Speeches 1986 - Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Sports Centre
Dear Young People of Australia,
1. I am grateful for your welcome and I am very pleased to be here with you this evening. As we come together, we know that the Lord Jesus is with us.
In your song you have raised your voices and your hearts to him, telling him: "We are gathering to celebrate your word, O Lord". Indeed, you have come together here to celebrate his word – his word of peace. This evening, through his Gospel, Jesus has revealed himself to you. Like the disciples you rejoice in his presence; you rejoice when you hear him saying: "Peace be with you".
It is the peace of his Resurrection that Jesus Christ communicates to you and brings into our lives. It is the peace of victory – the victory over sin. It is the peace of reassurance – the reassurance of eternal life. It is the peace of faith in Jesus, the peace that comes from accepting him as the Word of life, as the eternal Son of God who in the mystery of the Incarnation, by becoming the Son of Mary, became the brother of us all. It is the peace of humanity renewed and made strong by contact and communion with the living Jesus – the Jesus who is "the firstborn from the dead"; the Jesus who continues to live in his Church; the Jesus who wishes to unleash in the world the power of his peace, and who wishes to do so through you young people.
And so Jesus repeats to you tonight those everlasting words: "Peace be with you". With all the love of his heart, Jesus wants his peace to become your peace. At the same time he continues to speak to you as he spoke to his Apostles: "As the Father sent me, so am I sending you".
2. Tonight, in fact, you are being sent by Jesus into the world as peacemakers; you are being commissioned to communicate his peace and its power everywhere you go.
But this means that you yourselves must be filled with this peace of Jesus; you must receive it into your hearts. You must seek it at its source, which is the person of Jesus. And because your commission, your calling and your task are not static but dynamic, you must search for this peace continually. You must embrace it in the word of Jesus, which is the revelation of God.
Yes, dear young people, you must be totally convinced that in order to have that full and perfect peace which Christ offers, you must find it in Christ. For this reason the Church says to you today:
– If you want peace, open your hearts to Christ.
– If you want peace, accept Christ; accept him as the Son of God; accept him also in the mystery of his humanity; accept him in others.
Embrace Christ in everyone who shares with you the dignity of human nature. Reach out to him and discover him in the poor and lonely, the sick and troubled, the disabled, the aged, the unwanted, all those who are waiting for you smile, who need your help, and who crave your understanding, your compassion and your love. And when you have acknowledged and embraced Jesus in all those people, then – and only then – will you share deeply in the peace of his Sacred Heart.
The more you discover the fascination of the peace of Christ, and try to pursue it with the help of God and through the discipline and effort it requires, the better you will be able to be apostles to other young people in Australia and beyond. Your effectiveness as peacemakers will be in direct proportion to the degree in which you accept Christ’s peace into your own hearts.
3. Peace has its human dimensions and human demands. What does this mean in practice? How can peace become the reality of our lives, the reality of our world? I have spoken many times of the practical dimensions of peace, of what we must do to preserve and develop God’s gift of peace – the peace that Jesus is so willing to share with us. It has often been repeated:
– If you want peace, work for justice.
– If you want peace, defend life.
– If you want peace, proclaim truth.
– If you want peace, " always treat others as you would like them to treat you".
In a word:
– If you want peace, you must love: "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength... You must love your neighbour as yourself ".
All this involves personal effort and discipline. It involves accepting ourselves and others as creatures of God, as children of God, as human beings dependent for our happiness on God’s law, which is his plan for our lives.
4. In unity among yourselves you will find strength, and in unity you will reach peace – the peace of Christ.
This unity is a reality here tonight – a great reality. It is unity in diversity. And this diversity is authentically Australian; it is authentically Catholic. You represent many different groups with different specific aims, but you are one in the name of Jesus, one in the peace of Jesus. You are one in the ideal of Christian service, one in pursuing justice, one in proclaiming the truth of the equal human dignity of all human beings.
You have come from different ethnic groups, and the very fact that you have gathered here shows that you intend to reject all forms of prejudice and discrimination based on race, origin, colour, culture, sex or religion. You are open – and open you must be – to the great cultural diversity which enhances your unity as Australians and manifests your Catholicity.
