The apostles’ request—“Increase our faith!”—is one we’ve all echoed at some point, when we could not take in pains, despite our best efforts to believe, when we doubted God altogether when tragedies stuck our lives unawares and how many other ways! “Increase our faith” sounds noble, even holy.
Although the prophet Elijah did not author any biblical book, I chose to begin by presenting him as a model of prophetic ministry. Elijah is often compared to Moses, who is regarded as one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament. Significantly, both Elijah and Moses appear together on Mount Tabor during Jesus’ transfiguration, symbolizing the continuity between the Law and the Prophets.
The Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus established earlier this week a new Formation House in Taipa island. The project was officially inaugurated and blessed last Monday and brought Father Carlos Luis Suárez Codorníu once again to Macau. The Superior General of the Priests of the Sacred Heart introduced the vocational center, whose fundamental purpose is to prepare postulants “so that they can better serve the Church in China”. The new Blessed Juan María de la Cruz Formation House is currently home to four young men, three from Vietnam and one from India, but the number may increase as early as next year, Father Carlos Luis Codorniú told “O Clarim”.
At the end of 2024, O Clarim published a series of columns on hope. Thereafter, another series on faith. It is now the turn of charity, the third theological virtue.
Pope Leo XIV proclaimed, earlier this month, the first two saints of his papacy, in a historic ceremony at Saint Peter’s Square, including the first saint of the millennial generation. Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati, two Italian lay young men born nearly a century apart, joined the ranks of Saint Therese of Lisieux and Saint Dominic Savio as saints of the Roman Catholic Church. The Holy Father urged young people around the world to look to the new saints’ testimony of faith as an example. In Portugal, where Saint Carlo’s spiritual legacy is touching more and more hearts, floats bearing the image of the young Italian saint took to the streets of several parishes’ hours after the teenagers’ canonization. António Machado, a deacon who wrote one of the first ever books about Carlo Acutis in the Portuguese language, explains why the Italian teenager, who died of leukemia in 2006, became a mass phenomenon among young people. Acutis, Mr. Machado told “O Clarim”, stands out as beacon of hope and a role model for contemporary Christians.