New Creation

First Reading ‡ Acts 10:34.36-43We have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead. Responsorial ‡ Psalm 117:1-2.16-17.22-23This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad. Second Reading (option 1) ‡ Colossians 3:1-4Look for the things that are in heaven, where Christ is. Gospel ‡ John 20:1-9The…

First Reading ‡ Revelation 11:19; 12:1-6.10I saw a woman clothed with the sun and with the moon beneath her feet. Responsorial ‡ Psalm 44:10-12.16The queen stands at your right hand, arrayed in gold. Second Reading ‡ 1 Corinthians 15:20-27aAs members of Christ all people will be raised, Christ first, and after him all who belong…

At first glance, this feast day appears to be all about the dignity of Mary. When Pope Pius XII solemnly declared the doctrine of Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven as a dogma of the faith on 1 Nov 1950 in the document Munificentissimus Deus, at paragraph 44 he stated: “the Immaculate Mother of God, the…

When was the last time that you were so truly grateful for something that happened in your life that you had to shout out aloud in thanksgiving. I remember as a kid growing up on the farm, we would often help dad when he went to burn off in the steep gullies that were difficult…

The vision that the letter to the Hebrews paints today is certainly expansive. It is an image of the new creation where everyone is welcome and treated as a first-born son and citizen. After attending a forum at the University of Wollongong this week (in 2013) on Refugees, it became even more apparent how far…

This year our parish celebrated the Easter Vigil early on Easter Sunday morning (beginning at 5am) as a Dawn Mass, rather than early in the evening on Holy Saturday night as has been the custom. In part this was because I never liked the fact that during the Easter Vigil celebrated at that time, you…

One of the limitations of celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus is that for so many people in the church, they still operate with a tri-part understanding of creation, even though they know that this is not the case in the physical universe or according to the laws of science and nature. So we still think…

One of the things that strikes me about the celebration of Pentecost, are its Jewish roots. When the disciples met in the upper room on that day, they almost certainly would have reflected upon the passages of Exodus 19 and 20 which detail the events around the arrival of the Hebrew nation at Mount Sinai,…

On this feast of the Ascension, we ponder the event of Jesus ascending into heaven as told in the Lukan literature – the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. The other synoptic Gospels do not record the event at all, and John only hints at it by telling Mary of Magdala that…

With Revelation 21 being the second reading for the next two weeks moving into Ascension and Pentecost, it seemed like the appropriate time to begin a new teaching series on the Hope of New Creation. So over the next four weeks, we will explore the nature of Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, Resurrection and the Last…

Death was not God’s doing. So how do we make sense of death and how the Christian should approach this stark reality? How should we respond to our natural instinctual and evolutionary reaction to fear death? The teaching that the book of Wisdom offers and which is then magnified by Jesus in these two tightly woven stories…

In the journey through Lent each year, the Church leads us first out into the wilderness to be with Jesus during his temptations, and then on the second Sunday of Lent his three closest disciples join Jesus as they journey up a high mountain. The strange event which the bible calls Jesus being transfigured is…

The long journey that we have been on with Jesus which began in chapter 9 of the Gospel of Luke – the journey from Galilee in the north down to Jerusalem has finished and Jesus has made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem – which the church celebrates each year on Palm Sunday. So all the…

When was the last time that you were so truly grateful for something that happened in your life that you had to shout out aloud in thanksgiving. Perhaps if you were a Roosters fan, it was last Sunday night? I remember as a kid growing up on the farm, we would often help dad when…

The vision that the letter to the Hebrews paints today is certainly expansive. It is an image of the new creation where everyone is welcome and treated as a first-born son and citizen. After attending a forum at the University of Wollongong this week on Refugees, it became even more apparent how far removed this…

Dedicated to my mother. The first reading, taken from the opening verse of the book that we usually call the ‘Acts of the Apostles’, is clearly presented as a sequel to the Gospel of Luke. As Bishop Tom Wright says, it could just as easily be called the Acts of King Jesus, part II. For…

Finally in the season of Easter we arrive at the end of the story with the final two chapters of the book of Revelation being the centrepiece of the liturgy this week and next (the second reading is in the middle/centre of the liturgy of the word). The vision that St John receives in Revelation…

Heaven, Hell and God’s love Presented over a two-day seminar, these workshops open up the theme of the place of the resurrection of Jesus in the life of Christians, considering what society teaches and understands about death and what happens after death. The seminar looks at the teaching of scripture and…

In Hebrews 12 we arrive at what can be argued as the climax of the letter/document with a description of two mountains. The first, although unnamed, clearly refers to Mount Sinai and the place of the reception of the great covenant by Moses. The frightening scene is related powerfully – complete with a blazing fire,…

This workshop was presented during the Ignite Conference 2012 – Awaken. It is in part a response to the book written by Rob Bell, called ‘Love Wins’ which was published in 2011. This is the description of the workshop: Rob Bell challenged the Church to rethink heaven and hell in his book Love Wins. This seminar…

  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,…

After journeying through this season of Advent with the prophet Isaiah, and then for the last two weeks with the witness of John the Baptiser, it is only on this fourth Sunday of Advent that we finally are presented with the figure of Mary to accompany our Advent reflection. When we encounter her in the…

Literature in the classical world was often concerned to set the scene and provide an overview of the whole text from the very first line of the text. When we come to a text like the Gospel of Mark, we may be tempted to pass over the opening line of the Gospel – which we…

During the month of November, there is a tradition of remembering the dead and praying for them – particularly during the Eucharist. Our liturgy this Sunday provides an opportunity to reflect upon this practice in the light of the Lord’s coming and the judgement. When Paul writes his earliest letter, to the Thessalonians, he still…

The feast of the Ascension can be one of those feast days that seems utterly bizarre and irrelevant – it is so mythological and pre-scientific to border of pointless. Or if we can reclaim it somehow in our understanding of its place in the life of Jesus, we can still be left wondering what this…

‘Peace be with you’ – this is the greeting that Jesus proclaims to the disciples when he appears to them – even if they are locked behind closed doors for fear of the same fate falling on them as has just happened to Jesus. But the peace that Jesus promised, and the peace that he…

Welcome to the third day – the day when everything is different because of that day – which John calls the first day of the new week, when the tomb was empty. On Friday we waited in silence and we mourned and lamented. We so often live our whole lives on Friday. We are shocked…

The Easter Vigil provides us with the opportunity to be immersed within the story of our salvation and the continuing work of God – from creation to redemption. So it is only appropriate that we make Alleluia our song as we celebrate the day of Resurrection and become builders of the new creation.Play MP3Recorded at…

To truly appreciate the full scope of this sixth sign in the gospel of John – the healing and faith of the man born blind – we need to remember the full scope of John’s spiritual vision. John is always leading us to look back to the beginning of creation and forward to the wonders…

On the second Sunday in Lent each year we join Peter, James and John to witness that incredible moment when Jesus is changed (in the Greek, metamorphoo, which you can probably discern from the word is an aorist indicative passive third person singular verb, which is a form of ‘metamorphosis’ meaning ‘to remodel’ or ‘to…