Homilies – March – 2025
HOMILY
ARCHBISHOP CHRISTOPHER PROWSE
CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP OF CANBERRA AND GOULBURN
ST CHRISTOPHER’S CATHEDRAL
2ND MARCH 2025
EIGHTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (YEAR C)
AND MASS ONLINE
Readings: Sirach 27:4-7 1 Cor 15:54-58 Luke 6:39-45
There is a change in the weather now from summer to autumn. There is also a change coming to our Liturgical life. This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the Lenten period.
This Lenten period will be celebrated during a Jubilee Year of Pilgrims of Hope.
The word “Jubilee” is well placed in the Lenten Season. The Biblical understanding of “Jubilee” can be expressed as “the restoration of broken bridges.” There is a social dimension to our coming closer to God through prayer, fasting and alms giving. It affects others. We can’t have a Catholicism that is centred on our own relationship with God. A Lenten Jubilee would not permit this.
That being said, the Readings today do speak of one major roadblock on our Lenten Pilgrimage to Easter. It is centred on the tongue. In the First Reading today it says, “In a shaken sieve the rubbish is left behind, so too the defects of a man appear in his talk.” It then summarises by saying, “a person’s words betray what a person feels.”
In the Gospel today the road blockage of our tongue is commented upon by Jesus Himself. He talks about our immense capacity for self-deception. We all know that we have a tendency to minimise our own personal responsibility and maximise blame onto someone else. This is done through our scandalous talk of another. Jesus comments that, “Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye and never notice the plank in your own?… Hypocrite!”
But the Lord, as always, goes to the deeper reason for the tongues’ offences. He concludes by saying, “For a man’s words flow out of what fills his heart.” So the heart is the real problem. This is the spiritual diagnosis of the Lord. The heart is, in Biblical terms, the source of both grace and sin.
Let us always remember that whereas the heart might be deprived it is never depraved.
Five hundred years ago in the Reformation people like John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli comment in their writings that the heart of a human person was depraved.
But these people were described eventually as completely departing from the Catholic Tradition. We might be deprived but we are never depraved in our hearts. There is no such thing as a rotten heart. It may be a heart, however, that needs the building of bridges in a symbolic way.
Let’s keep this in mind.
Help in our Lenten journey on the way we relate to others can come from our 5th and 6th Century theological traditions. Here we have the rule of St Benedict. Three words seem to summarise so much of the help he can give us in our Lenten journey when we ask God to cleanse our hearts.
He talks first of all about stability. What are the foundations of your life? We must nurture a daily structuring or prayer to give us parameters around which we enter into our day. We should nurture our prayer life daily.
Secondly, I use the word “Anchorage.” St Benedict uses the more complicated terminology but I think in this year of Pilgrimage, an Anchor is a great symbol of hope. Particularly, when our everyday stability and routine is challenged by the storms that come thick and fast in our lives. We activate the Anchor. In other words, like a boat, we go into a safe shore and drop Anchor. We wait until the storm goes past and then get on with our life. Isn’t it interesting that when we do have troubles the first thing that seems to go, is our prayers. The Saints of the Church seem to suggest that when we are under difficulties we should pray longer not shorter. We ask ourselves what is God saying to us? We discern honestly.
Thirdly, there is the importance of obedience in the Benedictine tradition. Obedience is listening carefully to the Holy Spirit in our lives. This can be helped by prayer, fasting and alms giving to heighten our awareness of the presence of God in our lives. This will help us to learn from the storms in our lives: what is of God and what is not of God and to draw us back to the stability of our everyday life.
You might want to pursue these thoughts of Stability, Anchorage and Obedience in your lives as we lead up to Ash Wednesday.
There is also a lovely prayer form that I would like to suggest to you. It is called “Pray for five.” Simply, it means we choose five people and pray for them in a very special way without necessarily telling them. Not only pray for them but we try to listen to them more carefully and go out of our way to restore any “broken bridges” that might be there. This brings out a social dimension to our prayer life and the quality of our prayer life can be judged by the quality of our relationship with others, especially our friends and those who are on the peripheries of life.
Another prayer form is the “Holy Doors Prayer.” Simply this means that when we go into a room which presents a new challenge, we pray for the people that we are about to meet. When we leave the room we pray for the people we have just encountered and ask God’s blessing upon them. This helps us again to be more loving and attentive to the relationships we have with others through this “Holy Doors Prayer.” It could be going into your work place, going home into your house, even going into the supermarket. “Holy Doors” is another way of coming close to God in Lent.
