Fr Jim's (old) Blog

Our children at Holy Cross School are studying Cambodia as part of their religious education "Mission" unit. It's great to see the natural sympathy the kids have for kids who don't have what they have. They naturally sense the injustice and want to help. But their options for helping seem to be limited to the inevitable "let's do a fundraiser". Which means getting other people to give money. I see this premise also in high school kids who are full of good will to raise money for charity, and even better, go on a "mission trip" or immersion experience, but who rarely correlate their own standard of living with an unfair share of the world's resources, of which the object of their concern suffer the lack. For awhile I've been watching our school do the eco-friendly project of collecting the lunch scraps and feeding them to the chickens. But the quantity of food thrown out has staggered me - 4 or 5 buckets a day, which is far too much f...

Weddings. Check. Baptisms. Check. Funerals. Check. I've done plenty of each. But a couple of weeks ago I got a call to do something I've never done before: bless a boat! This was a new surfboat. Macs are a fairly competitive club and do well in the state competitions. The club president gave a speech, I did a one minute prayer and blessing with holy water, and the widow of a long time club member poured champagne on the boat before the crew took it out for an inaugural row. There was such a good vibe there, and a few people I know from the parish. It struck me that there is a strong sense of community there in the surf club. Three things which the church offers; community, purpose and opportunities to serve, the surf club also does. For people without religious faith there must be a number of similar places in society which offer these.

During my time in Omaha I studied the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius . It is one thing to study them, but another to do them.The exercises can be done as a 30 day intensive retreat, or a week by week program. Much as I would love to, there isn't a spare month I could be away from the parish again, so I am doing the 30 week version. I receive spiritual direction via Skype from my director (referred from the Jesuit retreat centre in Pymble ). Each week she sends me a list of scripture passages to meditate on and other prayer exercises, and then in an hour conversation via Skype we talk just about how I have been praying. It has been a very focused experience of prayer thus far. In other experiences of spiritual direction in the past we have talked about a broader range of issues of life, prayer and ministry, but this is just about prayer, nothing else. I am praying with passages of scripture which of course I have known, such as Jesus' declaration of bringing good news t...

Christ in the City , a Catholic urban ministry offers some tips for how a Catholic can relate to a homeless person on the street, something which many of us find deeply uncomfortable: 1. Ask the person’s name, remember it, and greet them if you see them again. The usual social etiquette of meeting and greeting is often foreign for homeless people. Some of them report not hearing their own name spoken for weeks on end. 2. Reach out and offer a handshake. Again, homeless people often never receive this most basic act of physical connection with another person. This simple gesture breaks a barrier and expresses that you recognize their dignity. One moment of awkwardness for you can be the highlight of the day for him or her. 3. Give something other than money. Many people are wary, and sometimes for good reason, of giving money which may be spent on alcohol or drugs. But to give food, such as a banana or a chocolate bar can make a difference. Personal items such as socks, a to...

Gina Rinehart is rich. Warren Buffet is rich. Bill Gates is rich. But what about you? Are you rich? Most us of never think of ourselves as rich, because we know people who are richer than us. We know there are people who are poorer, too, but we usually don't know them, we just know about them. Try this website www.globalrichlist.com   where you can enter your income, and it tells you where you are on the scale of the world's richest to poorest people. I've invited people to do this in this week's homily, because the gospel is from Luke 16, where the unnamed rich man goes to hell simply for being rich, when the poor man Lazarus was at his gate and he did nothing to help him. On a global scale you and I are both pretty rich (and if you're like me and don't have a full wage but live subsidised by family / church / government, try calculating the wage it would cost to pay for your lifestyle outright. The average Australian full time wage is approx $75,000,...

 One of the good things about the Catholic lectionary is that it forces us to look at the whole bible, and not the just easy bits, or the bits we like. This weekend for the 25th Sunday of Year C we read Luke 16 with its difficult parable of the unjust steward, who seems to be corrupt at work and then gets praised by Jesus for it. Deacon Paul and I have both wrestled with what to say this weekend. Jesus' point though is to put people before things, and this is the angle I will take, looking at why Jesus so often challenges our relationship with money. In a nutshell, it's because so often money makes us less happy. This News.com.au   article is one of many studies and anecdotes which show that more than half of all lotto millionaires end up less happy than before.    When you look at pictures of kids like these from poor countries, people often note that they seem so happy, when contrasted with us who have so much, and we wonder why. I wonder if it is s...