Your membership in varied Church groups and movements also shows that you have grasped the important principle of diversity as applied to the one apostolate of the Church. Within the sacred unity of the Church, there are many different ways of serving the Lord. There is "one and the same Spirit who distributes different gifts to different people, just as he chooses", one Spirit who inspires all to work in unison for the one aim of building up the Body of Christ and of spreading his peace.
5. Dear young people: you are not alone! Through the groups to which you belong and with the help of friends, you must continue to weave the great fabric of Christian unity, collaborating with other Christian brothers and sisters, and being open in brotherhood and love also to all men and women of good will.
No, young people of Australia, like Jesus you will never be alone! Speaking about his Father, Jesus declared: "He who sent me is with me, and has not left me to myself". And he wants you to find his companionship and the companionship of his Father and the Holy Spirit in the Church. And this is precisely what you are doing.
Only in shared companionship with the Lord will you be able to communicate peace to the world.
Realize too that the parish, despite all its human limitations, is, after your family, your base in the pursuit and spread of peace. Your journey will often take you elsewhere, but the parish is meant to be, as I said on another occasion: "a fraternal and welcoming family home, where those who have been baptized and confirmed are aware of forming the People of God. In that home, the bread of good doctrine and the Eucharistic Bread are broken for them in abundance, in the setting of one act of worship".
6. As young people following the example of Christ and trying to live up to the vocation of being peacemakers, you are faced with great challenges every day of your lives. These challenges are part of ordinary living: at home, at school, at work, in Church, in the many and varied activities that make up your lives; in health and sickness; in good times and bad, when problems weigh you down; at moments of anxiety, concern and hope.
At every turn of your life, you are asked to overcome any tendency to selfishness, to reach out to others with open hearts and open minds, in dialogue, not rivalry, with sincere respect and love of every brother and sister. This openness to others in understanding patience, compassion, and in the desire to help promote their good, is an expression of fraternal love. It is a fine example of peacemaking.
At the same time openness to others does not mean that every opinion has equal value: no matter how strong it is, sincerity of conviction cannot turn injustice into justice or falsehood in to truth. The truth is not always the easiest or the most comfortable way. The truth is not always the same as the majority opinion, especially if that opinion has been artificially induced by powerful and clever forces of manipulation. But the truth will always be the way to real freedom. Jesus himself tells us: "You will know the truth and the truth will make you free". Both truth and freedom, dear young people, together with justice and love, are the basis of your peace – the peace of Christ received into your hearts and into the world.
7. There is yet another thought that I would like to leave with you. I would like to speak to you about the importance of prayer, because prayer is so closely linked to peace, and peace depends so much on prayer. Permit me to repeat to you what I told the young people of England and Wales a few years ago: "In prayer, united with Jesus – your brother, your friend, your Saviour, your God – you begin to breathe a new atmosphere. You form new goals and new ideals... In Jesus, whom you get to know in prayer, your dreams for justice and your dreams for peace become more definite and look for practical applications... Through contact with Jesus in prayer, you gain a sense of mission that nothing can dull... In union with Jesus in prayer, you will discover more fully the needs of your brothers and sisters. You will appreciate more keenly the pain and suffering that burden the hearts of countless people. Through prayer, especially to Jesus at Communion, you will understand so many things about the world and its relationship to him, and you will be in a position to read accurately what are referred to as the ‘signs of the times’. Above all you will have something to offer those who come to you in need. Through prayer you will possess Christ and be able to communicate him to others. And this is the greatest contribution you can make in your lives: to communicate Christ to the world".
And as you communicate Christ to the world, you will communicate the gift of his peace. A dynamic event is taking place in your own lives. Christ is continually speaking these words to you: "Peace be with you!". And he sends you out on mission as he sent the Apostles: "As the Father sent me, so am I sending you".
8. Dear young people: the Risen Christ is offering his peace to the whole world, and he wants to make you his instruments of peace. You are called to combat chaos and confusion with order – the order of your own lives directed to God and in proper relationship to your fellow human beings. Yours is the task of preserving the beauty of nature and the dignity of all God’s creation, so that it may all serve humanity and glorify the Creator in accordance with his plan.
The triumph of justice in the world depends so much on you, and it means that the destruction of injustice must begin with the purification of your own hearts.
You are called to confront the errors of the world and every vestige of deceit with the power of truth. For all of us Christians, like Saint Paul, it is a question of living the truth in love and of growing up to the maturity of Christ.