As we begin our preparation for Lent let us, in this Jubilee Year of Hope, recall the prayer that the Priest prays at Mass when he says, “As we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ.” Let this be our “Gospill.”
Homily Archbishop Christopher Prowse
Thursday 6th March 2025
Bowral Retreat Centre
Retreat for Catholic Education Principals of the
Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn
Readings: Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Luke 9:22-25
It is great to be with you. Thank you for all you do in the Archdiocese. You are extremely committed Catholic men and women. We respond together as servants of the Gospel to make Jesus known and loved.
This time the theme of our Retreat is “Charisms.” This is a very significant topic which is as ancient as the New Testament itself. It was also very significant in the Vatican II Council and the time immediately following. However, there has been periods where over our history charisms seem to have been “forgotten.”
With the promotion, especially by Pope Francis, on synodality and the importance of our Baptism, charisms and their link with service of the Gospel are returning in full force.
I particularly welcome Ms Clara Geoghegan. She is very well versed to lead us in reflections on charisms. It has been one of her passions over the last few decades and she has advised many in Australia on this topic.
The Catholic understanding of charisms is not just simply human talents or skills. They are gifts from God through our Baptism for the service of the Gospel. All the Baptised are given charisms. We are to co-discern what those charisms are so they can be used for the greater glory of God.
On many levels charisms are not as complicated as people think.
Let me give you a few examples.
Last year I was visiting a grade six class prior to celebrating the Sacrament of Confirmation with them a few days later. When I was speaking to the children I asked many questions. A young girl in that class answered some of the questions in a way that I thought was exceptional. When I returned back to my office I thought about her answers and felt that she was a very special girl indeed. It wasn’t because of her intelligence or natural skills. I thought it was something the Holy Spirit had given her. Her capacity to be able to articulate as a child but in an adult way the mysteries of our faith, drew me to Jesus.
So, sure enough, I returned to the local parish a few days later and Confirmed her and her classmates.
In the photograph session afterwards I noticed that she was with her parents and family members. Once the photographs had been taken, I tactfully called the parents aside and had a chat to them. I mentioned to them my discernment that there was something special, on a spiritual level, about their daughter in regard to her answers to my questions the other day.
They were delighted that I mentioned this. Indeed, they mentioned that for quite some years they too had noticed that she was very spiritually attuned. They then quickly related to me how, in her grade three class when she was preparing for First Holy Communion, she presented them one evening with a very blunt question. She said to her parents, “Why don’t we go to Mass?”
The mother, in relating this to me, showed great embarrassment when she told me the answer she gave at that time. She said, “We don’t go to Mass because we don’t need too.”
Her daughter persisted in showing great interest in Catholic life and particularly the Sacraments she was about to receive. So, to at least accompany her, the mother started to go to Mass. The father, an atheist, remained at home. After a few Sundays the mother herself became re-engaged with the practice of her faith and also felt quite drawn to attending Mass frequently. Indeed, through her daughter, she renewed her Catholic life quite fulsomely. The father, on this Confirmation night, also commented that over the last few years he too had been thinking for the first time about Christianity. He had recently joined the Rite of Christian Initiation of an Adult (RCIA) to become a Catholic.
All this happened because of the great charism that the Lord gave this young lady! It was a kind of charism of faith. It wasn’t learnt or accomplished by her own efforts. It was pure grace. It was given. This young lady opened herself up to the grace given. In this case she is a real “Marian figure.” She is like Mary when she too was given a grace by God, a charism, to become the mother of God in Jesus Christ.
Let’s learn from this example and other examples. Even last Sunday a pregnant couple came to see me to say they wanted to re-engage with their Christianity before their child arrived. Quite incredibly, the mother shared that they were lapsed Christians from another denomination. They had been “shopping” around different Churches. They found that when they went into Catholic Churches, particularly St Christopher’s Cathedral, the child within her womb was felt to be very much at peace and almost joyful in being there. How this happened I am not sure! However, that was their statement and both were now requesting to become Catholics.
It appears that even the child within the womb can be given a charism to bring their parents’ home to God! We shouldn’t laugh at this! It is somewhat similar to what happened with John the Baptist in the womb of St Elizabeth!
Something new is happening in the Church today. These examples are not entirely rare.
