Year C
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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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32nd Sunday of Year C
In many ways I am coming more and more to the conclusion that we live in an age of isolation, especially in our modern Western and brilliantly technological societies. There is a great paradox in this since with the communication revolution that is also a characteristic of our time never before have we been so connected to one another. If we are as connected to one another as never before how can we be suffering from such isolation? This, indeed, is a critical question. Yet, the symptoms of isolation which mark our current social experience are all around us. Tanveer Ahmed wrote some time ago: “Modern technology is vastly increasing our connectivity,…
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31st Sunday of Year C
One of the people that stand out in my memory when I was engaged in the ministry of spiritual direction was a young man, James (not his real name). When I first met James he had completed a degree in film and was involved in film-making, and was becoming quite successful in his endeavour. But James was also struggling. He was depressed and the depression was becoming more significant. I met with James regularly over perhaps a twelve-month period, seeking to listen to him and understand something of his life’s journey. Through our conversations it became apparent that though he was becoming quite successful as a film-maker he actually didn’t like what he…
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30th Sunday of Year C
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 expects everything about us and around us to be ideal, and the need to let this go. How easily 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.…
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29th Sunday of Year C
The Admission to the Ministry of Acolyte of Hien Vu and Martino Hoang The Admission to the Ministry of Lector of Shane Hyland Luke 8: 1-18 There can be many times in our lives when we know the temptation to lose heart. Sometimes life’s events simply take away our strength to keep hoping. And we incline to despair. Yet this Sunday we are told a story by Jesus about never losing heart. It seems that we are to be like the importune woman, while God is presented like the judge who eventually gives in to our persistence. Yet, perhaps there is another way of looking at the story Jesus tells us. …