In the face of rivalry you must offer to the world the image of respectful dialogue. Your answer to insult and injury is pardon. The only acceptable position in the face of alienation is to promote reconciliation and to offer fraternal solidarity. Yours is the gigantic task of overcoming all evil with good, always trying amidst the problems of life to place your trust in God, knowing that his grace supplies strength to human weakness. You must oppose every form of hatred with the invincible power of Christ’s love.
This is what it means to be young peacemakers, to help build peace, the Kingdom of Christ’s peace. This is what you are called to do, and in this mission of yours you will be sustained by the intercession of Mary the Mother of God, and by all the angels and saints. But to be effective, you must accept this mission and its conditions freely, and you must personally say yes to Christ in prayer. With Christ you must all stand together.
Dear young people of Australia: with Christ and each other, you are not alone!
1. Earlier this year, I had the pleasure and privilege of visiting the Synagogue in Rome and of speaking with the Rabbis and the assembled congregation. At that time I gave "thanks and praise to the Lord who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth and who chose Abraham in order to make him the father of a multitude of children, as numerous ‘as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the sea shore’". I gave thanks and praise to him because it had been his good pleasure, in the mystery of his providence, that the meeting was taking place. Today, I praise and thank him again because he has brought me, in this great Southern land, into the company of another group of Abraham’s descendants, a group which is representative of many Jewish people in Australia. May he bless you and make you strong for his service!
2. It is my understanding that, although the experience of Jews in Australia - an experience going right back to the beginning of white settlement in 1788 - has not been without its measure of sorrow, prejudice and discrimination, it has included more civil and religious freedom than was to be found in many of the countries of the Old World. At the same time, this is still the century of the Shoah, the inhuman and ruthless attempt to exterminate European Jewry; and I know that Australia has given asylum and a new home to thousands of refugees and survivors from that ghastly series of events. To them in particular I say, as I said to your brothers and sisters, the Jews of Rome, "the Church, in the words of the well known Declaration Nostra Aetate, ‘deplores the hatred, persecutions, and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and by anyone’ ".
3. My hope for this meeting is that it will help to consolidate and extend the improved relations you already have with members of the Catholic community in this country. I know that there are men and women throughout Australia, Jews and Catholics alike, who are working, as I stated at the Synagogue in Rome, "to overcome old prejudices and to secure ever wider and fuller recognition of that ‘bond’ and that ‘common spiritual patrimony’ that exists between Jews and Christians". I give thanks to God for this.
4. Where Catholics are concerned, it will continue to be an explicit and very important part of my mission to repeat and emphasize that our attitude to the Jewish religion should be one of the greatest respect, since the Catholic faith is rooted in the eternal truths contained in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in the irrevocable covenant made with Abraham. We, too, gratefully hold these same truths of our Jewish heritage, and look upon you as our brothers and sisters in the Lord.
For the Jewish people themselves, Catholics should have not only respect but also great fraternal love; for it is the teaching of both the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures that the Jews are beloved of God who has called them with an irrevocable calling. No valid theological justification could ever be found for acts of discrimination or persecution against Jews. In fact, such acts must be held to be sinful.
5. In order to be frank and sincere we must recognize the fact that there are still obvious differences between us, in religious belief and practice. The most fundamental difference is in our respective views on the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. Nothing however prevents us from true and fraternal cooperation in many worthy enterprises, such as biblical studies and numerous works of justice and charity. Such combined undertakings can bring us ever closer together in friendship and trust.
Through the Law and the Prophets, we, like you, have been taught to put a high value on human life and on fundamental and inalienable human rights. Today, human life, which should be held sacred from the moment of conception, is being threatened in many different ways. Violations of human rights are widespread. This makes it all the more important for all people of good will to stand together to defend life, to defend the freedom of religious belief and practice, and to defend all other fundamental human freedoms.
6. Finally, I am sure we agree that, in a secularized society, there are many widely held values which we cannot accept. In particular, consumerism and materialism are often presented, especially to the young, as the answers to human problems. I express my admiration for the many sacrifices you have made to operate religious schools for your children, in order to help them evaluate the world around them from the perspective of faith in God. As you know, Australian Catholics have done the same. In secularized society, such institutions are always likely to be attacked for one reason or another. Since Catholics and Jews value them for the same reasons, let us work together whenever possible in order to protect and promote the religious instruction of our children. In this way we can bear common witness to the Lord of all.
