Blessing pets on St Francis of Assisi

Today the Christian Church remembers a remarkable person, Francis of Assisi. (1182-1226)

He was born in 1182 almost a thousand years ago in Italy. As a young man he sought adventure but also looked to the future. After an illness he underwent a change after a voice in a dream told him to ‘follow the master rather than the man’. He returned a changed man, and began to meditate and pray a great deal.

This conversion led Francis to share his family’s wealth with those less fortunate. Concerned about this, his Father took him to court in 1205, which led to that famous scene where Francis returned all his Father’s possessions to him, including his clothes, thereby renouncing his inheritance. Many people joined Francis, and they lived according to simple rules of poverty (not owning anything), and the teaching of the Church. He was one of the great originals, as he introduced a radical way of following Christ and depending entirely on others. This gave hope and strength to those on the edges of society.

Francis was a whole man. He wanted to be like Jesus Christ in every way, not to pick and choose what to believe or follow: every word had to be obeyed, every action tested to see if it conformed to God’s will.

Francis loved creation and lived very close to it.  He preached to the birds on number of occasions, and they listened, but to him this was less important than preaching to people to save them from their sins. He rescued lambs from slaughter, but this was less important than saving lepers from a rotting to death, unloved and uncared for. He tamed the wolf at Gubbio but was more concerned with people of the neighbouring towns who were fighting with each other.

We recall Francis’ love for all God’s creation was not just for the beauty of what he saw. He loved creation for two reasons:

God made it and therefore to was good

In creation one could see signs and learn about the creator.

Today we bless pets and remind ourselves of our God who gives great gifts to our world. He gives us the gift of companionship through our pets, who teach us to care and love even as they show us an aspect of the beauty of God’s creation.

Blessing of Pets, OLQP 4th October 2011, Feast of St Francis of Assisi.

Our Own Masters?

Each of us are aware of people who are completely full of themselves. They are so concerned about their own cares, their own ideas, their own thoughts, their own dreams and goals that there is no room for anyone or anything else. I am sure that as I am saying this, all of you here can think of someone who fits the bill, and we ourselves may have been or maybe still are that person.   If we are that person, or if we know that person, the characteristics are instantly recognisable: self-centredness, conceitedness, being always right, a disregard for others views or inspirations and many others. Sometimes this is hidden behind a stated desire for the independence of self or others, or maybe in terms of freedom fighting, but it is thinly veiled. However, probably the most insidious and damaging characteristic is that of self-sufficiency, to the detriment of community.

Traditional societies, such as aboriginal culture that we here in the Kimberley are so privileged to live in or near, values the community dimension of life. The major events, decisions, joys and pains of life are laid bare by individuals so that they are shared by the community. There is not one single person in control. This does not destroy the person, but reassures the individual that they are not alone.

On the other hand many modern societies like to emphasise the cult of the individual. In these societies, and we can count our own in this group, nothing is able to get in the way of the desire or aspiration of the individual. This can often lead, of course, to an exalted view of our own importance and a disordered understanding of the attainment of our own desires. Put simply, we are limited and finite beings, we are not capable of everything, and we are not our own gods and masters.

That is where our Gospel parable chimes in so eloquently. Israelite society was strictly organised but had God as its centre of its law. Over its history there had been times when they disregarded God’s place at the centre and as a result completely lost their way.  The greatest crime of the tenants was not to hold back the rent (this is not an economic parable), but to reject the place and their need for God claim for themselves something they had no right or capability to hold. They rejected the prophets (the messengers) and then God’s own Son, and then are not able to produce the fruits of the kingdom, as they have put themselves above it. I think that is where this parable challenges our society and the direction that it seems to be going at great speed.

Faith is the antidote to rampant individualism that sees oneself as the centre of the universe.

Any society that has put itself at the centre of the universe has ultimately fallen amid an avalanche of human rights violations and totalitarianism. The history of the twentieth century is littered with examples of violent atheistic regimes.

This is not the society envisaged by Jesus as he told this parable. It is not the society that the church strives to build on this earth to prepare for the perfect society in the next. Our task is to allow ourselves and others to recognise the place of Christ at the centre of our world, the fact that as individuals we cannot be and do everything, but as a group with Christ at our head we are able to achieve things of which we can hardly dream.

Homily OLQP Sunday 2nd October 2011, 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Living with Integrity

At the ordination of a deacon, the newly-ordained deacon comes before the bishop who presents him the Book of the Gospels and tells him: "Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you now are.  Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach." It is very clear and very precise, and by extension not restricted to priests or deacons, but a call to all the baptised. The order is important as well. We must believe first, then we can teach by our lives, and finally witness by putting into practice what is taught.

