During his visit to Brisbane to bless and open Queensland’s Holy Spirit Seminary, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith CARDINAL WILLIAM LEVADA celebrated Mass in St Stephen’s Cathedral on April 27. This is an edited version of his homily
IT has been my great privilege to bless the buildings and the new chapel at Holy Spirit Seminary in Banyo.
It is my sincere hope that this new seminary will be a great blessing for the Archdiocese of Brisbane and the dioceses in Queensland, forming good priests who will minister to the sacramental and spiritual needs of their people for generations to come.
My visit to Brisbane has therefore been one of great hope – a hope inspired by the tangible work of the Holy Spirit in this local Church.
This hope born of the Spirit is what I would like to reflect upon with you.
We hear once again Jesus’ promise to send the Holy Spirit: the Advocate who will be with us always, the Spirit of truth who will dwell within us as our helper and guide.
We are to be vigilant, not only in preparation for the liturgical feast of Pentecost, but attentive to the varied ways in which the Holy Sprit of God shows Himself in our daily lives, fulfilling the Lord’s promise.
Indeed, to be attentive to the presence and work of the Spirit in our lives, in our Church, and in our world is a hallmark of discipleship.
It is a sign of our Christian hope in the nearness, the providence, of our God, and of our trust in the promise of Jesus to be with us until the end of time.
This vigilance, this keeping watch for the Holy Spirit, is a task for the whole Church as much as it is a personal calling for each of us in our unique spiritual journeys.
It is the lens through which I would like to mention a particular opportunity for you, the clergy and faithful of the Archdiocese of Brisbane, to consider the great work of the Holy Spirit in building up this local Church.
Next year you will celebrate your 150th anniversary – your sesquicentennial jubilee as a diocese. This is now a time of preparation.
It is a moment analogous to the eager expectation of today’s liturgy for the fulfilment of Christ’s promise of the Holy Spirit.
It is a time to acknowledge the work of the Holy Spirit which has brought you to this moment in history.
This attentive preparation will allow you to enter into the anniversary celebration with mind and heart renewed, and so receive from the celebration the many graces which our Lord desires to share with you.
In the age of the Prophets, the jubilee year was used as an image of Messianic blessing, a prophetic image of the great good God had in store for his people when the Messiah, the great Prophet and Teacher would appear.
The hope conveyed in this image became a personal drama for a group of Sabbath worshippers in Nazareth at a moment in time, in human history – a moment when Jesus read the words of the Prophet Isaiah about the Messianic promise: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (Lk 4:18-19).
Then he declared: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
This is the drama of God’s love that you will recall in a special way in the sesquicentennial jubilee of Brisbane archdiocese.
Jesus came “in the fullness of time” to sanctify time, to reclaim it for the One who created it, and to open it to eternity. And we are privileged to live with him in that fullness of time, in the ongoing “year of the Lord’s favour”!
By the gifts of the Holy Spirit which he sends into our hearts, he calls us to be his instruments in writing the story of salvation history in this time and place: he invites us to write a new chapter in the book of the Church that began with the Acts of the Apostles.
The anniversary of the archdiocese is an opportunity to recall with gratitude the work of the Holy Spirit in planting the seeds of faith in this part of Australia and guiding the Church’s growth throughout the generations.
In these months leading up to the jubilee, I urge you to gather from your own families, parishes, and schools the great stories of faith which helped shape this Archdiocese of Brisbane.
This act of “sacred memory” is a way to prepare for the jubilee precisely by being attentive to the presence and action of the Holy Spirit shaping, guiding and transforming this local Church.
Surely the whole Church in Queensland can acknowledge with great gratitude, especially to Archbishop John Bathersby and the bishops of the Metropolitan Province of Brisbane, the dedication of the new Holy Spirit Seminary as part of this jubilee of the Lord and as a sign of hope in the continued work of the Holy Spirit in this local Church.
In addition to this exercise of ecclesial memory, we are called to the very personal task of keeping vigil for the work of the Holy Spirit in our own lives.
As we spend time with Jesus through prayer and the sacraments, we come to know him better and love him more.
How can we not respond to his invitation to be his apostles who proclaim this good news to the ends of the earth? We do this by the witness of our lives, faith-filled and resolved to keep the commandments he has given us.
We do it by our participation in works of charity on behalf of our neighbour in need, by the pursuit of justice in our personal lives and in our society, by seeking to make the peace that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit ever more a reality in our lives and in our world.
And we do it by telling the story of Jesus, of God’s love in person, of how he here and now asks everyone to let him into their lives.
Sometimes we may think that Jesus is already known “to the ends of the earth.” But in proposing the “new evangelisation” as the principal project of this millennium of Christianity, Pope John Paul II reminded us that each generation needs to be evangelised anew, that nations once Christian need to hear the good news proclaimed again, that each one of us needs to hear more radically the call to conversion and communion with our Lord.
Evangelisation begins in our families, in our schools, in our workplace. It is the simple witness of our discipleship, the fruit of our joy at coming to know the Lord and his abundant love for each one of us.
Evangelisation is also the ability to articulate our Catholic faith in a way that gives answer to the questions and longings of faith which we often encounter in our family members, co-workers and friends.
This articulation, which sometimes went by the name “apologetics”, responds to the exhortation we heard in today’s second reading from St Peter who urged those first Christians: “always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” (1 Pt. 3:15).
In this context, I would like to propose anew that both the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the recent Compendium of the Catechism, works overseen by Pope Benedict XVI while still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, are most effective tools for evangelisation, assisting Catholics everywhere to articulate the faith which underpins the vibrancy of their hope and love.
“Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts!” St Peter tells us in today.
This is the preparation for the jubilee in which the Spirit guides us.
We sanctify him in our hearts by making time for regular prayer, by purifying our hearts by a regular examination of conscience and celebration of the sacrament of Penance, by striving to live integral lives in concert with God’s moral law, by faithful celebration of the Holy Eucharist and the devotional life of the Church, by active charity that reaches out to those in need.
These things, while having a personal and interior character, bear great fruit in the Church and in the world.
Nothing will attract people more to the Church than the experience the Christian faith lived authentically by her members.
If we are attentive to the way the Spirit works in us, we will indeed sanctify the Lord in our hearts, and the Spirit will use the authenticity of our faith as his most effective tool for evangelisation.
I will conclude these reflections by recalling the encyclical letter Spe Salvi, in which Pope Benedict XVI has reminded us of the simple and yet profound truth that, in Christ, the future is full of hope.
God has shown us in Jesus what the true fulfilment of human life is. He has given humanity the gift of his own divine life, and he has asked us not only to embrace it ourselves, but also to share it with the whole human family.
Let us look with eager anticipation towards Pentecost and to the coming celebration of the sesquicentennial jubilee of the archdiocese, confident that the risen Lord’s promise to send the Holy Spirit is being fulfilled in our very midst.
