Sunday
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3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 25 January 2026
Last Thursday, our nation paused to observe a National Day of Mourning for the victims of the Bondi Terror Attack on 14 December last year. It was a day to remember lives cut short, families changed forever, and a community wounded by violence. It was a call to us to remember the victims of violence, to honour their lives, and to commit ourselves to a society where safety and respect for life are paramount. In the same week, we witnessed important legislative reforms addressing gun laws and hate speech — reminders that our society continues to struggle with the tension between freedom and responsibility, speech and safety, fear and hope. This,…
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2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 18 January 2026
January has its own distinct feel. The roads are quieter. Emails come a little slower. There’s space to breathe. For some, it’s been a time of rest; for others, a pause before the next surge of activity. But now, the rhythm is beginning to change. Workplaces are stirring back to life. We are beginning to think about school again. The year, in all its demands and possibilities, is starting to press in on us again. And yet we are grateful that we still have another week or so before the holiday feel becomes a distant memory. Into this quieter moment, the Church puts before us a revelation in today’s gospel: “Behold, the…
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Baptism of the Lord – Sunday 11 January 2026
The Irish writer, Seamus Heaney observes that there are moments in life when we stand at the edge of what we know, and the crossing asks something of us. He wrote in his sequence of poems, “Crossings”: Running water never disappointed. Crossing water always furthered something. Stepping stones were stations of the soul.[1] He was reflecting on how, from time to time, we find ourselves at thresholds in our life. The past gives way and we cross over to something new, and of our need to be active in that novelty, not merely passive observers. Our liturgy brings us to such a moment on this weekend. The Feast of the…
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Solemnity of the Epiphany – 4 January 2026
In his correspondence with a young aspiring poet right at the beginning of the 20th century, the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “Be patient toward all that remains unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers, which cannot be given to you because you could not live them. At present you need to live the questions. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”[1] Rilke’s advice to young to Franz Xaver Kappus is as timely to us now…
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Feast of the Holy Family – 28 December 2025
In these days between Christmas and the New Year, in the great Octave of Christmas we focus our attention on a family. Not an idealised or sentimental family, but a real one: fragile, vulnerable, displaced, and living under threat. The Holy Family does not step onto the stage of history surrounded by safety or certainty. Almost immediately, they are on the move. The Gospel we hear today reminds us that this child is born into danger; that his parents are anxious, searching, sometimes confused; that their life together unfolds amid political violence, fear for a child’s life, and the necessity of flight. Jesus grows up not in a protected bubble,…
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Fourth Sunday of Advent – 21 Sunday December – in the wake of Bondi Terrorist Attack
In these final days of Advent, when our hearts would ordinarily be light with expectation, they are heavy. Last Sunday’s terrorist violence at Bondi Beach, occurring at exactly the time our own parish was sharing the joy of Christmas Carols on the Concourse, has shaken us deeply. A place of sunlight and festivity has been pierced by terror and death. Names, faces, families now carry wounds that will not easily heal. We gather this Sunday the Sunday before Christmas – carrying all the emotions of the past week: shock, grief, anger, fear, and an aching question never far from the surface: How can God be near when darkness breaks in so…
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Second Sunday of Advent – 7 December 2025
Christmas is often a time when we re-unite not only with family, but also with friends with whom we have not been able to enjoy a great deal of contact over the year. Even though we may be wondering how we might get through all that needs to be done in the next couple of weeks, I am sure most of us are looking forward to the time of Christmas at which we renew our bonds with one another in such a special way. Christmas is an expectant time, and as the time towards Christmas becomes shorter we have an increasing expectancy about it – I suppose for all kinds of…
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First Sunday of Advent – 30 November 2025
We begin our Advent journey toward the Festival of Christmas by lighting, week by week, the candles of our Advent Wreath. Each flame represents one of the great blessings that Christmas reveals to the world: hope, faith, joy, peace, and love. These are the true gifts of Christ’s birth—gifts not simply to admire from afar, but blessings meant to be birthed in us, especially in this Jubilee Year, when the Church has invited us throughout to rediscover the mercy, renewal, and freedom that God longs to give. The candles will light over the next four weeks burn in a world shadowed by anxiety, conflict, and uncertainty. Across nations and neighbourhoods, and…
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30th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 26 October 2025
Sebastian Moore, the English Benedictine writer, once wrote that we need conversion not so much from sin, as from innocence.[1] It was a curious declaration: we need conversion not so much from sin, as from innocence. What may he have meant by this enigmatic pronouncement? Perhaps, he was alluding to the aspect of us that wants to have everything and everyone perfect, the part of us that that expects everything about us and around us to be ideal. We demand that our relationships, our marriages and our families be ideal even as we struggle in the recognition that they are far from so. We demand that our jobs and professions…
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29th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 19 October 2025
There can be many times in our lives when we know the temptation to lose heart. Sometimes life’s events simply take away our strength to keep hoping. And we are inclined to despair. It is difficult for us not to lose heart. Yet this Sunday we are told a story by Jesus about never losing heart. It seems that we are to be like the importune woman, while God is presented like the judge who eventually gives in to our persistence. But perhaps there is another way of looking at the story Jesus tells us. I recall a writer, Megan McKenna putting it this way: she was in Mexico sitting…