A few days ago an elderly woman visited our presbytery asking to see a priest. She was exhausted and sad. The reason she put herself through all this trouble to travel some distance, changing trams twice on a hot day, was the suffering she was going through after the conviction of Cardinal George Pell was made public. In her fragility caused by her age she became even more fragile because of the hurt, confusion and doubt she was experiencing.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers in faith! The image of that fragile fellow believer of ours has stayed with me as a prophetic image of our Church today. Our Archbishop Peter Andrew Comensoli, in his letter to all of us, put it in this way: ‘Your heart is hurting; and your home of faith is hurting.’ Home of faith that’s our Church community. The words of our Archbishop and the image of that elderly woman I find as something I can recall as I pray and reflect on the events which have been unfolding. As we are hurting our Archbishop has invited us ‘to never forget those who walk with this pain every day, whose lives remain devastated by the impact of sexual abuse inflicted on them in their vulnerability.’ Suffering can damage people. We know it well. That’s why I turn to Our Blessed Mother who stood at the foot of the cross and looked at the suffering body of her Son Jesus Christ. She didn’t have power to change it. She didn’t have a means to change it. But she wasn’t hopeless. She loved that suffering body. She held fast to her faith that God was to bring salvation out of that. We call the Church the Body of Christ. Today this Body is severely hurt. It is suffering. At the heart of that suffering Body are those who were abused by the people who were called to show them the face of Christ. In this suffering Body we also see other holy People of God who are hurting because they love the Church, because they love Jesus Christ. You haven’t chosen this situation. You may be asking now how to deal with this situation. Let me tell you what I will be doing. The holy season of Lent is just a few days away. In our churches we will walk the Stations of the Cross. I will make it my Lenten practice to use so called ‘Mary’s Stations of the Cross.’ The reflections help us to look at Jesus’ way to Golgotha through the eyes of Our Blessed Mother. Some years ago I participated in such Stations of the Cross. The reflections were read by a woman who lost her son to a suicide. She carried a lot of suffering, as she led us through the prayers it all came back to her again, this time however she went through her suffering with the suffering Virgin Mary. I will walk this Lent with Mary praying to draw grace to look at the suffering Body of Christ, which are the suffering people of God, the way she looked at the suffering Body of Christ walking through the streets of Jerusalem to the Calvary.
            My Dear Fellow Believers! In the Gospel Jesus said to his disciples to ‘take a plank out of their own eyes.’ For a long time, far too long, such a blank was the blindness of some of our Church people to the tragedy of sexual abuse. This stigma will not disappear any time soon. However as I look with Mary at Jesus I see him carrying a horizontal beam. He also said to us: ‘Take up your cross and follow me.’ Thank God we are not blind to the suffering of the survivors of sexual abuse any more. Today at the verge of Lent maybe the Lord Jesus is pointing out to us the plank we have taken out of our eyes and invites us to take it up with humility and responsibility. I hope and I pray that it can bring healing and new life to each one of us hurting at the moment and to our hurting home of faith.

Abraham Lincoln, who was the sixteenth President of US and who led the country through its civil war and the most severe internal national crisis, once said: ‘The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend.’ In Lincoln’s words we can hear an echo of today’s preaching of Our Blessed Lord. We continue receiving what is known in the Gospel of Luke as the Sermon on the Plain. Last Sunday Jesus presented to us two ways of living: the way of life and the way of death. Today we hear what the way of life looks like. Let’s listen to Jesus’ life giving words again: ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who treat you badly.’
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! We may think now that what Jesus invites us to do is opposite to common sense. How can we open wide our heart to someone who not only doesn’t appreciate it but who hurts us as well? To answer this question let me fast forward to the day when we find Jesus on the cross. Not many people were left there but St Luke gives us some final words of the dying Saviour of the World. What did Jesus say on the cross that St Luke wants us to treasure and to ponder? In his terrible agony Jesus loved his enemies, those who condemned him to death and those who crucified him. How do we know that? Despite his pain, when every cell of his body screamed with pain, Jesus made an effort to say loudly some prayer. It was not a prayer for pain relief but for his enemies: ‘Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing.’ He even managed to find an excuse for what they did to him!
