For us who are living here in Australia, royalty is not far from our national consciousness. There’s hardly a week that we don’t have news about Queen Elizabeth and the royal family.

Every time I read today’s Gospel I am reminded of an experience I had when I was a young priest.  I was helping out in a neighbouring parish and really did not know much about them.  So I based my homily on the conversation that some of us priests had at breakfast about how easy it is for us to “sanitize” this Gospel text and how easily we lose the sense of shock and surprise that Jesus’ listeners must have felt. 

What strange and unsettling days we are living in. Within a matter of weeks our society has been rendered almost unrecognisable thanks to the spread of the coronavirus and the restrictions that are now in place to save lives.

In beautiful autumn weather we see many Australian beaches fenced off and deserted. Shopping centre shelves have been stripped, thousands of people have lost their jobs, churches are closed and even the footy has been cancelled. Where can we find hope in all of this?

In today’s Gospel, Jesus foresees the various contexts in which his apostles will be witnesses to him, including the possibility that they will encounter hostile reactions.

The prophecy of Zechariah 8:20-23 nourishes the hope of the people of God, who await its fulfillment in the universal pilgrimage of peoples to Jerusalem at the end of time (see Zec 8:22).

The Alice Springs community recently turned out in numbers to explore Christian Yoga as a Christ-centred form of prayer and meditation.

The Introduction to Christian Yoga was hosted by Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish, under the guidance of Fr Gilbert Carlo SVD, who was visiting from the Janssen Spirituality Centre in Victoria.

Back in the 1950s, when I was still in the Seminary, the Feast of Christ the King was celebrated in Grand Fashion.

I can remember being very impressed with the celebration of the Feast of Christ the King when I was in the Seminary.

Imagine this scene in a movie we may have seen in the not so distant past. A condemned criminal sitting on an electric chair in the last minutes of his life, an executioner just waiting for the signal to pull the lever to activate the electric chair, a police officer looking at the clock waiting nervously until the clock strikes 3pm, the time of the execution, another police officer waiting for the phone to ring.