Attention!
By Sr Rose Rolling
The second-century Roman poet Juvenal, in his poem Satire X, writes that “two things only the people anxiously desire – bread and circuses”. The phrase “bread and circuses” was devised to describe how the politicians of Ancient Rome maintained peace and popularity through distraction. Distraction revolved around distributing free food and providing free entertainment like gladiatorial games, chariot races and theatre shows. These freebies acted like a sedative or anaesthetic on the population, wooing them into a comatose-like state.
In the first section of our Gospel passage today, Jesus rebukes a generation of people who exhibit what we could call a bread-and-circuses attitude towards religion. Jesus recalls their attitude: “We played the pipes for you, and you wouldn’t dance; we sang dirges, and you wouldn’t be mourners.” This spiritual sickness was not new, nor confined to the secular authorities, for it had afflicted the prophets of Israel generations before. In our first reading today, 700 years before Christ, the prophet Isaiah voices God’s lament
This weekend, we celebrate a feast for rebels. That might sound surprising. Sunday is the great Solemnity of Christ the King, and royalty conjures up images of sumptuous wealth, establishment privilege, and unthinking, maybe fearful, kneejerk obedience to the powers-that-be. All this has often been true of earthly monarchy, of course – but this King is different. 
Today we celebrate and give thanks for the fifty years of professed religious life that Sr Mary Teresa (Terry) has lived. And in doing so, we celebrate and give thanks for the commitment and perseverance in religious life – in our Dominican religious life – that this represents. A commitment and perseverance that encourages us to celebrate that Dominican life itself – our Dominican mission – as we have all lived it – and as we commit ourselves to continue to live it in the years to come. Although there are many and very great challenges that face us in the present, our Dominican life is a wonderful thing – it’s wonderful because by its nature it remains every vital and ever necessary – because preaching and living out the truth of the Gospel remains every vital and ever necessary – and because those of us who have given our lives to this can realize what it means to preach and live out the truth of the Gospel in so many ways. 