Over three weekends we are celebrating the First Communion, or First Eucharist of 75 children from our parish. More so than ever before, these have been really beautiful celebrations so far. It feels like it's been more about the Eucharist than about the "First". We have intentionally spread the families across 6 Sunday Masses so that there are 12-15 children and their families at a time, the church is not overcrowded, and the the children are receiving communion as part of the community they are, or could be with every Sunday. Everyone has seemed more settled and focused than has sometimes been the case. There are less over-the-top dresses, veils and tuxedos, and more children who are nicely dressed but also age appropriate. I haven't needed to tell people not to take photos. I've preached an intentionally accessible homily, knowing that for many of the parents they haven't really done the journey to know and meet Jesus Christ, though through the sacramen...

A new book has been published this week called Letter to My Teenage Self   in which 50 prominent Australians write the advice they'd like their teenage self to have. It got me thinking about an album I listened to a lot as a teenager, The Big Picture by Michael W Smith. I listened to this album at least once a day when I was 15, and many times after too. We didn't have a CD player in 1987, so this was on a vinyl LP. I was a nerdy, unathletic, uncoordinated 15 year old. I felt picked on at school and wasn't enjoying puberty in the slightest. Becoming fanatically Christian certainly didn't help my popularity. But this album, along with other Christian rock albums became my solace. Like so many teenagers, I listened to albums on high rotations, and the lyrics shaped my worldview. The melodies and phrases inhabited by conscious thoughts and my daydreams. As I look back now I can see how the lyrics shaped me. Much of what I truly, deeply believe about myself, life an...

This week a dozen of us from the parish - myself, Deacon Paul, Mary, Mayo, Mary, Mike, Sue, Leigh-Anne, Eric, Charles, Kathy and Sarah took part in the Proclaim Conference hosted by our diocese. It was focused on evangelisation in the parish context. Guest speakers Bishop Nicholas Hudson from the UK and Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Mrs Susan Timoney from the US joined local presenters to explore a number of ways in which parishes can be the place where the good news  of Jesus is spoken of and lived out. I felt affirmed that much of what they taught we are already doing in our parish: having a dedicated faith formation team, having 'mercy events' like the community dinners, making sure sacramental programs are explicitly evangelical, and working towards the Alpha program as an outreach beyond existing parishioners. I feel like we don't need to adjust the steering wheel, rather, we just need to keep the accelerator pressed to the floor.

Three years ago our Parish Pastoral Council initiated a new ministry to build community and to reach out beyond the parish in a Christ-like way to our neighbourhood. Jane Kenny who was on the PPC at the time presented a model of Community Dinners which had been successful in her previous parish at Narraweena. The energy with which everyone on the PPC resonated with the idea seemed to be of the Spirit and so we launched our Community Dinners here in Kincumber. They've been a resounding success. Each Tuesday night (apart from a winter break) up to 100 people converge on the school hall to share a free, open meal. It's a family friendly event, and attracts people from aged 1 to 95. The dinners recognise that there are many people who live alone who eat every meal on their own. Sharing meals together was a hallmark of Jesus' ministry, and of Christian fellowship ever since. Strangers have become friends through this meals, and for some people it is the place they feel mos...

I had only intended to write this blog while I was away from the parish, favouring face to face communication while I'm here. But it was suggested to me by our parish Faith Formation Team that the blog had made an impact, and might be an opportunity to offer a range of material which I can't always use  in a homily, or in the parish bulletin. There's also the advantage that readers can leave comments, so I'll give it a go. Last Sunday's second reading was a difficult passage from the Letter to the Hebrews which includes the phrase "The Lord disciplines those he loves" (Heb 12:6). This can be read as God inflicting suffering on us to teach us a lesson. In my homily I explored differing perspectives on how much we think God intervenes in the world, which could change our perspective from God inflicting suffering to make us grow to God allowing suffering so that we can grow. Suffering comes to us in many forms of loss and limitation, often unavoid...

For two weeks before I left for the US people at home were asking me "have you packed your bags yet?". I resisted packing until the last day because I think the physical actions of packing lead to the emotional pack up as well - checking out and no longer being present where I am. So for the same reason I have been holding off packing my bags here. I want to stay present and enjoy every last minute of this wonderful adventure. But the time has come. I've had to work out what to do with some of the things I've bought while here: kettle, coffee mugs, reading lamps; stuff which is too big to fit in my bag, but too good to throw away. Fortunately one of the few locals from Omaha in our classes, Coco, has kindly offered to store a box full of stuff for Kevin and I till next year. Packing these things has, as I knew it would, brought up the sadness of leaving for me. I have so many people I am looking forward to seeing back home (family, friends, 600 parishioners), bu...

