Archbishop of Sydney

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Suva, Fiji

2 Cor 9:6-10; Jn 12:24-26

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
10/8/2006

We might begin by thanking God for our many blessings; often blessings which we can take for granted, or simply accept as an inevitable part of our world.  In all cases these blessings are not inevitabilities, but represent considerable achievements, under God, worked for across many generations.

Let us remember that everywhere in Oceania we enjoy religious freedom; we are not persecuted.  This is quite different from the first 300 years of Catholic history under the pagan Roman Empire.  So today we celebrate the feast of St. Lawrence, deacon and martyr, who was killed in Rome in 250AD under Emperor Valerian.  Our situation is also different from that obtaining in many other parts of the world today, some of them quite close to us, where Catholics are harassed and sometimes even killed.  More Catholics were martyred for the faith in the 20th century than in any other century of history.

The term “Catholic” comes from the Greek word which means universal and we also should not take it for granted that as Bishops from many nations and nationalities of the Oceania Bishops’ Conferences we are welcomed automatically among you as brothers.  You do receive us because we are united in the Body of Christ, one people of God around the successor of St. Peter as pope and head of the Church and around the successors of the apostles, the bishops who head the local churches.  This unity, essential around Jesus Christ, is always under hostile pressures, great or less, cannot be taken for granted, and has to be defended and worked for in every generation.

The scripture readings today speak of the necessity for the grain of wheat to die in the earth before fruit can be produced.  Those who love their life will lose it, Jesus explained.

In other words we have restated here the message of the Cross, counter-cultural and redemptive, which must always remain a challenge and provocation to much of the so called secular society around us.

The early Christians were forced by their circumstances to understand this.  Enculturation was not a major intellectual preoccupation for them, although it was occurring.  Not so much that they were taking on the colours of the violent, sexually obsessed and pagan world around them; they were slowly transforming public opinion and public standards by their faith, personal lives and the quality of their family and parish life.

The blood of martyrs, the most extreme example of being counter-cultural, has always been the seed of the Church.

Lawrence was a deacon of Rome, and the deacons were then important figures in the administration of the Church.  Deacons were usually bishop’s men; part of the bishop’s team and therefore the priests often viewed them with some suspicion.

It was only about the middle of the third century that imperial Rome began to target the bishops in their persecutions, a backhanded compliment to their leadership and the inconvenient fact that the Church communities were still growing, were refusing to die.  More than 100 years earlier Pliny had written to the Emperor of the “invincible obstinacy” of these Christians.

Lawrence was asked by the Prefect of Rome to produce the treasures of the Roman church.  Pope Sixtus II had distributed to the poor what wealth the church had and so Lawrence presented the poor themselves to the Prefect as the treasures of the church.  The greatest strength of the church is always found in the faith of its parishioners, much more than in its buildings or organisations or financial reserves, important though they are.

Lawrence was burnt to death. Tradition has it that as well as converting one of his jailers, he asked his executioners to turn him over as he was already burnt sufficiently on one side.

This is a magnificent last line!  Perhaps the only rival in Catholic history I know of is the story of the reprobate French Bishop Talleyrand, who was asked on his death bed to renounce Satan.  He refused saying that it was no time to be making enemies!

Lawrence’s death has been embroidered by history, but the basics are well attested.  Bishop Fisher reminded me that the Chapel of Pope Nicholas V in the Vatican commemorates his life, with frescoes painted by the Dominican genius Fra Angelico.

The first reading we heard tonight had St. Paul telling the people of Corinth that the Lord loves a cheerful giver, that he who sows bountifully will reap bountifully.  As we give so shall we receive.  Lawrence was a splendid example of this.

The hospitality we visitors received from the Church in Fiji is another example of cheerful giving.  I thank Archbishop Petero and his Archdiocese for this, for the wonderful evenings we had together in the various parishes last night, I was at the parish of St. Pius X and, more personally, for the invitation to preside and preach in his cathedral tonight.

We are all present here as the children of witnesses, witnesses across the generations, some of them heroic.  As a visitor to Fiji, I pay tribute to those who brought the faith to these islands, especially to the early French Marists, who joined their new order and volunteered to come to the ends of the earth in a period of unexpected Church revival and growth after the terrible times of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.  The steady progress here since then, the happier relationships with other Christians, especially the Methodists, and the Catholic contribution to social stability and progress, to justice and peace – all of these are reasons for gratitude to God and examples of the unselfish service of the Lord, which God our Father will honour and reward.

All of us who are visitors, Catholic brothers and sisters from over the seas, pray that the seeds of faith here in Fiji will be multiplied in the future and the yields will be increasingly generous.

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