In effect, it is a call to lead a life of integrity, so that what we hold in our hearts is lived in our lives. Surely that is the aim of us all as we strive to lead a Christian life. In our Gospel we are presented with the two sons who acted to a challenge in different ways. The first son, for whatever reason, rebelled against the authority of his father, which was a huge issue in that society. We can only assume that he was being honest with himself, and then was given the grace of reflection, a result of which he followed the direction of his father. His integrity remained intact.

The second son just said yes, he would follow his father’s direction, and for whatever reason he did otherwise. Maybe he just wanted to keep his father happy by saying yes, or maybe he really intended to go, or there are a host of other possibilities. What is clear is that he said one thing and did another. We must assume that there was some intention of following the direction of his father, but did not follow through.  Each day we are given opportunities to choose, to remain faithful, to reflect on our decisions and amend them if it is needed. The admonition of the bishop to the newly ordained deacon can form a pattern for all of our lives. It is not something that we do once, but an action that is revisited in our daily lives, part of the ongoing process of conversion.

Many years ago I prepared a couple for the baptism of their child. As we were going through the Apostles Creed, the father stopped me and asked me to omit a line. He did not believe that one, he said, so he wanted me to leave it out. I explained that it was not a supermarket, and that I had to ask it, as this is our faith. He told me he would not assent to that at the baptism. The day of the baptism came and asked, with some trepidation, for the beliefs of the parents.  The father answered positively and the baptism proceeded. Later he told me that my challenge had made him really think, and that he had come around to an understanding of the creed. What shone through to me was his the integrity of his approach, not just keeping me, his wife and extended family happy, but truly confronting the issues of faith in his life.  He emerged, like the first son, with a stronger faith.

Today is Social Justice Sunday. Each year the Bishops of Australia put in front of us an issue of our society for our reflection and action. This year they have asked us to reflect on the situation of prisoners in the jails of our country. The challenge for our society is to discover a suitable and dignified method of rehabilitation that respects the rights of each of us in society to a safe social situation.  It asks us for our attitudes to those in prison. There are alternatives to incarceration, and the statistics do not show the success of locking up large numbers of people for minor crimes. This is an opportunity for many of us to form an informed opinion on a major issue for our society.

Reflection which leads to action means that we are able to live by the will of our God. In doing so we will lead a life of integrity.

Homily, Social Justice Sunday, 26th Sunday in Ordinary time Year A, 24th September 2011

Strength in the Storm

A few weeks ago I stood in the middle of a violent storm at an airfield in Madrid with two million others, one of them being the Holy Father. It was wild, but in the midst of the wildness of the weather there was a calmness among the people. Pope Benedict stood there, not leaving (even though he was advised to do so) like a rock, the rock of Peter. Afterwards, the press reported that the normal crowd reaction in such cases is mass panic. When you have panic in a crowd of two million, there are inevitably deaths. There was no panic, so injury, no death, because there was something else there with us at Cuarto Vientos. That same spirit is with us tonight. 

The calmness we were able to hold in the storm taught us a lesson. Pope Benedict told us before he left: “Your strength is greater than the storm. With the rain the Lord has sent us many blessings. In this you are an example. As happened tonight, you can always with Christ endure the trials of life. Do not forget this.” We had done the impossible,and emerged soaked and happy! We learned the lesson.

Peter had to learn the lesson as well. He was being very generous, going beyond the confines of the Mosaic Law in offering to forgive his brother seven times. In reality he did not have to forgive him even once. This was big. However, Jesus blows him out of the water and demands that he do the impossible. What Jesus suggests is madness, but Jesus does it with a straight face….  he is serious. Of course it is madness, and of course it is impossible, but with the Holy Spirit it is possible… forgiveness is possible, reconciliation is 

possible.

Today is the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York. My first memory of this tragedy is the horror of the planes flying into the towers, The second memory is the immediate outrage called  for righteous revenge in the style of the Mosaic Law, ‘an eye for an eye’. I am not so sure that Jesus would have been in the grandstand cheering for retribution. In fact I am sure he would not have been. Justice is to be sought and strived for in our lives, and the key plank to that effort is forgiveness. Benedict told us a few weeks ago: Dear young people do not be satisfied with anything less than truth and love. Do not be content with anything less than Christ.

This cannot be done without the active participation of the Holy Spirit, and it cannot be done by ourselves.  Without the Spirit it is simply impossible and without purpose.  Without each other, without the community of faith it is both humanly and divinely impossible. The Holy Father said during his homily at the Closing Mass: We can’t follow Jesus on our own. Anyone who would be temopted to do so would risk never encountering Jesus, or following a counterfeit Jesus. This of course means, he concluded Having faith means drawing support from the faith of your brothers and sisters.

Forgiveness and reconciliation without the Holy Spirit and each other is impossible. With each other, and strong in the Spirit, we can achieve heights of which others can only dream! That is the message of Christ, that is the message of the Holy Father, that is the message of two million young people in Madrid, and that is the message that our world needs to hear.

