Life can be hard. There’s stress at work or school, finances to balance, relationships to manage. It can sometimes seem like no matter where you turn, there’s some obstacle to overcome.
The 2009 film, The Blind Side, starring Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw as Leigh-Anne and Sean Tuohy and Quinton Aaron as Michael Oher tells the true story of a black boy who has had a traumatic childhood and is now suffering from homelessness and learning difficulties.
On this day, 25 years ago, I was ordained to the Priesthood of Jesus Christ. It was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and the readings were full of foreboding about the Son of Man being lifted up on the Cross, like the serpent lifted up by Moses on a stick, that we might have life (Num 21:4-9; Phil 2:6-11; Jn 32:13-7).
My thanks to His Grace the Archbishop of Honiara, Most Rev. Chris Cardone OP, for the honour of preaching at this Mass of Thanksgiving. I have known Archbishop Chris since the 1980s when I was a student in the Dominican Order and he was a newly-minted priest.
Mother Teresa visited Australia repeatedly and left her in footprint on this land through the 14 Mission Houses of her sisters here, including their Pacific mother-house in Surry Hills.
He was destined to be a brilliant chemist and in 2006 to discover the elusive process for clean coal technology: electricity with no carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
In the Middle Ages one of most popular devotional items, found in the best Christian homes, was a carved head of St John the Baptist on a plate!
It is the most confronting image amongst the enormous cast of characters in the Sistine Chapel.
We live in the age of “I” and “my”. Devices are called ‘iPhone’, ‘iPod’ and ‘iPad’. ‘MyTrains’ or ‘MyBuses’ take us to ‘MyZones’ or the web takes us to ‘MySchool’ and ‘My eBay’. Ever since ‘the Me generation’ we’ve been bombarded by such self-centred language.
In the fourth instalment in the Die Hard series, released in 2007, John McClane, the old detective played by Bruce Willis, asks the following question: “You know what you get for being a hero? Nothin’. You get shot at.
In the early hours of yesterday morning-last night for us-85-year-old priest, Fr Jacques Hamel prepared to say Mass. What he didn’t know was that this would be the last Mass he would ever say: just as he was finishing Mass, two terrorists claiming allegiance to Daesh or ISIS stormed the church, taking Fr Hamel and four others hostage.
We’ve all heard the story of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37) many times before; though we all love it, it’s so familiar we easily switch off when it starts to be read.
