The Society of Jesus will organize a workshop on December 11th on the teachings of Laudato Si’. Aimed at lay people, the seminar is an invitation to better understand the apostolic exhortation with which Pope Francis seeks to inspire and mobilize Catholics worldwide to take care of our Common Home and achieve climatic and ecological justice.
On November 21, 2021, Feast of Christ the King, Edna Ritchie and Roxanne Pangan received their First Communion at the Macau Cathedral during the 5:00 PM Mass for the English-speaking community.
For us postmodern people who are living in a permanent state of distraction, constantly multitasking and browsing our devices with scattered minds, the faculty of attention is rapidly deteriorating. Someone wrote that “attention is really another word for love,” because only when we pay attention do we take the attention off ourselves and we become less self-centered, less self-fixated. Any true encounter – and any genuine act of love – needs this movement from the self to the other. It’s the only worthy way to live, to work, to build relationships.
“The Lord is present in the passage of our lives, he accompanies us and will one day also dry our tears. One day, not far off, everything will find its fulfilment in the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom of justice and peace.”
We need priests because we, sinners, need mediators who act in the name and with the power of the one single Mediator and Redeemer who is Christ.
St Gregory the Great adds, “Consider well how terrible is the hour of death, and how appalling the remembrance of our sins will be at that time. For the devils will recall all the harm they have done to us, and remind us of the sins which we have committed at their instigation.”
Thus, we should never hesitate to offer to a very ill person or a dying one the possibility of receiving the Anointing of the Sick. And should we ourselves be in that situation, we should not hesitate to ask for it, together with the two other sacraments of Confession and the Viaticum.
The remote matter of this sacrament is olive oil or oil from other plants that has been blessed. The proximate matter is the anointing on the forehead and the hand.
The form, as mentioned above, is the prayer that is recited as the anointing is being done.
“You want to do something for the Lord … do it. Whatever you feel needs to be done, even though you’re shaking in your boots, you’re scared to death – take the first step forward. The grace comes with that one step and you get the grace as you step. Being afraid is not a problem; it’s doing nothing when you’re afraid.”
Pierce Brosnan knows he has had a wonderful life and still has, but his faith has been his “constant” support. “God has been good to me. My faith has been good to me in the moments of deepest suffering, doubt and fear. It is a constant, the language of prayer,” he stated in Irish TV RTE’s Late Late Show.
The feast of Saint Cecilia that we celebrate on November 22, reminds us once again to understand the community value of music. Good music strengthens social bonds in a positive sense, while bad music strengthens them in a negative sense. I have often related a fact as an example. When I was a professor in Macau, I gave my college students a theme, to explain their favorite song to me. Some entertained me about bands and songs honestly unknown to me, but what struck me was the fact that some of my students preferred songs that almost incited suicide.