Archbishop to youth: ‘The life we give away is the life we keep’

By Heather Excell

“The only thing we take with us when we die is what we have given away.”

With those words, first spoken by the late Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, Archbishop Tony Ireland encouraged the young adults gathered for the Big Pub Night at the New Sydney Hotel on 6 August to embrace the Gospel paradox that the life given away is the life that cannot be destroyed.

Held on the Feast of the Transfiguration and during National Vocations Awareness Week, Archbishop Tony reflected on how an encounter with Christ transforms a person from within and reveals the purpose for which they were created.

Drawing on the account of the Transfiguration, he noted that when the Father spoke from the cloud, His instruction was simple: “Listen to him.”

“This is where Christian vocation begins,” Archbishop Tony said.

Acknowledging the rapid pace of change in today’s world, Archbishop Tony challenged young people to look beyond external success and ask a deeper question.

“We have become very good at changing things around us. A new phone changes your pocket. A new job changes your routine. A new address changes where you live,” he said.

“Transformation asks something much deeper: Who are you becoming?”

Reflecting on St Paul’s words to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” he explained that true transformation comes through an encounter with Jesus Christ, who gradually shapes people into His own likeness.

Archbishop Tony also encouraged those present to see vocation not simply as a choice of career or state of life, but as a response to God’s invitation to give themselves in love, whether through marriage, priesthood, religious life or faithful Christian witness in everyday work.

Turning to the Gospel account of the feeding of the five thousand, he reflected on Jesus’ use of the disciples’ five loaves and two fish.

“He does not ask them to produce what they do not have. He asks them to bring what they do have,” Archbishop Tony said. “Jesus could have fed the crowd without the apostles. But he chooses to involve them. That is vocation. God does not need us. Yet astonishingly, he chooses to work through us.”

Archbishop Tony reflected on the witness of the late Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận, who wrote Five Loaves and Two Fish after enduring 13 years of imprisonment.

He said Cardinal Văn Thuận came to realise that God first calls people to Himself, rather than simply to the work they hope to accomplish for Him. Through his years in prison, he discovered that the important question is not how much we have in our hands, but whether we are willing to place it into the hands of Christ.

“The great tragedy would not be to reach the end of life without having accumulated enough,” Archbishop Tony said. “The tragedy would be to reach the end carrying gifts that were meant to be given away.”

Archbishop Tony concluded by reminding those gathered that “nothing given in love is ever really lost.”

“Because in the end,” he said, “the life we give away is the life we truly keep.”