HOMILY FOR VOTIVE MASS OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST SYDNEY CATHOLIC YOUTH “PURPOSE” FEST 2025
ROSEBANK COLLEGE, 2 JULY 2025
The Guardian recently ran an article on ‘aura farming’—curating the coolest, most confident or most mysterious version of yourself.[1] Popularised by video games, TikTok and Twitch, aura farmers rack up imaginary ‘aura points’ by striking sharp-angled poses, wearing arresting gear (like a Dominican habit), doing nonchalant things like riding their bike to school with their hands in their pockets, or posting obscure quotes from the likes of St Thomas Aquinas—so that whether people are admiring or cringing, they are paying attention!
If aura farming had been a thing in first-century Judea, some might have accused Jesus of it. After all, He did some rather unconventional things that drew plenty of attention. He mixed with the punk crowd of His day: tax-collectors, harlots, lepers, samaritans, or other off-limits characters. His cool mate Johnny B was a hippy. Jesus did other strange stuff like cancelling demons, surfing without a board or even an inflatable, multiplying fish burgers, or messing with the weather—all of which struck His critics as plain attention-seeking behaviour. He posted things no-one else would dare, like “My Torah is better than Moses’ Torah” or “I’ve got precedence over Abraham” or “The Father and I are One and the same”. Jesus had aura!
Yet in our Gospel today (Jn 6:51-58), Jesus says some things that left many people unimpressed, confused, even writing Him off: “I’m bread, living bread, heavenly bread,” He says. “The bread and wine I will give will be my flesh and blood. Eat this flesh, drink this blood, and you’ll live forever.”
No wonder the critics reacted as they did. Jesus was known for saying some unusual things, hard things, even revolutionary things. But “eat my flesh and drink my blood”: that sounds like cannibalism and no Jew would go there. Uncool, Jesus, nuts, no aura points for you!
Yet instead of striking a more fashionable pose, curating His message so it’s more marketable, He turns up the volume. “Not only can you consume my flesh and blood, you must! If you don’t, you’ll be a zombie. You might still walk around for a while, but you’ll be dead inside. But receive me in Holy Communion, and you’ll really live—you’ll live for ever!”
Even today, many find Jesus’ words about the Eucharist shocking. Some seek to tone them down by reading it all as ‘Jesus code’—symbolic, poetic, unreal. He can’t possibly expect us to take Him literally on this, they say. But as Jesus dug in on this, so has His Church ever since. We believe and teach and do what He did. The Eucharist is not just about Jesus, it is Jesus: His body and soul, His flesh and blood, His humanity and divinity, His everything. But why would Jesus want to give us all this and why would we want to receive it?
The American fantasy drama Highway to Heaven ran to five seasons in the ’80s and is now being streamed. It takes viewers on an emotional journey of self-discovery, faith and compassion. It was created by Michael Landon (of Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie fame), and he stars as Jonathan Smith, an angel on P-plates, sent to earth to help some needy people. His co-star Victor French (also from Prairie) plays an embittered ex-cop, Mark Gordon, who with the apparent approval of ‘The Boss’ (a.k.a. God) joins Jonathan on his assignments and is gradually reformed along the way. Mark is actually Jonathan’s big project, by which he will eventually graduate to a fully-fledged angel.
Recently Pope Leo announced that the first ‘millennial’ saint, Carlo Acutis, will be canonised on 7th September. Behind the façade of an ordinary kid who loved soccer, pizza, pets and video games, there was something less common: a deep faith and extraordinary devotion to the eucharistic Lord.
At his First Holy Communion, aged seven, Carlo told his Mum he wanted “to be united to Jesus always”.[2] He attended Mass most days, so he could receive Christ as often as possible. He created a website cataloguing 130 well-documented Eucharistic miracles. Where the prophet Isaiah spoke of “a highway to holiness” (Isa 35:8), and John the Baptist of “a highway for the Lord” (Mt 3:3), where Jesus spoke of Himself as the Way (Jn 14:6), Carlo promoted the Eucharist as a “highway to heaven”.[3]
No Hollywood make-believe, this highway, no striking a pose for aura-farming purposes: it is real and unaffected, and Carlo was as certain of it as he was of his own existence. By the time leukaemia took him at age 15, he was well along that road to God, as his forthcoming canonisation confirms.
