A reflection on the Church's journey, 11 May 2026

6 days ago
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Australian Catholic Bishops Conference at Mary MacKillop Memorial Chapel , celebrates the Divine Liturgy in the Byzantine rite.

The Most Reverend

ROBERT RABBAT

by the Mercy of God

Melkite Greek-Catholic Eparch of Australia, New Zealand and All Oceania

“That they all may be one…” (John 17:21)

Christ is Risen!

I often suspect that most homilists make a contextual reference to the Gospel pericope of the day and then proceed to exegete the reading, which actually means to dismantle the text according to their own abilities and the capacity of the congregation to endure the process.

However, when I thought about this morning, I concluded it is a brave man, perhaps other than the Holy Father, who presumes to preach to an assembly of bishops, I won’t even attempt it!

So I am not about to deliver a homily or a sermon or an address, but rather I wish to share with you some reflections on the situation of the Eastern Catholic Churches sui juris in contemporary Australia.

Perhaps to offer a counterpoint to my later comments, I would offer the following: one of my older clergy remembers vividly one of his classmates in 1960 being upbraided by the local parish priest in front of the class because his family had not attended Sunday Mass in his parish church but, that Sunday, had gone to St Maroun’s Maronite Church at Redfern. The final comment of the infuriated monsignor was, “You are in Australia now, you must go to the Australian church”.

“Fast forward to 2026” and some sixty-six years later, I am here as one of the four Eastern Catholic bishops in Australia, and our communities, along with others, are part of the Australian Church, and I am able to share these few thoughts with my brothers, the Australian Catholic bishops. In that comparatively short time, the Eastern Catholic Churches in Australia have passed from being listed as migrant chaplaincies to being accepted as integral Churches within the Cattolica.

We have been singularly blessed in the friendship of the Australian Roman Catholic bishops and priests who have journeyed with us through the transformation from those migrant chaplaincies to eparchies and dioceses. And of course, we still note the great fraternal kindness with which the Roman Catholic hierarchs care for Eastern Catholics who do not have their own bishops, and who are dependent upon the local Catholic bishop.

The journey we have made together is why I can celebrate the Byzantine Divine Liturgy today in this especially significant place for the Australian Catholic Church and do so with a bishop of the Maronite Syriac tradition and another of the Roman Catholic tradition.

And what you see today is indeed the theme that I would share with you today, the unity of the Church which is made manifest in the diverse ways in which the faith is held and proclaimed, and in which the Household of the faith lives the life in Christ.

Many, perhaps even most, do not know that for the first millennium the canonical borders throughout Christendom were more fluid than we imagine as we look back over a second millennium of ecclesiastical myopia backed up by the occasional diatribe and excommunication.

To the question of to what church do you belong, a somewhat perplexed Christian of the first millennium, would have replied but there is only one Church….even if he or she understood that this one Church did things differently across ethnic and cultural traditions, there was only Christendom.

One of the great difficulties that we face is our tendency to be content with the status quo, all of us have heard of the decision maker, sometimes even bishops, whose response to unwanted challenges is, let’s leave that to my successor. I wonder how often we admit even to ourselves that the present challenge is for us, here and now, and it is not sent to us to be simply filed away for future reference.

For many people there is a pious commitment to fulfill the last wishes of a beloved parent or friend who has died. I wonder how many of us truly take to heart the words of the Prayer offered by our Lord at the Last and Mystical Supper,

“That they all may be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:21)

How quick we are to ensure the dying wishes of others are fulfilled, and yet so often the wishes of Jesus, on the eve of his Pascha, are studied as linguistic exercises rather than commands binding upon us, profound poetry to be studied but not necessarily lived.

The expression one occasionally hears to describe the ideal state of the Church, especially amongst the students of the first millennium, is very simple, The Undivided Church. As Catholics, East and West, we have that blessing, it is not a vague memory or an imperfect condition inherited from distant past, it is with us today; it is here as we celebrate this Divine Liturgy.

We should, at every opportunity, seek to make that oneness ever more certain before the world. I would suggest that here in Australia, we can make a valuable contribution to the journey to the one Eucharist with the Orthodox Churches, our sister Churches, by working towards the regularisation of the date of Easter and that as a pressing need, and not simply something to be left to our successors.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference is a truly effective sign of the place of the Eastern Churches in the Australian Church, we have a member in the Permanent Commission, direct involvement in the several commissions and committees, and one of our Byzantine Catholic bishops is also a cardinal.

The challenge presented by the date of Easter, has been addressed several times by the Holy Father, who has often expressed his desire for the matter to be resolved. He did so during his pilgrimage to Nicaea where he said that the present situation often "divides families and weakens the credibility of our witness to the Gospel". His Holiness has repeatedly expressed the hope that a common Easter date be proposed sooner rather than later.

In seeking a resolution of the so-called “paschal controversy” we are following the example of the Holy Father and supporting him in his mission to confirm the brethren. As we consider the situation of the Undivided Church in Australia, I would simply encourage each of us to avoid the easy solution, “I’ll leave that to my successor.”

The late Holy Father, Pope St John Paul II, spoke of the Church needing to breathe with both lungs. It is an especially vivid image. That surely is the role of the Eastern Catholic Churches, to be the living proof that a Church can be Catholic without abandoning the inheritance of the first millennium.

Perhaps for some, in whatever Catholic ministry and of whatever Church sui juris, the temptation to complacency reveals itself in not considering the full manifestation of the Undivided Church, the Cattolica. We simply settle down to the status quo; we leave it at that. The mission to strengthen and demonstrate the unity of the Household of the Faith is not optional, nor is it the exclusive task of the clergy, it is a vocation to which every believer is called.

As Pope Benedict XV wrote in his 1917 encyclical Dei Providentis,

"The Church of Jesus Christ is neither Latin nor Greek nor Slav, but Catholic; accordingly, she makes no difference between her children; and Greeks, Latins, Slavs and members of all other nations are equal in the eyes of the Apostolic See."

In Australia, we are blessed that the Catholic Church has lived and continues to live this ideal.