Members of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference gathered in Mary MacKillop Memorial Chapel on May 11 for a Mass celebrated in the Melkite tradition.

Melkite bishop Robert Rabbat led the Mass with prayers in English and Arabic. The Mass was concelebrated by all the bishops with Archbishop Anthony Randazzo and Maronite Bishop Antoine-Charbel Tarabay assisting at the altar.

Celebrating Mass in an Eastern Church tradition has become a regular part of the ACBC plenary program.

Bishop Robert became Eparch of the Melkite Church in Australia, New Zealand and All Oceania in 2011.

He told the bishops that since the 1960s the Eastern Catholic Churches in Australia had journeyed from “being listed as migrant chaplaincies to being accepted as integral Churches within the Cattolica”.

“The journey we have made together is why I can celebrate the Byzantine Divine Liturgy today in this especially significant place for the Australian Catholic Church and do so with a bishop of the Maronite Syriac tradition and another of the Roman Catholic tradition,” Bishop Robert said.

“And what you see today is indeed the theme that I would share with you today, the unity of the Church which is made manifest in the diverse ways in which the faith is held and proclaimed, and in which the Household of the faith lives the life in Christ.”

He said Christians of the first millennium, when asked which Church they belonged to, would have replied “but there is only one Church”.

“I wonder how many of us truly take to heart  the words of the prayer offered by our Lord at the Last and Mystical Supper: ‘That they all may be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that you have sent me.’” (John 17:21)

He urged his fellow bishops to “seek to make that oneness ever more certain before the world”.

“I would suggest that here in Australia we can make a valuable contribution to the journey to the one Eucharist with the Orthodox Churches, our sister Churches, by working towards the regularisation of the date of Easter – and that as a pressing need, not simply something to be left to our successors,” Bishop Robert said.

“The challenge presented by the date of Easter has been addressed several times by the Holy Father, who has often expressed his desire for the matter to be resolved.

“He did so during his pilgrimage to Nicaea where he said that the present situation often ‘divides families and weakens the credibility of our witness to the Gospel’.

“His Holiness has repeatedly expressed the hope that a common Easter date be proposed sooner rather than later.

“In seeking a resolution of the so-called ‘paschal controversy’ we are following the example of the Holy Father and supporting him in his mission to confirm the brethren.”

He said it was the role of the Eastern Catholic Churches “to be the living proof that a Church can be Catholic without abandoning the inheritance of the first millennium”.

“The mission to strengthen and demonstrate the unity of the Household of the Faith is not optional, nor is it the exclusive task of the clergy, it is a vocation to which every believer is called,” Bishop Robert said.

(Image of Bishop Robert Rabbat courtesy of Paul Osborne/Australian Catholic Bishops Conference)