ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, 11 MARCH 2026
عَلَيْكُمُ السَّلَامُ As-salamu alaykum, Peace be with you. Welcome to St Mary’s Cathedral House for our 15th annual Iftar dinner, honouring especially the Muslim community, but bringing together people of many faiths.
I thank Lisa Buxton, Executive Officer of Aboriginal Catholic Ministry, and join her in acknowledging the Gadigal elders past and present, and their connection with the land on which we meet.
From the Islamic community I welcome: my friend His Eminence, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, Grand Mufti of Australia; Sheikh Shadi Alsuleiman, President of the Australian National Imams Council; Khaled Sukkarieh, Chair of the Islamic Council of NSW; Shafiq Abdullah Khan, Founder of the Australian Islamic Cultural Centre and the Al-Faisal Colleges; Imam Amin Hady of the Zetland Mosque; Kazi Ali OAM, President of the Muslim Cemeteries Board; Professor Mehmet Özalp, Director of the Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation at Charles Sturt University; Mehmet Saral, Co-Founder of Affinity Intercultural Foundation; Mrs Madenia Abdurahman, President of Together for Humanity; and other leaders and representatives of the Muslim community.
From the Jewish community I salute: Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton, Chief Minister of the Great Synagogue, with Max Freedman, its President; Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio OAM of the Emanuel Synagogue; Rabbi Zalman Kastel AM of Together for Humanity; Vic Alhadeff OAM from SBS and other organisations; and others from the Jewish community.
From the Christian churches I greet: His Grace Bishop Vardan Navasardyan, Primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and representatives of the Coptic Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, Anglican and Uniting Churches.
I also welcome our friends from the Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, and Bahá’í communities.
From the Catholic Church we are graced by several bishops: Eparch Antoine-Charbel Tarabay OLM of the Maronites; Eparch Amel Nona of the Chaldeans; Eparch Robert Rabbat of the Melkite Greeks; and Bishops Danny Meagher, Richard Umbers, and Terry Brady of the Latins.
I also welcome the charming and indefatigable Sr Giovanni Farquer RSJ, Director of our Commission for Ecumenism and Inter-religious Relations, with Jacqui Garber, Michael Kenny and the Commission members; Ms Monica Doumit, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Sydney; Sr Josephine Dubiel RSJ, Congregational Leader of the Sisters of St Joseph; Dean Don Richardson of St Mary’s Cathedral; Prof. Hayden Ramsay, President of the Catholic Institute of Sydney; Dr Michael Casey of the PM Glynn Institute in the Australian Catholic University; and other representatives of Catholic parishes, schools and agencies.
From the wider community, I salute: Jillian Segal AO, Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism in Australia; Hon. Justice Francois Kunc of the Supreme Court of NSW; Dr Paul Morrissey, President of Campion College; Mr James Jegasothy, Acting CEO of Multicultural NSW with our old friend Mr Stepan Kerkyasharian AO. Welcome also to all other community leaders and faithful. It’s great to have you all at my place once more!
Let me begin addressing the ‘elephant in the room’. The attacks of October 7 2023 in Israel and subsequent captivity and reprisals, the Bondi massacre last December following a series of antisemitic incidents and subsequent threats to social cohesion, and the joint American-Israeli airstrikes on Iran of a fortnight ago and subsequent extension of that conflict to fourteen countries at last count: all this has affected our communities in various ways and potentially made it much harder for us to meet. There are raw feelings, perhaps some awkwardness, tension, suspicion, even resentment in the air. Our years of friendship and the evident good will of each person in this room does not make all that go away and there is no point in pretending. It is the human reality. It has been so in the Middle East since time immemorial. It is so in many other places also and for many other peoples.
But I want to say how impressed I am by each of you that you have come tonight to celebrate Iftar together, and how honoured I am by your presence here despite recent events and feelings. It really is a tribute to you all, and especially to some of our religious leaders who, rather than stirring up hatreds and recriminations, have been trying to pacify their communities and reach out to those who are hurting from whichever community. It is a tribute also to Australia, because a gathering like this would not be possible in many parts of our world at the best of times, let alone amidst current tensions.
Your presence tonight is, I dare say, an act of great faith and hope and love: faith in God and human good will; hope for a world without such tensions and violence; love for one another as children of God, other selves, trying to be faithful to God and searching for happiness. Thank you, brothers and sisters, for your courage in gathering in such times, for your genuine fraternity with each other at my table, and for persevering in faith, hope and love.
“Leap of faith” is a phrase used everywhere from boardrooms to sporting fields, in the media, even the odd religious sermon. It’s commonly shorthand for a bold step taken with no guarantee of success, as in “I quit my job and started my own business: it was a real leap of faith,” or “It took a leap of faith to keep backing my old footy team after so many losses.” The saying is so common we barely stop to think what it originally meant.
It comes in fact from the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Writing in 19th century Copenhagen, he was troubled by the rationalist claim that everything worth knowing can be discerned by observation and reason. Kierkegaard thought that much of our deepest wisdom and commitment requires more than eye- and brain-power, something more like a “leap in the dark” or an act of trust.[1] Nowhere was this truer than with respect to God, who is not reducible to observations and theorems but transcends them all. Kierkegaard thought we can only reach God by taking a proverbial “leap of faith”.
