Homilies

ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 1 JUNE 2025 There are many stories from the Middle Ages about court jesters teaching their masters a thing or two. In one, a king is so amused by his jester, he hands him a staff and says, “Keep this staff till you find someone more foolish than yourself—then give it […]

ST MARY’S BASILICA SYDNEY, 31 MAY 2025 Unparalleled in wisdom about our origins, lives and destinies, about the perennial battle between good and evil, and about the possibility of redemption… I am speaking, of course, not of the Bible or the Summa but the Marvel comics and films. Connecting the stories told there is the […]

CATHEDRAL OF STS MARY AND JOSEPH, ARMIDALE, FEAST OF OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY OF POMPEI, 8 MAY 2025 Patrick White’s 1955 novel, The Tree of Man, chronicles the lives and fortunes of an Australian family and their society.[1] Stan Parker inherits an untamed patch of bushland, clears it by hand, builds a shack, and […]

ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 2 MAY 2025 Alexander, the fourth century Bishop of Alexandria, once saw some kids playing by the sea, mimicking the ritual of Baptism. He asked who they were and discovered that the one playing bishop was called Athanasius. After questioning the boy-bishop, Alexander told him his baptisms seemed to be valid […]

ST MARY’S BASILICA, SYDNEY, 1 MAY 2025 “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the wise and learned, and revealing them to mere children” (Mt 11:25-26). Jesus’ words of thanksgiving tonight upend conventional wisdom: God’s revelation, He makes clear, is not first and foremost for the clever or […]

St Mary’s Catholic Church, Concord, 30 April 2025 Welcome to St Mary’s Church in Concord for the Pontifical Mass of Christian Burial for Fr David Coffey, a priest of the Archdiocese of Sydney. David was born in Lismore in 1934, one of four children to Leo and Mary. He was educated at St Joseph’s Mildura, […]

ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 24 APRIL 2025 Formerly known as the Glebe Island Bridge, the longest cable-stayed bridge in Australia was completed in 1995. In a ceremony in 1998 it was renamed “the Anzac Bridge”, as a fitting memorial to those who had fought in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. In the year […]

ST MARY’S BASILICA, SYDNEY, 22 APRIL 2025 “Woman, why are you weeping?” the angels ask Mary Magdalene on Easter day (Jn 20:11-18). Her grief is profound, her tears sincere. With the execution of her Master and Friend, her world had been turned upside down. Now she has come to tend His corpse and her grief […]

ST MARY’S BASILICA, SYDNEY, 20 APRIL 2025 “I wonder if I am dreaming?” she asks after falling down a rabbit hole. In Lewis Carroll’s 1865 masterpiece, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the girl finds herself in a bizarre world where nothing makes sense anymore. Rabbits carry pocket watches, playing cards serve as soldiers, Cheshire cats disappear […]

ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 17 APRIL 2025 Recently released, The Return recounts the final events in Homer’s epic The Odyssey. Odysseus, played by Ralph Fiennes, washes up naked on the shores of Ithaca after two decades away. He’d been a great success in the Trojan War, being the one who proposed the Trojan Horse and […]