Archbishop of Sydney

Easter Sunday

St. Mary’s Cathedral Sydney

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
8/4/2007

The United States of America has an immense cultural as well as economic influence everywhere, especially in the English-speaking world, for good and for ill.  We often forget that the USA is also one of the most religious societies in history.  A recent poll showed that more than 90% believed in God and 82% called themselves Christian.

But our perceptions of this are skewed because if Indians are the most religious people on earth and Swedes the least religious, the USA is a nation of Indians interpreted to itself and overseas (via media and academics) by a nation composed largely of Swedes.

If Australia was to be placed on this spectrum we would be somewhere in the middle, closer to Sweden, but not nearly as close as much public discussion suggests.

The Christian feast of Easter is a bigger challenge to credulity than Christmas because Easter shows us the confrontation of good and evil, poses the question whether suffering can have meaning, and asserts a belief in life after death.

Many journalists, like their fellow Australians, do not know much about Christianity, but I believe Christians obtained more coverage this year than for many years and I am grateful for us.  It is always interesting to read what is offered by writers as well as Church leaders, and pessimism usually predominates: the “situation is bleak” and the “West is post-Christian”.

Some of the diagnoses are spectacularly wrong.  One biblical scholar who has been writing about Judas as a way of bringing Christ to a wider audience (and I hope he succeeds) believes the “Christian Church has lost touch with the power and message of Jesus Christ”.  I hope he visits a few parish churches, anywhere in Australia at this Easter.

Another Australian writer, not a Christian, believes “the Church is paralysed with worry about the empty Cathedrals”.  I wonder how long it is since he visited a Catholic Cathedral on a feast day.  If you go the S.C.G. or the M.C.G. on Monday morning you won’t find many people, but about 13,000 attend our Christmas masses at St. Mary’s Cathedral Sydney and 8-9000 attend here at Easter.  This is repeated around Australia in Catholic Churches.

The same author claims that “doctrine kills story” and that we should “downplay the moral teaching”.  Quite a few Christians have embraced this reductionism enthusiastically.  Their churches are emptying and this mistaken strategy is one reason for the hostile pressures on us.

A revival of religious interest is occurring among many young Australians who are drawing the unsurprising conclusion that money, materialism and self-seeking do not bring meaning or peace of mind.

This revival is taking a variety of forms, only some of which are anti-institutional.  Twenty or fifty people gathering in half a dozen pubs and clubs together would not fill much space at Hillsong, or at Fr. Stan’s concert in St. Mary’s Square on Palm Sunday, or at a Catholic Cathedral!

What is surprising about teenagers today is not the percentage who are hostile to institutions, but the larger percentage who will listen to the Christian message spoken from any agency with conviction and sympathy.

The truth of the Easter story has a power of its own.  You do not need saints to tell this story, although it helps, because even to unbelievers Jesus’ progress from the Last Supper to his death is moving and powerful.

To those with faith there is a deeper layer of meaning.  The first chapter of the Book of Revelations puts it this way.  “Grace and peace from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the First-born from the dead, the Ruler of the Kings of the earth.  He loves us and has washed away our sins with his blood . . . . .  This is the truth”.

The person of Christ is not simply a pain-killer, “the heart of a heartless world” as Karl Marx wrote.  Christ promised no-one a pie in the sky and it was not Father Christmas who was crucified on Good Friday.

Because Christ brings us the truth of the human situation, he also brings us hope and we call him the light of the world.  The Easter Vigil’s fire reminds us of this, as the hundreds of candles flickering in our darkened Churches remind us of our task and the hostile challenges, the indifference which we face.

We are told that all ages belong to Christ, who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end and even a rudimentary knowledge of Christian life across 2,000 years, of history will also remind us that we are not living in any situation approaching the worst of times.  There is today an openness to the gospel which was not there even 25 years ago in Australia.

We should be under no illusion.  The basic Christian claims for Easter are extreme and when they are accepted in faith they produce that “invincible obstinacy” which has been found in every age and was remarked on by Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithyria in his letter to Emperor Trajan a persecutor early in the second century.

“Why look among the dead for someone who is alive?” the apostles were told whey they entered the empty tomb.  “He is not here, he has risen”.

At Easter we affirm the central Christian message of love, that Jesus was not just a spokesman for God, but was from God, the only Son of God.  We believe that he redeemed us by his suffering and death, so that our sins will be forgiven if we repent, that the happiness of heaven is opened to us, that everyone is called to faith and that everyone must choose between good and evil, truth and falsehood, hope and despair.

I welcome those adults who have come into the Church tonight and I wish Easter peace to everyone.

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