Holy Name of Mary Parish Hunters Hill
  • Home
    • About Us >
      • Parish Team
      • Parish Bytes
      • Parish Pastoral Council
      • Inter-Church Council
      • History >
        • Windows and Statues
      • Photo Gallery
  • Our Churches
    • Holy Name of Mary Church
    • St Peter Chanel Church
  • Liturgy
    • Altar Servers
    • Altar Society >
      • Folding and ironing altar linen
    • Children's Liturgy
    • Eucharistic Ministers
    • Lectors
    • Music
    • Welcome Ministry
  • Sacraments
    • Baptism
    • Reconciliation
    • First Communion
    • Confirmation
    • Marriage
    • RCIA
  • Community
    • Aged Ministry
    • Children
    • Grief Care and Support
    • Marist Laity
    • Men's Group >
      • An Evening with John Ferris
    • Youth and Young Adults
  • Outreach
    • Social Justice
    • St Vinnies
  • Safeguarding Children
    • Child Protection
    • Children's Resources
    • Young People's Resources

TWENTY NINTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TME    

19/10/2014

 
Isaiah 45: 1; 4-6 I have taken the hand of Cyrus to subdue the nations before his countenance
Give the Lord glory and honour
1 Thess 1: 1-5 We are mindful of your faith, hope and love.

Matthew 22: 15-21 Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.


In this little scene from the gospel, you would think Jesus was sitting for the HSC! The Pharisees were constantly trying to put trick questions to Jesus to see if he would put his foot in it. Jesus, having studied well and learnt well, has very good footwork and easily evades the traps they set for him, gives them more than they bargained for in his answers .

Jesus was a good student of his people’s story. No doubt he had learned much from his family, and the religious and other leaders as he was growing up. He was keenly aware of his people’s suffering at the hands of the Roman occupation forces and at the hands of the Jewish religious leaders who were collaborating with them.

He had a very keen sense of justice and never hesitated to point out injustices when he saw them. In fact, he was free enough to call everything exactly as he saw it and this is what got him into trouble.

It seems his critics aren’t looking for truth. They prefer people who share their own views and they aren’t too impressed when a truth is expressed that is truer than the truth they have been holding on to. The tellers of these truths are dangerous because if their ideas take hold, then we will lose our positions of power and influence, and then where would we all be?

It’s necessary to make the tellers of these truths disappear, because dead men tell no tales! This is exactly what happened to Jesus. The only problem is that the truth of his story outlasted his human life here and in his rising from the dead, both he and his story are still alive and well, and the world has indeed changed.

His ideas are still as dangerous and challenging as they ever were.

When we listen to Jesus responding to the Pharisees today, we hear him setting everyone free to do what they judge best, to render to God what is God’s and to render to Caesar what is his. He leaves us, and more, calls on each of us to be free enough to take personal responsibility for the choices we make, for the faith that we embrace and for the causes we proclaim.

It is this freedom that St Paul praises in his touching words to the Thessalonians. Let’s listen to him again:

“We always mention you in our prayers and thank God for you all, and constantly remember before God our Father how you have shown your faith in action, worked for love and persevered through hope, in our Lord Jesus Christ. We know brothers and sisters, that God loves you and that you have been chosen, because when we brought the Good News to you , it came to you not only as words, but as power and as the Holy Spirit and utter conviction.”

We’d be pretty safe saying that while we are all on the way to this inner freedom, this passion for truth and justice, this faith in Jesus grace at work in us, none of us is perfectly free. So it’s good that we pray for one another that we continue to grow in this freedom which is God’s own hope for us.

Having said that, we can look around our own little community here and see eloquent expressions of this freedom which Paul praises so gently.

  • We see the energy and delight with which our Pastoral Council members and others prepared for the Parish Dinner, and the joy everyone took on the occasion. People were talking about it all through this past week. One of our veteran parishioners commented to me that is was one of the very best parish events he’s been to.

  • On Tuesday our small but energetic Social Justice Group met. Apart from the three projects we are engaged in, there again was a clear and generous spirit, openness to each other’s points of view and a desire to do our best for those in special need and to engage in the most difficult task of speaking about and acting about injustice. 
  • Then on Wednesday evening our lively Liturgy group gathered to review our Feast Day Mass the other week, to begin planning for Advent and Christmas and to reflect on the general issues around our liturgical life that we’d like to address further. Two new members joined us and we rewarded ourselves with a little party! St Paul would have been pleased with the lively grace of this group.

  • Then there is our dear Norma Brosnan who has lived most of her life in our parish and contributed so much to the parish and the wider local community. Norma had a stroke last Sunday and is in a stable condition in hospital. Her free spirit still shines through her injured body, much in the manner that Jesus’ spirit of love shone through his broken body on the Cross. St Paul would surely want to catch her up in his arms and his words.

  • Along the same lines we have Suzi Hajje who had further brain surgery this week and ever since has being filling the pages of Facebook with stories about how well she is with lots of accompanying photos. In her illness she becomes a gift of joy for so many of us.

    These are just five instances among the countless graces that you all bring to our life together here. Listen to St Paul one more time, grateful for the inspiration of those around you, and grateful for the inspiration you bring us all.

