Corpus Christi 2026 at South Hobart

Sunday 9am Mass at St Francis Xavier Parish, South Hobart

Dear friends one and all,

This morning we gather with hearts that are heavy.

Only a fortnight ago this church was filled with joy. You celebrated Pentecost together. You gave thanks for the newly refurbished hall with its beautiful images of the life of St Francis of Assisi. There was laughter, conversation, hope and gratitude.

And now we gather in sorrow.

Your parish priest, Father Michael Tate, died on Friday.

For almost nine years he stood at this altar. He baptised your children and grandchildren. He buried your dead. He preached the Gospel. He challenged you, inspired you, and he walked beside you.

Today, as we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi, this parish family mourns.

And yet there is something deeply providential about the fact that Father Michael has died on the eve of this great feast.

Because Corpus Christi is the feast of memory.

In the first reading Moses tells the people of Israel: “Remember.”

Remember the desert and remember the manna.

Remember the God who carried you when you could not carry yourselves.

The Eucharist is the Church’s great act of remembrance. It is not nostalgia nor merely looking backwards. The Eucharist is a living memory.

Whenever we gather around the altar, Christ makes present his saving love. Calvary becomes present. The Risen Lord becomes present.

The Eucharist reminds us of who we are and whose we are.

And this morning, standing here in St Francis Xavier’s Church, memory surrounds us.

Every corner of this parish bears the imprint of Father Michael.

The hall behind us, adorned with those magnificent scenes from the life of St Francis which he lovingly brought from Assisi.

The affordable housing project inspired by Pope Francis’s vision that the Church should be a field hospital for the wounded of the world.

The Camino to St James at Cygnet, which has helped countless people discover that faith is not simply a set of ideas but a pilgrimage.

This entire parish is, in a sense, a living memory of Father Michael’s priesthood.

But if we knew Father Michael at all, he would not want us to stop there.

Because for him the Church was never a museum preserving memories.

It was always a workshop of the Holy Spirit, always becoming, always reaching further, always dreaming.

Even recently he spoke to me about his next great vision.

Not a building project, not a program, a spirituality.

A Franciscan centre where young and old could learn how to care for creation not merely as an environmental issue but as a sacred gift entrusted to us by God. A place where people could discover, through St Francis of Assisi, that creation is not something to exploit but something to receive with gratitude and wonder.

Even at eighty years of age, Father Michael was still dreaming and looking beyond the horizon.

That was one of the remarkable things about him.

Tasmania has known him as many things.

A brilliant legal academic.

A senator.

A Minister for Justice.

An ambassador to the Holy See.

A public intellectual.

A priest.

But you knew him as something more intimate:

You knew him as your pastor and soul friend.

And that is perhaps the highest title of all.

Today’s Gospel takes us to the heart of the mystery that shaped his life.

Jesus says:

“I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.”

The Eucharist was not simply something Father Michael celebrated.

It was the source from which he lived.

Week after week, year after year, he stood at this altar and repeated those astonishing words:

“This is my Body.”

“This is my Blood.”

And gradually, as happens with every faithful priest, his own life became caught up in those words.

The Eucharist does that.

It takes ordinary lives and transforms them into gifts.

Today’s second reading says: “Though there are many of us, we form a single body because we all share in this one loaf.”

How fitting those words are today.

This parish family is hurting.

You have lost someone you loved.

Yet the Eucharist reminds us that death does not have the final word.

The communion we share in Christ is stronger than death itself.

The Body of Christ stretches beyond this church, beyond this city, beyond this world.

Father Michael now entrusts himself entirely to the mercy of the Lord whom he served.

And we entrust him into those hands as well.

May the Lord whom Father Michael served so faithfully welcome him to that heavenly banquet where every dream finds its fulfilment, every camino/pilgrimage reaches its destination, and every hunger is satisfied forever.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.

And let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.

Amen.

Most Rev. Anthony J. Ireland
Archbishop of Hobart
7 June 2026