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19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Last Sunday, I shared how the times may leave us feeling like getting into our own little boat and heading off into the middle of the lake where no one can disturb us, and where we may be free from the concern that swirls around us as we continue to navigate the threat of the pandemic. However, once we are out in the lake, we are not guaranteed serenity. I remember once picking up a small poster which read, “Dear God, help me; the sea is so wide, and my boat is so small.” The size of the lake itself can be overwhelming, and then storms whip up so that the…
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18th Sunday of Ordinary Time Podcast
The story of the 5000 takes us to the heart of what we celebrate in Eucharist: from just a little an abundance is reaped. Our own five loaves and two fishes, our own small stumbling efforts to go beyond ourselves, to share with others from the little we have, have an effect much greater than we can imagine. Those efforts are truly blessed, and give life to others. And our own hungry hearts, themselves, become mysteriously satisfied. https://media.blubrry.com/davidranson/content.blubrry.com/davidranson/18th_Sunday_of_Year_A.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS
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18th Sunday of Ordinary Time
This time last year, the word ‘unprecedented’ seemed to be on everyone’s lips. It was the word most commonly heard on the media. At that time, it referred primarily to the drought we, in Australia, were experiencing. It then transferred to the bushfires and smoke to which we were subjected from October to February. None of us could have predicted that, within a few months, we would be in our current situation battling our way through a pandemic. Curiously, we rarely hear the word, ‘unprecedented’ now. It is as if the circumstances of the moment are too historic in character for the word, ‘unprecedented’ to do justice. The word, ‘unprecedented’…
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Entrustment of Catenian Association Australia to St Mary MacKillop of the Cross – 27 July 2020
Soon after the final declaration of Mary’s sanctity was given in Rome in 2009, I read a poignant but rather challenging letter to the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald from a Vincent Matthews: My wife is a saint. And I don’t need the Pope to confirm it. For nearly 40 years she worked as a nurse in many parts of Australia easing the suffering of the sick and helping to cure many. She is idolised by her three children and is a special nana to two adoring little girls. Aged 74, she works in a charity shop, gives part of her age pension to Medecins Sans Frontieres and to World Vision to help a child…
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17th Sunday of Ordinary Time Podcast
The Kingdom of God is given to us as a pure gift. Yet, there is a real sense in which it is in our hands. We can give it life, or we can crush it. And our response is linked to the way that we look underneath the experiences in our life, trying to perceive what their invitation might be. When we are able to look at the experiences of our life in this way, then each moment can become what we might call Kingdom-moments in our life. They are not moments, however, that are given to us on a platter. We have to come to a decision about how we are to respond to…
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17th Sunday of Ordinary Time
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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16th Sunday of Ordinary Time Podcast
Our task is to keep the two halves of the story always together. If we keep only the half of God’s love then our religion might become mere sentimentality and lose the energetic, vivifying, healing and transforming power that truly belongs to it. If we focus only on the half of evil and darkness then that half would simply generate itself more and more in random violence around us and we would become simply hapless victims to the darkness around us. https://media.blubrry.com/davidranson/content.blubrry.com/davidranson/16th_Sunday_of_Year_A.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS
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16th Sunday of Ordinary Time
We don’t need to be following the news for very long without coming to the recognition that evil exists. 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 the presence and activity of evil. Evil, though, is a genuine force that we…
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15th Sunday of Ordinary Time Podcast
God wishes to communicate with us. God’s communication is in many forms all around us. But that message, like any other, is not in some form that it simply injects into our minds. God’s message like any other, in order to be truly heard, means we must listen. And listening is not easy: it is one of the hardest things for us to do. It means that we will need to stop, it means that we will have to give time, it means that we will have to ask questions to get to its full meaning; it means that we will have to let go for a while of all our own resistances. Yet, when we…
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15th Sunday of Ordinary Time
The Australian social researcher, Hugh Mackay once gave a reflection on how difficult it is to get other people to hear what we are trying to say.[1] As he observed, how many times have we said in frustration, “If I’ve told them once, I’ve told them a hundred times. It just seems to go in one ear and out the other!” As Mackay says, what we may be really saying, of course, is, “Guess what, I know a message that never works. It doesn’t seem to matter how often I say it; it never has any effect on the people I’m talking to. But I don’t give up easily. It’s such a good message that I’m…
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