Archbishop of Sydney

Fatumaca Mission, East Timor

Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1 Cor 7:29-31; Mk 1:14-20

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
22/1/2006

The one true God is very mysterious and powerful.  Our God is a Mystery of Love.  He created the whole world, the sun, the planets and all the stars.  Astronomers tell us that there are as many stars in the sky as all the grains of sand in the world!  But God also loves each of us and he knows us.

Especially as we get older, we find it hard to remember names.  For me even the names of Timorese towns and villages are hard to remember – Los Palos, Fuiloro, Home Wailili, Venilale, but God knows each of us – the East Timorese, the Indonesians, the Portuguese, the Australians and all the other people who have ever lived.  God knows much more than the most powerful computer and He loves what he knows.

God calls each one of us to be good and to believe and some he calls to do special work.

In the Old Testament times, Jonah who finished up in the belly of the whale was called by God to a special task.  God wanted him to tell the people of Nineveh that they must repent, be sorry for their sins or Nineveh would be destroyed.

Nineveh was a huge city in the Assyrian Empire in the Middle East before Christ and Jonah was not a local.  It was as though God called a special messenger from Fatumaca to go and preach repentance in Dili.  Jonah did not want to answer God’s call because he was frightened, but in fact the people of Nineveh listened and repented.

In every age God is calling each of us to be good and to believe and he also calls people like Jonah to do special work.

Hundreds of years later as Jesus was organizing his community of followers (what we call the Church), he chose the leaders of his group.  These are the apostles whose images are in the 12 windows above the altar.

Galilee is in Northern Israel and contains the beautiful Sea of Galilee where these men were fishermen, living at Capernaum.  Jesus’ leaders were chosen not from the capital, but from this country town.

Capernaum was situated on the trade route from East to West, and therefore had many visitors.  Specialists have now discovered the foundations of the Jewish prayer hall, the synagogue, and we believe that Peter’s house was next door.

Peter was one of the leading fishermen in the village and Jesus chose him and his brother Andrew to be fishers of men.  There were 2 others, the sons of Zebedee, James and John, who were fierce strong personalities, called “Sons of thunder”.  They too were called to be fishers of men, to call men and women to follow Christ to repent and believe.

Peter received this name from Jesus and it means rock, because Peter is the human foundation on which the Church is built.  His successor is the pope in Rome, now Pope Benedict XVI, while all the bishops, like our Bishop Basilio of Baucau and Bishop Ricardo of Dili are successors of the other apostles.

God is still calling us through his bishops, priests, religious and catechists to repent and believe.  This is his plan for each of us as we live our daily lives and gather in community around our bishops and Pope Benedict the successors of the 12 apostles, of Peter, Andrew, James and John.

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