“LIFE is Christ”, and the Church was enriched by how different cultural traditions expressed this truth, Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge said at the Multicultural Mass at St Stephen’s Cathedral yesterday.
“Each culture gathered in this cathedral has its own insight into an understanding of what it means to say, ‘life for us is Christ’, but that diversity, that difference is no problem,” he said.
“It presents a fantastic possibility – the sharing of all our insights and understandings in that great symphony of faith, which is the Church.”
St Stephen’s Cathedral was full for the Multicultural Mass with many people from Brisbane’s multicultural communities wearing their traditional cultural dress.
Archbishop Coleridge said the Multicultural Mass drew “us to the very heart of God who excludes no one”.
He said the Father sent a Christ who belonged to no one person more than anyone else, no group more than any other group.
“God sent His Son into the world not just into the Church, or into this ethnic group or that ethnic group, but into the whole world,” he said.
“So what we do here today in the cathedral has to echo out into the world.
“Christ belongs to everyone, no one is excluded and no one is overlooked.”
Referring to the Gospel, Archbishop Coleridge said the way to life was finding harmony between humanity’s ways and God’s ways.
He said humanity’s thoughts and ways were often in conflict with God’s own.
“Here is a God who opens every door and welcomes every human being always has and always will, summoning us… to understand in the depth of our being that we are in fact all sisters and brothers; not enemies or opponents; not just the other; but flesh and blood to each other,” he said.
“I say this on this world day of the refugee and the migrant, how many of you have come to this country as refugees and migrants and you come to us as a wonderful gift from God.
“But you haven’t always found the welcome of God, even in this country, perhaps especially in this country, and having listened to Uncle Joe’s Welcome to Country I can’t help but think of our Indigenous brothers and sisters, who have been made refugees in their own land.”
