We have no idea how our small efforts, which we might think are irrelevant and unnoticed, if sustained by God’s grace, can give comfort, direction and hope to our fellow brothers and sisters who, like me, are often lost and weary.
Year: 2023
How could one become salt and light?
The Christian is salt of the earth: with her/his presence, s/he is called upon to prevent corruption, not to allow society guided by wicked principles to rot and go into decay.
BITE-SIZE THEOLOGY (208): What are our duties towards human life?
Catholic teaching states that human life must be respected because it is sacred. It is not lawful for anyone to destroy an innocent human being. However, there are times when our duty is to defend life, especially our own. We can legitimately defend ourselves while choosing not to kill.
FORGIVING OTHERS BRINGS HAPPINESS
Hurt? Betrayed? Resentful? ‘Forgiveness is the best medicine’ is an age-old adage and nothing is as effective as forgiveness for healing deep wounds. To forgive and be forgiven makes every day a new day.
‘In Macau, the Church enhances the coexistence between East and West’
While the Catholic Church reinforces and integrates the particularities of Macau’s uniqueness as a multicultural space through religious practices, the Portuguese authorities in Lisbon need to pay attention to the Portuguese people who have already left Macau in recent years and others who say they will soon do so, claiming to some extent the “orphanhood” they feel in relation to the expected support from official institutions in Portugal.
Interview with Associated Press: Pope Francis speaks on Ukraine, homosexuality and more
Largely, the Associated Press has been very aggressive against the Catholic Church but a giant of this size has room for many exceptions, as this interview with Pope Francis showed. The conversation with the journalists ventured across many important topics.
Hundreds of Filipino devotees throng St Augustine’s Church to celebrate feast of Santo Niño
The Filipino community in Macau prayed and danced once again in praise of Señor Santo Niño. The Sinulog celebrations and the devotion to the Holy Child of Cebu brought together more than five hundred devotees at Saint Augustine’s Church on January 15. Father Felipe Bacalso, SJ, who arrived in Macau in later October, presided over the ceremonies.
Empty handed in front of God to be ready to receive His goodness
We might think that Jesus’ words are thoroughly unreasonable. But after looking at the history of the Church, and even human history in general, pope Benedict was convinced that the Sermon on the Mount “is the real high road of life; it is only on the way of love, whose paths are described in the Sermon on the Mount, that the richness of life and the greatness of man’s calling are opened up.”
Being Truly Poor in Spirit
This beatitude is not a message of resignation but of hope: no one will be in need when all become “poor in spirit,” when they put the gifts they have received from God in the service of others, as does God, “the Holy One” who, while possessing everything, is infinitely poor: he holds nothing back, gives everything, even his Son.
“I’m just another humble servant”
Paul Pun Chi Meng was earlier this month awarded the Medal of Merit in Philanthropy by the Government of Macau, an award that the Secretary-General of Caritas dedicated to Father Luís Ruíz and Mother Maria Góis, the pioneers of modern social work in Macau. Paul Pun spoke to O Clarim about the challenges Caritas has faced over the last few weeks, but claims the difficulties are already part of the past.