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…

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…

We are often used to saying, “distance makes the heart grow fonder.”  Sometimes, though, we are not so sure.  We know how long-distance friendships or relationships suffer for lack of contact, it seems that the saying is true only when actually come into contact with each other from time to time, or when we are constantly reminded of the one we love.  Then, the separation we experience with someone we love does act to deepen our love.  This is why the photos of those we love but who have died become so important to us.  Our constant reminder of them through these symbols means that our love does not extinguish but that, in fact, our…

On an extensive property midway between Condobolin and Lake Cargellico, some 800km west of Sydney, a Kenthurst man, Walter Brachmann, has built the most beautiful shrine dedicated to Christ the King.  It is an extraordinary enterprise:  out in the back of nowhere, on the edge of the immense Australian desert, stands this majestic little chapel.  I have come to know of it because a friend of mine, a Franciscan brother Dominic Levak has taken up residence there, living the life of a hermit.  Dominic spends the day in the saturation of the stillness and silence of the vast Australian outback, tending to simple chores, reaching out to a local aboriginal…

Though we live our life on them today and take them completely as granted as if they have always existed, I will never forget the first time I accessed a computer and went online – which, amazingly was only some thirty years ago –such a short time ago, on the scale of things.  I remember the sense of awe as my laptop hooked into the computers of institutions around the world for the first time.  Suddenly, I was part of the communication revolution and with it the information revolution. In my more recent years, social media has come to the fore of many people’s lives, and communication between people takes…

The account of the Transfiguration is given us each year on this the 2nd Sunday of Lent. Each year we hear a different version of the account. This year the version is from the gospel of Matthew. Though there are differences between the three accounts from each of the gospels, there are clear similarities as well.  Jesus and his disciples are on a mountain.  There is the sense of being in solitude.  There is a cloud. The inner luminosity of Jesus becomes apparent.  The figures of Moses and Elijah are in the heart of the experience.  The essential filial identity of Jesus as Son of the Father is revealed.  The…

“Scapegoating” is a term we are well used to.  We know the tendency of a group being assailed with problems to shift blame onto one individual.  He or she must wear the group’s guilt and is sacrificed accordingly.  Ordinarily, this person is ironically innocent of the group’s crime.  That is also of the nature of scapegoating:  there is an inherent injustice about its use -an innocent party is made to be responsible for the group’s woes. How we saw this play out in the extraordinary miscarriage of justice in Victoria in relationship to Cardinal Pell’s conviction in 2018, and indeed continuing to be played out in some of the media…