Fr Jim's (old) Blog

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.