7. Mr President and Members of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, I thank you once again for this meeting, and I give praise and thanks to the Lord in the words of the Psalmist:
"Praise the Lord, all nations! Extol him, all peoples! For great is his steadfast love towards us; and the faithfulness of the Lord endures for ever. Praise the Lord!".
Sir Herman, Chancellor of this University,
Distinguished Professors and Representatives of all Australian Institutions of Higher Learning,
Dear Students and Friends,
1. It is a great pleasure for me to be with you today, and it is with great respect and esteem that I address you.
I would like on this occasion to honour this University of Sydney and the other Universities throughout this land, which are so much a part of the cultural history of Australia.
I would like to honour all these institutions of higher learning precisely in the role they play in relation to the truth at the service of man.
I wish to honour those who staff: and attend these institutions – all of you who devote yourselves to the work of the mind, to reflection and to teaching. You recognize and bear witness to the human need “to know” in order “to be” – to be a fully acting person. You recognize the need to use knowledge and the need to transmit it. By dedicating yourselves to human learning, you declare your willingness to stand face to face with truth – the truth about man as he relates to the whole world, to all creation. In so doing, you proclaim to the world the Author of creation. Indeed the whole of academe is of its nature an acknowledgement of the relationship existing between man – the only earthly being with intelligence – and the Author of truth.
To seek and teach the truth effectively is indeed a great mission. To accomplish it. it is necessary to look beyond one’s own powers to the Spirit of truth. This, dear friends, is your exhilarating task in this great land of yours, which is not only yours but which is the Southern Land of the Holy Spirit.
2. At the centre of all scholarly investigation, research and study is the mystery of man – man as the image and likeness of God. And thus at the centre of all learning, with man, there is God.
The role of the scholar, the thinker, the researcher, the student, is the eminently human role of man looking up to the Author of truth in the expression of his own incompleteness, and in the recognition of a need that he cannot fill by himself. This attitude of the human person in the quest for truth is already an act of praise of the Author of truth, who alone can fully satisfy the human intellect.
All the institutions that you represent today exist in the context of this vocation to truth: to pursue truth, to seek it out – precisely because it is the truth – in order to embrace it. and to live according to it. This task, this pursuit of truth, which is arduous in itself, is formidable likewise in its scope. What is sought is the vast truth about man, which includes the individual person – always however "defined first of all by his responsibility towards his brothers and sisters and towards history" – and all society. The truth of man is discovered together with the truth about the world in which man lives. What is also sought is the truth about God which explains the truth of man. The scholar is called not only to discover this truth but to reflect on it. to reflect on its countless differing expressions. All these differing expressions do not capture the full beauty of this truth about man, and much less the full incomparable beauty of the truth about God.
3. To pursue truth is also to reflect on the great moral and scientific questions of life. For all of you, dear friends, it is also a means of reflecting on the issues of truth within the context of Australia and of her needs and challenges.
As scholars and students your task is far more than a theoretical one. You are called to place the great patrimony of truth at the service of man. Truth itself becomes the service of love and unity. In the acceptance of the truth there open up possibilities of love. Saint Peter tells us: "By obedience to the truth you have purified yourselves for a genuine love of your brethren".
The role of scholars also includes bearing witness to the standards of truth, helping others to live by the truth when it is discovered.
The pursuit of truth involves a great dignity and responsibility on many counts. The scholar helps to transmit knowledge of humanity gained by exacting, rewarding and at times frustrating research. He teaches and transmits the truth, and in so doing helps to strengthen the values of society.
In order to help link truth effectively to human conduct, your scholarship and studies must contribute to the building up of a society that defends human rights; a society that protects its weaker members, especially the elderly, the handicapped and the unborn; a society that encourages the family, recognizes the rightful dignity of marriage, and honours its children; a society that sees its responsibilities to justice in terms also of international human solidarity far beyond its own boundaries. In other words the scholar must contribute by his knowledge, beyond the walls of his institution, to the building up of a more humane society. This is indeed the purpose of all human activity. Each discipline has of course its autonomy, but all disciplines converge towards the good of man in accordance with the truth of his nature.
4. Access to institutions of higher learning is a privilege, and it is one that you have received and from which you are benefitting. It is increasingly available to members of this generation. Such was not always the case by reason of circumstances and discrimination.
