Travelling Lght

Last week I walked the pilgrimage route to Beagle Bay that we will take in a few weeks. The small group walked slowly, leaving plenty of time for reflection, prayer and noticing the country around us as we passed through. We were pilgrims walking through a sacred land, not that this land was any different to any other, it is just that the speed we walked and the reflection which was afforded  us by that pace enabled us to see the wonders that God had placed on our track. We travelled light, not worrying about material goods, trusting in God and in our support person.

The prophet Isaiah, extolling the wonders of Jerusalem, was a man who was tuned in to god and to his country.  Jerusalem was the mother who nursed and cared for all who respected her. Those who visited Jerusalem were filled with hope and carried light hearts. Pilgrims to Jerusalem carried little material goods, but were filled with faith and expectation: they knew that God would do something, so they were looking for signs.  They believed, as Isaiah says, that: To his servants the Lord will reveal his hand.

When we travel light and have a destination in mind, we are able to claim the status of pilgrim. It is not just people who go up to Jerusalem or travel to beagle Bay who are pilgrims. True, those people take part in pilgrimage and are pilgrims, but all of us can be pilgrims by our attitude and the way we approach our lives. The Lord appointed the seventy-two to go out and bear witness. They were told to travel light. As Boniface Perdjert, the first aboriginal permanent deacon teaches, Christ did not get worried about material things. He was born in the countryside in a cave, like so many of us have been born. He walked about like so many of our people die with nothing.

Freedom comes with detachment, and it is in this that our Aboriginal brothers and sisters can teach so much to the wider Australian society that is so bent on material gain that we squeeze the spiritual element out of our lives so effectively that it becomes so tame and so to interfere with our hectic lifestyle.

Jesus sent his materially poor and detached disciples out with a mission. The freedom gained in this enables the disciples to concentrate on that which is important and to leave behind that which is unimportant. The same call is given to you and me.

Today, Aboriginal Sunday, we are asked to appreciate the land that has been given to us all to share, land that has Aboriginal people as its custodians. We are called to live in this land together, in harmony and peace, letting go all that would hold us back from freedom and peace. In so doing we are able to listen to God speaking in our land and its people, we are able to follow God in simplicity showing peace and mercy to all people. We will be able to let affronts and slights go past, and to acknowledge the spirit of God active in our world. In the words of the psalmist, we can say:

Come and hear, all who fear God

I will tell what he did for my soul

Blessed be God who did not reject my prayer

Nor withhold his love from me.

Homily 13th July 2013 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time year C 

Aboriginla and Torres Starit Islander Sunday

Parish Bulletin for 13th Week in Ordinary Time

The Fall of the Proud Pharisee

Yesterday I was in a class at St Mary’s. I was to talk with the class about the seven deadly sins. Remember them? Pride, Greed, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy and Sloth. I started by asking why we should be talking about such negative things when maybe we should just know that God loves us. The answer came back that we needed to know that we had choices; we needed to know that bad choices would result in sin and a decrease in our happiness and freedom. Wow! All of a sudden, looking at sin went from being unhealthy navel gazing to a serious look at ourselves so that we could move forward as people of integrity.

St Luke presents us with a story of two people who have been offered forgiveness. As in many places in Luke’s Gospel, there is a triangular pattern at play.[i] Simon does not realise what is happening and remains proud in the denial of his sinfulness, whereas the woman fully realises and acknowledges what is happening with deep appreciation.  Jesus uses the whole scene to teach me and you.

It was a great honour to be invited to the distinguished person’s house, but Simon ‘violates all the rules of hospitality’. [ii] The Pharisee probably asked Jesus to his house to trap him, after all, since how many ‘sinful women’ (whatever that means) would be allowed to waltz into the dining room of a Pharisee who was not allowed to have the slightest contact with sin. She provides the hospitality the host refused to provide. The trap was sprung when Jesus allowed this woman to touch him, bathe his feet and dry them with her hair, something only done to one’s husband.[iii] The drama increased and Simon’s pride was appeased: If this man was a prophet he would have rebuked this woman. Therefore Simon had proved that Jesus was a fraud, or had he?

Jesus is a prophet and he knows that this woman is on the outer of society, but even more, he can see what is in Simon’s heart, and brings it out in the parable. Simon is so puffed with pride and wanting to score points that he can’t see what is in front of his face. His answer justifies the presence of the woman, yet he still cannot see even his own sinfulness: So Jesus takes it apart, stage by stage, gently allowing Simon to accept forgiveness. We are told that the woman accepted forgiveness. We are not told of Simon’s final reaction.

