Acts 1: 1-11 Why are you standing there looking up into the sky? Jesus has been taken up into heaven
 
God mounts his throne to  shouts of joy, a blare of trumpets for the Lord.
 
Ephesians 1: 17-23 He made Jesus to sit at his right hand.
 
Matthew 28: 16-20 All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
 
When we farewell each other we usually say what’s deepest in our hearts, or whatever it is we’ve neglected to say to each other up until now.
 
In this final moment of Jesus’ face-to-face ministry with his disciples, we see yet one last reminder that Jesus’ whole purpose was to reveal the love of the Father for all peoples.
 
His last act is to return to the Father, and in so doing completes the mission the Father gave him.  As we mark this moment in the gospels, let’s  reflect  on the love that he unveils for us and the love which he offers to us all, and the love that he then asks us to share as far and wide as we can.
 
Just to stop and muse for a moment on what the love of God is a bit like, is to be caught up into a world that hardly seems real.
 
How could there possibly be a love with no strings attached, with no expectations, with no demands, with no conditions. How can there be a such a love when in our world conditions, strings, expectations, demands are the normal and expected currency?!
 
According to our deep scriptural tradition, all the way from Isaiah through to the wonderful parables in Matthew and Luke, we meet with a God of radical hospitality and unconditional love. 
 
This love sets no conditions,  and is not based on rights and obligations, is not constrained by any other force, fear of rejection or ridicule, but is pure gift.
This love is born of profound acceptance and respect.  It cannot be  earned, bought or bargained for. It is simply given.
 
It is this love alone that can change hearts.  Our poets and song-writers and philosophers have been telling us that for aeons, but we fail to hear and believe.
          
It is love alone that will bring a conversion sufficient enough to make a different world emerge.  Fear may bring a  certain conformity, but only love changes the heart.
 
Love does not wait for the right conditions in order to swing into action.  In times of joy, suffering, doubt, war, drought, in all our times where things are at best incomplete, love simply is.
 
Love does not wait to be invited in, but rather is already present within and among us if we only dare step back and recognize that she is there already. 
 
Love does not expect to given applause or recognition before offering her gift. There is no need for love’s ego to be fed or satisfied, for love takes no account of her own needs.
 
Love simply is.
 
This gift is available to us in every moment.  God’s gracious tender unconditional love is our heritage,  and when we are preoccupied with our suffering, pain and needs  we can easily miss seeing or tasting this gift.
 
This gift is ours to offer to each other and to all who cross our path.  It belongs to everyone.  Everyone has a claim on this love.  No one is excluded from it - no one.......and yet....
 
“Through Jesus Christ, God intends to engage in some fashion with every person.” Pope John Paul 2
 
Our world is awash with the poor, the lonely, the desperate, the rejected, the addicted, the powerful seeking their own ends, just as much as ever. 
 
This gift of love has been available to us since time began and yet we still cannot believe that it is a possibility for us and so in our world still, people feel rejected by governments, churches, families, partners. 
 
People are denied their basic rights by virtue of the wealth that is locked up in investments and share markets. 
 
People are denied access to this love by religious rules that exclude,  that lack the compassion and flexibility to deal with people’s reality. 
 
People are denied access to this love by the small print which says
: “We don’t know you;”
         “You don’t fit into our world view, or our religious, political or cultural perspective;”
         “To save ourselves dealing with you we will give you a number instead of a name;”
“We will give you a label instead of a face so we don’t have to deal with or engage with you - you are simply too much trouble.”
 
What we are often really saying is that “we are too self-absorbed or too frightened to engage with you with love. If we dare let it loose, it may call us to change, to let go, to move to places where we have not dared go before.”
 
And through all our struggles to set love free, love simply waits, sometimes with a troubled face, and sometimes with an aching heart, for her chance to break through.
 
Love will not rest till all hearts have been welcomed into her embrace. This is at the heart of Jesus’ promise to his disciples as he farewells them at the time of his return to the Father on the first Ascension day.
 
 
 

Acts 10. 34-43 – We have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection.
 
This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad.
 
Colossians 3:1-4 Look for the things that are in heaven where Christ is.
 
John 20: 1-9 The teaching of the Scripture is that he must rise from the dead.
 
