You are here:HomeArcadiaNews & EventsHomilies Please see below for a list of recent homilies Trinity Sunday Year A - 2020 Listen to what each of the readings focus on this Trinity Sunday The Lord, a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger rich in kindness and faithfulness [Be united live in peace and the] (a) God of love and peace will be with you God loved the world so [much that he gave his only Son], so that everyone who believes in him might be saved, & might have eternal life We know that traditionally we have spoken of God the Holy Trinity as Father, Son and Holy Spirit And some of us may be disturbed by the overly patriarchal language used to speak of a God who is so much beyond our understanding, or knowledge, or our capacity to speak accurately of Some have even suggested we would be better to speak of God in this day and age as God the Creator, God the Redeemer and God the Sanctifier – focusing more on the functions of each person of the Holy Trinity, and avoiding an overly patriarchal way of speaking of God And while our readings today do not speak of God in the terms: Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, they do avoid the patriarchal language and speak of who God is and what God does: So that everyone who believes in him might be saved, & might have eternal life In a week when Droughts, Bushfires, Floods and Covid 19 have taken a back seat to the consequences of a white policeman with his hands in his pockets and his knee jammed into the neck of a black man in Minneapollis, who does not listen to George Floyd’s cries of: I cannot breathe! I cannot breathe! I cannot breathe! When people of conscience around the world demonstrate carrying placards many of which say: Black lives matter! When politicians, medical authorities and the Supreme Court of NSW either recommend not marching because of risks of spread of Covid 19, or ban marches because its not a good idea in the present circumstances And when, on appeal, the Court allows the marches in NSW When since the Royal Commission into black deaths in custody in 1991, 423 indigenous people have died in custody in Australia I am reminded of a passage from Barbara Ward’s book: A New Creation, where she so eloquently says: All societies have had some sense of laws and conventions which must govern human behavior in society, but justice as a passion, justice as judgment, justice as the precondition and context for any truly acceptable relations between human beings is virtually the invention of the Bible. It springs fiercely into history on the lips of the Jewish prophets and cries to heaven for vengeance when the least of God’s creatures is defrauded or oppressed. Insofar as new problems … force (us) to face with more realism the issues of justice – both at the national and international level – then the Christian commitment to justice could well be the most relevant aspect of its contemporary witness. These recent events across the world in response to George Floyd’s death, which touches such glaring problems, as yet not properly addressed in the US and in our own country, of the unjust treatment of our first nation’s people still to this day, indicates strongly that it is our society which is literally sick, and in need of a radical and lasting cure. Mercy is indeed significant rather than sacrifice, but without justice it is empty. How many more indigenous lives must be sacrificed, often over trivial offences such as drunkenness in public places, offensive language, non payment of fines, before we get the message. I hope I did not hear properly what I thought our Prime Minister said on Friday, urging people not to demonstrate because of the great sacrifices others had made to reduce the impact of Covid 19 on our society. Indigenous peoples have also made huge sacrifices to get us to where we are with Covid 19, but some issues of justice have called them to even greater sacrifices! And they have been extremely patient and merciful with the rest of us being so slow to act justly! The God we worship as the Holy Trinity is: The Lord, a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger rich in kindness and faithfulness The God of love and peace will be with us For God loved the world so much …, so that everyone who believes in him might be saved, & might have eternal life And in this context: St Paul says to us: Be united, live in peace – and as Pope Paul VI stated so often (in his encyclical Pacem in Terris): there can be no peace without justice. Pentecost Sunday – Year A – 2020 When Pentecost day came round, the apostles had all met in one room, when suddenly they heard what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven, the noise of which filled the entire house in which they were sitting, and something appeared to them that seemed like tongues of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head of each of them. They were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in foreign languages. This graphic account is fixed in our minds as containing the heart of the apostles religious experience at Pentecost. It grapples with questions of languages and cultures. It raises issues of how to express religious experience in order to share it with others, in line with the command to go out to the ends of the earth and tell the good news! It gives us the example of how the apostles began to do just that. And the passage echoes elements of an earlier episode in Jewish literature: that of Elijah in 1 Kings 19.8f: Elijah preached to his people, encountered hostility, hid in a cave only to be confronted by God: Why are