• Year C

    30th Sunday of Year C

    Sebastian Moore, the English Benedictine writer, once wrote that we need conversion not so much from sin, as from innocence.[1] It was a curious declaration: we need conversion not so much from sin, as from innocence. What may he have meant by this enigmatic pronouncement? Perhaps, he was alluding to the aspect of us that wants to have everything and everyone perfect, the part of us that expects everything about us and around us to be ideal, and the need to let this go. How easily we demand that our relationships, our marriages and our families be ideal even as we struggle in the recognition that they are far from so.…

  • Occasional

    Annual Broken Bay Catholic Schools Mission Mass – Our Lady of the Rosary Cathedral, Waitara

    Matthew 5: 1-12 “The Beatitudes” I am sure that many of our parents remember the first words we spoke. For our parents these words were memorable – especially if they were about them! The first words we utter are a mighty achievement. But then the first words a person speaks in a new role, too, always have a great significance about them. We think of the first speech of a member of Parliament or a president. Without putting too much pressure on him, we are looking forward to the first homily of Bishop Anthony, though some of us may have already watched his first greeting to us after the announcement…

  • Year C

    29th Sunday of Year C

    The Admission to the Ministry of Acolyte of Hien Vu and Martino Hoang The Admission to the Ministry of Lector of Shane Hyland Luke 8: 1-18 There can be many times in our lives when we know the temptation to lose heart. Sometimes life’s events simply take away our strength to keep hoping.  And we incline to despair. Yet this Sunday we are told a story by Jesus about never losing heart. It seems that we are to be like the importune woman, while God is presented like the judge who eventually gives in to our persistence.   Yet, perhaps there is another way of looking at the story Jesus tells us.  …

  • Occasional

    Mass for Clergy Jubilarians – Our Lady of the Rosary Cathedral, Waitara

    As I may have shared with some of you previously, I have had the fortune of once being able to visit the island of Malta upon which Paul had been shipwrecked on his way to Rome. I realized on Malta that the texts of Paul’s time there were not simply historical in character but were, in fact, highly elaborate commentaries, not simply on Paul, but on the Church itself for which Paul is presented as a metaphor.  The actual account of Paul’s shipwreck detailed in the chapter 27 of the Acts of the Apostles teaches us this in a very particular way. Taking the peculiarities of the chapter into account…

  • Addresses

    Holy Spirit, Discernment and Discipleship – Twilight Reflection with Catholic Youth Broken Bay, Pennant Hills

    The Holy Spirit: Who exactly is it? “The wind blows wherever it pleases,” says Jesus. “You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8)  Jesus speaks of the Spirit has something transparent but something also as something that is experienced. The Spirit is transparent like the wind or like a breath.  There are the two images of the Spirit, in fact, with which we are presented at the Festival of Pentecost:  a forceful wind which shook the house, fire to enflame cold hearts and enable the disciples with courage and confidence.   Yet, in the…

  • Occasional

    Homily for the Concluding Mass of the 27th General Chapter of the Sisters of St Joseph – Baulkham Hills

    “Christ is alive! He is our hope, and in a wonderful way he brings youth to our world, and everything he touches becomes young, new, full of life.”[1] So does Pope Francis begin his recent letter to the young people of the world. Yes, “Christ is alive! . . . The one who fills us with his grace, the one who liberates us, transforms us, heals and consoles us is someone fully alive. He is the Christ, risen from the dead, filled with supernatural life and energy, and robed in boundless light . . . Because he did not only come in the past, but he comes to you today and every…

  • Year C

    28th Sunday of Year C

    In his book, “Beyond Belief,” Hugh Mackay, the Australian social researcher outlines the deep vein of ambivalence about religion that runs through Australian society: on the one hand many Australians do not actively worship, yet they still like to see local churches operating, and we still turn to churches to baptise our children and to educate them.[1]  Around two thirds of Australians say we believe in God or some ‘higher power’, but fewer than one in ten of us attend church weekly.  So those of us gathered here for Mass are an extraordinary minority no matter how mainstream we might consider ourselves to be.  And all of his means 90% of the population…

  • Occasional

    Broken Bay Diocesan Bible Conference Opening Mass – Friday 11 October 2019 (Luke 11: 15-26)

    It was once suggested to the Nobel laureate Patrick White that he enter psychoanalysis. He flatly refused because he said that if he got rid of his demons then his spark of genius would evaporate. Somewhere we have to learn how to live with our demons rather than simply get rid of them.  And by this, I mean, that we have to learn how to live with what we consider to be flaws in our personality, vulnerabilities in our make-up.  We have to let go of a frenetic attempt at perfection in which we seek to become somehow flaw-less.  It’s not the presence of flaws that is actually the problem for us; it…

  • Year C

    27th Sunday of Year C

    Jesus was a great story-teller, and as a story-teller of his time in 1st centrury Palestine he knew the means that a story-teller used to convey the meaning of what he wished ot share.  One of those techniques is hyperbole: something is overstated in order to make a point. It was an excellent technique in an oral culture, used to the art of storytelling. The hyperbole, itself, is not to be taken literally. People would go away and remember the over-statement and in time understand what was being said underneath. The use of juxtaposition is another technique: two statements are put aside each other, one informing and opening up the meaning of…

  • Reflections

    What might the Church of the future look like where young people have a voice? – Notes for the Panel Keynote for the 2019 BENet Conference, Glebe

    I can only answer the question from my limited context: Australian, Western, male – informed by my Cistercian background but also by my own current role of leadership for a diocese. I cannot speak for every context. For my reflections I draw principally from Christus Vivit– the recent Apostolic Exhortation to the Youth of the World by Pope Francis, and a 2017 presentation by a young woman of our Diocese of Broken Bay, Ashleigh Green, an appointed observer at the Synod on Youth that is the precedent to Christus Vivit.[1] If we wish to answer the question I recommend a careful reading of the Exhortation – it really presents as a portrait of…

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