Our People

Homily for Sunday before World Youth Day in St Ursula’s Church Cologne (WYD 2005)

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
14 August 2005

How very appropriate that with all of us foreign guests in this welcoming land the Mass readings today are all on the faith and destiny of foreigners! For weeks now we have all been conscious of the build-up to WYD 2005 and aware that it is not like any other trip we make, not like tourist trips or junkets, not like business flights to make deals or academic trips to conferences, not like school excursions or university study tours. Perhaps the closest parallel experience is when young people go trekking during and after their studies to discover themselves and the world and make some big decisions about their future. Just over twenty years ago I did just that, little knowing where my six months backpacking and discerning would take me!

We have come here to Cologne, each of us probably with very mixed motives. I fear I will be part den-mother, part inspector. I will need to be reminded that I have come with you as a pilgrim. We have come because we know that God is here at the shrines we will visit, in the catecheses and liturgies we will experience, amongst the pilgrims and hosts, and in his Vicar who is to give us his blessing. Like the three kings who journeyed once to Bethlehem and then again to Cologne, we know that coming to God is rarely as romantic as the Christmas crib suggests: most often going on pilgrimage involves considerable hardship both for the pilgrims and the hosts, and there is not much sentimentality in toilets and transport for one million, whether you are at the user or the provider!

It’s interesting that nonetheless something special still clings to the idea of the pilgrim. Even today when so many religious ideas and activities are scorned, people still have a respect for those on pilgrimage. People do not generally think of pilgrims as mere spiritual tourists, with envy perhaps, or resentment, or indifference. Rather, they think of pilgrims with interest, admiration, even honour. Part of this is respect for the risks pilgrims take and the difficulties they endure, all for the sake of some higher good than simple fun. Yet if the world still honours pilgrims, it often can make no sense of what they do once they arrive: their simple pieties like that of the Three Kings genuflecting with gifts for the Infant King or the Canaanite woman calling out after him and revealing to all and sundry that her daughter is mad. The woman, of course, has great faith, she believes, but that does not mean there is no risk for her: quite the reverse. Like so many Christians today, this woman’s own people were strangers to Christ. To hail him and credit him with miracles is to stand out as different, to expose herself to scorn, even danger.

Our Canaanite heroine presents herself to Jesus as Lord, in the way Isaiah recommends in the First Reading: she does not see her foreignness as an obstacle to approaching the One she believes can cure her daughter. Somehow she knows his help does not depend on belonging to the right ethnic group: it depends upon her accepting and worshipping him as Lord. For Jesus expands the vision of those around him: salvation is no longer tribal; it is a gift to all those who serve and love the Lord God, offering him sacrifice of an upright life.

Of course, some are tempted to extend the words of the Messiah so that he teaches not just the inclusiveness of Christianity but the equivalence of all faiths and ideologies. On this view all religions, spiritualities and worldviews are partial at best in their grasp of the truth and all are of equal value. Thus Jesus’ call becomes not ‘all who worship me as God will be saved’ but ‘all will be saved whomever, or whatever, they worship’. But this is exactly not what Jesus says. The faith of the woman whose prayer he answers is not just faith that he or anyone can do it: it is faith that He can do it, because of who He is. In other words, however opaquely, she recognized Him and not just his power. Christ’s message that he is Lord once heard and accepted changes everything for the hearer. It means the end of the idols we’ve found comfortable up till now.

And this takes us back to the idea of pilgrimage and why we are here. Australia, like Germany, is a complex, fast, rich, multicultural society. These are to an extent things to be proud of; often they are the result of our Christian heritage. Yet in the coming days our status as pilgrims means we must cultivate not pride but humility: whether we are here as young pilgrims, or leaders, or observers or whatever, this week we must let ourselves see the world differently, let ourselves be changed by this meeting with Christ at the tomb of the wise men who two millennia ago met him when he was only a baby. For a few days, things are to become simple not complex, slow not fast, poor not rich, spiritual not secular. It may feel like we have entered a time of hype, meetings, crowds, excitement—but to think only that will be to not attend World Youth Day.

These are not just work days ahead. They are not holidays either, at least not as modern man understands the word holiday. Originally, of course, the word holiday meant holyday. It is the older meaning that captures what is ahead for us. Whatever the hardships and the delights ahead, we are entering sacred time and space and there at least some of us will, I hope, be transformed by the encounter with divine grace. Bring to Our Lord, then, a heart as open as that of the Canaanite woman. Let God do wonderful things for his young people, as he did for her daughter. Let him do wonderful things for the older ones among us, as we smile upon his contact with the lives of our young people. Let it be a week for us that means we can return to Australia ready to build the kingdom of God.