Leach Publications

07/06/2026

Homily for Corpus Christi Sunday

‘I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.’

The words of our gospel today are very familiar to us and with that familiarity is the danger that we lose a sense of just how shocking they truly are. Just imagine if Anthony Albanese or Peter Dutton were to stand up and say: ‘our party policy is now for you to eat my flesh’. Or if Donald Trump sent out a tweet saying: ‘unless you eat my flesh you’re going to die.”

There would be pandemonium. People would think they had gone mad. There would be calls for them to be removed from office on the grounds of insanity. Much the same thing happens in the crowd listening to Jesus. Only Jesus doesn’t back down. He doesn’t say: ‘Hey guys, don’t worry. I was only speaking metaphorically.”

No, instead He raises the ante. ‘I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you.’

This is, perhaps, less shocking to us than it was to His Jewish listeners. To drink blood was strictly forbidden in all Jewish law and scripture, from Genesis, to Leviticus, to Deuteronomy. Jews were forbidden to consume the blood of an animal since the animal’s blood was its life and that life belonged to God alone.

This wasn’t just crazy language that Jesus was using. It must have seemed to them sacrilegious, blasphemous language and, in truth, from the mouth of anyone else, it would be.

Perhaps to emphasise the point of just how shocking and earthy this language is, in the original Greek, John here uses the word sarx, which means flesh or meat, and not the more neutral term soma, which would mean body; the term used by the other gospel writers.
This is, of course, John’s greatest passage on the eucharist and communion. While the other gospel writers simply report the institution of the eucharist at the last supper, John explores the deep meaning of this communion. In Jewish understanding, the flesh on an animal is considered to be its substance and its blood to be its life.

So, Jesus is here offering us, commanding us to take and eat, both His substance and His life: all that He is. In communion, we take in the very substance and life of Jesus Himself and, of course, He is divine and His life is eternal. So, if we have His life, then we too will not die.

We too are brought, in the Spirit, to the Father and participate in the life and love of God. This, indeed, is the only way that we can have life. Anything else, even the most glorious food, the most precious manna, will only lead to death.

In communion, Jesus gives Himself to us totally and we, in turn, receive Him totally, becoming incorporated into His own body even as we take His body into ourselves. This is why St. Paul can say that: ‘though there are many of us, we form a single body because we all have a share in this one loaf.” In communion, we, the church, form one body and that one body is the body of Christ, who is God.

Perhaps a good analogy here would be a marriage. In marriage, the couple give themselves completely to each other so much so that they are not two anymore but become one body. This commitment is unconditional and in dissolvable.

If they can’t do that, if they can only say: ‘yes I promise to love you but …’; then it may be a good idea to postpone the wedding.
In communion, God calls us to the wedding feast of the lamb; to complete union with Him. His commitment is unconditional and He calls for an unconditional commitment from us.

This is not impossible, through the grace of God. Sinners though we are, we can try and in the end, that is all that is asked of us: to try, to keep on trying, and to reach out for God to pull us up each time we fall.

You know, there is a prayer that the deacon, or the priest if there’s no deacon, says quietly as he prepares the chalice: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled Himself to share in our humanity”. This expresses the ancient eucharistic understanding of the church: that God became man so that we might become God.

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05/06/2026

An interview I did VERY early this morning. Connection was a bit of a problem. Long delay but that's a function of distance. The interviewer was in Virginia, USA. My part begins about 46 minutes in.
[](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms0dzKbuf3I...)

