Mark Keown

I hear it is official, Mary MacKillop is to be declared Australia's first saint ( http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10616660 ). Pope Benedict 16 is to declare this in March. This has been received with great joy in Australia. She certainly seems to have been an amazing women, healing lung cancer and leukaemia, a founder of the Catholic order of the Sisters of St Joseph in Penola, South Australia in the mid 1900's. She was a caring women, staying strong in the faith, helping people until her death. Apparently Garry McLean, who runs the Mary MacKillop Heritage Centre, is relieved that at long last Australia has a saint. He is on record as saying, 'it's fantastic for a country to have its first saint.' Now I don't want to demean her legacy at all, she certainly deserves honour for her great achievements. Indeed, she most likely deserves her status as a saint. But the problem is, that the whole canonisation, saint-thing, stands i...

I am currently reading through the Bible again, to keep it fresh and allow it to speak into my life and teaching. It is a good thing to do every year to. I am amazed at the astonishing ability it has to speak freshly. Reading the latter portions of Exodus and Leviticus brought this thought to me, what a job it was to be a priest! The instructions concerning the Tabernacle and its implements, and the complicated Levitical laws would have made priestly living extremely complex. It must have been an astonishingly messy job. In the Middle Eastern heat, constantly sacrificing animals, circumcising boys, and ensuring that the huge array of legal requirements for each sacrifice, the challenge of priesthood would have been extreme. It would have been dirty and smelly, like a meat works. It would have been extremely challenging psychologically, seeking to get things right, to ensure God was pleased with the ministry and sacrifice. To put it bluntly, thank God that Jesus has come and completed...