Indeed, in a few weeks, there will be the canonisation of Blessed Carlo Acutis. A young Italian man, he died at the age of 15 years from Leukaemia. He too brought his mother and extended family back to the Church by showing the importance of engaging with Jesus Sacramentally. He will become the first Saint in the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year history who was computer literate! He will become a patron of Social Media! How we certainly need Saints and people of Holiness to help us in that area!
All of these stories do show me that the Holy Spirit is working in a new way. Quite different from times past.
Perhaps we are coming out of a “functional” Church where there has been an undue emphasis on everything being “accountable and transparent.” This is not to be dismissed. We need to have a fully functional Church that is accountable and transparent. The terrible situation of the sex abuse issues in the Church and the ongoing and present day pain of victims does insist that we have a fully functional Church that is alert to safeguarding children. We have learnt our lessons in this regard. I like to think that perhaps the safest place for a young person in this Archdiocese is in a Catholic School! I am sure this is the case! Thanks be to God!
However, a fully functional Church is not enough! We can become almost like a machine. And we can ape lessons from the corporate world and bring them into the Catholic Church in an “unbaptised” way. We are here for the salvation of souls. Not just for making ecclesial machinery squeaky clean in a functional way. It is not only efficiency that we are looking for. It is faithfulness. Faithfulness in all that God wants us to do and be as Jesus has taught us in the Scriptures in the last 2,000 years of our Catholic Tradition.
If we are a purely functional Church, we become “Pelagian.” This is a heresy of centuries past. Here people felt that they didn’t really need God to get to Heaven. They could get there themselves. This type of “salvation” is an extreme form of a functional Church.
Yet the youth of today are certainly interested in the Religious in a new and exciting way. The examples above show that but this is not just in exceptional things. Many of the priests of this Archdiocese, and I speak on behalf of my brother Bishops around Australia, notice the same. Particularly since the end of Covid many of the elderly are not coming back to the Church due to health reasons. They are participating online. Yet it is not as if the Churches are completely empty. The numbers are very healthy in so many ways although this doesn’t seem to be picked up in sociological surveys.
We can see that multicultural and young professional groups are there in fulsome numbers. It is undeniable. These younger people are not fussed as their parents are with the functionality of the Church. Indeed, they are far more searching for the mystical dimension in the Catholic Church. They are looking for an experience or encounter with God. They seek answers to deep Religious questions that are not just simply philosophical or theological. They are looking for something that is tangible and existential. How can I invite Jesus into my life?
We see this with the buoyant youth apostolate in the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn. I am continually amazed that so many young people are very much open to the possibility of an experience of Jesus and an encounter with the Holy Spirit. They move onto discipleship and mission. The work of evangelisation continues in a new way for a new generation. It gives great hope in this Jubilee Year of Pilgrims of Hope.
On the other hand, we don’t just simply want a mystical church that dismisses the functional aspect. The danger with a mystical Church on its own is that it becomes very pietistic and tends to neglect the poor and the oppressed. That is when it becomes an extreme. This is a type of Gnosticism. It becomes a group of people who seem to feel they have a particular insight into God that nobody else has. The Church now becomes some sort of “clique” or pious club. This is simply what we are not.
We both need a fully functional Church and a fully mystical Church! It is not “either or”, it is “both and.”
We need a functional Church that tends to the structures of the Church in a way that is liberating and helps us to be ready to become missionary disciples of the Resurrection. It helps to train new “Peters” to go out fishing in the deep waters of new frontiers hungry for God.
We also need the mystical Church. We need the Marian dimension of the Church: Mary the Mystic. We need to embrace this and not presume that it is already there. It requires the activation of our Baptism which has already been given but has remained dormant. It becomes like a Baptism in the Holy Spirit where the Holy Spirit both comforts and disrupts us to become the people that God wants us to be.
It is like both the pyramid and the circle. Both are required in the Church.
I know Principals of Catholic Schools, whether they like it or not, are forced into the functional aspect of Church and School administration. There can be no other way about it. However, let us never become functionaries in our ministry as School Principals! May our schools always function well and truly be accountable in all aspects of the way we go about dealing with human beings and little ones at that.
Yet, let us not be so attentive to this that we forget the children in our classroom often look at things quite differently in regard to the Religious dimension. Maybe the students of our schools can do quite a lot to evangelise the Principals and the teachers!
Both dimensions are required in the school as indeed the Church generally.
