Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP has been speaking this year about signs of a “second spring” of faith in Sydney.
It’s an image that’s hard to shake once you start looking: green shoots everywhere, not all fully formed, but unmistakably there.
What strikes me most is that people aren’t approaching the church the way they once did. Faith is no longer seen as a family heirloom gathering dust on the shelf.
People are asking deeper questions again – about meaning, purpose, and the good life – and they are asking the church to answer with clarity.
And grace builds on grace. We are still seeing the afterglow of World Youth Day 2008, not because of nostalgia, but because ordinary Catholics keep saying “yes” to God in the quiet, unfashionable ways that actually carry a church forward.
Across our parishes there’s a quiet but real shift: hospitality is getting warmer, evangelisation feels less like a programme and more like a habit, and people are discovering that belonging in the church isn’t a prize for the perfect but a home for the searching.
I think that is why initiatives like Alpha that are grounded in sharing a meal, focusing on Jesus, and talking freely, are so popular.
The Sydney Synod consultations confirmed this. Parishioners spoke about welcome, belonging, and mission – not because those themes were scripted, but because they have become the instincts of a church learning again how to breathe.
A big part of this rediscovery is Eucharistic. When people meet Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, other things fall into place. And from that meeting flows an instinct to take faith into the streets. That’s why processions matter. They are simple, disarming invitations: “Come and see.”
When the World Youth Day Cross and Icon returned briefly to St Mary’s Cathedral this month, passers-by stopped.
No instructions were needed; the reverence spoke for itself. Indeed, our public devotions – Walk for Christ, the Our Lady of Fatima procession – continue to gather people who long for unity and hope in a fractured world.
And the announcement of the 2028 International Eucharistic Congress has added real momentum. People can sense that something is building, and they want in.
This year also marks five years of Go Make Disciples. It hasn’t been a magic wand – and that’s not what mission ever is – but it has helped many communities make small, steady steps toward a more missionary way of living.
The Sydney Centre for Evangelisation continues to walk alongside parishes in this slow, ordinary, very human work, and even managed to launch the archdiocese’s first women’s conference along the way.
And then there is Gen Z. They’re not returning to the church; many are discovering her for the first time.
They come out of curiosity, and stay because they stumble upon beauty, reverence, and joy. Some even begin evangelising their parents. That is not a strategy; that is the Holy Spirit at work.
Of course, the church remains a field hospital, and I’m very much a patient as well as a priest.
But this is precisely her attractiveness: everybody belongs. As James Joyce had it, “Here comes everybody”– because Christ has come for everybody.
The archbishop has asked us to notice the green shoots around us. They really are there.
Our task is simple: keep saying “yes”, walk with Christ in our streets, and let the joy of the Gospel show on our faces.
Hope looks ordinary until suddenly it doesn’t. And Sydney is starting to look hopeful again.
