The Australian flag at the entrance to Ballina District Hospital (NSW) has flapped itself to pieces.

One and a half stars of the Southern Cross are gone.

The local branch of the RSL (Returned and Services League) has complained and wants something done about it.

Not a big deal?

It might be, if you had fought in a war to defend the flag and what it stands for.

* * *

A bigger deal, media-wise, was Australian athletes at the Winter Olympics draping a huge “boxing kangaroo” flag across a multi-storey Vancouver building.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) told them to remove it.

They didn’t.

Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, mocked the IOC, saying, “We want to see a lot of the Boxing Kangaroo, particularly now that we’ve had this ridiculous ruling.”

* * *

Is this flag affair just a matter of taste, or is there a serious issue involved?

What does a boxing kangaroo represent?

It signifies that we will do anything — except the obviously right thing — to defy everybody and draw attention to ourselves, threatening a punch-up or similar if not given our own way.

If we must be defiant, why not do something better than the conventional thing, rather than something stupider?

* * *

In Russia, in 2002, the government ordered regions to design their own local flags.

The city of Penza (600km east of Moscow, population 500,000) defied convention by designing a flag carrying an image of Jesus.

Yury Leptev, speaking for Penza’s Social Politics Committee, explained that there is a legend that in the 1500s Ivan the Terrible presented an icon of Christ to the people of Penza.

Leptev said they had held an unofficial referendum about the flag, and support for the chosen image was “strong”.

Some non-Christian leaders criticised it, saying it “blurred the lines separating Church and State”.  (St Petersburg Times)

To which one might reply, “No need for lines separating Church and State –  as long as it’s the right Church.”

Mr Rudd says Australia’s new education system will be “back to basics”.

More science, more mathematics, more history?  

Nothing “basic” about that.

More basic to ask: “Do these children know how to behave themselves?”

And: “Do they know why they should behave themselves?”

Leading to the truly basic questions:  “Is there a God? What has God put us here on earth for?”

Postpone increasing maths/science/history. Boost religion classes.

* * *

The questions above are answered on one single page of your Bible – in Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans:

“The just man shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those who suppress the truth of God: because that which is known of God is manifest . . . for the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable . . . .”

(comment: Godliness (religious gusto) is basic to justice, and the two of them are basic to everything worthwhile — so obviously so that there’s no excuse not to know it)

* * *

 “Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law. For when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature those things that are of the law; these not having the law are a law to themselves: the law written in their hearts . . . .”

 (comment: Even people not brought up knowing any religion know right from wrong. Woe betide educators who twist young minds into “rights/self-esteem” mentalities)

* * *

“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus . . . .”

(Comment: Every child must learn the supreme importance of what the Church offers, especially Baptism, Holy Communion and the Sacrament of Confession)

* * *

If you doubt that your local school will teach your children these basics, don’t send them.

In today’s Australia, a decision to send a child to school is a grave decision. Perhaps the normal/default practice for thinking parents should be home schooling

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What is a saint?

Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines a saint as a “holy person.”

However, we’re already hearing a lot of baloney about Mother Mary from people keen to play down her holiness.

Yesterday a chappie on the South Australian Catholic Church payroll told the media: “The thing about Mary is she’s a bit more vibrant, she’s not a goody-two-shoes type figure . . . .”

* * *

Cringe.

Are we so afraid of the notion of holiness that we must pretend that even true saints — who have given their whole lives to sacrificial devotion in the hope of becoming holy — are not really holy at all, but are, in fact, just a little bit like us?

Are we determined to domesticate even this greatest and holiest and most God-centred and prayer-centred Australian of all time, and make her ordinary – so that we, in our state of personal decay and feeble compromise, need not feel embarrassed or challenged to change ourselves?

* * *

Pope John Paul II warned against this: “Dear friends: Mary MacKillop cannot be understood without reference to her religious vocation . . . Mother Mary of the Cross did not just free people from ignorance through schooling, or alleviate their suffering through compassionate care. She worked to satisfy their deeper, though sometimes unconscious, longing for ‘the unsearchable riches of Christ’.”

* * *

Here is a prayer that Mother Mary MacKillop used in her personal devotions:

“I resolve, with the help of God’s grace

to die any kind of death,

or to suffer any kind of pain,

either of mind or body,

or any other affliction that can befall me,

sooner than for one moment to commit a deliberate and known sin

against God’s love,

and the claims he has upon my duty and service. 

Hitherto I have sadly forgotten my great end . . .

I will come back to thee, my Eternal Father . . .

Let me not prove a coward in thy service. 

Let me love to be humiliated and persecuted,

so that I may, during the remainder of this short life,

remain as near to thee, my Jesus,

in the thickest of the strife,

as in thy Divine Wisdom thou art pleased to permit.  Amen.”

* * *

Holy Mary MacKillop, Saint Mary of the Cross, traditional Catholic, please pray for us.