So, let us now go on with the Mass knowing that God who has always hovered over the chaos of the world with the Holy Spirit is hovering over the chaos of our world today. The Holy Spirit of Genesis always turns chaos and disorder into order.
Let us pray for each other now in thanks giving for the many gifts that God has given us. May Jesus make us chief evangelisers of our schools in the Archdiocese. Let us become co-discerners in seeing were the charisms of the Holy Spirit are bubbling up in our very presence in such subtle but remarkable ways!
Homily Archbishop Christopher Prowse
Friday 7th March 2025
Bowral Retreat Centre
Retreat for Catholic Education Principals of the
Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn
Readings: Isaiah 58:1.9 Gospel: Matthew 9:14-15
He was a young Italian man of about 20 years old when he felt God calling him to a more intense spiritual life. He felt a real calling to live out his Christian life in a solitary manner. He went to a place called Subiaco near Rome. He placed himself in a cave on the side of a cliff. Once or twice a week he got somebody to send down supplies via a rope and bucket. He wanted to live completely on his own. Other people heard about this and although they found his life-choice very quaint, some wanted to join him. He ended up finding that he was not on his own. Others were keen to share the solitary life in God that he was starting to live. He would have preferred them to have left him alone but what could he do!? So he started to form a number of caves. After a period of time there were too many people so he had to move to bigger premises!
This man was eventually known as St Benedict. In the 5th and 6th century monasticism began in the Western world via his leadership. A few centuries before that, St Anthony followed a similar vocation in Eastern Catholicism. He was one of the desert fathers (and mothers) of desert monasticism in the Middle East.
Eventually St Benedict moved from Subiaco to a place called Monte Cassino. He began what we now call the Benedictine Order. Their particular charism is hospitality. I have been to both these places. Monte Cassino has had many different destructions and reconstructions over the centuries. The latest was in World War II.
In about 603 he wrote a very brief but helpful document called “The Rule.” It isn’t long but it is very practical in helping people to live a community life but in a monastic way. It is still a “fresh” Rule even today.
Principals of Catholic Schools also live a type of monasticism. When I listen to you carefully, I can tell that you have a very structured life and there is a certain routine that happens every day. However, there is also a newness to your everyday! (Too new perhaps!!). What can we learn from this “Rule” that might help our “new monasticism” as Principals of Catholic Schools?
St Benedict articulated three vows that might be of assistance.
The first vow is the vow of Stability. He talked about how work and prayer (ora et labora) gave stability and backbone to everyday life. It was almost a timetabling of the day to give it shape no matter what happens. There was always the centrality of seeing God in all things.
The second vow had a rather complicated name so I am going to just call it Anchorage. This is good for the Jubilee year of Pilgrims of Hope. Hope, in its ancient Christian symbolism, is seen as an Anchor.
So, although we have this stability we know that everyday things happen in our lives. Whether we like it or not, we are going to be disturbed in our daily routine. However, we always must go back in fidelity to the Spirit of stability. It is a bit like the cyclone nearing Queensland and Northern New South Wales at the moment. The boats must go into harbour and an anchor must be deployed for stability and support for the changing environment. This is exactly what St Benedict was mentioning. It is so easy for us in our little crises, which come daily, to give away the stability.
Indeed, quite often the first casualty when things come unexpectedly in life is our prayer life. When difficulties come, we often find that we don’t pray or can’t pray. The Saints of the Church say that when there are difficulties we should pray longer.
The third vow is the vow of Obedience.
Obedience is just not simply the servile response to external rules. We Australians have a very narrow understanding of what obedience is. In the monastic life and deep spiritual life, obedience means literally “to listen attentively.” It is a very synodal process. In other words, where is the Holy Spirit happening in my life in its stability and its instability? Where are the areas that I feel God working or areas where I don’t feel God present? Where is the evil one? Where is the human spirit distracting us? Being obedient to God means to meditate carefully and to examine our daily life in the light of the Gospels.
I hope these three monastic vows might be of assistance to the new monastic way that your own lives are shaped as Principals of our schools.
In all things, as always, the Holy Spirit is there to not only disrupt us but also to comfort us. The Holy Spirit always guides us. Let us increase our devotion to the Holy Spirit knowing that, especially through the Saints and Mary, God is always leading us to His son Jesus our Lord and Saviour. St Benedict, pray for us!
