SHOWING THE WAY TO GOD
Fr Quyen Vu SJ
Next week many Australians will enjoy the chance of a public holiday to take time away from work. This will be the first King’s Birthday public holiday since 1951. For most Australians we only know a Queen as monarch. Even though it seems strange now to say King’s rather than Queen’s birthday, it’s a relatively small change. But it suggests the way we live through constant change. Things that may seem permanent are replaced or slip away. In the midst of change we are invited to see new possibilities, to discern the way the good and bad spirit are moving in new situations, and in that recognition to discern how we are called by God to respond.
Much changes, but God’s love and His desire to be in relationship with us does not. Just a few days after the King’s Birthday holiday we are reminded of this as the Church celebrates the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We celebrate the way God pours out his love over all creation. We, Jesuits and Partners in Mission are called to be taken up in that outpouring. The Society of Jesus is consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and we are missioned to share that devotion in new and engaging ways. Nothing is more necessary in our world at this time than authentic witness to the way God loves each person abundantly.
God’s love is for each one of us and experiencing that love moves us to love one another. The Church must be moved to express its love especially for those who are seem unloved and unwanted, to reach out and accompany those discarded by our world. At the end of June, Australia marks Refugee Week. This is an opportunity to recognise the plight of so many displaced people around the world and to consider concrete ways that we can respond. This year’s theme calls us to compassion, which a Christian might recognise as an invitation to accompany those on the margins with Jesus’ own heart.
In all that changes, and in all that seems to stay the same, let’s commit as Jesuits and Partners in Mission in the Australian Province of the Society of Jesus to loving one another, and especially to loving those discarded, marginalised and disposed, with the abundant love God shows through the heart of his son, Jesus.
Feature photo by David McMahon.
Video by Janark Gray.