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…

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…

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…

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…