St Francis Xavier Parish, Armadale

29/05/2026

24/05/2026

Homily for Pentecost, 2026

My father was notoriously difficult to buy gifts for. He didn’t like to be spoiled, and he led a fairly simple life in his latter years, with little need of extra material things. He did like to read books though, and one year my brother and I found a book we thought he would like – the autobiography of Neil Armstrong, who of course was the first man to step foot on the moon. Imagine our embarrassment, then, when we realised—after Dad had opened it—that we had given him that very same book as a gift a few years earlier… and he hadn’t even read it the first time!

Doubling up on a gift like that is probably a rarity (hopefully!), but it is more common for folks to receive gifts and for them to end up in a drawer or on a shelf—still unused—many years later. Think of how many items of clothing or books or DVDs or anything else that you’ve been given over the years and which, for one reason or another, you have never used. So it is one thing for us to be given a gift, and another thing all together for us to use that gift and to use it well.

Today’s feast of Pentecost is a celebration of gifts – indeed, the greatest gift of all, God himself. We commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the newly-formed Church, gathered together around Our Lady and the Apostles. We remember this gift, and in so doing we ourselves are drawn into this powerful movement of the Holy Spirit.

This extraordinary event was, for the broader Church, the deeper fulfilment of a promise which, for the Apostles, had already been fulfilled at the Resurrection – when Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”. Today, with the whole Church throughout the world, we pray the ancient prayer of the Church, asking that this gift will be renewed in our own time and in our own lives: “Come Holy Spirit, fill our hearts, and set us on fire with your love.”

In Saint Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he gives some advice as to how we can recognise the presence of the Holy Spirit within us and among us. He explains that the Holy Spirit’s coming into our lives will be manifested in the gifts of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 22-23). It goes without saying that these are all gifts worth having, and it is worth reflecting on just how much our lives would be changed if we allowed ourselves to receive these gifts more fully.

I’m sure many of us desire to be more patient, more gentle with those we love, and more in control of our lives. Many of us wish that there was a little more joy in our lives; that the goodness within us might come to the surface more often, that our love could be more generous and sincere. The gifts which the Holy Spirit brings are the very gifts which could make our lives richer and more loving and more deeply human.

And so, yes, it does make sense for us to pray, “Come Holy Spirit.” Indeed, this is what the Church invites us to do in a special way on today’s feast. But it is worth noting that this prayer has, in a very real sense, already been granted.

All of us who have been baptised are already bearers of the Spirit of God. When the water was poured over our heads, or when we were immersed, so too was the Spirit of God poured out upon us. When, at our Confirmation, the bishop (or the priest designated by him) made the sign of the cross on our foreheads with the sacred oil of Chrism, we were filled with the fullness of the Holy Spirit’s gifts, and were strengthened and renewed and commissioned to be signs and bearers of God’s love. And all of us who have ever received Holy Communion, as many of us will in this Mass, receive the true presence of the Lord into the deepest reality of our lives, which transforms us slowly but surely into living images of his own loving presence to the world.

All of this has already happened and continues to be a part of us. All of it is renewed and deepened each time we receive Holy Communion at Mass. All of these gifts of the Holy Spirit—peace and courage and understanding and love—these have already been given to us.

But we, like all those who are offered gifts, have a choice – namely, whether we decide to make use of them or not. The gifts of God’s Spirit have already been offered to us and they reside within us. But we still have the choice of ignoring them, or pushing them to one side, or failing to make the most of them. Indeed, it may be that we have done this for many years. But, like gifts that lies unused on a shelf or hidden away in a drawer, the presence and power of God’s Spirit continues to lie within us just waiting for us to remember him, to turn to him, and to allow him to be for us all that he wants to be.

- -

It is not coincidental that this feast of the Holy Spirit also marks the beginning of the Church, because the power of the gifts that the Holy Spirit brings is, quite frankly, too much for us to handle on our own. So our Lord calls us into a community of disciples – a communion of fellow believers who share our love of the Lord, who can support us when our own flame of faith becomes weak, and who can challenge us to allow the Holy Spirit’s gifts to bear real fruit in our lives.

