More than 550 people gathered online and in person and in small groups across Australia on Tuesday night for the Marist Association of St Marcellin Champagnat’s annual Marian Lecture.
This year’s lecture, held at Southern Cross Catholic College, Burwood, was delivered by Anglican theologian Rev Dr Sarah Bachelard. A Rhodes Scholar who studied at Oxford under Rowan Williams, she is the founder of Benedictus Contemplative Church and a teacher of philosophy, ethics and spirituality.
She is also a member of the World Community for Christian Meditation and the author of several books, including Pools of Grace.
Dr Bachelard invited listeners to consider what a life shaped by grace might look like in a world marked by striving, anxiety and fragmentation.
Drawing on personal experience, scripture, philosophy and contemporary Catholic thought, she offered a vision of Christian life that is expectant, merciful and true.
Dr Bachelard began with a candid account of her own crisis following her PhD, years marked by exhaustion, self‑doubt and the pressure to “be exceptional.”
Her turning point came unexpectedly while sitting alone at Darling Harbour in Sydney, where she realised she could simply “be” – a moment she described as an experience of pure grace.
“I could relax and be simply human, a human being among others, no better and no worse,” she recalled.
This awakening opened her once again to faith, not through doctrine but through a renewed capacity to love others without fear or self‑protection.
Grace, she emphasised, is everywhere yet often unnoticed. Drawing on poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and Denise Levertov, she described grace as the shimmering presence of God in ordinary life, and the human struggle to remain open to it.
She explored two pathways that deepen receptivity to grace: failure and loss, which dismantle self‑reliance and contemplative prayer, which slowly loosens the ego’s grip. Both routes lead to what she called “poverty of spirit” – a radical openness, exemplified by Mary, whose fiat “Let it be with me” becomes a model for Christian availability.
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Dare to Imagine a Life Shaped by Grace (Marist Association of Saint Marcellin Champagnat)