HOMILY
ARCHBISHOP CHRISTOPHER PROWSE
CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP OF CANBERRA AND GOULBURN
ST CHRISTOPHER’S CATHEDRAL
9th MARCH 2025
FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT (YEAR C)
AND MASS ONLINE
Readings: Duet 26:4-10 Romans 10:8-13 Luke 4:1-13
Today we celebrate our first Sunday of Lent on our journey towards the Easter Mysteries during this Jubilee Lent. It is the International Jubilee of Pilgrims of Hope.
People say that Australians are great tourists but poor pilgrims.
It raises the question: What is the difference between a tourist and a pilgrim?
In the First Reading today from the Old Testament, we hear a summary of the Exodus event. Here it could be said that it is not so much that the People of God were tourists but they were nomads. It is mentioned that they are a “wandering Aramaean” community. It is God’s intention that they move from being nomadic to becoming pilgrims. It is God Himself who wanted to lead them on the great pilgrimage to the Holy Land – “The land of milk and honey.”
Two things could be said about this forty-year exodus event. The first, is that God was always faithful to them in his Covenant. The second, is that the People of God are almost always unfaithful to God.
The word “Wilderness” is a very good word mentioned in the Scriptures today. It is in the “wilderness” that God teaches His People to move from unfaithfulness to faithfulness.
In the Gospel today we see Jesus, the “New Moses”, beginning His public ministry after forty days of fasting in the wilderness of the Judean Desert. It is only in Jesus that the unfaithfulness becomes faithfulness. Jesus is victorious over all the temptations of the evil one to break the covenant of God’s loving kindness.
Three temptations from the devil are articulated.
The first, is for Jesus to become selfish. The devil tempts Him to turn stones into bread. He is tempted to make material comforts a priority. Jesus dismisses this temptation.
Secondly, Jesus is taken to a panorama whereby the nations of the earth are to be viewed. The devil says to him, “I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms, for it has been committed to me.” This is pure nonsense. The devil is always the great deceiver. He is the prince of lies. He does not have control over the nations of the earth. It is a temptation for Jesus to control and use power over others. Jesus resists this temptation outright.
Thirdly, Jesus is taken to the top of a tower and told to throw Himself down whereby His Angels will come and rescue Him from death. Here Jesus is tempted to succumb to the vanities of this world. He is tempted to court human adulation. He is tempted to become a performer and win the next Academy award! Maybe His life could be transformed into a television series!
Jesus again is not only victorious over this temptation but then dismisses the devil outright.
The Good News is that Jesus is victorious over the evil one. The closer we come to Jesus and be more faithful, the closer we receive the power from on High to overcome the temptations to selfishness, control and vanities of this world. The Good News story is that Jesus, not only is the pilgrimage leader on our journey to the new heavens and the new earth but Jesus Himself is our final destination. Jesus is the Way the Truth and the Life! The closer we are united with Jesus the closer we are to victory on our pilgrimage and our final destination.
All this is done through our rebirth in the waters of Baptism. Lent is the pilgrimage towards renewing our Easter Baptisms.
We welcome today, so many of the candidates of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (R.C.I.A.) from various parishes who have come to the Rite of the Elect today.
There is a beautiful summary of Christian Baptism in the Second Reading today. St Paul in his writings to the embryonic Church in Rome summarises it all in a very important statement where he says, “If you confess that Jesus is Lord and if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved.” Here is our ticket to glory! With our lips we proclaim sincerely that Jesus is Lord. With our heart we truly believe that God raised Jesus from the dead. By doing so we become, through our Baptism, part of our community of the saved! We become part of the community of the Holy Spirit. We become the people of God that Jesus wanted us to be.
So let us for our “Gospill” use that beautiful expression in three words that seem to summarise our Baptismal Creed…Jesus is Lord. We are not saying that Jesus was Lord or will become Lord or might be Lord. We are saying Jesus is Lord. We use the present tense. We say that Jesus is our Lord our Master, our Saviour the one who takes us from failure into victory. So let us in this Lenten time arrive from the wilderness of prayer, fasting and alms giving. Let us never become just simply tourists or nomads in life. Let us become intentional pilgrims and as intentional pilgrims we say over and over again, “JESUS IS LORD.”
HOMILY
ARCHBISHOP CHRISTOPHER PROWSE
CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP OF CANBERRA AND GOULBURN
ST CHRISTOPHER’S CATHEDRAL
16th MARCH 2025
SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT (YEAR C)
AND MASS ONLINE
Readings: Genesis 15:5-12. 17-18 Phil 3:17-4:1 Luke 9:28-36
Last Sunday, the First Sunday of Lent, the Gospel pertained to the three temptations of Christ in the wilderness. Here the humanity of Jesus was stressed.
On this the Second Sunday of Lent the Transfiguration is the Gospel. The Transfiguration is shared in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Here the divinity of Jesus is stressed. Whereas, the focal point last Sunday was the wilderness, the focal point for this Sunday is the mountain and cloud.
It is important to stress that we Catholics believe in Jesus being fully human and fully divine. It is not 70/30 or 50/50. It is Jesus fully human and Jesus fully divine. We are the “both and” people in the “either… or” world.
In today’s Gospel the divinity of Jesus is directed towards our end destiny in Christ, risen from the dead. Here the Risen Lord comes in glory. In this Jubilee Year there is much hope for the pilgrims on this journey.
Yet, in a rather strange response (it is only to be found in Luke) Peter, James and John are sleepy in the midst of this manifestation of God’s glory.
Later in Luke’s Gospel they also fall asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane.
There seems to be a hint of this even in the First Reading when the Abrahamic covenant with God is being considered, we hear that, “Abram fell into a deep sleep.”
It seems that sleeping during important moments of God’s presence has a Biblical tradition! If anybody is falling asleep at this Mass at the moment it could be said you are keeping up a good Biblical tradition!!
During this Lent it is good for us to consider the following: Are we sleepy too in the presence of Jesus?
It seems to me that there are two temptations keeping us spiritually sleepy.
First of all, we can ask this important question during Lent: Are we saying prayers or are we truly praying? We hear about mind fog. Is there a spiritual fog when we come to the Lord in prayer?
Babbling like the pagans is something that Jesus speaks strongly against. When we actually pray, the word “intentionality” comes to mind. We are intentionally praying. We are saying to the Lord, “Here I am Jesus, mind, body and spirit. I am listening to you.” So let us not just be here bodily but let us be here mind, body and spirit. Less the Mass becomes a formality rather than the absolute centre of our Catholic life as it is.
Secondly, we can all be tempted to be spiritually sleepy when we pray from a very narrow window. By this I mean that we are not praying from the mountain top, as in today’s Gospel. Rather, we are praying where our feet are very much planted on rather narrow perceptions of reality. These ideologies can easily cloud our vision of what God does in our life.
A good example of this is the crucial issue of belief in marriage and family life. We Catholics believe that Marriage is the wonderful bond of love sharing and life giving. Three words are used to describe this bond coming from our Scripture and Tradition – Permanence, Faithfulness and Openness to new life.
Yet we hear many people talk about this beautiful Catholic Tradition as being “unscientific… old fashioned.” or “The majority think otherwise.”
Are we limiting God’s vision by imposing on our Religion the narrow window of ideologies? Let us move to the mountain top and see reality from there. Let us be very vigilant lest when we pray, we are praying through a very narrow vision indeed.
Apart from two temptations that keep us spiritually sleepy, there are also many things that can be said about the graces that wake us up spiritually.
May I suggest simply two. There are so many others.
There is the grace of suffering in the suffering and death of Jesus. An example of this could be bereavement, which is so common in our communities but so often unstated. Here the bereaved often use expressions of longing, yearning, aching, these too are also important definitional words for deep prayer. Suffering, although extremely painful in any form, can be a way of us embracing the Suffering Christ more that we have ever thought or imagined. It wake us up to Christ presence with us in new and exciting ways.
Then there is the grace that comes from beauty.
Last week I spoke to a number of adults who are wanting to become Catholics this coming Easter. A number of them spoke about their attraction to the Catholic Church by meditating on the beauty of creation. People are far more alert today in regard to the caring for creation. They then asked the question, “Where does this beauty come from?” This can be a real opening grace to seeing the Lord more clearly. Then there is the beauty of love. The great attractive force of love, particularly in Married couples, can really help us to wake up, not only to each other, but to the source of all love, the unconditional love of Jesus in His Death and Resurrection.
I always remember the response I was given when I asked a couple from the country who had been married over 50 years, what was the secret of their great love. The answer was quite profound: “We had decided years ago that the “I” has become the “We” and the “Mine” has become the “Ours.”
