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4th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 30 January 2022
We all have our limits, our boundaries. At different times, in different places, with different people we are used to drawing the line in the sand. We take our stand from which we will not cross. We have our bottom line, from which we will negotiate no further. This of course is well understandable, and even necessary for a sense of self and identity without which we can have no genuine relationship. We are not simply reeds in the wind or chameleons who are constantly changing colours. We are constantly in a process of self-definitions, and sometimes that self-definition occurs negatively: we define ourselves as being not something or other.…
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3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time – 23 January 2022
Over the last week or so we have once again been struck by the enormous power of nature and the destruction that it can create. Our hearts have gone out to the people of Tonga in their experience of the volcanic eruption and the subsequent tsunami. We think too of the people of Afghanistan, of Myanmar, of Ukraine – in so many places, people live with violence and fear. The stories of the world’s grief can be overwhelming for us. There is every instinct for us to close off, to close down, to retreat into what Pope Francis calls the ‘globalisation of indifference’, to become as unaffected as possible. Perhaps…
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2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 16 January 2022
With the great interest in spirituality it is not unusual to come across approaches to spirituality that envisage it to be primarily about the quest for peace and harmony, a kind of self-satisfaction. In this sense becoming spiritual is about becoming at “one with myself”, “connecting to my real self,” finding a centre within myself” that promises to make be immune from all the ups and downs, and the many contradictions, of life. The self-help sections of bookstores are full of literature that promise we need never feel powerless again, that success is always within our reach, that vitality and beauty are always attainable if we but follow a few…
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Baptism of the Lord – 2022
With the Feast of the Lord’s Baptism the Christmas Season comes to an end. We began the Christmas Season celebrating the birth of a Child. As we began the season celebrating new beginnings, so we conclude the season. Jesus’ baptism represents for him a new beginning, the beginning of his ministry to realise his mission. This invites us to consider what new beginnings are being extended to us. How is God calling us, within our own circumstances, to move forward in our life? What are the new possibilities into which we are being invited so that our own hearts might not lose their freshness no matter our age? Our hearts…
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Feast of the Holy Family – 2021
At my father’s funeral several years ago, I happened to meet a man whom I had not known before. When I asked him his connection to my father he replied, “Well actually my great, great grandfather was responsible for bringing your great, great grandfather to Tasmania.” I was fascinated by the information which resolved some confusion as to how my forbears came to Tasmania. The man at the funeral had the answer: Samuel Ranson arrived in the Port of Launceston on 12 August 1841 to be the overseer of Wickford’s – a property near the township of Longford, near Launceston. This disclosure opened up further discovery for me – that…
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Fourth Sunday of Advent – 2021
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. It has often struck me that in Australia we have our own experience of hope. From penal settlement and convict experience, through to the mythology of the pioneer farmer, and to the shores of Gallipoli, and extending even to our fascination with sport, Australians, historically, have defined themselves as those who often find themselves pitched against an overwhelming odd with every prospect of defeat, yet discovering there a new sense of solidarity with one another. As Joachim Dirks once commented, The preoccupation with…
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Third Sunday of Advent – 2021
Whenever I hear today’s gospel the first image that comes into my mind is a particular cartoon of Leunig. It is of one of his typical figures seated at a chess board which is against a window opening out to the night sky. The figure’s chess partner is indeed the night sky, the unknown, the mystery, God himself. “What then must we do?” – the question repeated three times in today’s gospel – seems to be such an apt title to the cartoon. “What then must we do?” It is the question with which we are confronted so often in our life which feels many times like a chess game…
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Second Sunday of Advent – 2021
Christmas is associated with family for us, and often enough with family reunion. Maybe family members who have been away for awhile are coming back home. Christmas is often a time, too, when we re-unite with friends with whom we have not been able to enjoy a great deal of contact over the year. Christmas is an expectant time, and as the time towards Christmas becomes shorter we are full of expectancy about it – even if this expectancy from time to time becomes a kind of dread! This kind of expectancy is, in different ways, at the heart of the Christmas mystery, and today’s gospel takes us to this…
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First Sunday of Advent – 2021
There used to be a Chinese curse which went, “May you live in interesting times!” It is hard to know whether we live under this curse, but we certainly live in a time of great change. As Pope Francis himself remarked, it is not even that we live in an era of change, but that we live in a change of era. And it is this that make the times even more interesting. The hardest challenge for us in a situation of change, is to listen deeply, to be alert for both the dangers and the possibilities. In fact, the full Chinese proverb goes, “May you live in interesting times…
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Solemnity of Christ the King
In these weeks the country has been on heightened alert for bushfire. We have known just how destructive the fires have been on the north coast and in Queensland; it has been difficult for us to imagine the scale of bush destroyed and we have felt the despair of the people who have lost their homes and property, especially those who have lost loved ones. Here in Sydney we have recognized the situation by the pall of smoke covering the city now for some days. All of us feel a sense of trepidation about the forthcoming summer. As we see the pictures of devastation and view the smoke that engulfs…
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