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.

Pakistan is suffering its worst floods for many decades.

Perhaps 20 million people affected – homes, crops, businesses and belongings damaged or destroyed.

Water contamination spreading disease.

The least we can do is to donate to agencies providing relief.

We should give all we can afford – then a bit more.

* * *

Today’s gospel reading in traditional Catholic churches is from St Luke’s gospel, chapter 10:

A lawyer stood up to test Jesus, saying, “Master, what must I do to possess eternal life?”

Jesus said to him: “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, soul, strength, and  mind — and thy neighbour as thyself.” Jesus said: “You have answered right: do this and you will live.”  But the lawyer, willing to justify himself, said to Jesus: “And who is my neighbour?”  

Jesus answered: “A man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho fell among robbers, who stripped him, wounded him, and went away, leaving him half dead.

“It chanced that a priest went down the same way, and seeing him, passed by. Also a Levite who saw him passed by.

“But a Samaritan traveller coming near, saw him, and was moved with compassion. He bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and setting him upon his own animal, brought him to an inn and cared for him. Next day he gave two coins to the host, saying: ‘Take care of him — any more you spend, I will repay you on my return.’

“Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers?”

 The lawyer said: “He that showed mercy.”

Jesus said to him: “Then you go and do the same.”

* * *

So Christians must be among the first to dig deep.
Catholic relief agency, Caritas Australia, is working with local partners in Pakistan, transporting medical and food supplies, hygiene and shelter kits, plus water-purification tablets. Transport will include rope-pulley systems over swollen rivers, boats, helicopters, donkeys — whatever it takes.

Caritas will continue helping Pakistani communities both during and after the headlines.

Enquiries:  phone 1800 024 413.

To donate online:  www.caritas.org.au/source/Donation/

A Sydney University social work lecturer, Lesley Laing, recently released a study called “No Way to Live”.

It is being used to pressure the federal government into amending the Family Law Act to make it harder for men to see their own children than under present shared-parenting arrangements.

The study is wide open to questions about its methods and conclusions, both of which are probably pretty suspect.

The fact remains, however, that there is a real problem — those involved suffering terrible emotional pain and sometimes physical injury.

Police in the state of Victoria attend 20,000 domestic violence incidents per year.

Domestic violence accounts for about 10 percent of the deaths of Victorian women aged 15 to 44.

* * *

What is to be done?

First, let’s eradicate some false assumptions.

Domestic violence is commonly regarded as something nearly always done by men to women.

* A New Zealand survey, the biggest ever on family violence in young couples, found that 37 percent of women, compared with 22 percent of men, had inflicted violence on their partner.

* An American survey found that domestic violence where both parties are violent is the commonest kind (69%). Second comes violence by a woman against a man (21%). Coming last was male violence against females (10%).

Researchers commented that a key to reducing abuse is to make it as unacceptable for a woman to hit a man as it is for a man to hit a woman: “If we want men to stop it, women have to stop it, too.”

* Regarding children’s safety, a menacing factor, seldom mentioned, is the mum’s new boyfriend. Ask your family doctor whether this isn’t, in his experience, where the worst dangers lie.

* * *

Expecting changes to the Family Law Act to fix things is like trying to reconstruct an already-broken egg — something which, in this entropic universe, only happens in miracles.

Prevention is the only way to go.

* Children must grow up learning that normally Mums and Dads are married and stay together for life.

* The Churches must proclaim that Marriage is a Sacrament — part of the Natural Law, written into human nature and into our universe.

A society not respecting Marriage in this way will, unfortunately, get the domestic violence it deserves.

Professor John Mendoza, chairman of the Australian Federal Government’s National Advisory Council on Health, resigned the other day.

He says the Government has no vision or commitment to mental health.

Like most rows, this row was about money. The government intended putting in $30 million a year where Professor wanted a billion.

Professor’s pet project seems to be “Headspace” — a youth mental health service. He talks about mentally-ill young people losing touch with their families, getting into crime etc.

Losing touch? Surely the biggest reason family members lose touch isn’t so much having an illness in the house, as having a television in the house.

* * *

Think of depression, less as an illness, more as an industry.

Drug companies get rich selling Zoloft, Prozac etc., chemicals said to rectify “chemical imbalances in the brain”, which perhaps cause depression .