The first Catholic bishop of Australia, Archbishop Polding, in a Pastoral Letter in 1857, alluded to the times when Catholics were denied access to centres of higher learning: "For many unhappy years in the past", he wrote, "... our intellectual culture was from well known causes, difficult and precarious. But now we are invited to a free career in acknowledged equality". This privilege of access to institutions of higher learning is indeed a great one and all people must protect it.
At the same time, the institutions themselves must recognize the right to freedom of study, enquiry and research, so that truth may be attained. Truth requires from us absolute acceptance. In the presence of truth, man is fulfilled because he is a being made to know. And in the presence of the Supreme and Eternal Truth man is totally fulfilled.
The Catholic Church in Australia has long since indicated her esteem for education and for tertiary education in particular. She has made sacrifices to establish schools and to establish links with this University of Sydney. The founding of Saint John’s College in 1857 bears witness to this esteem for the University. More recently the establishment of an Australian Ecclesiastical Faculty of Theology – the Catholic Institute of Sydney – bears further witness to how the Church feels at home in the university world.
5. It is precisely because of the relationship of universities to truth that the Catholic Church has aligned herself with them from the beginning. The history of their birth is intimately connected with her own life. She recalls with pride the names of so many universities – outstanding examples of intellectual endeavour and human progress – that are her offspring: Paris, Bologna, Padua, Prague, Alcala, Salamanca, Krakow, Oxford and Cambridge.
Not only did the Church consider it her duty to establish centres of learning, but she has not ceased working to maintain them. This has occurred in the face of formidable obstacles and sometimes in the face of hostile regimes.
Throughout the centuries the universities have in fact been for society centres of knowledge, research and truth. The role of the university has been not only to discover truth, but to place it at the service of society and to elicit collaboration in research for further truth. This role is part of the very structure of the institution. In another place I mentioned: "No university can deserve the rightful esteem of the world of learning unless it applies the highest standards of scientific research, constantly updating its methods and working instruments, and unless its excels in seriousness, and therefore, in freedom of investigation. Truth and science are not gratuitous conquests, but the result of a surrender to objectivity and of the exploration of all aspects of nature and man".
In placing truth at the service of society, universities thereby supply structures of dialogue, offering also to society the conclusions of study and discussion, and the reasoning behind profound convictions. This is indeed a responsible role which the universities must merit, guard and not lightly surrender to those who can make no claim to knowledge.
6. By its very nature, scholarship is ultimately theocentric, and as such it renders immense service to humanity. It helps people in their search for the meaning of life. It supports them in their gropings for the light of truth. Scholarship, with the truth it brings, does not abandon people when they have succumbed to disregarding human life, to tolerating violence, to pursuing greed, to accepting injustice. No, even as certain sectors of humanity are guilty of all of this and are hence drifting to destruction, truth offers help. It will not go away. It still makes itself felt. It appeals to the highest instincts of man. It confronts his conscience. It will plead its own case and prove it!
As scholarship discovers by its proper method the existence of God and receives insights into his being, it helps man to understand his own nature, to know himself. The great nobility of the human mind is based above all on its ability to know God and to search more and more deeply into the mystery of God’s life and there – at that point – to discover also man.
It is no wonder then that, as centres of learning, the universities of the past and the present have welcomed into their midst schools of theology, dedicated to the science of God. The truth of God leads us to the truth of man, and the truth of man leads us to the truth of God.
7. There is yet another aspect to many institutions of higher learning, and it is the application of the Judeo-Christian vision of man. In this twofold tradition there is the common denominator of divine revelation: man is seen in the light of God’s revelation to the world. The full truth about man is greater than human reason can discover, but no element of revealed truth will ever contradict the smallest particle of any truth.
The world of learning and scholarship offers a very special fascination to all those who hold the specifically Christian vision of man – for all those who profess that Jesus Christ is "the Way, the Truth and the Life". The role of the Christian scholar is one which, without minimizing any access to truth, holds that Jesus Christ as the eternal Word of God is the full embodiment of all truth. Hence the vocation of the Christian scholar is to investigate, pursue, analyse and explain all finite truth in the light of Christ.
When this Christian scholarship is accompanied by prayer, then man finds the condition for truth’s greatest triumph. But there is yet something else to be noted and it is this: when truth is fully unleashed in the world, it brings with it freedom. All of this is exactly what Jesus Christ proclaimed. He told his Apostles: "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free". Those words of Jesus Christ have echoed through the centuries, as have these: "If the Son frees you, you will be free indeed".