What an alarming moment as Mary Magdalene and the disciples discover the empty tomb where Jesus had laid.  Along with all the disciples, and with Jesus’ mother Mary, Mary Magdalene has been through several days of deep grief.  The one who had held all their hopes was defeated, killed, destroyed, and along with his death they were experiencing the death of all their own hopes and dreams.
 
There was no escape from this hellish disaster that had come upon them.  And of course that is what life is like for so many people around our world still.  There are the experiences of hell that happen to us all, such as an accident, an illness, a disability.  Then there are the experiences of hell that we create for ourselves and each other: our addictions, whether it be to drugs, alcohol, work, sex or possessions. There is the hell we create through unfaithfulness, prejudice, and so many kinds of selfishness.  There is the hell of poverty and famine.  There is the hell of unresolved anger or crippling fear. 
 
Hell is about having nowhere to escape, nowhere to turn, and no one near to help.  Hell is having nothing at all to hope in. 
 
This was the experience of Jesus’ friends in these days following his death, and is the experience still of so many of our brothers and sisters around the world.  They know more Good Fridays than Easter Sundays and for many their whole life’s journey is dominated by the suffering of Good Friday.
At this time the people of Syria and other middle-eastern countries will know what we are talking about, just as much as someone local in our own community who is stuck in an impossible place of suffering.
 
The empty tomb, the stone rolled away that Mary and the disciples discover in the gospel story here, is a symbol of hope then. There is an escape possible from the hell of isolation, addiction, fear, anger and poverty.  There is a life beyond the pain and poverty which for so many millions of people is their normal daily experience. 
 
The stone is rolled away and Jesus is risen.  It takes not only a wonderful sense of humour, but a great great passion to rise from the dead, and for our world to rise above the violence, poverty and pain that dominates most of our news bulletins each day.
 
It takes a mighty effort, an enormous spirit of hope, and a stubborn belief that life can be better, in order for our world to rise from the dead. 
 
In our first reading, Peter points out to the listening Jewish crowd that while they had had Jesus killed, God had raised him up.  The original verb he uses here is “aroused” which is the same verb we use for the arousal of all our passions, our political energies, our protective instincts towards our families, our sexual energies.  In fact all that makes life worthwhile and worth fighting for, is embodied in this word that Peter uses.  Jesus is “aroused” from the dead.  In other words, his resurrection is a passionate claiming of the things of life and a refusal ever to let the hellish things of death have the last word.
 
So what’s that got to do with all of us? 
 
Well, we can respond by simply sitting back, enjoy the Easter break, admire the story of Jesus and crack another bottle of champers!
 
We could listen to the stories of this Easter celebration and be glad that there is hope of eternal life for us because of Jesus’ resurrection.
 
We could decide to come to Church a bit more often so that we can be a bit more sure of being in God’s good books.
 
On the other hand, we could decide to do something about the hell that our world experiences every day.  With the talents, the financial resources, the material resources, the education we have, we could decide to touch a part of our broken world with our own dose of passionate hope and enable a little rising from the dead to happen in the lives of people who would otherwise remain in the tomb with the stone covering the entrance and with no hope of escape. 
 
We could stretch ourselves a little beyond our own comfort, our own survival, our own convenience, and rise to new life ourselves by entering the pain of another person’s world and rolling back the stone of their loneliness, despair or isolation.
 
Let’s make this Easter a bit more than a friendly party.  Let’s make sure that the presence of the Risen Jesus is something we carry with us when we leave here today.
 
It’s certainly the surest way for us all to have a truly happy Easter and that is what I wish for all of you here today.  Happy Easter everyone!
 
Song: Easter Expressions
 
 
 

Holy Thursday provides us with wonderful memories and much inspiration.  We have the tender intimate last meal of Jesus and his disciples, Jesus’ passionate prayer for the unity of all who believe in him, his washing of our feet in the humblest of possible gestures. 

Then too we have the betrayal of Judas, the fear of the disciples as to what is coming next, the protestations of Peter that he will never deny Jesus.

In the middle of it all, we have Jesus promising to stay with us always through the extraordinary mysterious gift of the Eucharist, and for this we are thankful every day. Along with the gift of himself in the Eucharist, he commissions the disciples to continue breaking open this Sacrament, and in the process the mystery of the priesthood emerges.

