Seasons

Jesus demonstrates what it looks like and what is possible as a human being to say a complete yes as a servant of the perfect will of God. Most of our life is marked by living with compromise and settling for second best – or worse for addiction, failure and sin. As we walk with…

With the election this week of Pope Francis, many people have been excited by his choice of name, his evident humility in bowing and asking for the blessing of the crowd, his payment of his hotel bill, catching the bus rather than being chauffeured and many more; but others have been disturbed by this simplicity…

The parable of the lost sons (Luke 15:11-32) is so rich and so regularly commented upon, that today I will note only a few things. We perhaps miss the extent of the insult that the younger son levels against his father when he asks for the share of the inheritance – not only is he…

When we come across Moses wandering through the wilderness, caring for the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, we are not told how often he has come to this particular place. Although the text calls it the mountain of the Lord, it is clear that is anachronistic – it only becomes worthy of that designation as…

We read today from the ninth chapter of the Gospel of Luke – a chapter which saints and scholars across the centuries have told us is the centre of the Gospel. Before Jesus begins his journey towards Jerusalem, he begins this process by gathering the disciples together (always a sign of the church) and he…

On the first Sunday of Lent each year, we remember why we journey through the wilderness for forty days when we hear about the journey of Jesus – driven by the holy Spirit into the desert – for forty days of prayer and encounter with God. We must first note that temptation should not only…

The NSW Catholic Bishops released a Lenten Pastoral Letter in response to the Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, called “Sowing in Tears”. The letter itself is a fine example of authorship by committee and says all the kinds of things that one would expect such a letter to say. The opening…

Ash Wednesday reflection – with the students of St Paul’s Primary School, Camden. The short, three-chapter book of Joel provides a call and response by the people of God suffering as a result of a national calamity – a plague of locusts has destroyed their grain and grape crops, so the people are running out…

Gathering to celebrate the Eucharist on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, the liturgy provides fantastic images to reflect upon. From the prophet Isaiah who reminds us that the Lord will not crush the bruised reed, to the Lord Jesus who after he comes up out of the water receives the gift of…

When I caught up with some friends during the week to celebrate a mutual friend’s birthday, the conversation turned to the Feast of the Epiphany and the celebration of Christmas. Mainly this was because one of the guys was a deacon in the Coptic Orthodox church, and he was gently berating me and the other…

When you drive around in Sydney’s south-west, with all the road-works around, you are bombarded by an increasing array of signs – some permanent, some portable, some flashing and variable. Road signs can help you to know what the speed limit is, or if there is a sharp corner looming, or a change in the…

We are told by surveys and the media that more and more Australians no longer believe in ‘god’. Yet, if you asked them what the ‘god’ that they don’t believe in is like, I would have to say that I don’t believe in that ‘god’ either. For most people, god is a being who is…

The early church began to realise after the events of the death and resurrection, that this is the God who was revealed in the baby born in Bethlehem. God has come in the child born in the manger. God has come in Jesus of Nazareth; if we want to know what God is like, we…

The liturgy through the season of Advent provides events and characters to meditate upon. We are joined by Hebrew Testament prophets in our journey who express the hopes and longings of the generations of people for the Messiah to come. In the weekday Masses, Isaiah provides the main voice, but in our Sunday Masses, we…

As a society we so often accept poor substitutes rather than the fullness of life experience that is offered to us. When we journey through the season of Advent, it can at times feel like a poor substitute for the season of Lent. The reality is very different – because the character of the season…

The readings today reminded me of being in Brisbane at the start of last year, when the devastating flood waters that had claimed too many lives in the Lockyer Valley moved downstream towards the city. Authorities did not want any more lives to be lost, so did all that they could to ensure that the…

We begin the new liturgical year (Year C) in much the same tone as we concluded Year B – with a focus on the destruction of Jerusalem. So it seems appropriate to reflect on the events that would have so marked the lives of any Christians living in the forty-year period between the wonderful events…

The Feast of the Ascension can strike us a quite bizarre affair – especially to one who grew up on a diet of science-fiction and imagined that Jesus somehow managed to add flying and living outside of the atmosphere to his walking-on-water and multiplying food – as well as raising the dead and getting through…

In the first century, the standard expression of the Jewish faiths was strongly influenced by the Pharisees, the most populous of the many forms of Jewish sects that were active at the time. Unlike other groups which were often on the fringes of Jewish society or groups such as the Sadducees which were deeply embedded…

I am sure that if many parishioners ever bother to listen to the first line of the second reading today, they either choose to ignore it or doubt that it can actually be true. It is a rather extraordinary claim: ‘think of the love that the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be…

  One of the lovely things about the Gospel today (Luke 24:35-48) is that it deals with the nature of the resurrected body of Jesus and demonstrates that the disciples did not share the same drug-induced hypnotic experience, or simply remember the warm and fuzzy experiences of Jesus invoked by a vision of his ghost,…

  Although in the debate on Monday night on the ABC1 TV program QandA between Richard Dawkins and Cardinal Pell, it seemed that doubt and questioning of faith was a very recent and modern phenomena, if you study the scriptures and Christian tradition carefully such doubts and questions are immediately apparent.The passage from John’s Gospel…

Although we profess and declare that Jesus Christ is risen, and that through the resurrection, death has been defeated – sometimes it can feel like nothing much has in fact changed. Just this morning the news announced the discovery of a the dead bodies of around 100 young men killed in Syria – many showing…

  A brief reflection offered at the end of the Stations of the Cross, celebrated at St Paul’s, Camden on Good Friday morning. Play MP3 Length: 2’15” A full recording of the service (slightly edited to reduce some of the silences and not including the final multimedia) Play Full Service mp3 Length: 40’05”

  Last weekend I joined the throngs – not in welcoming the Messiah to Jerusalem – but in watching the new hit movie, The Hunger Games – based on the first part of the popular trilogy written by Suzanne Collins. The action takes place in a future post-apocalyptic north America, where all that is left…

Taking a friend out for a driving lesson a few weeks ago brought to mind my own experience of learning to drive a car. Growing up on a farm, our first driving experience was with tractors and motorbikes and eventually cars as we made our way around the paddocks. But once I actually received my…

A Jew would recognise our first reading today as the very last passage in the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh. English bibles have tended to reorganise the order of the books in the Old Testament, so that we no longer follow the three-part division of the Tanakh into Torah (the Law), Nevi’im (the Prophets) and Ketuvim…

Our first reading from Genesis 22 contains what is often regarded as one of the finest examples of a short story in all or Western literature. In 19 short verses, the reader is taken on a terrible and shocking journey along with Abraham and Isaac – your only son, the son that you love -…

As we journey through lent each year, the Church provides us with similar foundations. Each year, on the first Sunday in Lent, we journey with Jesus out into the wilderness as he is tempted; on the second Sunday, we travel with Peter, James and John up a high mountain where Jesus is transfigured. These two…

A lot of the things that we do as a Christian church are kind of strange. If you had never been into a Christian church before, and you happened to wander into this church today – particularly at the end of Mass – and saw several hundred, otherwise ordinary people, who have freely submitted themselves…