Taking his audience on a journey from Nick Cave to Six30 Holy Hour, and from Gen Z’s search for meaning to the iconic St Patrick’s Cathedral, Archbishop Peter A Comensoli used his 2024 Patrick Oration to map out the possibilities of inviting people into a life with Christ.
Speaking to a gathering of civic, religious and community leaders at the Greg Craven Centre in Australian Catholic University’s new Kolkata Building—and many more who tuned in via Channel 31 or YouTube—the Archbishop delivered the fifth annual Patrick Oration on the feast day of the Archdiocese’s patron, St Patrick, celebrated this year on Monday 18 March.
The oration is an annual opportunity for the Archbishop to speak to the wider community and to present a pathway forward for the Catholic Church in Melbourne, inviting us to renew our hope for the future.
Archbishop Comensoli began by describing a recent interview with Australian musician Nick Cave, noting how important the image of Christ in Gethsemane has been for Cave, and ‘how Christ, in the garden, is tethered to the earth, yet reaching beyond. For in the midst of the loss that came from that shattering silence, Jesus yearns. It is a yearning that leads to his most creative deed: his surrendering to death on a cross.’
While loss marks all of us, the Archbishop said, there is an important distinction between loss and being ‘lost’, pointing out that the ‘frail, limited, insufficient and vulnerable reality’ of the human condition that Jesus shared with us, and that we see most clearly in his death on the cross, becomes, mysteriously, the key to our transfiguration, since without the ‘loss’ of the cross, ‘there could be no resurrection.’ It is by means of Jesus’ ‘limited and broken body,’ he said, that ‘we receive his real and abiding presence.’
Around two-thirds of Australians say they believe in God or some ‘higher being’, but fewer than one in ten are actively engaged in religious practice.
The Archbishop said that as he passes St Patrick’s Cathedral on a Thursday evening, he is often struck by those making their way ‘through the doors of St Patrick’s to gaze on Christ’ at Six30 Holy Hour. Part of a tradition that goes back almost 25 years—and that was started by returning World Youth Day pilgrims—approximately 100 mostly young people turn up on any given Thursday, each ‘making their way to a spiritual doorway onto the love of Christ present among them’, each carrying ‘a need in their lives’ and a yearning to be taken ‘beyond’.
Archbishop Comensoli has also wondered about those who walk past the doors of the Cathedral on a Thursday evening but don’t come in: ‘Do they know they are welcome also to enter in?’
‘There is something both unnerving and beautiful about that weekly gathering, as the broken Body of Christ is exposed in the form of the broken Bread of Life,’ he said. While we might instinctively find such exposure and vulnerability uncomfortable, ‘Jesus says, be here with me; let me be seen.’
At times like this, he said, ‘silence speaks’. It is in the silence, not the noise of our lives, that we find ourselves yearning for more and learning to hear God. These times of quiet longing can expose ‘the crack in our lives’ that lets the light get in, he said, quoting another poet-musician, Leonard Cohen.
The place in which the Zs and As will come to faith is not in the world where we are presently living. They are not antagonistic to God or anti-Church … They simply do not know that there is God.
Reflecting on why those gathering at Holy Hour ‘are predominantly a young crowd’—Gen Ys and Zs—he pointed to Australian social researcher Hugh Mackay’s observation that more and more people are identifying as ‘SBNR’ (‘spiritual but not religious’).
‘Around two-thirds of Australians say they believe in God or some “higher being”,’ he observed, ‘but fewer than one in ten are actively engaged in religious practice.’ Even as the traditional idea of God is fading in our culture, ‘the desire for a life of meaning remains’, he said, noting that more people walked the Camino de Santiago last year than ever before in its history.
Zoomers, however, are different again. Materially endowed, technologically savvy, and with longer life expectancies, they are ‘mostly two or three generations removed from any lived experience of religion or the Church, or even knowledge about God or Christ,’ he said. ‘This does not mean they will not look for something more, or yearn for what is beyond; rather, they will experience differently, and therefore yearn differently.
‘This is the reality we older generations need to understand and step into, for the place in which the Zs and As will come to faith is not in the world where we are presently living. They are not antagonistic to God or anti-Church … They simply do not know that there is God; or know that the building next to their school is a church; or know the language that reveals Christ among them.’
‘Spirituality’ asks nothing of us, and will eventually lead to nothing. It is religious faith that asks something of us, for it points the way ahead.
The acronym ‘SBNR’ should not necessarily be seen as a source of encouragement, since the common trajectory, he suspects, is not towards the ‘R’ but away from the ‘S’, as people increasingly move from loss to lost. ‘“Spirituality” asks nothing of us, and will eventually lead to nothing,’ he contended. ‘It is religious faith that asks something of us, for it points the way ahead.’
