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.”

What seems to make Christianity unique among religions is its claim that Jesus Christ was God incarnate (“in the flesh”).

Not just a good man, but literally divine.

This annoys atheists, agnostics etc.

It annoys also many others who just want to get on with their lives, un- bothered by religion.

Christ’s divinity is also disturbing for his believers.

It tells them that God wants us to hand our lives over to supernatural forces — to give up conforming with the materialistic, distraction-seeking mentalities that our neighbours and friends expect of us.

* * *

Today is the Second Sunday of Lent.

Today’s gospel reading is exquisitely discomforting to those who don’t want Jesus to be divine or to make demands of them.

It describes a mysterious, awesome and unsettling event:

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John his brother, and brought them up into a high mountain apart: And he was transfigured before them.

His face did shine as the sun: his garments became white as snow.

And behold there appeared to them Moses and Elias, talking with him.

(They spoke of his decease that he should accomplish in Jerusalem.)

And Peter said to Jesus: ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make three tabernacles, one for thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias.’

As he was yet speaking, behold a bright cloud overshadowed them. And a voice out of the cloud, saying: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear ye him.’

The disciples hearing it, fell upon their faces, and were very much afraid.

Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Arise, and fear not.’

And they, lifting up their eyes, saw no one but only Jesus.

As they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying: ‘Tell the vision to no man, till the Son of man be risen from the dead.’

* * *

The disciples learned a lot from this event:

 * that Jesus is/was truly God

 * that to please God we must be willing to suffer

 * that to live pleasing to God we must depend on him giving us the strength

 * that Jesus alone speaks with God’s full authority

.

Young Australians are exposed to unremitting attempts to destroy their consciences.

Television, internet, magazines, fashion, music — all desensitising them to alcohol, drugs, violence, extramarital sex, underage sexualisation and encouragements to be greedy.

School subjects are distorted to be more of the same, presenting a worldview where every facet of life is a power struggle.

Notions of virtue — of right and wrong — are sacrificed in the cause of making children consumers, mentally conformed to a feminist-dominated society.

It starts before the child can stand up — parked in front of the television at home, dropped off at a child-care centre — day after day learning that the world is a place in which mummies work.

* * *

A step towards sanity might be for more children to learn history.

Properly taught, history shows a child that the world was not always like this.

The world does not, therefore, have to continue being like this.

There was once a world where you didn’t have a mobile phone.

A  world where you respected your parents.

A  world where you could leave your house unlocked.

A world where it was normal to commit yourself life-long to a husband/wife before using them sexually.

* * *

In this world, there occurred the resurrection from the dead of one Jesus Christ — a real, historical, eyewitnessed, event.

The eyewitnesses included Peter, the fisherman-disciple, who ran to the graveyard that first Easter morning, finding, not Christ’s dead body, but an empty tomb.

Jesus then appeared to Peter and others — alive, talking, eating, still bearing crucifixion wounds.

Before the crucifixion, Peter had denied even knowing Jesus — a coward, wanting to save his skin.

Shortly after, Jesus ascended to heaven, leaving Peter (of all people) head of his Church.

They preached in Jerusalem and throughout the world.

Many were themselves killed by God’s enemies — the only way to silence him.

If Christ’s resurrection wasn’t true, just a yarn they had invented, would they have died rather than deny the message?

But the resurrection is true — the greatest thing ever to happen — in a different league from any other event.

* * *

Meanwhile, back in 21^st century-land, that kind of history is not discussed in the media or in polite schools.

.

In Poland, Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek is in a bit of trouble.

He apparently said recently that, in Europe, the Jews “have a good press, because they have powerful financial resources – extremely powerful, with the unconditional support of the United States. And this promotes a kind of arrogance, which I consider to be unbearable.”

He also mentioned that the Jews created the term “Shoah”, or “Holocaust”, to define the extensive killings of Jews by German Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s – and to suggest that those sufferings were unique, with no precedent in history.

* * *

One journalist chose to misquote these latter remarks under a headline, “The Shoah, an invention of the Jews.”

Bishop Pieronek  restated his original words — that it was not the account of the historical killings, but the use of the term “Shoah”, that he calls an “invention”.

Anyway, the bishop is now threatened with “legal action for defamation”.

