Meaning of life

The
Catholic Weekly
Online

Sydney
26 October 2003

Meaning of life

Tuition fee jump

Award for Reservist chaplain

Outreach

Priests set priorities

Step behind the convent walls

Desire to serve others

Trial for euthanasia?

Interfaith

Seminar on self help in action for hearing impaired

Editorial: Enormous debt

Letters: Interstate appreciation

Conversation: Br Dan Stafford, chaplain to the Australian Jockey Club - A generous fraternity of 'saints and sinners'

Voice of Youth: Blessed upon the earth

‘Wonderful occasion’

Stone takes the cake

Bumper crop of students

Concert ‘journey’ by young honours Pope’s anniversary

‘My kids’ bring tears

Meaning of life

Archbishop Pell blesses a young congregation member

By Marilyn Rodrigues

“The centre of the Pope’s work is the question of the meaning of life,” said the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr George Pell, at the Silver Jubilee Mass for Pope John Paul II.

In trying to address this question, secular humanist views of life have no value for human suffering, the archbishop said.

But “Pope John Paul II addresses this intellectually and through the public performance of his duties at such personal cost,” he said.

The Pope, in his current ongoing physical weakness, “shows time and time again that he is willing to suffer for us”.

“That’s why today, he ‘struggles wearily on helped only by Christ’s power driving him irresistibly’,” Dr Pell said, referring to the Mass’s second reading by St Paul on his suffering for the sake of the Christ and the Church.

St Mary’s Cathedral was packed for the Mass to celebrate the life and work of the Pope.

The Mass began with an entrance procession that featured representatives, from different nations, many in national costume, bearing 26 flags, including the Polish, Aboriginal, Australian and Vatican state flags.

The Mass was organised by the Sydney archdiocese and the Society of Christ - an order of priests who minister to Sydney’s Polish Australian community.