Homily 11th  September 2011, 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time. St Vincent Pallotti, Kununurra.

Not Your Usual Sunday Mass

Two weeks ago I concelebrated Sunday Mass with the Holy Father, eight hundred bishops and eight thousand priests. It was not your usual Sunday Mass.  That Mass was at the culmination of the pilgrimage of millions of people, invited to Madrid by Pope Benedict. The reason for the pilgrimage is stated by St Paul as we heard today in the letter to the Romans: “love is the one thing that cannot hurt your neighbour.” This is where World Youth Day starts.  I would like to ask Soleil White to come up and give us her reflections on where this leads.

The experience that most touch me on the pilgrimage was doing the Stations of the Cross in Fatima. While walking the Stations of the Cross we stopped at the Fourth Station (Peter’s Denial), as we walked away a cool breeze swarmed by and I felt at peace and that God was really with me. At that point in my life I really came to believing that God was always with me and that he brought me on this journey to find my faith. Later on that evening I explained my experience to Sabrina from the NATSICC group. She placed her arm around me and gave me a smile and said it was okay to openly believe in God and that we were all there to celebrate our faith with young people from all over the world – Soleil White

It was with experiences such as this that we came to the vigil with the Holy Father at Cuatro Vientos, when the storm hit, everyone shared umbrellas, coats and groundsheets. We tried to stay dry but just got soaked right through. The WYD cross fell over in a gust and hit a bishop, and the Holy Father remained in his chair, ignoring advice for him to move to shelter, in front of us like Peter the Rock. The whole event resulted in bringing the crowd closer together in true solidarity around our Pope. And, in addition, the rain settled the dust and cooled things down, and after the storm had passed, the wind dried the soaked us so that it made for a bearable night. Before he left, the Holy Father, who also got soaked, said:

Dear Young Friends, We have lived together an adventure. Strengthened by your faith in Christ, you have resisted the rain. Before leaving I wish you all good night. Have a good rest. I thank you for the sacrifice that you are making and I have no doubt that you will offer it generously to the Lord. We shall see one another tomorrow, God willing, in the celebration of the Eucharist. I am expecting all of you. I thank you for the fine example that you have given. As happened tonight, you can always, with Christ, endure the trials of life. Do not forget this. I thank you all.

The WYD program was intended to remind us that we are not accidents on this earth, but willed out of the love of God and destined to help each other reach the dizzy heights God has made possible for each one of us. On Sunday morning the Holy Father continued:

Yes, dear friends, God loves us. This is the great truth of our life; it is what makes everything else meaningful. We are not the product of blind chance or absurdity; instead our life originates as part of a loving plan of God. …If you abide in the love of Christ, rooted in the faith, you will encounter, even amid setbacks and suffering, the source of true happiness and joy. Faith does not run counter to your highest ideals; on the contrary, it elevates and perfects those ideals. Dear young people, do not be satisfied with anything less than Truth and Love, do not be content with anything less than Christ.

So WYD was a chance to encourage, strengthen and challenge one another. In many ways our Sunday Mass here in Broome is the same. Here we come to put aside the cares of this world and remember that there is something bigger than us of which we are a part. At the time of WYD, Vargas Llosa, a famous Spanish writer and agnostic, wrote that World Youth Day was: a gigantic festival and there are two possible readings of this event: one which sees World Youth Day as more a superficial than a religious festival, and the other which interprets it as proof that the Church of Christ maintains its strength and vitality. I was there both for the event and the testimonies of young people who participated.  I know that there was nothing superficial about WYD, jusdt as there is nothgin superficial about our presence here today.

Pope Benedict always reminds his listeners that his role is to present eternal truths in a way that encourages us think and then act in a positive way. St John Chrysostom provides a perfect conclusion to our reflection on WYD and today’s liturgy, and the necessary action that will result from it:  

             

You will be doing everything for the glory of God if, when you leave this place, you make yourselves responsible for saving a brother or sister, not just by accusing and rebuking him or her, but also by advising and encouraging, and by pointing out the harm done by worldly amusements, and the profit and help that come from our instruction.

In other words, “Whoever tries to save those that are negligent, and to snatch them from the jaws of the devil, is imitating Christ as far as a human being can.” What other work could equal this? Of all good deeds this is the greatest; of all virtue this is the summit.

That is what PopeBenedict aimed for in Madrid. That gift of God, given through the Holy Father and two million young people, is offered to this parish and every Parish in the world today.  May we accept this extraordinary gift of the Holy Spirit.

Homily, OLQP Broome 4th September 2011, 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A   

Feed Them Yourselves!

