Last election comment in relation to Mass Readings today

Following the Scripture Readings, I will make my last comments about Election result.

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C  8 September 2013

Wisdom 9:13-18.

Who can know God's counsel, or who can conceive what the LORD intends? For the deliberations of mortals are timid, and unsure are our plans. For the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns.
And scarce do we guess the things on earth, and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty; but when things are in heaven, who can search them out?
Or who ever knew your counsel, except you had given Wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high?
And thus were the paths of those on earth made straight, and men learned what was your pleasure, and were saved by Wisdom.

Ps 90(89):3-4.5-6.12-13.14.17.

You turn man back to dust,
Saying, "Return, O children of men."
For a thousand years in your sight
Are as yesterday, now that it is past,
Or as a watch of the night.
You make an end of them in their sleep;
The next morning they are like the changing grass,

Which at dawn springs up anew,
But by evening wilts and fades.
Teach us to number our days aright,
That we may gain wisdom of heart.
Return, O LORD! How long?
Have pity on your servants!

Fill us at daybreak with your kindness,
That we may shout for joy and gladness all our days.
And may the gracious care of the LORD our God be ours;
Prosper the work of our hands for us!
Prosper the work of our hands!

Philemon 1:9-10.12-17.

I, Paul, an old man, and now also a prisoner for Christ Jesus,
I urge you on behalf of my child Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment, I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I should have liked to retain him for myself, so that he might serve me on your behalf in my imprisonment for the gospel, but I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary.
Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more so to you, as a man and in the Lord.
So if you regard me as a partner, welcome him as you would me.

Lk 14:25-33.

Great crowds were traveling with Jesus, and He turned and addressed them, "If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion?
Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, 'This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.'
Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops?
But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.
In the same way, everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple."

Kevin's Commentary of the day:

Did you feel like you woke up in a better Australia today?

You did, even if you don’t feel it yet. Some say it feels like after the Berlin wall fell down in Germany. 

Hate to say it but I didn’t expect the Australian people to turn toward Tony Abbott as convincingly as the saviour they think he might be.

Despite my public disagreement with the manipulative hold that many self-righteous Catholics have over the Liberal Party, I have never embraced the Labor invective just because I was dirty on the party for dumping me as their choice for the seat of McMahon.

I am not at all upset to have been spared the wasted energy that would have been expended by Ray King, Jaymes Diaz and Andrew Nguyen contesting seats in the election. To be totally honest, as I watched the week’s media melee rushing to dig dirt on people who looked like being bolters for the Coalition, I was relieved I am not mixed up in the unstable world of politics. There’s a proverb that accurately describes political wranglings, today’s news is tomorrow’s fish & chip wrapping.  I am relieved that the Party was not rewarded for shunning me and not listening to my warnings re: Greenway, McMahon and Fowler but totally stunned by the community’s choice for Lindsay. Just goes to prove the song “Folks are dumb where I come from…” But I give it to her, the pendulum for change swung fast in her electorate as it did across most of Australia.

If you want my humble opinion (and I think you do if you bother to read my commentaries and blogs) Liberal didn’t win government, Labor lost it.

What was the reason? Two major factors stand out for me.

Kevin Rudd’s ego and the sideshow which was the marriage equality stance.

As a practicing Catholic Christian and believer in all Jesus said, I think this statement of Jesus summarises the true Christ-following position on a contemporary morally-polarising issue:

“God made them male and female. That’s why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined with his wife, the two become one body. Therefore what God has joined together, let no man divide”.

Jesus was quoting Genesis, the first book of the Bible. If you believe in God, then this is God’s view, and it’s not humanity’s right to have a contrary opinion. If you disagree with God’s law then you would be wrong and have a similar status to the footy player who argues the rules with the referee. You will never win. You will be penalised.
Jesus, quoting His Father, did not say “…a man leaves his parents and is joined to another human”. It is clearly gender specific.

So many people make wrong choices, and this is just one of them. To those who say, ‘I didn’t choose my orientation’, maybe not but you can choose what you do about it. I feel a very strong desire to mate with many different women. It’s the way God made me. But He still commands me not to. Many pedophiles claim the same right to have sexual intercourse with willing children.
I have met a few pedophile priests who vehemently protest that God “made me this way”. Society says they are ‘wrong’ to have that orientation. That was the view of Corey Bernardi too, that we blur the lines and slide down the slippery slope if we authorise homosexuality.

To legitimate marriage for homosexuals within two generations of the act being unlawful would be too rapid a mind shift for many people. And I believe I speak for a moral silent majority that believe it would be a direction that is extremely wrong for our society to take at this juncture in an already very much divided religious landscape. There was no outspoken protest against Rudd’s Q&A comments but certainly some minds were made up that night: Rudd is a man of no principles.

Also in the back of people’s minds as they waded through the propaganda pamphlet foisting volunteers was Rudd’s lies. “I will not contest the leadership again” is one that stuck out in my mind.