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01/06/2026

Musings from Saint Mary Magdalen’s

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey… Well, sometimes at least. Winter came early to Trentham this year, but only briefly. Glorious autumn soon reasserted itself, but it stayed only for a few days. Winter is coming, driven by the inexorable logic of orbital mechanics. In the church’s year we have left behind the celebration of Eastertide and now move into Ordinary Time, where each day simply follows the next in an orderly progression. It is a quiet time, without the joy of Christmas or the drama of Easter. A time to gather our thoughts and get on with the ordinary stuff of life. It is a time suited to winter.
In winter the cold and wet naturally circumvents our activity. It is a time of bright house lights in the dark and a warm hearth fire in the cold, a time to sit and meditate or, perhaps, to join with friends over a warm drink. It is a time of fewer distractions where life can be encountered in a stark simplicity. It is a good time to examine and to pray, to give thanks and to dream. It is also a time to hope, because the same inexorable orbit that brought us to winter will also bring us to spring and summer. The same is true in life. Winter is followed by spring.
So, in this time when grey mists soften our world, the trees reach stark branches to the sky, and the rain dances on the roof, lets enjoy the quiet and the rest that the cold can bring. Sure, you might be safe and warm if you were in LA, or the Gold Coast or Bali, but winter in Trentham has a beauty all its own, a beauty you won’t find in those other places.

Deacon Joe

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30/05/2026

Children’s Homily for Trinity Sunday
(To be read to little ones.)

Today is Trinity Sunday: when we celebrate the fact that the one true God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is a great and sacred mystery, a mystery that goes to the very depths of God Himself.
OK kids, who’d like to hear a story about a man who thought he could solve this mystery? All of you? Good - because you’re going to anyway.
One day, a long, long time ago, St. Augustine, who was one of the smartest men who ever lived, was trying to understand God and the Trinity. He knew all about it.
He knew that there was only one God but that this one God was the communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit - each of whom was God.
Each person of the Trinity was not a part of God. God was fully present in the Spirit just as He was in the Father and the Son.
But there were not three Gods. There was always only one God, and the three persons were each fully this same one God.
He knew all this, but he just couldn’t understand how all these things could fit together. After a long time trying to figure this out, he thought he needed some air, so he went for a walk along the beach. There he saw a small boy who had dug a hole in the sand, as small boys often do. St Augustine watched the boy as he took a seashell and ran down to the sea, filled the seashell with water and came back and tipped it into the hole. Then he did the same thing again. He ran down to the sea, filled the seashell with water, came back and tipped it into the hole. Then he did it again and again.
Now, St. Augustine thought this was very strange and he said: “Hey kid, what are you doing?”
The little boy answered: “I am going to put the whole of the ocean into this hole of mine.”
St Augustine probably thought “Hmm... Ok, this kid has issues.” However, what he said to the boy was: “Kid, that’s impossible. That’s a small hole and the ocean is huge. You can’t possibly fit the whole of the ocean into that little hole.”
The boy looked at him and said: “it’s easier to do that than to try and fit the whole of God into your little mind.” Then the boy disappeared, and St Augustine had learned his lesson.

We can never fully understand God. This God who raised up the mountains and scattered the stars like dust. When they realise this, some people turn their back on God and pretend He isn’t there – and they miss out on all the beauty and love, the sheer wonder, of that great ocean.
Some people think, well if the ocean doesn’t fit, what I need is a smaller ocean – and they opt for a little god, one they can understand and control. But the real God is always a great mystery of love, wild and free, and any god we think we can understand and control, isn’t God.
You know, I think we kids can cope with this better than some of the grownups, because we have to deal with parents all the time and they can be hard to understand. They won’t let us watch the television shows we want, they make us go to bed when we’re not tired, they make us eat green stuff...What’s all that about?
We can’t always understand our parents, but we know that they love us, and we love them and that’s the really important thing. It’s the same with God. We can’t understand this great God of ours, but we know He loves us, and we can love Him.
We know that He, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, loves us freely and without limit and if we love Him in return, then that’s the really important thing. We can’t understand God with our minds, but we can love Him with our hearts and if we do that – then we enter out onto that vast ocean of beauty, joy and love. We enter into the very deepest mystery of God.
Nothing can limit us, sailing on this ocean. There wonder and adventure awaits. The great adventure of becoming who we truly are, the great saints that God has called us to be.

