St. Joseph's Catholic Church - Hobart Parish

St. Joseph's Catholic Church - Hobart Parish Hobart Catholic Parish is under the Pastoral Care of the Passionist Congregation.

10/06/2026

Daily Reflection, June 10, 2026

Readings:

1 Kings 18:20-39
Matthew 5:17-19
Reflection:

Our wonderful finance officer, Margaret Lokmer, shared a beautiful image of a mosaic at our recent staff event in Templestowe: that of a mother pelican who has pierced her breast to feed her babies in a time of drought or famine. An image taken up by Christianity which speaks to the self-sacrifice we find in our readings today.

Elijah’s faith is palpable when he challenges the prophets of Baal to a competition. He taunts them as they dance around their sacrifice, before digging a trench around his own offering, and saturating it in water. “Show them you are God!” he prays, a miracle to win Israel back, and the fire descends, the flames so intense, they lick the flooding water. There is one God, Elijah insists, whom they must love with all their hearts, minds, bodies and souls.

Elijah is prepared to lay down his life, to pierce his own breast to save. Had the fire not come, the irate worshippers surely would have struck him down. Instead, his faith brought all of Israel back to God. They had broken the first commandment, yet the fire descended, the Israelites repented and Elijah was redeemed.

Jesus insists he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it. Like Elijah, he loved God with all his heart, mind, body and soul. He offered himself in sacrifice to draw humanity into relationship with God. On the Cross, blood and water flowed from his pierced side, the lifeforce from which the Church was born and nourished, as the pelican chicks from their mother’s breast.

We continue to worship the Baals of our time: possessions, money, power and technology, yet God continues to call us home. God descends as Pentecostal flames, drawing us into full communion with the Trinity, and like Elijah, we are redeemed.

Angela Marquis works for the Passionists at St Joseph’s in Tasmania, and with WATAC (Women and the Australian Church), and is a founding member of the Australian Women Preach organising team.

04/06/2026

Passionist Priest, Fr Mike Tuyên CP, recently arrived in Hobart, beginning ministry at St Joseph’s Church with a deep sense of peace.

04/06/2026

Daily Reflection, June 4, 2026
Readings

2 Timothy 2:8-15
Mark 12:28-34
Reflection

Jesus teaches us the greatest commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength… and love your neighbour as yourself. This is a whole‑life invitation. To love God with your heart is to offer your desires, your wounds, your hopes. To love God with your mind is to give your attention, your choices, your thoughts. To love God with your strength is to let your actions, your work, and your body become part of your worship. Loving God means nothing is held back.

So how do we love? Love is not just emotion. Love is a doing word. Love is prayer. Love is praise. Love is gratitude. Love is the daily effort to choose goodness when it would be easier not to. Love is pouring ourselves into God and into the people God places in our lives.

And then Jesus adds, “Love your neighbour.” Not just the easy neighbour. Not just the agreeable neighbour. Every neighbour.

I invite you to think of someone in your life who is hard to love. Hold their name gently in your mind. Now remind yourself that you are called to see them as Jesus sees them: worthy, beautiful, enough, dignified, loved. Not because of what they do, but because of who God is.

Let that truth soften something in you. Replace frustration or judgment with the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self‑control. Remember that God loves that person deeply. God has prepared a place for them in the kingdom, where their spirit — not their flaws — will remain.

And here is the hope: when we love like this, even imperfectly, Jesus whispers to us what he once said to a scribe who understood the commandment: “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

Jo Mcdade – a Passionist.

03/06/2026

Daily Reflection, June 3, 2026

St Charles Lwanga and Companions
Readings:

2 Timothy 1:1-3,6-12
Mark 12:18-27
Reflection

Popular images of life after death and heaven itself are usually earthly and familiar scenes – pastures, clouds, choirs, even harps playing, etc. We choose ‘homely’ images to describe the life to come.

Yet, the life to come with God is a mystery, pure and simple. We understand basic truths – we will live on, our life will be eternal with and through Jesus’s death and resurrection – but detailed descriptions escape us. Faith is faith, and we live by faith, yet we are human enough to seek some recognisable dimensions of the life to come to help us.

