Archbishop of Sydney

Second Sunday of Lent – Youth Mass

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
Gen 12:1-4; 2 Tim 1:8-10; Mt 17:1-9

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
20 February 2005

Tonight I wish to do a couple of things: to preach on the gospel as usual and to speak on our Holy Father and the undesirability of his retiring.

For a long time I wondered why the Church decided that an account of the Transfiguration should be the gospel reading for the second Sunday of Lent, that time of preparation and renovation for the great feast of Easter.  The rationale is now much clearer to me than it used to be.

Lent is not only a time for repentance, for a moral “spring clean” (in the autumn of the Southern Hemisphere), but it is also a time for us to examine the quality of our faith and to work through prayer, and perhaps through pondering and consideration, to purify and deepen our faith.

This is particularly true today in our type of society where it is suggested that any one theory of life is as good as another and where it is impossible, or at least unintelligent to claim to know the truth about the mysteries of life; i.e. the source of happiness, the root and meaning of evil and suffering, and the reality and nature of the afterlife, especially whether there is reward for good and punishment for unrepented evil after death.

At the end of Mass tonight I will commission the Mission Team for 2005 for Catholic Youth Services of our Sydney Archdiocese. I ask you to pray for them personally during this year and pray that God will bless their work with young Catholics in our parishes and schools.  The witness of young Catholics to other young people who are searching is indispensable and very powerful.  This is also true even when the young witness to other young people who cannot be bothered searching or don’t believe there is anything worth seeking beyond the consolations of everyday life.  These young people live in community together and have a daily round of prayer and work.  For them this year should certainly be a time when their faith is deepened and purified through regular prayer; please God, something like a Transfiguration experience.

In today’s Prayer of the Church the commentary is taken from a sermon of Pope St. Leo the Great, who lived around the middle of the 5th century and who played a crucial role, as the bishops of the Church in the Council of Chalcedon clarified how the human and divine are united in the person of Jesus Christ.

Pope Leo explained that Jesus revealed his divine glory in the Transfiguration, with his face as bright as the sun and his clothes as white as snow chiefly because he wanted to prevent his disciples from feeling scandalized in their hearts by the cross.  Jesus did not want the disgrace of the passion, all his sufferings and death, which He fully accepted, to break their faith.  Therefore he revealed his hidden dignity, which will become apparent to us regularly only after death.

In Jewish law two or three witnesses are needed to sustain a charge or a claim.  Therefore Jesus had with him Moses and Elijah, witnessing to the Law and the prophets who were preparing the way for Christ in the Old Testament.  He also had Peter, James and John to witness to this miracle for his followers.

When the cause is clear, we are prepared to make sacrifices, as good husbands and wives do for one another, as good parents do for their children.

It is one thing to accept in principle that we do not fear to suffer for righteousness sake; that we will never doubt that God will fulfil his promises.  In actual fact, and in daily life, we know that we can struggle to meet those high ideals.

So Pope Leo repeats that in order to endure our trials with patience, we always have to have ringing in our ears, the words of God the Father in this miracle: “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased – listen to him.”

As always the divinity of Christ is crucial to our acceptance of him personally; crucial to the authority we ascribe to his teachings.  The Transfiguration helped the apostles and helps us to continue to believe this.

Tonight I ask you to pray for our Holy Father, the Pope, as he struggles on in his last weeks or months, probably not years.  He has surprised us before, but he is very ill.  We pray that his faith remains strong and that he always finds peace in his heart in these final trials.

A sympathetic question is often asked in these days, sometimes by good Catholics: Why doesn’t the pope retire?  Even if he remains as pope, why are there so many public appearances, in a wheel chair, where his voice was sometimes unintelligible and he was manifestly sick and exhausted?  He finds it difficult to breathe and often can manage to utter only a few sentences.

To begin with, it is useful to remember that the Pope has publicly stated many times that he does not intend to retire, but continue carrying his cross until his death.  We can take him at his word.  No person or official can compel his resignation.

It would be a different situation if he lost his faculties.  Years ago I remember Bishop J. P. O’Collins, my first bishop, telling me of a cardinal in the 1920s who was nominated for the position of pope, but would not allow his name to be considered because there was Alzheimer’s disease in his family.

As the successor of St. Peter, the Pope is the corner-stone for the world-wide unity of the Catholic Church.  Such a unity is always maintained only through wisdom and hard work, as the splits with Orthodox Christians in the 11th century and with the Reformers of the 16th century demonstrate.

A retired pope could become an agent of division in the church, perhaps exercising undue influence on the election of his successor; perhaps as a focus of discontent when a group of Catholics was dissatisfied with a decision of the new pope.

As well as some bad popes during the 2000 year old papal story, there were decades which saw rival claimants to the papacy, each supported by opposing groups of followers.

We have to be very careful with the precious jewel of Church unity.  This does not survive automatically.  With this background we can better understand why the great Italian writer of the 14th century Dante Alighieri had placed Pope Celestine V, who had abdicated in 1294, on the outer reaches of hell in the next life!  Pietro del Morrone was a saintly hermit, elected pope at the age of 85 after a 27 month vacancy.  He became a puppet of King Charles II of Naples and was not up to the task.  He sensibly abdicated, but still provoked Dante who was upset by the consequences of this as a precedent for disunity.

The papacy is a life long office, because the pope is not like the chief executive of a multi-national company.  He is a living personal symbol of unity.

This pope also recognises that growing old and being sick are important parts of life’s journey.  Suffering with dignity should not always be hidden from the public.  All human lives have value.

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