            Our common sense resists such thing. However both Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Plain about loving enemies and his own example of doing it are the grace to transform our rebellious mentality from within of our anger and hatred.
As Jesus went into the ‘belly of the beast,’ which was exemplified by those who hated him and wanted to do away with him, as he goes into the darkness of our heart and mind where we harbor resentment and a sense of vengeance. Why does he go there? To be crucified again? He will be crucified again by us if we cling to our conviction that it is our fundamental right to be angry at some people and refuse them our forgiveness. St Paul in the Letter to the Ephesians put it this way: ‘Even if you are angry you must not sin.’ How can we avoid sinning when we get angry with someone? In the same letter St Paul gives us some good and divine advice: ‘never let the sun set on your anger.’ It means: you may find yourself angry, mad etc. but make it your way of dealing with it that before the sunset you will weed out your anger. Let Jesus, the Rising Sun; dispel the darkness of your hatred and anger.
Jesus doesn’t promise that your love for enemies will be reciprocated. What Jesus promises is that you will be a true missionary going on a mission to your own heart in order to ‘model it on the heavenly man’ - Christ himself. What a mission it is! What a fruit it can bear!
St Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians wrote: ‘The first man Adam, as scripture says, became living soul; but the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit.’ By the last Adam St Paul meant Jesus Christ.
My Dear fellow strugglers in faith! When the Sacred Heart of Jesus was wide open on the cross, when blood and water poured out, there was the spirit of forgiveness released for us so that we can ‘be compassionate as our Father is compassionate.’ This is the Gospel. This is the Good News for us. Take this Gospel, this Good News, into the darkness of your own heart and mind. Let it work from within. There are still a few hours before the sunset. Use them well to get rid of your anger. For Jesus’s sake do it. 

​At the end of the forty-year-journey through the desert the aged Moses spoke to the people who were about to enter the Promised Land: ‘I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing or curse, therefore choose life.’ At the crucial moment of their history, Moses calls his people to choose, to make a decision. It is not about choosing between going to the Promised Land and returning to Egypt. It is about the choice to live a godly life in the Promised Land. Could it be said that the Land was to bring death and curse upon the people settling into it? Of course not, however people could live in the Holy Land as pagans and that’s death and curse. The Land itself wouldn’t make anyone automatically true worshipers.
As they were sighting the destination of their long desert wandering Moses, as God’s prophet, reminded the people that it was not the end of their journey with God and to God. They would need to live not only off the Land God was giving them but also off the Holy Word which would be coming to them. The very first verses of the beautiful Book of Psalms capture that: ‘Happy indeed is the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked; nor lingers in the way of sinners nor sits in the company of scorners but whose delight is the law of the Lord and who ponders his Law day and night.’
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! This passage of Scriptures applies to us too. Our Promised Land is called the Church. As we read the chapter six of St Luke’s Gospel we find Jesus ‘at a piece of level ground.’ That’s why what he said there is called the Sermon on the Plain. St Luke symbolically says that this is the fulfillment of what John the Baptist preached: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth.’ St Luke, as he contemplates Jesus preaching on the plain, marvels at how the prophesy of the Baptist is unfolding. However it is not simply the geography that inspires the Author of the Gospel. From the landscape he moves his focus to ‘a large gathering of Jesus’ disciples with a great crowd of people’ and at the center of that gathering there is Jesus and the Twelve Apostles chosen just hours before.
The Plain where Jesus preached his sermon became the new Promised Land because there was Jesus, the Twelve, the disciples and a crowd of people. This new Promised Land is defined not by seas, deserts, rivers or mountains; it is defined by the people who are Jesus’ disciples.
This Promised Land, the Church, the gathering of Jesus’ Apostles and disciples, is where we are. We’ve got our Baptismal certificates, Confirmation certificates, Marriage certificates etc. We are in the Promised Land but it is not the end of our journey with God and to God. Jesus, like Moses, said to his listeners gathered on the plain about making a choice between the way of blessing and life and the way of cursing and death.
In order to appreciate Jesus’ sermon on the Plain let me tell you a story. It is about a woman and a man falling in love with each other. They were still young and studying. They didn’t have much money. But they loved each other. When they got married they experienced poverty, even they were hungry sometimes. There were also tears when they felt abandoned by their friends and relations. But at the deep level they were happy. They didn’t regret the hardships because they had each other, because they shared life.