However, today, we read of the Sadducees inventing a most fanciful set of circumstances around the image of marriage relationships in heaven, not to seek wisdom but rather to try to trap Jesus and justify their own perspective (namely, that there is no resurrection).

Like Jesus, we needn’t be too bothered by the imagined scenario.

Jesus doesn’t get distracted by the ridiculous scenario; he reiterates the fundamental truth – we will live with God in a new way. Simple as that. The fact that Jesus doesn’t describe eternal life in any way other than by saying we’ll be ‘like angels’ affirms his humanity and his total sharing of life with us. Like us, he lived in trust and hope.

We glimpse dimensions of life to come in his deep story; that is, if we want to see how we will be with God, let us simply look to his life, which perfectly reveals God’s love.

Jesus acted to make people feel at home with God. His kindness, sacrifices, compassion and care are all manifestations of this love. It is this love that will surround us, too. So, the promise of Jesus to us and his example can be summed up in the image he uses in other contexts, that of home, a place for us to be safe.

Hospitality and welcome were deep values in his culture, and it’s at the heart of the kingdom of heaven, too. He will welcome us into eternal life with the same care and hospitality.

Fr. Denis Travers C.P. is the provincial of the Passionists of Holy Spirit Province.

02/06/2026

Daily Reflection, June 2, 2026

Readings:

2 Peter 3:11-15,17-18
Mark 12: 13-17
Reflection

Peter, in the first reading today, urges us to live a holy life so that a new heaven and a new earth will unfold. Holiness, as Christians understand it, is not worked out by our willpower or by keeping the rules legalistically. It is firstly the work of the Holy Spirit living inside every believer. The Holy Spirit transforms the person from inside and aligns them to the character of God. This process of internal transformation is a lifelong journey.
“You should be living holy and saintly lives while you wait and long for the Day of God to come,…”
On the Day of God, righteousness will be at home. Justice, peace, love and joy are some of the signs of righteousness at home. They are simply the fruits of the Holy Spirit. This is the new creation what Jesus promised.
Through the anointing of the Holy Spirit we become a new creation. The process of this new creation begins with REPENTANCE. Jesus says, “Repent and believe in the good news. The kingdom of God is near” Mark 1:15. The process continues through RECONCILIATION. Because with bitterness and unforgiveness in our hearts new creation is impossible.
The key element of the process is FAITH IN JESUS. All those who receive him and believe in him are empowered to become the children of God. The process continues further with PRAYER, WORD OF GOD and the MAGISTERIUM teachings. Through these we build relationship with God and rekindle the Holy Spirit in us.
Also through SACRAMENTS and GOOD WORKS of mercy and compassion we are made new. Above all as a Passionist, walking through the path of SUFFERING and accompanying those who suffer we are transformed into a new creation. “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church”. Colossians 1: 24.
As the month of June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, may our hearts be transformed into a new creation.

Justin Durai Raj CP

St. Joseph’s Community,
Hobart, Tasmania.

01/06/2026

Daily Reflection, June 1, 2026

St Justin, Martyr
Readings

2 Peter 1:2-7
Mark 12:1–12
Reflection

At the entrance to the Temple in Jerusalem, there was a magnificent golden vine, a symbol of Israel as God’s beloved vineyard. It reminded people that they were planted, cared for, and cherished by God. Israel was not an accident. It was a people loved into being.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus stands near that symbol and tells a painful parable. The vineyard is loved, but the tenants forget that it is not theirs. They begin to act as owners, not stewards. They reject the servants, and finally they reject the son. It is a story about power, pride, and the danger of forgetting who we are before God.

Jesus knows what is coming. He speaks of the son being killed and thrown out of the vineyard. Yet rejection is not the end of the story. The rejected stone becomes the cornerstone. What human beings throw away, God uses as the beginning of something new.

