21st Sunday in Ordinary Time – St Helens – 2026
Mass and blessing of the altar
There are some things in a church which we notice immediately. We notice the crucifix. We notice the stained glass. We notice the statues and the sanctuary. But today our attention is drawn to something which can sometimes seem so familiar that we almost cease to notice it.
The altar.
Today, in this small Catholic church here in St Helens, we do something very beautiful. We bless this altar. And in doing so we are reminded that this altar is not simply a piece of church furniture. It tells us something about who we are, and even more importantly, it points us towards the One in whom we believe.
The Gospel today gives us that wonderful moment when Jesus asks his disciples: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
They give him various answers. Then Jesus makes the question personal: “But you, who do you say I am?”
Peter answers: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
It is one of Peter’s great moments.
And we know there were other moments which were not so great. Peter could be wonderfully wise, and at other times he could get it completely wrong. We shall hear that next week and we will hear Jesus give Peter a pretty sharp rebuke.
And that is why the keys in today’s Gospel are so important.
What are the keys which Jesus entrusts to Peter, the keys which open the Kingdom of Heaven?
Ultimately, the key is Jesus himself.
The Second Vatican Council beautifully teaches that Christ is “the key, the centre and the purpose of the whole of human history” (Gaudium et Spes n. 10).
And today this newly blessed altar says precisely the same thing.
Christ is the centre.
In a few moments this altar will be blessed. From this day forward it will have but one great purpose. Here the sacrifice of Christ will be sacramentally present. Here bread and wine will become for us the Body and Blood of the Lord. Here Christ will feed his people.
That is why an altar is traditionally kissed by the priest. It is why we reverence it. It is why we gather around it. The altar represents Christ himself.
There is something particularly moving about blessing or dedicating an altar in a small Catholic community.
We began our Mass singing of the ends of the earth seeing the salvation of our God. St Helens may seem a long way from some of the great centres of the world. But there are no edges to the Church when Christ is at the centre.
The same Eucharist celebrated in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome is celebrated here. The same Lord who fed Peter and the first disciples feeds his people in St Helens. The same Christ who has sustained generations of Catholics is present among us.
And perhaps that is the real beauty of today.
An altar is fixed and solid. Life often is not.
We come to the altar with our joys and our grief. We come carrying the people we love. We come when life has gone wonderfully well and when we do not quite know what to do next.
And Christ gives himself to us. He is bread for us. He gives himself:
“This is my body.”
“This is my blood.”
We come to this altar to receive Christ so that we might carry Christ from this church into St Helens and beyond. We are fed here so that our lives might become Eucharistic lives, lives given in love.
And when we leave Mass today singing a new song to the Lord, the new song is not simply the hymn on our lips.
The new song is the life we take through those doors.
For from this altar Christ sends us out, so that even here, on this beautiful eastern edge of Tasmania, all the ends of the earth may see the salvation of our God.
Most Rev. Anthony J Ireland
Archbishop of Hobart
23 August 2026