Pentecost Sunday

St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney

+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
31 May 2009

Today we celebrate the fact that the Spirit of God is still with us in a wonderful way within the Church community, if we allow Him to be present.

Last week I was in the Northern Territory, mainly to launch the appeal for the restoration of the Our Lady Star of the Sea Cathedral in Darwin.  I came, received a marvellous welcome, saw a bit and admired much of what I saw and then left to return home.

But God has not left us.  Christ, the Son of Mary has completed his earthly life and returned to the right hand of the Father as his only Son.  But before leaving He promised to send the Holy Spirit to remain with us always.

God's spirit, which we sometimes call "Providence", is at work everywhere in the world supporting and inspiring men and women of good will.  We do not claim that Christians have a monopoly of goodness and our personal observations and even a little knowledge of history shows that Christians can often be very ordinary and on occasion very evil.  But history also shows that gifts of the Spirit do produce wonderful fruits, when those gifts are accepted by Christians and put to work.  God is with us.  We should be glad and grateful.

Today we celebrate another confirmation ceremony, in this case for adults, one of more than one hundred such ceremonies for children and adults celebrated in Catholic churches in the archdiocese of Sydney.  Every candidate has to open his heart to the Spirit, to make the Spirit welcome.  No one is required to have a perfect or even deep understanding, but good will and an openness to God are essential for the Sacrament to work.  Confirmation is not magic, nor an empty ritual, but requires personal cooperation in faith from the recipient.  You are free to come or not to come; to cooperate or not cooperate.

The fruits of the Spirit are traditionally listed as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control; wonderful blessings.

But today I want to talk about a couple of the gifts of the Spirit, wisdom and understanding, which are necessary to recognize truth.

My Pentecost message this year is on truth and freedom under the heading "No Truth.  No Freedom".

We take truth for granted, until we realize we have been told lies, or that we have got it wrong, been mistaken.  We need truth like we need oxygen.

It seems to me therefore that as believing Catholics, who accept Jesus' teaching on faith and morals, we might usefully try to persuade others, especially our young people, of the truth of three propositions: a) There are truths; b) There are religious truths; c) There are moral truths.

When talking about truth to teenagers, I am inclined to ask them to leave considerations on sexuality out of the discussion temporarily, because self interest, especially in sexual matters, can derail considerations of truth.  It is more useful to talk about the rights and wrongs of marriage, family, life issues and sexuality, when we all accept that there are moral truths.

We know there are truths which are not our inventions.  The easiest examples are when the truths describe visible and material realities, like the Sydney Harbour Bridge or the recent Victorian bushfires or the financial crisis.  Other truths cannot be seen when they describe our pain, or numbers or possibilities for the future, but they are nonetheless true, describing different types of reality, not just the fanciful products of our imagination.

The second claim is that there are religious truths, religious claims which are either true or false.  In particular Christians claim that their central truths are not myths, i.e. traditional collective beliefs about fictitious persons or events.  We believe that the teachings of Jesus Christ lead us to the most important truths of faith and morals.  Neither God nor Jesus Christ are in the same category as Father Christmas, which is a lovely belief for children, but ...

God does not cease to exist because someone, or many, do not believe in Him.  Neither would the fact that everyone believed in Him bring God into existence.  If I foolishly believed in the existence of the man in the moon my enthusiasm does not make him real.

My final claim is that there are moral truths which we are obliged to recognize, something like the truths of hygiene.  For centuries people did not realize that open sewers spread disease and could not control infections in wounds.  Today we understand these medical matters better (and much more) so that life expectancy has increased spectacularly.

So too there are moral truths which need to be followed if we are to escape from the law of the jungle where "might is right" and live in decent societies.  Some examples are easy, some more difficult.

Arson is a good place to start.  Deliberately starting bushfires is wrong; difficult to understand why it occurs, but wrong by universal agreement.

In today's world-wide financial storm both public opinion and the courts condemn businessmen who inflated their profits, concealed their losses or deceived others into investing in scams, worthless schemes.  Society cannot work if we are surrounded by lies.  We all know this.

The Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Truth.  May we always strive to live within the truth and learn to love its light and love.

In the name of Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.