So in this week coming up as we begin Lent, let us wake up to the presence of God and avoid being sleepy like Sts Peter, James and John.
I am reminded of the popular hymn that has us singing…”Awake from your slumber, arise from your sleep, a new day is dawning on all those who weep.” Let us particularly advance this awareness and alertness to Christ’s presence by the typical ways of Lenten prayer…prayer, fasting, alms giving.
On this Transfiguration Sunday may our “Gospill” be the words of St Peter when he says to Jesus, “It is wonderful for us to be here.” Let’s say this! Let’s believe this! Let’s live this!
HOMILY
ARCHBISHOP CHRISTOPHER PROWSE
CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP OF CANBERRA AND GOULBURN
ST CHRISTOPHER’S CATHEDRAL
23RD MARCH 2025
THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT (YEAR C)
AND MASS ONLINE
Readings: Exodus 3:1-8. 13-15 1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12 Luke 13:1-9
There is an important prayer lesson in today’s Readings. I suppose it comes down to the one line…Do we pray to God with or without an agenda? Is prayer ultimately trying to change God or to change me?
In the Gospel today we hear that “some people” come to Jesus. This expression “Some people” could mean any of us. There is no politics here. There is no accusation here. Just genuine people wanting to seek wisdom from Jesus. They are chattering about current affairs.
What are they chattering about?
They are discussing two current tragedies in their time and place. There is the slaughter of innocent people and the accidental death of people when a wall fell on them. They are chattering about the causes. They don’t say that an evil God has caused this. Being good Jews they understand what the psalmist said and what we have sung in today’ Responsorial Psalm, “The Lord is kind and merciful.” Well then what causes this evil? Is it evil people? Have they “had it coming to them?” Were they leading a life not pleasing to God? This is certainly what they are chattering about.
We too chatter like that. During the week I received a telephone call from a friend overseas. Unexpectedly he lost his job for no apparent reason. He is a very devout Catholic. He goes to Mass whenever he can, almost daily. Then why has God allowed this to happen!!?
It is important that we do come to God with all our needs and petitions and even our angry prayers. We pray prayers of petition and intercession in our Mass. It is never to be devalued. God wants to hear the “cries of His people.” But, if this is the only way we pray, then it is not deep Christian prayer. Intercessory prayer is one prayer but if we are not careful we can be praying to God with a particular agenda in mind. Jesus corrects their chatter in today’s Gospel. It even seems a bit harsh to us. He is asking them not to look simply at the changing of the world but the changing of the human heart. He keeps on telling them, “Unless you repent you will all perish as they did.” It couldn’t be a starker message! It reminds me of the expression, “Lord change the world and start with me.” Conversion, particularly in Lent, must start with us.
Jesus adds something to this. There is an urgency about it. He offers the parable of the fig tree. Apparently fig trees, in antiquity as with today, take three or four years of nurturing before any fruit, that is the figs, appear. The Gospel parable shows that this particular fig tree has been a longer period of time. People feel that there is something rotten with the tree and is should be removed. The owner says to nurture it and fertilise it one more year to give it some extra time to mature. He says, “Leave it one more year and give it more time…if not, then you cut it down.”
So, in our Lenten Season in this Jubilee Year of Pilgrims of Hope, there is an urgency for us to convert and believe in Jesus.
This brings us on to the wider question of what is Christian prayer. Certainly it is praying for our needs in intercessions as mentioned above. But we must be careful. Our prayer is not to change Jesus’ mind. In other words, don’t pray to change God. Pray so that we can change.
You might wish to recall how Jesus said in different parts of the Gospels that when we pray we are to “go to your room and close the door.” Jesus also tells us “don’t babble like the pagans.” There is the importance of silence and Jesus Himself seeks that silence throughout His whole life. Then of course there is the incredibly important wisdom of Jesus when he says, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and then everything else will be given to you.”
So, true Christian prayer is seeking first God’s will and then everything will be given to us.
Seeking “the Holy will of God” was an expression far more popular in years past. It is perhaps not said so much these days but it hasn’t gone out of fashion! Our submission to the Holy will of God is a perennial path way to Holiness. Therefore, when we approach prayer there is a certain reverence about it. In the First Reading when Moses encounters God it says, “Moses covered his face, afraid to look at God.” God is God. We are not God. When we enter the Church we make the sign of the Cross renewing our Baptism with Holy water. We are also asked to genuflect or to bow our heads to the presence of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament before and after we are seated. There is certain reverence here. Pity we don’t see it happening today as much as we ought.
