150th Anniversary
St. Peter & St. Paul's Church, Cork, Eire
Pontifical High Mass Extraordinary Rite
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
12 Jul 2009
In the second century "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" (Didache), which is one of the readings in the official Prayer of the Church for last week, we find these beautiful words: "As this broken Bread was scattered upon the mountains and was gathered together and made one, so let your Church be gathered from the end of the earth into your Kingdom: for the glory and power are yours through Jesus Christ for ever and ever."
I am honoured to begin the celebrations for 150 years of worship in your Church of St. Peter and St. Paul by celebrating this pontifical High Mass as a token gesture of gratitude from Australia, from the ends of the earth, especially from the Catholics in Australia for all the blessings the Irish brought to us Down Under. Undoubtedly the Catholic faith was the greatest of those blessings, but we thank God too for all the other human gifts you brought of family, hard work, a sense of justice, a love of freedom and a sense of humour, which is almost as important.
Tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of Irish men, women and children sailed from Cork Harbour for the New World of the Americas and Australia. Many of those departing for Australia did so unwillingly as guests of His Britannic Majesty and many were unfortunate and broken. Others left freely, driven out by lack of opportunity for their children and were scattered far beyond the mountains and across the oceans.
But most of them and their successors have done well, built happy and productive lives and in many cases they were strengthened and directed by their Catholic faith in Jesus Christ Our Lord to whom the glory and power belong, now as certainly as they did when the Didache was first written.
A sesquicentenary is certainly a time to say thanks to Almighty God for all His blessings, but it should not be reduced to an exercise in nostalgia, a basking in the accomplishments of times past. A sesquicentenary also looks forward confidently to the future and asks God's blessings on what we are doing today to meet our challenges and build constructively for the future.
Every age has its own difficulties and sometimes these are steeper than at other times. But storms pass and pressures lessen eventually and, if we have remained true to our Catholic fundamentals of Christian faith, hope and love expressed in service, then there will be leaders and believers to grasp the new opportunities and strengthen again the Faith of our Fathers. And of course you should not forget that the level of religious practice here in Ireland is still higher than in any other part of the English-speaking world, with the possible exception of Malta.
I was born in South East Australia in a city called Ballarat, famous for its gold in the second half of the nineteenth century and not far from Melbourne, which was led for 46 years by one of Cork's most famous sons, Archbishop Daniel Mannix. The first ten years of my life were in the home which once belonged to my maternal grandparents, where a large portrait of Mannix hung on the wall. One of my aunts was Patricia Mannix Burke.
Mannix's tombstone describes him as "a father to his people". The faith strengthened in his time and it was under his leadership that Catholics in Australia claimed their place in the sun and became an important part of the mainstream of Australian life through the self confidence he inspired and the education he offered and supported. A first cousin of his, also from Cork, Bishop Foley, was bishop of my own diocese of Ballarat in the 1930s.
In this parish we owe an enormous debt to Archdeacon John James Murphy, who built this beautiful Church and to Edward Welby Pugin the architect.
The portrait of the Archdeacon in the Mass booklet portrays a formidable individual with an unusual personal biography, especially for a nineteenth century priest.
He exemplifies the powerful effects of a conversion, a change of direction as he approached midlife. At the age of fourteen he was a midshipman on the Charles Grant for the British East India Company, returning home to leave again for Canada to work with the Hudson Bay Company, living for years with a Native American tribe and known as the "Black Eagle of the North". He was only ordained a priest at the age of 42 after a conversion experience in Rome.
We thank God for this turn of events, for his work here with the poor especially during the Famine years and we thank him for this Church.
As the parish priest explained this truly is a house of God and a gateway to heaven. Every Church should lift our minds to heaven, remind us of the Transcendent and lead us to the Mystery of the one true God. All church buildings should also remind us of the Heavenly Jerusalem and the symbols, decorations and overall plan of Neo-Gothic churches do achieve this.
The centre aisle recalls the glorified streets of heaven mentioned in the Book of Revelation leading to the altar, the banquet table for the heavenly wedding feast of the Lamb of God, a foretaste of heaven made possible by Christ's unique sacrifice on the cross, which becomes present again every time Mass is celebrated.
The beautiful columns which hold up the building with their decorated capitals, the pillars of this Church, also remind us of all those hardworking people, the living stones, who keep a church community faithful to its vocation of service. They also echo the bronze columns believed to have been in the temple at Jerusalem built by Solomon one thousand years before Christ.
The tabernacle on the old High altar contains the Blessed Sacrament, the abiding presence of Christ in the consecrated hosts, whose adoration is one of the characteristics and strengths of this parish today. Such a tabernacle is a development from and the culmination of the Ark of the Covenant in Solomon's Temple, where God's glory resided among the Jewish people.
The many statues of the saints which gaze down upon us in the central nave and in the sanctuary instruct us that the community of worship is the communion of saints, which embraces the past as well as the present and will continue into the future.
I believe that one item is missing as the foundation stone, a large block of limestone with names and date and blessed by Bishop Delaney, has been mislaid and cannot be found. I cannot help but wonder whether the stone was laid in the Italian style as happened in Rome last Monday for the new Australia House, the pilgrim centre we will open there in eighteen months time. A hole had been dug, which contained a layer of cement on which I placed the signed stone. Workmen then covered this stone with cement and filled the hole with soil to remain there in perpetuity, or, as I remarked, to remain lost for ever. Certainly your accounts speak of the foundation stone being lowered into place.
I should conclude on a more serious note because the gospel account from Mark about feeding of the multitude from the seven loaves and a few fish is a spectacular and miraculous anticipation of all the human works of service, which a genuine Catholic parish continues to offer.
Certainly in a Catholic Church the liturgy regularly reaches out to touch the Eternal as babies are baptised, couples are married, the people are nourished by the Eucharist and sins are forgiven.
But grace works through nature and we should not forget the everyday human help which this parish also continues to offer after 150 years – the sense of community, of common rejoicing in good times, of solidarity in distress, of the inner peace and reconciliation which are brought about by forgiveness, of the human structures forged by marriages and baptism, of the comforts given by visiting the sick and aiding the battlers, whether it be in famine times or when a pregnancy is unexpected. God's work is done in many ordinary and wonderful ways.
Let us thank God for the beauty of this Church and for all the miracles of grace and acts of kindness which have been brought about in its 150 years of history.
We also pray that God will continue to bless this parish community as it moves confidently and humbly into the future and continues to worship Christ Our Lord who is always coming to meet us.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
