It’s 50 years since Fr Brian McCoy SJ was at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl when the Aboriginal Mass was celebrated during the Eucharistic Congress in Melbourne, an event he refers to as a “sustaining and life-giving memory”, reports Eureka Street.

“That Saturday afternoon,” he says, “many of us heard a strong and joyful Aboriginal Voice for the very first time. Many voices, in fact. It involved a very large number of Aboriginal people, particularly from the Kimberley of Western Australia and Northern Territory, who had come down to participate in the event – more than 150 adults, teenagers and a children’s choir.

*The Australian Aboriginal Liturgy on 24 February 1973. PHOTO: MDHC Archdiocese of Melbourne, via Eureka Street.*

“This liturgy was, for many of us who were present, the first time we had witnessed and experienced Aboriginal people expressing their Catholic faith in ways that were culturally different from our own but very significant to them. The ancient Catholic liturgy took on a new dimension of life and energy as people sang in their own language, mimed the Word of the Gospel and danced.

“That (February) 1973 event opened hearts and minds as it revealed how Christian faith was a living, relational and dynamic experience, always in the process of being invited into new depths and awareness of the sacred.

“It would be a great shame for the Catholic Church in Australia if it failed to keep listening to that voice of the Holy Spirit in this very ancient land. That voice, coming from the lived experience of Aboriginal people, can further enrich our Christian faith but also reveal how we might seek to better live and walk, carefully and respectfully together upon the land.”