Below is the Homily given by Fr David Ranson at the Vigil for Peace on Tuesday, 16 December 2025, following the terrorist attack in Bondi on Sunday evening.
Last Sunday evening, our parish along with members of other Christian Churches in the city of Willoughby gathered on the concourse at Chatswood for a beautiful evening of Christmas Carols. The night resounded with the sense of gentleness and peace, both of which lie at the very heart of the Christian Christmas story. Our evening finished with the sense of harmony and hope.
At exactly the same time, on the other side of the city, at Bondi, others, too, were gathering with festivity to mark the Festival of Lights, Hanukah, itself a narrative of memory and hope. Their evening finished with unimaginable pain and distress.
How do we reconcile these two experiences occurring in the same city at the same time? Joy and grief? Harmony and severance? Gentleness and barbarity?
The juxtaposition feels too great for us to bear. It confounds us; it devastates us. As one member of our own community observed to me yesterday, what would stop someone consumed by hatred, doing the same thing to ourselves on the concourse of Chatswood last Sunday evening? A question to which I had no answer. We are confronted with the radical nature of our vulnerability, the acknowledgement that in the end we are completely at the mercy of one another – a truth from which we shield ourselves, but which is so radically exposed in what we have experienced.
In an instant, we are confronted with the reality of evil: its inherent violence and even more so, its intrinsic absurdity, characterised as it is by non-sense. Evil abhors innocence; and it is the innocent who are its victims.
It forces yet again, the question how are we to respond to evil when suddenly, dramatically, violently it manifests itself?
We are reminded again that evil can never be confronted with seeking to assert a force stronger than itself. This is simply to perpetuate the ancient treadmill of oppression and submission. No, rather the only way that we can address the manifestation of evil is to assert an entirely different logic – simply not to buy into its rhythm and demand – and rather to practice the exercise of an entirely different power – the power of friendship, of hospitality, of solidarity. This is why we absolutely need to come together in the face of evil – to hold one another, to reaffirm the bonds that bring us together, to cultivate community, together to light candles – small, flickering but with a strength stronger than any darkness can extinguish. Then we discover that with this power we hold a light that alone can give the answer to the experience of evil. Suffering love is the one answer to anxiety suffered. In other words, only a love that holds, that embraces, that carries, that accompanies demonstrates to us that evil has no ultimate power. This is the power that alone can disarm the power of evil. It refuses to enter the logic of evil and dares to assert something entirely different. And evil is confused and ultimately is forced to recognise its powerlessness, whatever its initial presentation.
Notwithstanding, the power that brings us together this evening also importantly provides us a with the space to acknowledge what has brought us to this moment, and the responsibility that we must assume in that space. Yes, there is no future with retribution. Yet, neither there is a future without responsibility. And our responsibility is not only to name the antisemitism that has unfolded into this horrendous moment, but also to interpret it.
The Cistercian Norwegian Catholic bishop, Eric Varden commented only last month, that “throughout the West, antisemitism, the world’s oldest hatred, is raising its ugly head, more or less sublimated in political terms, but instantly recognisable. Much is being written about this development. This is good. Wise heads must think together to counter a trend that lies within the body politic as a latent virus.” Varden goes on, though, to refer to the work of the late English Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who spoke of antisemitism as ‘the first warning sign of a culture in a state of cognitive collapse. It gives rise to that complex of psychological regressions that lead to evil on a monumental scale: splitting, projection, pathological dualism, dehumanisation, demonisation, a sense of victimhood, and the use of a scapegoat to evade moral responsibility. It allows a culture to blame others for its condition without ever coming to terms with it themselves.’ As Varden highlights, “those words were written ten years ago. Meanwhile they have only gained in relevance.”
Antisemitism is always the ‘canary in the mine.’ A people are scapegoated, irrationally forced to carry the failure of a society. It will continue until we take responsibility for the moral failure that is ours as a society bedevilled by self-interested patterns of social relationship that can only bring about alienation, isolation and fragmentation. Do we have the courage, as a society, truly to acknowledge this, to attend to this, to understand this? Legislation, important as it is, is not sufficient. Desperately do we long for the leadership to understand this and prophetically to enunciate, in Walter Brugemann’s word, the grief of a people denied by the dominant consciousness of our society. Without this, our Jewish brothers and sisters continue to suffer.
Yet, we will stand with them as their dear friends, and refuse to allow this extraordinary historic sociological dynamic to take away their dignity, their heritage, their future. My Jewish sisters and brothers, this is our solemn commitment to you this evening.
May the lighting of the third candle of the Jewish menorah on this day in the Festival of Lights, bring us to this recognition. It is the candle for understanding. May we understand, and not only understand, but commit ourselves with all sense of responsibility to address what is being exposed to us through this barbaric event, so that our sisters and brothers may suffer no further. Then, that for which we most deeply hope in the story of Christmas will lead us together into a new future.