Since the beginning, this priesthood has been expressed in so many ways in different cultures and different Catholic traditions.
Sometimes in our own western Church, and often in the Orthodox and other Eastern Catholic Churches, the emphasis has been on the mystery that we celebrate and in the process the liturgies themselves have been couched in mysterious language, symbols and gestures.

In the early Church, the Eucharist was very quickly seen to be both an expression of the mystery of God’s presence among us and at the same time it had a pastoral dimension. In other words it was meant for the real nourishment of those present and those not able to be present.  The Mass had both a cultic and a pastoral dimension.

Over centuries this pastoral dimension tended to be lost and replaced by the cultic, to the point where up to the time of Vatican 2, many Catholics would come to Mass and say their own prayers while the priest said his prayers with his back to the community, speaking often silently in a foreign language.

Since the Vatican Council, the pastoral dimension of the liturgy has once again been reclaimed and seeking to balance this with the cultic dimension has been an ongoing challenge. That the Mass be clearly an act of worship and at the same time an act of understandable nourishment for those present continues to be a work in progress.

Along with these shifts, our understanding of the role of the priest changed too and the sorts of discipline required of the priest developed accordingly.

Priests for the first half our history, apart from those who chose to live in monastic communities, were often married with families. In due course the western Church determined that it was more appropriate for priests to be celibate.  There were a number of diverse reasons for this development. 

This state of things as we know has continued down to our own time and in many ways has served the Church well. Returning to the Last Supper and paying careful attention, we hear Jesus’ deep desire that people be nourished and nourished well through his presence in the Eucharist.
While ever and where ever there have been sufficient priests, God’s people have been well and truly nourished.

As we are all aware, this situation is changing rapidly. Many country dioceses in Australia have very few able-bodied priests. Many Religious communities such as our own are growing older and fewer.  At 69 I am in the younger half of our Australian Marist community.

This morning at the Mass of the Oils at St Mary’s Cathedral, there were several hundred priests together, a strong and joyful presence.  On closer inspection, many heads were grey, white or bald. A small number had dark hair! While there are larger numbers of younger priests in countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, in general around the world we are becoming critically short of priests.
At least ten of the thirty or so Australian Bishops are at retiring age and their replacements are nowhere in sight.

Perhaps we are being called to a new imagination, a fresh courage, and a new vision in order that Jesus’ longing for the good nourishment of God’s people may continue.
Some are asking whether the gift of priesthood needs to be tied exclusively to male celibate members of the Church. These discussions are hesitant in some cases, dismissed as unnecessary in others and are full of angst and frustration in others.
It is a given that Jesus wants his people to be well nourished.  It is also a given that there are very few people putting their hand up to be priests right now. We are left with very big questions that demand our prayerful, faith-filled, patient and at the same time, urgent attention.

The way forward is not clear-cut and requires much reflection and conversation.  Such reflection and conversation is taking place at many levels of the Church, including among the leadership of the Church.
As we take the nourishment that Jesus offers us in our Eucharist this evening, let us join our prayers with all those around the world who are striving to listen for whatever it is that the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church in this time. Let us pray that the way forward is one we choose with great care as we listen out for where the Spirit calls us.

IN CLEARER LIGHT
Who will welcome in when doors are knocking?
Who will feed the hungry deep inside?
Who will heal, forgiving hands out-reaching?
Who will breathe a spirit new and bright?
 
Who will soothe in sickness and in sorrow?
Who will bind as two hearts live as one?
Who will teach the truth of people’s story?
Who will bridge the real with dreams unsung?
 
Where can deeper longings make connection?
When can fractured spirits head for home?
Why delay when grace can run so freely?
How can new-found stories make their claim?
 
Listen for the heart that love breaks open;
Learn and look beyond what’s gone before.
Let God’s gifts run free in every culture;
Anointed hands held ready to be called.
 
God provides the home for all our longing;
Let the Church release God’s saving dream.
Holding back no avenue to freedom;
Love and truth in clearer light be seen.
 
Come the day uncluttered hearts are sharing;
Given wholly to God’s ancient song.
Come the day when light bursts from the shadows;
And priestly people live where they belong.
 
