Dedication of Cathedral 11 July 2010 Sermon

Anniversary of Dedication of Cathedral (Adelaide) 11.7.10 (replacing normal Sunday)

One thing that we do as Catholics is adore Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. The Host is placed in a monstrance positioned in the centre of the altar and by its central position visibly draws to Itself all who enter the church.

This is exactly what Our Lord intends. He wants to gather all people, all nations to Himself, to restore the unity of the scattered children of God (cf Jn 11); to round up the lost sheep; to give sight to the blind and all those other sources of relief described in the prophecies (cf Lk 4 quoting Isaiah).

All who adore Him converge on Him, asking that He take us into Himself, into the depths of mystery which we cannot comprehend in our minds, but we know in our hearts it is where we need to be.

He exerts a centripetal force on all His creation to come to Him to be restored to its original condition (perfect) and freed from its slavery (cf Rom 8).

And that includes us. We are drawn to Him like a magnet.

He is the Centre of creation, the One who binds all things together, and enables all things (and people) to find their true place and purpose. (Cf Ep1 and Col 1)

It is in this context that we have today’s feast, the Anniversary of the Dedication of the Cathedral church in this Adelaide archdiocese.

Feasts of dedication of churches are considered to be feasts of the Lord Himself, insofar as the church building is His dwelling place.

The honour we pay to a church is honour meant for Our Lord Himself.

As He is the point of convergence for all creatures, so is a church built in His name, and especially the Cathedral church of a diocese.

In a diocese we build many churches so that people can get to one that is not too far away. But the plurality of churches does not take away from the single unity that should pervade each diocese.

In each diocese there is a Cathedral and that church especially acts as a focal point, a point of convergence for all Catholics to worship, and all necessary prayers to be prayed.

When we celebrate the dedication of the Cathedral we are reaffirming our own desire to be one with Christ; to converge on Him; and to pray continuously that all other people will find their way to Him.

We find Christ fully present here in this church as much as in the Cathedral; that is how well He caters for us. We do not have to climb up to the Temple as the Jews had to do; we worship in spirit and truth, and can do so fully in any part of the diocese. But we must acknowledge the Church is bigger than wherever we are, and make a spiritual convergence on Christ, the centre of unity, even if we do not make the physical trip.

There are many centrifugal forces at work on us in today’s world and we need to overcome them. There are many who will tell us that there is no central truth; no one saviour of the world; no one way to live rightly – it is up to each person to decide for himself. So the spirit of our age is highly ego-centred and individualistic. Never have we been so alienated from each other as a result.

In the name of a false freedom we are encouraged to find our own way on the path to meaning, to abandon traditional beliefs. Only chaos can result from this, and we have plenty of it as proof.

Today’s feast is a reminder that there is a Saviour but only one; there is a flock to which we are called, but only one. We cannot pick our own saviour but we can seek out the One who is real and calls us to Himself. We cannot pick our own church as though it is up to us, but we can joyfully take our place in the Church which He has established... the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, to which we belong and whose unity we celebrate today.