By Peter Bugden
BRISBANE Archbishop Mark Coleridge, celebrating the feast of the Dedication of the Cathedral of St Stephen on December 4, reminded worshippers who gathered there that if they were not living more deeply dedicated to Jesus Christ then the cathedral would be like “a house built on sand”.
Archbishop Coleridge, in his homily at the feast day Mass, reflected on the fact that the cathedral had had two dedications – the first in 1875 and the second in 1989 after restoration, renovation and extension.
“So this cathedral has been well and truly dedicated – twice over,” he said.
“It seems almost as if the dedication of the cathedral has been a work in progress.”
Archbishop Coleridge said the building up of the faithful as followers of Christ was similarly “a work in progress”.
“Each year we celebrate the dedication (of the cathedral), not just as an act of nostalgia – looking back to the two dedications – but we celebrate the feast imploring the Lord to build us up as a dedicated people …,” he said.
“If that is not true, if we are not being built up more and more and more – a work in progress – if we are not living more deeply dedicated as the living temple, then all of this comes to nothing.
“It is a house built on sand.
“It is just an illusion unless the people who gather here – we, us – are being built up ourselves more and more and more as a living temple, that our lives are dedicated more and more deeply to Jesus Christ crucified and risen.
“He is the rock upon which this house and the community that gathers in it are built.”
Fr Jacques Philippe, who was visiting Brisbane from the Community of the Beatitudes in France, concelebrated at the Mass for the feast of the dedication.