Avid readers of the blog (all three of you) might remember that when I first arrived here in Omaha there was nothing ready in the dorm room, not even toilet paper, and nobody around who could give any information. I felt quite lost and wrote about here. I soon discovered that lots of us who had arrived at different times had the same experience. I raised this at the student board meeting and we agreed that someone should do something. And apparently the previous year group had the same experience and also thought someone should so something. Nothing happened though, because in a big system like a university the people who coordinate the program of study aren't the people arrange the accommodation. Following the maxim of St Mary of the Cross "never see a need and not do something about it", a couple of us have made up an information sheet which will be in each room next year with simple things like where the nearest shops and take away food places are, how to operate...

Any way of prayer or mediation may be considered a spiritual exercise. Just like physical exercise it helps to have a plan, a coach and some discipline. The Spiritual Exercises (notice the capitals) are a series of meditations and contemplations which 16th century St Ignatius of Loyola composed from his own prayer experience, and then taught to his followers, who became the Society of Jesus (The Jesuits). The Exercises are mostly contemplations of scenes in the gospels, where we are to use our imagination to place ourselves within the scene so as to meet Jesus intimately, allowing the gospel account to unfold as we watch, listen, feel and take part. Following the contemplation of the scene is a prayer dialogue with Jesus about whatever we experienced and learned. Woven throughout the program of gospel scenes which Ignatius chose are some specific meditations on sorrow for sin, choosing to follow Jesus, and then giving yourself wholeheartedly to Jesus. The Exercises can be don...

I'm now in the middle of my second term. Life on college campus has a wonderful rhythm here, which for me is 6 wake, prayer, breakfast 8 Counselling skills class 10 Theology of the Spiritual Exercises class 12 lunch, break, study 5   Mass , dinner study, exercise and that's about it! In between there are wonderful conversations in the dorm rooms and hallways,and occasional walks downtown for groceries or an evening stroll. Tuesday night is a 7pm Mass for our whole class group (about 50 people this term) and Friday night is a social dinner. Weekends are free, and I usually go to the 10.30am Mass here on campus. Some people here are getting cabin fever, feeling frustrated and/or bored of the same routine and being with the same people all the time. I like it. I think having spent years in seminary I'm quite OK with an institutional style of life. It feels to me very contained, where all my focus is on the one community of people and in the same direction. In normal ...

Brian Wilson was the brains behind The Beach Boys, who seem to feature in the soundtrack of most people's teenage years. Tonight I went to hear him in concert in Omaha as he played for the 50th anniversary of the Pet Sounds album, a record so groundbreaking that Paul McCartney cites it as inspiration for Sergeant Peppers. I wouldn't have known the concert was on except that The Beach Boys are my room mate Kevin's favourite band. I fell in love with Brian Wilson when I watched the biopic Love and Mercy last year. Wow. What  perfect concert. It was outdoors at sunset, but in a small amphitheater rather than a stadium. As befitting a concert by a 74 year old and attended by hippies of various generations it was over by 9pm so not a long late night (its a school night!) and close enough to walk the couple of miles home. Brian and his 10 piece band played the whole Pet Sounds album including the sublime God Only Knows plus all of the upbeat favourites like Good Vibra...

One thing the US has plenty of is flags. So you can't not notice when they are at half-mast, as they are today. Again. They've been down more than up in the past month. First Orlando. The the two black men shot by the police. Then the five police in Dallas. And now the eighty people in France. And the 250 people in Turkey. And the nameless many who won't even make the headlines for a day. Last weekend when I went to my old parish of St Thomas in Chicago the homily and the prayers were about gun violence. When I was last there eight years ago they often focused on gun violence too. It was awkward and uncomfortable. But it was also necessary to be reminded that if life is good and safe and enjoyable, then this is what God wants for us and it makes him happy, but it is not the way life is for everyone. We need to be reminded of the suffering and tragedy of the world at church, by lowered flags, and by good journalism so that we stretch our hearts in love and reconciliati...

The first week of this second term has flown by. It seems much easier than last term. I'm not sure whether it is actually a lighter workload, or if it is the combination of being back in the swing of reading hundreds of pages and writing essays again, and that unlike the first week of last term I'm no longer jetlagged, getting lost and going to orientation meetings one after the other. It's a pleasant space anyway, and I want to make the most of the remaining three weeks here. I'm running occasionally, about 10km at a time, but at night, because even then it's quite hot. We're spoiled for choice with several masses here each day but I'm mostly going to the quiet 5pm weekday Mass and the beautiful, upbeat 10.30am Mass on Sundays.

