Homilies

A few weeks ago the news was awash with the first pictures from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The giant telescope, which cost $10 billion dollars to design, build and launch, is “powerful enough to catch the heat of infrared light in the cold darkness of space, but light enough to be carried by a rocket more …

“Lord, teach us to pray,” the disciples ask Jesus. But what does it mean to ‘pray’? Put simply, prayer is raising our heart and mind to God, mostly with a view to encounter and conversation. So Jesus begins His short course on prayer with saying: “Speak to God as Father, our heavenly holy Father.” Begin with your relationship with God …

It’s a quintessential rags-to-riches tale. Having failed to land a teaching job and needing to support herself and her husband who was still studying, Betsy Sanders took a sales apprentice position in a department store for less than $2.50 an hour. Her ‘temporary’ employment with Nordstrom ended up lasting two decades, by the end of which she …

The Aussie writer-director Baz Luhrmann is an undeniable titan of his craft. Four of the top ten grossing Australian films of all time are by him,[i] and his latest biopic, Elvis, is well on the way to being another smash hit. His style is utterly distinct: vivid eye-catching costumes, dizzyingly fast-paced action, operatic scores, …

Second Assembly of the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, 8 July 2022 A very warm welcome to you all to St Mary’s Cathedral for our Votive Mass of Mary, Mother of the Church. As we embark on our last full day of work for the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia, we […]

The Martin family story has all the ingredients for a binge-worthy Netflix series. Ambition, success and failure, heartaches and joys, fateful encounters and divine blessings, a family of heroes, it even had the valleys of Normandy as a beautiful backdrop! Yet ironically, neither Louis nor Zélie thought much …

When last in Rome I saw for the umpteenth time one of the most breathtaking panoramas of the Holy City: that from the Parco Savello or Orange Grove atop the Aventine Hill.

Thank you all for joining us for the Walk With Christ procession on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ—Corpus Christi. First the construction of the George Street tram, then the COVID pandemic and associated limitations on public gatherings, have in recent years interfered with this particular tribute of love and public witness.

In 1967 a rather precocious young Anthony Fisher complained to Sr Mary Eucharia RSM that the new hymn she was teaching us—Sr Miriam Therese Winter’s “I saw raindrops on my window: joy is like the rain”—seemed barely to mention God. In response Sister offered us a better hymn: she taught us Richard Connolly and James McAuley’s ♪♪ Seek, O seek the Lord, while He is near, Trust …

In the feature article in today’s Sydney Morning Herard Lauren Ironmonger asks whether monogamy is dead and we are destined for multiple contemporaneous and successive primary loves?[1] She says it is the question on the mind of millennials as they navigate the perennial human …