The English Language School for Pastoral Ministry (Box Hill, VIC) recently held a Culture Day. Our 4 Timorese Carmelites, Fr Pedro Amaral, and Brs Agostinho Dos Santos, José Natalino Freitas and Anacleto Guterres Da Costa, were among the 18 different cultural groups involved at the School. Traditional dress, cultural songs, customs and food were shared by all.
Click here for more photos and a video of the Carmelites singing at Culture Day.
As the families of victims of the al Noor and Linwood Mosque massacres prepare to bury their loved ones and help each other heal, our thoughts and prayers go out to them. The Carmelite NGO has released a special prayer written by Fr Franciscus Ardji, OCarm.
The Carmelites of Australia and Timor-Leste are united in offering our prayers of support and consolation that our compassionate God will bring healing to our Muslim brothers and sisters and the whole of the New Zealand nation. Read the prayer here.
This Sunday’s Gospel of the Transfiguration completes the ‘little parable’ formed by the Gospels of the first two Sundays of Lent.
These Gospels tell us what Lent is about and what Christian life is about: a journey from temptation and doubt to transfiguration and faith. A journey away from allowing ourselves to be tempted to evil and towards allowing ourselves to be tempted to good by the action of God’s Holy Spirit within us.
Many times over the past few years the East Timor Students Association has met at the Carmelite Priory in Middle Park. This time it was to hold the annual elections for President and Vice President.
A total of 24 ETSA members, including our own Carmelite students, cast their votes and elected Elsa Pinto as President and Angela Tavares de Jesus as vice president of ETSA.
The handover of documents and reports from the former officers marked a new journey for ETSA under the new chairpersons.
Our great Lenten journey has begun! It’s a journey which begins in ash and ends in light. Fire is a profound part of our national experience. We know its power to destroy, blacken and reduce to ash. We know that evil can do the same - destroy our wholeness of spirit, blacken our lives and others’ and reduce the beauty of human life to so much ash.
We began Lent in the ash of acknowledging our own part in harbouring, creating and doing evil - those places in us where the fire of anger, bitterness, selfishness or narrowness of mind and heart has left nothing but smouldering ash.
On Ash Wednesday we begin our journey to the great feast of Easter.
Wearing ashes symbolises our desire for conversion, to turn again towards God. Repentance (conversion) is not so much about being sorry for individual sins. It is about changing the direction of our hearts – away from all that limits God’s love and action in us. Conversion is about opening ourselves to a fresh experience of God’s healing love which makes us whole and restores us to our rightful place as beloved daughters and sons in the Kingdom of God. It’s about moving back into right relationship with God and neighbour.
You can download reflections for each day of Lent drawn from the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Based on the see, judge, act method each day features a short observation about one of the goals, the scripture readings for that day and a call to do some concrete action which will help make the goal a reality in our own local situations.
This Lent, reflect on and transform your relationship to God’s creation through simple daily gestures and commitments. Take this time as an opportunity to live more wisely, think more deeply and love more generously. “Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.” (Pope Francis). The Calendar is made available by Catholic Religious Australia.
This month's issue of the JPIC newsletter highlights the tragedy of global human trafficking. Sr Claire Griffin talks about the work of Catholic Religious involved in alleviating suffering and rescuing victims. There's also a video on our JPIC page about the Zimbabwean Carmelite Sisters Agape Leona project helping Human Trafficking survivors in Africa, and the February Pope Video about human trafficking.
More than 40 Carmelites gathered at Blessed Titus Brandsma community in Fatuhada in Dili to welcome 3 new candidates into the Pre-Novitiate program. They are Manuel Xavier Gonzaga, Moises Soares, and Constantino Barreto Amaral. During the same celebration of Evening Prayer our 6 first year pre-novices were also admitted to the second year of the pre-novitiate program. Fr Paul Cahill (Prior Provincial) presided at the celebration and presented a small cross and medal to the pre-novices as a sign of their participation in the program.
The pre-Novices, Carmelites and guests shared food, drink, songs and dancing after the ceremony. See more photos.
