“HEAL Country, heal our nation”, the theme of this year’s NAIDOC Week, invites all Australians to embrace First Nations’ cultural knowledge and understanding of Country as part of Australia’s national heritage.
Adopting this theme, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council explained, ‘Today our world is in need of healing – environmentally, spiritually and socially. We must all come together as a global community to fight the injustices of inequality, racism and environmental damage”.
In a homily for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sunday (July 4), Jesuit Father Frank Brennan considered the importance of the readings (Ezekiel 2:2-5; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6) in understanding healing in contemporary Australia.
“In today’s Gospel, Jesus goes back to his hometown where the locals are astonished, wondering where Jesus could have got his wisdom and his healing powers,” Fr Brennan said in his homily.
“After all they knew his family and just how ordinary they were, just how like them they were. Jesus declares, ‘A prophet is only despised in his own country among his own relations and in his own house.’
“Like the prophet in today’s first reading from Ezekiel, we are invited even amongst our own mob to reflect, ‘The spirit came into me and made me stand up, and I heard the Lord speaking to me.’
“To heal Country, we are invited to take a stand. We are commissioned to stand apart from the mob.”
Fr Brennan said it was four years ago that “Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders from the length and breadth of the country gathered at Uluru and published their ‘Statement from the Heart’ calling for ‘the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution’.
“Declaring their aspiration for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia, they called for ‘truth-telling about our history,” he said.
“The Voice and truth-telling are the ideas of the moment which hold the key to healing our country.”
Listen to Fr Frank Brennan’s complete homily here.
