My Dear Sisters and Brothers,

For over a century, prophetic voices have lamented the decline of Western civilization, a decline that has become more and more apparent with the passage of time. It is said, that when Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he responded, "I think it would be a very good thing."

One of the great prophetic reformers of our time, was a little old man by the name of Angelo Roncalli, better know to us as Pope John XXIII. Elected as a stopgap, caretaker pope who would not rock the boat, he transformed forever the face of the church by quickly summonsing an ecumenical council - the Second Vatican Council.

The call for that Council came in a moment of sudden inspiration, when he found himself bathed in light while celebrating the Feast of St Paul. It was, for him, "completely unexpected, a flash of heavenly light" like the flash of light that blinded St Paul on the road to Damascus and set him on a journey in a wholly new direction.

In his opening charge to the Council, he said, " Today the Church is witnessing a crisis underway within society." That crisis, he suggested, lay at least in part, in the fact that the enormous progress in the technical and scientific fields had not been matched by "... a corresponding advance in the moral field." "Hence," he said, "there is a weakening in the aspiration toward the values of the spirit."

He was not the first, nor the last to say such things. We have all experienced at first hand the impact on the Christian faith of an increasingly secular, pragmatic, and materialistic world. But where Pope John XXIII was different, was in his confidence that "In the present order of things, divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations which ... are directed towards the fulfillment of God's superior and inscrutable designs."

And it was in this confidence that he was able to summons the Church. This new Council would not, as in the past, reaffirm its own dogmatic statements and anathematize anyone who did not accept them, but be, instead, a "pastoral" council speaking God's truth in a new way and so bring healing to a needy world. It was to be a Council upheld by prayer throughout the world - especially the prayers of the elderly, the infirm, and children - a Council seeking a fresh outpouring of God's Spirit upon the church and world which would lead to a conversion of heart and a return to God.

There are many who believe that his much needed prophetic reform was cut short by his untimely death. Be that as it may, there can be little doubt that there is still a need for the Church to find new ways of speaking God's truth to a world that is tired of hearing the old ways. And, more than ever, we need the outpouring of God's Spirit upon the church and world that will lead to a conversion of heart and a return to God. That must surely be at the heart of all our work: to speak God's truth and, in the power of the Spirit, to make it visible in our lives.

A recent edition of the Star showed a picture of a national Memorial Service in Australia for those killed in the Bali bomb-blast. It showed a procession of "angels," dressed in white robes, enormous fluffy wings and black armbands. It was, for me, a sad picture - of sincere, hurting people, engaging in a religious ritual, far more pagan than Christian, or multi-faith. And it reminded me of how deep and genuine the spiritual thirst is within our society, and of the sad fact that we, the church, seem unable to speak God's truth to that spiritual thirst.

Part of the problem, perhaps, lies in what I said in my Ad Clerum a few months back, that even though we believe, our faith is largely peripheral to our everyday lives and daily consciousness. We believe; but we live, think and act in exactly the same way and by largely the same criteria as those who do not believe. And this can be true, even for those of us working within the Church. One of our ordinands said to me recently, "I find it frightening when I look at the clergy and see how cynical many of them have become. Even the newly ordained clergy seem, within a few years of ordination, to have lost their fire and love for the Lord, and are just going through the motions."

So often, for clergy and laity alike, instead of our faith determining and driving our activities, our faith is fitted in around a frenetic lifestyle, identical to that of the world around us. We may be working for God, (which is not necessarily the same thing as doing the things of God), but our agendas and our business are no different from all the other busy people.

Instead of allowing ourselves to get caught up in the rush and busyness of daily life, we need God, rather than the world, to set our agenda. Our primary calling must surely be, to become a people formed by God through prayer and the study of scripture; a people who, from their deep intimacy with God, are able to hear the cries of the world and to respond to it with words of life. And that can only happen if we make space in our lives for it to happen. As Eugene Petersen has said, "I can be active and pray; I can work and pray; but I cannot be busy and pray. I cannot be inwardly rushed, distracted or dispersed. In order to pray, I have to be paying more attention to what God is saying to me, than to what people are saying to me; to God than to my clamoring ego. Usually, for that to happen, there must be a deliberate withdrawal from the noise of the day, a disciplined detachment from the insatiable self."

Unless we are a people constantly being formed and transformed by God, we will inevitably become cynical in the face of the demands of ministry; unless we are a people for whom Christ is our living centre informing all aspects of our lives, we have nothing to offer the world. We need to be praying for a mighty outpouring of God's Spirit upon us, upon the church and in the world that will lead to true conversion of heart and a return to God for us all.

May God bless you all and renew you in the power of the Spirit.

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