Bicentenary Mass for the First Edmund Rice School
St Mary's Cathedral
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
5 May 2002
Tonight we celebrate 200 years of schooling by Blessed Edmund Rice. I would like to address the young men, the students of our schools, because many of you would still be deciding what truths you will stand for.
I can only speak to you as one of my generation - nearly two generations away. But my hope is that some of what I Say may be interesting to you and some of it may be useful.
Only today an old man volunteered to me that he was a Christian Brothers old boy and would be grateful for this every day of his life.
Becoming a student of the Christian Brothers means that you join a large, mixed family with a distinguished tradition. It is a tradition which has served our Church and nation well. You, the students of today, must continue this.
The Australian story is brief by the standards of our European culture. There are churches in England which have seen uninterrupted worship for 1000 years; fewer such churches in Ireland because of persecution. In Rome we can visit churches and catacombs where Catholics prayed during the great persecutions 1800 or 1900 years ago. Our country is young. The students of today are still Australian Catholic pioneers.
Most of the brothers schools in NSW were founded as part of the Irish diaspora, as Irish men and women fled their homeland in search of a better life for their children who sometimes, often were hungry, thirsty, in need of clothes. By and large they achieved this better life. They built well, becoming the first Australian patriots (others focused on the British Empire) and Australia itself became an Irish type of place.
As well as their charm and energy the Irish brought us the faith. In the "old country" it had kept them together in bad times, on the long terrible journeys on small ships to the ends of the earth. Now it sustained them as they struggled to subdue a harsh land, to battle heat, drought, bush-fires and flood.
The Brothers told my generation all this many times. By their example they also showed us, that religion was real and powerful, that the Catholic faith was for men too, that God gave us strength. They showed Christ lived in their hearts by faith. Time and again we were told to stand on our own feet, not to follow the crowd. There was a clear difference between right and wrong; even today some claim that Brothers' old boys are black or white people! We had it explained to us very clearly who were the sheep and who were the goats! Far better this than indulging our weakness and pretending we are doing the right thing.
The Brothers also showed us, more by their lives than by their teaching, another rule of life; that self sacrifice is at the heart of all achievement. Good marriages, happy families, useful careers, service in public life, vocations to the priesthood and religious life, even sporting achievement; all require self-discipline or self-sacrifice. We knew "no pain, no gain," even though we did not use these words then.
There is no doubt the religious attainments of the brothers' schools are due first and foremost to those who taught there and that means the Christian Brothers and the increasing number of lay teachers, who now work with them.
In many ways the life of a brother was and is a hard one, a constant round of prayer and service, plain hard work, although there are few vocations more rewarding personally than teaching children is for those who like young people.
In particular during this mass we should say a prayer of thanks for our teachers and especially the Christian Brothers. Theirs is a rich tradition of faith and sacrifice.
What about the future? Jesus said once that our God is a god for the living and not of the dead; a strange saying given Jesus' insistence on the reality of life after death and of the final separation between good people and evil people, which occurs then; as we heard in tonight's gospel.
However Jesus was also telling us that God's work will continue as long as human history continues. For us Catholics, Christians of the new dispensation, this means that priesthood and religious life in some forms, i.e., explicit and radical commitment to the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, will always be essential. Most Catholics are lay people, but there is no true Catholicism without priests and religious. This has been true in the past 200 years of our history and these values will continue to inspire young men in the future.
Styles of Christian living change, theologies come and go, sometimes there is even genuine development, pieties and devotions are various and also varying. But the Catholic fundamentals have always been the same; the one great God loves His people in a special way, His Son Jesus Christ redeemed us and God always, in every age, calls some men and women to a radical imitation of Christ, to a radical living out of Gospel values.
The future is often full of surprises; it is never seen clearly, although we must continue to plan, to use our intelligence as best we can so that Christians can serve society and explain God's love.
We have to acknowledge that trends in Western society are hostile to some Christian values and practices, e.g., to life-long marriages, to purity of heart, to regular Church-going and to vocations to priesthood and religious life. But we should not exaggerate our difficulties as the enemies of religion like to do. How many of us remember that there are fifty percent more seminarians for the diocesan priesthood in the world today than there were when Pope John Paul II started his pontificate in 1978 and that some religious groupings, even in Australia, have more vocations than ever before?
In my school football team I learnt that when we were being beaten (which was not often, even in the social games) the only way to get back into the game was to persist with the basics. This was true also when I was a primary school football coach and it is true of religion.
Let me conclude with two fundamentals. God must take first place. The first and greatest commandment is to love God. Love of our neighbour is the second great commandment, one essential way to express our love of God. We are doing God's work, just as surely as Abraham, whom St. Paul called "Our father in faith", who lived in Chaldaea about 1700 B.C. who founded the chosen people, the religious tradition to which we belong. Faith and prayer therefore remain essential and neither money for adults nor sports for youngsters is an adequate substitute for knowing and loving God.
God has often used the weak to confound the strong. The apostles were not Rhodes Scholars and not merchant bankers. They were few in number, poorly educated and lived in one of the most troublesome and backward provinces in the Roman Empire. Look what they started. Look at what has been achieved in two thousand years. Look at what Edmund Rice has achieved in 200 years.
My second fundamental is that no-one becomes a priest or a brother or a good Christian because of attractive working conditions. Certainly all vocations, lay and clerical, are helped by the sight of happy, hard working priests and religious, but the following of Christ always involves sacrifice. One of the greatest failures of the post-conciliar Church in Australia was the belief that more people would join up in things were made easier. We might have more sympathetic spectators, but we certainly have fewer joiners.
Abraham's story points up this truism. He founded a great people, but he had to leave his father's house and move to Haran and then to Canaan in order to do this. He was even prepared to sacrifice his only son Isaac, although God did not require this for him.
We should not attempt to deny or disguise the sacrifice, the Cross which is at the centre of Christian living and at the heart of love beyond all knowledge. The real task is to represent the vision splendid, to explain Christ's cause and the Church's work so that people are prepared to sacrifice themselves, to do the hard thing for good reasons. Every generation needs athletes of the Spirit. There is no Christian vitality without sacrifice. This was one lesson the Brothers taught my generation, not so much by their words as by their lives.
Let us ask God's blessing on our communities and our work. Let us thank God for what has been achieved. May we build well for the future. There is much unfinished business for young men in faith, compassion and service of poor. Your country and your Church need your commitment to these tasks.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
