Homilies
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Ash Wednesday 2020
The Church has begun its annual season of Lent: the time of preparation leading up to the festival of Easter the greatest of all Christian celebrations. We can never separate this period upon which we are embarking today from the celebration of Easter, just as we can never separate Easter itself from the festival of Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit, which is celebrated seven weeks later. We have begun the one journey, which begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Pentecost Sunday: our annual celebration of what is most important in our Christian life: the death and resurrection of Jesus. As Christians we are particularly mindful that we are constantly on a journey ‘from’…
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7th Sunday of Year A
One of the most curious aspects of the ministry of Jesus is both the place in which it begins and the message by which it begins. It begins in Galilee, the territory of great oppression by the Romans. As the writer, Miroslav Volf identifies, when Jesus begins his ministry, the Palestinian population “was suffering under the loss of national sovereignty to the Romans, as well as under a tense relationship between the Jewish aristocracy and the Herodian monarchy. Economically, the majority were caught between the Roman and the domestic elites, both of which were competing with the other to expand their fortune, especially through taxation. Dominated, taken advantage of, and threatened in their cultural…
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5th Sunday of Year A
In the research today about leadership there is much discussion about whether leadership it something innate or something learnt – i.e. are we born with qualities of leadership or are these skills that we can develop as time goes on and as circumstances call forth. In many ways, it is a question of and/both rather than either/or. Yes, some personalities have a natural instinct for leadership but if this is not refined then it cannot become effective; others never feel comfortable with roles of leadership but with time and with coaching they can learn how to lead. However, the single most significant factor in leadership is neither the natural ability nor…
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Vigil for Fr Denis Callahan
Our farewell of someone is always a celebration of memories. Even in the recounting of just a few of the facts of a person’s life and in the re-telling of some of the stories of their journey, we glimpse something of their mystery and of the relationships that made them such a particular presence in the world that, without exception, we realise is not the same as it was before the gift of the person’s life. For a few brief moments it is like being at the window of a person’s life. Yet we also realise that our own memories of the one whom we are farewelling cannot fully capture…
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Opening of School Year – Loreto College Normanhurst
Each year the Macquarie Dictionary selects a word of the year. The word (or words) for 2019 were ‘cancel culture’ which is the online phenomenon of boycotting public figures who say or do the wrong thing. The year before that it was ‘Me too’ – the drive of women to stand up against abusive behaviour of those in power. However, given that the theme for Loreto College this year is Verity, I want to come back to the word that emerged as the one for 2016, four years ago. That word was ‘fake news.’ And of course, it has lost none of its currency since. As the committee of academics, writers and journalists…
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Presentation of the Lord
Being the fortieth day since Christmas and the celebration of the birth of Jesus, the Church today recalls his Presentation in the Temple, the occasion on which his parents made the sacrifice required by Jewish law at the birth of a first son. Traditionally, it is also the day on which the Church blesses candles, bearers of light and symbols of dedication. Hence the word Candlemas is another word for this feast day. Perhaps it is an opportunity then to reflect on the significance of the humble candle, and the most extraordinary recognition all the darkness in the world cannot extinguish its simple, flickering fragile light. The lighting of candles seems…
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Opening Mass for Brigidine College and Commissioning of new Principal, Ms Laetitia Richmond
One of the great insights of our Tradition is that God created humans because God loves a good story. And so it is that our Scriptures are filled with narrative rather than philosophical discourse. Why is this so? The writer Denis McBride relates a Jewish explanation of this: truth is like a naked obscene man in a village. It needs to be tamed by a beautiful woman dressed in fine clothes and much adornment and this woman’s name is Story. Our stories open the imagination and help us see new possibilities. They are the best means by which we come to the Truth of life. For us, Scripture is a…
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Australia Day 2020
A little later in the year, towards the end of May, the 54th World Communications Day will be celebrated. However, just a few days ago on 24 January, the feastday of Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists, Pope Francis released his annual message on communications.[1] For us celebrating Australia Day this weekend, his emphasis this year on the importance and power of story might perhaps help us enter our national celebration. The Pope recounts our natural instinct for stories. “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…
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2nd Sunday of Year
In a challenging article this weekend, the Melbourne academic, John Carroll, suggests that the “new snobbery is not over bad taste, crude accents, cheap belongings and the wrong schools; it is over attitude.”[1] In a lengthy opinion piece, Carroll addresses the religion of our time: identity politics. In the past this was hardly a concern; most were busy with survival – “concern about identity was a leisure-time luxury [people] could ill afford.” Carroll proposes that the new basis of identity is “I emote, therefore I am.” In other words, what I feel is who I am. But because this is based on such a transitory dimension of who we are in…
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Baptism of the Lord
At the beginning of each Mass of Christian Burial we turn our attention to the two great symbols of our spiritual life: fire and water. As we firstly turn our attention to the Fire of Easter, represented by the Paschal Candle, we say, “In baptism our friend was enlightened by Christ. May Christ, the eternal and unfading light now welcome them into the kingdom of light and peace.” And then we take water, the great sign of life, and as we bless the body with it, we say, “In the waters of baptism our friend died with Christ and rose with him in glory. May they now share eternal life with Him in glory.”…