Tag Archive for ‘Christmas’
Wednesday 14th December
St John of the Cross Isaiah 45:6-8,18, 21-26; Psalm 85:9-14; Luke 7:19-23 Christmas: presents or presence? As we get closer to Christmas, we have another episode involving John the Baptist and Jesus. Yet the deep question of John is the basic question of Christmas and its meaning: Is Jesus the promised saviour from God, or […]
Sunday 4th December
2nd Sunday of Advent Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8,12-13,17; Matthew 3:1-12 Preparing for Christmas We are now in the second week of Advent and we are encouraged to prepare and make an easy entry for Jesus into my life and heart; remove barriers, sinful attitudes and unhelpful habits. There is a tone of judgment and […]
Holy Innocents – 28 December
Our liturgy throws us another curve ball today – we celebrate the feast of the Holy Innocents, recalling the young killed on the order of Herod (Matthew 2: 13 – 23). The nuisance is that chronologically this happens after the visit of the Magi, which we celebrate on 8 January!! If you still have any […]
Immanuel and a baby called Isaiah
The parents decided to call their newborn son Isaiah much to the surprise of the wider family. Isaiah was the Old Testament prophet who predicted Jesus’ future birth. Isaiah 7:14”…the young woman is with child and will give birth to a son whom she will call Immanual.” Apart from this old, biblical name, everything else […]
Francis Speaks
Joseph and Mary went up “to the city of David called Bethlehem” (Lk 2:4). Bethlehem: the name means ‘house of bread’. In this ‘house’, the Lord today wants to encounter all mankind. He knows that we need food to live. Yet he also knows that the nourishments of this world do not satisfy the heart. In Scripture, […]
God Present Among Us
Normally writing the editorial Focus for the Marist Messenger is difficult. One difficulty is that it is written a couple of months in advance with the focus clearly on something relevant to the month. Additionally, for this combined issue, this Focus must cover the two months of December – January. This is my first for […]
The Welcoming Heart of Christmas
As a child, it was exciting to visit my grandparent’s house. I’d run down the path along the side of the house – either I was too excited to walk or I was racing my brothers and sisters to get there first. Somehow I always managed to avoid tripping up on the raised edges of […]
Witnesses of the Cross – Light in Darkness
Our witness can be weakened by worldliness and mediocrity. The cross demands instead a limpid testimony. For the cross is not a flag to wave, but the pure source of a new way of living. And this new way is that of the Gospel, that of the Beatitudes. A witness who bears the cross in […]
December
Society of Mary Final Professions On 26 September, Fr Setefano Mataele, the Provincial of Oceania, received the perpetual vows of Brs Ratu Adrea Naleba and Joseph Tora from Fiji. Both are students at Marist College, Suva. At the General House of the Society of Mary on 3 October, Charles Mbara Apéké from Cameroon and Hayden […]
The God Nobody Seemed To Want
The Messiah was predicted and longed for among the Jewish people but when God actually came among us, the light was so different from what was expected, that in our shallow human perceptions it appeared that Christ was the God that nobody seemed to want. We expected a king of this world and received a […]
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