Australia Day – 26 January 2024
We have a natural instinct for stories. As Pope Francis once wrote:
“From childhood we hunger for stories just as we hunger for food. Stories influence our lives, whether in the form of fairy tales, novels, films, songs, news, even if we do not always realise it . . . Stories leave their mark on us; they shape our convictions and our behaviours. They can help us understand and communicate who we are.” [1]
We delight in weaving stories. For this reason, there is a link, as Francis identifies, between the words, ‘textile’ and ‘text’. Both come from the Latin word, ‘to weave’ (texere). Yet we know the capacity we have to weave both stories of good and stories of evil. And so, the Pope goes on to say, “. . . we need wisdom to be able to welcome and create beautiful, true and good stories. We need courage to reject false and evil stories. We need patience and discernment to rediscover stories that help us not to lose the thread amid today’s many troubles. We need stories that reveal who we truly are, also in the untold heroism of everyday life.”
This weekend, we recount the story of Australia. It is a story of dislocation and dispossession when told through the memory of our Aboriginal peoples, and a story of possibility and progression when told through the memory of those who have come to the land in more recent times. We are heirs to this extraordinary story of both hurt and opportunity in which all the actors in the story have their part to play. It is the story given to us to continue to narrate and to develop, so that we are not merely passive recipients of the story but those with a responsibility to “re-weave the fabric of life, darning its rips and tears” – as Pope Francis would say – and to continue to generate new chapters of the story.
Today we rejoice in stories of community, of innovation, of achievement as many Australians are being honoured with Australia Day awards. A number of these people are very eminent citizens. The great majority of them, however, are people embedded in their local communities, making those communities stronger by their voluntary initiative and industry. Each of them is a story that is part of the entire narrative of our nation. They are the stories that remind us of our most genuine identity – an identity that is not forged through political or social debate but through simple practice, though all the practical moments, often the face of danger, which express our openness to each other in the midst of what troubles us. Like the best stories, they nourish life. They teach us what our future can be like. They teach us what being Australian might be.
Let us honour the Australian story not in grand ideology or in grandiose display. Let us honour our story through the remarkable accounts of companionship and community that we honour today . And as we celebrate the story, let us remember that we are not only the hearers but that we are also the writers. Let us commit to writing a new chapter to our story, so that we might have a story to tell our children and grandchildren (Exodus 10:2) so that they too may have a story to tell those who come after them. In this way our Australian story will not simply be relegated to a faded memory but will continue to live and grow. May the story gain renewed energy by the way we now write it in a new way.
[1] Message of Pope Francis for the 54th World Communications Day, 2020, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/communications/documents/papa-francesco_20200124_messaggio-comunicazioni-sociali.html
