People outside the Mt Carmel Church in Taipa

Our Lady of Carmel – how to build faith that moves mountains?

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Pastoral action, Father Eduardo Aguero claims, is synonymous with relationship and the relationship that the Argentine priest managed to build over the last few months with the Portuguese-speaking Catholic community of Taipa has transformed the Church of Our Lady of Carmel into an example of spiritual flourishing in Macau. The Dehonian missionary helped to establish a new Bible study group and to relaunch the Holy Childhood project. On Sunday, the Advent season begins with the institution of the twelve readers that will serve the Carmel parish during the new Liturgical Year.

Laying on of the hands

BITE-SIZE THEOLOGY (154) What are the essential elements needed to confer the Sacrament of Holy Orders?

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“The essential rite of the sacrament of Holy Orders for all three degrees consists in [1] the bishop’s imposition of hands on the head of the ordinand [the matter of the sacrament] and in [2] the bishop’s specific consecratory prayer asking God for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and his gifts proper to the ministry to which the candidate is being ordained [form] [Cf. Pius XII, apostolic constitution, Sacramentum Ordinis].”

CCCN to celebrate one-year anniversary with Winter concert

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The Macau Cardinal Newman Centre of Cultural and Performance Arts will celebrate its first anniversary on December 4th, with a Winter-themed recital, the last concert of the Four Season series. The show will take place outside the premises of the cultural centre, on Calçada da Vitória. Young musicians will perform jazz, Chinese traditional music and hits from as far away as Portugal.

DESERT by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay

Detecting Christ’s coming

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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.

Christ healing Peter's mother-in-law

BITE-SIZE THEOLOGY (152) What good does Anointing do to us?

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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.