Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

Last Sunday some Greek pilgrims came to Jesus’ disciples saying: ‘We want to see Jesus’. One wonders what they were looking for. A healer? A miracle worker? One who take on the system? Whatever it was, Jesus responded by using the image of the grain of wheat that needs to die in order to live and give life. This image is lived out in the Passion story. A unique characteristic of our faith is the constant invitation to become part of the story of Jesus’ life and ministry on earth and of God’s ongoing love for the world. The entry into Jerusalem was not a parade but a protest in response to the militarism and oppressive dominance of the Roman Pontus Pilate who entered Jerusalem from the West. In our story, Jesus rides in on a donkey from the other side of town and the people hoping for an end to Roman oppression, thinking Jesus would be the one to bring it about.

Fifth Sunday in Lent

What is God up to? According to Jeremiah religion is getting a complete makeover from something formal, external and calcified to something alive to God that can touch peoples’ lives. Jeremiah speaks of God’s desire for a new and more intimate covenant; a deeper commitment. It is gut-located, heart-centered, and mind-penetrated. In his Spiritual Exercises, St Ignatius invites us to imagine God looking with great love upon our world where some ‘[people are] being born and being laid to rest, some getting married and others getting divorced, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the happy and the sad, so many people aimless, despairing, hateful, and killing, so many undernourished, sick, and dying, so many struggling with life and blind to any meaning.

It’s time for all communities to speak up for indigenous voice and dignity!

Edmund Rice Centre director, Mr Phil Glendenning AM has today issued a call for Australian communities that share a thirst for building right relations.
 
We are living in a time when so many societal injustices are being named and addressed in an effort to set right the underlying problems and preconceptions that sustain them. In many ways this is exciting and gives us hope for a better society. And yet time and again our nation has passed up on opportunities to take the first structural step to set right the injustices against the original peoples of these lands which today we call Australia.