As you look around this church this morning, you’ll probably see a group of people who, if you’re honest, you might not have chosen to gather together with on a Sunday morning if it were simply up to you. I remember being stuck by that fact when I was first returning to Mass in my early twenties after several years away. Here I was, kneeling alongside a very diverse group of people – people of differing ages, ethnic backgrounds, socio-economic backgrounds, political persuasions, tastes in music, etc.

And yet, even then, I could see that there was something very healthy about this. This union with people who, on the surface, were quite different from me, forced me to stretch beyond my own comfortable little bubble. If I was in union with the Lord, and they were in union with the Lord, I had to take them seriously, and they had to take me seriously.

Because, at its core, the Church’s communion is not a superficial “let’s all hold hands and just get along”. Such shallow attempts at community based on little more than shared geography are inevitably bound to fail.

No, the Church’s communion is based on something far deeper – namely, a “common union” with the Lord. It is based on a mutual love of the one who loves us more than we can imagine – a shared ingrafting into the life of Him who made all things out of nothing, and who sustains all things in every single moment.

And this shared union with the Lord is far more significant than any passing surface differences. Again, as St Paul said to the Galatians, in the Church “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28)

So we are not here this morning simply for our own sake, or to seek our own salvation alone. We are stewards of each other, called to support and compliment each other, as parts of a human body support and compliment each other. We are called to help the gifts of the Holy Spirit to manifest in the lives of each one of us.

And we as a Church are not here on earth simply for our own sake either. To quote from Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI:

“(The Church) cannot be like an association that, in difficult circumstances, is simply trying to keep its head above water. She has a task to perform for the world, for mankind… We are not fighting for our own survival; we know that we have been entrusted with a mission that lays upon us a responsibility for everyone. That is why the Church has to measure herself, and be measured by others, by the extent to which the presence of God, the knowledge of him, and the acceptance of his will are alive within her.” (Joseph Ratzinger, “Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith”)

So as we commemorate today the great sending of the Holy Spirit, and the beginnings of our Church, let us call again on Christ to send down his Spirit, so as to fill us anew with his grace, and to renew once more the face of the earth.

“Come Holy Spirit, fill our hearts, and set us on fire with your love.”

17/05/2026

Homily for the Ascension of the Lord, Year A

There is a powerful connection between today’s feast of the Ascension of our Lord into heaven, and the feast of the Annunciation – that world-changing moment when the Archangel Gabriel visited the Virgin Mary, and she said “yes” to the Father’s plan for her to be the mother of his divine Son. The moment our Lady said “yes”, the human and the divine became united in the person of the child Jesus in her womb.

Think about that! The human and the divine—God and man—are joined together for all eternity in the person of Jesus. The theological term for this concept is the Hypostatic Union, which describes how—from the Annunciation onwards—Christ Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, and these two natures are perfectly joined in him, never to be separated.

So at the Annunciation, humanity and divinity united in the person of Christ. And at the Ascension of our Lord into heaven, this divine human being—the person with the risen, glorified body of Jesus—became for all eternity a part of who the Triune God in heaven is. As we proclaim each week in the Creed, “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”

The Catechism explains that by “the Father’s right hand” we can understand the glory and honour of divinity, which the Son had before all ages, being one with the Father. But the Catechism also takes care to note that Christ is seated “bodily” at the Father’s right hand, having taken on human flesh at the Incarnation, and having had this flesh glorified in the Resurrection.

So it was not just the spirit of Jesus or the divine nature of Jesus that ascended to the Father. It was the risen Jesus, whole, alive, and entire, in his glorified body that ascended. This is the body which the disciples had touched, the body in which Jesus had eaten and drunk with them both before and after his Resurrection – a real, physical body, but now, risen from the dead, a gloriously restored body, bearing the marks of his passion. This is what/who ascended. This is what/who, now and forever, is a living, participating part of God.

What does this mean for us? Well for one, the Ascension, along with the Incarnation, tells us in unmistakable terms that it is a good thing to be a human being – indeed, it is a wonderful and important and holy thing to be a human being. It is such an important thing that God did it. Furthermore, the fullness of God now includes what it means to be a human being.

Again, think about that! The Triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—is perfectly one, and the Son is both fully human and fully divine. So our humanity—the very thing that we probably lament at times—is now and forever a definitive part of the Godhead – physically, as well as spiritually. God loves us so much, that—without loss of divinity—he let himself become human. We are forever a part of God’s DNA, so to speak. We have an “inside man” with God, quite literally, in the person of Christ.