What makes our brain chemicals imbalanced anyway? Doesn’t what happens to any body organ largely depend on how we use the organ? What goes wrong with our brain chemicals might result from the moral and spiritual decisions that we use our brains to make.

And if “depression” results largely from such spiritual malfunctions, the solution may be a turn to true religion.

Tablets and counselling could also be a part of the answer — but only a small part.

* * *

“Depression” is a fashionable word for what would have, in the past, been called sadness or suffering.

Shouldn’t we be giving priority to teaching children how to suffer — and to teaching them that suffering has meaning and purpose? Might one reason we have guilty feelings be that we are guilty? Guilt is best resolved by forgiveness. Once forgiven, a weight rolls off our shoulders.

Ask a priest to hear your confession. If you haven’t been for ages, don’t worry, he’ll remind you how it’s done.

Another good aspect of confession is that it is free.

* * *

Blessed Mary of the Cross (Mary MacKillop) wrote to the members of her Order when circumstances were making them depressed, “We have had much sorrow and are still suffering its effects, but sorrow or trial lovingly submitted to does not prevent our being happy — it rather purifies the happiness.”

Today I read these words, “Oh, I have long been sick of the world and its cares, of its false pleasures and dangers . . . .”

What kind of a person would speak like that?

Somebody contemplating suicide?

Somebody suffering clinical depression?

Somebody looking for sympathy?

* * *

No, none of those.

It was somebody who had found something better than the things of the world to live for – something “out of this world”.

Somebody wanting to put her life completely at God’s service — which made the worldly ambitions that mostly people live for seem tedious by comparison.

It was, in fact, the young Mary MacKillop, sharing with her mother her reasons for entering the religious life of a Sister of Saint Joseph.

Her browned-offness with this world’s godless attitudes echo the words of Saint Paul in the Bible:

“God forbid that I should boast, except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” 

* * *

Does this blog overdo the emphasis on the Bible and God and the Catholic religion etc?

Well, there is a desperate need out there for Australians to find something — something better to believe in than what they believe in at present.

2,500-plus Australians commit suicide every year.

That is about seven suicides per day.

For every completed suicide there are over 30 attempts – which means there are over 200 people a day attempting suicide.

There are 50 percent more deaths by suicide in Australia than by road accidents.

* * *

What can we do?

We must copy Saint Paul and Blessed Mary MacKillop and direct our ambitions and desires – not towards worldly delusions and mirages – but towards the reality of God.

To make Australia a happier place, let’s not forget willingness to listen to those who are unhappy, and to offer them simple kindness.

We might dwell on some other words of Mary MacKillop in that same letter to her mother:

“How many are lost through the coldness and indifference of those who might and should think more of their eternal welfare and less of this miserable world . . . .”

To non-Catholics, what goes on at Catholic Mass (the Sacrament of the Eucharist, Holy Communion) must seem a bit of a mystery.

Catholics believe that at Mass they receive on their tongue the Body and Precious Blood of Christ — yes, literally, the Presence of Christ himself.

The reality of one’s Catholic-ness must also remain after the Mass in changed lives — lives full of love for God and for our brothers and sisters whom we meet every day.

* * *

Today is the Second Sunday after Pentecost.

It falls a few days after the feast of Corpus Christi (last Thursday) which honours the Body of Christ in the Eucharist . . . .

and a few days before the feast of the Sacred Heart (next Friday) which honours the divine and human love of Christ shown in his redemptive suffering and death on the Cross.

* * *

At Mass today, the priest reads words from the First Epistle of Saint John:

Do not be amazed, brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. He who does not love, remains in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.

The proof of the love of God is that Our Lord laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

Anyone who has sufficient worldly goods and sees his brother in need, and refuses him compassion: how can the love of God remain in him? My little children, let us not love merely in words or in talk, but in deeds and in truth.

* * *

That’s today’s take-home message — religious people are always in danger of being quick to talk love but slower to help out in real life.

Likewise, of course, non-religious people — perhaps even more so.

God, in Christ, has shown us an example of infinite and supernatural love . . . .

He offers us supernatural help through his sacraments, especially the Mass, to practise the love that we preach, willingly and generously.