you here? Why? indeed! He is told to go and stand on the mount before the Lord: and behold the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. (Authorized Version of 1611) Stephen Prickett (Words and the Word. Language, poetics and biblical interpretation, Cambridge, 1986, 6f) suggests that “this is such a well known story that it is easy to miss how enigmatic and puzzling it is.” He raises questions about the source and nature of the fire, the earthquake and the voice. And he gives a literal translation of the final phrase: a voice of thin silence. He assembles various attempts to translate into English the expression of God’s revelation to Elijah: The Good News Bible: the soft whisper of a voice. The New English Bible:a low murmuring sound. The Jerusalem Bible: a sound of a gentle breeze, Eventually “eliminating all suggestions that the language is “obscure and ambiguous,” which it is. And concludes: “Something very odd had apparently happened to Elijah.” And the ‘author’ is at pains to express poetically the depths of the religious experience, beyond human knowing and understanding. And something very odd had occurred in the lives of the apostles this Pentecost day. How does one express the depths of religious experience, especially when it involves the Holy Spirit? Luke in The Acts of the Apostles, uses images of fire and wind, as did the author of Elijah’s experiences. But the voice mentioned by Luke is that of each apostle filled with the Spirit speaking a foreign language, not that of God communicating through his Spirit directly. No voice of thin silence here! But what of our own religious experiences and our capacity to engage in conversations with people of our time? What of the ambiguities and obscurities mixed with the profound awareness of something greater than ourselves, touching us, and moving us to take such risks, that people of our time reject us, as did Elijah’s audiences? As we begin to emerge, at various rates from state to state, from the lockdowns, having been through droughts, and fires, and a pandemic, Starting from next Monday, June 1st, we are permitted to have 50 people at celebrations of the Eucharist. Please make sure you register online or by phoning Paula for Parish Masses and Fr David for Monastery Masses. We need to keep our distances, use hand sanitizers, and be able to track those who have attended in case of any outbreak for Corana19. Sometimes God speaks to each of us, and sometimes to us as a community through the Holy Spirit. At times the Spirit speaks loudly and dramatically in nature, and at other times the Spirit speaks again in that voice of thin silence. Are we up for the task of discerning how God speaks to us today through the Holy Spirit, what God is saying and be able to respond appropriately? When Pentecost day came round, the apostles had all met in one room, when suddenly they heard what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven, the noise of which filled the entire house in which they were sitting, and something appeared to them that seemed like tongues of fire The Feast of the Ascension - Year A - 2020 There was a priest in a shop trying out a pair of binoculars He had just got them focused nicely on the far wall when a fellow who had noticed his roman collar, came up and whispered to him, “Just tell them to come up the front of the church, Father!” When he had been at table with them, he had told them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for what the Father had promised… Now having met together they asked: Lord has the time come? It is not for you to know times or dates that the Father has decided… but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you… Why? What was the power from on high to do to them? Perhaps part of the answer lies in the prayer which opens the second reading May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him What wonderful language, and Paul goes even further . . . May he enlighten the eyes of your mind so that you can see what hope his call holds for you, what rich glories he has promised and how infinitely great is the power that he has exercised for us believers “What the Lord gives us in the gift of the Spirit and which we experience in prayer is a new vision, or a new dimension. The people we are fond of and love, the things we like doing, the places we like, are in some tangible way different, added to, increased, by God . . . The people and places and activities, which we love, become different in view of the Ascension . . . you will know what I mean, when I say that the Lord’s abiding presence - yes, that’s it, prayer is God’s abiding presence” gives us a new vision of reality (cf. Dom Dominic Gaisford) and it takes time to savour it, value it, experience it . . . time . . . Thomas Merton offers us an insight into this: it “means being attentive to the times of the day: when the birds begin to sing, and cars come out of the morning mist / fog, with the sun coming up, the warmth of midday, the chill of the evening air . . . the reason why we don’t take time is, perhaps, a feeling that we have to keep moving This is a real sickness, But we live in the fullness of time Every moment is God’s own good time, His Kairos, we have received the fullness of God’s Spiritas a result of his ascending to the Father’s right hand . . . The whole thing boils down to giving ourselves time in prayer . . . Creating a chance to realize that we have what we seek We don’t have to rush after it, It was there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.” One act is required - and that is all: for this one