When Jesus ‘fixed his eyes on his disciples’ he put together words the most people would never do: poor and happy, hungry and happy, weeping and happy, castigated and happy. But if we live in the Church as disciples for whom their relationship with Jesus is the most important thing in life we are like that young couple I mentioned before. We may suffer a lot but we have our Lord in our life and what a life it is.
St Catherine of Siena once said: ‘It is heaven all the way to heaven.’ Could we be surprised at that if Jesus is the way, the truth and the life?
My Dear fellow believers! Choose the Way. Choose the Truth. Choose the Life. Then it will be for you heaven all the way to heaven.

​There was a girl whose name was Chiara. She was bright, cheerful and popular. She enjoyed swimming, skiing and being with her friends. When she went to high school there was a misunderstanding with a teacher. Chiara had to repeat the first year at high school. She was disappointed. This is what she revealed to her friend about that disappointment: ‘I wasn’t able to give this suffering to Jesus right away. It took a little time to recover.’
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! In the Gospel for this Sunday we meet a disappointed man – Peter. Let us listen again to how he revealed his disappointment: ‘We have worked hard all night long and caught nothing.’ Peter wasn’t able to give his suffering, his disappointment to Jesus right away either. As a mature man, who was supposed to support his family, he must have felt bad, kind of a failure.
The prophet Isaiah had this awesome vision when he ‘saw the Lord of Hosts seated on high throne and above whom stood seraphs crying ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts. His glory fills the whole earth.’’ At the same time he looked into his own conscience and what he saw was all but holy, in fact he declared with disappointment: ‘What a wretched state I am in. I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips.’ He was disappointed with himself of not being worthy to be in the presence of All Holy God. He was disappointed that he didn’t live up to the standards to which God was calling his people.
Different kinds of disappointments we have seen in these three people. Could you add your own disappointment to the story?  Do think about that. Identify and name your disappointment. Why? Because your disappointment can become your appointment with God. Chiara met Jesus in her study disappointment. Peter met Jesus in his work disappointment. Isaiah met All Holy God in his personality disappointment. If you, my fellow believers, are disappointed with something in your life open wide your eyes and look around. The Lord Jesus is there. He is not going to join you at feeling sorry for yourself though. Instead at this unique appointment in your disappointment he says to you: ‘You did not choose me, no, I chose you and I commissioned you to go out and bear fruit, fruit that will last.’
This is our discovery that God is at work, that God transforms the world through our need for him. He is not waiting for us showing off to him our awards and achievements but he wants to award us with his compassion. He wants us to display before people that we live and move in him. He wants us to fascinate others with our content with living the life as his followers and even more… as his children.
I am fascinated with the life of Isaiah and Peter. I am also fascinated with the life of that girl I mentioned at the beginning, Chiara Badano. Looking at them you can see the radiance of God shining in our world which seems to be a dark place so often. Chiara was born in 1971. She is our contemporary. She died at the age of 19 of a rare bone cancer in 1990. When two years earlier she was told the grim prognosis she was disappointed and she struggled to accept it. She asked her mother: ‘Mum, is it fair to die at 17 years of age?’ However eventually she said: ‘If this is what you want, Jesus, so do I.’ When exhausted with illness she revealed: ‘I have nothing left, but still have my heart, and with that I can always love.’ Our Catholic Church has recognized how precious disappointment it was as it was indeed an appointment with God. Chiara was beatified, she was declared Blessed in 2010, only 20 years after her premature death. Was it a premature death? By 19 she reached the maturity of Jesus’ follower, of a child of God who lived with content her dependence on God, her need for God.
Blessed Chiara, pray for us.

​A woman was attending a silent retreat. After a few days, during a brief sharing session, which was the only time when the attendees were allowed to speak, she said: ‘I cannot wait to go home.’ Some people thought that she was getting sick and tired of silence but she went on to say: ‘I cannot wait to go home and to tell my family and friends about the peace, solace and joy I have been living during this retreat.’
