A Christmas quip goes: “Don’t get so preoccupied in what the world has to sell that you miss what God has to give”.

Bula from Fiji, where I am at home, visiting my family, especially my mother who is struggling health-wise. What a gift it is to have our travel borders beginning to open up again.

The pandemic lockdown period gave us missionaries and many others, a taste of what it must have been like for our first missionaries, including St Joseph Freinademetz, who left their home and family knowing they would most likely never return.

In Australia and New Zealand, we are  familiar with the presence of people on TV using sign language. When an important announcement is made, the speaker is accompanied by an interpreter who uses sign language to speak to the deaf audience.

We are coming to the end of the Liturgical Year and the readings of this Sunday speak to us of the end of the world, the end of time, the final coming of Jesus to take all peoples and all creation to himself.

The readings this Sunday talk about the need for generosity of heart. The two widows represented in today’s first reading and the Gospel are the unlikely people who could be generous.

We now live in a world that is becoming more complicated. Just look at the internet. I listen to parishioners who are complaining of their difficulty in keeping up with technology.

Isn’t this a wonderful expression? It conjures-up images of happiness and excitement that all of us have experienced at some time in our lives.

In sports, the dream of an athlete is to be the best, to be at the top, to be number one. Unfortunately, sometimes in the process, a good number might resort to various ways of doing it either legally or illegally.

Recently, marriage has been quite a hot topic in various sectors of society. At one end, there are advocates for “marriage equality” which means you can marry any person regardless of their gender.

What a weird world it would be if we took today’s Gospel at face value! Jesus spoke about cutting-off body parts and plucking-out one’s eyes. Did he really mean that his followers should do this?