The kingdom of God comes clothed in ordinariness and dressed in vulnerability.  We are here, probably like the tenants, expecting it to come in grand schemes in a form before which we would tremble.  Instead it comes rather in a way that we can easily scoff and dismiss, so ludicrous can it first seem to us.  God has come to us as a baby, as one socially marginalised, as one hanging on a tree, as bread.  None of these ways has the elements of a grand army, a mighty battalion.  Like the landowner’s son in the parable all these ways are disarming in their simplicity.  4,607 total views https://media.blubrry.com/davidranson/p/content.blubrry.com/davidranson/27th_Sunday_in_Ordinary_Time.mp3Podcast: Play in…

As disciples of Jesus, and as members of the Church, we are those who have been given the eyes and the ears to see and to hear when and how the Kingdom of God is showing itself.  We are those, therefore, who can perceive in the most unlikely and the most ordinary of places that something extraordinary is occurring. We are those who have been gifted by our faith to read in something that at first might seem a long way away from the Church and from what is religious, the presence, nonetheless, of a genuine spiritual reality.  4,524 total views https://media.blubrry.com/davidranson/p/content.blubrry.com/davidranson/Homily_for_26_Sunday_2020.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Whatever good we strive for then must be out of a sense of celebration for what we know we have already received from God.  In the Kingdom of God economics and gratitude are integrally linked.  When our lives are a celebration of what we have received already from the sheer graciousness of God, they are marked by a simplicity which is essentially hospitable.  We no longer need to acquire feverishly at all costs  We do not look on others in terms of what they have done, or what they have achieved, of how well they perform, how much they have acquired.  4,337 total views https://media.blubrry.com/davidranson/p/content.blubrry.com/davidranson/25th_Sunday_of_Year_A.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

The mystery of forgiveness is central to the Christian perspective.  Forgiveness, though, is a challenge. It is a mystery. And it is a journey. It is an appointment that awaits each and every one of us.  Each and every one of us carries hurt, some of them very deep.  Each hurt presents with the challenge: to forgive or not to forgive.  The challenge is unavoidable.  The decision, however, is ours to make or otherwise.  It is our Christian discipleship that impels us each day to enter the journey of forgiveness.  It is here, perhaps more than anywhere else, that the depth of our Christian commitment becomes apparent or otherwise. It is in the challenge of forgiveness that…

The Gospel recognises that our relationships are never easy, including the relationships between fathers and their children which we mark here in Australia on Father’s Day. They are always fraught with the possibility of hurt, with disappointments, with projections, with disillusionment.  Their demand is constant.  Yet, it is what happens in and through them that determines our real sanctity.  We do not grow in holiness by practicing more religion.  We grow in holiness by practicing more listening, more humility, more love – by genuinely encouraging one another rather than putting wedges between ourselves.  4,784 total views https://media.blubrry.com/davidranson/p/content.blubrry.com/davidranson/Homily_for_23rd_Sunday_of_Year_A.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

One of the most radical truths we will learn in life is that which is expressed by the Australian novelist, Patrick White, “The mystery of life is not solved by success, which is an end in itself, but in failure, in perpetual struggle, in becoming.” We can spend our whole life learning the meaning of this.  It confuses us given that it is the opposite of what we want.  It is the antithesis of the culture in which we have been immersed and which seduces us in subtle ways so that we become despondent because we find we are not as free as we think, not as in control as we want to…

Like the identity of Jesus, our own identity is an ‘event’ that discloses itself in and through a commitment to something other than itself.  When we are somebody for everybody, so that nobody is just anybody, the question about our identity is given back its answer.  When people see the way in which we live our life, would  they too reveal back to us our own God-given identity, as bearers of the Christ, if we asked them who we are, as Jesus asks his disciples who he is?  4,574 total views https://media.blubrry.com/davidranson/p/content.blubrry.com/davidranson/21st_Sunday_of_Year_A.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Jesus is confronted with a Canaanite woman, a stranger, a foreigner, someone culturally entirely different from himself.  At first he reacts as we all do in such a situation:  defensively, even with hostility.  But her presence persists.  He hears her story.  His perspective changes.  This encounter becomes a turning point in Jesus ministry.  4,534 total views https://media.blubrry.com/davidranson/p/content.blubrry.com/davidranson/20th_Sunday_of_Ordinary_Time.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Christian peace comes not from the absence of conflict in life, but in the recognition that precisely in the conflict and storms of our life, someone is holding us, providing us with the assurance that we have a sense of identity larger than the conflict by which we are encircled.  When we feel overwhelmed, not sure where to place our steps, it is the gospel that invites us to receive a gaze which comes to us from beyond our own confusion – a gaze which steadies us, assures us, invites us.   5,043 total views https://media.blubrry.com/davidranson/p/content.blubrry.com/davidranson/19th_Sunday_of_Year_A.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

The story of the 5000 takes us to the heart of what we celebrate in Eucharist:  from just a little an abundance is reaped. Our own five loaves and two fishes, our own small stumbling efforts to go beyond ourselves, to share with others from the little we have, have an effect much greater than we can imagine.  Those efforts are truly blessed, and give life to others.  And our own hungry hearts, themselves, become mysteriously satisfied.  4,908 total views https://media.blubrry.com/davidranson/p/content.blubrry.com/davidranson/18th_Sunday_of_Year_A.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS