Category: Spirituality

The Rosary is recited at St Anne’s Church every Saturday morning from 9am and is led by the Legion of Mary.

Adoration is prayed on the first Friday of every month in St Anne’s Church from 7pm to 8pm.

The Emmaus Charismatic Prayer Group meets at St. Anne’s Church at 10.15am on Thursdays.  All welcome, including children.  For further info/transport  contact Lambert & Elaine van der Weerden on 9744 4029.

We will be running Lenten Sessions after 8.30am Mass in the Parish Centre for approximately 40 minutes. The sessions will be repeated the following Tuesday after 7.00pm Mass at OLMC Church. There are six sessions in this series and you are welcome to attend as many as you like.
The sessions start with an Opening Prayer followed by a focus question from the Apostolic Letter The Start of the New Millennium, by Blessed John Paul the Second . Next, the Sunday Gospel is read and we listen to a reflection on the Gospel. That is followed by a period of discussion and sharing and then a short period of silence in the Christian Meditation tradition. Finally we close in prayer, remove our name-tags, and step back into the world with a lighter step.
Total cost is $8 to cover the costs of materials purchased.

Lenten Sessions 2013 will be starting from Sunday 17 February after 8.30am Mass in the Parish Centre, behind St Anne’s Church, for approximately forty minutes. The session will be repeated the following Tuesday at OLMC church after 7pm Mass. There are six sessions in this series, and you are welcome to come to as many as you like! They are reflective of the Sunday readings, so will enhance the experience from Mass. Total cost is $8 to cover cost of materials purchased.

This Celebration will be held on Sunday 20 January 2013 at Good Shepherd Parish, 88 South Circular Rd, Gladstone Park.
Celebrations begin at 1.50pm and conclude at approx. 4pm.

From Monday 14 January at 9.30am to Friday 18 January 2013, a National Conference entitled “Holy Spirit Come!” will be held. This conference will feature four high powered Catholic Lay Evangelists from around the world! Each one will present encouragement and hope through a call to a renewed faith. Cost of Conference is $150 per person.
For Melbourne Youth to gather, a free event called “One”- one God, one Spirit, one Church– will be held on Friday 18 January 2013 from 7.30-10.30pm at Central Hall, 20 Brunswick St, Fitzroy. Enthusiastic speaker’s and musical talent will raise the spirits of all who attend.
Info can be found on the Welcome Desk or please direct all enquiries to 9486 6544.

This will be held in St Anne’s Church on Wednesday 12 December 2012 at 7.30pm. Our Penitential Service will be one of reflection on the Advent readings with periods of meditation. There will not be individual Sacramental Reconciliation at this Service.

She wishes people to celebrate each year on December 8, between 12-1pm in St Anne’s Church, the hour of graces for the whole world.
With this exercise, one will receive numerous spiritual and bodily graces.
All are welcome.
For those who wish to learn to pray the rosary, check out a beautiful and helpful website at www.therosary3.com.

November is traditionally the month to remember those who have entered eternal peace starting on Thursday 1 November, with All Saints Day. We invite you to take a memorial sheet and complete it. The sheets will be placed in a memorial book where all our dearly departed will be remembered and prayed for by our Parish.

EVENING ADORATION will be held at St Anne’s Church on Friday 5 October from 7-8pm.

As part of the Year of Grace, the relic of St Francis Xavier will be part of a national pilgrimage.
For the dates and places please visit www.pilgrimageofgrace.org.au.

Reflection on the Gospel-23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B
Veronica Lawson RSM

(Mark 7:31-37)

Those who are profoundly deaf frequently find themselves on the edge of the human and earth communities. Without access to birdsong, to spoken discourse, to the vast range of media communication, they often struggle to understand and to be understood. Their capacity to communicate their deepest wisdom, their hopes and dreams, their anxieties and fears, is limited not only by personal disability but also by the incomprehension of others. In our contemporary technological world, sophisticated hearing devices and cochlear implants transform the lives of many who previously suffered from serious hearing loss and its social consequences. Whatever degree of deafness is experienced, relief from such an affliction offers far more than physical healing. It brings insertion into the life of family and community and workplace. It opens up new horizons and unimagined possibilities.

In first century Palestine, the chances of relief from hearing deficiency and associated speech impairment were minimal. Desperate people put their faith in folk healers who used their healing hands and drew upon their knowledge of the medicinal properties in certain herbs and other plants. It seems clear that Jesus was known as an effective healer and that he used some of the same methods as other healers of his time. Many of his contemporaries in that part of the world would have turned to Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, or his daughter Hygeia. Jesus turns, not to Asclepius or Hygeia, but to the God of Israel (‘looking up to heaven…’) as the source of healing power.

There is layer upon layer of meaning in today’s healing story. Place features significantly. Jesus travels from Tyre on the northern Mediterranean coast to the Sea of Galilee via the non-Jewish territory on the eastern side of the lake. It was a regular route, but definitely not the most direct one. The gospel writer seems to be stressing the all-embracing nature of Jesus’ healing ministry. As the gospel story has unfolded, we have found that the same healing power of God is available to Jews and Gentiles, to male and female, young and old alike. It is available to those with bodily afflictions and those who are paralysed by anxiety and fear. There is irony in the telling of the story: a Gentile deaf man can be brought from no hearing to hearing, from ‘speaking with difficulty’ to clarity of speech, but Jesus’ own disciples will shortly fail to hear and understand (‘Do you have ears and not hear?’-Mark 8:18). We open our ears to hear in the hope of understanding.