Tony Abbott for all his bravado and self-assuredness has yet to prove his leadership ability but I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt since most of Australia believed in his ability to redirect Australia for greater prosperity, despite him not giving much away in terms of promises or policy detail.

I don’t think many of you have built a tower in your lives speaking as one who has, I knew how important it was to finish it once I started. I think that’s what drove Tony Abbott. Once he became Party leader, I am sure he saw it as his personal ambition to achieve it by whatever means it took. Labor made his job easier with all their divisive in-fighting and betrayals. Who was confident that Kevin Rudd wouldn’t ruin our international reputation further by his self-aggrandising public foolishness resulting in him being ousted by his rivals once again?

Finally, the point of the Gospel: Jesus warns us from building our castles on this earth. Something that became clear to me from rabid tweets by vitriolic atheists and anti-life campaigners who attacked me for my stance against Islam, homosexual marriage and abortion is that there are many excusably ignorant people in Australia.

Their anti-religious views are a product of growing up in a culture with no clear standouts when it comes to models of virtue. There are no really good leaders in the Catholic Church and there are very few great spiritual leaders in our schools. We falter because we are given incongruent arguments defending priestly celibacy while we know there are many frauds wearing chasubles on Sunday. The Catholic people have voted with their bums and absented them from the pews by their thousands (compared to when I used to preach). The Catholics are sick of being treated like the Labor party treated the Australian people, like mugs. We see what’s wrong and we complain but no one is listening.

I suggest we put our focus more clearly on an eternal perspective and realise that we are just travellers here, exiles from Heaven on a journey home.

Stop thinking that a stronger economy with less debt and more toys is going to make us better as a nation. The only progress we need to be making urgently is in our relationship with God and His designs for our future. We need to remind more humans of the call of Jesus for a radical conversion of heart and not be so preoccupied with what a small section of the community want.

This was the crux of Labor’s problems. By getting side-tracked by some people’s issues they lost sight of the bigger picture and more urgent problems.

Tony Abbott’s dignified wife made the point clearly on some TV interview I now forget when she said, “It’s a conversation that needs to be had but we are a long way from deciding on it…” She was clearly choosing her words carefully aware that Cardinal Pell will be vetting her response in their next policy meeting.

Penny Wong you are a nice person and probably strongly believe in your right to have your union sanctified. But from your own admission you are not as good a Christian as you should be, and if you spent less time agitating for what you believe is good for you or fair for you, and more time trying to help others who have no voice, get what’s important and necessary for them, then maybe people might have empathised with you more.

I always have reservations about people whose axes are being ground only to cut down a better tree for themselves to build with. A two-term Government that has allowed jobs to be lost and debt to rise to the point where a growing number of people are struggling to survive as I witnessed even in our community at Glenmore Park (and as shown on last week’s Four Corners) doesn’t deserve the chance to try better next time.

So let’s give Tony Abbott a chance to finish the tower he started to build when he lost the last election. Please pray as I did last night that the country will return to the values that have kept us the envy of the rest of the world. And please people, do not allow yourself to be fooled into thinking that growing numbers of   

 
Philoxenes of Mabbug (?-c.523), Bishop in Syria Homilies, no. 9 ; SC 44

“Being His disciple”

Listen to God's voice pushing you to come out of yourself to follow Christ... and you will become a perfect disciple: “Whoever does not renounce all he possesses cannot be my disciple.” After that, what is there to say? What answer can you give? All your hesitation and questioning falls flat before this single saying... And elsewhere Christ says: “Anyone who forsakes his life in this world will keep it for eternal life... If anyone serves me, my Father will honour him” (John 12,25f).

Again, He says to His disciples: “Get up, let us go!” (Jn 14,31). By these words He shows us that neither His nor His disciples' place lies here. Where are we going, then, Lord? “Where I am my servant will also be” (Jn 12,26).

If Jesus cries out to us: “Get up, let us go!” who would be so foolish as to stay here with the dead bodies in their tombs and dwell among the dead? Therefore every time the world tries to hold you back, remember Christ's words: “Get up, let us go!”... Every time you feel like sitting down, staying put, being happy to stay where you are, remember that insistent voice and say to yourself: “Up you get! Let's get going.”

Because, in any case, you have to go. But go as Jesus went: go because he tells you to and not because the laws of nature carry you away in spite of yourself. Whether you like it or not you are on the way of those who are leaving. Leave, then, because your Lord tells you to and not necessitated by constraint. “Get up, let us go!” This voice arouses the recumbent; it is the trumpet voice casting out the sleep of laziness with its cry. It is a force, not a word. All at once it clothes the one who hears it with new strength and pushes them on from one thing to another in a winking... “Get up, let us go!” Do you see how he, too, accompanies you? What are you waiting for?... God is calling you to set out alongside him.