Various versions of this story are circulating, and it isn’t easy to get the facts.

* * *

Anyway the notion that Jewish killings by the Nazis were unique in history is not true.

Unfortunately such things have occurred since the human race began – and still do — massacres of entire populations and ethnic groups.

Christians should point this out.

It’s basic to Christian Faith that the one case of suffering that was unique was the suffering of Jesus Christ on the Cross – unique because Christ was, himself, unique.

* * *

Saint Catherine of Siena records, in her Dialogue, how Christ appeared to her, telling her that:

“Though my act of suffering was finite, the fruit of that suffering which you have received through me is infinite. This is because of the infinite divine nature joined with finite human nature. It was this human nature in which I was clothed that suffered in me . . . but because the two natures are fused with each other, the eternal Divinity took to itself the suffering I bore . . . for this reason what I did can be called infinite . . . had it not been infinite, the whole of mankind, past, present, and to come, would not have been restored.”

* * *

The central message of the Catholic Faith is that Jesus Christ — a Jewish man — was God Incarnate. Most Jews find themselves unwilling to believe this. Many others doubt it, too.

But the Church must continue to proclaim it, because it is God’s message of salvation to his human children, both Jewish and Gentile, whom he loves so much.

Today is, for Christians, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary — also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple – also as Candlemas.

It commemorates the day, 40 days after the birth of Jesus, when Mary and Joseph took their little Son to the Jerusalem Temple to be “presented” to God.

In those times Jewish mothers were also expected to undergo a ritual “purification” bath [Mikvah] forty days after childbirth.

* * *

February 2 is the end of the Christmas season for Christians.

If you have been to Mass since Christmas, you’ll have noticed the continuing theme of Our Lord’s birth in the Bible readings and songs.

But today is the day to take down your Nativity Scene and Christmas decorations.

If you already did it weeks ago, it means the commercialisers got the better of you this year.

There is always next year, however.

Next year leave your Nativity Scene up for the whole 40 days.

Don’t let them sell you short.

* * *

On the first “Presentation Day”, Saint Simeon, an old man at the Temple, ready to die, took Baby Jesus in his arms, and prophesied concerning the child’s future:

“Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word:

For my eyes have seen your salvation,

Which you have prepared before the face of all people;

A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.

And Joseph and his mother marveled at those things which were spoken of him.

And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his mother,

Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (Yes, a sword shall pierce through your own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

* * *

All this is recorded in your Bible, in the Gospel of Saint Luke, chapter 2.

On January 17 2010, Pope Benedict visited the Jewish Synagogue in Rome.

Some Italian rabbis stayed away in protest because:

(1) Pope Pius XII did not, they say, condemn the Nazis sufficiently in the 1940s for their persecution of Jews.

(2) The present pope reinstated a “Holocaust-denying” bishop, Bishop Richard Williamson, in January 2009.

* * *

The facts are:

(1) Catholics all over Europe hid Jews from the Nazis with the encouragement of Pius XII. This was remembered and praised by Jewish leaders at the time of Pius XII’s death.

(2) Pope Benedict has distanced himself from Bishop Williamson’s views, saying that he must “take his distance, in an absolutely unequivocal and public fashion, from his position on the Shoah, which the Holy Father was not aware of when the excommunication was lifted . . . .”

* * *

Anyway, in his recent Synagogue speech, the pope talked about the “spiritual closeness and brotherhood” between Christians and Jews.

He said, “Christians and Jews share to a great extent a common spiritual patrimony. They pray to the same Lord . . . .”

In this, was he not implying that Jews have, within their religion, a valid means of finding salvation?

Contrast the first pope, the Apostle Peter, in a speech to the Jews in the year 33AD, within days of the Ascension of Christ, saying, “Let all the house of Israel know most certainly, that God hath made both Lord and Christ, this same Jesus, whom you have crucified.”

How did Saint Peter’s hearers react? The Bible records that, “When they had heard these things, they had compunction in their heart, and said to Peter, and to the rest of the apostles: ‘What shall we do, men and brethren?’

 “Peter said to them: ‘Do penance, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ.’”

That was the Catholic answer.

That is exactly what Pope Benedict XVI is not saying.

* * *

Pope Benedict needs our prayers. At present he seems to be getting it wrong.