 

ALL SAINTS DAY
Apocalypse 7:2-4; 9-14 I saw an immense crowd beyond hope of counting, of people from every nation, race, tribe and tongue.
Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.
1 John 3:1-3 We shall see God as he really is.
Matthew 5: 1-12 Rejoice and be glad your reward will be great in heaven.

As kids we used to go round singing the old hymn “Faith of our Fathers, and promising to be true to our faith till death!”   In the early Church of course, thousands of new believers didn’t have long to wait before they faced death because of their Christian faith.  

We ride on the backs of these heroic people as we celebrate their memory today.  In the early Church this Feast was known as “Martyrs’ Day” and by the seventh century we hear it being called “All Saints’ Day”.  I guess by then, not all the Saints were martyrs so it was an early attempt by the Church at being inclusive!!
These Saints are like our family Photo-album. They give us glimpses of the past and glimpses of what it looks like to live a life of faith, holiness and sometimes even heroism.  

They not only give us a glimpse of the past of course, because somehow we believe they are still with us in spirit, to inspire us and give us a nudge in the right direction when we need it. Not actually having them in a photo album of course, we use lots of other ways to remember them, such as their Feast Days, their pictures in our stained glass windows and our statues, the names we chose for our Confirmation, and the memories we have of learning about one or other of them as children. 

It might be a good idea to look one of our featured saints up on the parish website.  All the ones you see in both our churches, are written about there thanks to Mark Mullins, John Keneally and Arthur Boyd, who have all in recent times joined the great Communion of Saints themselves.  (For those for you reading this who are not in the parish www.hnom.com.au is the place to look.) A lovely thing about the Saints of course is that they weren’t perfect.  They were often as not, confused, troubled, neurotic, eccentric, extreme in their views, unwell.  They’d have fitted very well into our parish, or any other parish really! Along with their wounded selves, and sometimes because of and through their struggle with their wounded selves, they learned to become very, very good at living the gospel. 

The Beatitudes became some of their guideposts and they learnt to give these odd, paradoxical declarations of Jesus, some shape and colour and credibility.  They showed us that gentleness could work, that a hunger for justice could accomplish change in our wider world, that freedom from slavery to possessions or ideas, could open us to new growth, that embracing our grieving times could indeed mean new comfort and peace, that taking the risk of being peace-makers could actually change lives, that being true to their own truest selves could open others up to see God’s face.  They dared to imagine that God’s Kingdom could really come. 

It’s a sad thing when people lack any sort of imagination and end up settling for the present as the best of all possible worlds.  Nothing’s going to improve, and the human family is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past endlessly. One of things that the Saints give us is a marvellous gift of imagination. 
They have lived lives that remind us that it is possible for us to be better than we usually are.  
They have lived lives that remind us that hope is a more realistic option than despair.  They have picked up Jesus’ words in the Beatitudes and run with them, words that are full of imagination.  Imagine if we could be peacemakers or creators of justice, or merciful…..Imagine what that would be like!  The Saints then stir our imaginations to hope and to a hope that is shot through with joy.

Up till now, we’ve mostly been speaking about the headliners, the saints who have been recognized by the whole family of the Church, and who have been honoured by being canonized and mentioned in the liturgy now and then. Now of course there are countless others who have found their way home to God through lives of quiet holiness and heroism.  Their names are written just as surely, to use St John’s phrase in Revelation, in “the Book of Life” and they too are part of the great story of God’s Kingdom coming alive among us all. 

In fact you will know many of them personally.  Perhaps your Mum or your Dad, your husband or wife, your grandparents, your brothers or sisters, your friends from school days or your workplace, your fellow parishioners, and perhaps little angels you knew for only a little while,  who died long before their time. 
Hold them all in your heart this day, and give God thanks for the many ways in which they have shaped your heart’s own story.  Hold them close in your memory, and call out to them to keep an eye on you as your journey continues here.  Remember their beauty and grace, and with a smile, remember their wounds as well.  They were once as we are now, wounded, fearful sometimes, unsure of things, forgetful, obsessive and needy.  They were also fun to be with, tender in love, passionate about the issues of their day, faithful and in their own way, in touch with God’s heart. 

As they touched us and our lives, so now they touch God.  They are all still worth knowing! 
Take them home with you when we finish celebrating here and hold them close.  Let them still nourish you and call you forward that you too may join that immense crowd beyond numbering of which St John speaks in our first reading.  Invite them in to pray with you when you pray, to wait with you when you need to wait, to weep with you when it is your time to weep and to celebrate with you when you know deep joy.   Invite them in that they might open up for you, your own path to God’s Kingdom.
​
This is the people that longs to see God’s face, and we celebrate with sure hope and growing faith, that it is God’s face too, that will welcome each one of us in our turn.
Happy All Saints Day to you all – let’s live it well and with great good cheer.
​

Ambition and lots of it, has been on display this past week in our political world. Some ambitions have been dashed, some left uncertain at this point and some have been fulfilled.

In the media, and at the butchers, hairdressers, supermarkets and dinner tables, we’ve been arguing the toss with each other about whose ambitions should have come out on top.  Part of our own agenda in these arguments possibly centred around who we do and don’t admire, and whose rise to power or fall from grace suited our own ambitions best.

As St James points out in our second reading, so much of human ambition stems from something unfulfilled within ourselves. There is always something more that we are seeking that means that we can be in a constant state of longing. We’re never quite satisfied, never quite complete, never quite happy, or we are happy enough until something better comes along!

The world of advertising is built on an understanding of this human condition.  Ads are designed to make us feel what we are missing out on.  They are meant to make us feel unhappy with what we have now.
They are full of illusions, especially when they use words such as “ultimate”.  We have in the past heard of “the ultimate in smoking pleasure”, and look where that got us! New cars are often described as the ultimate model.  I’m often tempted to call up and ask why they are intending to produce no further models!
We really are a restless lot and unless we come to terms with this restlessness, we’ll never be truly happy. St Irenaeus, writing before the age of inclusive language, once noted: “Happy is the man who has stilled the lifelong battle going on in his own soul.”

Our gospel story today picks up this restlessness in the disciples of Jesus.  They are a bit sheepish as Jesus asks them what they’ve been chatting about on the road, because they are aware that their ambitions are not really worthy of the mission to which Jesus is calling them. Jesus calls them forward from ambition to service and suggests that it is in learning to serve that one’s restless heart may find some sort of peace.
It’s easy to look at our politicians and point out their human shortcomings, their ambitions and their unworthiness. People like Alan Jones, Ray Hadley and Andrew Bolt have had a field day this week doing that very thing.

It’s easy to look at our Church and its leaders and do the same thing. At this time, there are forces within the Church, some people in seemingly high places who are working very hard to discredit and dismantle the direction that Pope Francis is trying to take the Church.

We can be dismayed by the Church’s politics, its displays of human ambition and its consequent infidelity to the gospel, and we can easily forget that the Church has been political centuries longer than any of our own Political Parties! We’re experts at it!!

Of course when Jesus turns his gaze on us in the Church, we lower our eyes, start saying our prayers and try to hide our ambitious conversations from him, just as the disciples did on the road that day.
Let’s turn our gaze inwards for a moment, and check the state of our own restless selves. In which areas of my life do I hear myself saying things such as: “If only I had…….;” or “Look at what he or she has and here am I still miles behind”. “I can’t wait till I can afford to……” and so on.

Then let Jesus look us in the eye and ask us what we have been talking and thinking about as we walked along with him. How would that conversation go?  Would we be able to hear him call us beyond our restless ambitions to a place where a spirit of service is allowed to shape the way we live each day? What would it take to release ourselves from our slavery to our unfulfilled ambitions?

It’s worth recalling St Augustine’s over-used words of wisdom: “You have made us for yourself O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” The fact that we continue to gather here around the Lord’s table, tells us that we recognise the truth of Augustine’s words, that we recognise the struggle we all have to centre ourselves on Love, on God, and our need to remind ourselves where our true happiness and peace will be found.

Let’s pray for ourselves, for one another and for our restless world as we come to the Eucharist now. Let’s hold in our hearts all those people who are the victims of violence brought about by other people’s restless ambitions:
Victims  of Domestic Violence
Victims of Sexual abuse
Victims of Emotional Abuse
Victims of war
People who have been driven from their homelands and are seeking refuge
Children who have become pawns in a battle between parents and their conflicting ambitions
The elderly whose very lives may be at risk because the ambitions of younger family members don’t include them anymore.
You can add your own experiences to this list.

We conclude with the words of St James:
“Wherever you find jealousy and ambition, you find disharmony and wicked things of every kind being done; whereas the wisdom that comes down from above is essentially something pure; it also makes for peace, and is kindly and considerate; it is full of compassion, and shows itself by doing good; nor is there any trace of partiality or hypocrisy in it. Peacemakers, when they work for peace, sow the seeds which will bear fruit in holiness.”
May James’ concluding words come to describe the way we are in the quiet of our own hearts, in our families and in our community.

Isaiah 35: 4-7 Then the ears of the deaf will be opened and the tongues of the dumb speak.
Praise the Lord my soul
James 2:1-5 Has not God chosen the poor of te world to inherit the kingdom?
Mark 7: 31-37 He makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak

A small boy’s body washes up on a beach in Turkey and the world begins to feel a new kind of sadness and bewilderment as the biggest movement of displaced people since World War 2 begins to replace local political gossip on our news headlines. In our own small neck of the woods, we have bunkered down, allowed ourselves to be blinded by a veil of secrecy and washed our hands of any responsibility as the rest of the world stumbles to who knows what next crisis. 

In the light of unfolding events across the Middle East, in which we have been and continue to be participants, and in the light of the ensuing flood of migrants seeking refuge across Europe, let’s listen to the words of St James once again and unfold them a little: Jesus opens the ears and loosened the tongue of the deaf and dumb man.  What a mighty symbol this healing story presents to us. No matter how deaf we are, how afraid to speak out in the name of love, if we allow a simple touch from the hand of Jesus to unlock our hearts, what new headlines our world would wake up to tomorrow morning!

In the words of our first reading: “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, then the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongues of the dumb sing for joy.”

Pope Francis is repeatedly calling on the leaders of western countries to find ways of responding to the tide of human misery flooding across Europe. There are voices being raised locally, such as Liberal back-bencher Craig Laundy and the Leader of Tasmania’s Labor Party. No action is yet in sight in response to their pleas.

In the Church too we need to keep an eye on our border protection policies. Pope Francis recently spoke to a group of priests, expressing his concern about younger priests who are denying people baptism for their children because they don’t seem to be fit and acceptable.  He reminded them that the Church’s doors are open and welcoming and are not to be seen in any way as toll-gates! 

For us, we buy a very cheap freedom indeed while we settle for our own local preoccupations and ignore the cries of the ones the Lord calls us to hear. 

The broken bread of the Eucharist, the broken Body of Christ that we share here this day, requires a newly thoughtful “Amen” from each of us. 


ISLANDS OF SHADOW                                                                        Kevin Bates sm


1. Islands of shadow on the edge of our knowing,
Birthing a question whose answers we hide,
Islands of shadow in our blind spot you linger,
Will our eyes ever open to the truth we’ve denied?

2. As a nation of migrants we are nervous around you,
What do we call you when don’t know your name?
You hold our deep secret and we hide from the learning
That aches to be shared – in the dark we remain.

REFRAIN:

When will the light be released?
Will your shadow be lifted?
Will you ever taste peace?
How will we gentle your pain
While the wire and the ocean your boundaries remain?
(Coda: Or is it our blindness that’s really to blame?)


3. The labels we give you, well they save us from facing
The depth of your stories by razor wire bound.
On the islands of shadow your crying is silenced
As we seek to keep safe our own holy ground.

REFRAIN

4. Many voices are raised, many people are marching,
The hunger for justice still binds us to you.
Oh islands of shadow be free from your burden.
We ache for the day when this hope will be true.



Hunters Hill
4 April 2014
For our Marist Social Justice and integrity of Creation Group.

Job 38: 1, 8-11 Here I have set the boundaries of the sea

Give thanks to the Lord, his love is everlasting

2 Corinthians 5: 14-17 All things are made new

Mark 4: 35-41 Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him.

“Who can this be, even the wind and the sea obey him?”  