My dear Sisters and Brothers! What that woman experienced was profoundly Christian. I mean not only the peace, solace and joy she found but predominantly the desire to share it with others. Her religious experience reflects that of prophet Jeremiah who heard from God: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you came to birth I consecrated you.’ How many of us long to hear it from God, to have deep down in our soul the conviction that God speaks these words to us as well. God does speak these words to us but to hear them we need to be open to hear them in their entirety: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you came to birth I consecrated you. I have appointed you as a prophet to the nations.’
Jewish people had imbedded in their religiosity that God wouldn’t cease to send them prophets. When Jesus came he inaugurated a new era of prophets. The anointing to be prophets we, Christians, receive at our Baptism. After the water of Baptism was poured upon you the priest took the oil of Sacred Chrism and while anointing your head he said: ‘God now anoints you with the Chrism of Salvation. As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet and King, so you may always live as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.’ It doesn’t mean that we can predict future. It is not the role of a prophet. A prophet is the one who lives closely to God, reflects on God’s holy words, observes attentively what is happening in the community in which she or he lives and offers it a prophetic insight. This is how Jesus preached in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth. The Gospel for this Sunday reveals to us that people ‘were astonished by the gracious words that came from his lips.’ It wasn’t sweet talking but prophetic talking, the talking which explains the reality in light of God’s word.
Our society doesn’t appear resembling that of the Jewish community at the time of Jesus which longed for prophets. Our society doesn’t seem to be longing for prophets, at least prophets of God. The situation which happened prior to the Second Persian Gulf War captures something of our society. Saint Pope John Paul II already during the First Persian Gulf War in 1991 cried out: ‘War never again! No, never again war, because it destroys the lives of innocent people, throws into upheaval the lives of those who do the killing, and always leaves behind a trail of hatred and resentment that make it all the more difficult to resolve the very problems that provoke the conflict, the war.’ In 2003 when President Bush was preparing to launch the Second Persian Gulf War the Pope said: ‘This is not an accord with God’s ways.’ He sent a cardinal with his personal letter to the President. The President received the cardinal but never opened the letter. In what looked like his failure St John Paul II resembled our Blessed Lord who faced rejection in his home town even if at the beginning people found his words gracious.
When we take our religious experience out of our comfortable private room we may meet ridicule or rejection. It may hurt us deeply as faith in God is very personal, as it makes us who we are. This is the cross we are called to take up as we follow the Lord Jesus. We are called to be prophets of the Twenty-first century, the new prophets who believe not only for our own good but for the good of others and thus for God’s glory.

​There was a Belgian girl whose name was Nancy. She spoke of her childhood in this way: ‘I was that girl nobody wanted. While my brothers were celebrated, I got a storage room above the garage as a bedroom. My mother kept telling me: If only you had been a boy.’ It impacted Nancy badly. When as an adult she was looking for help she was offered a sex change. She did it and became Nathan. After a series of therapies and surgeries Nancy who was now Nathan realized that the new person she became didn’t meet her dreams. ‘I was disgusted with myself. I didn’t want to be a monster.’ This time the help given was legal euthanasia on the grounds of the ‘unbearable psychological suffering.’ The person was 44 at the time of death.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Could you sense any good news given to Nancy at any stage of her life? I don’t. From her childhood to her premature death she was entangled in the spiral of evil. Her tragic life and death are however a diagnosis of what is happening in our society where people anoint themselves as messiahs, saviors of the world. It is a recurring drama from the Book of Genesis when Satan said to the first people: ‘You will be like god.’ In the first centuries of Christianity when our brothers and sisters in faith were committing themselves to the Lord Jesus, when they strived to live according to the Gospel, they were surrounded by images and statues of various gods and goddesses. They had to navigate in the society where there were hundreds and thousands of gods. We don’t see statues of pagan gods at every street or intersection. However we are surrounded by people who have usurped the role of God. They don’t expect us to burn incense in front of them or to light candles in their honour but they do expect that we welcome their new dogmas about the society, life and death, about the nature of human being, with obedience which can be compared to a religious obedience to God. In this situation we hear from Jesus news which is good. It is Good News for our temporal life and for our eternal life: ‘The spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and to the blind new sight, to set the downtrodden free, to proclaim the Lord’s year of favour.’ That’s spirit, that anointing to be the Saviour of the world, has been given to Jesus Christ as our Blessed Lord announced: ‘This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen.’ Good News is not a theory or some clever advice. Good News is Jesus Christ himself.
