HOMILY FOR MASS OF THURSDAY OF THE 1ST WEEK OF ADVENT + VISIT OF THE WORLD YOUTH DAY CROSS AND ICON

ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 4 DECEMBER 2025

The slang name for diamonds is ‘rocks’ as when someone remarks on ‘the size of the rock’ on someone’s finger. It’s an ironic name, given that rocks are cheap and ordinary, and that, strictly speaking, diamonds are not rocks at all: rocks are composites of several minerals while diamond is pure carbon. But it’s not a bad nickname. After all, we talk of things being “as hard as rock”, and diamonds are the hardest natural substance, capable of bearing immense weight and pressure. We use them for sparkle in jewelry but also for strength in drill tips. Either way, they endure, without cracking or crumbling, so that “diamonds are forever”.

Rocks feature in our readings as Jesus finishes His great Sermon on the Mount with a story (Mt 7:21-27). Two construction companies build houses using the same blueprint, materials, labour and look. But when a cyclone comes, the one built on rock stands firm, while the one lying on the sand collapses.

But Jesus wasn’t interested in granting council building certificates or advising architects and builders. His parable is an invitation and warning to us. “It’s not the one who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ who will enter the kingdom of Heaven,” He said, “but the one who actually does my Father‘s will.” (Mt 7:21) God isn’t fooled by our lip-service or flattery: He knows our hearts and sees our deeds, and we will be judged by whether we’ve based our lives on Christ. Building on rock is genuinely founding your life on Christ’s commands; building on sand is doing ‘faith’ on our own terms. The one is genuine discipleship, full-cream Catholicism; the other nominal Christianity, Christianity Lite.

But we are human beings, I hear you thinking, and we easily mistake sand for rock. How do I know the Catholic thing is the really solid stuff to base my life on? I see lots of truth and goodness and beauty in the Church, but also things I don’t understand, don’t agree with, even things that scandalise me. Will the Catholic thing be enough to sustain me when things get tough: when the winds of suffering and doubt come my way?

“Are you building your lives on firm foundations?” Pope Benedict asked, in company with this cross and icon, at the final Mass of World Youth Day 2008. “Are you making space for the Spirit in a world that wants to forget God?” Only Jesus is “our everlasting rock” (Isa 26: 1-6), the rock-solid basis of our existence and purpose, so that, as St Paul put it, we become “living stones of a temple built upon the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the keystone, holding the whole structure together” (Eph 2:19-22; cf. Acts 4:11-12; Rev ch. 21).

The World Youth Day icon is of Our Lady as protectress of youth and of Rome. It is an image of a mother and child lest, we forget that God really did become one of us and spent half of his life as a child and half as a young adult. We have the World Youth Day Cross, lest we forget all that that God-made-youth-did for us, in living and dying for us. That cross was planted on the solid rock of Golgotha (Mt 27:33 et par.), as a lightning rod where heaven and earth would meet. Yet it’s an empty cross, as Christ was taken down and buried in a stoney tomb (Mt 27:57-61 et par.). But cross and tomb could not contain Him; the crucified One rose as the sure foundation for our lives.

This cross is a reminder, my young friends, that Christian love is cruciform—pointing upwards to God and outwards to humanity. It stands as the place where God’s love and human sin collided—and love won out. And this makes it stronger than any diamond, and more glorious in its lustre.

The world offers you many other possible foundations for your life: ego and self will; pursuit of pleasure or power; maximisation of income and possessions; multiplication of apps and likes; focus group fashions and internet sensations; the cultures of relativism, polarisation and secularisation. But empires fall, ideologies fade, systems collapse. Only the Cross endures and the Christ who is so solid He can lend His followers a strength not their own, a peace that surpasses all understanding, a hope that cannot be shaken. Stick to Him and when the storms come your house will stand firm.

INTRODUCTION TO MASS OF THURSDAY OF THE 1ST WEEK OF ADVENT + VISIT OF THE WORLD YOUTH DAY CROSS AND ICON – ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 4 DECEMBER 2025

Welcome dear friends to St Mary’s Cathedral for this evening’s Mass with the World Youth Day Cross and Icon—gifted to the youth of the world by St John Paul II. They were last with us in 2008 when Sydney hosted World Youth Day and we welcome them back to the harbour city.

I salute concelebrating with me my auxiliary bishops and Fr Chris Ryan MGL who led the Journey of the Cross and Icon around Australia in 2007-08. I acknowledge directors, staff and volunteers from WYD08 and representatives of the parishes and school system who hosted the youth of Australia and of the world at that time.

A special welcome to the representatives of the Archdiocesse of Seoul and the Church of Korea, who will welcome us to their shores for the World Youth Day in 2027: thank you for sharing the journey of the cross and icon with us.

