Through this season of Lent, we have been exploring the theme of Hope, the focus of our current Year of Jubilee. We have reflected on how hope arises from our needs, on how hope opens us to the future, how it is guaranteed by our faith in Christ Jesus and in his Resurrection, and how it is our Christian answer to the encounter of evil because it is a pronouncement that the evil is never the final word, that something bigger is at work. And now we come to the final reflection in our series: how each of us is called to become an agent of hope. Do I offer…

The German writer, Deitrich Bonheoffer gave us the distinction between what he called, on the one hand, ‘cheap grace’ and, on the other, ‘costly grace.’ Writing in Germany in the 1930s he lamented the way in which the Christian Churches had so accommodated themselves to the prevailing currents as to have lost their genuine sense of discipleship of the Risen Lord. And this could equally be a possibility in our own time in which we can be swayed by political forces that use the term Christian to describe their aspirations, but which, in their conduct, are in no way Christian. Of course, this is always a tendency for us. we…

Every day the images of people who suffer are put before us – whether it be in Gaza, or Ukraine, or even in our own country.  In some ways we become inoculated against what we see. We turn over the channel, and go back to what we were doing.  We look for something more entertaining, not perhaps alluding to the fact that news broadcasts on television and social media are edited in such a way to keep us entertained in the first place.  The problems are too big for us to think about, the places of which they speak too far away, too foreign. And even though we shake our heads by the…

The season of Advent that we have been celebrating in the time leading up to the celebration of Christmas this week is a season characterized by hope – the theme of the Year of Jubilee which Pope Francis will open on 24 December, Christmas Eve. It has often struck me that in Australia we have our own particular experience of hope.  From penal settlement and convict experience, through to the mythology of the pioneer farmer, and to the shores of Gallipoli, the experience of so many migrants beginning life anew here, and extending even to our fascination with sport, Australians, historically, have defined themselves as those who often find themselves…