Third Sunday of Lent

Suggested formula for recognition of Indigenous people and their land

Today we stand in footsteps millennia old.

May we acknowledge the traditional owners

whose cultures and customs have nurtured,

and continue to nurture,

this land since men and women awoke from the great dream.

We honour the presence of these ancestors

who reside in the imagination of this land

and whose irrepressible spirituality

flows through all creation.

Jonathan Hill

Second Sunday of Lent

‘To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.’ [William Blake]

Today’s gospel story invites us to look again and see things in a new way - to see Jesus, ourselves and sisters and brothers as God’s beloved and to see Creation as God’s gift. Lent is our opportunity to liberate the imagination. We are offered the gift of renewed sight. We can see God within ourselves, each other and in Creation and recognise their sacredness and dignity. 

The classic image of Australia as a new and young country of opportunity and promise is an illusion. We are not a young country. We have history, languages, cultures, lore and traditions going back tens of millennia. We live in diverse places across the continent which historically recognised hundreds of First Nations. We, as Australians should all be proud to have a direct lineage to the world’s oldest, continuous culture and civilisation. We are a country whose very earth and land formation speak to deep time, history, mythology and dreaming. What we can agree on is that we are a country of opportunity.