Homilies

Quite a mood swing. One moment it’s ‘Hosanna, Praise the king’ (Lk 19:28-40), next it’s ‘Crucify him’ (Lk 22:14-23:56). One moment high as a kite, waving palms, singing and dancing, so excitedly the very stones seem to cry out; next it’s down in the dumps, full of anxiety and foreboding, looking for a scapegoat.

Ruth Elizabeth Davis – better known by her stage name ‘Bette Davis’ – is considered one of the greatest actresses ever. The first person nominated for five consecutive Academy Awards, she received many honours.

‘There’s glory for you!’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t—till I tell you.

We’ve all got something embarrassing in our past, some great shame we’ve repented of and would rather not be reminded of: mine is that I used to be… a lawyer.

It’s a mystery in families, why one kid turns out one way, another so differently, even though they’ve had the same upbringing, affection and advantages. Today a boy asks for his inheritance early (Lk 15:1-3,11-32). In the Ancient Near East it’s a terrible request.

‘A long melancholy meditation on loss, impermanence and that noble, stubborn, foolish thing called love.’ ‘What gives it its emotional heft is the sense of expiry and mortality that hangs over it.’ It ‘confronts the irreversible forward march of time, the pain of abandonment, the loss of love.’

Suffering. Innocent suffering. What sense can any human being, any religion make of it? And how can we believe in a good God in the face of it? The common answer in the ancient world was: he got what he deserved.

The prehistoric peoples of Australia and the Pacific, Africa and the Americas, the ancient Greeks, Romans and others in Europe, the tribes of the Middle East, and the great religions of Asia, all had their sacred sites where they felt particularly close to God.

The Sydney Church I grew up in still a rather Irish one. Already by then my parents and schoolmates, like many Sydney Catholics, were not: they represented the much more culturally diverse Australia which was emerging by the 1960s and is now so obvious here in Sydney.

It’s a great pleasure to be here today, and I would like to thank you all for attending this important ceremony. I’m told that a number of the builders who have worked on this project are here today, so I give a special welcome to them!