Deaths of Australian soldiers in Middle East war zones are increasing.

Recently three — Corporal Jared McKinney, Private Grant Kirby, and Private Tomas Dale  — were killed within three days.

We admire these men for their bravery. We feel for their distressed families.

It seems almost rude to ask the unavoidable question — what point was there to them being there anyway?

Will their sacrifice ultimately help anybody?

* * *

We must, of course, respect their sacrifice.

Many of us doubt whether we could find the courage to do what they did.

Every ANZAC Day our whole nation goes into a state of perplexity.

We all want to pay our respects . . . .

We all want to avoid glorifying war . . . especially war against those who aren’t a direct threat to Australia’s sovereignty.

* * *

Inside Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance is a “Stone of Remembrance”, engraved with the words “Greater love hath no man”.

Every year, at 11am on 11 November — the hour and day of the Armistice which ended World War I – a ray of sunlight shines through the roof, lighting up the word “LOVE”.

Those words come from the Bible — words of Jesus Christ predicting his own death — nothing to do with soldiers or war.

John’s gospel, chapter 15:

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you.”

* * *

The Christian message is that the Passion of Christ is the one redeeming sacrifice.

Humanity (you and I) are enslaved by sin (disobedience to God) – meriting for us punishment, as demanded by God’s justice.

Christ’s Passion has infinite merit, such that it was a kind of ransom — covering the price of redeeming us from that debt of punishment.

No other sacrifice is in the same league.

Not the death of any soldier, however courageous.

Not the deaths of however many millions of Jews in the German Holocaust.

* * *

The Catholic Church teaches that Christ’s Passion is unique, literally.

Many people find that hard to believe.

Everybody finds it hard to understand.

Even harder to explain in words.

The statistics show that about 8 percent of Australians go to church every week.

About 12 percent go once a fortnight to once a month.

About 20 percent go at Christmas and Easter, but hardly any other time.

Which fits in with the other things we know about human nature.

* * *

Much of what we do we really don’t do — we have machines, gadgets and short-cuts which sort of do them for us.

Most workers don’t really go to work. They sit in a machine that goes to their workplace: then they get out.

Most meals today are not prepared, so much as unwrapped.

Most people’s only hope of catching a fish is to get the fish-and-chip man to chuck the pre-cooked, pre-wrapped, pre-greased, pre-over-salted parcel across the counter for you to “catch”.

They say today’s young people do less communicating using their vocal cords than with their fingers on keyboards — another way of saying they don’t communicate at all.

To worship God together with other people is a logical duty, but you might say, “I can worship God at home . . . .”

To which God replies, “No you can’t. I have told you that you must do it together.”

* * *

The Law of the Catholic Church is that, “Sunday . . . is to be observed as the foremost holy day of obligation in the universal Church . . . on Sundays and other holy days of obligation, the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass.”

Yes, bound.

The Bible warns against non-attendance at Mass — against trusting in second-hand religion, religion by remote control, making up our own rules etc.

The Epistle to the Hebrews (chapter 10) spells it out:

“Brothers, since through the blood of Jesus we have confidence of entrance into the sanctuary . . . let us hold fast to our confession that gives us hope, for he who made the promise is trustworthy.

“Let us consider one another, how to rouse one another to love and good works — not forsaking our assembly together , as some have become accustomed, but encouraging one another, and so much the more as you see the great day approaching.”

Researchers worry that constant looking at screens – television, computer, mobiles – can create, or at least aggravate, attention disorder problems in children.

The old joke about ADD standing for “Absent Dad Disease” may be truer than we like to think.

Given an upbringing with no functional father plus wall-to-wall electronic brain stimulation – little wonder if a youngster never learns to apply himself to reality, to set priorities or to resist impulses.

* * *

Politicians and vested interests insist that the internet needs to be high-speed.  Anyone saying different would be considered a fruit loop.

But are not human beings, by and large, low-speed? And are not humans more important than the internet?

Really getting to know someone cannot be rushed. And it takes time learning to understand why a certain problem is dominating somebody’s life.

Yet don’t we all need — fairly often — to be understood and listened to?

Such help may be very scarce in a future with everybody’s minds high-speeded away from the wave-length of the human soul.

* * *

Some Catholics join the Third Order of the Society of Saint Pius the Tenth.

Members of this order NEVER watch television.

They must say certain prayers every day and make their Confession and receive Holy Communion frequently.

Also they are encouraged to spend one hour before the Blessed Sacrament at least once weekly — kneeling in silence before the Tabernacle on the altar in their church, motivated by their belief that in that tabernacle Christ is truly present, welcoming us to himself.

But is an hour too long? 

Well, doesn’t it take about 15 minutes merely to shake off the unspiritual distractions of the outside world? 

Perhaps another 15 minutes to tune our ears into listening for God’s unobtrusive presence. 

Finally, by God’s grace, one may enter into conversation with Our Lord . . . worldly things fade . . . at the end of the hour we’re reluctant to leave.

Having first found God in the Blessed Sacrament, then we can seek to find him in other people.

ANZAC Day isn’t quite what it used to be.

It used to be a day for honouring those brave enough to die for their nation, their faith and for God (as they understood him).