I spent the weekend in Chicago with my friends TC & Romana whom I lived with in 2007. I've visited them once since, but not since they've been married. They now have a 6 month old baby too. It was a great weekend. You often hear people say of old friends "we just picked up where we left off" or "it was just like old times". This wasn't. It was better. It was wonderful to see TC married, happy and settled, all the things he wasn't 5 years ago. For me it was a wonderful bit of nostalgia, to see the old building we used to live in, to walk along the lakefront of Lake Michigan where I used to jog in the snow, and to go to Mass at St Thomas' Church which I attended while I was studying. Still, I'm equally happy to be back in Omaha, with the new friends I've made and the new opportunities this coming term holds. And as I have 8am classes tomorrow I'm signing off and going to bed now.

This is the end of term 1. Last night was the graduation Mass and dinner for a dozen of the final year students who have taken between 3 and 6 years to complete the course. It was a touching evening, seeing the bonds which that cohort had developed, and wondering ahead to how that might be my group in two years' time. The testimonies were powerful, and always came back to the same theme of spiritual growth and personal transformation. One man spoke about the event in Mark 2 when a paralysed man's friends lower him through the roof to get to Jesus. He said that of the hundred times he's read or thought of that account, he always saw himself as the healthy helpers, not the man on the mat, until coming to do this course, and discovering all the healing and forgiveness and growth that God wanted to do in him. A powerful night. So this weekend many of the American students will leave, having finished the first term. The overseas students like myself, including from Vietnam, Ho...

Today is American Independence Day, the 240th anniversary of the original 13 US colonies declaring their independence from Britain. This is a piece of our Australian history too, as the US stopped receiving convicts from Britain, and after awhile of leaving prisoners in crowded ships moored in the Thames, Britain decided to send them elsewhere: Australia. So last night we went down to the baseball stadium to watch the celebratory fireworks. Unlike New Years Eve in Sydney where you need to camp out all day, we just walked down, found some grass and sat. I've never been so close to fireworks before (not since "Cracker Night" was discontinued in the 80's). Not only did we get a great view, we could feel each explosion resonating in our chest cavities. It was loud! By contrast we had a very quiet night a couple of nights ago. We had a dinner for the whole group, then everyone retreated back to their rooms to work on essays (this is the final week of first semester an...

Today I was reading an article by an American religious commentator concerned with the large numbers of migrants coming into the country, staying in blocs together, not assimilating and causing problems because of their religion. Does this sound familiar to Australians? But the article was from the 1880s, the commentator was a Methodist, and the problem migrants were Catholics of Irish and Italian descent. It reminded me yet again that we need to look at questions of migration and Islam through the long lens of history and not the myopic lenses of Jones, Bolt, Abbott and Trump. We as Catholics were once perceived as a problem too. What can we do to welcome, engage and embrace migrants of Muslim faith, who have every bit as much right to migrate to Australia as did our Irish and English ancestors? Well, this month is the Ramadan fast. If you know a Muslim, or you see one and don't know what to say, say "Ramadan mubarak" which is pretty much "happy Ramadan...

It's been a couple of days of personal bests. Not in terms of race times or anything else we might consider to be PB. But some of the best things I've experienced in the past month. 1. We are spoiled for choice with Masses here. I go to one of them most days. Yesterday I went to the 5pm weekday Mass for the first time. And it was wonderful. It was in a small chapel with comfortable seats. There were about 20 people which the priest said was a lot for the summer. It was just the most prayerful, intimate, beautiful Mass I've been to since I've been in the US. The priest, one of the Jesuits, Fr Steve just prayed the prayers of Mass so slowly and gently it was as if he was dropping every word into my soul. It was intimate and soul touching. I'll keep going to 5pm. 2. It's cooled down a little from the consistent run of 35 degree days, enough that I went for a good long run last night. Something I haven't been doing much of for awhile. It's only about a m...

Every year Omaha hosts the baseball College World Series. College sport seems to be a big thing here in the US, more so than in Australia. I don't think people pay money to watch Macquarie Uni play RMIT in soccer, for instance. But it's a very US thing to do, so on Friday night I went to see two teams I've never heard of play I game I barely understand. But it was a great night! Americans do atmosphere very well. The stadium was full. It was a balmy summer evening as the sun set below the western bleachers. There's a palpable sense of excitement. People are chomping down in stadium food which all seems to be variations of deep fried something covered in the thick dark yellow cheese Americans seem to love. The game moves quickly, much more so than cricket, with teams alternating pitching and hitting between each innings (equivalent of an over in cricket), and musical interludes between each innings. The ball is often hit into the crowd and it was just a few seats away ...

