Our People

Homily for the Mass of Thanksgiving to the World Youth Day Staff

Waterview, Homebush

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
30/7/2008

In the Cathedral Church of St Mary in Sydney there now hangs what will be a permanent reminder of the World Youth Day in Sydney in 2008. On the wall as you enter the Western door from College Street there is an image of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, Help of Christians, before which tens of thousands of pilgrims made their consecration to Our Lady and received the Apostolic Plenary Indulgence. The Virgin is typically Australian in her features and context, with the Australian outback behind her and a wattle halo in her hair. Like a living monstrance she holds forth for our adoration her divine yet very human Son, the Word of God.

¡°When your words came to me, I devoured them,¡± says the Prophet Jeremiah in our First Reading today (Jer 15:10-21). ¡°Your Word is my delight and the joy of my heart.¡± So sings Our Lady of the Southern Cross echoing the prophet. And in her ear, by royal command of the Cardinal Prince of Sydney, is the pearl of great price from our Gospel today (Mt 13:44-46), that symbol of a disciple¡¯s willingness to give up everything for the sake of the kingdom of God. Now in turn do a generation of newly catechized and confirmed young people, whose delight is in the Word of God and especially that Word-made-flesh in Jesus Christ and in his Eucharist, now they sing with Jeremiah and Our Lady of the Southern Cross ¡°When your words came to me, I devoured them, for Your Word is my delight and the joy of my heart.¡± Now some of them at least, like merchants looking for fine pearls, have found the pearl of great price, and are willing to give their all that they might share in God¡¯s kingdom come.

Above the head of our new Aussie Mary stands a constellation which the ancient Greeks thought part of Centaurus¡ªin those ancient times it could still be seen from both Northern and Southern hemispheres. The Peruvian Incas thought it was a kite. In Indonesia and Malaysia people saw a stingray; in Tonga a duck. The New Zealand M¨¡ori called it ¡°Te Punga¡±, the anchor which holds down Milky Way. Australian Aborigines saw it at the end of a giant emu in the sky or as a possum sitting in a tree. Only when Christian eyes finally saw the constellation was it identified as Crux, the Cross: ¡°As the peoples of Oceania came to accept the fullness of redemption in Christ,¡± Pope John Paul the Great once wrote, ¡°they found a striking symbol in the night skies, where the Southern Cross stands as a luminous sign of God¡¯s overarching grace and blessing.¡± (Ecclesia in Oceania 13) The great southern region, then, including our island continent of Australia, was in a sense a ¡®natural cathedral¡¯ with a cross above it, which for millions of years awaited the Word of God and the eyes of faith fully to appreciate its beauty and explain its meaning.

During the Vigil of World Youth Day we gathered under the Southern Cross ¨C kindly veiled by cloud at times in order to warm the Southern Cross Precinct a few degrees ¨C and we were especially conscious that we were surrounded by ¡°a great cloud of witnesses¡± (Heb 12:1), a Milky Way of saints, who like stars enlighten and guide us on our way. ¡°Life is like a voyage on the sea of history ¨C often dark and stormy ¨C a voyage in which we watch for stars that indicate the route,¡± Pope Benedict wrote in his great encyclical on Hope. ¡°The true stars of our life are people who have lived good lives. They are lights of hope. Certainly, Jesus Christ is the True Light, the sun that has risen above all the shadows of history. But to reach him we also need lights close by¡ªpeople who shine with his light and so guide us along our way.¡± (Spe Salvi 49)

At the Vigil and throughout the week we have saw and heard of the lives and virtues of the several patrons of our World Youth Day: after Our Lord himself, who, more than Mary ¨C ¡®Our Lady of Southern Cross¡¯ ¨C could be ¡°a star of hope for us¡± (Spe Salvi 49); she has, for over a thousand years, been hailed as ¡®Star of Sea¡¯: Ave maris stella. And beside her in Southern firmament we see the likes of Peter Chanel, Mary MacKillop and Peter To Rot, priest, religious and married layman, people ¡°full of faith and Holy Spirit¡± (Acts 4:31; 6:5; 11:24), who laboured under the Southern Cross so that the Gospel might reach furthest reaches of the world.

When we all woke up on the Sunday morning ¨C those who had even been to sleep! ¨C we woke to that eternal dawn that is Jesus Christ, and joined the Holy Father for the Mass of our lives, we saw a vast array of new stars of hope, not just from the Southern hemisphere, but like Teresa of Calcutta, Pier Giorgio, Maria Goretti, Th¨¦r¨¨se, Faustina and John Paul II, from every country and language and temperament, all called to be saints for the new millennium!

The risk is, of course, that the sunlight and starlight will fade in our memories, and that those brief moments when we thought that in the company of those young people we really could be saints and that we really could build a better world with God, we may now come back to earth, to turf, and decide it is too hard. But of course we never could be saints on your own, even with the best will in world. Such good as we did these past three or four years, or months, or weeks, we did because we were in company with others, our World Youth Day team, a communion of saints or at least saints-in-the-making, some of you feeling like martyrs-in-the-making, all of you inspired by the Holy Spirit ¨C all of you, not just the Catholics. The Holy Spirit is the One who makes saints; He is the One who dispenses the gifts we need. He is the One who fulfilling Christ¡¯s promise came with power and made witnesses of frightened fishermen and taxmen and the like (cf. Acts 2:29; 4:29,31). Even their enemies could not understand how such ordinary men could show such courage and endure such difficulties with joy (cf. Acts 4:13). Nothing could stop them! To those who tried to silence them they replied: ¡°We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard¡± (Acts 4:20).

This is how those heroes we call the saints are made: by that divine power we know is the Holy Spirit and by their willingness to speak the words He gives them to speak. In this World Youth Day he has spoken to us the Word who is our delight; he has revealed to us the pearl of great price. Devour that Word, again and again, by prayerful contemplation of the words of the Holy Father and of all that happened in that WYD week and before and since. Delight in the pearl of your own contribution to WYD, a pearl made from grit and difficulty, but covered and polished by your own generosity and God¡¯s grace.

Thanks be to God for each one of you! Thanks be to God for World Youth Day 2008!