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Second Sunday of Advent – 10 December 2023
Frog was in his garden. Toad came walking by, “What a fine garden you have, Frog,” he said. “Yes,” said Frog. “it is very nice, but it was hard work.” “I wish I had a garden,” said Toad. “Here are some flower seeds. Plant them in the ground,” said Frog, “and soon you will have a garden.” “How soon?” asked Toad, “Quite soon,” said Frog. Toad ran home. He planted the flower seeds. “Now seeds,” said Toad, “start growing.” Toad walked up and down a few times. The seeds did not start to grow. Toad put his head close to the ground and said loudly, “Now seeds, start growing!” Toad looked at the ground again. The seeds did…
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First Sunday of Advent – 3 December 2023
There is a magic in every beginning, wrote the German philosopher Herman Hesse.[1] How true this is when we experience the birth of our children, when we hold a newborn baby in our arms, when we delight in the pure wonder and sense of play evidenced in young children. When we gaze upon a child we are caught intensely between an immediate experience of the present and a heightened expectation of the future. And I think it is true that in every child, God waits for us to stir again within us the sense of new beginnings, of fresh possibilities, of awakening hopes. The invitation that God sets before us is to become…
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Solemnity of Christ the King – 26 November 2023
During a week, we are confronted with many different types of power. Almost daily, through different situations, we read about the power of political might, the power of wealth and the power of evil. Such power, particularly when it is displayed dramatically, shocks us – although sometimes it can act to seduce us. On this Sunday – the last in the Church’s liturgical year, the feast of Christ the King – we come together, however, celebrating another power: the power of the Kingdom of God, the power of Jesus the Christ. And in the face of all other forms of power, we say that this alone is the power in which we put our…
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32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 12 November 2023
The well-known anthropologist of the mid–twentieth century, Joseph Campbell, who became quite popularised in recent times, was once asked what was the one piece of advice he would give to someone setting out in life. His reply was simple: “Follow your bliss!” Regretfully, a good deal of Campbell’s work has been commandeered by exponents in New Age Spirituality, and this little saying “Follow your bliss” has got interpreted at the service of a kind of self-enhancement where the self is the arbiter of all that is right. But what Campbell was really getting at was that our vocation in life is known through that which gives us a sense of life, of enthusiasm, of…
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30th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 29 October 2023
One of the most poignant memories I have of my mother’s funeral was the gesture that my father spontaneously enacted on the occasion. During the Lord’s Prayer he simply stood out from the pew and went and stood with his hands on my mother’s coffin and prayed the Our Father for the last time together with her. It was a beautiful gesture reflecting their very long partnership of over 61 years. My parents enjoyed a long partnership. But at the same time their partnership had not been without its difficulties. In fact, for many years I think it was, for different reasons, no small struggle. Indeed, some of my own earliest memories were…
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29th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 22 October 2023
It is the time of tax, one of the two certain things in our life. It is also a period where politics and economics are at the centre of our conversation. In the midst of the economic and political turmoil around us at the moment, this word of the gospel comes to us: a word about the interrelationship between the things of Caesar and the things of God, about the things of government and the things of religion. How do they sit together? These questions are certainly not new, but from time to time they arise with a greater sense of urgency. Often our memory of when they have arisen in the past can help us…
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Diocesan Liturgy of Lament for the crime of sexual abuse in the Church – 12 October 2023
We gather this evening again as we have for the past 7 years to demonstrate our shame at the hurt inflicted in our community of faith by those in positions of leadership and trust. We express our sorrow, and we renew our commitment to foster communities known for their accountability, safety and care. Just as the project of national Reconciliation which takes its own turn this Saturday is not an occasional matter that once achieved can be put aside and relegated to the archives, so too our Lament for the crime of sexual abuse within our Church. It is not something expressed and moved on from: it is our way of being…
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27th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 8 October 2023
I am sure that some of us have heard of the clergyman who lived in a town that was hit by a major flood. The water was a foot deep in his living room. Some parishioners in a boat rowed up to his door, asking them to join him. “No, go ahead,” he said. “I’ll be just fine. God is taking care of me.” So, they left. Then the water rose to the second floor. Back came the anxious parishioners in the boat. And they asked him to join them. Again, he refused. By the time the boat came back once more, the house had been completely engulfed and the clergyman was standing on his chimney. “Father,” his parishioners…
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26th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 1 October 2023
On one of my very first visits to Sydney I was taken by a friend who works with homeless youth to some of the places in which such young people live and hang out. I recall the time I was with them around a campfire near St. Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst. They had got the campfire going from some curbside formwork and were preparing to shelter against a winter Sydney night. Most of them were on drugs of some kind, many of them prostituting – all of them with background stories of enormous tragedy. And yet, as I left them that night I could not but be struck by the…
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25th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 24 September 2023
We often say religion and politics don’t mix. And it is true we must be careful to avoid the politicization of religious faith in such a way that religious faith becomes a vehicle to achieve political ends. However, at the same time, paradoxically we can never separate faith and politics as if we can behave one way in an internal world of spirituality and another way in the external world of civic affairs. Politics is about choices, and the choices we, ourselves, make cannot but be informed by our discipleship of the Lord. This will be something very important to consider carefully as we approach the forthcoming Referendum on constitutional change.…
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