17 March 2009 St Patrick's Day Mass

Homily of Archbishop Philip Wilson
St Patricks Day Mass, March 17, 2009
Gospel Reading – Luke 10: 1-12, 17-20
My brothers and sisters,
It goes without saying because it is so noticeable, that we live today in a time of great change,
change in the world and change in the life of the Church. And what happens in the times of
great change in the life of the Church, is often people become confused about what it is that we
need to cling to and what it is that we can leave behind. But one of the things that we need to
remember constantly in times of great change in the Church, is that we have to have every
confidence in Jesus Christ. He promised that he would be with us always and that he would
always guide us. The power of the Holy Spirit resides in the very centre of the Churches’ life,
it’s not dependent upon the people who occupy different positions in the life of the church, it
doesn’t depend on their genius or their brains or their abilities. It all depends on the fidelity of
the people of God to the instructions of Christ and to the power of the Holy
Spirit present in our midst.
The other thing that we need to remember is taught to us by history and that is that the
Church has always been in a time of great change. Nothing has ever remained the same and if
you look at the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland, you will see that’s very clear. Way,
way back at the very beginning after Patrick’s first missionary journey and the development
of life of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Ireland then became a place where people were so
captivated by Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit, that they set off to the other parts of
the world, some of which were unknown to them, in order to be able to renew the faith and to
carry the faith of Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit in the Sacraments in the word of God to
those people.
In the nineteenth century, the time of great change occurred because Ireland moved from a
point where the harsh and repressive laws that had inflicted their lives for so long, especially
in regard to the practice of their faith, were gradually removed from them and it was just a
short time ago, that the Catholic Church in Ireland was free and allowed them to live it’s life
and to follow it’s own destiny the way that the Lord wanted. That was accompanied by
another extraordinary flowering of this sense of vocation and missionary vocation, that was
reflected then in the way that so many Irish people who left Ireland for their survival, carried
their faith very deeply in their hearts and in their experience and were ultimately
accompanied by Irish clergy and religious who helped them to develop their faith and to
develop the way in which they experienced their faith in new lands, from one end of the earth
to the other. Even in far away South Australia, which is about as far away as you can get
from Ireland and here they came. So much of what we experience today, is a result of the
fidelity of those people, in the way that they live their lives.
In Britain there is a very important Catholic paper called ‘The Tablet’, which is a weekly, and
it contains all sorts of news and wonderful stories about our faith and lots of articles that
people argue about a lot, but two weeks ago in The Tablet, there was something very
interesting and I’m not sure that many people would have noticed. Inside the back page, on
the back cover was an advertisement signed by the Archbishop of Dublin, Archbishop Martin.
In the advertisement, Archbishop Martin was looking to recruit lay people to work in the
parishes of the Diocese of Dublin, to take their rightful place as a result of their baptismal
consecration in the work and the pastoral life of the Church. This is a dramatic change, but it
is the very change that we face all over the world in the Catholic Church, because one of the

great manifestations of the power of the Holy Spirit in our midst, has been the way in which
in the last 100years, we have come to realise that Baptism is at the centre of our lives and
whatever the importance of vocation to priesthood and religious life, for everybody no matter
who they may be, the Pope and everybody else. The most important moment of their life in
their relationship with the Lord is the moment of their Baptism and that is then the root of the
dynamic that is meant to energise them to be the witnesses to the Lord.
So we stand on the threshold of a change, where everybody in the Church is asked to recognise
the tremendous gifts that they have been given by the Lord at the moment of their Baptism
and to make the manifestation of those gifts by their life of faith and of charity, to be the
centrepiece of their lives. This is the way that Jesus wants the Church to be renewed in our
modern times. This is why we experience the changes that we do in the life of the Church.
Jesus’ plan, is that we won’t lose anything of what is so precious to us, the word of God, the
celebration of the Mass, the celebration of the Sacraments, the prayers and the life of prayer
that characterises our community. None of that is to be lost, but we are to be energised by the
power of the Holy Spirit as we discover what it means to say, that at the moment of our
Baptism, we enter the royal priesthood of Christ, the first priesthood of the Church, which is
the consecration of all to be missionaries and witnesses to the Lord in the way that they live
their lives.
So what is the big challenge that faces you and me as we live today? It is to recognise that our
first task, as the disciples of the Lord, is to witness to the Lord in the ordinary structures of
our daily life, to witness to our faith, with the way that we love Christ and the way that we
are faithful to Christ, to witness to our faith, by the way that we love God and love our
neighbour. It just so happens, that that is the great need that the world has today. The great
need that the world has today, is for people who belong to Christ, to witness to the love that
God has planted in their heart and to manifest that by the way that they live their lives,
because the rush of the modern world that we live in and the modern secular society, is to
alienate people, separate them from one another, to introduce a notion within human
relationships of competition, to let people think that maybe by following the tenets of greed
that they will be able to live their lives happily, because they have everything and as people
soon come to realise, what they end up with is an empty box, because our box is meant to be
filled with the presence of God and the power of Jesus Christ.
We can talk about this eloquently and have many philosophical arguments about it and that is
all the imagery for the scriptures and that will have no affect in the lives of the people who
surround us, because today as Pope Paul VI said in the 1970’s, “people need witnesses more
than preachers and if preachers don’t witness, then their word is always going to be
ineffective”. The world begs for the Church today to witness to the Lord by the way that
everyone in the Church lives out their life in love and in peace. I have no doubt in the midst of
faraway time, when St Patrick came to Ireland to preach the faith that it was this dynamic
that was operating in his life too. They were different times and they were tough people, but
they were equal to the task that the Lord gave them to share this civilisation of love that we
have as a result of the gifts that Christ has given us.
So the feast day of St Patrick every year is a wonderful occasion for us, to reflect on the
heritage that has been given to us, but to reflect as well on the challenge which it presents to
us today. Sure, these are times of change and we don’t have all the answers, but these are
times when we can be sure that just as at the time of St Patrick that Christ is with us and that
the power of the Holy Spirit is guiding us.