My Call to Holiness class is giving me the opportunity to read saints whom I've never read before. Last week I read some of Catherine of Sienna's writings. Catherine was a remarkable 14th century lay woman who composed evocative prayers with phrases such as "and you, high eternal Trinity, acted as if you were drunk with love, infatuated with your creature.....you engrafted your divinity into the dead tree of our humanity". She wrote hundreds of letters with psychologically prescient wisdom to her peers, to clergy, and even to popes, ultimately brokering peace between the Pope and various opposing rulers which allowed the papacy to move back to the Vatican. This week I'm reading St Francis  de Sales, a 17th century bishop of Geneva whose gentle pastoral manner is striking me and reminding me of my shortcomings which I constantly need to work on. As we read through the history of saints we're looking at how holiness has been understood through the ages, and...

Two weeks ago the deadliest mass shooting in US history took place when a disturbed man killed 49 people and injured more in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida. As the news broke we held our breath wondering "is this yet more ISIS inspired violence?". At first it seemed that it was, the gunman phoned 911 and claimed it for ISIS. But investigations showed the gunman had no links to ISIS, but instead was a fragile, disturbed man, known to be violent, who was also deeply homophobic, supposedly triggered by seeing two men kissing in the street. This turned out to be the focus of his violence; it was a gay nightclub, and it was gay people he was targetting. Investigations showed that he had been a regular visitor to the club, perhaps scoping it for the attack, but paired with the uncovering of his phone & internet history of going to gay websites and dating apps he may well have been a closeted gay man, filled with loathing for himself and for other homosexuals. Creighton Unive...

Things have improved a whole lot since I arrived at an empty building two weeks ago. My building, McGloin Hall is now full of people doing summer programs, and my group all live on the second and third floors. There's a chapel on the top floor. It's only a few hundred meters one way to the classrooms, and a few hundred meters the other way to the dining hall. I've got a 14 meals a week meal pass, so I have cereal at home for breakfast and then lunches and dinners in the dining hall. The food is pretty good. Each 'room' is a suite with two bedrooms, a shared bathroom and lounge. This is good for two people to share, but the freshmen (first years) who usually live here during college term have four to a suite, two to a room, which would be very cosy, to say the least. I think the beds can be double bunked, which I remember being fun when I was 11 years old and sleeping at a friend's house for one night. It might be less fun doing it as an adult for a whole ye...

Today Summer Term 1 began. I have two classes each day for four weeks. I'm with an extraordinary group of people. There are priests and religious sisters from Uganda, Nigeria, Vietnam and Hong Kong, as well as priests, religious and laity from the US. I feel like the dumbest person in the room when I realise that some of these people have three degrees and speak four languages (English is usually their second or third), and do some challenging ministries, such as in the case of Fr Peter from Nigeria, ministering to people who have been attacked by Boko Haram. My first class is The Call to Holiness, which our lecturer describes as "a romp through the communion of saints". My knowledge of the saints is rather piecemeal, so I'm looking forward to discovering depth and context. One of the resources we'll be using is a series of podcasts, such as this one on Saints Perpetua and Felicity, whom I knew were 3rd century martyrs but not much else. http://cucatholicctr.o...

Every half marathon or other endurance race I've run has a familiar pattern: I warm up in the first kilometer, find a rhythm and run most of the way at that pace. Then somewhere in the back third or quarter it gets really tough,  everything hurts and I want to quit. But if I press through I get a second wind and then when I see the finish line I can sprint home. Most retreats follow this pattern too, and so it  was with this 8 day (really 10 days) retreat in Griswold, Iowa, surrounded by gently rolling hills covered in corn and soyabean farms. I had a great spiritual director who gave me some spiritual exercises to do (eg, read the healing of the blind man in Mark 10, meditate from the point of view of the blind man, then from the point of view of Jesus, then from in prayer sit with Jesus and let him as you the question he asked the blind man "what do you want me to do for you?" But by Tuesday I'd just had enough peace, silence and prayer, and I wanted to get  o...

Well, I’m in Omaha.  It’s a bit  underwhelming compared to Seattle. Not just the city, but the experience of arriving at a near empty accommodation block last night with no one around, no instructions, finally finding a key, finding my room, then going searching for basics like toilet paper (found), and a kettle (none). There’s only a few of us who were arriving last night, as we’re heading out on retreat for eight days this afternoon. I’m sure it will get better from here on in. Seattle though was just wonderful. Not just the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, as they call it, but the warmth of hospitality of my friends which made this seem so rather bleak by comparison.  But this did two things for me. Firstly it gave me an insight that this is just a millionth of what any new migrant, let alone refugee must experience in coming to a new place where you know no one and nothing. At last I had the language to ask directions and the money to go buy some takeaway...