Over this last week, throughout Australia, National Child Protection Week has been commemorated.  On this Sunday, the Church in Australian celebrates Child Protection Sunday. These are important commemorations especially given our recent history. We know only too well that those who are vulnerable in our midst suffer most when there is a culture of silence and suppression both within families and communities. Closed families and closed institutions create situations of self-preservation which place them above a sense of genuine self-examination and, on occasions, even above community responsibilities.  It is precisely this inward absorption of both families and communities that Jesus himself confronts in the gospel we hear this weekend.   Jesus calls us…

In the annals of Christian legend there is a famous story about one of the early Roman martyrs, St Lawrence. Lawrence lived in a time of persecution, and as a deacon was responsible for his community’s administration.  The Roman prefect had already taken the Bishop of Rome into custody and was about to do the same with Lawrence. However, realizing that Lawrence had the keys to the community store, and thinking that this might contain much gold and silver, the Prefect first demanded that Lawrence show him the location of the store. Being a wily administrator and not losing his cool, Lawrence said, “Give me three days and I will make…

As the football season reaches towards the Finals emotions are mixed. For the supporters of those teams that meet the Finals there is a great deal of excitement. For others, our teams have not met our expectations. We think, well next year things will be better, but we know that we are not promised such a guarantee.  Whether it is for our sporting teams, or in many other aspects of our life, we want the best that is possible, and this expectation begins to infiltrate most dimensions of our lives.  For example, in our relationships we can easily be led into thinking about how we might achieve the best partner, or…

17 August 2019 In an interview, the winner of the Miles Franklin Prize for literature this year, the aboriginal writer, Melissa Lucashenko quoted the philosopher, Rosa Luxemburg: “The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”[1] Luxemburg is a Marxist thinker, but I think this declaration is to be something quite true. The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening. It reminded me of a wonderful sentence in Pope Francis’ recent exhortation to the Youth of our Church when he declared, “I ask you to be revolutionaries, I ask you to swim against the tide; yes, I am asking you to rebel…

Homily to the Parish of Gosford 11 August 2019 Many years ago, there was quite a popular film called, “Dead Poets Society.” The catchcry of the film, Carpe Diem,“Seize the Day”, became somewhat famous in itself and got to be widely used. The film was very much a portrayal of the philosophy of Henry Thoreau. Thoreau was a well-known American humanist philosopher of the 19thcentury. His famous work was called, Walden,and was an account of him leaving the city and retiring to the side of Walden Pond in the north-east of the United States at which he sought to come to the essence of what life was all about.  It represented his own sea-change,…