Evening for couples coming up in Melbourne and Sydney

Love and Truth has organised an evening for married or engaged couples in Melbourne on 30 August and in Sydney on 13 September.

In Melbourne in Burwood the Emmanuel Community welcomes married and engaged couples for a relaxing and enjoyable wine and cheese evening.  The topic of the evening is "Holy Husbands and Wives in History...Inspiring us today."  Further details, including about how to RSVP, can be found on the flyer when you click here.

In Sydney the evening will be held in Croydon Park on Saturday 13 September.  The evening will include a very nourishing variety of wine and cheese, as well as discussion about "Embracing your Spouses’ Family".  Further details, including about how to RSVP, can be found on the flyer when you click here.

Rome School of Mission posts new promo video.

18 Students.

13 countries of origin.

9 months of intellectual, spiritual, human and mission formation. 

Must be this year's ESM promo video.

St Peter's Square Way of the Cross by ESM students

How to evangelise today?  On Good Friday the students of the Emmanuel School of Mission in Rome prepared and acted out the Stations of the Cross in the most public place of the city of Rome, St Peter's Square.  Seen by thousands of international tourists from all over the world, the students shared with those around them the reality of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ and its importance at the very heart of their own lives.  You can enter into their proclamation by checking out the 6 minute video on Youtube.  Indeed, Resurrexit!

Love and Truth in Sydney 3 May 8pm

Married?  Engaged?  Going out?  Love and Truth are different evenings organised to bring together couples to learn, share and grow through the challenges and joys of relationship and married life - over select cheeses and complimentary fine wines!

The next Love and Truth evening in Sydney will be Saturday 3 May starting from 8pm.  For more details, or to rsvp, please contact the co-ordinators at loveandtruthsydney@gmail.com.

Zacchaeus course starting in Sydney 30 April 2014

New in Sydney this year, the Emmanuel Community is launching the Zacchaeus Course starting on 30 April.

The Zacchaeus course is for any person seeking to live out the relationship to their work, the common good, property and the poor and underprivileged in a more fully integrated way.  Based on the social teaching of the Catholic Church, each week's presentation is followed by guided exercises on the theme of the presentation to be put into practice during the weeks that follow.  In this way, Zacchaeus does not remain a merely intellectual exercise, but rather an opportunity to grow and really change the world where we are.

While requiring a certain level of commitment, those following the course will only need to meet together once every fortnight.  Based at Homebush Public Library, the course will beginning on the 30 April at a one-off cost of $50.

For more details, please contact us via email on zacchaeussydney@gmail.com.

"Think big! Open your hearts" Francis says to world's youth

(Source: holyfamilyjmj.org)

Pope Francis to Young People: "Think Big! Open Your Hearts"
Holy See Releases Pontiff's Message for the 29th World Youth Day

Vatican City, February 06, 2014 (Zenit.org) | 250 hits

The Holy See today published Pope Francis’ message for the 29th World Youth Day (WYD), which will take place on Palm Sunday, April 13. The theme for this year’s event is based on an excerpt from the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.

World Youth Day, which was initiated by Blessed John Paul II in 1984, is celebrated annually on a diocesan level and internationally every two to three years. Pope Francis attended the international WYD last year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in his first international apostolic journey as Pontiff. The final Mass of the event was attended by over 3.5 million youth from around the world.

“How vividly I recall the remarkable meeting we had in Rio de Janeiro for the Twenty-eighth World Youth Day,” the Pope’s message stated. “It was a great celebration of faith and fellowship! The wonderful people of Brazil welcomed us with open arms, like the statue of Christ the Redeemer which looks down from the hill of Corcovado over the magnificent expanse of Copacabana beach. There, on the seashore, Jesus renewed his call to each one of us to become his missionary disciples.”

The Holy Father began his message by reflecting on the Beatitudes, which he said were “new and revolutionary” in presenting “a model of happiness contrary to what is usually communicated by the media and by the prevailing wisdom.”

“A worldly way of thinking finds it scandalous that God became one of us and died on a cross! According to the logic of this world, those whom Jesus proclaimed blessed are regarded as useless, 'losers.' What is glorified is success at any cost, affluence, the arrogance of power and self-affirmation at the expense of others,” he wrote.

The Pope went on to call on the youth of the world to resist the enticements that present a false illusion of happiness. In doing so, one risks settling for less and “thinking small," he said.

“Think big instead! Open your hearts!” the Pope wrote.

John Paul II

In a communique released by the Pontifical Council for the Laity, the Holy Father’s message is presented as an invitation to young people to imitate Jesus in their own lives, like Saint Francis of Assisi.

“Young Christians are therefore called to conversion, to embrace an evangelical lifestyle, one of moderation in which we seek the essential and act in solidarity with the poor,” the communique stated. “The Pope explains that the poor are both the 'suffering flesh' of Christ that we are all called to personally touch, and they are also true masters of life, often with much to offer on the human and spiritual plane.”

Concluding his message, Pope Francis reminded the youth that this year will mark 30 years since Pope John Paul II entrusted the World Youth Day cross to the youth. The upcoming canonization of the late Pontiff, he said, will be an event marked by great joy.

“He will be the great patron of the World Youth Days which he inaugurated and always supported,” the Pope wrote. “In the communion of saints he will continue to be a father and friend to all of you.”

World Youth Day 2016 will be held in Krakow, Poland, where Blessed John Paul II served as Cardinal prior to his election to the papacy. (J.A.E.)

(February 06, 2014) © Innovative Media Inc.

