This homily was preached by Australian Catholic Bishops Conference President, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB, at St Mary’s Cathedral, Perth, on December 15, 2025.

Yesterday our Jewish brothers and sisters began the annual celebration of Hanukkah, a festival which recalls the return of the Chosen People to Jerusalem and the rededication of the Temple following the Jewish Maccabean Revolt against the oppressors in the second century before Christ.

Hanukkah is also known as the Festival of Lights. It is a celebration which recalls, by the daily lighting of a new candle over a nine-day period, the miracle of the oil in which oil sufficient for only one lamp was miraculously able to keep nine lights shining throughout the nine days of celebration for the dedication of the Temple.

At its heart, the Feast of Hanukkah celebrates the Jewish people’s faith in God who restored Jerusalem to them and enabled the rebuilding of the Temple which had been destroyed.

The lighting of the candles is an invitation to rekindle the flame of trusting faith in God’s fidelity to his people.

There is much in common between the Jewish lighting of the nine candles and the Christian lighting of our four Advent candles.

This Advent tradition is also an invitation to us to rekindle our hope in the fidelity of God which, for us, is made visible in the coming of Christ, for which we long even more after the horror in Bondi yesterday.

Fidelity

I spoke a moment ago of our Jewish brothers and sisters. In fact, all recent popes have used this expression, often referring to the Jewish people as our older brothers and sisters in the faith.

The links between Judaism and Christianity have often, throughout history, been marked by suspicion, hostility and violence, more often than not perpetrated by those who claimed to be disciples of Christ.

Our history may be difficult and confronting, but our basic theology is not.

On a day like today it is vital to remember that the very Eucharist we celebrate here today derives from the last Jewish Passover meal which Jesus, a faithful Jew, celebrated with his disciples, also faithful Jews.

The very last prayer Jesus prayed as he was dying – “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” – was taken from one of the Jewish psalms.

Indeed, as Jesus grew up under the watchful care of Mary and Joseph his prayer life would have been structured around the Jewish psalms which are still the backbone of the daily prayer of the Church.

Jesus himself insisted that he had not come to abolish the commandments of the Jewish law but to bring them to perfection (Cf. Matt 5:17).

And Saint Paul, himself a proud Jew, once wrote this: “To the Jewish people belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen” (Rom 9:4-5).

In the working of divine providence, it is through God’s fidelity to the Chosen People that, as we Christians believe, a moment in history arrived when a young faithful Jewish girl, Mary, gave her unqualified “yes” to God. As the daily Angelus prayer puts it, it was then that “the Word was made flesh and lived among us”.

Beloved

The only truly Christian response to the Jewish people is to recognise that they remain God’s beloved Chosen People, for again as Saint Paul reminds us “as far as God’s call is concerned, the Jewish people are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable” (Rom 11:28-29).

It is because the Jewish people remain so beloved by God that they are indeed, as the popes remind us, our elder brothers and sisters in the faith.

We are called to honour them as our revered ancestors in the faith and to respect, support and love them, no more so than at this time when they are feeling abandoned, isolated and fearful in the very country in which so many of them have made their home, believing that in doing so they would be safe and free of the horrors of antisemitism.

This ideal must be our hope and our prayer, and the goal to which we all commit ourselves, as we confront the dreadful reality which unfolded in Sydney last night.

Today as we entrust to the Lord those who lost their lives yesterday in Bondi, as we pray for those who were injured and all who have been traumatised, and as we plead with the Lord to break open the hard hearts of all who harbour any trace of antisemitism or any inclination to violence, I invite you to join me in entrusting all our Jewish brothers and sisters across the face of this country to the care and prayerful support of that young Jewish girl who with trusting faith in the God of her ancestors said to the angel Gabriel, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord: let God’s will be done in me”.