Archbishop of Sydney

Witnesses

Pentecost Sunday

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
11/5/2008

Today is Pentecost Sunday, when Christians celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to the first followers of Jesus, powerfully deepening their faith in him and giving them the courage to take his message of love and hope to the world.

It is an important occasion, reminding believers that the religious spirit needs to be regularly renewed if it is to continue to bear fruit for other people. It is also a reminder for non-believers that the spirit of goodness needs to be looked after. It doesn’t automatically renew itself.

It’s easy to become focused on our own concerns and to forget that other people need a hand. People who dedicate their lives to caring for the young, the lost, the sick, the poor and those down on their luck, play an important role here. They are witnesses to us of the power of goodness.

Renewing social capital is one of the most important tasks facing us today. These witnesses shake us out of our sleep and  wake us up to the bit that we can too do to help keep Australia a fair and basically decent society.

Genuine witnesses show the way, point to the truth, inspire and motivate. They find strength in difficulties and struggle to overcome personal weakness. Truth today still spreads through the enthusiasm and example of witnesses, especially among friends, even friends and contacts on the internet.

Effective witnesses need a deep belief in the causes they promote; core values which call to perseverance and commitment. Just as a skin-deep espousal of religion is no substitute for a commitment to Christ, a superficial commitment to goodness is not worth much to society.

Many ages have been worse religiously than our own.  Some have been better. Australian life today offers a basic prosperity to most citizens, a rarity in history, with a good measure of justice and decency.

But an increasing minority find it difficult or unnecessary to believe and Christian understandings of sexuality, marriage and family are under a sustained attack unprecedented in the Western world. The sexual revolution, the disintegration of married and family life, is not an emancipation into freedom and happiness, but a relapse into paganism, a reassertion of power and self over love. This damages many people.

Wise and knowledgeable witnesses are needed to warn society away and to persuade young people, both Christian and non-Christian to follow life-enhancing paths, even when others venture up dead-ends.

A lapse into fundamentalism provides no solution and makes matters worse in the long run.  Fundamentalism rejects or undervalues reason, oversimplifies, is often intolerant and latches onto the literal meaning of Scripture texts in an individualist and black-and-white fashion. 

Above all we must never become false witnesses, nor follow them.

I hope that one of the fruits of the Sydney World Youth Day for Australia will be a new generation of witnesses to faith and goodness.