In the light of Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter on Global Warming and the Environment this week, we could ask the same question of ourselves and our leaders. We seem to have imagined that we were in charge of the world of nature, given that Genesis invited us to have dominion over all creatures. Pope Francs’ words this week indicate that we have taken the dominion to levels never anticipated, and that our dominion of creation is now the cause of its progressive destruction.

We can hold this thought and apply it to the leaders of industry and governments whose policies and profit-at-all-cost practices have rendered it necessary for the Pope to write such a document. 

We could also question ourselves and the way in which we treat the world around us.  

We still consume like there is no tomorrow, and we consume to the point that may mean there will be no tomorrow within a few short generations. We waste as much food as we consume and many of us leave the job of cleaning up after ourselves to someone else. 

The storm on the Sea of Galilee was a sudden experience of danger for the disciples. 

The storm that our mother the earth is now experiencing, while it includes an increase in cataclysmic weather events, is the result of several centuries of industrial and economic development, supported by the politics of the day. 

In this process, almost imperceptibly, the earth has started show the signs of strain as temperatures and sea levels rise, as considerable numbers of living species of flora and fauna become extinct. 

Pope Francis details some of these developments and points especially to our use of fossil fuels as a most significant contributor to this gathering storm. 

He also cites our propensity for short term political gain as governments, including our own, wriggle and squirm as they try to avoid facing up to the challenges that the damage to the environment presents to us.

Both the natural and the human environment feel the damage brought about by policies and practices that put profit ahead of any other consideration. 

Each of us has our own area of influence.  For some of us it might be our own household use of energy, food consumption, clothing and so on.  For some of us we may have some influence through a neighbourhood group.  For some the local Council, for some State of Federal Government.

For most of us we may imagine our influence doesn’t stretch very far but that may not necessarily be true.

Bishop Terry Brady in his homily to our youngsters lining up for Confirmation this week, suggested that all of us together, in order to make Jesus known and loved, could raise our voices in areas where it matters.  He noted that letters from Bishops, “if we’re honest don’t go that far”, and that they will not be heard as widely or effectively as our voices all raised together. 

The trouble is often enough, that we can’t all agree on what’s important and what’s not, influenced as we are by the economy and politics of the day, and our own security in relation to them.

We don’t want any storms to disturb our boat-trip and if there are storms elsewhere, we’d prefer to keep them out of sight. Our own need for self-protection and our obligations regarding other needs beyond our immediate world struggle, to find their balance. 

Pope Francis in his letter, is urging us to re-balance our own lives so that the life of our world might find its proper balance too.

The disciples in the boat were alarmed and fearful for their lives because Jesus was asleep through the height of the storm. When he woke up and addressed the situation, calm and good order was restored. The disciples were amazed at the result!

In our turn, we are the voice of Jesus, and for too many in the world, this voice that should mean hope, survival and more, dignity and freedom, seems to be silent, asleep, while the storms of poverty, war, displacement, the degradation of the environment, surround them.

Let’s read the Pope’s words carefully and take them to heart. Let’s then be bold enough to speak those words in whatever place and time that we can find. 

You see, our salvation is not just about our little souls getting themselves to heaven.  Our salvation is about the coming of the Kingdom of God. This coming Kingdom while it includes each one of us, also includes the whole of creation.   

St Paul reminds us elsewhere that Jesus is the first born, not of a bunch of souls, not of a church, not of a nation, not just of the human family, but Jesus, Paul tells us, is the first born of all creation. 

We pray that each of us plays our part in the coming to be of God’s Loving plan, and that we use our own unique gifts of intelligence, imagination and freedom for this universal saving purpose.

In conclusion, we re-visit the words of our Psalm today: and let’s listen prayerfully to the words in the light of our reflection just now:

Some sailed to the sea in ships to trade on the mighty waters.                       These men have seen the Lord’s deeds, the wonders he does in the deep.

For he spoke, he summoned the gale, tossing the waves of the sea up to heaven and back into the deep; their soul melted away in their distress.

Then they cried to the Lord in their need and he rescued them from their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper: all the saves of the sea were hushed.