And this, of course, was and is a pure gift. As Jesus said to Nicodemus in St John’s Gospel, “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven” (John 3:13). In other words, left to our own devices, we would never have had access to the “Father's house”, to life and happiness with God. Only Christ could open such access for us, which indeed was the whole point of his coming among us. And now, we are exhorted to live with joyful confidence that we too shall follow where he, our Head and shepherd, has gone before us.

The ascended Christ is for us a source of tremendous strength and encouragement. St Paul speaks of Christ as “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), who reveals to us the deepest truth about what it is to be human. He was like us in all things but sin, and was not unfamiliar with the aches and pains and trials and heartbreak and suffering that are so often part of our human experience. And yet, he also revealed the supreme dignity of our humanity, in that he freely chose to take it on himself.

Furthermore, in his Ascension, he calls us to follow his humanity into eternal life with the divinity. The Orthodox, rather daringly, speak of this as our call to “divinization”, in which—through Christ—we ourselves are called to become more like God.

We are called into union with Him whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and whose reign shall have no end. We are made for glory with God in heaven, the same glory in which our humanity currently abides in the person of Christ.

Let us rejoice in this fact, and let all of its implications wash over us. May we live with the dignity befitting such eternal glory, and not allow ourselves to sink into the sin and selfishness that is beneath such dignity. And may we treat others with the dignity befitting the eternal glory for which they have made, recognising Christ in them, even when his presence is seemingly well-disguised.

In the Ascension, our humanity was raised—quite literally—to the heights. We give thanks for this gift in this Mass, and we pray that, in the fullness of time, we—and all those whom we love—may also go where our Lord and guide has gone before. Amen.

10/05/2026

Homily for the 6th Sunday of Easter, Year A

There are many beautiful things about the ebb and flow of our liturgical year. The highlight, of course, is the intense immediacy of Holy Week and the Sacred Triduum, in which our Lord’s self-offering on our behalf is laid bare in all its heart-breaking power and majesty.

The season of Lent as a time of purification and preparation for this greatest of weeks probably makes sense to us as well, even if we sometimes struggle to be faithful to the assorted penances we set ourselves. And yet, the season of Eastertide—a bit like the season of Christmastide—probably gets a bit overlooked in the consciousness of many.

For starters, there is the idea of the Easter Octave as a single liturgical movement, emphasising that the power and significance of the Resurrection is so great that it cannot be constrained to a single day. And, just as Lent is a time of spiritual and physical fasting, Easter gives us firstly a full week—and then an entire season of fifty days—of compulsory feasting.

I would suggest that feasting and fasting are both things that many of us struggle with as ongoing physical disciplines. We’re hardwired into our daily routines, and it takes a lot of effort to force ourselves into a deliberately out-of-the-normal rhythm of life for any extended period.

But, as an internal disposition, I suspect that many of us find it easier to live in the headspace of Lent more than that of Easter, defaulting more to self-examination and reproach, rather than to gratitude and joy.

It is not an insignificant thing for the Church to command us to extended feasting—both physically and spiritually—and to linger in the gift of grace. We all have different tendencies, I suppose. For some, there is perhaps a disordered sense of humility, or even unworthiness, which leads to a discomfort with looking the resurrected Christ in the face and saying, “He is risen for me.”

For others, especially in our economics-driven culture, there is likely a nagging voice that says, “get back to work,” lest some unspecified disaster befall us. Indeed, I can affirm in myself the challenge of simply stopping for a two-and-a-half week break without regularly worrying that my to-do list is going to grow inordinately in the meantime.

At the root of all of this, I suspect, is a very human discomfort with the superabundance of God’s gratuitous love – how can we possibly spend fifty days feasting? How could anyone justify that? After all, there are the stresses of our day-to-day lives to worry about – our jobs, our studies, our to-do lists, financial stresses, family difficulties, etc.

On a broader level, some might argue that feasting and leisure and joy are simply inappropriate in the face of the drama and suffering of our times. And indeed, the digital age has amplified the age-old temptation to get overly caught up in the headlines, which—it must be said—almost always tend to be depressing. But we should remember that today’s headlines are not uniquely depressing, despite what the prognosticators of doom would have us believe. War, disease and famine have been constants for almost all of human history. Fearing that the sky is falling is as much a spiritual problem as it is a problem grounded in reality.

