.

The crusades must be seen as part as part of the response to 500 years of Moslem military expansion through North Africa into Spain, and through the Middle East towards Greece.

It is a fascinating story; an equally interesting intellectual exercise is to adjudicate on the moral rights and wrongs of the Crusades (and they certainly committed some great crimes). What is important is that we are continuing the best of their traditions a that of public Christian service.

The following of Christ, if genuine, must have consequences in our personal lives and in public life.

Christ was not a spirit, but a man of flesh and blood even after his resurrection. He ate the grilled fish they gave him on his request. He suffered and struggled before he rose from the dead.

Following Christ means that we struggle to keep his commandments. These commandments give flesh to our commitment to faith and love.

And following Christ always means struggle and suffering, resisting the forces of evil, which sometimes do not realise the extent of their evil doing (as was the case at the crucifixion).

Today a few mistaken spirits would like to return Christian faith to the realm of private life, arguing that Christian perspectives should not have consequences in public life because not everyone is Christian. However, Christian teachings are based on human nature and therefore contribute to human flourishing and happiness. In a democracy like Australia's, Christians have as much right as anyone else to try to convince the majority of the truth and usefulness of Christian perspectives and must be allowed to combine publicity to work for our goals. The Order of St. Lazarus is one thousand year old expression of this.

The Easter faith, our faith in the risen Christ has consequences for daily living, or our faith is dead. As St. James wrote "faith without works is dead".

For nearly 300 years Christian were persecuted intermittently by the Roman Empire, but slowly this small minority spread, increased in numbers and started to change public opinion especially in the cities. The country side was slower; the word pagan means from the country side.

The Christian community supported their widows and orphans; they cared for their sick, staying with them even during plagues like the current SARS; they welcomed all races to their worship and community; they opposed the public cruelty of the amphitheatres where men fought one another or animals to the death; they insisted that women be treated with respect, that baby girls should not be left to die.

Without government support then, Christians started a revolution in public opinion.

When the Roman Empire became Christian in the fourth century, this revolution took new forms under the leadership of the bishops, who now often worked with the imperial government officials to look after the poor. This was something new. It was not the church doing what the state used to do, because the state ignored the poor often enough, provided they could keep them quiet with bread and circuses.

The Knights of Lazarus continued this tradition of public service in new ways in the new and different societies of seven or eight hundred years after the first Christian emperors.

Times are now changing again. Everyone takes it for granted that Christian works of charity are there to help those of every faith and no faith; as is the tradition of the Order of St. Lazarus today.

Governments who favour privatisation support this, because Church agencies generally serve the battlers well and governments always hope that Church agencies will provide more and more of the money to ensure that needs and supply run together.

So the ancient Christian tasks and responsibilities remain basically as they always were, but the answers are given in changing forms and changing circumstances.

The first challenge is our personal response to the risen Lord a with our faith, our prayer and our attempts to live a good life and repent of our sins.

The second challenge is to carry this into public a by struggling to influence legislation so that the common good will be enhanced and by combining in organisations of faith, love and service to serve the communities in which we live. This has taken many different forms in the past and I am sure the variety of agencies will not be less in the future.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.