Two thousand years ago he came to the synagogue in Nazareth to offer people the life which flows from God. This Sunday we listen to the beginning of the Gospel of Luke. Until December the Sunday Gospel readings will be primary from Luke.  Among some of the most loved passages there is the parable we call the parable of the prodigal son. However when you reflect on the parable deeply the question appears: ‘Who was more prodigal? The son who wasted lots of money or the father who didn’t hesitate to ‘waste’ his love?
St Luke dedicated the Gospel to Theophilus which translates as ‘friend of God.’ That’s how I call you who are gathered here in this church: Friends of God. You may think that it is only a nice phrase I use. It is not just a phrase but an invitation to grow in your conviction that you are a friend of God. Take this opportunity as you listen to the Gospel of Luke this year to allow the Good News, to allow Jesus to convince you that you are a friend of God. I encourage you to take the parish bulletin home every week and to read prayerfully the Gospel reading as your daily prayer. Let is sink deeply into your soul.
One of the reasons I love coming to your outback parish is that here, in the middle of the desert, the words of my favourite Psalm 62 come so alive: ‘O God, you are my God, for you I long, for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water.’ This longing can be only satisfied by God like the longing of that person I spoke at the beginning. Nancy needed Good News; she needed love of Christ to heal her not to become Nathan. This is our mission, to help people to discover that they are friends of God, that they are his sons and daughters, that when it comes to loving - God, whom Jesus Christ has revealed, is truly prodigal. By praying and meditating the Sunday Gospels you will be soaked with the Spirit like the earth gets soaked when a good rain comes.

​In 2013 a new word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary: FOMO. It is an acronym for the Fear of Missing Out. It is the term for a psychological syndrome which is defined ‘as a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent.’ The social media which allow people to follow or somehow rather participate in the life of other people contribute to FOMO. Some people, especially young people, get caught in the constant checking of what their friends or colleagues are doing as they fear that they are missing out on those experiences that they miss out on living their own life.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! As we listen to the Gospel about the wedding at Cana we get a sense that Jesus was comfortable there, don’t we? He enjoyed the time of the joyful celebration. When you flick back one page of the Scriptures you will find Jesus in a different environment. Before he came to Cana he was with John the Baptist in the desert. From other Gospels we also learn that after being baptized by John Jesus spent forty days in the desert on his own where he was tempted by the devil. He embraced that too. Jesus shows us the life which is the life of communion with God. Such a communion led him to embracing the situations he was in with full attention and commitment. Jesus was not seeking new and exciting experiences because his relationship with his Father and the Holy Spirit was an ever new and exciting reality he was living.
Some people apply FOMO to the Christianity. They fear that by embracing faith, that by following Jesus, they will miss out all the excitements of life. What they face is the choice they are compelled to make. As Jesus himself said: ‘No one can serve two masters.’ It was the choice which St Paul revealed in his Letter to the Philippians: ‘Because of the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord; I count everything else as loss.’
The wedding setting of today’s Gospel is an example of such a choice. To enter the marriage covenant one needs to choose to leave behind lots of other experiences. This choice however opens to something truly fulfilling and life-giving.
A married man who was working in the office where all the other employees were single started feeling sorry for himself that after work his colleagues were going to pub while he had to go to his wife and children. He began thinking how much he was missing out. Then one day his coworker said to him: ‘I wish that soon I can be in your situation. That I can have a home, that I can have a wife and children I can go to after work.’ This conversation realized the married man that what he had at home was far more precious than what he thought he was missing out.
In our Second Reading taken from the First Letter to the Corinthians St Paul wrote: ‘There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit.’ May this same Spirit of God lead us to see our Christian faith, our following of Jesus as something exceeding all other experiences we might have.

​​‘The skies are brass and the plains are bare,
Death and ruin are everywhere;
And all that is left of the last year’s flood
Is a sickly stream on the grey-black mud;
The salt-springs bubble and the quagmires quiver,
And this is the dirge of the Darling River.’