At this point we reach the final moment of truth. This final moment of truth coincides with the liberation elected by Jesus Christ. As a result of this liberating process humanity is free and unshackled to pursue its destiny to be itself: free not in order to reject the truth but to embrace it. This then is the final temporal stage of all human searching: humanity free to live the truth of its creation by God and its Redemption by Christ.
8. Distinguished friends, dear students: it has been a great pleasure for me to reflect with you on your mission of truth at the service of humanity. We all realize that there are many other considerations that could be developed at length. But I have tried to emphasize the dignity of your mission and the greatness of your calling, whatever be the prease connection of your life with the world of thought, learning and research. Both in the field of learning and in that of instructing others your lot is cast with truth and with truth’s uplifting and transforming power. All of you – in research, teaching, study and administration can be proud to contribute something truly great and noble to the world, to your fellow human beings. Remember the words recorded by the Prophet Daniel: "They who are learned shall shine like the brightness of the firmament and those that instruct many in justice as stars for all eternity".
On a very personal level, permit me now to tell you how many memories come to me by being here with you today. I feel at home, among friends, among my own. My association with the university world in Krakow and Lublin is still vivid in my mind, but also all the many contacts that I have had with academe throughout the world. And the common element in all of this is truth – truth at the service of humanity, humanity fulfilled in truth and speaking the truth in love.
Dear friends: may God sustain you in your commitment to his truth and to its consequences in your lives. And in this truth may you all experience his love.
"I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus...".
Dear Brothers and Sisters, men and women Religious of Australia,
1. I have greatly looked forward to this meeting. And now with joy in my heart I see you here, representing the whole of religious life in this land. As I speak to you in this magnificent concert hall of Sydney’s Opera House, I am very much aware of being with dedicated men and women living out their consecrated lives in every corner of Australia. I greet each one of you in Christ, in whom you lack no spiritual gift.
In the name of the whole Church, I wish to honour the tradition of religious life which you represent. From the beginning, consecrated men and women have been a vital part of the very fabric of the Church’s life in this country, and have made a contribution to the Christian and human development of Australia which is beyond calculation.
2. The first ecclesiastical administration of this region was entrusted to the English Benedictines. In 1834, John Bede Polding was appointed Vicar Apostolic of New Holland and in 1842 was named first Archbishop of this city. In 1838 the Irish Sisters of Charity came here to begin an apostolate among women convicts, orphans, the sick and others in need. In the footsteps of these pioneer men and women, others too numerous to mention here have lived their religious consecration and given of themselves totally and unceasingly. They have served a growing society with its many needs.
Particular mention should be made of the role of religious in implementing the inspired decision of the bishops in the latter part of the nineteenth century to establish a comprehensive school system of Catholic education. In cities as well as in smaller communities, men and women religious have been the support not only of this educational system but also of health care and social works, which are an integral part of the development of Australia.
The presence of dedicated religious serving the needs of the Catholic population in both town and country has led to a remarkable closeness between the religious and the Catholic laity. There is a relationship of deep trust, love and mutual respect between you and the people you serve, a relationship which I am confident you will maintain and continue to deserve.
I wish to pay tribute to all the religious who have lived and served in this country during the past hundred and fifty years. I thank God for his gift of such outstanding witnesses to the beauty and strength of the Gospel. I give thanks for so many lives lived according to the grace of God given in Christ Jesus. One outstanding witness known to me, because her cause has been introduced, is Mary MacKillop, Mother Mary of the Cross, Foundress of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart. With you I share the hope that before long all the requirements for her beatification will be fulfilled, thus setting a special seal of approval on religious life in Australia.
3. Today there are approximately eleven thousand women religious, one thousand six hundred brothers and two thousand religious priests in Australia. There is so much to thank God for, including the rich variety of charisms in religious life which he has raised up in Australia.
I wish to say a special word to the contemplatives among you. Dear religious: you will always have an important part to play in building up Christ’s Mystical Body. Its members do not all have the same function. You offer God an excellent sacrifice of praise; you gladden the community of God’s people with your witness of holiness and you increase it through a hidden apostolic fruitfulness. I commend to your prayers and sacrifices the needs of the Church in Australia and in the whole world, and I assure you of the Church’s gratitude for the gift of your lives.