24/05/2026

Homily for Pentecost

If you’ve ever been travelling around the Ballart region, you will have noticed all the wind farms that have been established around there. Great white windmills arrayed across the hilltops, turning to face the wind, their blades turning slowly even when there is only the slightest of breezes.
Of course, sometimes they are still. These great turbines, marvels of aeronautical engineering, can do nothing, produce precisely zero power, if the wind doesn’t blow. It is the wind that has all the power and energy. The windmills, for all their technology, only capture it and pass it on.
We often talk about wind power, but I think we sometimes underestimate the power of the wind. Yes, it can blow as a gentle breeze, slowly turning the blades of our windmills, it also has the power to uproot great trees, to tear down houses, to smash boats against the rocks, and send huge waves crashing into the coast.
That’s why the wind is a good metaphor for the Spirt of God. Yes, it can blow gently to ease the hurt of our soul, but it can also shatter empires and tear down the mighty from their thrones.
It was the breath, the Spirit, of God that blew across the waters at the dawn of creation when His Word called order out of chaos. It was this wind that drove back the Red Sea and allowed the Israelites to walk to freedom.
It was this wind that tore the veil of the temple in two when Jesus was lifted up for the healing of all who looked upon Him, when the world changed, and creation trembled.
This same wind later blew through an upper room in Jerusalem where the apostles were hidden away and filled them with so much energy that they seemed to be on fire, inebriated with the love of God. If we would but open our hearts, that same Spirit would breathe in us and through us now, giving us life and calling us to prayer.
Today we celebrate the feast of Pentecost. The day when God’s Spirit breathed so powerfully on those frightened men that they went out and boldly proclaimed that Christ, whom the world had killed, was now alive.
The thing is, Pentecost is not just something that happened in Jerusalem a long time ago. God’s Spirit comes to us now, today.
Now, today, He renews the face of the Earth. He opens our eyes to see the light of each new morning. He gives us life with every breath we take. He loves us with every beat of our heart.
We are called to let the Spirit of God breath through us so that it can become a mighty wind to blow away the evil of the world, to let the love of God flow through us so that life can come back to a dry and barren world, to be so energized by the Spirit that we set all the world on fire with the love of God.
You may think this is hard, unrealistic, impossible even? Well, while nothing is impossible for God, it’s true that without the Spirit blowing through us, we would be like those great windmills on a windless day, standing still and pointless, producing nothing. Yet if we would but turn to face the Spirit, to allow the breath of God to flow through us, we could take all the power of God and transform the world.
Filled with His Spirit, we can go out and say to a sad and disappointed people that there is a “happy ever after” more glorious than that imagined in any of our stories – an eternity immersed in love and joy.
This is what we are called to do. This is what we are sent to do. This is what we are gifted to do. To be the means by which that wind, that breath of God, uproots all the sin and brokenness of our world, tears down all its cruelty and injustice, and sends great waves of joy smashing against its walls of hopelessness and despair.
Two thousand years ago, the Spirit of God came like a mighty wind and shook an upper room in Jerusalem where some frightened men were hidden away. It filled them with “great power”; filled them with so much energy that they seemed to be on fire, so much energy that they set out to change the world. This same Spirit is given to us today. This same task lies before us.

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18/05/2026

https://legendfiction.substack.com/p/bannermark-the-besieged-6-stories

These stories from LegendFiction Authors whip you away to a realm of danger, banners, and an imprisoned god, where nature is biting back and no one knows why.