The cornerstone is where two walls meet. In Christ, Jew and Gentile, insider and outsider, familiar and stranger, are brought together into one holy temple. This is both comforting and challenging. We often imagine that we are the only ones close to Christ, the only ones who truly belong. But from our little place in the wall, we cannot see the whole building.

This Gospel asks us to become humble tenants, not proud owners. The vineyard is God’s. The Church is God’s. Grace is God’s. We are simply invited to care for what has been entrusted to us, and to remember that Christ is larger than our boundaries, wider than our imagination, and stronger than every rejection.

The stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone. And on him, God is still building a home for all.

Giltus Mathias CP

28/05/2026

Daily Reflection, May 29, 2026
Readings:

1 Peter 4: 7-13
Mark 11: 11-26
Reflection:

In today’s Gospel we read that Jesus was hungry, so he went looking for fruit on what looked like a healthy fig tree. However, it had nothing to offer, and so he cursed it. The disciples, quite rightly, pointed out that in fact it wasn’t the season for figs.

Most varieties of figs are quite unique as they produce a small first crop early in the summer and then the bigger main crop in the autumn. Even though the growth and development of the fruit are at different times, the tree is nurturing them for its self-propagation, as within each fig are 100s of tiny flowers. As humans we have also discovered they are delicious and nutritious (as have the birds!).

Although the Gospel then moves to the infamous Temple scene of Jesus upturning the tables of the money changers and turning out those who were selling and buying things, there is a deep connection with the cursing of the unfruitful fig tree. The fig tree was symbolic of the Messianic Age and the Temple was the very centre of the Jewish faith. His deep anger at seeing what the Temple had become led him to rebuke what was taking place, especially towards the chief priests and the scribes who were as fruitless as the fig tree – all show and no substance. They should have been the very ones to herald in Jesus as the Messiah. Instead, they were determined to work against him.

But of course, Jesus had a deeper reason for looking for the fruit and rebuking the defilement of the Temple. His quest for food is a quest for our love to satisfy him; his search for figs behind the leaves is an intentional search to uncover what lies deep within each of us. His upturning of the tables was to work on getting rid of everything that is contrary to God.

What is my true identity? What is the special grace that I have been gifted that I use in the service of God and others (1 Peter 4: 10)? What fruit am I developing and how much have I got to offer up when it comes to the harvest? Am I like the Temple’s chief priests and scribes that talk the walk or am I a true disciple of Jesus that is trying to walk the talk?

“By their fruits you will know them” (Matt 7:16).

Victoria Raw is parishioner of Te Whetu O Te Moana, Star of the Sea Marlborough, NZ and is active in lay ministry.

28/05/2026

Daily Reflection, May 28, 2026

Readings:

1 Peter 2:2-5,9-12
Mark 10:46-52
Reflection:

Jesus Stopped. Jesus Called. Jesus Listened.

Jesus can feel the anxiety, the uncertainty, the embarrassment and the courage of the blind beggar who calls out aloud, ‘Son of David, Jesus, have pity on me.’

‘What can I do for you?’ Jesus asks. The blind beggar is not ignored or tossed aside with a coin donation. Jesus stops, calls and listens.

For the beggar it is as though time stands still. A pathway is made through the crowd. ‘That I may see again’ is the beggars reply.

Jesus looking into the blind beggar’s soul sees past hurts leading to anger, stress, hopes and visions of a future life destroyed.

Jesus sees the poverty, loneliness, cruelty, brutal conversation and degrading comments being made that break the beggar’s spirit and sense of self-worth.

The beggar is a broken person. who wants to be made whole again. Physical blindness enables an encounter with Jesus to occur where a new vision of life is given and received. A blind beggar no longer he follows Jesus along the road.

Broken people blinded by the harshness of the world cross our paths every day, but the busyness of our lives make it difficult for us to see them. We become blind like the people following Jesus who told the beggar to keep quiet.

Busyness is our excuse for doing nothing. There nothing wrong with living a full and productive life and taking on new challenges. We have real obligations and responsibilities and visions of how our life should be.

These blot out our commitment to others living in need.