act pulls everything together and keeps everything in order . This one act is to stand with attention in your heart - Or, in the words of St Luke, read as a metaphor, stay in your city, then, until you are clothed with power The power of this Spirit of wisdom and perception, that the eyes of your mind be enlightened and you might see the hope to which you are called Take the time to stand with attention in your heart on this Feast of Ascension - whether you’re in the front seat or the back of the Church, or even still at home in these days of lockdown: That you may go forth and make disciples of all nations… knowing that I am with you, yes to the end of time, says the risen Lord! 6th Sunday of Easter – Year A – 2020 Reverence the Lord Christ in your hearts What a beautiful invitation! One of the chief characteristics of the Rule of Benedict, is St Benedict’s constant encouragement to reverence ALL member of the monastic community, ALL who come as guests to the monastery, ALL of creation, and ALL the property, tools and utensils of the Monastery as concrete signs in daily life of our reverence for our God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But here St Peter is exhorting us to reverence the Lord Christ, in our hearts. How significant is this in a time when we have been allowed very limited access to reverencing our Lord and God, together, in our great celebration of thanksgiving in the Eucharist. Clearly at Mass we should be reverencing Christ in our hearts, but also in our sacraments and in our churches, as a living community. But, alas, that is not so easy as we continue to deal seriously with the pandemic sweeping the world. And always have your answer ready, St Peter continues, for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have. A hope that persists amidst the panic of our current dilemmas. The virus… the shaking of our confidence in Church leaders… the undermining of so much we have taken for granted in the ‘Lucky Country’, and in the Church of our Baptisms and Anointings with the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, along the lines of the tradition mentioned in our first reading, from St Luke in the Acts of the Apostles . St Peter continues with pastoral advice on how we should engage in such conversations with those who do not believe, and wonder why we still hold fast to our beliefs: But give it with courtesy and respect and with a clear conscience… And if it is the will of God that you should suffer, it is better to suffer for doing right… The Feasts of the Ascension and of Pentecost will be celebrated in the next few weeks, and offer us further opportunities for reverencing key aspects of the mystery of the Lord Christ’s life, death and resurrection, including the sending of the Holy Spirit, mentioned in today’s gospel from St John: Jesus said to his disciples: ‘If you love me you will keep my commandments I shall ask the Father and he will give you an Advocate, to be with you forever, the Spirit of Truth. I will not leave you orphans, I will come back to you… As we move to Stage One of the lifting of restrictions in our daily lives, we have been given the opportunity to gather for worship, not just in our hearts, but in small groups of ten. We need to keep a record of those attending, to allow tracing of the virus in the event of an outbreak, and so we ask you to register with Paula El Chaar our parish secretary. There will be additional Masses, at 11 am on Sundays, and 9.30 during the week. More details are available on the website, facebook page, and in the Bulletin. Please do not register for every Mass or many Masses, but allow opportunities for other parishioners to celebrate as community. On such occasions we must be conscious of the need for social distancing, and so designated spots have been assigned in the front pews, left and right of the altar. Extra precautions are being taken to sanitize them before and after each celebration, to keep you safe. Hands must be properly sanitized as you enter the Church. Holy Communion may only be received on the hand, to avoid contamination by saliva, as directed by our Bishop. As we enter this new and dangerous phase of reverencing our God, we must take great care to respect one another, and be extra careful if we wish to be able to continue to share this privilege in the months ahead. But above all, continue to Reverence the Lord Christ in your hearts, and to reverence one another! 5th Sunday – Easter – Year A – 2020 (Apologies for the delay – we have been upgrading our computer) The word of the Lord continued to spread: the number of disciples in Jerusalem was greatly increased, and a large number of priests made their submission to the faith. We may be tempted and worried in the present lockdown to wonder in our isolation whether the word of God continues to be spread today, or whether at the end of it will our numbers have diminished further tomorrow. We might also be curious about the large number of priests who made their submission to the faith. Just who they were is not made clear. They certainly were not Catholic priests. Some think they may have been from the Jewish monastic community at Qumran at the northern end of the Dead Sea. Ascetical, pacifists in the face of Roman colonization, very prayerful, going by the number of copies the Psalter found in their library, and they practiced some form of ritual cleansing by water upon entering the community. This latter practice shows a few similarities to the Christian initiation rite of Baptism. In Baptism there are also several forms of anointing with oil: of catechumens, before