Anzac Day Mass
(Domus Australia)
Most Rev. Julian Porteous, Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
16 Apr 2011
Anzac Day always falls in the Easter Season of the Church's year. It cannot be closer to Easter Sunday than this year. Our commemoration of Anzac Day is caught up in the Church's most important Octave - Easter Week. Liturgically the Church's mind and heart continues to contemplate the wondrous mystery that the Lord has truly risen as he said.
This focus on the Risen Christ is not inappropriate as we honour all those who served our nation in times of war and particularly those who paid the ultimate price of their lives. The Paschal mystery invites us into the most profound and difficult levels of human experience: suffering, pain, sacrifice and death. It invites us each year not to just remember suffering and death, but to contemplate the mystery of suffering and death as a means by which others may live.
Jesus Christ died not just as a result of cruel injustice, but he consciously entered this path as an offering of himself for the reconciliation of humanity with God his Father. At the Last Supper he stated simply - "a man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends". The sacrifice he accepted as his lot was not only substitutional but redemptive. We live because he died. As we declare at Mass - "Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life".
These themes are entirely appropriate as we Australians today commemorate Anzac Day.
Here in Domus Australia - the new pilgrim centre for Australians in Rome - at this first of what hopefully will be an annual event, we link ourselves with our nation and its remembrance of those who served and died for our freedom and wellbeing.
Here in Rome our thoughts can be focussed particularly on the Australians who served in the theatres of war in this part of the world. We naturally think of Gallipoli and the landings on this day in 1915, and we think of the campaigns that involved thousands of Australian troops in the Middle East and on the Western Front.
In the Second World War we think of Australian presence in North Africa, especially the "Rats of Tobruk". We think also of campaigns in Crete, Greece, Sicily and Italy. We remember Australians serving in the air defence of Britain.
Australians, many of whom had never been further than a few miles from where they lived, found themselves in extraordinarily exotic locations, in cultures and climates so far removed from Australia. They fought in wars that were not posing an immediate threat to their homeland. They fought for loyalty to England or for the ideals of freedom.
My grandfather - Manful Granger - was one such Australian volunteer. He enlisted in August 1915 at the age of 19 years and 8 months. He went to Egypt as part of the reinforcements for the 1st Battalion, which had returned from Gallipoli. He was posted to Fromelles in France but just before the disastrous assault in which 2,200 Australians lost their lives, he was posted to Poiziers.
His battalion saw action in places that are familiar names to Australians - Ypres, Hill 60, the Somme Valley. He was involved in attacks on Bayonet and Hilt trenches and the village of Gueudecourt. He was involved in two costly battles at Bullecourt, north east of Amiens, in which there were 3,300 casualties out of 5,000 men in the first battle, and 10,000 Australian casualties in the second. Finally his battalion took part in the offences at Villiers Bretonneux which marked the beginning of Allied victory and the end of the war.
Manful Granger was repatriated in January 1919 and returning to Australia he finished his apprenticeship as a compositor. His is one story among thousands.
Now dotted across Europe and in Turkey and in North Africa are the Commonwealth war graves where Australians are buried. At Villers Bretonneux there is a memorial to those Australians who died on the Western Front in World War I - 10,773 names are inscribed.
The most important Christian symbol is the cross. Our faith is centred on sacrificial death. It is not a preoccupation with death itself as rather an awareness of the sacrifice that the Son of God was willing to make for the salvation of humanity.
For Christians the greatest celebration each year is the Resurrection of Christ. Death was not the end, but the passage to new and glorious life. Today we remember those who sacrificed their lives in the service of our country. Their deaths were not in vain. We today gratefully acknowledge that the freedom we enjoy is because they were willing to offer their lives for the good of our country.
Today at this Mass we not only look back in history but we also remember and pray for the 3,300 Australian Defences Force personnel who are serving in 12 operations including Afganistan, Iraq, East Timor and the Solomons. We pray that the Lord will protect them and return them safely to their families and country.