Our society esteems busyness. This drives us to live frantic, chaotic lives. Mobile phones, computers, laptops keep us working when we should be resting, relaxing, meditating enjoying each other’s company and consolidation of significant relationships.

A walk in the park, a swim in the sea can be a real joy, but even a ‘smart watch’ can turn their advantages into a competition where we are stretched beyond our limits.

How can we see the blind person when we live in such pressured lives?

Peter Addicoat CP is a member of the Hobart Passionist Community.

27/05/2026

Daily Reflection, May 27, 2026

St Augustine
Readings:

1 Peter 1:18-25
Mark 10:32-45
Reflection:

In his History of the English Church and People, St Bede the Venerable records that Pope Gregory the Great inquired about some fair-haired children in the Roman slave market: he was told that they were ‘Angli’, ‘Angles’, and responded that if they were Christians, they could be ‘angeli’, angels. He commissioned the monk and prior Augustine to proclaim the Gospel to the pagan Anglo-Saxons, the remote ancestors of so many Anglo-Australians and New Zealanders. Augustine landed in England in 597 AD and soon founded the See of Canterbury, which remains to this day the primal see of the Anglican Communion, presided over for the first time by a woman, Archbishop Sarah Mullaly.

Augustine brought the precious and life-giving word of God to the Anglo-Saxons. Today’s first reading from the letter of Peter (1 Peter 1:18-25) reminds us that the ransom paid to bring our ancestors to the worship of the true God revealed in Jesus Christ was Christ’s own sacrifice. God raised Christ from the dead so that ‘you would have faith and hope in God’. Today’s Gospel (Mark 10:32-45) emphasises the meaning and implications of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for our human relationships. The sons of Zebedee had sought ‘the best seats’ in heaven: Jesus reminds his disciples that the life of a Christian must be about service, since ‘the Son of Man himself did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many’.

Robert Gascoigne is a parishioner at St Brigid’s, Marrickville. He is a theologian who taught for many years at the Australian Catholic University.

26/05/2026

Daily Reflection, May 26, 2026

St Philip Neri
Readings:

1 Peter 1:10-16
Mark 10:28-31
Reflection:

St Philip Neri is remembered as a saint of humour, warmth and deep humanity. There was a lightness about him that drew people in, not because life was easy, but because his heart was alive with God. His joy was not superficial cheerfulness; it was the fruit of a life surrendered to the Holy Spirit. For that reason, his feast speaks beautifully to the days after Pentecost, when the Church lingers over the gift of the Spirit poured out upon believers. The Holy Spirit does not simply strengthen us for mission. The Spirit also gives joy: a steady, grace-filled gladness rooted not in perfect circumstances but in the love of God. This is why the call to holiness in 1 Peter 1:10-16 is not severe or joyless. We are told to set our hope completely on Christ and to be holy in every aspect of our conduct, because holiness is the Spirit’s work in us. In today’s gospel, Jesus promises that those who leave much behind for his sake will receive far more, even though the path still includes persecutions. Christian joy, then, is not the absence of suffering but the grace to remain open to God within it. Kate Bowler, a theologian whose recent book is titled Joyful, Anyway, brings that truth into the present with honesty and tenderness. Diagnosed at 35 with Stage 4 colon cancer and now, ten years later, in remission, she writes with the hard-won wisdom of someone who knows that joy does not depend on everything getting better and cannot be manufactured by force of will. Instead, it is received, noticed and chosen anyway, even in a wounded world. St Philip Neri reminds us that this radiant joy is still possible: it is the gift of the Spirit, the strength of holy lives, and one of the clearest signs that God is near.

Alison Gore is a parishioner at St Paul of the Cross, Glen Osmond. She works in education and formation.

Address

65 Harrington Street
Hobart, TAS
7000

Opening Hours

Monday 10:15am - 4:15pm
Tuesday 8:30am - 3:30pm
Wednesday 8am - 3:30pm
Thursday 8:30am - 3:30pm
Friday 10am - 3pm

Telephone

+61362344866

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