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therecord.com.au
10, 2013
2013
Thousands unite in prayers, liturgies, midnight baptisms and re-enactments commemorating and celebrating Christ’s death – and Resurrection.
In stirring homily at the Chrism Mass, Archbishop Costelloe urges Catholics not to be disheartened.
DO NOT BE AFRAID QUOTABLE Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB addresses priests of the Archdiocese and Mass-goers at St Mary’s Cathedral on March 26, urging Catholics not to be disheartened by challenges confronting the Church at the present time such as the scandal of sexual abuse, divisions among Catholics and the widening gap between society and Gospel values. PHOTO: ROBERT HIINI
This is the unedited text of the homily given by Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB of Perth at the Chrism Mass in St Mary’s Cathedral, Perth on Tuesday evening, March 26, 2013.
I
n the year 1207, in a little rundown and crumbling church in the countryside not far from a market town in central Italy, a young man of 26 knelt down in prayer. He had been a soldier and came from a rich merchant family but, having returned from the war and from imprisonment sick and dispirited, he had experienced a profound conversion of heart and now preferred to wander the hills and valleys alone, reflecting on and praying about
his future. The young man’s name was Francis, the little church was the Church of San Damiano, and the nearby town was called Assisi. It is this young man, St Francis of Assisi, whose name our new Pope bears. It seems opportune then for us to ask ourselves this evening what St Francis, and Pope Francis, might be able to teach us as we celebrate this Chrism Mass together. AS THE young Francis knelt in that church, looking up at the crucifix with its lamp burning before it, he seemed to hear the Lord speaking to him from the cross. “Go and rebuild my Church, for it is falling into ruins.” Francis was a simple young man. As he looked around him at the ruined church in which
he found himself, he decided that the Lord was calling him to repair the building which he immediately set out to do. Years later, long after he had come to understand much more clearly what the Lord was asking of him, he presented himself before Pope Innocent III, seeking approval for the group of followers he had gathered around him. The Pope was initially reluctant but after a dream in which the Pope saw his own Cathedral, Saint John Lateran’s, beginning to topple and fall, only to see Francis run in and put his shoulder to the crumbling pillar and hold it up, the Pope realised, as Francis himself had done, that the Church herself was beginning to crumble and was in urgent need of renewal.
NINE hundred years later, our new Pope has invited us to recall again the story of St Francis of Assisi. In doing so, we might be inclined to see ourselves, our Church, in a similar situation to that facing the young Francis of Assisi. Certainly, in the crowd gathered in St Peter’s Square for Pope Francis’ Mass of Installation, there were many banners held high carrying the same words St Francis heard in San Damiano’s: go and rebuild my Church. We all know of the challenges we face: the awful scandal of sexual abuse and the ways in which our response as a Church has often been very poor; the very low percentage of Catholics who gather regularly, at least in our part of the Church, Continued - Page 6
“We all know the challenges we face: the awful scandal of sexual abuse and the ways in which our response as a Church has often been very poor, the very low percentage of Catholics who gather regularly to celebrate Mass and the Sacraments, internal divisions between so-called progressives and so-called conservatives ...” “We must never allow ourselves to forget that the Church, our Church, this Church, is the body of Christ and this means we have Christ as our head ...” “Tonight, as we recognise ourselves to be in stormy seas, we must all hear two things from the Lord: ‘Go and rebuild my Church’ and ‘Do not be afraid. I am with you’.”