Archbishop of Sydney

25th Anniversary Tangara School

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
Jer 17:5-8; Cor15:12, 16-20; Lk 6:17, 20-26

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
11/2/2007

Last week I watched an ABC television programme on El Nino, the phenomenon in the Pacific where the ocean waters’ temperature rises slightly around Christmas time bringing heavy rain to Peru and the West coast of the Americas and drought like conditions to Australia and beyond.  It was fascinating to learn something of the early scientists’ efforts as they came to realise that change in the ocean’s temperature affected high and low air pressure centres not only in the Pacific but in South East Asia and changed the direction of the prevailing winds.

The programme was all designed to frighten us, like the sermons on hell in my youth, suggesting that the collapse and disappearance of a North Peruvian civilization was caused by it – by floods rather than drought it suggested and even linking the destruction of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, which it dated to around 2000 BC, to El Nino, although drought was the cause this time.

Whatever of all this, the Old Testament writers knew about drought in a way that Sydneysiders do not know it.  Although our water supplies are dangerously low, we have regular summer rain, the grass rarely turns from green to brown.  Ours is a beautiful part of the world unlike many other parts of Australia.

Jeremiah knew deserts and drought, the parched wilderness, uninhabited salt lands, dry scrub in the wastelands and he knew how to ensure that trees survived during the recurrent droughts.  They should be planted at the water’s edge, alongside rivers, so that their deep roots will draw up the moisture from the depths and their branches will continue to bear fruit, surrounded by healthy green foliage even in drought conditions.

We might transfer this imagery, as Jeremiah did, to our own spiritual and religious situation here in Australia, which is of course culturally part of the Western world.  Religious conditions are harder, much worse, in other parts of the west; worst of all in East Germany, Holland and Belgium, perhaps Switzerland.  Fierce desert winds have started to blow in Spain and the climate in England is steadily deteriorating.

Here in Australia we are not in the middle of a terrible spiritual drought, but El Nino shortages of rain are more frequent and have damaged the forests, stripped the leaves from many, but not all of our large trees.  There is no doubt that a lot of sturdy scrub survives and it is possible that some huge local trees will be revitalized by the bush fires as our gums often are.

And last but not least new trees have been planted alongside ancient rivers, which continue to draw strength from life-giving waters, producing regular fruit and many beautiful flowers.

We celebrate today in this Mass the twenty-fifth anniversary of Tangara School and while this is first of all a Mass of Thanksgiving, we also use the occasion to ask God’s blessings on what is being done at the moment as we ask God’s blessings on your activities for the future; so that more and more planting alongside the rivers of life will be made, more and more trees will grow to healthy, producing rich fruit and pumping oxygen, spiritual oxygen, into our heavily polluted atmosphere.

The religious situation has changed for the worse in Australia in many ways even as our level of prosperity, availability of education, health care and travel opportunities have improved.  While the religious instinct is still strong, a pure faith in the one true God is often discounted or camouflaged in messy pantheist rhetoric, so that regular worship is not seen as a high priority and traditional Christian teachings on sexuality and marriage, on the importance of children and on life issues such as abortion and euthanasia are fiercely, often bitterly contested and rejected.  The traditional sociological structures which served the Catholic Church well in Australia from the 1850’s to the 1960’s have all been weakened i.e. the family, the parish, religious orders and traditional Catholic primary and secondary schools.

In God’s providence new prophets have emerged, nearly always independently of any central human planning, to develop and change our structures so that grace can continue to come to us through human channels.  The schools of the Parents for Education Foundation, such as Tangara, are one such example.

Their greatest strength comes from their absolute conviction that life comes from Christ and his teachings, from the Catholic tradition of faith and morals.  These lessons need to be learnt and appropriated, not pushed to one side or down the list of importance, so that they are reduced to a misty backdrop, apart from a few grand official occasions.

Christs’ teachings on the illusory nature of worldly success, on the value in faith of suffering (a fundamental difference between us and the secular world) as explained provocatively in today’s gospel passage on the beatitudes have to remain at the heart of our striving.  And today’s gospel seems to imply that if everyone speaks well of us we are false prophets!  Certainly Opus Dei activities have traditionally escaped that charge.

In our new and more difficult condition it is sociologically necessary for lay people and especially parents to be more and more involved if we want to see healthy trees and regular fruit.  I think the insights of St. José Maria Escriva e.g. on the importance of lay people and parents are profoundly true, a key to understanding how we can continue to cope in our pleasant, beguiling but damaging spiritual environment.

The second reading brings to light a further necessary dimension to Christian teachings, because not only do spiritual and transcendental values have priority over worldly success for Christians, but Christ’s promises only make sense, as sometimes the beatitudes only make sense, in the light of eternity.  If Christ is not risen, we shall not rise for judgement and vindication.  Our hopes would be without foundation and we would be unfortunate victims of fraud.  We always labour in the light of eternity where our everyday actions will bear fruit for good or ill.  Only in eternity will the scales of justice balance out, especially for the sufferers Our Lord was describing in the beatitudes.

In the Mass booklet today the Tangara shield displays a huge Australian gum under a midnight sky with the Southern Cross, a beautiful image.  Let us pray that the imagery of Jeremiah describes Tangara’s future so that many birds can settle in the gum’s branches during the long years which lie ahead, even if the landscape continues to be sparse and dark.

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