14th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 5 July 2026
Today, the Church in Australia celebrates National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sunday. We give thanks for the oldest continuing culture on earth and for the profound gift that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples offer to the whole Church. Their witness reminds us that God was already at work in this land long before the Gospel was first proclaimed here. And in their own tradition we are given a way to enter Jesus’ message today.
Jesus says: “Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest . . . Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Of course, the words are addressed not to those carrying heavy physical burdens, but to those weighed down by anxiety, noise, endless activity, and the relentless demands of modern life. Most of us know what it is to be busy. We fill every empty moment. Our days are crowded with responsibilities, our minds crowded with information, our hearts crowded with concerns. We have become uncomfortable with silence. If a moment of stillness appears, we instinctively reach for our phone, scroll social media, or fill the silence with conversation or music.
This is where the wisdom of Australia’s First Peoples offers an extraordinary gift. Among many Aboriginal peoples there is the practice known as dadirri, often translated as “deep listening.” Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr Baumann describes it as an inner, quiet awareness that recognises “the deep spring that is inside us.” It is more than silence. It is an attentive presence. She writes: “In our Aboriginal way, we learnt to listen from our earliest days . . . We learnt by watching and listening, waiting and then acting. My people are not threatened by silence. They are completely at home in it . . . Our Aboriginal culture has taught us to be still and to wait.”
This is a remarkable echo of today’s Gospel. Jesus invites us to come to him and find rest. Dadirri teaches us how we might begin to receive that gift not by striving harder, but by becoming still enough to notice that God is already present.
Perhaps the greatest burden many of us carry today is not simply the amount we have to do. It is that we have forgotten how to be. We have forgotten how to receive life as gift. Jesus does not simply promise relief from our burdens. He invites us to learn from him. In other words, he offers a different way of living, a way marked by gentleness, humility and trust in the Father. Earlier in today’s Gospel, Jesus rejoices that these mysteries are revealed not to the self-sufficient and clever, but to those who approach God with the openness of little children. Hearts that are uncluttered are able to hear. This is the invitation we discover in our own Australian landscape. The vast Australian landscape continually calls us back to this deeper rhythm. Its immense skies, ancient rivers, gum trees and quiet bush remind us that creation does not rush. The seasons unfold patiently. Life grows in hidden ways. God’s work is often slow and gentle.
Therefore, perhaps this week we might accept Jesus’ invitation in a very practical way. Set aside just five minutes each day; go outside if we can, sit quietly, watch a bird, notice the movement of leaves in the breeze; listen to the wind; observe the light changing across the branches of a tree. Or simply allow creation to come to you. There is nothing to achieve. Nothing to solve. Simply be present. Simply listen.
As we do, our attention gradually moves from the world around us to the world within us. We begin to hear not only the sounds of creation but also the movements of our own hearts—our hopes, our fears, our gratitude, our wounds, our deepest desires. The Australian artist Michael Leunig once wrote of entering “an old quietness” filled with ordinary sound: the birds, a broom sweeping, someone digging in a neighbouring garden. It is a quietness that has held generations before us. And within that ancient quietness another voice slowly becomes audible.
Many years ago, Pope Paul VI spoke of silence leading us first to hear ourselves, and then, beyond ourselves, to hear “the voice of the Spirit of God.” In silence we begin to recognise that beneath all the noise of our lives there is One who has been waiting patiently all along. The God who knows us better than we know ourselves. The God who gently says, “Come to me.” Ultimately, the rest that Jesus promises is not merely relaxation. It is communion. It is discovering that our lives are held securely in the Father’s love. It is learning to carry life’s burdens with Christ rather than by ourselves.
Today, as we honour the spiritual wisdom of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, may we also receive afresh Jesus’ invitation. May we learn again the grace of deep listening. May we become people who are not afraid of silence, because in that silence we discover not emptiness but Presence.
For there, in the quietness of attentive hearts, the gentle and humble Christ still speaks. And there, as he promised, we truly “find rest for our souls.”
