Welcome to the Australian Catholic Youth Festival Adelaide Convention Centre

Welcome to the Australian Catholic Youth Festival
Adelaide Convention Centre, 3 December 2015

What an awesome opening this has been for our Australian Catholic Youth Festival! And you might say: surprising. After all, our theme – “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” – is just about the most unfashionable one you could pick for a contemporary youth festival! But it happens to be the theme Pope Francis picked for us this year, and for an old dude he's pretty switched on to young people. It happens also to be the ideal Archbishop Tim Costelloe, Maddie Kelly and Steve Angrisano unpacked for us so beautifully tonight. Most importantly, the line comes from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:1-12), and no-one in history has understood human beings as well as He did. Along with the pure-hearted he beatified the poor in spirit, the gentle, the grieving, the just, the merciful, the peacemakers and those persecuted for right – as we heard the young Novocastrians read and sing to us. So Jesus named eight be-attitudes, eight attitudes or ways of being, which together are the recipe for the good life, the happy life, the truly blessed life.

Jesus didn't just talk such Gospel talk, He lived it. He was humble, gentle and merciful with people, strong on justice, sorrowful at evil. And he knew what it was to be persecuted: the Prince of Peace paid the price of his life to bring us reconciliation. Yet He was happy. He didn't just go mountain climbing. He also loved to party, to party with His friends: fish barbecues with Pete and the lads by the lake, wedding receptions, intimate dinners with Mart, Mary and Lazzy, drinks with taxmen and other sinners, picnics with five thousand. Though He had lots on His mind – He was, after all, saving the world – He wasn't always serious. He loved to tease His disciples as He taught them. Jesus was a funny guy, a charming guy, an inspiring guy, and people loved being in His company. It's where they found their deepest happiness.

So do you want to be happy? If so, draw close to Christ and try his be-attitudes. The disciples were curious, interested in the unexpected things he taught like that you could be happy even while being poor or oppressed or pure, but eventually they fell in love not just with His words, His ideas, His memory, but with Him. They fell in love with the One who was Himself most “pure of heart“, undistracted, undefiled, focused on what most matters, on who most matters, loving God His Father with His whole heart and mind, and loving us as Himself. Encountering this blessed purity, the first disciples were blown out of their minds, out of their sins, out of their bad habits. They were converted. Not to being grave and judgmental – but to being truly happy. At last these young guys knew what their life was for!

That's the call of these days together. To join people just like you, in the struggle for holiness, blessedness, a whole eternity of happiness. The Australian Catholic Youth Festival we have now begun together is a graced time to spend with Christ and his friends, a time to make them our friends. Away from the distractions and stresses and everything that makes us impure, unfocussed, adulterated. A kind of fast. A kind of mountaintop retreat. For a few days you can be unabashedly yourself as a Catholic. You can sing wioth Steve “He's the be-e-est: J-E-S-U-S”. You can 'come out' as a Catholic, be public about it, and no one will laugh at you – though plenty might laugh with you. Encounter Jesus in His word and his world, in his great sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist, in the talks and the silences, the concerts and dialogues, in your bishops and youth leaders, in the displays and in each other. Let yourself fall more deeply in love with Jesus, 'the man of the beatitudes', so that you might become living beatitudes yourselves.

I don't know how often you get personal mail from the Pope. Mostly he writes to the bishops, priests, religious and lay faithful of the whole world all at once. But today he's written to you, personally, each one of you. He says he's praying for you, right now, gathered in this Festival. He prays this time together will make us all “Spirit-filled evangelisers who pray and work for the spread of the Gospel, the conversion of culture and the care of the poor and marginalised in society.” Now that's a mission for you! The encounter with Jesus turned his disciples into Spirit-filled evangelisers: it can do the same for you. I pray it will! I believe it will! God bless you my young friends, friends of Jesus Christ.

And so let us pray: Lord Jesus, we are gathered here in Adelaide for the Australian Catholic Youth Festival, and we know that we are here because you have drawn us. May our hearts be open to receive everything you have prepared for us. May our time together be filled with the joy that comes from the presence of the Spirit.

We pray, Lord Jesus, that during this Festival, we may encounter your great love and mercy and, in response, that we may fall ever more deeply in love with you. Then we will be your joyful witnesses of the Gospel, “working for the conversion of culture and the care of the poor and marginalised in society.” We ask this, Lord Jesus, in your most Holy Name. Amen.

The Lord be with you.
R/ And with your spirit.
May almighty God bless you, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.