Some years ago, the actor Sean Penn produced one of the most extraordinary films I have ever watched, “Into the Wild.”  The film is based on the true story of 22-year-old Christopher McCandless who leaves his family and journeys as an itinerant across the United States, finally achieving his aspiration to experience the vastness of the Alaskan wilderness. The journey was not simply an exercise of the American pioneering spirit, as it was an exploration of the experience of isolation.  The geographical isolation in which McCandless immerses himself is a mirror of the psychological isolation in which he is entrapped. For Christopher, the isolation becomes toxic.  There is, however, a fragile moment of…

One of the most curious aspects of the ministry of Jesus is both the place that it begins and the message with which it begins.  It begins in Galilee, the territory of great oppression by the Romans.  As the writer, Miroslav Volf identifies, when Jesus begins his ministry, the Palestinian population “was suffering under the loss of national sovereignty to the Romans, as well as under a tense relationship between the Jewish aristocracy and the Herodian monarchy.  Economically, the majority were caught between the Roman and the domestic elites, both of which were competing with the other to expand their fortune, especially through taxation.  Dominated, taken advantage of, and threatened in their cultural identity,…

Pope Francis continually calls to reflect deeply on our call to become missionaries. To be a missionary we do not have to travel to a far-away land. Rather, it means entering what we are doing with soul, as the pope writes, to do what we do with purpose and passion. Then we become a missionary wherever we are: we become missionaries as mothers, as fathers; we become missionaries in our professional life. “Let us go forth, then, let us go forth to offer everyone the life of Jesus Christ.”[1] We are to re-engage in what he calls “a missionary dynamism which will bring salt and light to the world” – the same call…

It is not an uncommon story to hear people who have visited countries where poverty is visibly overwhelming, coming home and saying how happy the people whom they encountered. It confuses us. How can people who have so little, have so much? How can we who have so much, through our systems of education, health and law, have such little happiness? Our thinking identifies happiness with what we have, with what we have achieved; and yet, often enough, it seems that those who have very little are the happiest people in the world.  How can it be that happiness seems to be in proportion to what one doesn’t have?    These kinds of…

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…