Archbishop of Sydney

Youth Mass

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time - St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
Zech 12:10-11,13:1; Gal 3:26-29; Lk 9:18-24

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
20 June 2004

Before I ramble over the readings of today to develop a few thoughts, I want to ask your prayers for an initiative which was launched at Greenacre, here in Sydney on last Friday night.  We saw there the first official meeting after some months of preparatory work of the Christian and Muslim Friendship Society.

The relationship of the Western world and Islam will continue to be one of our greatest challenges for many years.  If the men of violence prevail, especially the terrorists, the situation could deteriorate into a true clash of civilizations.

Our present task is to do whatever we can to encourage dialogue and moderation, and especially in Australia to get to know our Australian Islamic brothers and sisters and encourage the two groups of young people to know one another to avoid trouble, harassment and violence here in Sydney.  At the moment this is possible and is backed by both political parties and by the Islamic leadership.  Sheikh Hilaly was present and spoke on Friday night at the meeting attended by a large crowd of Muslims and Christians, mainly men.

This small initiative, set against the massive currents now in collision, is still worth your prayers, not least because community peace in Australia is a must, an imperative to be preserved.

The meeting was held at the Melchite Catholic Centre’s hall and the chairman and sponsor was Bishop Issam Darwish, who has spent most of his life working in Syria and has a long history of friendship and useful co-operation with Muslims there and also here in Australia since he arrived as a bishop in 1996.

A few words about the Melchites will also lead us into today’s gospel about Christ’s identity.  There are different families or churches in the universal Catholic Church led by the Pope, often with their own liturgical language, a slightly different celebration of the Eucharist (although the basics are the same) their own pious practices, their own church laws.  We belong to the Roman rite, named after the Roman Eucharistic form we follow, sometimes called the Latin church (because that used to be our language of worship).  Another significant difference is that these Catholic churches, unlike our Latin church, allow the ordination of married men as priests.

The Melchites follow the Byzantine rite and date from the great Church Council of Chalcedon in 451, when the Pope and bishops ruled that Christ, the Son of God, had a divine and a human nature.  This is our belief today also, the official Catholic teaching on the mystery of the Incarnation, but a large body of Christians, especially in the East then would not accept that Jesus had a human nature.  These are called Monophysites and are found in three Orthodox churches; the Copts from Egypt, the Syrian Jacobites and the Armenians.  As Orthodox they do not accept the leadership of the successor of Peter, the Pope.

The Melchites accepted the official teaching of this Council of Chalcedon and remained in communion with Rome and Constantinople.  The Syrian word “malkaya”means imperial; they were the Emperor’s men.  The majority of them today are Orthodox after the 1054 split and there have been Catholic Melchites since 1684.

In the early years of freedom for the Catholic church in the fourth and fifth centuries there were terrible doctrinal and political conflicts, complete sometimes with riots and strife and ongoing divisions as the Church clarified the doctrine of the Trinity and especially as the full divinity of Christ was defended against those who denied He was divine or claimed He was only semi-divine.

The answers to Jesus’ question in today’s Gospel “who do the crowds say I am” have been many and various over the years and remain various today also, where a goodly number of Christians do not accept Christ’s divinity.  As I have explained many times enormous consequences follow when we accept that Christ is truly divine.

It is interesting that Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ of God i.e. the one anointed with the oil of chrism (Christ is not a family name like Jones, or O’Brien, or Alfredo or Nguyen), and therefore the Messiah, is immediately followed by Christ’s prophecy that he was destined to suffer grievously, be rejected and put to death.

We are used to the crucifixion story, but that conjunction of divine dignity and ignominious suffering must have been upsetting and baffling to the disciples.  To make matters worse Jesus continued on immediately and said that his followers will also have to suffer.

What does it mean to say that we must renounce ourselves, take up our cross every day; that if we want to save our life we must lose it?

These are provocative and profound teachings, worth prayer and puzzling.

 Perhaps the first part of the answer is that if we put ourselves first at the expense of those around us we are not following the commandment to love others.  This cannot bring us to heaven and it cannot bring us to peace and contentment in daily living either.

 To follow the commandments, to respect and help others regularly, to pray daily and go to weekly Mass all cost us something.  They do not represent the easy way out.

 Sometimes in our daily life, at work or with our social acquaintances we shall be disadvantaged because of our Christian principles.  Sometimes it is unpopular to tell the truth or to call a spade a spade, however politely, when we insist some activities are wrong.  Sometimes it needs courage to resist abortion, to maintain Christian standards of sexual morality before marriage.  All this and more constitutes taking up our cross to follow Christ.

 Jesus is not John the Baptist, nor Elijah, nor one of the prophets.  He is not another great philosopher, not a poet or scholar, not a priest or bishop or pope.

 He is worth following as he calls us to take up our cross, but he has promised us real rewards even in this life and a hundred-fold reward in the life to come.

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