God will never abandon us …

“God, out of love, can lead us to walk on difficult paths, to experience wounds and painful thorns, but He will never abandon us, He will always be with us, next to us, within us. For a believer this, more than a hope, is a certainty. God is with me.” | Pope Francis, General Audience, 20 March 2019

Ash Wednesday

Come back to the Lord with all your heart; leave the past in ashes, and turn to God with tears and fasting, for he is slow to anger and ready to forgive. (Jol 2:13)

 

 

Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent; the smudge on the forehead, the sign of the ashes. The liturgy invites us to what must appear to the sleek, gleaming technological world as something odd in the extreme – a liberation of heart that comes about not just by “receiving the ashes” but by accepting ourselves as being “dust and ashes”.

Dust and ashes are immemorial symbols of our human fate.  Ash Wednesday invites us to reclaim the lost ground, our earthy insignificance; to come back to earth; to refuse to be gods or supermen, to be HUMILES, ‘humble’, on the level of the dust human, HUMANI – of the earth, “for out of it you were taken; you are dust and to dust you shall return (Genesis 19).

– Tony Kelly C.Ss.R.

Diaconate Ordination of Tony Simbel C.P. by Bishop Richard Umbers, Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, Saturday 2 March 2019

COLLECT FOR THE ORDINATION OF A DEACON

O God, who have taught the ministers of your Church to seek not to be served but to serve their brothers and sisters, grant, we pray, that Tony whom you graciously choose today for the office of Deacon, may be effective in action, gentle in ministry, and constant in prayer. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Passion of Jesus …