Our People

Homily for the Feast of the Holy Cross

Holy Cross College, Ryde

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
10/9/2007

In 1770 Captain Cook discovered the Eastern seaboard of Australia and erected the Union Jack as a portent of a future penal colony for those whose crimes might include the practice of ‘popery’ in Britain. At that very time a bright 23-year-old Irishman, Daniel Delany, was being secretly ordained a priest in France because the British had outlawed the practice of the Catholic faith in Ireland also. Father Delany returned to an Ireland racked by poverty and ignorance, and set about raising the physical, intellectual and spiritual level of his charges. His particular emphasis was on the evangelisation and catechesis of the young. At 36 he was named a bishop and in that rôle he continued to focus on the religious education of children and youth. Two centuries ago this very year he received the first four men to start the Patrician Brothers. We honour all his sons today, including those who established and led and taught in this college.

Recently, the 17 Bishops of NSW and the ACT issued a pastoral letter entitled Catholic Education at a Crossroads: one I hope you have all been reading and discussing. It reflects upon the changed context, enrolment patterns and nature of our schools in recent years. To give just one example of that shift: when I was a boy here at Holy Cross there were 60 in my class and though the fees were very low some families could not pay at all. The almost slave-labour of religious brothers and their lay assistants kept the school going and I can only look back and marvel at how they managed.
 
In their letter the bishops gratefully acknowledge the achievements of Catholic schools in our region and the quality and commitment of school staff. They invite reflection on the implications of our changing educational and cultural context, of the rising proportion of nominally-Catholic and non-Catholic enrolments, and of the under-participation of students from poorer families. They ask all Catholic educational leaders, staff and parents, as well as the broader Catholic community, to join them in recommitting to Catholic schooling in the new situation of the 21st century. And they challenge all those involved to dedicate themselves to ensuring that our schools are truly Catholic in their identity and life, are centres of ‘the new evangelization’, enable our students to achieve high levels of ‘Catholic religious literacy’ and practice, and are led and staffed by people who will contribute to these goals. Though our context is different, I think Bishop Delany would have enthusiastically supported this commitment to the evangelisation and catechesis of our young people two centuries after his own.

The publication of this pastoral recalls another, published in 1879, in which Archbishop Vaughan and the NSW bishops called for the building of a Catholic School system to assist poor Catholic families educate their children in a context often hostile to their heritage. In particular the leaders of the Church feared that Henry Parkes’ government schools would impose a mentality that was essentially establishment-Protestant, secularist-agnostic, even Free-Masonic upon the minds of all young Australians and be “seedbeds of future immorality”. No, said the bishops, we must go it alone and build a network of schools to rival the best in the world.
 
Holy Cross College was an answer to that clarion call. The mostly Irish bishops of NSW naturally preferred Irish religious to educate their young, and what could be better than brothers in green sashes named for St Patrick? These men were dedicated to the education of poor boys and they worked first in isolated rural schools and then in to working class city schools, as Australia became one of the most urbanised countries on earth. Still today they actively search for ministries to the most dispossessed young people. But a century ago they were also part of the army defending our Catholic youth from the evils of the state system.

Such an idea is alien to us today. But it is not all that long ago that the nuns put all boys out of their primary schools at the end of Year 4 and a young boy found that no Catholic school within cooey of his Longueville home had a vacancy for him until Year 7. On being told he would have to go to the local state school images erupted in his mind of children of that other religion – the dreaded “publics” – menacing him in various ways while the school systematically brainwashed him into apostasy. He cried and cried and told his parents he would play truant from school or run away from home or deliberately fail all his subjects if he were sent to such a place. Finally, after much searching by his parents a Catholic school agreed to take him in for the rest of his primary years: it was three buses away from home, one-and-a-half hours each way. I will be eternally grateful to Holy Cross College at Ryde that I was saved from becoming a public in a seedbed of immorality by their decision to take me – and my brother – for those two years!

Our Gospel passage this morning (Matthew 11:25-30) talks of the light yoke and easy burden that is Christ’s and that in turn he shares with those who come to him, especially those who come heavy-burdened. What is that yoke he shares with those desperate for ease and for rest? The Holy Cross. This is surely one of the strangest paradoxes of a Christian story full of paradox. If someone came to you and said: “look I’m weighed down with grief, hunger, confusion” – like those young Irish boys in Daniel Delany’s day – “please help,” and you responded with “OK, here’s another cross for you to carry; take it up and follow” they might not be pleased!

It’s a bit like when we hear the beatitudes, those “Blessed are” or “Happy are” sayings of Jesus. You might say Jesus had a rather strange idea of blessedness! If someone advertised: “Join me and I can promise you poverty, hunger and thirst, physical, emotional and spiritual,” they might not get many takers. If they promised the blessings of purity and peace, with a good dose of meekness and grief alongside them, you might suggest they need some PR advice. If someone said, “Join my operation and, if you do all I ask, you will be really, really blessed: I promise you will be persecuted and reviled and defamed and, if you’re really lucky, you’ll get nailed to a cross like me,” you might very well say, “Thanks, but no thanks. If that’s blessing, give me a curse; if that’s Christian happiness, gimme some old-fashioned pagan pleasure instead.”

So what’s going on with all this Holy Cross talk? Time and again Jesus’ message to us seems to be: if you are looking for the quick road to happiness, if you want to by-pass commitment and self-sacrifice, I’m not your man, I’m not your God. Look elsewhere. But don’t expect to find enduring happiness there. Yet if in the midst of your sickness, confusion or low morale, you turn to me, you might just find there is more to life than the quick fix, the buzz of the sportsfield or the nightclub, the frenzy and the ecstasy. That there are more lasting, more satisfying and, in the end, more healing things on offer in the kingdom of God. In the end my yoke might be lighter after all.

Our first reading today (Numbers 21:4-9) tells the strange story of the caduces, the Aescuplian and Mosaic staff, the ancient symbol of medicine still used today: a cross pole on which a snake was crucified so that all who were sick and dying could look on it and live. Our second reading (Hebrews 5:7-9) explains this strange healing symbol to us: it tells of the obedience of the suffering Son, whose entreaties on our behalf, especially those cried out as he hung, snakelike on the Cross, are the source of our salvation.

Its less than a year to World Youth Day when a quarter of a million young people will join us in Sydney for a week of catechesis and culture, liturgy and festival, before half a million or so celebrate the central World Youth Day events with Pope Benedict. The herald of this extraordinary grace to come is the World Youth Day cross which, with an icon of Our Lady and the Child Jesus, is now making its way around our country. It is having quite a time, seeing every significant place for young people in our land, being touched and kissed and cried and laughed with, being carried and raised high and crowd surfed and sung to. A simple wooden cross has the power to draw young people to itself so they can testify to their faith and hope and love, their ideals for the future of our world, their promise to give their energies in service and leadership. When the young people of the world gather to celebrate here in Sydney next year, under the evening light of the great Southern Cross and around that simple wooden cross, they will gather because they know, at some level, that in this Holy Cross is their salvation, rest for the weary, hope for a broken world, a promise to each of immortality. We adore O Christ and we bless you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world!