Homily for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jeremiah 20:10-13; Psalm 68; Romans 5:12-15; Matthew 10:26-33
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In today’s first reading the prophet Jeremiah laments that those who used to be his friends are now the very ones plotting his downfall. Why? Because he had the courage to proclaim the truth. He was prepared to prophesy to the people. And so he was denounced. Those who used to be his friends watched for his downfall declaring ‘Perhaps he will be seduced into error. Then we will master him and take our revenge!’ Nonetheless Jeremiah is confident: ‘The Lord is at my side, a mighty hero’.
During the week we celebrated the requiem mass for Michael Tate who had been an academic, a senator, a minister, a diplomat and a priest. Michael was a friend of mine. One of the most difficult periods of Michael’s life was in 1984 when he chaired a Senate committee on allegations concerning Lionel Murphy, a High Court judge, who, like Michael, had been a Labor Party Senator. Michael did not vote on party lines. He decided ‘that the conduct of Mr Justice Murphy, as found by (him) on the balance of probabilities, had an actual tendency to pervert the course of justice’ and such behaviour ‘could amount to misbehaviour’.1 This did not win Michael any friends in the Labor Party, and it earned him considerable antipathy at the time. The truth of the allegations against Lionel Murphy was never determined. But Michael acted and voted according to his conscience. He was prophetic, suffering a fate like Jeremiah’s. Prophets have a tendency to be a thorn in the side of those who exercise power and authority.
As I look back over key moments of Michael Tate’s life, I realise that it was the prophetic moments and stands that singled him out. He was attracted to politics when he was a young legal academic at the time of the Vietnam War. University students who were being called up for conscription could plead conscientious objection to all war, but they could not plead conscientious objection to a particular war. Michael thought this was wrong. To change the law, he decided to go into politics. The change came but it took decades not years.
Having studied theology at Oxford after his legal studies, Michael raised many eyebrows when he entered the Senate not swearing an oath but taking an affirmation. He took seriously Jesus’ declaration in Matthew Chapter 5: ‘I tell you, do not swear an oath at all…All you need to say is simply “Yes” or “No”; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.’
In 1988, Michael was Minister for Justice. He had the task of steering through the Senate bills for four referendums proposed by the Hawke government. The Labor Party had only ever succeeded once in amending the Australian Constitution. Michael later described it as ‘a gruelling process’.2 He knew the referendums had no chance of success. All four went down, voted down comprehensively in every state. When it came to the 2023 Voice referendum, Michael with the blunt voice of experience told me that the proposal had no chance of success. Why? Michael told me: ‘To succeed you need consensus or a crisis.’ We had neither. Once again the Labor proposal for constitutional change went down – voted down comprehensively in every state. If only those in power had listened to Michael whose prophetic voice was strengthened and crystallised in the cauldron of political realism.
One of Michael’s political heroes was Martin Luther King Jr who preached a consistent message of peace and pacifism. As a minister, Michael finally agreed to our involvement in the first Gulf War to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Michael took down the portrait of King from his office wall. The prophet learned that there were times when principles had to be compromised. Michael restored the portrait to its place when the law allowing conscientious objection to a particular war was finally passed.
After forced retirement from the Keating ministry aged 47, Michael became an ambassador to the Hague and the Holy See. When completing his term as ambassador, he paid a courtesy call on Pope John Paul II who asked, ‘Well, Excellency, what is your next assignment?’ Mihcael replied, ‘Holy Father, actually I am going to study for the priesthood.’ As Michael told it, ‘Suddenly the pope came alive with a big smile and said in his Polish-accented baritone, “A late vocation!”’ Michael replied ‘No, Holy Father, an early vocation long delayed.’ And so he ministered as a priest in his home town Hobart for 26 years.
When I was rector of Newman College at the University of Melbourne, I invited Michael to come and address the students. He told them the story of his decision finally to become a priest. As a comfortable ambassador, he had read W H Auden’s poem The Cave of Making which was an elegy to Auden’s friend and fellow poet Louis MacNeice who had died neglectfully young:
God may reduce you
on Judgment Day
to tears of shame,
reciting by heart
the poems you would
have written, had
your life been good.
Tate decided to write that poem, becoming a priest. He challenged the students to write their own poems. He told them:
You have a unique role in the 14 billion year history of the cosmos. In fact, the history of the universe, the history of the human race, will be frustrated if you do not take the tide which you sense is at the full. Don’t wallow in the shallows, safe but unfulfilled. Be open to discerning the poem, or, maybe, a series of poems, which you are meant to write with your life. Be courageous, or you could end up on your deathbed crying tears of shame!3
As I look back over Michael’s life, I think he was well schooled in the instruction Jesus gives the Twelve in today’s gospel from Matthew: ‘Do not be afraid. For everything that is now covered will be uncovered, and everything now hidden will be made clear. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the house-tops.’
May Fr Michael Tate rest in peace, content with Jesus’ assurance that ‘if anyone declares himself for me in the presence of others, I will declare myself for him in the presence of my Father in heaven.’
Lord, in your great love, answer me.
I pray to you, O Lord,
for the time of your favour, O God!
In your great kindness answer me
with your constant help.
Answer me, O Lord, for bounteous is your kindness;
in your great mercy turn toward me.
Lord, in your great love, answer me.
Fr Frank Brennan SJ AO, Adjunct Professor of Thomas More Law School at ACU and Adjunct Research Professor at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, is a former Rector of Newman College, University of Melbourne, and CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia (CSSA). His latest books include Pope Francis: the Disruptive Pilgrims Guide (ATF Theology, 2025), and Gerard Brennan’s Articles and Speeches: Maintaining the Law’s Skeleton of Principle (2 volumes) (Connor Court, 2025).