They rejoiced because of the calm and he led them to the haven they desired. Let them thank the Lord for his love, the wonders he does for all peoples and all creation. (Psalm 106)

Ezekiel 17: 22-24 I have made the small tree great

Lord it is good to give thanks to you

2 Corinthians 5:6-10 Whether we are living in the body or exiled from it, we are intent on pleasing the Lord.

Mark 4: 26-44 The mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds, grows into the biggest shrub of all.

This is what the Kingdom of God is like: The sower went out to sow some seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing: how, he does not know. Of its own accord the lad produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the crop is ready, he loses no time: he starts to reap because the harvest is come.

For so many of us, our lives are so busy, so many deadlines and commitments to meet, so many tasks to be completed each day.  Our lives can easily be reduced to doing, achieving, producing.  Pleasing others through our achievements can become our driving force. 

Measuring our well-being and sense of self by economic outcomes as we know, sells our self very short. It’s impossible to recognise ourselves as God’s masterpiece, as Paul calls us, if our predominant point of reference is the size of our bank balance, our house or our car!

Likewise a government which focuses on economics as its primary task, will sell its people short in the same way that we can do to ourselves. 

Even religious people get caught up in the same kind of economy by imagining that if they multiply the prayers they say, the religious events they attend and the number of Saints they invoke, they will somehow strike a good bargain with God. 

We create the illusion that we have to do it all. In this mode, we, rather than God become the centre of our own little universe. We close our borders, personal, family, national to others as we focus on our own security, our own progress, our own salvation.  

Then Love is born among us and turns our world on its head. Love breaks through our borders, our barriers, our preoccupations with ourselves and our performances.  Our focus becomes someone else.  

Suddenly we are aware of our own barren ground, the soil that has been waiting for the seeds of love to be sown.  Somehow, love starts to grow all by itself and we are astonished at how differently the world appears. 

Now we are no longer the centre of things, we can see more clearly. 

The birth of a baby, the gift of married love that grows in surprising ways, the cry of a sister or brother in need finally reaches our heart and it is as if we are born again!

The earth has shifted and our centre is no longer where it was.  All the important things, deadlines, productivity, future planning, economic success and its trappings, all have to make way when love really hits town. 

Love you see, asks nothing of us but is pure gift. Our economic, busy self has real trouble dealing with that! 

Love, while asking nothing of us, confronts us with the deepest possible questions about ourselves, about human relationships, about the ultimate meaning of life. 

It’s as if love draws us into herself and says “Come and see what I’d like  to create with you: a beautiful faithful marriage, a brand-new child, a lifetime of memories that will never fade because you have lived them and grown them in times of joy and in times of suffering.”

“Come and look beyond where you have dared look before and listen, really listen to the cry of the person seeking refuge here, to the deep pain of one wounded by the abuse of a person she or he once trusted, the plaintive yearning of one who feels beyond love’s embrace because of personal or family history, because of marriage break-down, because of sexual orientation.”

For love to grow, we need now and then to clear the land, let it lie fallow, and then wait for the seed to be sown, knowing that we need to wait and rely on the sower to sow in the sower’s own good time. 

Fallow time is not the easiest place to be.  Everyone else seems to be doing so well and here am I struggling to hold my head up. I look silly.  I feel the odd one out. I’ve got nothing to show for all my efforts. Nothing seems to be happening!

Fallow time comes to us all and without it the soil of our hearts will not be ready for the arrival of love’s seed.

There is no point in being impatient and trying to hurry the sower along. The seeds of love will be sown when the time is right, when love decides, when the right circumstances for good growth are at hand. 

So today, whether your crops are well developed, whether they are newly planted, whether your land simply lies fallow right now, know that love will find you, in love’s good time.

Sit quietly during our Mass now and recognise that the work of our salvation is in Love’s hands, in God’s hands, the sower who knows well when our waiting time will be done. 

We pray a blessing today on all your marriages, past, present and in preparation. We pray a blessing on the marriages that have birthed us, nurtured us and inspired us. 

As we appreciate the commitment of you, our married brothers and sisters, we look to you to show us the face of Jesus as you deepen your love for one another and bless the rest of us with the sacrament of your marriage as only married people can. As we bless you today, we look for the blessing that you bring to us and thank you for the grace of the love you sow among us.  

The sower went out to sow some seed on the land…………