Archbishop of Sydney

CHRISM MASS, HOLY THURSDAY

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
8 April 2004

Welcome to you all, especially the young primary school students.  This is your Cathedral and it is good to welcome you here as we celebrate the anniversary of the Last Supper, first Mass and consecrate the holy oils used in baptism, and confirmation.  The Church makes great use of symbols: water for baptism; bread and wine in communion; and the oil of kings to mark the special dignity of all who are baptised and confirmed as members of the Church.

I also welcome very warmly my brother priests.  It is good for us to be together as priests to concelebrate the Eucharist.  It reinforces both our priestly identity and sense of community.

As is my custom, I will follow substantially the Holy Father’s letter to priests for this Holy Thursday.  The Holy Father wishes that this Holy Thursday Letter continues a tradition which began with his first Easter as the Bishop of Rome twenty-five years ago.

We are gathered as priests and bishops for the renewal of our priestly promises.  This eloquent rite follows consecration of the Holy Oils, especially the Chrism, and is a most fitting part of the Chrism Mass, which highlights the image of the Church as a priestly people made holy by the sacraments and sent forth to spread throughout the world the good odour of Christ the Saviour (2Cor 2:14-16).

At dusk each of us will enter symbolically the upper room at Jerusalem for the beginning of the Easter Triduum.  It is precisely to that “large room upstairs” (Lk 22:12) that Jesus invites us to return each Holy Thursday.  At the Last Supper, we were born as priests:  We should remember this; the Catholic priesthood is not a later historical development.

We were born from the Eucharist.  If we can truly say that the whole Church lives from the Eucharist (“Ecclesia de Eucharistia vivit”), we can say the same thing about the ministerial priesthood: it is born, lives, works and bears fruit “from the Eucharist” (cf. Council of Trent, Sess. XXII, can 2: DS 1752).  “There can be no Eucharist without the priesthood, just as there can be no priesthood without the Eucharist” (cf. Gift and Mystery: On the fiftieth Anniversary of My Priestly Ordination, New York, 1996, pp. 77-78).

The ordained ministry is not a set of functions, but an office; which enables the priest to act in the person of Christ and culminates in the moment when he consecrates the bread and wine, repeating the actions and words of Jesus during the Last Supper.

Pope John II asks that if we feel moved before the Christmas crib, when we contemplate the Incarnation of the Word, what must we feel before the altar where, by the poor hands of the priest, Christ makes his Sacrifice present in time?  We can only fall to our knees and silently adore this supreme mystery of faith.

“Mysterium fidei”, the priest proclaims after the consecration.  The Eucharist is a mystery of faith, yet the priesthood itself, by reflection, is also a mystery of faith (cf. ibid, p.78).  The same mystery of sanctification and love, the work of the Holy Spirit, which makes the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, is at work in the person of the minister at the moment of priestly ordination.  There is a particular interplay between the Eucharist and the priesthood, which goes back to the Upper Room: these two Sacraments were born together and their destiny is indissolubly linked until the end of the world.

By celebrating the Passover meal and instituting the Eucharist, the divine Master brought the Apostles vocation to its fulfilment.  By saying “Do this in memory of me”, Jesus put a Eucharistic seal on their mission and, by uniting them to himself in sacramental communion, he charged the Apostles to perpetuate that most holy act in his memory.

As he pronounced the words “Do this…” Jesus’ thoughts extended to the successors of the Apostles, to those of us who would continue their mission by distributing the food of life to the very ends of the earth.  In some way, then, the Holy Father explained, in the Upper Room we too were called personally, each of us, “with brotherly love” (Preface of the Chrism Mass), to receive from the Lord’s sacred hands the Eucharistic Bread and to break it as food for the People of God on their pilgrim way through time towards our heavenly homeland.

The Eucharist is a gift from God “which radically transcends the power of the assembly”.  The assembly of the faithful, united in faith and in the Spirit and enriched by a variety of gifts, even though it is the place where Christ “is present in his Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations (Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, 7), is not by itself able to celebrate the Eucharist or to provide the ordained minister.

Quite rightly, then, the Christian people is urged to give thanks to God for the gift of the Eucharist and the priesthood, while praying unceasingly that priests will never be lacking in the Church.  The number of priests is never sufficient to meet the constantly increasing demands of evangelization and the pastoral care of the faithful.  In some places of the world the number of priests is dwindling without sufficient replacements from the younger generation.  Here in Sydney, thank God, we see a promising spring-time of vocations; not long established, not spectacular, but reason for thanks.

We must work to encourage our people to pray for vocations, which remain a mystery of personal response and a gift from God.

Prayer, enriched by the silent offering of suffering, remains the first and most effective means of pastoral work for vocations.  To pray means to keep our gaze fixed on Christ, the one High Priest, who represents us, as a brother, to God the Father.

Let us pause in the Upper Room and contemplate the Redeemer who instituted the Eucharist and the priesthood at the Last Supper.  On that holy night he called by name each and every priest in every time.  He looked at each one of us with the same look of loving encouragement with which he looked at Simon and Andrew, at James and John, at Nathaniel beneath the fig tree, and at Matthew sitting at the tax office.  Jesus has called us and, along a variety of paths, he continues to call many others to be his ministers.  He calls us as priests to support the 35 seminarians now studying for Sydney and encourage new ones.

The Holy Father reminds us, that more than any other effort on behalf of vocations, our personal fidelity is indispensable.  What counts is our personal commitment to Christ, our love for the Eucharist, our reverence and fervour in celebrating it.  He points out that priests in love with the Eucharist are capable of communicating especially to children and young people that “Eucharistic amazement” which The Holy Father has sought to rekindle with his Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia (cf. No. 6).

The Holy Father asks us to show special care for altar servers.  The group of altar servers, under your guidance as part of the parish community, can be given a valuable experience of Christian education and development.  Help the parish, as a family made up of families, to look upon altar servers as their own children, like “olive shoots around the table” of Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life (cf. Ps. 127:3).

With the help of the parish family, the Holy Father prays that all servers, boys and girls will learn to grow in love for the Lord Jesus, to recognize him truly present in the Eucharist and to experience the beauty of the liturgy.  When children and young people serve at the altar with joy and enthusiasm, they offer other youngsters an eloquent witness to the importance and beauty of the Eucharist.  Even young children will grow in faith and develop a love for spiritual realities through these examples and activities.

Finally the Holy Father reminds us that we are the first “Apostles” of Jesus the High Priest.  Our own witness counts more than anything else.  We are called to be fathers, teachers and witnesses of Eucharistic piety and holiness of life!

Our particular mission in the Church requires that we be friends of Christ, constantly contemplating his face following the example of Mary Most Holy.  I ask you all to pray unceasingly, as the Apostle exhorts (cf. 1Th 5:17), and to encourage the faithful to pray for vocations, for the perseverance of those called to the priestly life and for the sanctification of all priests.  Help your communities to love, understand and support that unique “gift and mystery” which is the ministerial priesthood.

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