Archbishop of Sydney

Christmas 2004

Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
25 December 2004

“Behold the father is his daughter’s son,
The bird that built the nest is hatched therein, . . .
O dazzled eyes, behold your son of grace;
Dull ears; attend what word this Word does bring;
Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace.
From death, from dark, from deafness, from despairs,
This life, this light, the Word, this joy repairs”

These words were written about 410 years ago by an English priest and martyr, the Jesuit, St. Robert Southwell.  In those days active Catholic priests in England were outside the law, regarded as traitors to Queen Elizabeth I and liable to pay with their life if caught.  He did pay this price.

He truly knew in his own suffering and that of his people what Isaiah was describing today; a people walking in darkness, living in a land of deep shadow, with a bar across their shoulders, threatened by the rod of the oppressor.

But in the middle of this turmoil Southwell knew the meaning of Christmas, knew that there was no better gift that God could give to us than God himself.

This is the essential background as we ask ourselves about the meaning of Christmas.

How does this annual miracle of Christmas work?  What makes soldiers far from home, people sleeping rough, broken families, lonely suburbanites, religious cynics, hope at the year’s end that life has some point and that things may get better?  Some can’t manage this, but most do.

The imagery of the stable helps; the magic and comfort of carols and snow and presents helps, even in the Australian summer.  But more than all this, Christmas touches people because the message is that we are not forgotten by God.  Today is born Our Saviour, Christ the Lord.  The Son of God came to earth and lived as closely with us as we do with our own loved ones.  He did not forget us, and he never will.  His presence lives on today in many ways, but especially through our acts of kindness.

In Bethlehem Christmas time is usually bleak and cold.  Certainly the cave or stable there 2000 years ago was no palace; rather a dingy place of shelter for animals and for those with nowhere better to go.

These surrounds would have brought Mary and Joseph down to earth quickly after the joy and gratitude that comes with birth.

Away from home and friends for the census of Caesar Augustus, the visit of the shepherds and the wise men would have been very welcome to them.  There is a lesson here for all of us.

The shepherds and the wise men were very different personally, professionally and in their approach to religion.

Christ’s teaching of the beatitudes tells us that the poor are blessed; a teaching we find hard to understand in prosperous Australia.  But the truth of Christmas is simple and confronting and the shepherds probably found it easier to believe than the wise men that God had come among us in that little child, only one among millions of victim children.  The wise men belonged to a group of men and women who can find it difficult to grasp simple truths, especially when they carry profound personal consequences.

The late Evelyn Waugh is a serious candidate to be judged as the finest writer of England in the twentieth century; not necessarily as a novelist or poet, but as an all-round writer.

He was also regularly rude and inconsiderate, even to his children; and he was a snob and a convert to the Catholic faith.  When asked how he could behave so badly and be a Catholic, he replied asking the questioner to imagine how much worse he might have been without his Catholic faith!

He wrote a lovely life of Helena, the mother of the first Christian Emperor of Rome, Constantine.  She searched out and protected the important sites from Jesus’ life and built the first great Christian Churches.

In this novel Waugh has Helena meditating on the difficulties of the Wise Men, representing throughout the ages “all the learned, the oblique, the delicate”.

“You are my especial patrons”, she says, patrons of all who have a tedious journey to make to the truth, all who are confused by knowledge and speculation . . . who stand in danger by reason of their talents.

“Pray for the great . . . . pray always for the learned . . . .  Let them not be quite forgotten at the Throne of God when the simple come into their Kingdom”.

Waugh was right.  He knew well that talents can sometimes be a barrier to faith and happiness.  He knew that the Wise Men were unusual because they followed the star all the way to Truth.

So, speaking not for myself, but because I am a Catholic bishop repeating the same message that has been announced every Christmas for nearly 2000 years, I wish you God’s peace and repeat the promise that God is interested in each one of us.

Wherever you are and however difficult your life and your year, God is not a hair’s breadth away from you.  You are welcome in St. Mary’s Cathedral this Christmas, and always.  If you take time to speak to God in prayer and to listen, you will find new strength and direction.  This Christmas I pray that all men, women and children will know that God has not forgotten them and that this knowledge will bring peace especially to all of us gathered here tonight, whether we are closer to the wise and learned or to the battlers, the poor, the successors of the shepherd.

The good news is for everyone, for all the world.  Today is born Our Saviour, Christ the Lord.

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