Last Sunday evening was the first evening of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. Hanukkah commemorates the Maccabean uprising in the second century before Christ, when the Jewish people successfully recovered Jerusalem and the second temple from the Seleucid empire. It continues over eight days, with the lighting of a new candle each day in a menorah placed in a prominent window of each household. It celebrates that God is faithful to his people and empowers them to take their rightful place where they are living.
The beginning of this year’s festival was brutally interrupted by the violent attack on the Jewish families that had gathered to celebrate their faith and their place amongst us by assembling at Bondi Beach in Sydney. The attack was deliberately planned to target a particular group in our community because of their faith, to cause as much injury and death as possible, and to leave a legacy of fear, division and anger. It was an evil act, motivated by hatred and designed to create terror. It is therefore rightly called terrorism.
We gather today as Christians, with political leaders and community representatives, to join our voices to the shock and condemnation that has been expressed this week throughout Australia and, indeed, around the world. We come together to reject violence and hatred, and to insist that all people of all faiths have a rightful place amongst us, and should be confident of the safety, peace and tolerance that we all treasure.
As in most years, the eight-day festival of Hanukkah is celebrated this year during the Christian season of Advent, which is also a celebration of light, marked by the candles on the Advent wreath and preparing for our Christmas celebration of Jesus’ birth as the light that comes in the darkness. We feel that a shadow that has been cast over us as well, bringing grief and sorrow in the midst of the joy and hope that should be at the centre of our celebrations. For the attack at Bondi was carried out against our fellow countrymen and women, against fellow people of faith, against our Jewish sisters and brothers whose faithful proclamation of God’s powerful presence draws on a history that is shared by Christians and Jews together and is recorded in the sacred texts that we hold in common. Today’s Gospel offers a timely reminder of that shared history in reporting that, at the Annunciation, the angel spoke to Mary of the God of Jacob and of David, which would have made complete sense to her as a faithful Jewish woman who went on to raise her son, Jesus, as a faithful Jew himself.
So today we affirm our solidarity with our Jewish sisters and brothers, our sympathy for those who have suffered or lost loved ones, and our support for them as they face the threat and hatred that was made so tangible last Sunday.
But we want to do more than offer sympathy and support. The prayers of our Mass today ask God to bring peace in our world by strengthening our commitment to being peacemakers. The second reading, from Saint Paul’s letter to the Colossians, sets out in more detail what that involves. Saint Paul calls us to be people of compassion, kindness, humility, patience, forgiveness and love. If we want to live in peace, we must renew our determination to reject hatred and violence as a response to the hatred and violence we saw last Sunday. We must choose to be inspired by the courage of those who responded with bravery and generosity when they saw what was happening around them, and by the overwhelming support throughout our community for those who were attacked.
If we want to live in peace, we must undertake the hard work of building peace and justice in a world where we see so many experiences of violence, injustice, intolerance, and division. Last Sunday, we again saw the darkness that is present so widely in our world. As we come together today to pray for peace, let us ensure that our celebrations of Hanukkah, Advent and Christmas are proclamations of the God who brings light, and who calls us to carry that light forward by resolutely turning our backs on the darkness, and by building peace and justice for all.