So while ‘God is not dead’, the Archbishop said, neither is God known by many today. ‘Christ is still to be discovered, and religious faith is still to be found and learnt.‘
All is not lost, though. As well as those young people of faith ‘who buck the trend’, he pointed to the ethnically and culturally diverse faith communities for whom ‘the ritual of faith and the words of the Bible’ are still meaningful. For them, and many others, he said, St Patrick’s Cathedral has been ‘the Mother Church’ of the Archdiocese, welcoming about 1,300 Mass goers each week, along with migrant and school communities, small faith groups and larger Catholic organisations, weddings, tourists, lovers of music, art and architecture, and ‘those who simply wander off the streets seeking a moment of sanctuary’.
Each of us has a responsibility to ensure that those who encounter St Patrick’s Cathedral, and her life, might find a home with Christ among us, and a light to guide their way.
Consecrated 127 years ago, St Patrick’s Cathedral is due for ‘a major renewal’ and some ‘structural love and care’, he said, and in coming months, we will see scaffolding erected and some construction work begin on the site.
However, the Cathedral is not just ‘a fixed edifice but a living environment, not a static building but a dynamic precinct of faith, and it is time to explore seriously the ways that she may flourish and live as a true light into the city for the generations to come.’ The Archbishop’s vision for the Cathedral is that it will be ‘a place of transfiguration in a world that yearns for more’—‘a school of charity and a place of learning; a location for dialogue with the surrounding culture, and a model of community life’.
This vision will require us to ask some serious questions of ourselves: ‘Who do people meet when they meet us at the doors … ? Do they see Christ’s face, hear his words, witness his actions?’ Each of us has a responsibility, he said, to ensure that ‘those who encounter St Patrick’s Cathedral, and her life, might find a home with Christ among us, and a light to guide their way.’
Among the distinguished guests at the oration were auxiliary bishops of Melbourne Bishops Martin Ashe, Terry Curtin and Tony Ireland, Syro-Malabar Bishop John Panamthottathil, Bishop Bychok from the Ukrainian Greek Eparchy, the Hon Ben Carroll (Deputy Premier of Victoria), Shadow Treasurer and Liberal Member for Sandringham Mr Brad Rowswell MP, the Hon Peter Walsh MP (Leader of the Nationals and Deputy Leader of the Coalition), Mr Iwan Walters MP (Member for Greenvale) and the Hon Susan Crennan AC KC (former justice of the High Court), along with representatives of many Catholic communities, social service agencies, health and aged care organisations, other faith traditions, clergy, religious, parishioners, young adults and seminarians.
It is time for the next stage or iteration of St Patrick’s [Cathedral] and the precinct. I think that’s very exciting.
Many of those present commented on how the oration had resonated with them. Mr Rowswell observed that the Archbishop’s reflections ‘were grounded not in some far-removed philosophy, but … in people’s lived experience and the journey that people are on in their own lives’, making them ‘resonate with people in a really special and meaningful way’.
Reflecting on the significance of St Patrick’s Cathedral, not only for the Catholic community ‘but to our city and to our state’, Mr Rowswell said there’s ‘a reason why it’s a minor basilica. There’s a reason why it’s not just the mother church of the diocese but such a pre-eminent church within Australia and this part of the world. It’s something that we should be very proud of. But it is time for the next stage or iteration of St Patrick’s [Cathedral] and the precinct. I think that’s very exciting.’
Caroline Knight and her brother Lindsay Sant are hoping to discuss some of the oration’s themes in an upcoming episode of their popular podcast, Catholics of Oz. Reflecting on the Archbishop’s ‘beautiful, meaningful words’, Ms Knight said she particularly identified with the idea that experiencing loss doesn’t mean you are lost. ‘He made me think of some times when I had loss in my life. But we’re not lost because we have Jesus Christ.’
Describing the Cathedral as ‘a shining beam in Melbourne’, she sees it as representing Christ’s presence in people’s lives. ‘Everyone is welcome there today,’ she said. ‘Jesus is there for us, still there for us, and we always have somewhere to go.’
Christ has already come with an invitation, and we need to help that invitation be in a language that younger people can understand.
Mr Sant agreed, explaining how important Six30 Holy Hour had been in the development of his own faith. ‘I remember that being a very formative time for me when I was a young adult, so I could relate to what [the Archbishop] was saying about people coming in. For many, many years, I did exactly the same thing.’
He was also struck by what the Archbishop had to say about Zoomers and the role each of us has in helping younger generations to find a sense of meaning and their own place in the Church. ‘They have a different language,’ he said. ‘Christ has already come with an invitation, and we need to help that invitation be in a language that younger people can understand.’ Along with the building work on the Cathedral, he said, ‘I think the challenge is also the work on ourselves, so that we can also help to bring that message.’
