Homily

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Kate (Master of Theology, Bachelor of Theology, DipEd, Bachelor of Arts) is currently serving as a Prison Chaplain for the Catholic Diocese of Bathurst NSW. She lives in central western NSW after several years of pastoral care work in isolated, outback communities. Kate has experience in Church leadership as a Diocesan Chancellor, Director of Mission/Identity as well as years in education, chaplaincy and mission management. Her experience in pastoral care have influenced her thinking and...

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sr Magdalen entered the Benedictine Abbey at Jamberoo, NSW in 1996 and made her Solemn Monastic Profession in 2001. Since entering Sr Magdalen has studied for an MA (Theol.) which she completed in 2006 and has been certified in the formation of Prayer Companions program from Mary McKillop centre in North Sydney (1999). She has guided guests in spiritual direction for the last 21 years and has completed studies with the Global Online Benedictine Spiritual...

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Katy Gilles MA Theology BA DipEd Japanese, Steeped in the Anglican tradition with strong community involved parents, her daily rhythm of reading the scriptures and prayer was encouraged. Studying at University opened her eyes to the myriad of spirituality within other cultures. Fostered by her High School love of languages, and a journey to Japan she began her vocation - teaching High School boys Japanese. Her theological understanding was awakened by her friendship and marriage...

Feast of Christ the King

Reverend Di Langham writes: I have been a priest in the Diocese of Newcastle for the past 21 years. I was the first Aboriginal woman in this Diocese to be ordained. I have been a chaplain in Corrective Services NSW for the past 20 years and prior to that I was a chaplain in Juvenile Justice. I am currently a full time chaplain at Cessnock Correctional Centre which is a male prison with around 650...

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jo is a teacher, educational leader and formation facilitator. She’s a mum, a daughter, a sister, an aunty and a spouse. She completed a MA (Theology) in 2016 focusing on moral and systemic theology in regard to the human person and Church teachings on sexual orientation. She has recently begun her doctoral studies this year exploring, from a critical feminist standpoint, leadership within a global network of Catholic schools committed to social justice. Jo has...

Text and Commentary

You must leave “home” to be wise

Christ is Bigger and Older than Jesus

Christmas Mass 2015: The Great Embodiment

God cannot resist Weakness

The Return to the Ordinary

Breaking Open the Coffers of Your Heart

The Three Wise Men see the sign, they move, they overcome opposition, and then they give the new-born King the best they have. Having walked this spiritual itinerary, they then “go back by a different route,” for no one ever comes to Christ and goes back the same way he came.

Called From Darkness Into His Light

The story of Bartimeaus is a model of the spiritual journey. The desire for Christ engenders in us spiritual healing, which is delivered in a profound illumination of Christ’s identity, the acceptance of which leads us into the Church.

Seeing the World Anew

This Sunday’s Gospel presents the extraordinary story of Christ’s healing Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus is blind. Christ gives him not only the ability to see the world, but to see the world anew through the revelation of his Grace. The Christian way of life is best described as a new way of seeing and it is through this vision, illuminated by the light of Christ, that we are invited to know and see the world as God...

Master, I Want to See

The story of the healing of blind Bartimaeus is a spiritual icon of enormous power. Bartimaeus is evocative of anyone who, aware of his sin, blindness, and incapacity, hears the summons of Jesus to come into the Church, the place where vision will be restored.

Coming Home from Exile

Our first reading from the prophet Jeremiah treats of a theme that is basic throughout the Bible: the motif of the return from exile. Like two great hinges on which the Old Testament turns are the stories of Exodus and Exile. Israel finds itself enslaved in Egypt, but God liberates the people; later, the northern tribes are carried off by the Assyrians; and later still, the southern tribes are carried off by the Babylonians. But...

The Danger of Blind Guides

Our Gospel for this weekend comes from the end of the Sermon on the Plain, which is St. Luke’s version, more or less, of the Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew’s account. Jesus has been operating as the definitive spiritual teacher here, and at the end of his address, he has some strong things to say about false spiritual teachers. Every spiritual teacher and guru is eager to tell you what’s wrong with you....

Are You Blinded By Cities of Sin?

Friends, in today’s Gospel, we hear the marvelous story of the healing of blind Bartimaeus—an icon of tremendous power and a sacred picture of the spiritual life and the process of salvation. We all find ourselves, in our need of Christ, in this image, as our own blindness distorts our vision of spiritual reality and the meaning of life.

Looking Over God’s Shoulder

Preparation for Lent in 2010 was a watershed moment for me. My faith had been loosey-goosey for several years. In fact, for quite a while I had stopped saying St Ignatius’ Suscipe prayer (which you see above) every morning—a habit I have generally kept through my adult life.

The God of Restoration

The ancient Israelites suffered in exile as a result of their spiritual blindness and deaf ear to the oracles of the Yahweh. Bartimaeus in the gospel represents all human condition of wretchedness and desolation. Deprived of sight to perceive our God as a result of our sins, we are called today to beg for his mercy as he makes his way towards our path of misery and abandonment. It is a call to a renewal...

