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Australia Day – 26 January 2023
There is always discussion about the date of Australia Day. Is the 26th January the most appropriate day to celebrate our national identity? One imagines that every year, the discussion will re-ignite, and only time will tell how the question is resolved. However, it strikes me that the very question itself highlights an essential element of our identity as Australians. Perhaps, our identity itself is marked by a question. It is a question that is inevitable given that we are people who live in the intersection between two perspectives. And we live, unsure of how to resolve these two perspectives. In the Australian experience, the most ancient of peoples intersect with the most modern,…
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3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 22 January 2023 – Lunar New Year
One of the most characteristic features about Australia is its light. Visitors often speak of its clarity and its intensity. Even our forests with the eucalyptus canopies allow a great play of light to filter through below giving them, too, a unique character. At this time of the year the experience of light is at its strongest: we are midway through summer. Summer, according to the Australia poet, Les Murray, is in both fact and image the dominant season of the Australian year. Even in our southern places, where it is usually mild, the weight of the imagery often obscures local conditions. Although it may not be our experience this year, summer, he asserts, is the blazing…
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Memorial Mass for the late Cardinal George Pell – Our Lady of the Rosary Cathedral, Diocese of Broken Bay – 16 January 2023.
At any funeral, one of the most remarkable experiences is listening to the eulogy of the one whose life is celebrated. For a few brief moments it is like being at the window of the person’s life; something of the radical uniqueness of the person’s life, their story and their journey are glimpsed, how their life was inter-woven into the stories and journeys of others. Yet, even when we hear a eulogy, we realise that the memories being shared cannot fully capture the person who is mourned. Indeed, even our own most special memories of the one we love are but glimpses of the mystery of who they are. Yes, our memories hold…
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2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 15 January 2023
“Scapegoating” is a term we are well used to. We know the tendency of a group being assailed with problems to shift blame onto one individual. He or she must wear the group’s guilt and is sacrificed accordingly. Ordinarily, this person is ironically innocent of the group’s crime. That is also of the nature of scapegoating: there is an inherent injustice about its use -an innocent party is made to be responsible for the group’s woes. How we saw this play out in the extraordinary miscarriage of justice in Victoria in relationship to Cardinal Pell’s conviction in 2018, and indeed continuing to be played out in some of the media…
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Solemnity of the Epiphany – 8 January 2023
On New Year’s Eve last year, I was introduced to ChatGPT – the powerful, interactive search engine that is built with Artificial Intelligence. Its capacity is overwhelming, creating instant responses to questions that are as personal as they are detailed. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence to become an active partner in conversation brings us to a new threshold of the Communications Revolution. It suggests a new frontier of cyberspace. Clearly, the future belongs now to the engagement with Artificial Intelligence on a whole range of levels. It’s a brave new world. The remarkable thing, of course, about ChatGPT is just not its power to galvanise the scope of the internet,…
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1 January – Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
Recently, someone remarked to me about an exchange she had had with a lady who put the question to her, “Who made God?” “If God has made everything, who made God?” “When did God begin?” Of course, God has neither beginning nor end. God is. Yet, to imagine something that has no beginning, that has always been, is not possible to comprehend. I think it is slightly easier for us to imagine something that may have no end, for we have a glimpse of eternity in our own experience of time, but to imagine something without a start is difficult indeed. We can apprehend such a mystery, but we cannot…
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Christmas 2022
The spirit of Christmas arises this year in a way different from the previous three. The COVID virus is still with us. Yet, this Christmas we have a sense of movement and association we have not enjoyed since Christmas 2019. And yet, still we sense an uncertainty and an anxiety in the humid air. Writing recently in the Sydney Morning Herald,Michael Idato remarked, “As the old year fades away, the exhaustion is palpable. Perhaps our post-pandemic lives have not lived up to the promise of the so-called Roaring 20s. The [last] year was to be a year of renewal and rediscovery. Travel was back. The world was back. So, what…
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4th Sunday of Advent – 18 December 2022
On this the Sunday before Christmas, we light the fourth candle for Advent – the candle of peace. Over our journey we have lit candles for hope, for faith, for joy. Now, on the eve of Christmas. we do so for peace. Peace is the quality that perhaps we most often associate with Christmas. It is the quality we want to surround our coming celebration – the outcome of the lights, the gifts, the carols, our Christmas Mass, our family gathering. For a few brief moments, Christmas promises us peace. We catch our breath; we glimpse innocence; we let go of the demands of our work; we rest. That peace might…
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3rd Sunday of Advent – 11 December 2022
As we continue our Advent journey, the sense of expectation in our waiting increases. Christmas is just two weeks away! This can fill us with a sense of disbelief and dismay because of all that we consider needs to be achieved beforehand. But it can also fill us with a sense of wonder and anticipation. The outcome of wonder is joy. And so, we light the third candle of our Advent wreath – the rose-coloured candle – designated for the gift of joy that is given to us as people of both hope and faith. As those who watch for the birth of the Lord’s life in the world, we…
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2nd Sunday of Advent – 4 December 2022
We mark our journey to the Festival of Christmas by each week lighting a candle on our Advent Wreath. Each candle represents one of the blessings of Christmas: hope, faith, joy, peace and finally love that crowns all the rest. These are the true gifts of Christmas, the gifts given to us as those who seek the birthing of the life of Jesus more deeply in our hearts and in our world. In lighting each candle, we are reminded of how we are to be people of hope, faith, joy, peace and love. On this second Sunday of Advent we light our second candle, the candle signifying the gift of…
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