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Opening School Mass for Pius X College Chatswood – 11 February 2026
In 1986, an extraordinary film was released, Babette’s Feast. Babette, a French Catholic, is a Parisian chef who gets caught up in the riots in the French capital in 1871. Her husband and son are killed in the fighting. Babette is assisted to escape to Denmark where members of a strict Protestant sect take her into their remote village. The founder of the community has died, but his two daughters engage Babette as their cook. The mysterious woman assumes the nature of a servant. They have no idea who she is, or what has bought her to their home. Having been in the village for 14 years, Babette wins 10,000…
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5th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 8 February 2026
The late Jesuit Superior General, Pedro Arrupe, once commented beautifully: “What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”[1] Where is my passion? It is the question to which Jesus constantly invites us. At the very outset of the Gospel, in his very first encounter with the disciples, the conversation begins with, “What…
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4th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 1 February 2026
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? …
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Homily for Opening Staff Mass – St Pius X College – 27 January 2026
As I reflected in my Australia Day homily, on 8 November last year, a small group of men stood outside the New South Wales Parliament dressed in black, their faces covered, their banners carrying the symbols and slogans of Nazism. I was in Rome at the time, but the shock of the incident stayed with me for many weeks. It was shocking not because hatred is new, but because of the sheer brazenness of the incident. Shocking because it demonstrated that, for whatever reason, our society had now become a place where the simply unthinkable had now become possible. The events of 14 December 2025, and the subsequent legislative reform…
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Australia Day – 26 January 2026
On 8 November last year, a small group of men stood outside the New South Wales Parliament dressed in black, their faces covered, their banners carrying the symbols and slogans of Nazism. I was in Rome at the time, but the shock of the incident stayed with me for many weeks. It was shocking not because hatred is new, but because of the sheer brazenness of the incident. Shocking because our society had emerged as a place where the unthinkable had now become possible. The events of 14 December 2025, and the subsequent legislative reform of only last week, have now made such a public protest more difficult. But legislation alone…
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3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 25 January 2026
Last Thursday, our nation paused to observe a National Day of Mourning for the victims of the Bondi Terror Attack on 14 December last year. It was a day to remember lives cut short, families changed forever, and a community wounded by violence. It was a call to us to remember the victims of violence, to honour their lives, and to commit ourselves to a society where safety and respect for life are paramount. In the same week, we witnessed important legislative reforms addressing gun laws and hate speech — reminders that our society continues to struggle with the tension between freedom and responsibility, speech and safety, fear and hope. This,…
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2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 18 January 2026
January has its own distinct feel. The roads are quieter. Emails come a little slower. There’s space to breathe. For some, it’s been a time of rest; for others, a pause before the next surge of activity. But now, the rhythm is beginning to change. Workplaces are stirring back to life. We are beginning to think about school again. The year, in all its demands and possibilities, is starting to press in on us again. And yet we are grateful that we still have another week or so before the holiday feel becomes a distant memory. Into this quieter moment, the Church puts before us a revelation in today’s gospel: “Behold, the…
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Baptism of the Lord – Sunday 11 January 2026
The Irish writer, Seamus Heaney observes that there are moments in life when we stand at the edge of what we know, and the crossing asks something of us. He wrote in his sequence of poems, “Crossings”: Running water never disappointed. Crossing water always furthered something. Stepping stones were stations of the soul.[1] He was reflecting on how, from time to time, we find ourselves at thresholds in our life. The past gives way and we cross over to something new, and of our need to be active in that novelty, not merely passive observers. Our liturgy brings us to such a moment on this weekend. The Feast of the…
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Solemnity of the Epiphany – 4 January 2026
In his correspondence with a young aspiring poet right at the beginning of the 20th century, the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “Be patient toward all that remains unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers, which cannot be given to you because you could not live them. At present you need to live the questions. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”[1] Rilke’s advice to young to Franz Xaver Kappus is as timely to us now…
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1 January – Mary, Mother of God – New Year’s Day
New Year’s Day customarily is a day to look forward. The old year has closed; a new year has dawned. We tend to put a line under the old and begin the new afresh. Today, however, I wish to do something different. I want to look back with you over the year that has been, reflecting on all that has occurred for us in the Year of Jubilee, signs to us of the Spirit’s activity in our midst. It has been a very significant year, marked also by the death of Pope Francis on 21 April and the election of Pope Leo XIV on 8 May, a radical change of…
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