As this edition of In the Word arrives in your inbox we are still rejoicing in the recent feast of Pentecost and the great gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our Church.

St Arnold Janssen, the founder of the Divine Word Missionaries, had a particular devotion to the Holy Spirit. He felt, that in his lifetime in the late 1800s in Europe, the Holy Spirit was the underrated personage of the Holy Trinity and that more emphasis was placed on the Father and the Son.

The Easter Season is almost drawing to a close with the feast of Pentecost approaching in two weeks’ time. Next week we will celebrate the solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord.

Temptations are a regular part of our lives. When I was still living in Macquarie Fields, five days a week, I’d go out in the morning and take an hour walk.

Happy New Year! I trust that as you receive this edition of In the Word, you are feeling rested and refreshed after a break over the Summer period.

As 2021 begins to unfold, it’s hard not to wonder what is in store for us after all the turmoil of 2020. And yet, our faith tells us it is better to take each day as it comes than to worry about the future.

The first Sunday after the Solemnity of the Epiphany, we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. This feast day marks the end of the Christmas liturgical season.

The movie, “To be or not to be” is a comedy film by Mel Brooks which is about a group of stage actors who are trying to escape from the Nazis in the newly occupied Poland in 1939. In one scene, Frederick Bronski, played by Mel Brooks, is asked to act like a Nazi Colonel in order to fool a Polish spy for the Nazis.

The oldest liturgical cycles in our Church, dating back to the second century, are the Lent/Easter Cycle and the Advent Cycle.  The Advent cycle came at the end of the Roman Year and in its origin had nothing to do with the Birth of Christ. 

Imagine you got the windfall of a lifetime. You’ve just won the top prize in lotto, which was worth millions of dollars. What would you do with this windfall?

In today’s gospel the scribes who exercised leadership in the Jewish community with their interpretations of the law found their authority being threatened by Jesus and therefore wanted Him to take a position on their discussions about what is the most important law in their scriptures. 

For those of us living here in Australia or in New Zealand, if you take notice, you’ll see that on all of our coins, we see the image of Queen Elizabeth II or whoever is the ruling monarch in England.