(13 July 08 - RV) Pope Benedict XVI landed safely at Australia’s Richmond Air Force
Base just outside Sydney, this morning, after pausing in Darwin to take on fuel and
stretch the legs.
The Holy Father’s travels carried him more than 10 thousand
miles or 16 thousand kilometres from Rome to the capital of New South Wales and the
host city of World Youth Day, 2008.
Pope Benedict’s public appearances are
scheduled to begin on Thursday of this week, after a few days’ rest at the Kenthurst
Study Centre outside Sydney.
Religion, Christian faith, is in a certain sense
in crisis. This is clear because the impression was, we do not need God. We can do
all ourselves.
During the customary in-flight press conference, shortly after
take-off, Pope Benedict said he is optimistic for the future of the Church in Australia,
as in the West, generally, and in all the world, noting that the Church in the Western
world, and Europe especially is in crisis, though not in decline…
Now, in this
historical moment, we begin to see that we need God.
In his message to
the people of Australia and to the young people pilgrims taking part in this 23rd
World Youth Day, the hunger and thirst that all human beings, and especially young
people have for God, was one of the Holy Father’s principal motifs:
“How much
our world needs a renewed outpouring of the Holy Spirit!” Says Pope Benedict in the
message, and he goes on to say, “There are still many who have not heard the Good
News of Jesus Christ, while many others, for whatever reason, have not recognized
in this Good News the saving truth that alone can satisfy the deepest longings of
their hearts.”
Quoting from Psalm 104, the Pope prays “when you send forth
your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth” (Ps 104:30).
The
Holy Father then expresses his firm belief that young people are called to be instruments
of that renewal, communicating to their peers the joy they have experienced through
knowing and following Christ, and sharing with others the love that the Spirit pours
into their hearts, so that they too will be filled with hope and with thanksgiving
for all the good things they have received from our heavenly Father.
In the
Past, I believed that young people were not really open to the experience of community,
whether it was in the Church, or within the civic community, or even within the family.
The
desire for community is something that the former archbishop of the host city of World
Youth Day 1993, Denver, Colorado, and current Major Penitentiary of Holy Roman Church,
Cardinal James Stafford discussed with me recently in an interview at his offices
in the Apostolic Chancery…
It was one of the most rewarding experiences that
I’ve had, not simply as a bishop, but as a priest and as a Christian, and it was rewarding
because I could see in the face of young people a new awareness of what they have
been called to live, that is, their vocation as Christians. In other words, I found
young people finding Christ in one another. World Youth Day changed my view of young
people, that they were very open to the Church, but, as a matter of fact, hungry for
the community of forgiveness and mercy that is the Church.
Paraphrasing
St. Augustine, whose autobiographical Confessions remain to this day among the most
riveting and compelling accounts of conversion ever composed; at the beginning of
his visit to the great southern land of the Holy Spirit, as he calls it in his message;
Pope Benedict says his prayer is that the hearts of the young people who gather in
Sydney for the celebration of World Youth Day will truly find rest in the Lord, and
that they will be filled with joy and fervour for spreading the Good News among their
friends, their families, and all whom they meet.