To the sisters and brothers and priests engaged in the many forms of the active apostolate I offer my encouragement and express my esteem. I thank you for your love of the Church and for your sharing in her saving mission. It is indeed hard to imagine what the Church in Australia would be like today without the contribution of your congregations in every field of her activity. I am pleased to know that in more recent years there has been an increased presence of religious in the ethnic communities. There is also an important missionary movement of Australian religious, in Papua New Guinea, the Pacific, Asia, Africa and South America. We can only rejoice at the power of God’s love at work in Australia through the witness of your religious consecration and, beyond your borders, through your missionaries.
I wish to add that I am very pleased that religious of the Anglican Communion are also here today. I thank you for the love shown by your presence, and I express the hope that through the grace of God given in Christ Jesus we may be led along the path of holiness and discipleship to full fellowship in him and in his Church.
4. Religious face great challenges at this particular time in the history of the Church and of this country. Health care, social welfare and the education of the young, which have been traditional apostolates of the religious of Australia, have become recognized as areas of responsibility for your Governments and now play a large part in their policies. Of itself this is a factor of progress in the development of society. But for you, and for the Church, it represents a serious challenge to reaffirm the specific character of Catholic health care, Catholic social welfare and Catholic education. Your contribution in these fields has in fact become more important than ever in the light of the rapid secularization taking place in Australian society as in other parts of the world. Within these fields, you are in a special way witnesses to the Gospel message of salvation in Christ Jesus.
Another challenge is represented by the huge post-war immigration of people from Europe and Asia. Here you have discovered new areas of Christian and pastoral responsibility. There is the call of service to the Aboriginal people and the defence of their inalienable dignity. There is the challenge arising from so many old and new forms of poverty in today’s society. The young often feel lost and frustrated. They need sure guides. They need the inspiration of your religious commitment. They need you to make Christ know1l to them in a way that will satisfy the innermost stirrings of their hearts. There is a need too for religious communities themselves to reflect the ethnic mix of the nation as a whole.
5. Of all the tasks facing you there is surely none so urgent as bearing authentic witness to your personal love of Jesus Christ above all else. This is at the very heart of your religious identity. The evangelical counsels which you profess through vows constitute the specific note of your lives, and they cannot be understood except in the context of a total response to the love of God revealed in Christ. It is Christ, the Lord and Master of your lives, who has called you to be religious, in and through the Church, in and through the Church, in an through your communities. It is to him that you have responded with a love that renounces all else for the sake of his Kingdom. And in that renunciation you have gained all. and have become all things to all people in order to win them for Christ.
Brothers and sisters, religious of Australia, your Christian dignity depends principally not on what you do in service to the Church and to the world, but on what you are: consecrated followers of Christ, witnesses to a new and eternal life gained by the Redemption of Christ, imitators of the state of life which the Son of God took on in coming into this world. Because of your special relationship to Christ, you belong inseparably to the life and holiness of his Body, the Church.
Through your lives the Church needs to be able to speak the message of Christ in truth and in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the deepest meaning of what is rightly called your prophetic role. The prophet’s word must be authenticated by the witness of obedience to the Lord and to his Church. And because the same Holy Spirit who dwells in your hearts has always assisted the Apostles and their successors in their teaching, we know that your fidelity to the Magisterium will ever be the guarantee of a correct reading of "the signs of the times".
In your lives of consecration and prophetic witness you experience a deep personal need for prayer – individual, communal and liturgical prayer. Prayer is the very expression of your identity as men and women consecrated to Jesus Christ, and it is a primary duty of all religious. It is also the secret of your interior joy. Fifteen years later we are still struck by the prophetic words of Paul VI, who said "Do not forget the witness of history: faithfulness to prayer or its abandonment is the test of the vitality or decadence of the religious life".
6. Total love of Christ and freedom of spirit for the service of God’s people are expressed in a clear way in chastity practised for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven. Chastity is above all a gift of love from Christ to you, and through you to the Church. To experience deeply Christ’s love and then to return it in joyful selfgiving is a daily challenge. To accept this challenge is to transcend yourselves and to leave behind any preoccupation with self. Then there will be room in your hearts for all human beings, especially the most needy – but you must love them all in the heart of Christ. Australia needs witnesses to sacrificial love. Australia needs you to show that the love of Christ and his Church is all-consuming, all-satisfying, all embracing.
