Roman Catholic World Youth Day One - Tuesday
I began my pilgrimage like a good protestant at St Andrew's Cathedral and was excited to see lots of people around.
The Rev Chris Moroney, the senior minster said there had been 1000 people through the Cathedral that morning, including a Polish group to whom he spoke via a translator. It is amazing that people feel free to walk in, get their guitars out and sing a song, as well as have some great conversations with Sydney Anglicans. The Cathedral is putting on continuous coffee and biscuits, and there are always people around to talk to visitors.
If you are frustrated with the traffic and up for a bit of evangelism, why not take the day off with a couple of your friends, come into the city at mid-day, talk to people around the Cathedral, stay for the talk at 1pm, then hang around for a bit more evangelism in the afternoon" Truly, it has never been easer to talk about Jesus in Sydney!
After an encouraging talk by the Rev Andrew Leslie about Knowing Jesus certainly through the Bible, it was off down to Darling Harbor for my first event as a pilgrim " The opening Mass lead by George Cardinal Pell.
On the way I got talking to Mario, a local volunteer. He had given up a week of his annual leave to help out with the massive catering effort to feed 100 000 people twice a day! I was really encouraged by this. I asked him why he was doing this " he said, "It is a good thing to help " to serve, besides, I'm having a great time."
I said, can I ask you a religious question " he said sure! Such openness I have rarely found talking to Roman Catholics.
I asked, "Are you certain you are going to heaven?" He said, "Yes, because I am a Son of God, and God is my Father. Wherever the Father goes, he takes his children." Great answer I thought! I asked a little more, "On what basis are you a Son of God?"
He paused for a while, then said, "I was born a Catholic, and if I keep doing good things I will go to heaven. If I don't sin, but it is always possible that I will sin, so you can't be sure."
Next I met Angela, one of 400 loud and fun Catholics from Philadelphia, all wearing Uncle Sam hats.
She wasn't sure what day it was as they only got off the plane yesterday. She had just finished high school and was starting College (uni.) as a Computer Science student in a few weeks. Her group had come out for 10 days. She loved Australia because the sky was a different colour " more blue, and everything was so clean. She was really looking forward to meeting the Pope because he is such a strong leader.
Are you certain you are going to heaven? "Yes!" confidently. Why? "Because of my strong faith." Will that last forever? A short pause, "Yes!" I would have liked to talk more but we got separated as we went into the Mass site.
At the venue it was shoulder to shoulder people for as far as the eye could see. I'm not good with numbers, but it felt like 100 000+.
Outside we watched the sun set and heard from pilgrims from past WYD events from around the world. I was standing next to Jon from Melbourne.
It was good to hear an Aussie accent. He described himself as a committed Catholic. He told me about the history of the WYD events and said it went back to 1986 when Pope John Paul II started running annual youth events. The one thing he was most excited about was the fact that "normal" people were coming to this event, not just people who went to Mass regularly.
Was he certain he was going to heaven?
"No. We don't know much about what will happen when we die so we shouldn't presume. Anyway life and religion is more about what happens here and now, I'll worry about what happens after death when I get to 80. I think everyone in the world is pretty bad, but we Catholics are just that little bit better off."
I was hoping I'd bump into some of my Catholic friends, who I haven't seen for a while, and the first one was Allan, a 40 year old friend from the Northern Beaches who was helping out with the catering.
I used to work with Allen doing volunteer work for St Vincent De Paul. He still goes out once a week and puts on a BBQ for homeless people who live in caves on the North Shore. Was he sure of going to heaven? "Yea, if I'm good".
Finally there was Rebecca and Bart who had flown over from Adelaide. Neither of them was certain where they will be spending eternity either. I really enjoyed talking with all these people about God, and found their openness and honesty refreshing! I also enjoyed talking with them about what I had learnt from the Bible about the promises Jesus makes to everyone who trusts Him, that they can be certain about eternity. If only evangelism was always this good. If you have a moment, pray for them.
The Mass began. Kevin Rudd started proceedings with a brief encouragement about people meeting in peace, not war. He then talked about how faith and reason were natural partners. Finally he talked about Australia's significant Catholic heritage.
Next a procession of over 20 men resplendent in red and gold processed up to the altar as the sun set behind them to the sound of violins and a choir of hundreds. George Cardinal Pell welcomed us in four languages. I was a bit upset by the mass and the way it was conducted.
I was particularly struck by the way the massive gathering was told to confess their sins. They listened to a song sung in Latin by a soprano for 5 minutes, and then a request to God was made to forgive them their sins and bring them to everlasting life, to which they said amen. There was no word from the front assuring them that there sins have been forgiven because Jesus has died for them " a small part of our Anglican Sunday services " but so very important. I will spare you more about the rest of the service which went for 2 hours with a lot more chanting, sopranos singing in Latin, organ music, incense to clean the altar for the sacrifice, and incense to clean Cardinal Pell so he could make the sacrifice etc.
There were 4 Bible readings, Ezekiel 37:1-14, Psalm 22 (sung), Galatians 5:16-17, 22-25 and Luke 8:4-18. I found the Galatians reading very interesting. They left out v18 that says, "If you are lead by the Spirit, you are not under the Law." taking away a verse that gives great assurance to sinning Christians. The other thing I noticed was the unusual translation of Galatians 5:24. It is normally translated, even in the Catholic version, "And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." Past tense " the idea being, sin has already been dealt with, don't go back to it.
In the Mass however they translated it as, "You cannot belong to Christ Jesus unless you crucify all self-indulgent passions and desire." This changes the emphasis of the passage from being one of encouragement to live out the reality of our relationship with Jesus and therefore our life in the Spirit to one that puts more of the burden on us alone " If we get rid of sin, then we can have a relationship with Jesus.
Finally Cardinal Pell's homily. A solid 30 minutes and all focused on the Bible!
He talked about all four passages, He gave appropriate acknowledgement to the historical context of the Ezekiel passage. He didn't link the resurrection of dry bones to Jesus though and didn't say much about Jesus elsewhere, though in other contexts I have heard him say quite a bit about Jesus.
When talking about Luke 8, he said the parable was about our faith, rather than how we listen to God and he didn't mention that the seed was the Word of God. He concluded this section by saying, "If we take God's hand, he will do the rest, trust, trust is the key."
In talking about the Galatians passage, he highlighted the battle between the Spirit and the flesh that goes on in a Christian's life, encouraged the listeners to work hard at this with discipline and self control, but again gave no encouragement that sin had been dealt with by Jesus. Finally he prayed to the Father and the Son and invoked Mother Mary to strengthen the group.
I was intrigued by the sermon and appreciated the time Cardinal Pell took thinking seriously about the Bible. The things he challenged people to do were good and came from the Bible. However there was no assurance that Jesus had already done these things for us and we could now confidently take them on because of our relationship with Him. I would love to talk more with him about what he thinks about this.
Of to bed. I will try to get the camera working tomorrow.