Jesus made Himself our highway to heaven by becoming one of us in the Incarnation. Angels come and go along that passage (Jn 1:51; Mt 16:7; Lk 16:22). But for mere mortals like us, it can seem impossible. That we might join Him on that road, Jesus shares His very substance with us, to conform us more and more to Himself, making us more divine so that heaven is our homeland too (Ps 8:5; Jn 15:5; Eph 3:19; 1Jn 3:2; CCC 460). Far from being about some weird cannibal sacrifice, the Mass is about family, union, communion, about living per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso, through Him, with Him, and in Him.
Shortly we will re-live the mystery Jesus preached that day in Galilee, the sacrament He instituted on ‘the night before He suffered’ in Jerusalem, the Passover He said He earnestly desired to eat with us (Mk 14:22-26; Lk 22:15; Jn 6:51-58). He will fulfil the Mosaic promise of “giving them bread from heaven” (Dt 8:2-3, 14-16) and His own promise of “the bread of life”. Not just temporary physical nourishment in the wilderness, but a way out of the wilderness to lasting spiritual nourishment. As Pope Leo recently explained, it is precisely for this that we are all hungry, only by this that we will ever be satisfied, to enable this that Jesus “delivers Himself into our hands”.[4] The Eucharist is our first taste of that heaven that is just down the road, across the bridge of the cross, accessible here and now and not just in some distant future.
And so, my young friends, get into the Carlo Acutis’ habit of celebrating with the Eucharistic Jesus, adoring the Eucharistic Jesus, receiving the Eucharistic Jesus regularly into yourself, so that you are heaven-ready. I pray that you will all have more years to get ready than Carlo had. But whether your life is long or short, it is only the appetiser: the real feast will be in heaven. Partying with Jesus now just gets you ready for that. Rather than narcissistic aura farming, it’s holy “grace-farming”, so that through Him, with him, and in Him you will live forever!
[1] Bertin Huynh, Luca Ittimani and Alyx Gorman, ‘Explain it to me quickly: What is aura farming, and is it cool or cringe?’ The Guardian 6 June 2025.
[2] ‘Who was Carlo Acutis?’ CatholicWitness.org 15 October 2020; Julia Gomez, ‘God’s influencer: Carlo Acutis named first millennial saint following 2006 death’, USA Today 1 July 2024.
[3] Jennifer Terranova, ‘The Eucharist: “Highway to Heaven” by Carlo Acutis’, Omnes Magazine, 21 July 2023.
[4] Pope Leo XIV, Homily on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, 22 June 20225; https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/homilies/2025/documents/20250622-omelia-corpus-domini.html#:~:text=By%20offering%20himself%20completely%2C%20the,the%20grace%20of%20the%20Eucharist.
INTRODUCTION TO VOTIVE MASS OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST
SYDNEY CATHOLIC YOUTH “PURPOSE” FEST 2025, ROSEBANK COLLEGE, 2 JULY 2025
Welcome friends to today’s Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist. It’s a delight to be with you all at PurposeFest.
My thanks to Daniel Ang and the Sydney Centre for Evangelisation, to the team at Sydney Catholic Schools and your individual schools, and to Campbell Evans and the Sydney Catholic Youth team, for organising this year’s PurposeFest. My gratitude also to our hosts, Principal Iris Nastasi, and the staff and students of Rosebank College, for their gracious hospitality; and to your own schools for encouraging your engagement. PuposeFest is one of our rolling series of Purpose High events, camps and festivals. This one includes opportunities for Mass, Adoration and Confession, sacred music, praise and worship, for a virtual reality experience of soon-to-be-saint Carlo Acutis, for inflatables, stalls and more! We’ve also put on a so-called “bomb cyclone” to impress our American guest; when I was in his city of Washington DC recently, I was delayed for a day by tornadoes, so it’s good to be able to return the compliment!
Concelebrating with me today are: our American guest star, my brother Dominican Fr Gregory Pine OP and our local spiritual celebrity, Fr Greg Morgan.
Finally, let me welcome each one of you to the altar of God. Your participation in Purpose Fest is a witness, not only to your peers, but to your families, the wider Church and the community. Safely in your hands, I have great hope for the Church in Sydney in the future!