17/05/2026

Homily for the Feast of the Ascension

Acts 1:1-11
Ephesians 1:17-23
Matthew 28:16-20

A monk once told me about an old man who came to stay at his monastery. He was not a monk. He never showed any interest in taking vows or becoming a part of the community. He just came as a guest and then he stayed. The monastery became his home. He was, however, a cantankerous and impatient old coot, and this became worse as he grew older and became disabled.
The monks took it in turns to care for him. When it came to the turn of this particular monk, the old man complained incessantly all the while the monk bathed him and put him to bed.
At the end of all this, the old man gestured impatiently to the monk and said, “Come closer!” The monk moved over to the side of the bed and asked if he needed anything.
The old man said, “No! Closer! Come closer.”
By this stage, the monk was exasperated by the old man's demands so he leaned over him and said crossly, “What is it? What do you want now?”
The old man reached up and placed his hand on the monk's cheek and whispered, “I want to touch the face of God.”
Today we celebrate the ascension of Jesus into heaven. This is, in fact, such a remarkable event that we can, in a sense, stand around looking up into the sky and miss an important part of today’s readings. Not only did Christ ascend into heaven but He commissioned His church to go and proclaim the gospel, even to the ends of the Earth.
Perhaps the angels need to come to us and say: “Why are you standing there looking at the sky? He gave you a job to do, go do it.”
The mission of Christ continues today in the Church and we are the Church. You see, in his human body Jesus was limited. It is true that he preached the words of life as no one else ever could – but only to those gathered around him. He healed the sick – but only those he encountered in his travels. It is through His Church that, as Luke says in Acts “...repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all the nations”.
In our second reading, Paul describes the church as “...His body, the fullness of Him who fills the whole of creation.” The awesome fact is that we are this Church. Our true life is Christ living in us.
With what hands will Christ now heal the sick? He must use ours.
With what voice can Christ now proclaim the forgiveness of sins? He must use ours.
Even, with what tears will he weep for this sad, lost and broken world? He must use ours. This is our task, given to us by the Spirit. We are called to be Christ in the world.
To be perfectly honest, it is not a task I, on my own, would face with a great deal of confidence. Indeed, it is a task which would be impossible if we did not have Jesus’ promise that we would be clothed in power from on high and the faith to believe that nothing is impossible to God.
We are baptised into Christ who is our only priest, our prophet and our one true king. How often have we expressed the kingly ministry of Christ? How often have we cared for the little ones of the kingdom, for the poor, the refugee, the homeless, the abused? How often have we stood up as prophets of God's love and spoken words of forgiveness and hope to the lost and the despairing? Do we, as a priestly people, bring all of this world's sorrow and joy, its triumph and its failure and offer it, through Christ, to the Father? How often do people reach out to us confident that in touching us they will touch the face of God?
The vocation to be a Christian is an awesome and scary calling but we have Christ's blessing. We are commissioned by Him and He has promised to give us His Spirit so that we have the power to fulfil our commission. So, do not be afraid, do not be discouraged. In this sad and broken world, your hands and your voice can be the hands and voice of Christ. Your face can be the face of God.

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10/05/2026

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A

John 14:15-21

In the first and best Spiderman movie, Peter Parker is told by his grandfather; “With great power comes great responsibility’. Well, in today’s gospel Jesus has promised us that He would send us His Spirit, that He would remain with us always and that He would bring us to the Father. He has promised us that He would not leave us orphans.

These are words of great comfort and yet with that comfort comes a challenge and a responsibility. We are challenged to love God. Ok, you say, that’s fine. God is pretty cool. I can do that.

The thing is, the call to love God is not a call to a pious sentimentality. It is something that challenges us to the very core of our being. It is a call to effort and sacrifice. It is a call to the cross. You see, the way that we love God is to live according to His commandments. And what are His commandments?

‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.' This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like it, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.'

Now, this command to love so completely can seem difficult and there are those who will tell you that a life given over completely to love is impossible; that it is an idealised goal that can never be reached. But we are filled with the Spirit of Christ. Jesus Himself walks with us and empowers us to love and to live according to His commandments. This is the superpower given to us and with this comes our responsibility.

‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ We have been empowered by the Spirit to live according to the law of God and so we now have the responsibility to live according to that law of love.
Oh sure, we may fail in the short term. We may react out of fear or greed. We may let our passions rule us. We may set ourselves up as judge over our neighbour and look on them with anger or contempt. We may turn our back on their need. But when we do, we have been given the power and the grace to turn again, to love again, and to once again live our lives according to Christ’s commandments and not our own desires.

We have been given the power to try, and to keep on trying, to live in love. More, we have been promised that, if we will but open ourselves to the awesome grace and love of God, we will succeed.

There is a story which comes to us from sometime in the fourth century. It tells of a monk who was coming into town from his desert monastery to get supplies.
Curious, the merchant asked him, “What do you monks do out there in the desert all day?”
The monk replied, “We fall down, and we get up again. We fall down and we get up again.”

The monk knew that the perfect Christian isn’t someone who has never sinned. The Christian is rather the one who, once they have sinned, seeks out the mercy and forgiveness of God, and then keeps on trying: one who, reaching out for God’s mercy, gets up after they have fallen down, and then gets up after they fall down again.

For most of us, learning to live according to the commandments of God, to live a life filled only with love and beauty, is going to take a while. Indeed, it may well be the work of a lifetime. But if it is, then it is the most important work that we can do, and it is the mark of a lifetime well spent.

You see, those who hold that a life of love is an impossible ideal have a subtext which reads – ‘don’t even bother trying’. You’re not that special. But you are that special to God.

As long as we keep trying, as long as we reach out to God and get up each time we fall down. Then we are accepting the responsibility to live according to Christ’s commandments and, because nothing, nothing at all, is impossible to God, we will come to live in the love of Christ, and the love of Christ will come to live in us.

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03/05/2026

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A

1 Peter 2:4-9
John 14:1-12

When I was young, there were times when I had to share a bedroom with my brother, so believe me when I say that I know the value of having my own room prepared for me. To be fair, I’m sure my brother does too. So, Jesus has some good news for us in today’s gospel.

However, there is something more important here than childhood memories of a lack of privacy. You see, there are many rooms and one is ready for me – and another for you. This is a personal promise because Christianity is a deeply personal religion. It is based not on law, not on disciplines or practices, but on our loving relationship with another person – Jesus of Nazareth.

Yes, it is the Church which is the spotless bride that Christ will present to the Father and we are saved in and through our membership of the Church, but that doesn’t mean that we are saved as an amorphous mass. We are saved individually. Jesus loves each one of us. He dies for each one of us. Indeed, He tells us that God has counted even the hairs on our head. A task which, in my case, He will have noticed getting easier with each passing year.
It is this relationship with Jesus that gives us our hope. If we want to know God, we don’t need to delve into arcane philosophy nor listen to some mystic guru. No, if we want to know God, then we look at Jesus. If we want hear God, we listen to Jesus. If we want to be with God, then we come into His presence in communion.

Jesus is our rock, utterly sure and steady, a fixed anchor in world of constant change. He is the keystone of our lives, around which all else is centred and from which all else takes its life.

Of course, if you’re not paying attention to it, you can trip over an anchor or stumble on a rock. If you believe you can storm heaven with the might of your intellect or win it with the strength of your self-control, then this is a stumbling block indeed. You see, intellect and strength of will cannot win heaven. Only openness to the love and grace of God can do that. You don’t need to prepare your own room. Jesus has already gone ahead to do that for you.

This can be a stumbling block to the smart and the strong. Heaven belongs to those who love, even if they are uneducated or slow, even if they are weak and in constant need of repenting their weakness.

You see, human intellect is always limited, conditioned by time and circumstance; and human strength is always compromised by our attraction to sin. Good as they are in themselves, they do not form a rock on which we can rely. Only the love of God, expressed perfectly in Jesus, is solid: solid enough to withstand all the storms that life can throw at us.

If we set ourselves close to Jesus, our corner stone and our foundation, our way, our truth, and our life, then come war or famine, come poverty or persecution, we are safe. The love of God is certain and even death is, for us, nothing more than a going home, where our room is already prepared. As Cardinal Newman commented when he was about to die. “I feel like a schoolboy going home for the holidays”. I think it is good to remember this at a time when death so openly stalks our world.