the pouring of water, and of chrism, after. When a person is anointed with the oil of chrism the prayer which accompanies it says, in part: He (God) now anoints you with the chrism of salvation. As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life. The inspiration for this prayer comes from Sacred Scripture. In fact it comes from our second reading today from the first letter of Peter: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God, who called you out of darkness into his own wonderful light St Peter is not speaking only of the ordained priests in the community, but of the whole community, set apart to sing the praises of God, as a royal priesthood When you meet as a family in prayer in these days, you are exercising your royal priesthood. How profound a calling, how uplifting! Yes, we are locked down, and kept apart. Is there a way out? Our politicians are exploring the possibilities, and leaving details to state premiers, because the situation in each state is different. In the gospel Thomas asks: Lord how can we know the way? A question for all time, and indeed a question we may be asking ourselves now. Do not let your hearts be troubled, trust in God still and trust in me, says Christ, I am the way out of all this. If we are still troubled we might take comfort from the history of the Catholic church in Korea. It is thought that perhaps at the time of the Japanese invasion in 1592-1599, some Koreans were baptised by Japanese Christian soldiers. Korea made Christian evangelisation impossible by not allowing contact with the outside world. But from these early conversions, and for many years, the laity welcomed new members by rightly performing baptisms of hundreds of years forming a small prayerful community. Eventually some educated Korean Catholics were part of annual diplomatic trips to Beijing to pay taxes to their overlords. There they encountered Jesuit missionaries who gave them several Catholic texts. From 1777 they began to study these books, and eventually some members of the delegation to Beijing were baptised. The Korean Catholics met in the home of Kim Bom Ou in Myongdong, and a number of ‘home churches’ developed. Eventually a Chinese priest arrived and found 4,000 Catholics who had never met an ordained Catholic priest. They had survived all those years, as a priestly people singing the praises of God, able to celebrate the sacrament of Baptism, but without the Eucharist, for centuries. History helps us to keep perspective. We are unsure of the immediate journey we are on and its outcome, but we are confident in the final journey to our homeland in heaven, where Christ has gone before us to prepare a room for each of us. The word of the Lord continued to spread: the number of disciples in Jerusalem was greatly increased. Fr Bernard McGrath OSB PP 4th Sunday Easter – Year A The Lord is my Shepherd, there is nothing I shall want Fresh and green are the pastures where He give me repose After years of drought, and months of bushfires, the pastures are indeed green, and indeed how wonderful it would be is there was nothing we should want! But, of course, we know much more has happened to all of humanity And we desire those restful waters to which he leads us, to revive our dropping spirits We walk in the valley of darkness, locked in, isolated, far from friends and family, encouraged to download the COVIDSafe App, and if enough of us have done so by next Friday, we are promised the reward of the lifting of some restrictions Yet still we fear evil in the form of a devastating virus Saint Peter in our second reading today speaks of the merit in bearing punishment, or beatings(in many English translations of the Greek original), patiently, after going about our business He links the sufferings of the present time to those endured by the innocent crucified one, Jesus our Lord and Saviour, bearing our faults in His own body on the cross, so that we might die to our faults and live for holiness. Through His wounds we have been healed. We have been healed! This theme of the contrast between fresh green pastures and valleys of darkness is taken up in new ways by Christ in the Gospel: Put before us, in striking contrast, are on the one hand those who come to steal, slaughter, destroy, and on the other Jesus, the giver of abundant life to the People of God (The Glenstal Bible Missal, p.295) Speaking of those who steal, slaughter and destroy, our community has been touched deeply during the week, by the home invasion at Cherrybrook, and the murder of Callum Saliba. He has brothers and children living in our parish How dark and deep is the valley through which they now walk. But Christ wishes to lift our spirits out of valleys of darkness and sin The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy I have come so that they may have life And have it to the full! How wonderful a calling is that! That we may have life to the full – After all that we endure patiently: punishments, beatings, isolation, illnesses, even death and destruction I have come so that you may have life And have it to the full! And let us offer our prayers and condolences to the Saliba family, that Callum may now enjoy eternal fullness of the life promised by Christ. Fr Bernard McGrath OSB PP Year A - 5th Sunday of Lent 8 Apr 2020 Be unbound, Go free. Christ is full of optimism, in the face of darkness, even his own death, and gives us confidence go ... More Year A - 4th Sunday of Lent 8 Apr 2020 How things change. Over the centuries people would have turned to the Church in times of natural disaster or war, joinin ... More