I feel squeamish when I see those paintings of Jesus, with Mary and Joseph, which depict this trio as the ideal family! In reality, no one in the Middle East, either now or 2000 years ago, would consider a mother+father+child as a family unit.
When you hear the words “Good News”, what first comes to your mind? Maybe for some, good news is winning the lotto. Maybe for others good news is your girlfriend accepting your proposal to get married.
I’m unashamed to say that I’m a “Mama’s Boy”. Whenever I needed something and I couldn’t get it from my dad, I always turned to my mum and without a doubt my dad would give in.
The Baptism of the Lord is not only about Jesus’ baptism, it is also about our baptism and the need for baptism in general and about Jesus being truly human even though He is truly God.
At a Christmas Mass for children one year, I passed the statue of the baby Jesus among the children asking them to touch and feel it, then tell me their feeling about the newly born baby Jesus.
This Christmas will not only open a Jubilee Year for the Universal Church, declared by Pope Francis, but also comes as the Society of the Divine Word celebrates its 150th Jubilee Year.
The theme of the SVD Jubilee is ‘Witnessing to the Light: From Everywhere for Everyone’ and that theme makes a great Christmas meditation, because it was on that first Christmas, more than 2000 years ago, that the Light of Christ came into our world. And we, as followers of Christ and missionaries, are witnesses to that Light.
In the Gospel according to St Luke, we listen to the voice of the one (John the Baptist) crying out in the wilderness and calling us to prepare the way of the Lord.
The SVD Australia Province launched its Jubilee Year Online Lecture Series this month, exploring the Jubilee theme, ‘Witnessing to the Light: From everywhere for everyone’ from the Biblical perspective.
The webinar featured a keynote presentation from Fr Wojciech Szypula SVD, the coordinator of the SVD Generalate Biblical Apostolate in Rome, with a response by Fr Elmer Ibarra SVD, coordinator of the Biblical Apostolate from the Australia Province.
For us who are living here in Australia, royalty is not far from our national consciousness. There’s hardly a week that we don’t have news about King Charles and the royal family.
The end of the world!!! Various people have anticipated it, various people have tried to predict when it will happen and so far, we’re still around to tell the story.
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