In a society blessed with material well-being, the witness of poverty, voluntarily embraced in imitation of Christ, pleads with force and conviction for the weak, the dispossessed and those who hunger for justice. But in order to be truly on the side of the poor, religious poverty has to be a genuine sharing in the poverty of Christ, who placed himself in the Father’s hands and who made himself accessible to all without discrimination. His power to uplift the poor and the downtrodden lay in the very truth which he embodied.
In your obedience you come especially close to Jesus, the servant of God, whose food was to do the will of the one who sent him and to accomplish his work. Obedience was not just a fact of life in Jesus’ earthly existence. It constituted the very essence of his messianic mission. It was his response to the original rebellion which had contaminated the whole course of human history. As Saint Paul writes: "All the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why we utter the Amen through him, to the glory of God". Evangelical obedience, which leads directly to the mature measure of the fullness of Christ, finds expression in willing participation in community life, where all should be of one heart and one mind. A unity of spirit and a communion of life are, in fact, signs of Christ’s life-giving presence.
7. Saying all this does not make your religious consecration any less a true sharing in the Cross of Christ. Not every question is answered; not every problem is solved. But there can be no genuine renewal of religious communities, as called for in our times by the Second Vatican Council and as clearly inspired by the Holy Spirit who leads the Church, without a return to the essential starting point: Jesus’ call and your response of love. The effectiveness of your whole mission in the Church is intimately linked to the intensity of your response of love.
Your practice of the evangelical counsels speaks to contemporary Australia about the God who called you. It draws attention to Jesus – the Way, the Truth and the Life – because he is your model. As religious you will often be silently confronted with the plea that people addressed to the Apostle Philip: "We wish to see Jesus". There are countless people in Australia asking to see Jesus and to see him in you. They will be satisfied only if they can discover Jesus in you. What is more, they will judge Jesus by the image of him that you reflect in your lives. Perhaps they will accept him; perhaps they will reject him. But many will be influenced by the image of Jesus that you present.
8. I am deeply aware that you are concerned about the number of vocations to the religious life. This is undoubtedly a serious problem for many local Churches and communities. In this respect the words of Christ challenge us; they show us that prayer must be our first response to the shortage of vocations. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to speak to the hearts of the young. And we need to be sure that what we offer them is indeed the word and the challenge and the promise of Jesus.
Those whom Christ calls to your houses of formation have a right to receive the Church’s authentic doctrine and her proper understanding of religious life. Only in this way will their consecrated love be fully grafted into the Church and their apostolate become a fruitful channel of Christ’s grace for themselves and for others.
The present problems are the Lord’s way of summoning us to greater faith in him, to a greater witnessing to the wonders of his ways, and to a deeper trust in the One who alone controls our future. We have heard the words of today’s reading: "God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord". God who is faithful will sustain you. He calls you to trust him.
9. Dear religious, sisters, brothers and priests of Australia: what is the hope that the Successor of Peter expresses in your regard? What can I say to you to show the completeness of my solidarity and union with each one of you in the following of Christ?
I express the hope and prayer that you will al ways walk in "newness of life", for a new life in Christ is what has been given to you in baptism and strengthened in you through your confirmation. By your consecration in the Church you are called to bear a particular witness to this life. You are called to embrace God’s life-giving word in a radical way. You are called to exemplify, with prophetic anticipation, the sacrificial love which the whole Church is meant to draw from the Paschal Mystery of the Lord.
Religious life in Australia is anything but a thing of the past. It is one of the most precious assets of our time, for it is a clear indication of the Gospel values that alone can lead society out of the spiritual desert in which so many of our contemporaries live. The challenge is enormous precisely because it requires so much individual and community commitment. In the last analysis, it requires of you a great love in Christ of the brothers and sisters who need your service. It requires a total sacrifice: we are willing to give in proportion as we love, and when love is perfect the sacrifice is complete.
Your companion along the way is Mary, Mother of Jesus and Mother of the Church. May you ever be able to repeat her words:
"My spirit rejoices in God my Saviour... for he who is mighty has done great things for me".
Yes, dear sisters and brothers, the Lord has done great things for you, and through you for Australia. Praised be the name of the Lord!
Praised be Jesus Christ!
Speeches 1986 - Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Sports Centre