            We can relate to these words of Henry Lawson written in 1891, can’t we? Last week when I was doing Mass at Menindee I saw the green toxic liquid filling the Darling River, which has caused devastation to the fish. The extent of the disaster has triggered some fresh discussions and analyses. Among the voices contributing to the discussion on the condition and the future of the Darling River, which is the third largest river in Australia, there is the voice of the Barkindji people who have lived on the Darling for millennia. They have called the Darling Barka which in their language means simply River. The anthropologists call them the ‘Darling River folk’ while they call themselves simply ‘people of the river.’ During a community march in Wilcannia to draw attention to the situation the aboriginal children sang: ‘Oh, the Darling River. We are the people of the river. The Barkindji people of the river. The river is our home.’ One of the elders said: ‘We don’t want the government’s billions of dollars poured into our community. We want our water flowing because that gives people hope and it brings people together.’
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! I hope and pray that this voice is not ignored. It is a different insight. It is not based on economy or politics but it reveals the profound connection of the Barkindji people to the Darling. The river makes them who they are. However I hope and pray also that we, Catholics, can listen to this insight as a prophetic message for us. This Sunday, which concludes the much loved Christmastide, the Church takes us to the Jordan River where Christ allowed John the Baptist to immerse him. His Baptism was not to clean him of his sins. His Baptism was like the rains in Queensland which send the water down the Darling River.
St Ignatius of Antioch, who was a disciple of St John the Apostle, meditating on Jesus’ Baptism wrote: ‘For our God, Jesus Christ was conceived in the womb of Mary by the Holy Spirit. He was born and baptized, that by His passion He might purify the water.’ That’s why the Eastern Church Fathers saw the water of our baptism as a miniature of the Jordan.
St Paul wrote in the Letter to Titus that out of ‘his own compassion God saved us, by means of the cleansing water of rebirth and by renewing us with the Holy Spirit which he has so generously poured over us through Jesus Christ our Saviour.’ We who have been baptised are the people of the Baptism River.
St Paulinus of Nola asked for the following words to be written on the baptismal font in his cathedral:  ‘From this font, which gives life to souls in need of salvation, flows a living river of divine light. The Holy Spirit comes down from heaven upon this river and joins the sacred waters with the heavenly source; the stream teems with God and from the eternal seed gives birth to holy offspring by its fruitful waters.’
My Dear Fellow believers! The Baptism River is not on the maps like the Darling River, though even the Darling may soon be erased from the maps as it becomes a story of the past. The Baptism River can be detected by the presence of Christian communities. It is determined not by geography but by the power of the Risen Lord. If there is a Christian community striving to live by the Gospel it means that they live on the banks of the Baptism River. Like you here. Even if the maps don’t show any river flowing through your town remember that there is the River here made of the sacraments we receive, the Word of God we listen to, acts of charity, forgiveness and unity, all these are filled with the power of our God.
We can apply to ourselves the words of the Barkindji people: ‘The Baptism River is our home…  It gives people hope and it brings people together.’ This River doesn’t dry up; only people can cease drawing from it.

            Did you ever play the game of hide and seek when you were children? Some players are so good at hiding that it is impossible to find them. Every now and then there is also someone who simply wants to be found. A number of times I have heard that our God plays a hide and seek game with us. This Sunday, as we observe the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, we can say that God is like those friends from our childhood who wanted to be found when we played a hide and seek game with them. If God wanted to hide himself from us he wouldn’t have sent the angels with trumpets to the shepherds. If God wanted to hide himself from us he wouldn’t have sent a star to lead the Wise Men. If God wanted to hide himself from us he wouldn’t have left information about his whereabouts in the prophetic writings quoted by the advisors of King Herod: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, you are by no means least among the leaders of Judah, for out of you will come a leader who will shepherd my people Israel.’
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Originally Epiphany meant ‘manifestation’ or ‘revelation’ of Divine and that was the spirit of the celebration of Jesus’ Nativity by the first Christians. They expressed their joy at Jesus being born and at being revealed to the world. How powerfully the gifts of the Wise Men capture this. By the way a few weeks ago I saw in a magazine a cartoon depicting the Wise Men. One of them was saying: ‘I decided to be safe. That’s why I’ve got him gift cards.’ I think that the cartoon speaks more about our modern attitude ‘get-me-what-I-want’ or ‘give-me-the-money-I-could-get-what-I-want’ then the story of the Wise Men. The gifts the Wise Men brought to the newborn Jesus indicated the transformation which had occurred in them. Church Fathers, like St Irenaeus who was born in the Second Century, taught that the Wise Men offered gold because they professed Jesus as King. They offered frankincense because they professed Jesus as God. They offered myrrh because they professed Jesus as Priest who was to sacrifice himself for people’s salvation. Myrrh was perfume used to anoint the bodies of the deceased. Think of Mary Magdalen running to Jesus’ tomb on Easter Sunday with perfumes.