Sometime in the next 24 hours Pope Benedict will announce Mary MacKillop’s recognition as officiallybeing a Catholic saint.

The formal canonisation ceremony will be later this year.

Then what?

Will Australians then suddenly change their ways and start living by the principles which Mary MacKillop lived by?

* * *

What principles did Mary MacKillop live by?

(1) Mary MacKillop believed in poverty — always ensuring that she had as little of this world’s goods as humanly possible.

Will we copy that?

(2) Mary MacKillop opposed government funding of Catholic schools.

She raised money, instead, by begging. All her nuns, including herself, begged — both in the streets and door-to-door.

Today’s church schools accept government money. Catholic teachers demand pay equal to government teachers.

(3) Mary MacKillop believed in obedience — expecting her Sisters to give absolute submission to the Rule of their Order, and to herself as their Superior.

Do Catholics today obediently submit to, and live by, Church teachings — or only to those teachings compatible with their worldly lifestyle?

(4) Mary MacKillop believed that God wants everybody to be a Catholic.

She requested prayers for her friends and relatives who weren’t Catholic, that they should convert.

So-called “ecumenism”, popular in today’s Catholic Church – the notion that God is happy with any religion so long as we’re sincere — was unknown to her.

* * *

So why is Mary MacKillop popular with Australians — most of whom have no intention whatever of living as she did?

We think we like her because we have created a FAKE Mary MacKillop.

A “feminist”, a “rebel” — that’s what we like to think she was.

But she wasn’t.

The “Mary MacKillop” we admire is a fraud of our own invention.

* * *

Do you want to learn what Mary MacKillop was really like, and to seek after God in her spiritual footsteps?

Then read about her — study what she herself actually said, wrote and did.

Don’t read just any old book about her, or you’ll end up misinformed.

What you need is a book about the REAL Mary MacKillop.

In 1983, on the seventh Wednesday before Easter, bushfires roared through many districts of Victoria and South Australia, leaving 85 people dead and over 3000 homes and other buildings reduced to ashes.

That event is remembered as the “Ash Wednesday Fires”.

* * *

The 46^th day before Easter was, of course, known as “Ash Wednesday” long before that.

A “day of ashes” to mark the beginning of Lent, the six-week pre-Easter season of prayers and fasting, has been celebrated by Catholics for over 1400 years.

It was mentioned in the Order of the Mass called the “Gregorian Sacramentary” (named after Pope Gregory I, pope from 590 to 604AD) which was the forerunner of the Traditional Catholic Mass used by all Catholics until the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s – and still used by traditional Catholics.

* * *

The name “Ash Wednesday” comes from the practice of placing ashes on the foreheads of believers as a sign of repentance. While doing it, the priest recites the words: “Remember, O man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”.

Using ashes in ceremonies associated with sorrow for sins goes even further back into Old Testament times (in the books of Jeremiah, Psalms, Jonas, Judith, Job and others).

* * *

Ashes signify that we want God to give us a humble heart, so that we may weep for our sins and stop doing them – and to receive God’s strength to never give up, but to persevere in pleasing Him.

With such thoughts in your mind, go to church today and, as the ashes are put on your head, ask humbly for God’s mercy and grace.

Recent research indicates a link between boredom and early death.

Based on questionnaires completed by 7,500 London civil servants aged 35 to 55 in the 1980s: those who reported being bored at work have subsequently died of heart attacks at over double the rate of those saying they liked their jobs. (International Journal of Epidemiology)

* * *

A quote from Pope Benedict XVI: “We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism . . . which has as its highest goals one’s own ego and one’s own desires . . . the church needs to withstand the tides of trends and the latest novelties.”

* * *

To hear a child say, “I’m bored,” is a frightening thing. We hear it all the time. We don’t know what to do.

The temptation is to be blackmailed — to give children even more of the very “trends and novelties” which are white-anting their souls.

Must their lives centre forever around the shopping mall and what can be bought there or shoplifted there?

See them practising at being little middle-aged robots. See them “hanging out” in the mall with like-minded, unprogrammed automatons — bored, bitter and meaningless already.

* * *

We educate them in the technological questions of “how?” Secular education ignores and lampoons all questions of “why?”

The answer to questions of “why?” ultimately relate to God.

Love for God is what could save them – and us.

* * *

Another beautiful quote: “O God, my love for you ought to be total, infinite in desire; because you will not give yourself entirely to a soul unless it gives itself wholly to you. I must not cling to any attachment, nor admit even a single voluntary imperfection, nor refuse you anything . . . .

“Seeking sacrifice in the smiling acceptance of suffering, O God, for love of you, I want to take advantage of the little opportunities, so that I may be strong in the big ones.”  (Sister Carmela of the Holy Spirit)

* * *

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, a key day in the Christian year, a day to begin in earnest to mentally approach Good Friday, Easter and all that they mean.

They mean everything.

More about that tomorrow.