St Julian of Norwich, the English 14th Century Mystic hermit has an almost jocular way of referring to our prayers seeking the will of God.
She says, “You ask for something. You don’t get it. God changes your will into his. He then gives you what you want.” What a wonderful prayer. It is cheeky! But holds a great truth.
Prayer is not magical. Prayer is transformative. It changes us.
This coming Tuesday we have the Liturgical Solemnity of the Annunciation. The time where Mary said, “What you want let it be done to me.” In other words…Let your will be done in me.
Let us pray like Mary as we are now deep in our Lenten Season and prepare ourselves for the Easter Mysteries of our faith.
So let our “Gospill” be: Not my will but yours be done.
HOMILY
ARCHBISHOP CHRISTOPHER PROWSE
CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP OF CANBERRA AND GOULBURN
ST CHRISTOPHER’S CATHEDRAL
30th MARCH 2025
FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT (YEAR C)
AND MASS ONLINE
Readings: Joshua 5:9-12 2 Cor 5:17-21 Luke 15:1-3. 11-32
Scripture scholars like to describe this most famous of Jesus’ parables as “The Loving father who had two sons.” It is also known as the parable of “The Prodigal son.” Here the emphasis is mainly on the son whereas the Scripture scholars tell us the emphasis should be on the loving father.
The word “Prodigal” is rather a technical English word. Would you agree? The word has many meanings but perhaps the meaning very often used is, “Reckless.” So we are talking about the reckless son. The reckless younger son of the loving father was possibly, using terminology of today, very narcissistic. He could only see things from his point of view. This selfishness made him demand that the father give him his inheritance, even before the father’s death. He then dehumanised himself by walking away from the father (in other words walking away from God) for a life of “wine, women and song!”
There is a beautiful expression in the Gospel which says that he did these things until “he came to his senses.” He then returned back to the father and asked for reinstatement.
The loving father too was rather reckless in another way. He was reckless and extravagant in his forgiveness of the son. It appears that his kindness and mercy had no limit. More about that in a moment.
Also, we could say that the eldest son was also reckless. He seemed to be trapped in his own world of judgment and self-righteousness. He observed all that was happening between the father and his younger brother and felt jealous and left out. We can see this in his very sad tirade directed towards his father. It is interesting that the Gospel parable doesn’t finish this part of the story. How did the elder brother and the father come to terms with their disagreements? That seems to be unfinished business.
Let us go back now to the “reckless” father’s merciful love for his younger son and elder son.
Perhaps the father’s contemporaries and fellow citizens might have said that he made three major “mistakes.”
The first, is that he allowed the younger son to take his inheritance and spend it. Secondly, he received his son back into his embrace without any apparent recriminations or punishment. Thirdly, as host of the party to welcome the younger son back, he left the party for a long period of time to engage with his elder son’s concerns.
On these three occasions, you can see the loving father going “outside” his normal home and routines to attend to these areas. He is trying to reconcile his two lost sons.
What lessons can we learn for our Lenten journey in this Laetare Sunday, as we journey towards the joy of Easter?
Perhaps firstly when we prayerfully consider this wonderful parable, we should learn that we should respond but not react to situations of concern that come up into our daily lives. There is a lovely expression in regard to responding to life’s challenges and that is, “it is a good idea to sleep on it!” You could hardly accuse the loving father of reacting. He responded over a long period of time and allowed the youngest son to play out his insecurities until “he came to his senses.” This takes time and it is only in that time that you can truly respond, not only to ourselves but to others.
Secondly, the parable shows that it is a good idea for us to meet others “on their own turf.” The father went outside looking for his sons or trying to reconcile himself with his sons. He did not wait for them to come to his home. He went out and met them on the road or out in the peripheries, as Pope Francis would say. This requires great trust and being prepared to be inconvenienced.
Thirdly, the loving father was always kind and merciful and forgiving. God is like the loving father. God is, in a sense “reckless” in his loving response to us in all our difficulties. It is such a counter cultural message in today’s judgemental and “finger wagging” world that we are in.
In this Jubilee Lent, as we journey towards Easter, let us learn these and other lessons which all require conversion of the heart.
So let our “Gospill” for the day be,“Jesus help me to love just like you.” The word to remember is “Reckless.” Jesus is recklessly in love with us. Amen!