In popular culture, Kierkegaard’s idea of a ‘more than rational’ leap of faith became instead something ‘less than rational’, even ‘irrational’. On this account, having faith is little more than wishful thinking, desperation, benightedness—a life-raft for believers when the evidence runs out…
But is that fair? I think all of us here tonight would say NO to that! Though faith may mean different things in various traditions and personal experiences, we would probably all insist that there’s more to it than the caricatures of the culture. Consider how much of our ordinary lives depends not upon observation and inference, so much as that judgment of mind and act of will closely related to faith we call trust. Children trust their parents and teachers; patients their doctors and nurses; congregants their clerics and holy books. We trust that the sun will set at a specific time—rather important for Muslims in Ramadan!—and that it will rise again the next day. Though there is always room for interpretation, we trust that observations are mostly reliable and words mean what they mean. We trust that those we love will love us back and make our good part of their own. We trust that behind the faces we encounter there is a real person, not a fraudster or AI. People of faith trust that God has our interests at heart, is not cruel, capricious or irrational, will keep His promises and reward our keeping His Law.
Without trust, we would in fact be paralysed. Faith, in Hebrew אמונה (Emunah), in Greek πίστις (Pistis),in Latin Fides, in Arabic إِيمَان (Iman), in Sanskrit श्रद्धा (Śraddhā), far from being the absence of reason or the enemy of science, is the ground upon which observation and reason flourish, as well as a complementary source of truth.
In Islam, as I understand it, إيمان (Iman) carries a particularly rich meaning: it is a deep inner conviction that God is the source and shaper of our lives. The Quran speaks of those “who believe in the unseen” (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:3), those faithful who entrust themselves to realities beyond the senses: to belief in Allah and His angels, books, prophets, judgment and destiny. More than just an interior matter, faith manifests itself in حسان (ʾiḥsān),excellence in worship and conduct.
In the Hebrew scriptures, faith is above all a relationship of trust between God and His people. אמונה (Emunah) is about the steadfastness of God and His covenant, and about our response. Abraham, “our father in faith,” sets out for a land he has never seen and puts his faith in the Lord, it is “accounted to him as righteousness” (Gen 12:1-4; 15:6; cf. Heb 11:8-13). Moses leads Israel through the wilderness sustained by the covenant of Sinai (Ex chs. 19–24). The Psalmist sings, “In God I trust, I shall not fear” (Ps 56:4).[2] Faith, on this reckoning, is no hit and hope thing, but fruit of a promise made by the most trustworthy source of all.
For Christians, faith is likewise personal and relational. Disciples of Christ are called to “be not afraid,” to “trust in God” and “follow Him” with their lives.[3] Faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). It affirms that reality is larger than our horizons, and that the God who called us into being invites us to hope in His boundless love.
These understandings of faith are not confined to the Abrahamic religions. In Eastern traditions, faith is no enemy of understanding but its truest footing. The Sanskrit term śraddhā (श्रद्धा) refers to the trust or confidence that comes from lived experience of the sacred; a conviction that holds firm, not because it can explain all the mysteries of our existence, but because it rests on the reality of the divine.[4]
Wherever we look, then, faith is far richer than our culture’s caricatures admit. But that does not make faith easy: it is sorely tested at times, as it must be for many amidst the recent challenges of which I spoke earlier.
If faith is richer and deeper than many credit, it also asks more of us than just affirmation. In the three great Abrahamic traditions, fasting, prayer and almsgiving play an important role in living faith well. Tonight I will only touch on one of these—fasting—as our evening began with our Muslim brothers and sisters breaking the fast after many hours. Throughout Ramadan, we know, observant Muslims fast from food, drink, smoking and sex from dawn to dusk; but they are also called to fast from fighting, envy, greed, lust, backbiting, and uncharity… which call is surely for us all.
Why do we engage in صَوم ṣawm or fasting? Is it for health and beauty? Or to atone for sins and conquer passions? Is it to share the suffering of the hungry or express remorse? Perhaps. But for us believers it is especially a reminder that we are creatures, not self-sufficient but always dependent on God and one another. The heavy Muslim fast of Ramadan is supposed to purify souls, make them more mindful of Allah, and more grateful.[5] Such goals are worthy for all believers, especially in such times of tension and challenge.
Dear brothers and sisters, tonight as we break the fast and share a meal together, we do so as people of faith. We affirm that whatever our differences, we share much more in common: a common humanity; a common nobility; a common vulnerability; a common reaching out to God; a common striving for the good; a common need for others. By fasting we atone for the times we’ve failed to live as the common life, indeed the friendship, God calls us to. By breaking fast we profess our hope for a world when we shall enjoy the heavenly banquet together. By breaking fast together we repudiate ancient hatreds and modern prejudices, resolving to trust, to share, to build with God the world He intends. No mere blind leap this: our faith is a deep and wise confidence that more and better is possible, by God’s grace.
جزاك الله خير Gazakum Allahu Khairan!
[1] Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, vol. 1, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 203.
[2] Cf. Ps 9:9-10; 23:4; 34:17; 46:1; 55:22; 56:3; 139:9-10; Isa 12:2; 40:31; 41:10; 43:12; 46:1-3
[3] Be not afraid: Mt 1:20; 10:26-28; 28:5,10; Mk 4:40; Lk 1:13,30,74; 2:10; 12:4,7, 32; Jn 12:15; 14:27; cf. Phil 4:6-7. Trust in God/Christ: Mt 6:25-34; Jn 14:1; cf. 2Cor 5:6-7; Heb 11:1; 13:5-8; 1Pet 5:7; Jas 1:2-4; 1Jn 5:5. Follow Him:
[4] Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), s.v. “śraddhā.” The term is translated as “faith,” “confidence,” or “trust,” and denotes a deep conviction and lucidity regarding what is real, valuable, and attainable. In its Sanskrit etymology, śrat means “to have conviction” and dhā “to uphold” “sustained confidence.”
[5] Quran 2:183-187, 196; 5:95.
