Our People

Homily for Mass of the Holy Spirit to celebrate 500 Days to World Youth Day 2008

Polding Centre Chapel

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
2/3/2007

We all know how children count down the number of sleeps till Christmas. It feels a little like that as we come to yet another milestone on our journey towards Randwick, especially now we’ve started our countdown clock at the Cathedral. At my recent World Youth Day meetings in Rome it was very clear that the Vatican officials, bishop and the Pope himself are joining in our count-down. “I am preparing to come to Sydney,” the Holy Father said to me last Saturday.

Of the many works the contemporary Church undertakes, World Youth Day is surely its greatest youth work. But World Youth Day also touches and captivates the whole world: as our First Reading (Joel 3:1-5 or RSV Joel 2:28-32) said “boys and girls shall prophesy, and young people see visions, but older people too will dream dreams, for the Holy Spirit is poured out on all, from the greatest to the least.” World Youth Day, you might say, is the Church’s major work focused specifically on its own future, its great work by which old popes dream dreams and young people see visions.

So World Youth Day is really the Church’s major work, right? Wrong! The Church’s major work is that given to her by Christ in his parting mandate: to go out and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to do all I have commanded you.” (Mt 28:19-20; cf. Mk 16:15; Lk 24:47) Preaching the Good News, moving hearts to faith and raising people up to a life of worship, love and action: this is the task of the whole Church for all time. And it is precisely this that makes World Youth Day so special: for nothing so focuses people of diverse talents and energies, ages and perspectives on the great task of the Gospel, preaching, bringing to faith and baptism, raising all to God: that is the ball from which must never take our eyes!

It is providential that this 500-day milestone comes in Lent, for in this season two things happen, or should happen. First, we put things right, we sweep out the house which is our soul, as the Jews of old swept out their houses in preparation for Passover. Such internal cleaning is necessary but generally uncomfortable. Secondly, we get ready to party, we decorate the house which is our soul in preparation for Easter, which is that most comforting of all things. We achieve this double-goal of casting out and bringing in, fixing and preparing, in many ways, but traditionally it begins with fasting, prayer and works of mercy. So in the spirit of Lent let us ask: five hundred days out from World Youth Day, are we aware of what needs to be put right in ourselves?

I am told we have ticked more than a hundred items off our dreaded gant chart of 1800 items. I fear we’ve probably added as many new items in the same period. Getting down that gant chart certainly matters enormously to me and Cardinal and all our World Youth Day staff and collaborators and friends. But this much is clear: we need to be more than planners and executors: we must be disciples.

Big events require big preparations and big implementation. When Jesus decided to feed five thousand, he did a two-minute-long feasibility study, by asking the lads how many loaves and fishes they had at hand. He had already given a long teaching to the crowd. He then gave careful instructions on what sized groups the crowd were to be divided into, where they were to sit, how the food was to be blessed, how food was to be distributed, how the scraps collected. So he had his evangelization and catechesis plan, his catering plan, his liturgy plan and his waste management plan. But he much more planned and so he called disciples together to do all this with him.

We too must plan and coordinate and realize our great event as disciples. If everything in our World Youth Day runs smoothly, if all the tasks are ticked off, if the photos look great and yet the Gospel is not preached, no young people brought to faith, no older people raised up to life with God, then we will have achieved a great secular work and a great religious flop. The Lenten test of whether we are staying true disciples amidst our many tasks is: are we praying, fasting, almsgiving? Are we giving less to ourselves so can give more to God and to others?

The Cardinal and I and some of clergy have agreed to some heavy fasting this Lent with the dual goals of major weight reduction and major holiness enhancement. Channel 9 may want to run a programme on who will be Australia’s biggest ecclesiastical loser of fat and gainer of grace! We know, too, that we need to pray even more than usual, amidst the preoccupations of meetings, negotiations, decisions and all rest. We must also be ready to give to those most in need, spiritually as well as materially. This Lent, in particular, we should fast and pray and give in the hope that Lent will yield lasting World Youth Day fruits.

Cardinal Pell, Danny Casey, the Directors and I are all very grateful and moved by your service and sacrifices, the extra hours given, the extra energies exhausted, the extra prayers said, the generous hearts from which this water that is the Holy Spirit flows. But even more grateful will be the people of Sydney and Australia and the young people of the world who may never meet you but who are already saving their pennies or rupies or eurocents or yuans or pesos so that they can join you for World Youth Day. They are trusting in your efforts on their behalf. Five hundred sleeps will soon be fifty, and as we head that way and excitement builds, we know we will be called upon to keep giving less to ourselves and more to God and to others in a long Lent before a new Easter and Pentecost.

Jesus cries out in our Gospel passage today that life and fullness of joy will bubble up and burst forth from the hearts of those who believe in him, once the Holy Spirit comes (cf. Jn 7:37-39). He looks forward to the coming of that Holy Spirit and so to the only future that really matters. He looks forward not with anxiety, but with open, hearty joy. How do we stay joyful through the emotional pressure and the sheer hard work, the inspiration and the perspiration, the great achievements and the little blunders that will mark next five hundred days of our lives? The only answer, of course, is to stay focused on the truth that we are his disciples.

Disciples are believers, students, followers. They have a Master and they look to him and his teaching for guidance on every topic and to his power to make it all possible. His guidance and power is, of course, “the Holy Spirit”. For disciples don’t just have big plans of their own: the know they are part of something bigger, bigger than themselves. They share a vision and a task with others and ultimately with God. That divine vision, too, is rightly called “the Holy Spirit”. As we look forward to this extra Pentecost given to Sydney in 2008, we must grow as disciples of the Divine Master and loving brothers and sisters in the greatest of all endeavours, the preaching of the Gospel to all nations, the building up of God’s kingdom on earth, the raising of our young and not-so-young to heaven.