Homily – August 2017 (Marriage & Family Sunday)
ARCHBISHOP CHRISTOPHER PROWSE
CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP OF CANBERRA AND GOULBURN
SUNDAY 13 AUGUST 2017
YOUTH MASS
ST CHRISTOPHER’S CATHEDRAL, FORREST
1 Kings 19-9; 11-13, Romans 9:1-5, Matthew 14:22-33
Welcome everybody. Particularly those young people from throughout the whole of the Archdiocese. Thank you so much for coming and joining us for this Mass which begins the conference called SHINE over the next day.
The readings of today present us with three challenges in life.
The first challenge is the challenge within. Elijah, in seeking God, did not find Him in the glitz of life. He wasn’t in a big troublesome wind or in a spectacular earthquake or a savage fire. He was found in “the sound of the gentle breeze”. Another translation of the scriptures has it as, “the voice of thin silence”. We see that Jesus Himself seeks out the gentle breeze and the thin silence in the gospel today. He sends the crowds away and the scriptures say, “He went up into the hills by Himself to pray”. He was listening deeply to His father and was attentive to the voice of God deep within Him. In His communion of Father and Son He found the energy to continue on the pilgrimage towards His Death and Resurrection.
We too will not be able to continue on in our Christian life unless we find moments of deep solitude and silence in our life where we can focus on Jesus in His scriptures, particularly reenergise with all that we need in the battles of life.
The second challenge, particularly for young people today, is the challenge outside. The disciples in the boat also experience a big head wind like Elijah. It was a heavy sea and the boat in which they were in, a symbol of the Church, was imperilled and being threatened to the point of sinking.
So if we are looking for a religion that is fully comforting and problem free and there are no challenges, please look for religion other than Christianity and especially Catholicism! Because in the midst of the challenges the Lord comes to us and helps us.
In this regard, I am thinking particularly of two wonderful Saints that have a particular love for young people. The Saints of World Youth Day.
First of all I am thinking of St Therese of Lisieux. She was a young French woman and died at 26 years of age from a very bad lung infection called tuberculosis. She died in 1897.
She suffered from enormous internal anxious struggle in finding her place in life. What did God want of her? How did she want to live out her vocation of Christianity?
Pondering on the gentle voice within her she discovered this one day to her great joy. She wrote later on in her autobiography that the great discovery was that she was to live out a vocation of love in the world. For whoever she met and whatever situation she was in, she pledged that she would love simply like Jesus to the people and situations that she encountered. This was her greatest joy in her life.
Another great World Youth Day Saint is St Maximillian Kolbe. He was a Franciscan priest who died in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland in 1941. We knew nothing much of him until the end of his life. As a prisoner in Auschwitz one of the prisoners escaped. The Nazis rounded up everybody and picked at random ten men to face death as a punishment for the escape of the prisoner. One man who was chosen immediately protested. He said he was married with a young family. Immediately Maximilian Kolbe came up and offered to take this man’s place. This happened. This time last year I was with our World Youth Day pilgrims at Auschwitz in Poland. We pondered in silence at the place where Maximillian Kolbe died. It was a bunker and he was thrown there with the others and starved to death over a two week period. When they opened up the bunker they found everybody dead except Maximillian Kolbe who was almost dead. They executed him immediately with poison.
But he showed enormous courage in the midst of the challenges of his life.
With the challenges outside, whether they be mental anguish or oppressive political regimes, we must be inspired by living out the life of love in whatever situation that we are placed in.
The third challenge of life is surely the challenge of confronting fear with courage and faith.
When Peter started walking towards Jesus on the water he looked at himself and took his eyes off Jesus. Immediately that he did this he began to sink. He became self-absorbed rather than Jesus absorbed. This is always a recipe for a disaster. We must always keep our eyes on Jesus and the storms of life. Jesus accompanies us even though we might feel that He is not there. We must keep our eyes on Jesus who leads us. Let’s listen again to what Jesus said to Peter when He lifted him up from sinking into the sea. I’m sure He would say to each of us today, especially the youth gathered here in such big numbers. He said to Peter “Why did you doubt me?” And then there is this lovely expression, “Jesus put out his hand at once and held Peter”. Allow Jesus in this Mass and tomorrow at the SHINE conference to put His hand out to you and hold you. May we confront the different challenges of life that are both within and outside with faith and courage knowing that Jesus always lead us on the way in life.
Ultimately all that we say can be summarised by saying that there is Only Jesus, Always Jesus, Forever Jesus.
Archbishop Christopher Prowse
Catholic Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn