17th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 26 July 2026
These weeks will not be easy for us as the Church in Australia. Last week the trial of the former Bishop of Broome commenced in Perth. On Monday morning an ICAC inquiry will commence involving a number of Catholic entities. We do not know how wide the scope of the inquiry may be caste.
At such a time, there can be a temptation to lose heart. The scrutiny directed towards our communities can so dominate our vision that we begin to believe there is little else to see. It is understandable. Wounds demand our attention. Yet if we look only at the wounds, we can miss the quiet work of grace that God continues to accomplish.
That is perhaps more difficult today than it once seemed. We can become so absorbed by what is broken that we no longer notice what God continues to bring to birth: the faithful service of countless disciples, the compassion shown in CatholicCare and parish outreach, the generosity of volunteers, the quiet fidelity of families, the courage of survivors whose truth is helping to purify the Church, and the daily acts of love that never make the headlines. None of these erase any failures. They do not excuse them. But neither should any failures blind us to the Kingdom that continues to grow, often unnoticed, in the midst of them.
As the late Pope Francis wrote at the outset of his pontificate in 2013:
Christ’s resurrection is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world. Where all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. It is an irresistible force. Often it seems that God does not exist: all around us we see persistent injustice, evil, indifference and cruelty. But it is also true that in the midst of darkness something new always springs to life and sooner or later produces fruit. On razed land life breaks through, stubbornly yet invincibly. However dark things are, goodness always re-emerges and spreads. Each day in our world beauty is born anew, it rises transformed through the storms of history. Values always tend to reappear under new guises, and human beings have arisen time after time from situations that seemed doomed. Such is the power of the resurrection, and all who evangelize are instruments of that power.[1]
The Kingdom is subtle, but it is unmistakably real. It is present wherever life triumphs over despair, because God is life. It is wherever reconciliation overcomes bitterness, because God is love. It is wherever hope refuses to surrender to fear, because God always opens a future where we can see only dead ends. Whenever we choose what gives life rather than what diminishes it; whenever we protect the dignity of another person, especially the vulnerable; whenever we seek truth rather than defensiveness, accountability rather than denial, compassion rather than judgement; whenever we choose hope over cynicism—we are already participating in the Kingdom of God.
These moments are rarely dramatic. They usually arrive disguised as ordinary decisions. They require attentiveness, honesty and courage. Above all, they require us to decide how we will respond to what life places before us.
There is an old story that illustrates this beautifully. I have shared it previously, but it is good to share it again in the context of the Gospel today:
An elderly man lived alone on the edge of a town. No one really knew who he was. Some believed he had once been a king; others thought he had been wealthy or wise. The children, however, simply regarded him as a foolish old man and delighted in making his life miserable. They vandalised his home, destroyed his garden, and mocked him whenever they could. One day, an older boy devised a plan to expose the old man’s supposed wisdom. He caught a small white bird and hid it behind his back. Gathering the other children, he announced, “I’ll ask him what I’m holding. If he guesses it’s a bird, I’ll ask whether it’s alive or dead. If he says it’s dead, I’ll release it. If he says it’s alive, I’ll crush it in my hands. Either way, he’ll be wrong.”
The children knocked loudly on the old man’s door. He opened it, quietly observing the group before him. The boy asked, “Old man, do you know what I have behind my back?”
The old man noticed a single white feather drifting gently to the ground.
“Yes,” he replied. “You have a bird—a white bird.”
The children were astonished.
The boy quickly asked his second question. “Is it dead or alive?”
The old man looked slowly at each child before resting his gaze on the boy holding the bird.
“My son,” he said gently, “the answer is in your hands.”
The future of the Church is not simply something that happens to us. Nor is the coming of God’s Kingdom something that unfolds independently of our choices. God has entrusted something precious into our hands. Every day we either nurture it or diminish it.
Will we become people who deepen division, or people who heal it? Will we retreat into discouragement, or continue the work of renewal? Will we allow failures, whatever they may be, to have the final word, or will we allow the Gospel to call forth something new?
The Kingdom of God is always God’s gift. But whether that gift flourishes in our communities depends, in no small measure, upon our response. The answer, as the old man said, is in our hands.
May we never cease searching for those quiet signs of God’s Kingdom hidden among us. May we have eyes to recognise them, hearts willing to embrace them, and lives courageous enough to nurture them. For wherever truth is spoken, justice pursued, wounds tended, hope restored and love chosen, the Kingdom of God is already present. And there, even in difficult times, we shall discover that God has never ceased walking with his people.
[1] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, On the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World, Apostolic Exhortation, (24 November 2013), n.265.
