May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be everywhere loved!

Good afternoon to each of you – family and friends of our Jubilarians, Bishop Brady, our MSC brothers, our Sisters and, in a special way our Jubilarians.

Love is always patient and kind: it is never jealous:
love is never boastful or conceited;
it is never rude or selfish … Love delights in the truth:
it is always ready to excuse,
to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes. (1 Cor. 13:4-7)

Come to me, all you who labour and are over burdened and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Mt 11:28)

All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection
and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death.  
That is the way I can hope to take my place in the resurrection of the dead. (Phil.3:10-11)
There are three things that last: faith, hope, and love;
and the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor.13:13)

Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit
for your hidden self to grow strong,
so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith,
and then, planted in love and built on love ... until, knowing the love of Christ,
which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God. (Eph 3,16-19)

It’s a rare thing to dedicate an entire life to a singular cause, but Sister Anne Gardiner has done exactly that – to the people of Bathurst Island.

Well before mainstream Australia acknowledged Sister Anne Gardiner as the 2017 Senior Australian of the Year, the Tiwi Aboriginal people of Bathurst Island had bestowed upon her the august title of “Puwanikimawu: a person who provides light to the people”.

Sister Anne’s good deeds among the Tiwi have been steady and unswerving for more than 63 years. The diminutive 86-year-old is typical of the group of remarkable women from the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart who have worked tirelessly at Bathurst island, 70km north of Darwin, for over a century.

Australia's senior citizen of the year in 2017, Sr Anne Gardiner, is on the move using her national profile to benefit the Tiwi indigenous community on Bathurst Island.

As a result of this award and through the generosity of Richard Rolfe OAM, the dealer principal at the Audi Centre Canberra, Sister Anne has been gifted a 4WD scooter which will allow her to activate a new project where she will meet and talk with every Tiwi person between the ages of 18 and 35 about self-esteem, motivation, and mutual respect.

"I will sit down and talk to the people to see if I can help them to understand the world that they are living in," Sister Anne said.

I’ve seen a few things in my time but if I was asked to give one piece of advice it would be this: our identity as humans is in who we are, not what we are. Who we are is only possible through our spoken languages and our lived cultures.

It is a message that is relevant today, as it was when I was born in Gundagai, NSW, the youngest of four children of Mollie and William Gardiner. We were a happy farming family.

All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death. That is the way I can hope to take my place in the resurrection of the dead. Not that I have become perfect yet: I have not yet won, but I am still running, trying to capture the prize for which Christ captured me. (Phil .3: 10-13)

The Pastoral Framework for the Sacramental Catechesis of Children is helping to bring families, schools and parishes closer together, according to those who oversee work in this area.

Carmen Balales and Sr Jenny Seal, who coordinate family and parish- based catechesis on behalf of the Archdiocese, say the response to the new framework has been “fantastic” and those involved are appreciative that the preparation process is more accommodating of the realities of families today.

Africa is a continent full of life, with a great cultural and religious patrimony. We cannot abandon it. Let us join our voices to the voice of the African peoples.

“When we look at Africa, we see much more than its great natural richness.

Sister Anne Gardiner has been living on Bathurst island north of Darwin since 1953. She is a community champion for the Tiwi islanders she knows and loves so well. As the 2017 Senior Australian of the year her message is about the absolute necessity to connect cultures and celebrate indigenous heritage. Sister Anne is speaking with Fiona Sewell.

Often when we see something terrible happen we don’t know what to do.  We think everything is too hard, too big and beyond us.  There’s an old saying:  “Where there’s a will there’s a way” and this is definitely true.  We don’t always know the way and often we get too caught up going through the things we can’t do, rather than focusing on the things we can.  I guess it is all about perspective.

You are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life 
as from the beginning he had meant you to live it. (Eph 2:10)

Singing is the sign of the heart’s joy (cf. Acts 2:46).
Thus St Augustine says rightly, “Singing is for one who loves”,
and there is also an ancient proverb: “Whoever sings well prays twice over.”