Sunday
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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…
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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.…