At the start of our gospel today, Jesus says “Do not let your hearts be troubled”. We don’t know what the future may bring but we do know that God loves us and, in the end, that’s all that matters.

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26/04/2026

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A

Acts 2:14,36-41
Psalm 22(23)
1 Peter 2:20-25
John 10:1-10

Some of you may be old enough to remember a Skyhooks song that compared the 6.30 news to a horror movie. Well, if we watch the news today we can see their point. Each night we are presented with images of terrorism, of war and threats of war, of violent crime, of assaults and murder.
All of this can seem a long way away from stories of sheep and shepherds, especially as, in Australia, we tend to farm sheep on an industrial scale, and we try not to get emotionally involved.
So, what can we take from today’s gospel where Jesus talks of Himself both as the shepherd and the gate to the sheepfold? How do we relate to it today as an image of God?
Our images of God, of course, are always analogies and analogies always limp, especially when referring to the divine, but our images of God are important. They play a huge role in our relationship with God, and they determine much of our prayer life.
Some people imagine God as an old man with a long, white beard sitting on a cloud somewhere: a distant, uninvolved god who can be safely ignored. They then say; ‘I can’t believe in a god like that. What’s the point?’. Fair enough. I can’t see the point of believing in a God like that either and if you read the bible at all, you’ll know that’s not the God of scripture.
Some people imagine a vengeful god; a god who waits eagerly to strike us down for our sins. They then say; ‘I can’t believe in a god like that’. Fair enough. I can’t believe in a God like that either and if you read the story of the woman caught in adultery, that’s clearly not the God of the gospel.
Some people imagine a sweet, insipid god; one who is always nice and inoffensive. They then say; ‘I can’t believe in a god like that’. Fair enough. I can’t believe in a God like that either and if you were to ask the money changers in the temple or the Pharisees, publicly insulted by Jesus, I think they would tell you that that’s not the sort of God Jesus is talking about. Such a god would be of little use in an unjust world.
If all our analogies limp. what then is our image of God? How do we know what God is truly like? We know by looking at Jesus, Jesus who is God in human flesh, who makes visible and known Him who would otherwise be invisible and unknowable. He is both our gateway opening to us the salvation of God and our shepherd, leading us to that gate. He has given His life so that we might truly be His flock and enter His sheepfold.
You know, the very first attempts by the early church at artistic representations of Jesus are the almost cartoon like pictures from the catacombs of Rome. They often show a young man carrying a lamb across his shoulders. That is, they are not attempts at a portrait of Jesus, as man. They are images of Christ, as the good shepherd.
This was the art of a frightened community, one that lived under constant threat and real oppression, under the very real possibility of torture and death. The image of God that made sense to them was the one that Jesus Himself used: that of the shepherd and the sheepfold.
It is an image of a God who is not distant or vengeful but who cares for His people. It is not an image of weak, sentimental god but rather of a strong, practical God who guards and protects His people, who guides them and keeps them safe, who gives even His own life to save theirs.
Sometimes, as we look at the world today, as we watch the evening news, we too can be scared, frightened of the future. We can fear being ridiculed or worse. Do not be afraid. We are an Easter people. We have a God who, with His love, has conquered hate, who with his life has conquered death.
He is there with His crook and His staff, to guide us and to lead us, with His strong right arm to defend us. He gives His own self to us, completely and without reservation, in communion. So, do not be afraid. Live your faith boldly and when you fail, and you will, come back, go to confession and the good shepherd will guide you back and joyously welcome you back, to his fold.
We are the sheep of His flock, He calls each one of us by name, and we hear His voice. No matter what happens to us, no matter how bad it might be, no matter what wolves or brigands attack us, He will not let go of us. He will always call us back, call us home, and keep us safe.

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