When I was the assistant to Fr McKelson, he kept telling me that soon he would become a pensioner, so I told him that when he did we will throw a party to spend his first cheque! Well his 65^th birthday and party came, and to celebrate, the Bidyadanga mob went out and caught 65 salmon, which were carefully filleted and refrigerated the day before. The time of the party arrived and the fires were burning when I was told that the fridges had failed and all the fish had gone rotten. Meanwhile there were two hundred people gathering for a meal. A team of people went into overdrive and, using everything in the kitchen and convent, cooked for the waiting people. I can assure you that there was a miracle there that day, but I do not know it was a miraculous multiplication of food. However, we are part of a greater miracle, described by the readings we have reflected on today, and we are all called to be part of the response.

God calls us to come together.  Come to he water you who are thirsty. We are invited and encouraged to acknowledge our need for God, and to work together to create a better world. It does not matter whether we consider ourselves to be talented, capable or worthy. God accepts our efforts as part of the whole and invites us equally to share in the benefits of being in relationship with him.

This invitation is freely given by God and not earned by us in any way.  In that way we can never be separated from our God, who created sustains and loves us. We are, of course, able to ignore or hide from God, and to commit sin, which prevents us from seeing the work of God in our lives and world.  This can happen, but St Paul is reminds the Romans and us, two thousand years later, that neither death nor life nor angel nor demon nor any other power nor life nor death nor anything else in all creation can separate from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The point is quite laboured isn’t it? However the point is made that God is there and is not going anywhere else! We have nothing to worry about, we are never alone.

Jesus comment to his disciples is the key to the story of feeding the five thousand. Miracles do happen, and they are from God, but those who recognise miracles cannot be passive recipients or spectators. I often have people ask me: Where is God? Why doesn’t he send a miracle to help people in need?   Our answer of the Christian is that of Our Lord: Feed them yourselves, pray and prepare, use every gift and talent you have, and when that is exhausted, God will provide. The Lord works through his people as well as through his world.

At Lourdes in France I have seen people praying and hoping for a miracle, not passive sitting, but fervently hoping praying and preparing for whatever gift their relationship with God allows them to receive. I have witnessed miracles at Lourdes and in other places, and they are all, without exception, the fruit of people co-operating with the love of God, people coming to the water, people offering the little faith, hope, love and money they have and allowing God to multiply it over and over.

God works best when things seem hopeless and people seem lost. This is not because God wants to big note himself, but these are the times that God’s people recall that God is in the middle with his suffering people, and that he is not going anywhere. We know that  God is with us we can change the world.

Homily OLQP Broome 30th July 2011

The Riches of Relationship

During the past week I have been in Sydney at a meeting called by the Australian Catholic Bishops. The Bishops asked for a representative from each diocese to come together talk about a radical concept. The concept is JESUS.  They are proposing a Year of Grace, which is defined as starting afresh from Christ. It is an opportunity to encounter Jesus I everything we do as Church, in every part of our lives. ‘What is so radical about that’ I hear you say, isn’t that what we try to do every day? Well, if my life is any indicator, yes and no.  Today’s liturgy gives us a wonderful chance to really ask ourselves that question and seek the answer.

What do I want out of life? Big question, and one that only be answered after a significant amount of reflection, and dare I say it, prayer.  We all have our priorities, and often what we would like to see as our priorities are, in fact not what is acted out in our lives.  We all have the experience of saying something that we did not intend to, and when it comes we are sure that it was from God and not from us. I think that is what happened to Solomon in his dream dialogue with God that we read about in the first book of Kings.  He did not ask for riches, wealth, and power, to win wars, to be handsome or get a stack of really good wives. Instead he asked for ‘a heart to understand how to discern between good and evil’. I don’t think that Solomon saw that one coming, but when it did, he took it and ran. It is right and true, and he was given that gift that made him the wisest and best king of Israel.  He encountered God, and having done that, everything else fell into place.

Solomon not only found the answer to life, but was able to sustain the pace. The psalm tells us about that: ‘Lord I love your commands”. That does not mean that they are all easy, or sometimes we do not find them difficult. It means that if we are in relationship with God, we accept him into our lives and allow him to mould and guide us, not just to follow the teachings of God when they happen to agree with our mood or situation.

The one we need to be relationship with, of course, is the one the Bishops have pointed us to: Christ. He is the one that all of our actions need to be measured against. In all our actions and the activities of our day we need to be able to ask: where is Jesus in all of this?

Each of us will have a different way of finding this treasure, and just like the search for the pearl can sometimes be treacherous, so the search for the pearl of great price can be dangerous, and the mighty can indeed fall prey to sin and temptation. We need to stay close to the church, be guided by ample prayer and teaching, and always move forward.

The journeys of each of us here are different, but they are carried on within the same matrix of faith. There is no new way, the path is forever the same, but with the gift of our humanity and uniqueness, always new. We hold a treasure, held in things new and old, a relationship with the Son of God, and through him, with each other. May God protect us and keep us moving together as one people.

Homily OLQP  Broome 24th July 2011