Those with eyes to see can always find signs of immense beauty in our world. More to the point, those with eyes to see can always taste the joy and hope of our faith, and most especially in the Good News of the Easter proclamation.

Asking how anyone could justify fifty days of feasting raises a key word with spiritual significance – namely, justification. A common temptation for many of us is self-justification, which can lead us—among other things—to allow ourselves only as much joy and leisure as we think we have earned, or which our circumstances warrant.

Of course, we must remember that this season of feasting is not justified by us, but by our Lord. And to be reluctant to join in is, really, to decline our invitation to join Christ. How then can one refuse? And if we do, what is any of this for?

The Church, in her wisdom, knows that we struggle with feasting as much as fasting, and so she commands us to make an effort to keep on feasting throughout Eastertide, just as she commanded us to make an effort to fast during Lent.

And so, six weeks into this festival season, let me say once more, happy Easter! Whatever is going on in your life, I exhort you to please strive to make space for joy – not only because we all need it, but also because it is our Christian duty.

Feast, and find your joy and peace not in the depression-inducing vortex of news headlines or social media, but in the secure knowledge that He who created you in love also redeemed you out of love, and longs to be in union with you for all eternity.

Let me finish with a brief poem from the spiritual writings of St Teresa of Avila that a friend gave me recently, in which our Lord speaks beautifully of this union at the heart of the Good News, and which we are invited into in today’s Eucharist:

It was by love that you were made,
Lovely and beautiful to be.
So, though it’s true that you have strayed,
Upon my heart you are portrayed—
Soul, seek yourself in me.

In you, dear Soul, I am confined.
You are my dwelling and my home.
And, even if one day I find
Closed-fast the portals of your mind,
I’ll beg for entrance when I come.

O Search for me not far away
For, if you would attain to me,
You only need my name to say
And I am there without delay.
Soul, seek yourself in me.

04/05/2026

This Wednesday evening. 🙏

22/04/2026

19/04/2026

Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Easter, Year A

In our Gospel we’ve heard this very powerful account of two disciples who left Jerusalem for Emmaus just after the Resurrection, completely oblivious to what the Lord was doing around them. And as they walk, they’re talking about what had happened – it’s in the past tense. The text says that they were downcast. You could even argue that they might have already been slipping into nostalgia – talking about what once was, what might have been, etc.

So they’re walking away, talking about what had happened, not realising what they’re walking away from. They think the dream is dead – and they’re probably heading back to their home town to pick up the pieces of their old life. Little do they know, the dream is well and truly alive. The problem is, it is so different from what they expected that they can’t see it. Indeed, when Jesus pulls up alongside them, they don’t recognise him – they can’t see what’s right in front of them. They still don’t get what Jesus’ mission and ministry are all about.

Jesus asks them what they were discussing as they walked along, and they tell him the story of all that’s happened—including the rumours of Resurrection—but it’s clear they don’t know what to believe. Then Jesus says something very significant – he upbraids them for being so slow to believe the full message of the prophets. In the original Greek it says he calls them “slow of heart” – essentially, he accuses them of being half-hearted. It’s a heart problem. And he says to them, “Do you not realise that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and die?” It was necessary.

Really? How could it be necessary? Why the cross? They couldn’t figure out the cross, just like us most of the time. It’s the thing we always leave out, because it’s so problematic. These poor disciples thought that Jesus’ suffering and death meant that is was all over – that he had lost. Little did they know that it was precisely through the cross that Jesus won his greatest triumph over sin and death.

So Jesus sets out to teach them – to help them see the significance of all that had just happened. And “starting with Moses and going through all the prophets, he explained to them the passages throughout the scriptures that were about himself.” Unfortunately we don’t have the seminar notes of what Jesus said to them on the way to Emmaus, but we do have the essence of it. And the essence of what Jesus said to them is this: “The Bible… is about me. The whole Bible—from beginning to end—is about me.”

Now, I had the privilege of studying Scripture in some depth for several years as part of my priestly formation, and I have to say that there can be a temptation to get so caught up in all the different ways of approaching the text that you can miss the wood for the trees. “Who wrote this section?” and “who was the audience for that passage?” and “what changes did the redactor make here?” and “how do you parse that verb?” and so on. Don’t get me wrong, all of that stuff is helpful, but it’s possible to get so caught up in it that we miss the most important thing—the very thing that Jesus points out to the disciples on the road—that at the end of the day it’s all about him, and that it leads to the cross.

