Some years ago, I had a friend working as a legal assistant in the refugee camps that sprang up in Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s. Every morning he travelled over by ferry to the islands on which the camps were situated to spend the day explaining international law to the refugees and trying to work out how their story might relate to their cause. Along the way, he wrote to me this moving story: “At Chim A Wan detention centre, Pham van Ai and I interviewed a woman who had been forced into prostitution in Vietnam. In fact, she did this in order to repay a loan she…

The Irish used to have a saying, “It is the Mass that matters.”  For them, recovering particularly from the Great Potato Famine in the 19th century, the Eucharist was the great source of identity in an environment that was incredibly oppressive. The celebration of the Mass was the rock of their existence in a sea of social hostility which threatened to engulf them.  We recall even the famous Mass rocks ‑ those rocks on which Masses were celebrated set out in the countryside away from the detection of the English invaders. The saying, “It is the Mass that matters” followed the Irish Diaspora to our own shores where the Eucharist has continued to…

The architect of the Parliament building in Canberra, Romaldo Giurgola was, apparently, fond of saying “great buildings begin with great ideas.”  In other words, if you can’t imagine the possibilities first, the end result will not be all that significant.  “Great buildings begin with great ideas.”  It’s an observation that underscores the power and the importance of the imagination in our life. “You must give birth to your images,” wrote Rilke. “They are the future waiting to be born.  Fear not the strangeness you feel.  The future must enter into you long before it happens.”[1]  The future begins in our imagination, in the images that we carry deep within us.   We are often used to downplaying our imagination.…

There is a perspective in theology that regards the event of Pentecost as the birth of the Church.  On this day, the Spirit is poured out on the disciples.  They are released from their disillusionments and their fears; they are enSpirited and emboldened to go out and to preach the good news that the life of Christ is more powerful than death, that the self-sacrifice of his love has overpowered the forces of selfishness and suspicion, that the future stretches out beyond us as a constant invitation full of possibility.  Our dead ends have become new beginnings; our sunsets have been changed into dawns. Yes, on this day the Spirit overwhelms our timidity,…

I chanced to read recently that there is nothing more intimate nor more remote as the face of a lover.  It brought to mind the observation of the French writer, Jean Mambrino in which he prays, “You wanted me to tell you once more about the interval that brings us together. I need that interval to be, to become. It is the interval which frees you. It arouses your desire, opens your countenance.”[1]  Mambrino was speaking of a core tension in our life, the tension between absence and presence.  We need both in order to understand ourselves and one another.  Yes, in the bonds that join us to each other absence can become a way of…

All around us now here in Wahroonga the leaves have changed colour and are beginning to drop to the ground. As the writer Joyce Rupp observes, “some people tell me that they don’t like autumn because it reminds them too much of the inevitability of death. The leaves falling from the trees onto the barren, brown earth makes them feel sad and lonely. The leaves are subtle reminders that we are asked to let go of many things throughout our life.  Every time we surrender something, we connect with our death, with the ultimate moment of letting go.”[1] Indeed, as this same writer recognizes, “Seeing death in any form – autumn leaves…

Though we live our life on them today – and especially now during this time of pandemic during which we are almost completely reliant on them and cannot imagine how we would operate without them – I will never forget the first time I accessed a computer and went online – which, amazingly, was only some thirty years ago. I remember the sense of awe as my laptop hooked into the computers of institutions around the world for the first time.  Suddenly, I was part of the communication revolution and with it the information revolution.  Whatever of our ambivalence about this revolution in the past, through this current period of social…

The late English writer Daniel O’Leary related a striking moment of epiphany narrated by the Irish mystic John Moriarty.  Moriarty was walking through muddy patches in the meadow near his Kerry home, wondering how those ‘hints of heaven’ could emerge from such a drab place.  “How could something so yellow as a buttercup come up out of soggy brown earth?” he asked.  “How could something so purple as an orchid and so perfect as a cowslip come out of it?  Where does the colour and perfection come from?”[1] As were the first disciples, we are surprised by the power of life when it appears, and often in the most unlikely of places and experiences.  As…

On the evening of the Easter Vigil, the greatest moment in our Christian year, we light the Easter Candle and proclaim the Risen Christ. Its soft glow celebrates the victory of Christ’s life over death, the conquest of love over fear. This year we do so in a climate of national and international anxiety. It is a time of shadows – the shadow of irrational panic-buying, hoarding and public brawls; the shadow of unemployment and financial insecurity; the shadow of profiteering; the shadow of disconnection from our community of faith and its sacramental life; the shadow of concern about our health and the health of our families. We have come to live…

“Take up your cross and follow me.”  These words are at the very heart of the Gospel. They are there so that these same words might be at the very heart of our discipleship.  Perhaps we have become so used to these words.  Yet, they are some of the most confronting words we will ever hear:  “Take up your cross and follow me.”   For the significance of the words to remain fresh we have to keep putting ourselves back into the time of Jesus and wonder at how the first disciples would have heard these words. The cross was a familiar sight in first century Palestine.  Crucifixion was the preferred method of the Romans of…