“Incredible, amazing, staggering, phenomenal, overwhelming”: that’s how a visiting bishop and his pilgrims described World Youth Day in Sydney in 2008. A quarter of a million registered pilgrims and many more unregistered ones filled the streets of Sydney with youthful faith and joy. An incredible team of directors, staff, volunteers and collaborators poured themselves out for God and His young people. The Catholic community, its pastors, parishes, schools and agencies, got behind it heart and soul. Our civic leaders, public servants, police, business and tourism operators, Aboriginal and community leaders, other churches and religions—all joined in this common project for the good of our country and our young people. It was the happiest and holiest week in the history of our city.

Millions took part in the journey of the WYD cross and icon around this land, led by Fr Chris, taking this symbol of God’s love into every corner of our lives and land. Some touched the cross; more importantly the cross touched them! 150,000 or so then participated in the Opening Mass at Barangaroo where Cardinal Pell preached a powerful call to faith. Thereafter the pilgrims attended daily catechesis at 235 locations around Sydney and took part in some 450 Youth Festival activities, such as concerts and exhibitions, forums and debates, drama and film, and centres of prayer, preaching and sacred music. Almost every hour of that week 2,500 of them passed through this Cathedral, through the Vocations Expo at Darling Harbour, through the Adoration and Reconciliation sites, and through the Shrine of Blessed Mary MacKillop in North Sydney.

Half a million lined the harbour and city streets for the Holy Father’s spectacular arrival at Barangaroo on the Thursday afternoon with the WYD cross standing in the bow of his boat. There he declared that no young person is an accident; their “very existence has been willed by God, blessed and given a purpose! Life is not just a succession of events or experiences but a search for the true, the good and the beautiful. It is to this end that we make our choices; it is for this that we exercise our freedom; it is in this that we find happiness and joy.”

The next day we were to witness the greatest story ever told in the Stations of the Cross enacted against the backdrop of Sydney’s iconic sites. Even our most cynical news media could not resist the images of young love nailed to a cross for the salvation of the world. To this day the Sydney stations are remembered by hundreds of thousands around the planet.

On the Saturday, while the Holy Father was articulating a vast vision of faith here in the Mother Church of Australia, tens of thousands took the pilgrim walk across the Harbour Bridge to Randwick. That night they heard testimonies from seven of their number, one from each continent, and from the Successor of Peter who challenged them: “Be watchful! Listen! Through the dissonance and division of our world, can you hear the concordant voice of humanity? From the forlorn child in a Darfur camp, or a troubled teenager or anxious parent in some suburb, or perhaps even now from the depth of your own heart, there emerges the same human cry for recognition, for belonging, for unity. Who satisfies that essential human yearning to be one, to be immersed in communion, to be built up, to be led to truth? The Holy Spirit!” So “let unifying love be your measure,” the Holy Father said. “Let abiding love be your challenge. Let self-giving love be your mission!”

At the Mass the next morning there were over 400,000 people, including 4,000 priests, 420 bishops, 26 cardinals and one very happy Pope. Looking on in awe through screens were the rest of our nation and another billion people around the world. Beside this cross and icon Pope Benedict declared: “Empowered by the Spirit, and drawing upon faith’s rich vision, a new generation of Christians is being called to help build a world in which God’s gift of life is welcomed, respected and cherished—not rejected, feared as a threat and destroyed. A new age in which love is not greedy or self-seeking, but pure, faithful and genuinely free… open to others, respectful of their dignity, seeking their good… radiating joy and beauty. A new age in which hope liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption which deaden our souls and poison our relationships.”

The legacies of World Youth Day 2008 are too many to list and many of them will be hidden from our eyes until we are in heaven. In this cathedral, there is the altar consecrated by Pope Benedict and the image of Our Lady of the Southern Cross he blessed. At UNDA there’s the medical library blessed by him. In Grose Vale, the Retreat Centre built in memory of him. There were staff that we captured, business relationships that we built, vocations that were nurtured. We got much better at youth ministry and formational activities. Act1v8, xt3, Theology on Tap, Youth Leaders Formation Courses and iWitness thrived. Aussie attendance at World Youth Days grew and a regular cycle of Australian Catholic Youth Festivals has been held, most recently in Melbourne. And there were many more fruits. Today we express our gratitude to God and His helpers in the presence of these two sacred signs. Many of those helpers from WYD-SYD are here tonight. We are reminded that we are all still pilgrims, drawn into the redeeming love told from Christ’s cross and the maternal care expressed in the icon of the Madonna. And so we consecrate the young people of our city and nation once more to their care, even as we repent of our sins…