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Fourth Sunday of Advent – 21 Sunday December – in the wake of Bondi Terrorist Attack
In these final days of Advent, when our hearts would ordinarily be light with expectation, they are heavy. Last Sunday’s terrorist violence at Bondi Beach, occurring at exactly the time our own parish was sharing the joy of Christmas Carols on the Concourse, has shaken us deeply. A place of sunlight and festivity has been pierced by terror and death. Names, faces, families now carry wounds that will not easily heal. We gather this Sunday the Sunday before Christmas – carrying all the emotions of the past week: shock, grief, anger, fear, and an aching question never far from the surface: How can God be near when darkness breaks in so…
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Homily for a Vigil for Peace – Our Lady of Dolours Chatswood – 16 December 2025
Last Sunday evening, our parish along with members of other Christian Churches in the city of Willoughby gathered on the concourse at Chatswood for a beautiful evening of Christmas Carols. The night resounded with the sense of gentleness and peace, both of which lie at the very heart of the Christian Christmas story. Our evening finished with the sense of harmony and hope. At exactly the same time, on the other side of the city, at Bondi, others, too, were gathering with festivity to mark the Festival of Lights, Hanukah, itself a narrative of memory and hope. Their evening finished with unimaginable pain and distress. How do we reconcile these two…
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Third Sunday of Advent – 14 December 2025
As we continue our Advent journey, the sense of expectation increases! This can fill us with a sense of dismay because of all that we consider needs to be achieved beforehand year’s end. 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 are people of joy! Like hope and faith, joy…
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Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of BVM – 8 December 2025
Over the last weekend, we became acutely aware of the summer heat and the devastation of fire. We sense that a difficult summer lies ahead. The merciless heat and the threat of fire leave us living beneath a kind of pall—an atmosphere of uncertainty and fragility. How deeply we long for cooler, safer days. It seems to me that this experience of living under a looming difficulty mirrors, in a small way, what we celebrate in this remarkable feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. For this moment, all creation, weighed down by heaviness and fragility, has longed. Tired of the inhibitions and distortions of the flawed condition into which…
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Second Sunday of Advent – 7 December 2025
Christmas is often a time when we re-unite not only with family, but also with friends with whom we have not been able to enjoy a great deal of contact over the year. Even though we may be wondering how we might get through all that needs to be done in the next couple of weeks, I am sure most of us are looking forward to the time of Christmas at which we renew our bonds with one another in such a special way. Christmas is an expectant time, and as the time towards Christmas becomes shorter we have an increasing expectancy about it – I suppose for all kinds of…
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First Sunday of Advent – 30 November 2025
We begin our Advent journey toward the Festival of Christmas by lighting, week by week, the candles of our Advent Wreath. Each flame represents one of the great blessings that Christmas reveals to the world: hope, faith, joy, peace, and love. These are the true gifts of Christ’s birth—gifts not simply to admire from afar, but blessings meant to be birthed in us, especially in this Jubilee Year, when the Church has invited us throughout to rediscover the mercy, renewal, and freedom that God longs to give. The candles will light over the next four weeks burn in a world shadowed by anxiety, conflict, and uncertainty. Across nations and neighbourhoods, and…
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Commemoration of All Souls – 2 November 2025
One of the most precious things we have when someone we know and love dies is a photograph of them. Photographs bring back memories of time spent together, of stages in a person’s life, of the events that characterised their life. But a photograph not only keeps alive the memory of the person it depicts. Most importantly, a photograph evokes a whole relationship. The photograph becomes a powerful symbol of the bonds we had with this person and becomes the means by which we continue to savour the history of our relationship with them, its seasons, it joys, its regrets – and most importantly, its continued hopes. Yes, even in…
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30th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 26 October 2025
Sebastian Moore, the English Benedictine writer, once wrote that we need conversion not so much from sin, as from innocence.[1] It was a curious declaration: we need conversion not so much from sin, as from innocence. What may he have meant by this enigmatic pronouncement? Perhaps, he was alluding to the aspect of us that wants to have everything and everyone perfect, the part of us that that expects everything about us and around us to be ideal. We demand that our relationships, our marriages and our families be ideal even as we struggle in the recognition that they are far from so. We demand that our jobs and professions…
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29th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 19 October 2025
There can be many times in our lives when we know the temptation to lose heart. Sometimes life’s events simply take away our strength to keep hoping. And we are inclined to despair. It is difficult for us not to lose heart. Yet this Sunday we are told a story by Jesus about never losing heart. It seems that we are to be like the importune woman, while God is presented like the judge who eventually gives in to our persistence. But perhaps there is another way of looking at the story Jesus tells us. I recall a writer, Megan McKenna putting it this way: she was in Mexico sitting…
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28th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 12 October 2025
In his book, “Beyond Belief,” Hugh McKay, the Australian social researcher outlined the deep vein of ambivalence about religion that runs through Australian society: on the one hand many Australians do not actively worship, yet they still like to see local churches operating, and we still turn to churches to baptise our children and to educate them.[1] Around two thirds of Australians say we believe in God or some ‘higher power’, but fewer than one in ten of us attend church weekly. So those of us gathered here for Mass are an extraordinary minority no matter how mainstream we might consider ourselves to be. And all of his means 90% of the population…
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