Simon and the woman both needed forgiveness, they both needed salvation. Simon did not realise this, and so remained aloof and superior. The woman has experienced the depths, where she has met God. The experience has led her to appreciate the total gift of God’s love and its transformative power. Simon was yet to experience this, and was poorer for it.

I can’t help thinking that it would have been good if Simon the Pharisee was in that class at St Mary’s listening to the Year Nine students. In studying the seven deadly sins, those students were being invited to be fearlessly open and honest in pursuing a life of integrity and justice.  Jesus invited the woman and the Pharisee to do the same, and today he invites you and me to do likewise. 

May he find in us willing and brave followers.

Homily, 16th June 2013 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time OLQP Broome.

[i] Brendan Byrne, The Hospitality of God: A Reading of Luke’s Gospel, (St Pauls, 2000), 74

[ii] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, (Sacra pagina series v.3) (Michael Glazier, 1991) , 129

[iii] Michael Fallon, The Gospel According to Saint Luke: An Introductory Commentary (Chevalier, 1997), 153

16th of June 2013 11th Sunday Ordinary Time

9th of June 2013 -- 10th Sunday Ordinary Time

Parish Bulletin Corpus Christi 2nd June 2013

Sustaining Ritual

I have just come back from the races, the first of the 2013 round. It was a fun afternoon seeing a lot of people out enjoying themselves. Looking around I couldn’t help notice the symbolism and ritual involved with the races. Men and women doll themselves up for the races, suits, hats, fascinators and other more unusual garb appear. People drink champagne and become instant experts at horse anatomy and breeding influences. We all survey the odds closely, even though most of us have absolutely no idea what we are doing. It is all ritual:  we are put into a different space, out of our normal zone so that we can experience something new and interesting within clearly defined boundaries. So it happened, and the results are predictable: I came home having placed a bet and lost: all is as it should be!

The Eucharist is our pre-eminent ritual, and as such it shares some basic elements with the races. It is predictable, since we know what we are coming to experience and therefore can prepare ourselves adequately. It is symbolic, and we know that each gesture, each word is loaded and brings with it salvation history and sacramental reality. It has a purpose which is to hold us together and to give us life.

At the outset, the miracle of the loaves and fishes may not seem to be the most natural expression of the Eucharist, but when we consider that we are talking about ritual, and that Jesus was talking about rituals that would sustain his people after he had left, the link becomes apparent.

The twelve gathered with Jesus are symbolic of the whole of Israel; they gathered in a deserted place, symbolic of the Exodus experience; they sit in groups of fifty, the jubilee number, a cause of rest, refreshment and celebration; Jesus gives the little he has to heaven, and trusts in God’s bounty; and finally, after everyone has eaten, there are twelve baskets leftover, enough for the whole world to eat. Jesus sustains and feed his people within the context of salvation history.

But that is not all the symbolism. Look at St Paul, who is reflecting on the experience of the early church. The church had been able to make the huge leap to realise the link between the Last Supper and the Cross that is ritually celebrated in the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is our ritual. On this Feast of Corpus Christi we reflect on it to help us to realise our roots, where we came from, so that we may see more clearly where we are called to and what we are called to become.

As we take the bread and wine remember that we are gathered by Christ as his people on earth. We are part of a long and venerable tradition of God calling and guiding his chosen people. We are formed and fed by his Word, as were the Israelites in the wilderness and the five thousand men.

As we bless the gifts, we recall the offering of the meagre yet staple gifts and bread and wine by Christ. We bring ourselves in all our poverty.

As we bread the body of Christ at the Lamb of God, we recall the broken body of Christ on the Cross. We recall the broken body of the Church: weak, vulnerable and sinful when left to our own devices, but in our weakness conscious of our dependence on the Father, as Christ was when he stated: into your hands I commend my spirit.

As we share the Eucharistic elements and receive the most holy Body and Blood of Christ we relive the distribution of the loaves and fishes from God’s endless bounty to all who allow themselves to be included in his family, we are included in the resurrection and the power of the Holy Spirit

.

There is an ancient principle, Lex orandi, lex credendi, ‘the law of prayer is the law of belief’, or ‘you pray what you believe’. We pray the Eucharist. We are the Body of Christ, we become what we receive until we are completely at one with our Lord and God.

Homiloy for the Solemnity of CorpusChristi Year C, 13th June 2013