Homilies
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4th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 28 January 2024
One of the privileges of our life is to be able to sit with someone else and to listen to their story and to hold their struggle to find meaning in their life. Sometimes those people with whom we might sit may have been struggling a long time, and alone. Sometimes they may have given up any struggle, and, rather, given in to the emotional or spiritual impasse they reached many years before. And sometimes they may have only just set out on a deeper search for themselves and for who God might be for them. Often, of course, we have no word to give, and the silence is hard to bear. On…
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Australia Day – 26 January 2024
We have a natural instinct for stories. As Pope Francis once wrote: “From childhood we hunger for stories just as we hunger for food. Stories influence our lives, whether in the form of fairy tales, novels, films, songs, news, even if we do not always realise it . . . Stories leave their mark on us; they shape our convictions and our behaviours. They can help us understand and communicate who we are.” [1] We delight in weaving stories. For this reason, there is a link, as Francis identifies, between the words, ‘textile’ and ‘text’. Both come from the Latin word, ‘to weave’ (texere). Yet we know the capacity we have…
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Third Sunday in Ordinary Time – 21 January 2024
I am sure that some of us have heard the story of the chap driving in the country who stops to ask the famer which is the way to the city. Says the farmer to him in reply, “Oh, if I were going to the city, I wouldn’t start from here!” How often we give this very same reply to our faith, and to our relationship with God, and even with each other. We get caught in the thinking, that if I were going to relate to God better it couldn’t possibly be from how I am feeling at the moment. If only I didn’t have to contend with this pain or with…
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2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 14 January 2023
I once chanced to see a rather striking sign outside a church. The text of the sign was simply, “Can you hear the voice of God in the silences of the day?” Can you hear the voice of God in the silences of the day? I was particularly struck by it because often enough we expect to hear God in another way. We think God speaks to us in an exceptional way, or that he only speaks to exceptional people, and, sadly, we don’t include ourselves amongst them. So often we will hear people say, “God never speaks to me,” or the question behind this conclusion which is “Why does…
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Solemnity of Mary Mother of God – 1 January 2024
It is not unusual for us to hear from children the questions, “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 understand it cognitively. To contemplate such a mystery requires the recognition of the…
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Feast of the Holy Family – 31 December 2023
An article was published around this time last year by Robert Waldinger and Mark Schulz, “What the Longest Study on Human Happiness Found is the Key to a Good Life.”[1] As the authors pointed out, since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has been investigating what makes people flourish. It started with 724 participants and has now had more than 1300 descendants of the original group. The authors claim that it’s the longest in-depth longitudinal study on human life, ever done. And what is the key to health and happiness? What we know already deep in our hearts: good relationships. The trick is, however, that those relationships must be nurtured. As they go…
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Christmas 2023
Even though at times it can be difficult to think of the right thing, gift giving is one of the beautiful customs of Christmas. It marks our appreciation and gratitude for the people in our lives. It does not need to be grand or expensive; it can be small and simple. At times it’s the outcome of a great deal of thought and consideration. I am sure all of us, at some time, have given a gift and held our breath while we waited for the other person’s response. Or we may have received a gift and not just been touched by it, but left without words because we know what it…
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First Sunday of Advent – 3 December 2023
There is a magic in every beginning, wrote the German philosopher Herman Hesse.[1] How true this is when we experience the birth of our children, when we hold a newborn baby in our arms, when we delight in the pure wonder and sense of play evidenced in young children. When we gaze upon a child we are caught intensely between an immediate experience of the present and a heightened expectation of the future. And I think it is true that in every child, God waits for us to stir again within us the sense of new beginnings, of fresh possibilities, of awakening hopes. The invitation that God sets before us is to become…
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Solemnity of Christ the King – 26 November 2023
During a week, we are confronted with many different types of power. Almost daily, through different situations, we read about the power of political might, the power of wealth and the power of evil. Such power, particularly when it is displayed dramatically, shocks us – although sometimes it can act to seduce us. On this Sunday – the last in the Church’s liturgical year, the feast of Christ the King – we come together, however, celebrating another power: the power of the Kingdom of God, the power of Jesus the Christ. And in the face of all other forms of power, we say that this alone is the power in which we put our…
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30th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 29 October 2023
One of the most poignant memories I have of my mother’s funeral was the gesture that my father spontaneously enacted on the occasion. During the Lord’s Prayer he simply stood out from the pew and went and stood with his hands on my mother’s coffin and prayed the Our Father for the last time together with her. It was a beautiful gesture reflecting their very long partnership of over 61 years. My parents enjoyed a long partnership. But at the same time their partnership had not been without its difficulties. In fact, for many years I think it was, for different reasons, no small struggle. Indeed, some of my own earliest memories were…