• It Is Through The Face That We Encounter God
• A Message of Hope
• Waiting
• An Octopus at Easter.
• Invite relationships
• Transformation
• This Moment
• A Good Story
• Can I Be A Healer?
• The virtue of doubt
• Mary Mackillop, Woman Of Faith
• Fridge Doors And The Rest Of The World
• Entertaining Angels
• More connected than ever, more disconnected than ever
• Feast of Teresa of Avila, 15th October
• The Witness of Maternity Leave
• Something New
• Farewell
• Australian Catholic University is a Public University Open to All
• What if God Was One of Us?
• Zest for life
• Attendance
• Christmas Angel Tree
• A Present For Me
• On being famous
• Reason To Celebrate
• World Youth Day
• May the evening's twilight find me gentle still
• Goodness: God’s Gift To Us
• A time for every purpose under heaven
• The Mad Dash
• The Positive Spirit is Fully Alive
• Its time to change
• Living an Abundant Life

On 30 November 2007 Pope Benedict XVI gave us a new encyclical on Christian hope, Spe Salvi. Its illuminating consideration of hope represents a timely message for us personally and as members of the University, this fortunate nation and the global community. A key insight of the encyclical is that the Christian message is not simply informative but also performative:

Christianity was not only “good news”—the communication of a hitherto unknown content. In our language we would say: the Christian message was not only “informative” but “performative”. That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known—it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. (n.2)

Another element of the Christian concept of hope that Pope Benedict XVI emphasises is that “Our hope is always essentially also hope for others; only thus is it truly hope for me too”. (n. 48) May 2008 be a year for us, as a University, when our commitment to the mission allows us to make things happen so that our mission is vibrantly alive within the University and performative in the communities with which we engage.

• Gabrielle McMullen,,
• Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Academic Affairs)