LATEST NEWS

Pope Francis has invited parishioners from every diocese in the world, including the Archdiocese of Melbourne, to participate in a worldwide Catholic questionnaire on the many challenges facing the family today. It covers: faith in family life, marriage, divorce, annulment, same sex unions, natural family planning and the participation in sacraments as part of family life. Attached is a summary we have made of the questions to help us in the consultation which Pope Francis has set up.
Please take home the sheet of questions and return your responses next Sunday 1 December. All replies will be collated and sent to the Melbourne Archdiocesan Office for Life, Marriage and the Family.
If you wish to read the original nine pages of questions, you may visit http://www.cam.org/synod. This is the first time a pope has consulted every fellow Catholic. Let us take up the opportunity.                                                

                     ……Kevin McIntosh

We offer our prayers and sympathy to Barry, Eileen and Mick as their father Jerry Keohane entered eternal life last Thursday having received the Sacrament of Viaticum (Holy Communion for the road– via (Latin) that morning from our Communion Minister to the Sick, Jean. Jerry was one of our parishioners for 26 years and was very fond of Sunbury which he found very friendly and which reminded him of the rolling hills of County Cork, Ireland. Vigil Prayers will be recited on Thursday evening at 7.00pm and his Funeral Mass will be at OLMC Church at 2pm on Friday being a pupil free day.

Reflection on the Gospel-33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time C, 17 November 2013
Sister Veronica Lawson rsm

(Luke 21:5-19)

Sixty years ago there was no Sydney Opera House. A hundred years ago there was no Harbour Bridge. It is hard to imagine a time when they did not exist or a time when they will cease to be, such is the status these monuments have acquired over a very short span of history. They are a source of wonder for tourists and locals alike. They have their counterparts elsewhere in our contemporary world. A few years ago, New York’s World Trade Centre was another such icon, seemingly indestructible and holding the pride of an economically and politically dominant nation, even if less aesthetically engaging than Sydney’s monuments.
In first century Palestine, the newly refurbished Jerusalem Temple was both aesthetically stunning and symbolically charged. It functioned primarily as the centre of religious worship. It was also an important locus of financial and political power. Its significance can hardly be exaggerated and its destruction at the hands of the Romans in 70CE was a devastating blow for the Jewish people. Luke is writing some twenty years after this event. He wants to tell his communities that the destruction of the Temple did not signal the end of the world, though that is how it might have seemed at the time.
There is life to be lived and there are struggles to be endured before God’s final judgment. Luke wants to offer hope and encouragement in the face of conflict and persecution and family division. He wants to offer his readers a caution not to listen to everyone who claims to know the time [kairos] of God’s visitation.
Like Jesus, disciples can expect to be ‘handed over’ and brought before political authorities. They are to find in this an opportunity to give witness or ‘to testify’. In his second volume, Luke has Jesus commissioning the disciples to be his witnesses ‘in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8). They don’t have to worry about what to say in their own defence: ‘I will give you words and wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.’ Endurance or patience is the way to life. The Greek term used here evokes the parable of the sower: ‘but as for that [the seed] in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance’ (Luke 8:15].
As we approach the end of the liturgical year, we are called to witness to a gospel way of life, to hold the word of God fast in honest and good hearts, and to trust that we are not alone in the everyday struggles of life, even when the world seems to be collapsing around us.

A Sing-a-Long will be held at Goonawarra Aged Care on Friday 20th December from 2.30pm to 3.15pm. All welcome. Come and catchup with old parishioners and friends and relatives. Help to spread a little Christmas cheer to those who don’t get out much……….no, sorry, that’s actually me!

“BETRAYAL OF TRUST”

The Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and other Non-Government Organisations released its report last Wednesday. 
For access to the report, the responses by the Church, recent updates, or to sign up for email alerts, visit the Church’s website: http://www.facingthetruth.org.au. As you know, we gathered as a parish last Wednesday for our Prayer Service of Sorrow for the victims of abuse. Those present appreciated all the planning by our Liturgy Group.