The 2025 Chrism Mass was held on the 10th of April at the Cathedral of St Stephen. You can watch the livestream of this Mass and read the transcript of the Archbishop’s homily below.
The story is told of an ancient Greek city. At its founding, the citizens had to choose which of the gods was to be their patron. The short list came down to two: Poseidon and Athena, both of whom were put to the test. Poseidon produced a spring of water, but it turned out to be salty and unsuited to human use. Athena however produced an olive tree, which was found to be useful for many reasons. So she was chosen as patron of the city, which was named Athens in her honour.
But the olive spread far beyond Athens – to every corner of the Mediterranean world and even to Australia, “a taste older than meat, older than wine”, it has been said; or according to the Italians, “as good as bread”. Good for cooking and eating, but also for lighting, healing, soothing, cleansing and who knows what else.
Not surprisingly, the Bible – itself a product of Mediterranean culture – also saw the olive as God’s gift. Speaking to God we will say this evening: “In the beginning you commanded the earth to bring forth fruit-bearing trees, among which the olive tree would arise as provider of this most rich oil”. So whether it be the goddess of Athens or the God of the Bible, the olive and its oil are seen as heaven’s gift.
Yet seen from another angle olive oil could hardly be more ordinary. It is everywhere in the Mediterranean world; no household would be without it. The lands of the Mediterranean float on a sea of olive oil, which becomes one of the great emblems of the ordinary containing the extraordinary. Divine it may be in its origin, but intensely human it is in its use.
It’s this marriage of the extraordinary and the ordinary which draws the Bible to olive oil as a symbol, since the story of the Scripture is the story of God who is immersed in something as ordinary as human history and who will eventually take flesh in the Incarnation, a God who is endlessly available.
But the Bible is drawn to olive oil as symbol for other reasons as well. Olive oil is mild in its taste and its working, yet potent in its effects and its range of use. It’s this blend of gentleness and power which draws the Bible to it as symbol of the Spirit of God, since for Scripture the divine Spirit is both gentle and powerful, a combination not often found in this world.
For the same reason, the Bible uses dew as a symbol of the Spirit of God, as do the Fathers of the Church and even our Second Eucharistic Prayer which asks that the Spirit come upon the gifts “like the dewfall”. In the dry land of the Bible, dew was and is a vital source of moisture; its working is gentle but its effects are powerful.
The same is true of the Spirit of God. The Spirit is both comforter and disrupter – gentle in comfort but powerful in disruption. The Spirit can heal wounds but also shake foundations; it can enlighten but also lead us into darkness; it is the fire which creates but also destroys.
Anointed with the oil of the Spirit, the Church is called, like Christ himself, the Anointed One, to be both gentle and powerful in bringing good news to the poor, binding up broken hearts, proclaiming freedom to captives. This means shunning the power of this world, grotesque demonstrations of which we see at this time. The Church is called to embrace instead the power of the Cross, the power of the Crucified, which is not only gentle but weak, utterly weak yet utterly potent, able to turn the world on its head, to turn the tomb to a womb, death to life. It is to this that our anointing with “the oil of gladness” points, especially for those who have been anointed not only in baptism but also in ordination. Many of them will renew their ordination promises this evening, and for their ministry we give thanks to God whose gift to us they are.
We have no idea what wood the cross of Jesus was made of; but symbolically it is the olive tree of which Jesus is the fruit. The fruit must be crushed to yield its oil, and Jesus is crushed on the Cross, the crushing foreshadowed in Gethsemane, which means olive-press. The crushing begins in the Kedron valley and will be complete on the hill of Calvary.
From the Cross and the Crucified, the “most rich oil” flows forth for ever, even into the Church in Brisbane, gently and powerfully. It touches the palate of our soul; it seeps through the pores of our skin; it soothes the wounds of our heart; it lights up the dark places deep within.
It also commissions and empowers, which is why in the Bible priests, prophets and kings are anointed. Their power comes not from themselves nor even from the people but from God. It is a power rooted in self-emptying. Oil was used in sacrifice; and the one anointed is to become a sacrifice.
From the Cross and the Crucified, there flow not only the oil from the crushed fruit but also the blood and water from the pierced side, the blood and water of the perfect sacrifice. The crushing is a self-sacrifice to which the anointed victim says yes in a way the fruit does not when consigned to the olive-press.
In the First Letter of John, we read that “there are three witnesses: the Spirit, the water and the blood who agree as one” (5:8). Tonight we join them in that witness to the extraordinary power of Christ’s sacrifice still at work in the world through the ordinary community of the anointed, the eucharistic Church.
We say yes to the oil and all it symbolises. We choose not Athena who once gave the olive tree to Athens, but Jesus who has become the olive tree for ever at the heart of the world, the tree in the middle of the garden, from which there come both the knowledge of good and evil and the gift of eternal life (cf Gen 2:9). Amen.