The Feast of Pentecost has arrived and the Gospel we listen to this weekend will tell us that the first call of the Christian community is to reconciliation. The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus appeared to his disciples, carrying the wounds of his crucifixion, with the words ‘peace be with you’. The first words that the Lord Jesus brings back from the grave are words of peace and reconciliation. This is the beginning of the Church. And then, John tells us, ‘he breathed on them and said: ‘receive the Holy spirit. For those whose sins you forgive they are forgiven.” The first disciples were sent out into the world to be bearers of peace and reconciliation. Each Pentecost Sunday is a renewal of the Christian community in the ways of reconciliation and peace.
And so perhaps it is no coincidence that we also celebrate National Reconciliation Week this week. National Reconciliation Week is a week when all Australians are invited to learn more about the shared histories and cultures of our land and to explore further ways to achieving reconciliation. This week also marks the sixth anniversary of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. That statement was signed by over 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders at Mutitjulu in the shadow of Uluru. It was that statement that called for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.
As we celebrate the feast of Pentecost, the feast of reconciliation and peace, I invite you all to join with me in a journey of discovery and reconciliation as together we explore more about the call of a First Nations Voice. St Pope John Paul II reminded us many years ago that Australia would remain incomplete without the voice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders being heard and received. In addressing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Alice Springs in 1986 he said: “You are part of Australia and Australia is part of you. And the Church herself in Australia will not be fully the Church that Jesus wants her to be until you have made your contribution to her life and until that contribution has been joyfully received by others.”
At the recent Plenary Council of the Catholic Church in Australia the first decree to be put forward and accepted was reconciliation. It included a specific endorsement of the Uluru Statement from the heart.
You are invited to come together with me at 7:30 pm on Thursday, 22 June for an online Zoom meeting, where we will explore further the Uluru Statement from the heart and the First Nations Voice to parliament. We are grateful to Sherry Balcome, Executive director of Aboriginal Catholic Ministry and a Western Yalanji, Djabaguy/Okola woman who will join us on this evening. A link will be sent to you upon registration. In the meantime Tricia Norman has worked with a small group of parishioners to put together information and resources around the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. We invite you to explore these resources and dialogue with us along this journey.
For a Christian community reconciliation is not an optional extra, it is constitutive of the very nature of the Church itself. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit will visit us once again this year and breathe life into our communities once more and lead us to deeper reconciliation and peace.
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Betty RUdin says:
Thank you for this Brendan. Powerful