Francis: "The joy of praise leads us to the joy of the feast"

(Source: sandyfordparish.org)

Reflecting on the episode from the Second Book of Samuel, which was read at Mass, in which “David danced with all his might before the Lord,” Pope Francis recalled that the whole people of Israel were celebrating because the Ark of the Covenant was returning home. He went on to say that David’s prayer of praise, “led him to move beyond all composure,” adding, “this was precisely a prayer of praise.”

Explaining that the passage caused his thoughts to turn to Sarah, Abraham’s wife, who, after giving birth to her son, Isaac, said, “The Lord made ​​me dance with joy.” He said that it is easy to understand a prayer of petition – asking something of the Lord – and prayer of thanksgiving, as well. Even prayer of adoration, he said, “is not so difficult,” to understand. Prayer of praise, however, “We leave aside – it does not come to us so easily [It. Non ci viene così spontanea].”:

“‘But, Father! This is for the Renewal in the Spirit folks, not for all Christians!’ No: prayer of praise is a Christian prayer, for all of us. In the Mass, every day, when we sing the Holy, Holy, Holy ... This is a prayer of praise: we praise God for his greatness, because He is great. We say beautiful things to Him, because we happy for His greatness [It. perché ci piace che sia così]. ‘But, Father! I am not able...I have to...’ Well, you’re able to shout when your team scores a goal, and you are not able to sing praises to the Lord? To come out of your shell ever so slightly to sing [His praise]? Praising God is completely gratis. [In it] we do not ask [Him to give us anything]: we do not express gratitude for anything [He has given]; we praise [Him]!”

We need to pray “whole-heartedly,” he said. “It is also an act of justice, because He is great! He is our God.” David, Pope Franics went on to observe, “was so happy, because the ark was returning, the Lord was returning: his body, too, prayed with that dance.”:

“[Here is] a good question for us to pose to ourselves today: ‘But how am I doing vis à vis prayer of praise? Do I know how to praise the Lord? Do I know how to praise the Lord when I pray the Gloria or the Sanctus? Is my whole heart really in it, or do I merely mouth [the words]. What does David dancing here say to me, and Sarah, dancing for joy? When David enters the city there begins another thing: a party!”

“The joy of praise,” said Pope Francis, “leads us to the joy of the feast - the feast of the family.” The Pope went on to recall how, when David returned to the palace, Michal, the daughter of King Saul, scolded him and asked him if he did not feel ashamed for having danced like that in front of everyone, he, who is the king. Michal “despised David”:

“I wonder sometimes how many times we despise good people in our hearts, good people who praise the Lord as it comes to them, so spontaneously, because they are not cultured, because they do not follow the formalities? [I mean really] despise [them]? The Bible says that, because of this, Michal remained sterile for the rest of her life. What does the Word of God mean, here? [It means] that joy, that the prayer of praise makes us fruitful! Sarah danced in the great moment of her fecundity – at the age of ninety! The fruitfulness that praise of the Lord gives us, the gratuity of praising the Lord: that man or that woman who praises the Lord, who prays praising the Lord, who, when praying the Gloria is filled with joy at doing so, and who, when singing the Sanctus in the Mass rejoices in singing it, is a fruitful person.”

On the other hand, warned Pope Francis, “Those, who are closed in the formality of a prayer that is cold, stingy [It. misurata], might end up as Michal, in the sterility of her formality.” The Pope asked, then, [that we] imagine David dancing, “with all his might before the Lord,” and that, “we think how beautiful it is to make the prayer of praise.” It will do us good, he said, to repeat the words of Psalm 23, which we prayed today: “Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lifted up, O eternal gates: and the King of Glory shall enter in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the King of Glory.”

(Source: http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-at-daily-mass-the-fruitfulness-of-pra)

Adoration weekly in Sydney starting 30 Jan 2014

From the 30th January 2014 the Emmanuel Community is organising silent adoration every Thursday evening from 8pm to 9pm in Sydney.

The address of the church is:

Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church
74 Underwood Rd
Homebush

"One day, having a little more leisure-for occupations confided to me left me scarcely any-I was praying before the Blessed Sacrament, when I felt myself wholly penetrated with that Divine Presence, but to such a degree that I lost all thought of myself and of the place where I was, and abandoned myself to this Divine Spirit, yielding up my heart to the power of His Love. He made me repose for a long time upon His Sacred Breast, where He disclosed to me the marvels of His Love and the inexplicable secrets of His Sacred Heart, which so far He had concealed from me. Then it was that, for the first time, He opened to me His Divine Heart in a manner so real and sensible as to be beyond all doubt, by reason of the effects which this favor produced in me, fearful, as I always am, of deceiving myself in anything that I say of what passes in time. It seems to me that this is what took place:" 

"My Divine Heart is so inflamed with love for men, and for you in particular that, being unable any longer to contain within Itself the flames of Its burning Charity, It must needs spread them abroad by your means, and manifest Itself to them (mankind) in order to enrich them with the precious graces of sanctification and salvation necessary to withdraw them from the abyss of perdition. I have chosen you as an abyss of unworthiness and ignorance for the accomplishment of this great design, in order that everything may be done by Me." 

"After this He asked me for my heart, which I begged Him to take. He did so and placed it in His own Adorable Heart where He showed it to me as a little atom which was being consumed in this great furnace, and withdrawing it thence as a burning flame in the form of a heart, He restored it to the place whence He had taken it

St Margaret Mary, 27 December 1673. (Source: EWTN)

How to change in 9 months: ESM Rome

9 months of Formation, Adoration, Compassion, Evangelisation - Transformation!

Applications for ESM Rome are now open here.