Liturgy

Community Liturgy

Thank you to the Sustainability group who prepared our Mass today.

Next week’s liturgy will be prepared by Year 10 students. All are welcome: Year 10 families and all families in the College.

Warmer, brighter spring mornings encourage some families to get to the College a little earlier in time for Mass. Don’t worry if you have not previously been to a Mass; it is joyous and user-friendly!

Community Liturgy summary

Where: College Chapel
Time: 8:00am – 8:30 am
When: every Friday in term time

GOOD NEWS for 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

“There will be joy in heaven over one sinner who does penance” Luke 15:1-32

The reflection for this Sunday’s Gospel is part of a longer homily by Jesuit priest, Fr Richard Leonard. Fr Richard Leonard SJ is the Director of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting, is a member of the Australian Catholic Media Council and is author of Preaching to the Converted, Paulist Press, New York, 2006.

…The idea that God ‘gets us’ through disasters, illness, misfortune and hardship is, tragically, still potent in Christian faith. No matter how often the Church teaches us, for example, that HIV/AIDS has not been sent as a curse by God on gay men, or that non-Christians are not punished for their beliefs through war and famine or that God does not send small accidents and sicknesses because God knows we need a rest, we can find this erroneous thinking is alive and well. At its worst it drives people away from the Good Shepherd who knows each of us by name, who will go to ridiculous lengths and risk everything to go after us and welcome us home.

There is a huge difference between God permitting evil in the world and God perpetrating such acts. We do not believe that God, the summit and source of love, rains down evil upon the world. Whatever of the many and wonderfully varied images of God in the Old Testament, the Israelites had a developed belief in God’s vengeance. Jesus, however, spoke more of God’s justice and compassion.

And even as intimate and loving as the Good Shepherd metaphor is, Jesus is clear about our freedom to choose between life in Him and the path which draws us away. None of us is coerced into the flock. We are not God’s victims. We know and hear the voice of the one who loves us most and are drawn to him, and can make a return every time we stray.

May our celebration of the Eucharist enable us to let go of any residual belief that God is out to get us. May it sharpen our hearing to his call and help us to delight in his embrace. And may it embolden us to be good shepherds to those we love so that we might risk everything, in his name, to be foolishly loving and compassionate to all we claim as our own.