Dear brothers and sisters, I write to you from Rome at the end of the Ad Limina Apostolorum pilgrimage of the Australian Bishops to the tombs of the apostles, to the Holy Father, and to the Vatican Departments.
29
Jun
2019
25
Jun
2019
HOMILY FOR VOTIVE MASS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
Three great and related ideas inspire and compete for the soul today: Christianity, Islam, and Secularism. Christianity, that is, faith in the person and Gospel of Jesus Christ,
23
Jun
2019
HOMILY FOR MASS OF THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
What are they staring at? In Paul Newton’s painting of The Catholic Community in Sydney c. 1818 the youngest are the most intensely focused on what they would have called ‘the Blessed Sacrament’.
13
Jun
2019
HOMILY FOR THE BLESSING OF THE TRIPTYCH
Today we bless a new work of sacred art, The Mother of Divine Wisdom with St Joseph and St Mary of the Cross MacKillop, created by Chiara Perinetti Casoni, whom we welcome today to Australia and celebrate in the University.
07
Jun
2019
HOMILY FOR MASS FOR CONSECRATED LIFE
Trials and errors, courts and appeals have been very much in the air of late! In our two readings this morning both Peter and Paul are on trial, and their further trials are prophesied. Paul had been imprisoned by the Governor of Judea, Antonius Felix,
06
Jun
2019
ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY
“There is little love of God in that parish; you will be the one to put it there.”[1] So advised the bishop who sent Fr Jean-Baptiste Vianney to Ars, a remote and neglected village of only 230 people. Visit every family in their home, the bishop advised, and do your best to give regular
06
Jun
2019
OPENING AND BLESSING OF SISTERS OF CHARITY NEW HERITAGE CENTRE + ARCHIVES
“God bless you ladies!” said the boatsmen who rowed the first sisters ashore to Sydney Cove on New Year’s Eve of 1838. Mother Mary John Cahill, Sisters Mary
04
Jun
2019
HOMILY FOR MASS FOR TUESDAY OF THE 7TH WEEK OF EASTER
In the 1987 humorous detective novel, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, the eponymous detective declares that “if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility
04
Jun
2019
BLESSING AND OPENING OF NEW BUILDINGS
Salt is rather out of fashion these days, being blamed for high blood pressure, fluid retention, heart disease, stomach cancer, you name it. While a little sodium is a necessary element in any diet, Australians, we are told, consume twice as much salt
01
Jun
2019
HOMILY FOR MASS AT ORDER OF MALTA AUSTRALIA CONFERENCE
Though today is the feast of St Justin Martyr and this evening the Vigil of the Solemnity of the Ascension, our Order seems to stand outside ordinary time and space.
