Liturgical Dance

Reality TV shows like MasterChef have reminded us of the art involved in preparing a meal - you need the right equipment, the right techniques and especially the right ingredients in the correct balance to prepare the culinary masterpiece. The feast of the Body and Blood of Christ provides an opportunity to reflect on the interplay between the essential ingredients in the celebration of the Eucharist - the priest, the people and the ritual - especially in the light of the introduction of the new translation of the Third edition of the Roman Missal in Australia. Over the history of the church we have seen that too often one of these essential ingredients have been overly emphasised - to the detriment of the others and of the life of the church community.

Does the new translation offer a way forward to finding the correct balance between all three elements in a new spiritual liturgical movement?

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Recorded at St Francis Xavier Cathedral, 9'55".
Corpus Christi.

God is love

When you read through the scriptures, one thing that modern readers might expect are passages that point to proofs for the existence of God. And yet there is not a single place that we can turn to to find something even remotely close to a De Deo Uno (Concerning One God) treatise that you find in classical and medieval theology. In fact the closest that you get is the statement that begins Psalm 14 and 53 - 'The fool says in his heart, "There is no God".' The bible - like all of the ancient near east, simply takes for granted the existence of God.

So what does the bible tell us about the nature of God? What are the images that you find that can help to illuminate the profession of faith of the early Church that God is three in one?

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Recorded at St Brigid, Gwynneville, 9am (10'49")
Trinity Sunday | John 3:16-18

Come Holy Spirit

This feast is a demonstration of the unique Christian understanding of grace and salvation. Before this day, although the disciples knew of the reality of the resurrection of Jesus and the fulfillment of the many prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures, they were still huddled together in fear - until the Spirit comes - then they become the Church.

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Recorded at Mater Dolorosa, 10am (9'45")
Pentecost Sunday, Year A.

Heaven and earth together

The feast of the Ascension can be one of those feast days that seems utterly bizarre and irrelevant - it is so mythological and pre-scientific to border of pointless. Or if we can reclaim it somehow in our understanding of its place in the life of Jesus, we can still be left wondering what this means for us. One bridge that we first have to cross is the acknowledgment that much of our thinking is not biblical - we are more formed by the systems of thought that the western world has taken from the ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle than they are by the rich eastern and Hebrew spirituality of the Bible. We tend to think of the world in a dualistic way - divisions between spirit and matter, between good and bad, here and there, now and then. When we think of heaven and earth, we try to fit them into one or several of these dichotomies. But this doesn't help us to approach the Ascension and its meaning - to do this we must dive into the original biblical vision.

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Recorded at Mater Dolorosa, 8.30am (11'15")
Ascension Sunday. Acts 1:1-11; Matthew 28:16-20.

Renovations at SJV - Stage 2

Photo gallery showing some of the recent works in the renovations...
View the album for the whole set of photos.

https://picasaweb.google.com/richard.healey/RenovationsAtSJVStage2