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19th Sunday in Year A – 13 August 2023
Many years ago, in a little Californian fishing village, I picked up a small poster which reads, “Dear God, help me; the sea is so wide, and my boat is so small.” None of us would doubt that life is sometimes turbulent and often chaotic. In fact, the ocean is good metaphor for how we experience life. At times, it seems calm and full of invitation; on other occasions, it is full of threat and a fearful place. For the people of the Scriptures, particularly, the ocean was a symbol more of chaos than anything. It was the place of darkness and uncertainty – the place of hidden monsters. The…
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Feast of the Transfiguration – Sunday 6 August 2023
I recall once, in a previous parish, having to deal with a terrible termite infestation. One of the rooms in the parish office needed particular attention. I was standing there, looking down at the boards hollowed out by the voracious termites, admittedly feeling rather crestfallen at the implications, when the technician, explaining in great detail the procedures he was implementing, suddenly sparked, “I just love my job!” His exclamation, which was clearly sincerely felt, was like a real ray of light into my anxiety. His enthusiasm for the technology that is behind the system we were considering implementing, and his obvious joy at what he was accomplishing in the termination…
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17th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 30 July 2023
Once upon a time there was an old man who lived on the outskirts of a town.[1] He had lived there so long that no one knew who he was or where he had come from. Some said that once he had been very powerful, a king, but that was long ago. Others said no, he was once very wealthy and generous, but without much now. Others said, no, he was wise and influential, and some even said he was holy. But the children just thought he was a stupid old man and they made his life miserable. They threw stones at his windows, left dead cats on his doorstep, ripped up the garden, and shouted…
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Commissioning of Parish Pilgrims to WYD Lisbon – 20 July 2023
In Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, one of the main characters, Sam, says at one stage, “We shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered,…
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16th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 23 July 2023
We don’t need to be following the news for very long without coming to the recognition that evil exists. We think of the atrocities of war; of the moral dysfunctionality of our own society. However, of course, evil not only exists in the situations of notoriety that occur in the world. We also know that evil exists in ourselves, even if in more subtle ways: when we do not treat others as their dignity deserves; when we use others for our own purposes; when we forget the accountability that is placed on each of us to live with integrity and truthfulness. Perhaps when we focus on our own failings, we can tend to underestimate…
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Trinity Sunday – 4 June 2023
The Feast of the Trinity that we celebrate this Sunday brings us to the very question about the image of God that we have. As Christians, we imagine God as Trinity. The Trinity is the central mystery of our Christian faith: the uniquely Christian understanding of God that we have. No other symbol captures our Christian experience of God which is at one and the same time of wild urgency and delicate intimacy. How else can this experience of God as wild urgency and delicate intimacy, this experience of God as so deeply and overwhelmingly relational, be expressed than through this image of a Tri-unity. Through Jesus we have dared to imagine God as Trinity,…
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Pentecost Sunday – 28 May 2023
In ancient times it was the sacred task of the women in Aboriginal tribes during the gray, wet winter months to carry the fire. Fire meant life. In the drizzle and the damp that we associate with the winter months, it was, of course, not possible to start fires at every new campsite. The fire had to be carried. This was achieved by maintaining hot coals in shell cones bartered from the coastal people. Upon setting up camp the coals could be enflamed into life. It is not difficult to imagine what a vital and important duty it was to carry those shells with the coals inside them, carefully and with a great sense…
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Ascension Sunday – 21 May 2023
We are often used to saying, “distance makes the heart grow fonder.” Sometimes, though, we are not so sure. We know how long-distance friendships or relationships suffer for lack of contact, it seems that the saying is true only when actually come into contact with each other from time to time, or when we are constantly reminded of the one we love. Then, the separation we experience with someone we love does act to deepen our love. This is why the photos of those we love but who have died become so important to us. Our constant reminder of them through these symbols means that our love does not extinguish but that, in fact, our…
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Sixth Sunday of Easter – 14 May 2023 (Mothers’ Day)
On an extensive property midway between Condobolin and Lake Cargellico, some 800km west of Sydney, a Kenthurst man, Walter Brachmann, has built the most beautiful shrine dedicated to Christ the King. It is an extraordinary enterprise: out in the back of nowhere, on the edge of the immense Australian desert, stands this majestic little chapel. I have come to know of it because a friend of mine, a Franciscan brother Dominic Levak has taken up residence there, living the life of a hermit. Dominic spends the day in the saturation of the stillness and silence of the vast Australian outback, tending to simple chores, reaching out to a local aboriginal…
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Fifth Sunday of Easter – 7 May 2023
Is one lifetime enough? Well, some of us I am sure would answer, “Absolutely!” Others of us would not be so sure. To some people immortality is at its best a doubtful blessing. Others find it downright undesirable. There was one man who wrote his own epitaph. It said, “Don’t bother me now; don’t bother me ever. I want to be dead forever and ever.” Clearly, in the minds of some people this one life is enough. They do not want, nor do they see, the necessity for another. That attitude may seem strange to us, even repugnant. Yet perhaps all of us have had moments where we have thought…
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