A loved shepherd feeds his sheep one last time.
A packed cathedral on a hot autumn night saw a crowd of over a thousand people spill out onto surrounding lawns to catch a glimpse on giant television screens of Perth’s farewell to Archbishop Barry Hickey on Tuesday night 6 March.
Also on hand were a score of WA’s top political and religious leaders including Premier Colin Barnett and various MPs, Anglican Archbishop Roger Herft, Rabbi David Freilich from the Perth Hebrew Congregation and Coptic Orthodox Priest Fr Abram Abdelmalek, among others.
But whatever his own feelings on the occasion might have been, Archbishop Hickey was a bishop to the very end of his time as Archbishop of Perth, keeping his emotional cards close to his chest and the gaze of the congregation focused squarely on the Mass.
Taking his cue from the readings for the second Tuesday of Lent he took up Christ’s warnings about the religion of the Pharisees and the dangers of Christians lapsing into hypocrisy in his homily, keeping the first part of the evening strictly liturgical.
In the same cathedral in which he had ordained nearly 100 men to the priesthood in the last 15 years, it was a classic Archbishop Hickey homily, delivered in measured tones with each point quietly but carefully emphasized and delivered.
And yet perhaps divine providence was subtly intervening in its own unscripted way.
The first reading taken from the prophet Isaiah called the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah to repent and turn back to God by being just, helping the oppressed, reaching out to the orphan and pleading for the widow.
In an almost eery way the virtues demanded by the prophet seemed to reflect the life of a Catholic prelate well-known for his concern for society’s downtrodden and marginalised.
The moment when an Aboriginal man came forward onto the sanctuary of the cathedral and played the didgeridoo during the preparation of the gifts seemed to evoke Archbishop Hickey’s lifelong sense of empathy and concern for Australia’s indigenous people, many of whom he has buried well before their time over his more-than 53 years of life as a priest, a bishop and an archbishop.
Mass, as it has been celebrated on every occasion since he was appointed Archbishop of Perth, proceeded one could almost say unremarkably.
The faithful prayed, the choir sang – gorgeously – over a thousand people sensed they were present at a historic moment in the life of the Catholic Church in Western Australia.
And as the faithful came forward to receive either communion or a blessing and on his final occasion as Archbishop of Perth, in the cathedral he can rightly say he completed, Barry James Hickey came forward at communion to feed his sheep one last time.