Hope In The Face of Darkness
A short and completely inadequate response to the terrorist attack at Bondi on Sunday 14 December 2026.
Little can prepare you to receive the kind of news that emerged from Bondi last Sunday evening.
While we can become immune to seeing the outcome of such events in other countries, usually places we only vaguely know, seeing and hearing the results of a deliberate, cowardly and targeted attack against fellow Australians taking place in Australia is relatively unknown.
And yet, this has happened.
At a time of year when many people are looking forward with joy and hope to the end of a civil year, the arrival of summer and all that is attached to that, and, for believers, great religious festivals, the people of Bondi, of greater Sydney, of New South Wales, and of Australia, must now face the fact of violence, and violence inspired by hatred, visiting our shores.
That the violence is most likely motivated by ethnic and religious ideologies only adds to the profound tragedy that has confronted us.
The level of uncivil discourse, of polarisation and of division, has been on the increase for a number of years, with the threat of violence never too far away from the surface.
And now that threat has surfaced, claiming the lives of innocent members of our community who were simply going about their lives, lives that no other Australian should have been perturbed by.
Tragic events such as took place at Bondi last Sunday render the very fabric of civil society, even though there had already been damage done to civil discourse by those who have sought to do so for whatever reason.
How are we to make sense of what has forced its way into our consciousness? Can we make sense of what has happened?
In the days immediately following this tragedy, this crime, the answer to those questions remains largely unknown. And we must also face the possibility that such questions may never be fully answered. Speculation about what, how, when and who will not allow our reality to be wound back; what has happened has happened, and we will be forever changed by it.
The Catholic Season of Advent, like the Jewish Festival of Lights (Hanukkah), is a time when holding on to hope in the face of everything else is encouraged and celebrated.
The light, which for Christians, is Jesus the Christ, can never be tamed by the darkness, whether that darkness is sin, or hatred, or violence, or anything else that threatens the world we inhabit.
Perhaps the greatest response for all believers in the face of the hatred and violence we witnessed last Sunday is hold fast to the hope that the true light, however we understand that, will never be extinguished.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.
May their memories be a blessing.