    “We always mention you in our prayers and thank God for you all, and constantly remember before God our Father how you have shown your faith in action, worked for love and persevered through hope, in our Lord Jesus Christ. We know brothers and sisters, that God loves you and that you have been chosen, because when we brought the Good News to you , it came to you not only as words, but as power and as the Holy Spirit and utter conviction.” 

TWENTY SEVENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

4/10/2014

 
Isaiah 5, 1-7 The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel
Phil 4: 6-9 Do these things and the God of peace will be with you
Matthew 21; 33-43 He leased his vineyard to other farmers.

 Let’s listen to St Paul again for a moment:

 Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honour, and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise. Then the God of peace will be with you.

 In our gospel reading we have a parable of Jesus where people acted with great dishonour, acted ignobly, acted out of greed and envy, and acted untruthfully.

 As we sit here, each one of us is probably somewhere between these two poles, and hopefully towards the end of the spectrum that St Paul urges us to embrace.

 As we sit here, our nation and our world are lurching around in-between these two poles as well.  Many people, and many of them unknown, are living heroic lives, striving to transform their world into the world that God entrusted to us, a world where everyone has an opportunity to live with dignity and freedom, a world in which everyone has the choice to seek the good, the noble, the beautiful, the virtuous.

 Similarly as we sit here, much of our world is in the grip of fear, terror, anger and prejudice. Our own happy-go-lucky nation is bit by bit being infected with fear of the most recent arrivals to our shores.   When you think of it and reflect on our history, we’ve always been a bit like this and at the moment the temperature in the room has gone up a few notches to the point where we are having absurd arguments about what people may or not wear when they visit parliament!

 At this time we are holding over one thousand children in detention centres in Australia and in off-shore facilities.

 Last week our Government, with the support of the Labor Opposition, sealed a deal with Cambodia, one of the most brutal, secretive and poorest nations in Asia.  We offered them $40 million dollars in assistance and they agreed to take a handful of asylum seekers from Nauru.  These people we are told can freely choose to re-settle in Cambodia.  Their options are limited to this choice: to re-settle in Cambodia, to stay on Nauru indefinitely in the tents provided, sleeping six men to a tent, or to return to the countries from which they fled in fear – some choice they have.

 Our Government, again largely with the support of the Opposition is seeking to re-introduce Temporary Protection Visas for people seeking refuge here, so that they can live and work in the community on a temporary basis.  Under the Howard Government, 98% of  people on Temporary Protection Visas eventually became permanent citizens.  Under the proposed new TPV’s, they will have to reapply for a new temporary visa every three years for the rest of their lives, thus being condemned to live in permanent insecurity.

 People in the public services related to asylum-seeker policy are now instructed to refer to people seeking asylum as illegal.  In fact they are perfectly within their rights to have sought asylum here and are in no way illegal according to Australian and International law.

 These policies are popular with the majority of Australians.  We elected our members of Parliament in part on the basis of these policies which they are now implementing.

 The Record, the quarterly bulletin of the St Vincent de Paul Society in its latest issue has a full treatment of the Vinnies Refugee Policy which was finalized this time last year.

 It is a thoughtful, thorough, practical and compassionate document.  If you want some intelligent and honest reading around this issue I recommend the Vinnies Record to you.  Any of our St Vincent de Paul members can tell you how to access it and I will put the Web address on our bulletin next week.

 Our Australian Catholic Bishops in May this year released their statement on our treatment of people seeking asylum.  In part they write:

 The policy can win acceptance only if the asylum seekers are kept faceless and nameless. It depends upon a process of de-humanisation. Such a policy would be widely rejected if the faces and names were known. Bishops have seen the faces; we know the names; we have heard the stories. That is why we say now, Enough of this institutionalised cruelty. We join with the Catholic Bishops of Papua New Guinea who have voiced their strong opposition to the use of Manus Island for detention. They have urged Australia “to find a more humane solution to people seeking asylum”. We do not accept the need for off-shore processing. But even if it continues, it surely does not require such harshness.

 The Government and Opposition want to stop the boats and thwart the people-smugglers. But does this require such cruelty? Could not the same goals be achieved by policies, which were less harsh, even humane – policies which respected not only our international obligations but also basic human rights? Can we not achieve a balance between the needs of people in desperate trouble and the electoral pressures faced by politicians? We believe we can; indeed we must – The time has come to examine our conscience and to act differently.

 Let’s listen to St Paul once again:

 Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honour, and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise. Then the God of peace will be with you.

 In the light of his encouragement to us, can we hope for the God of peace to be with us, while ever we support policies and practices that are anything but noble, true, just, virtuous or wise? Violent, punitive behaviour, behaviour based on fear rather than love, can never ever lead to true peace.

Let’s listen to the truth of our own hearts and ask ourselves how we can possibly reconcile our behaviours as a nation with the call of the gospel

    Author

    Homilies by Father Kevin Bates

    Archives

    May 2017
    March 2016
    November 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Location

More links

Sydney Archdiocese
Villa Maria Catholic Primary School

Marist Sisters College, Woolwich
Marist Fathers, Australian Province
St Vincent de Paul Society

Marist Missions