Once you understand that it’s all about Jesus and that it leads to the cross, you can read it and get it. It’s like getting to the end of a mystery novel when everything is revealed, and then you can then go back and read it again and you notice that the clues were there all along. So Jesus essentially says to them, “the very thing that’s giving you so much trouble—the cross—is the key to the whole thing.” This is why the Church has always said that the whole Bible needs to be read in the light of Christ – because it’s all ultimately about him and the victory he would win on the cross. So Jesus walks the disciples through it all—through all of salvation history—and he helps them see how he is the key to understanding it all.

Then they get to Emmaus, the disciples invite him in, and at the breaking of the bread they recognise him. At the breaking of the bread it’s no longer past tense – it’s present tense. “I will be with you until the end of the age.” And guess how I will be with you until the end of the age? Not in some esoteric doctrine that can only be understood by people with PhDs… but in a little piece of bread. Jesus is with us—in the most remarkable way—in the Eucharist.

A friend of mine likes to imagine that one time when Jesus was off by himself praying to the Father, his prayer went something like this: “I’ve been on reconnaissance here, I’ve looked around, I’ve looked at what we have to work with, and the one thing I can tell you is that whatever we leave them to keep them going when I’m gone… it had better be idiot-proof!” It had better be idiot proof!

Well I’m happy to tell you that the Eucharist is idiot-proof. It’s the most amazing thing, and in order for us to get it, all we have to do is do it… and keep on doing it. I mean, theological reflection on the Eucharist certainly has its place, but it’s not our job to figure out the Eucharist. Jesus didn’t say, “Take this and figure it out.” He said, “Take this and eat it.” The Church has been carrying out this command of Jesus for two thousand years, and we get to do it again right here in a few minutes.

At the breaking of the bread a remarkable transformation happened in the two disciples. The text says that “their eyes were opened”, and they “set out that instant and returned to Jerusalem.” These two disciples who only shortly before were anxious to go inside because it was nearly evening, set out that instant to make the seven mile journey back to Jerusalem to share the Good News. Why? Because their hearts were “burning within them” upon their encounter with the risen Lord. Pray with all your heart for such a grace. Pray that you too might encounter the risen Lord in such a way that your heart burns within you, and that this fire propels you to set out into the “dark nights” of our world to share the Good News.

Because—it has to be said—so many people in our culture are like the disciples at the start of this passage. They’re drifting away—just as the disciples were walking away from Jerusalem—because it doesn’t make sense. And so if, like Jesus in this passage, we are able to explain to folks that it is the Person of Jesus Christ who definitively makes sense of human history—and indeed the entire human experience—if we are able to communicate something of that to people who are drifting away, and they are subsequently able to encounter him – I’ve seen it many times – they too can come hustling back to the Lord with hearts on fire.

So let us pray in this Mass that each of us—and our parish community as a whole—may be able to relive the experience of these disciples on the way to Emmaus, and in so doing to rediscover the grace of the transforming encounter with the Risen Lord.

15/04/2026

7pm tomorrow evening will be the Episcopal Ordination of our new Auxiliary Bishop, Nelson Po. The ordination will be live-streamed from 6.30pm at https://www.youtube.com/perthcatholic. Please pray for Bishop-elect Nelson!

Send a message to learn more

12/04/2026

Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Easter, Year A (Divine Mercy Sunday)

Today we reach the end of the Easter Octave—the “eighth day” that we hear spoken of in the Gospel—and we celebrate this conclusion of the greatest feast of our year with a focused meditation on the mercy of our Lord, whose unearned love for us is so great that he endured a brutal passion and death to win our freedom from sin and death.

William Shakespeare famously wrote about the quality of mercy in his play The Merchant of Venice, in which the character Portia notes that mercy is “an attribute of God himself,” which drops like a gentle rain from heaven, seasoning justice, and revealing genuine strength. She also speaks of mercy as being “twice blest,” blessing both the one who is merciful and the one who is shown mercy.

