Ascension - Homily 5

Homily 5 - 2017

I remember in the mid-seventies going up to Broome for a few weeks. I had been asked to give a couple of retreats to the priests of the Broome diocese. When not giving the retreats, I stayed in the presbytery where an older indigenous woman was the house-keeper. She took the opportunity of the visiting priest to ask me a few questions about some things on her mind. I can’t remember now what they were, but I do remember asking her if she read much on spiritual things. She casually answered that, whenever Fr Mick, the PP, finished a book, he would pass it on to her and she would read it eagerly. She was as well-read as he was.

We shall have a few guests staying with us in the presbytery tomorrow night. One is an Aboriginal woman named Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr, from Daly River. I first heard of her a long time ago – in the seventies, I think – and I am thrilled that after all these years I shall meet up with her. What first interested me was something she wrote about what she called a “special quality of my people. ... It is our most unique gift. It is perhaps the greatest gift we can give to our fellow Australians. In our language this quality is called “dadirri”. It is inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness. … This is the gift that Australia is thirsting for. It is something like what you call "contemplation". Paddy tells me that Miriam-Rose will be talking to students and staff at St Mary’s on Tuesday.

What got me musing about these two women was, firstly, “Sorry Day” that was celebrated on Friday; then yesterday the fiftieth anniversary of the referendum that allowed indigenous people to be finally counted as citizens of this nation; and, finally, National Reconciliation Week that we shall mark this coming week. In addition to all that, there was the big meeting of indigenous leaders assembled in Uluru this past week who decided to press the Australian Government to work towards a Treaty with indigenous people. The sooner, the better!

Within this context, there echoes also in my mind the directive that the Risen Christ gave to his eleven first disciples [as we heard today in Matthew’s Gospel], “Go, make disciples of all the nations.” The danger, I believe, is that most of us, whatever we think of ourselves, are all very much in the process of discovering more and more just what being disciples involves. In today’s First Reading from Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, we had Jesus saying, “You will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth”. Do we stand out as witnesses of the Jesus who was crucified precisely because of his insistence that his Father was a God of forgiveness, of mercy and of reconciliation? It strikes me that making disciples of others, of witnessing to the message and mission of Christ, are as much factors of our learning as they are of teaching others. Personally, I feel there is so much I can still learn from people like Miriam-Rose. I would love to acquire more of her “inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness”.

The feast of the Ascension is a celebration of Jesus’ kingship, his “sitting at God’s right hand” [as the Second Reading quaintly put it]. Our celebration of that kingship would be more focussed if we could prioritise three more attitudes that Miriam-Rose identified. She wrote: “Many Australians understand that Aboriginal people have a special respect for Nature. The identity we have with the land is sacred and unique. Many people are beginning to understand this more. Also there are many Australians who appreciate that Aboriginal people have a very strong sense of community. All persons matter. All of us belong. And there are many more Australians now, who understand that we are a people who celebrate together.”

Deep listening and quiet awareness … respect for nature … all persons matter … memories celebrated together. Clear tributes to the authority exercised by Christ!