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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…
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29th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 22 October 2023
It is the time of tax, one of the two certain things in our life. It is also a period where politics and economics are at the centre of our conversation. In the midst of the economic and political turmoil around us at the moment, this word of the gospel comes to us: a word about the interrelationship between the things of Caesar and the things of God, about the things of government and the things of religion. How do they sit together? These questions are certainly not new, but from time to time they arise with a greater sense of urgency. Often our memory of when they have arisen in the past can help us…
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27th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 8 October 2023
I am sure that some of us have heard of the clergyman who lived in a town that was hit by a major flood. The water was a foot deep in his living room. Some parishioners in a boat rowed up to his door, asking them to join him. “No, go ahead,” he said. “I’ll be just fine. God is taking care of me.” So, they left. Then the water rose to the second floor. Back came the anxious parishioners in the boat. And they asked him to join them. Again, he refused. By the time the boat came back once more, the house had been completely engulfed and the clergyman was standing on his chimney. “Father,” his parishioners…
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26th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 1 October 2023
On one of my very first visits to Sydney I was taken by a friend who works with homeless youth to some of the places in which such young people live and hang out. I recall the time I was with them around a campfire near St. Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst. They had got the campfire going from some curbside formwork and were preparing to shelter against a winter Sydney night. Most of them were on drugs of some kind, many of them prostituting – all of them with background stories of enormous tragedy. And yet, as I left them that night I could not but be struck by the…
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25th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 24 September 2023
We often say religion and politics don’t mix. And it is true we must be careful to avoid the politicization of religious faith in such a way that religious faith becomes a vehicle to achieve political ends. However, at the same time, paradoxically we can never separate faith and politics as if we can behave one way in an internal world of spirituality and another way in the external world of civic affairs. Politics is about choices, and the choices we, ourselves, make cannot but be informed by our discipleship of the Lord. This will be something very important to consider carefully as we approach the forthcoming Referendum on constitutional change.…
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23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 10 September 2023
Some of you would be aware that for many years of my life I lived as a Trappist monk. Trappist life is a life lived in community, and most people would think of a monastery as a place of peace and tranquillity where Christian virtue was lived in its perfection. However, of course, the reality is quite different. A monastic community is really just like any other family: ordinary people who struggle to make life together work with all the joys and pains we all know in regard to this. I recall the great response of one of the old Irish monks in the community, Br Gabriel, who used to reply to the question…
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19th Sunday in Year A – 13 August 2023
Many years ago, in a little Californian fishing village, I picked up a small poster which reads, “Dear God, help me; the sea is so wide, and my boat is so small.” None of us would doubt that life is sometimes turbulent and often chaotic. In fact, the ocean is good metaphor for how we experience life. At times, it seems calm and full of invitation; on other occasions, it is full of threat and a fearful place. For the people of the Scriptures, particularly, the ocean was a symbol more of chaos than anything. It was the place of darkness and uncertainty – the place of hidden monsters. The…
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16th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 23 July 2023
We don’t need to be following the news for very long without coming to the recognition that evil exists. We think of the atrocities of war; of the moral dysfunctionality of our own society. However, of course, evil not only exists in the situations of notoriety that occur in the world. We also know that evil exists in ourselves, even if in more subtle ways: when we do not treat others as their dignity deserves; when we use others for our own purposes; when we forget the accountability that is placed on each of us to live with integrity and truthfulness. Perhaps when we focus on our own failings, we can tend to underestimate…
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