The University of Saint Joseph will be welcoming students from Portugal’s largest educational institution for socially disadvantaged children and youth as soon as next year. The program was confirmed to “O Clarim” by Álvaro Barbosa, Vice-rector for Internationalization and Academic Affairs of USJ. Macau’s Catholic university signed a collaborative agreement with Casa Pia de Lisboa just before Christmas.
In his usual Sunday Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square, on the occasion of the feast of the Baptism of the Lord which, according to the liturgical calendar currently in force in the Catholic Church, marks the end of the Christmas season, Pope Francis made the following statement: “the face and voice of God are revealed through the human side of Jesus”.
This prayer of the priest appears before my eyes in a hallucinative glow on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord: “May the mingling of this water and wine bring us to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share our humanity.” The celebrant of the Eucharist utters this prayer under breath while mixing a drop of water into wine in preparation for the offertory. When I said this prayer during my first mass, the baptism scene of Jesus came to my mind without any prior meditation, and it stayed on with me.
In the long sermon delivered on 1 January during the celebration of the New Year Mass in the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Damascus, Yohanna X, Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, stressed the expressed desire of Syrian Christians to commit themselves to the peaceful construction of “a new Syria”, hoping that the new administration will have the same desire.
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:18-19).
On Christmas Day, the Holy Door was opened in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, starting a Jubilee that will last until the end of 2025. It will be the great theme of the year! The beginning of a new stage for the Church and the world.
Pope Francis writes movingly: the Beatitudes are “the identity card” of Christians, and portray the Master for all(EG 63). We wish to reflect first on the Beatitudes in general, and second, of Jesus as the Beatitude of God. (In two columns)