We certainly see the effect of the Lord’s mercy on the Apostles following the Resurrection. Indeed, the transformation that we see in their lives is one of my favourite things about the Easter season. These men who consistently missed the point while Jesus was alive, and then all ran for cover as he was being sent to his death, and finally hiding behind closed doors after the fact – these same men suddenly burst forth into a hostile world with overflowing joy and heretofore unseen courage.

I most especially love the transformation we see in Simon Peter, whose dramatic failure during our Lord’s passion might easily have sent him on a downward spiral similar to that of Judas. As we know, the risen Lord would give him three chances to say “I love you”, and in so doing wash away the shame of his threefold denial.

You could argue that being the recipient of such unearned mercy and forgiveness from the Lord was a prerequisite for taking on the responsibility that Peter was subsequently entrusted with. As the leader of the early Church—the first pope, as we would now describe him—it’s easy to see how such a role could have tempted him towards feelings of pride and arrogance. But how could Peter ever be arrogant, when everyone knew what he had done?

It’s almost as though God, in his providence, allowed Simon Peter to go through his harrowing roller-coaster of betrayal and forgiveness so that he could approach the leadership that was being asked of him with humility. The unearned mercy he received from the Lord would always be front and centre, giving concrete impetus to Jesus’ teaching that Christian leadership must always take the humble posture of one who serves.

The fact that God could still use the Apostles as such key instruments in his mission, despite their weakness—and perhaps even because of it—is a tremendous consolation for us when we find ourselves in the midst of struggles, or being all-too-aware of our sinfulness. God can use our trials and weakness just as he used theirs, as reminders of our ongoing need of him, and to help keep us from pride when things start going well.

In a meditation on St Peter’s redemption and subsequent role within the early Church, Pope Benedict XVI once described the Church as having been in a real sense “founded upon forgiveness”. Having experienced the Lord’s mercy so comprehensively, the Apostles are then sent out to share the tremendous Good News they have received – the mind-blowing revelation that God is more on our side than we are on our own side, that we need never be afraid, and that Christ’s death and Resurrection have won everlasting freedom from the powers of sin and death.

The Apostles would witness to this new and completely unearned freedom—which even prison and death could not diminish—and in so doing aided the great outpouring of the Spirit onto the world. Through the great cloud of witnesses, this Good News has been passed down through the ages, and two-thousand years later, you and I have had the privilege of being baptised into it. We probably struggle to fully believe it at times, or to live out its radical implications for our lives, and yet here we are, gathering in our Lord’s name and around his altar nonetheless.

This is a place where we are invited to come apart from the world to gather as a community of faith, to give the Lord the praise that is his due, to reunite with our Lord in the sacraments, to support each other as we strive to trust the Lord in all things, and then—like the Apostles—to be sent forth from here to witness to the Lord in our day-to-day lives, and to serve him in our neighbour.

This is a responsibility, but it is also a tremendous privilege, one which we have received as a pure gift. And we have received this gift from the Lord, of course, but we have also received it from those who have gone before us in faith, and upon whose shoulders we stand. Countless generations of faithful have toiled before us so that you and I might know the risen Lord, and be able to gather to worship him and to be nourished by his sacraments.

And we have a responsibility to pay it forward—to be good stewards of what has been passed onto us—both by witnessing to those around us who don’t yet have the blessing of knowing the freedom offered by Christ, and also to strive to pass this faith onto the generations who will come after us. We are called to do this first and foremost through the witness of Christian love in our lives. But there is also a need for us to offer concrete support for the material needs of our local Church.

Every Christmas we celebrate how the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and, ever since. the Lord’s Church has dwelt among the flesh and bone of our day-to-day world. We are part of the Lord’s Body here and now, in our homes and in this parish. And just as a human body has day-to-day needs of food, shelter, clothing, etc, so our parish has day-to-day needs of providing for our liturgies, maintaining buildings, paying wages and bills, and financially supporting our efforts at proclaiming the Gospel.

The Body needs physical, as well as spiritual, care. And so the Church invites us to reflect from time-to-time on how we might be called to assist our parish in her mission at this stage in our lives – certainly with our prayer, with our witness and service, if possible with our time volunteering in some capacity, and as appropriate with our finances as well.

This is not my parish, or even the Archbishop’s parish – it is the Lord’s parish, and we are each invited to take responsibility for ensuring that it can be a place where the Good News of the Lord’s mercy is proclaimed to all, and where all are invited to share in the new life that burst forth from the empty tomb.