20/20 Vision

My vision is terrible. Uncorrected, it’s probably much worse than 20/200. My glasses prescription is about -8.5 diopters, for those of you who know what that means. Without my glasses, the whole world looks like a poorly-executed Impressionist painting. I’ve often wondered if Monet had bad eyesight, too. Bad vision usually isn’t too much of an inconvenience these days. High index lenses have taken the bulk out of the old “coke bottles.” For sports, I...

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The followers of Jesus – the disciples as they came to be called – went through a long process of formation as they struggled to understand who Jesus was. They perceived Jesus as clearly human like them, but yet more. Attracted by his teaching and actions among them they felt called to “come and see,” and to follow him. They were constantly called to “see” beyond the human, to grasp what God was doing in...

Seeing the Big Picture

As a father, I’m often talking with my son and instructing him on this or that. He’ll then sometimes ask “why?”, or he’ll dismiss what I am saying. I will then respond with, “well, you don’t see the big picture like I do…”, and then we’ll go on.

See the Forest

Do you ever have something, and not realize it? Do you ever take something for granted? Do you ever misunderstand your calling, even if it is spelled out in front of you? Welcome to the human experience.

Seeing the Need for Salvation

Brother Vincent, a much loved brother of our Order who died a few years ago, was born with very limited vision, and his sight deteriorated in the course of his life so that, by the time most of today’s friars knew him, he had been completely blind for many years. When he first joined the Order, though, he could still make out some distinction between light and shade, and he used to tell the story...

Looking Harder

Most Christians, most preachers, who reflect on this Chapter reflect on the Holy Eucharist. They are right; John wants us to do so. All the same, we might ask why John doesn’t tell us plainly about the Eucharist in his account of the Last Supper. Perhaps it’s because he was writing for a non-Christian audience – he tells us towards the end that he wants his readers to come to faith in Jesus. Maybe he...

Sometimes it is all about you

I have seen with my own eyes two people who have now been declared saints. One was Pope John Paul II in his popemobile in Glasgow, where he was taken round the crowds, who were in separate rectangular areas, rather like the crowd in the first multiplication of loaves and fishes in the Gospel of St Mark (6:39-40). So we all had a good view of him. The other was Mother Theresa who came to...

Rabbuni!

This Sunday’s Gospel passage tells us of the physical healing of a blind man. The gift of sight. Yet it also sets out for us a journey of insight which the man undergoes as he comes into contact with Christ and which leads not just to his being healed of a bodily handicap, but to his becoming a full disciple of Christ, to his following Jesus ‘on the way,’ that ancient phrase for being a...

Why Stand Looking into Heaven?

A man in white, the astronaut Yuri Gagarin, reportedly said: “I went up to space, but I didn't encounter God”. But had he listened to the two men in white who spoke to the men of Galilee, he could have saved himself the trouble of seeking God up in space. “Why do you stand looking [up] into heaven?” (Acts 1:11). As another man in white said forty days earlier on Easter morning, “he is not...

The Servants Knew

Some people have a lot of magic in their lives. Tables are magically set, heating just works, clothes are cleaned and ironed, and the most of the things they need just appear. At Christmas the magic works overtime. All sorts of delightful things spring up as if from nowhere. Where does it all come from? How did these delights get here? There is an easy answer to this and it is in the Gospel of...

Seeing in Love

“You can know a thing to death, and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.” So says the old preacher, Ames, to his son in the book Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. It seems to me to express a deep, and strange truth.

Sharing His Vision

Why should Jesus be the one we should follow? Why should we place absolute trust in his voice among all the voices and noise we hear in our world? Why should he be the one equipped to be our Good Shepherd, the one to lead us to pasture? Our second reading proclaimed to us the promise of our ultimate goal. The glory of this final destination is something that escapes us for now. We cannot...

Take Heart, He Is Calling You

The character Bartimaeus leaps out from the pages of Mark’s Gospel and stays with us as we go on our way from Sunday to Sunday. He becomes a follower at the eleventh hour, just before Jesus finally enters Jerusalem, at a stage when those who have been disciples all along are beginning to lose heart. His story is told so that we may take heart, not just sitting by the wayside but actually following Jesus...

Wise Men came from the East to Jerusalem

Not the only magi in the New Testament… A certain Simon, who practised ‘magic’, was converted and baptized by Philip; offered the apostles money if they would grant him authority to give people the Holy Spirit; was rebuked and repented (Acts 8:9-24) – yet is remembered mainly for ‘simony’. A certain Elymas Bar-Jesus, a Jewish prophet, is also a magos; court astrologer to the Imperial proconsul, whom he tries to prevent the apostles from converting:...

Believing is Seeing

The Gospel is about a beggar who was blind being instantly healed. It was enough to lift him out of such total destitution as we can hardly imagine today. We can be thankful that we live in such a different world. Society’s natural response today is to provide medical care for the sick and invalids, and support for the destitute. Stories of healing like this may have introduced such concern.

Seeing the Christ

From time to time, probably, all Christians ask themselves, 'what would it have been like to have been in the gospels, to have seen Christ face to face?' Today we get our question answered. We came to know Jesus not by having met him during his life on earth. Rather we were introduced to him by reputation: those who formed us in the Christian faith told us about him. But just knowing things about Jesus...