Now powerful people are changing it — a disturbing symptom being the ditching of “God Save the Queen”, the anthem close to the hearts of most of the fallen.

In recent years, Australia’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) has been conducting an ever-bigger program of indoctrination of Australian youth, climaxing every ANZAC Day, April 25.

The DVA supplies schools with sophisticated curriculum materials, websites, virtual tours of battlefields etc., costing taxpayers $6 million a year.

Children hear about their debt to the fallen soldiers and the heritage of “freedom and democracy” that they left us.

It works. Children will literally recite that “if they had not fought at Gallipoli, we wouldn’t be where we are today”.

Historically, the 1915 Gallipoli campaign did little to protect Australia. But Anzac Day is no longer about history. It’s about whipping up a secular nationalistic “Anzac Spirit” in young minds.

* * *

The lobby group orchestrating all this is the RSL (Returned and Services League) with its 1500 sub-branches and 240,000 members.

Anybody hoping to weaken their grip on the minds of Australia’s children — or on the nation’s purse-strings — will face a skilled, relentless, well-connected, implacable enemy, which makes Freemasonry look like Pollyanna.

Attend a memorial service tomorrow and look at it from this angle. It’s true, isn’t it?

But many present won’t notice.

* * *

A newspaper editorial asserts that Anzac Day is now “the most significant date in the calendar of the nation”.

Yes, we take ourselves and our nationalism more seriously than we take God — making Anzac Day more “significant” than Christ’s birth, death and resurrection as celebrated at Christmas, Good Friday and Easter.

But disregarding God brings consequences in both time and eternity.

God revealed to Saint Catherine of Siena that he will call mortals on the Last Day, “Rise ye dead and come to judgment . . . you are who are dead to my love . . . .”

Is that us he was speaking about?

Are we so confident that God is irrelevant — that the “Anzac Spirit” is all we need to make a better world and to be happy in the after-life?

If you went to midnight Mass last night, you have been through a very meaningful experience.

First a fire was lit and blessed — in the dark outside — creating light where there was no light.

The Mass readings  included the full-length Genesis account of the Creation, when the light was switched  on in our universe.

At Creation, man was given light for his soul, God’s grace. Within days, the Bible says, disobedience took over, and that light was gone.

* * *

Anyway, the fire at the church was used to light a candle to be venerated because it represents Jesus Christ, “the Light of the World”.

The light of the world is the Sun, you say? Clang. That’s wrong. The Sun will be a black hole soon enough, sending out no more life-giving rays.

Human beings are immortal, soul-wise. We need a light for our souls that will be there forever.

That means God.

* * *

God is an interventionist God. What other kind of God could there be? He intervened by entering our world in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.

But Christ isn’t here now, you say?

Isn’t he?

At Mass, we can receive the Body and Blood, the Soul and the Divinity of Christ.

The Roman Catholic Church is, in fact, is the continuing incarnation of God upon earth. We must be careful when we feel tempted to criticise the Church.

Yes, people in it have molested children. Yes, there are others who could have done more to stop it happening, and didn’t.

The fact remains that it is God’s will that we come to him through that same Roman Catholic Church. If it is an unworthy Church in many ways, that should just suit us. We ourselves are unworthy of God’s goodness.

* * *

The Christian gospel is perfect. The Sacraments are perfect.

If you think the Church is not good enough for you because of appalling things happening in it, then you are suffering from a disease called “pride”.

You would do well to get down on your knees and stay there until God has removed it from your heart.

The European Union’s first-ever Citizen Referendum will vote on whether Sunday be officially declared a day for family and rest.

Martin Kastler, 35-year old father of two, representing the Christian Social Union of Bavaria, a member of the ruling coalition in Germany, presented the petition to the European Parliament at Strasbourg last month, saying this initiative “will strengthen direct democracy in the European Union.”
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The Referendum’s online website, titled “Mum and Dad Belong to Us on Sunday” says:

“We need a work-free Sunday in all of Europe,
•  because children need a family day, which is protected as a day off-work
•  because this brings Europe forward on its way to become the most child-friendly region in the world . . . .

•  because studies prove the positive health effects of the work-free free Sunday
•  because every person needs spare time — to relax, to be active in civil society, for hobbies and for religion
•  because the work-free Sunday is a part of the European cultural heritage.”

* * *

Sunday, the day of the Sun, being the first day of the week, dates back to prehistoric Egyptian astrology.

The Jewish religion kept the seventh day holy (Saturday/the Sabbath).

For Christians, Sunday took the place of the Sabbath as the day set apart for public worship of God (the Lord’s Day), because it was the day of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

The practice of meeting together on the first day of the week to celebrate the Eucharistic Sacrifice is mentioned in the New Testament in the Acts of the Apostles and elsewhere.

In the Didache, the injunction is given: “On the Lord’s Day, come together and break bread. Give thanks (offer the Eucharist), after confessing your sins, that your sacrifice may be pure”.

This became a central feature of European society, and has remained so.

* * *

Sunday needs to be rescued from becoming just another work day.

This European initiative is a good one.

Other countries like Australia should consider doing the same.