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…

In his book, “Beyond Belief,” Hugh McKay, the Australian social researcher outlined the deep vein of ambivalence about religion that runs through Australian society: on the one hand many Australians do not actively worship, yet they still like to see local churches operating, and we still turn to churches to baptise our children and to educate them.[1]  Around two thirds of Australians say we believe in God or some ‘higher power’, but fewer than one in ten of us attend church weekly.  So those of us gathered here for Mass are an extraordinary minority no matter how mainstream we might consider ourselves to be.  And all of his means 90% of the population…

For a long time, it has been the social rule in Australia that the topics of religion and politics are not to be raised in polite conversation.  For a great deal of our history, we have also had the adage that politics and religion don’t mix, and that they, therefore, should be kept quite separate.  And so, in Australia, particularly, when religious leaders have started talking about political or economic matters many of us start feeling uneasy, if not even embarrassed.  In our own time, however, we have a strange reversal of this history for now it is not uncommon for political leaders to appeal to religious principles to stir the population to…

We might recall the film, “Dead Poets Society” starring the late Robyn Williams as a slightly eccentric schoolteacher.  At his school, he mentored a group of students into realising their potential.  The catchcry of the film, Carpe Diem, “Seize the Day”, became somewhat famous in itself and got to be widely used.  The film was very much a portrayal of the philosophy of Henry Thoreau.  Thoreau was a well-known American humanist philosopher of the 19th century. His famous work was called, Walden, and was an account of him leaving the city and retiring to the side of Walden Pond in the north-east of the United States at which he sought…

We are now just halfway through our celebration of our Year of Jubilee, opened by Pope Francis last December but to be concluded by Pope Leo at year’s end. Throughout, we have had the theme of Hope greet us each time we come to our church with its invitation that we renew the hope in our hearts through our discipleship of the Risen Christ and most importantly that we become those who can give hope to others in a world in which hope is in short supply, and becoming increasingly so. A Year of Jubilee – following the pattern of Jubilee into which the Book of Leviticus calls the people…

One of the things in which I have recently taken an interest in my own life of prayer are the questions that we discover in the texts of the Gospel.  It is quite a fascinating exercise to go through the texts and identify the questions that are posed in them.  I have come to recognise that they have great significance and indeed establish the scaffolding, if you like, of our discipleship of Jesus.   One of the most important questions that we come across is the haunting question at the heart of this account we here today: “Who is my neighbour?”  it is a question which is meant to take hold of us, and…

One of the interesting things we have discovered about the famous walk of the Camino de Santiago was that the route of pilgrimage, itself, predates the journey St. James, himself, took in the 1st century.  Scholars now think that St. James went to the region of Compostella because he knew of an existing route of pilgrimage there and thought that because the route already represented people searching for something those on the way may be opened to his message of the Good News.   In fact, in the ancient world, before St. James, the destination was a place on the Spanish coast, a place that is now marked as Fisterra, some…

Some years ago, I was very fortunate to be on the island of Patmos, one of the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey.  Patmos is an island associated with the apostle John.  He was exiled there during the Diocletian Persecution at the end of the 1st century, and it is held that there on the island he wrote the final book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation.  In one of the monasteries on the island, however, is the most extraordinary museum with the most priceless religious treasures from antiquity. One of the artefacts that particularly attracted my attention in the museum was an…

Celebrating a wedding. It’s always a happy occasion, and one full of expectation! Indeed, every wedding brings before us something for which we all long: the simplicity of falling in love, the promise of exchanging a commitment to each other, the hope of beginning a life together. the midst of all the other troubles and uncertainties we experience in the celebration something with all the promise of being good, true and beautiful. And it fascinates us. Somehow it brings us home to ourselves. For many, their wedding is not the first time that they have exchanged a commitment to another person.  But at wedding there is every hope that this time the commitment will work.…