Archbishop of Sydney

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
Ephesians 5:21-32

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
27/8/2006

As you would know we follow a three year cycle of readings for our Sunday Masses.  This year B, or number 2 in the cycle, features Mark’s gospel.  However as his gospel is comparatively short, it is supplemented with an interval of five weeks from John’s chapter six on Jesus as the bread of life.  Today is the last in this series, but as I have nothing to offer beyond what I have explained in the previous weeks, I have decided to speak about the beautiful passage we have from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians on the central topic of marriage and love.

 By way of introduction I want to mention two unrelated pieces of my recent reading.  Within the last week or so Pope Benedict gave an extensive interview to a Bavarian journalist, some of which is published in today’s Catholic Weekly.  The Holy Father was asked why he did not speak against homosexual marriages, abortion and contraception on his recent visit to Valencia for the World Meeting of Families, especially as Zapatero’s Government there is very anti-Catholic and actively legislating on such issues.

 Pope Benedict replied that Catholic teaching does not begin with a series of negatives, or “noes”.

 The Christian package is positive, before we set out the limits.  Men and women are made for one another while love has a set of grades or ascending stages, sexuality, erotic love, and then agape or charity, so that marriage is the union of a man and woman in love and happiness, constituting a family with children and so ensuring the continuity of the human race.  None of this is a Catholic invention, but follows from the laws of nature and natural law.  Some non-believers are hostile to any such concept of natural law, because the need for a Creator follows closely on the acknowledgement of ordered creation and they know this.

 All of this is quite uncontroversial for Church-goers, but in the wider world it is politically incorrect and fiercely contested in the media and among those who try to influence young people.

 Recently the results of a three year study on Generation Y in Australia, 13 to 29 year olds, have been published.  Not all the news is bad, but more than a quarter of the young Christians are moving away from their Christian origins.  Prominent among the reasons given by those who no longer identify with the Catholic Church were our teachings on homosexuality, sex before marriage, abortion and Church attitudes to women.  Most of these ex-Catholics want us to change our views on such issues.  Important Church teachings cannot be reversed, but they are open to better understanding and more appropriate explanation and teaching and Pope Benedict was speaking good sense on this issue – and of course on many others.  He is a marvellous teacher.

 So today I want to say a few words about Pope John Paul’s theology of the body, a happy by product of the sexual revolution of the sixties.  This theology based in large part on today’s excerpts from Ephesians.

 Sexuality has to be linked to love and life and orthodox Christians over 2,000 years have always taught that sexual activity is good and holy within marriage.

 Genesis is the first book of the Old Testament and the Apocalypse (or Revelations) is the last in the New Testament, constituting the book ends of the Bible.  The first tells the story of Adam and Eve and the last compares the union of Christ with his Church to the union of a man and woman in marriage, where Christ is the bridegroom and the Church is the bride.  There is an important symbolism here.

 Later in this Mass I will confirm 14 choirboys into full membership of the Catholic Church, and to some large extent life’s choices still lie before them.  So I ask them, young as they are, to remember as they pass into adult life to examine closely the alternatives to the Catholic package.  They should test the Spirits and see whether the non-Christians and especially the anti-Christians are leading happy and productive lives.  What package works better?

 The validity of Christian teaching on sexuality and marriage is demonstrated in the wounds of those who do not practice it.  Infidelity and irresponsibility do not bring freedom, but slavery, imprisonment to bad habits and even addiction.  Pagan life today is like driving a car with flat tyres.

 Men and women are gifts to one another, because sexual activity is an offering of love to the other, rather than a search for self satisfaction.

 Christ himself was compassionate towards sexual sin, which is usually a misdirected search for love, but sexual fidelity is a struggle.  And we know that cut price Christianity does not work, does not attract joiners, although it can stir up some nostalgia and distant sympathy.  There is of course no such thing as cost free Christianity, which is a poisonous myth.

The human body is also a spiritual mystery, a sign of what is hidden in God from all eternity.  We can even see sexual intercourse, crowning the deep loving relationship of a man and woman as an intimation, initial evidence of the exchanges within the Trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Spirit.  We never heard this sort of talk when I was growing up.

We should all be committed to working for a civilisation of love, which is founded on sex, marriage and family, on the essential linking of love, sex and new life.  Let us pray particularly for those about to be confirmed that they will choose well and wisely.

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