            We may focus on those gifts and their value that we may overlook the conversion which had happened in the Wise Men. Before they found the Baby Jesus in Bethlehem they had found him as their King, God and Priest. A few centuries earlier God spoke through the Prophet Jeremiah: ‘You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’ It is not God who hides himself from us. It is our heart that makes God obscure to us. You may have seen this commercial of the Free TV. A man thinks loudly which button to press on his remote-control to get the Free TV. Then his dog starts bringing all sorts of green things but the man doesn’t make a connection. King Herod and his people were given all clues needed to find Jesus but because their hearts were selfish and ambitious they failed to find him as their Lord and Savior. It reminds us of Adam and Eve after they sinned. What did they do next? They hid themselves from God.
‘You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’ My Dear fellow believers! I wish I knew the conversations the Wise Men had on the way to Bethlehem. Why? Because I see in those men what the Church should be like. The Church is a community of disciples of Jesus, where we support each other to find the Lord Jesus in our daily life, as our King, God and Priest. St Matthew didn’t however give us details of their conversations. What he has given us though is this image of the Wise Men travelling together to Jesus. Maybe that was the secret that they had found the Lord. On my own it is easy to get confused, lost, discouraged or fascinated by other things. But if I have a fellow believer I can trust there is a hope that if I miss the Lord my sister or brother in faith will point him out to me.
Happy Epiphany.

            The first day of the New Year the Church dedicates to our Blessed Mother. We, the disciples of Jesus have many reasons to be grateful to Mary. We can recall the many graces she has obtained for us. We appreciate her constant intercession for us. There are shrines where the memory of the miracles performed through the intercession of Mary is still vivid, in fact the miracles continue.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! As we begin the New Year the Gospel for this Mass invites us back to Bethlehem. St Luke, who eight days ago, at the Christmas Midnight Mass told us about the birth of Christ and how the angles of God announced it to the shepherds, shows us today how ‘the shepherds hurried away to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph and the Baby lying in the manger.’ With the shepherds we discover that the reason for us to be most grateful to Mary is that she has given us Jesus. We ask her for many things. We believe that for us asking her for various things is as natural as for children asking their mother. Our confidence is based on the role she played in Jesus coming into our world and into our lives. If she has given us her son Jesus would she refuse interceding before the throne of God to obtain the good things we seek? That’s why the first day of the year for us Catholics is called the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. This title is the most beautiful and the most important of all titles ever given to Mary: Mother of God.
O Blessed Virgin we turn our hearts and minds to your motherhood. The motherhood you embraced was bigger than your life. Your motherhood was the gate for God to enter our poor world. This little Babyboy was your joy. He has been our joy too. This little Babyboy gave meaning to your life. He has given meaning to our lives too.
            Mother of God is a beautiful expression but it is also a hope filled expression. As we begin the New Year we do so nurturing hope that it will be a good one. We can have this hope because we look into the coming 365 days through the lenses of this Luke’s Gospel in which Mary holds the Baby Jesus. I firmly believe that she extends her arms with her tiny Treasure towards us. Contemplating this Gospel passage I can’t help thinking of that moment from the Mass when the priest takes a host and moving it towards the congregation he says: ‘Take it all of you.’ Bethlehem means the house of bread. Before Jesus spoke of himself as the Bread of Life, the place of his birth already indicated it. The little town of Bethlehem had waited a long time to be the house of bread not just by name but by the presence of the Bread which came down from heaven. Similarly we desire to be Christians not just by name but because Jesus Christ lives in us.
O Holy Mother of God, we will take Jesus into our own life and thus our life will become a new Bethlehem, a new house of bread. We ask you to help us to be generous sharers of Jesus with the people who will cross our path in the coming twelve months.
Happy New Year.
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