HOMILY FOR SOLEMN MASS FOR THE 33RD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (YEAR C)
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 16 NOVEMBER 2025
A flutter on the Melbourne Cup is all very well, but these days you can bet on rather more consequential things. You can get odds on whether China will invade Taiwan by Christmas,[1] or whether there will be a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine by Easter.[2] You can wager on how many tweets Donald Trump will post next week, which company will have the best AI by the end of 2025, or who will be pope after Leo. The rise of these ‘prediction markets’ has been meteoric.
One company, Polymarket, has recorded $US22.5 billion in trades executed on its prediction market platform over the past three years,[3] including serious investment from major financial institutions. Google now displays prediction market odds in its search results, treating crowd-sourced probabilities as seriously as stock prices. What started as an academic exercise has become a major industry: over $US3 billion was bet on the last US presidential race alone.[4] And what was once the province of professional fortune-tellers and spiritual soothsayers has been democratised, as the markets rely on ‘the wisdom of the crowds’ rather than the projections of any single prophet.
The success of prediction markets is in part due to simple greed: some hope to make a quick buck from them. Yet they also tap into the human desire to conquer uncertainty and control the present and the future. We’re not content to wait and see—we want reliable predictions on future weather, stock prices, even romantic adventures, pricing tomorrow’s risks today and letting the algorithms soothe our anxieties.
In today’s Gospel (Lk 21:5-19), Jesus looks at Jerusalem’s magnificent Temple and makes a terrible prediction: “What you are staring at now will soon be all destroyed; not a single stone will be left on another.” A truly bearish forecast! Yet the disciples want more precision from the prediction markets: “Rabbi, when exactly will this happen? How will we know? Please give us the day, time and bus number.”
Christ has no interest in the algorithms and bets. He denies them the specifics they crave. He offers something more important and more unsettling: “Revolutions on earth or in the heavens, wars and rumours of wars, pandemics, climate change, the second coming: you’ll see signs or hear talk of them all. But these are the signs of every age and won’t give you the certainty you seek. Forget calculating the odds. Just be ready and persevere.” Malachi’s prophesy (Mal 3:19-20) is equally challenging: a day of fire and fury is coming, comeuppance for the wicked, healing for the righteous. So get ready!
Modernity is risk averse. It makes its risk assessments and seeks to mitigate them. We don’t just want to forecast the future: we want to control it. But the Jesus thing isn’t about hedging our bets; it’s not about control. It’s about trust, “let go and let God,” God’s will be done.
Which is not to say He makes no predictions about the future. Jesus is clear: there will come good things and bad; a beautiful creation with natural disasters; communities that help and that harm; relationships of life and love or of hate and death; a faith proud to be called Christian but that can also make us targets. It’s a rather bleak prophesy. Yet in the same breath Jesus says, “Don’t be deceived, don’t worry: no hair of your head will be lost; your endurance will save you.”
Faith is precisely such paradox. We are told God’s kingdom has come, and yet is still coming (Mt 6:10; 12:28; Lk 17:20-21). We must lose our life in order to regain it (Lk 9:23-24 etc.). We are radically uncertain about the future yet totally assured about Whose hand it lies in (Rom 8:38-39; 1Pet 5:6-10). All was finished on the cross (Jn 19:30), yet all will yet be made new (Rev 21:5). We know not the hour, yet we work as if it’s any moment now. We work, as Paul counsels (2Thess 3:7-12), not because our deeds can save us, but because in our ordinary actions extraordinary graces can shine. It is in ordinary deeds that we imitate the selfless love of Christ and are conformed to being like Him. It is there that we build up our families, community, Church.
So, as some wrestle with eschatological anxiety, calculating the odds of some apocalypse, Paul tells us to keep calm and carry on. The earliest Christians offer us a great example of what it means to live with such confidence amidst uncertainty. As Jesus had predicted, they faced betrayal at home and persecution outside. Some were imprisoned, tortured, killed. They didn’t know what each day would bring. Yet their witness was marked, not by panic but by trust, not a frantic scramble to secure certainty but fidelity amidst insecurity. They gathered for the Eucharist. They prayed at home. They cared for the needy. They forgave their enemies. They encouraged one another in hope. Their trust was not in the shifting calculations of the empire but in the steadfast promise of Christ.
Our Psalmist speaks today to the 14 new choristers, the first girls to be joining. The psalmist calls them to “sing psalms to the Lord, with the sound of music; with harp, and trumpet, and horn”, for we are confident that “the Lord comes to rule the earth with justice.” (Ps 97(98))
In an age desperate for prediction and control, their music invites us into something much more reliable, into God’s presence, and acclaims Him as “the King, the Lord”. Christ doesn’t ask us to predict the future; He asks us to be faithful in the present. To love the person in front of us and show mercy here and now. To pray today’s prayers and sing today’s hymns. Christian life is more surrender than control, trading the wisdom of the markets for the folly of the cross (1Cor 1:18), wagering your all, not on a calculation but on a person—the One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life (Jn 14:6). In Him the future is not anxious-making but peace-giving, not somewhere fearful but somewhere redeemed, not someone unpredictable but Someone completely reliable.
[1] https://polymarketanalytics.com/markets/17413 put the chances at 13%. Sriparna Pathak and Gaurav Sen, “Something to keep in mind: China can’t invade Taiwan yet,” The Strategist 11 August 2025 put the chances at 5%. “Will China take the potentially devastating step of invading Taiwan—and if so, when can we expect an invasion to happen?” Global Guardian 3 January 2025 put the likelihood of an all-out invasion at 35%. “Is China preparing to invade Taiwan?” The Week 24 September 2025 quoted Admiral Samuel Paparao, commander of the US Lindo-Pacific Command and the Atlantic Council both suggesting the chances of invasion are very high.
[2] https://polymarketanalytics.com/markets/31759 put the chances at 23%. Luke Harding, “What are the prospects of a ceasefire in Russia-Ukraine war?” The Guardian 20 August 2025; Max Bergmann and Maria Snegovaya, “Russia’s war in Ukraine: The next chapter,” Center for Strategic and International Studies 30 September 2025.
[3] https://tokenterminal.com/explorer/projects/polymarket/metrics/trading-volume
[4] https://www.netcoins.com/blog/prediction-markets-in-2025-from-election-bets-to-billion-dollar-valuations
INTRODUCTION TO SOLEMN MASS FOR THE 33RD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (YEAR C)
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 16 NOVEMBER 2025
Welcome to St Mary’s Cathedral for today’s Solemn Mass of the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time. Our liturgical year will wind to a close next Sunday with Christ the King. Then comes Advent: though the decorations are already up in many places, our spiritual preparation for Christmas does not begin until we have bedded down the present year this Sunday and next.
Yet if we are to do Christmas in the very beautiful way customary here at St Mary’s, we need great music. And so it is a particular joy for me today to be installing 14 girls joining our boys as new choristers, to help lift our hearts to heaven this Christmas and all year round. Our choir, like our school, seeks to draw both boys and girls into the ancient yet ever-new beauty of our faith, through amongst other things sacred music. In sharing their gifts in this important ministry, these young women will help draw people to God’s Christmas love. Concelebrating with me today is Fr John Flynn, Rector of the Royal English College in Valladolid, Spain. To everyone here today, including the families of our choristers, the regulars and the visitors: a very warm welcome to you all!