Imagine that you have organised a big feast for your daughter’s wedding and after thinking and debating about who will be on your guest list, with one week to go before the wedding, you learn that a lot of the guests you are expecting to be there start begging off and offering cheap excuses and even worse some of them won’t give a word why, they just say that they can’t turn up.

Anyone who has the good fortune to visit the Vatican should take up the opportunity to visit the Sistine Chapel and gaze upon the frescoed ceiling painted by the great Rennaisance artist, Michelangelo Buonarotti, the most famous part of which is surely ‘The Creation of Adam.’

It’s been really amazing to witness a million and half young people from all over the world gather in Lisbon, Portugal for World Youth Day 2023

Whenever I have the chance, I watch a movie every now and then. Sometimes there is something at the movies that catches my attention and if I have the time, I’ll go and watch it as my form of stress-reducing recreation.

Almost every time before the movie proper, there are film clips about what kind of movies are coming up in the next week or so. It’s like a sneak peek of what’s next. Not giving away everything but somehow enticing us to come back to the movie house because they have something nice to offer.

My Dad used to eat papaya and one day he decided to throw the seeds onto our lot near our house. Then he was surprised when one day the seed that he had thrown grew and soon enough it was producing fruit and my mum had no need to buy papaya anymore. You can just imagine how fruitful that soil was.

Fr Elmer Ibarra SVD travelled to Argentina this month to attend the 10^th plenary assembly of the Catholic Biblical Federation, an experience he says which reaffirmed and gave fresh energy to his commitment to proclaiming the Word of God in a fragile world.

Fr Elmer, who is Rector of the SVD formation house, Dorish Maru College, in Melbourne, attended the assembly in his capacity as coordinator of the Bible apostolate for the SVD Australia Province.

When I was studying nursing, we learnt two kinds of isolation for patients. The first kind of isolation is when a patient is set apart because they are so vulnerable to getting bugs from other people that they might get a lot sicker.

The first reading from the Prophet Jeremiah speaks of how Jeremiah was ill treated for doing God’s work. He is thrown in the well since he is accused of dampening the spirit of the soldiers and the people by speaking the truth.

The Gospel reading for this Sunday invites us to be ready and dressed for action. We remember the Gospel from last Sunday, where the rich man, seeing the bumper harvest he had, thinks of building bigger barns and store all the wealth to himself and doesn’t even give a second thought of sharing it with the other.

I have to admit that for quite some time I have not read many SVD publications. I feel I don’t find anything new. The familiar messages of multi/intercultural, international, dialogue(s), mission, ‘world is our parish’, ‘unity in diversity’… all sound too familiar from the novitiate days and almost slogan-like. It’s the same message, just under different packaging. Social justice and climate change! Oh yeah, great! Who would not stand up for such lofty ideas in this age of the globalisation, unless one is a bigot.

Like doubting Thomas, instead of taking ideas for granted, we must keep asking questions and re-examine what is passed on to us. Renew and revive!