As in previous years we will host this most precious devotion of grace by continuous silent prayer before Jesus. This year, Adoration will be at St Mary MacKillop, Birkdale.

Adoration begins Friday 16th March 6:00pm and continues through until 8:00am Mass on Sunday 18th March.

Please consider spending one hour over the weekend in silent prayer before Jesus. A roster for 40 hours of continuous Adoration is on the Welcome Desk.

Adoration is also available during Lent on Thursdays between 5pm and 6pm. Come and adore Him! 

Dear friends

Have you been watching the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea? I can’t say I’ve been watching a lot of it but one thing that has captured my attention are the medal ceremonies. Those athletes that have come first, second or third in their particular event are rewarded with an Olympic medal by an official as they stand on the medal podium or dais. The traditional dais has the person who came first standing on the highest step, with second slightly lower, followed by third, who is slightly lower than second. These athletes literally have a mountain top experience. They are elevated physically and having studied the faces from the winners at this Winter Olympics in South Korea, I’d suggest that they are elevated emotionally too.
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The gospel this Sunday is the Transfiguration. The Transfiguration is a high mountain top experience for Peter, James and John; first, second and third if you’d like. Peter, James and John are physically and emotionally elevated and I dare say spiritually elevated too. But, just like the medal winners they don’t stay on the dais or mountain top forever, they eventually venture back down to the valleys and plains of their life. The invitation to us in this 2nd Week of Lent is to not to forget our mountain top experiences with Jesus but to cherish them like Olympians do with their medals. To hold onto our mountain top experiences with Jesus and to let them dazzle the everyday.

God bless
Deacon Tom

Dear friends

This week I thought I would take a little section from Pope Francis' 2018 Lenten Message. In this section Pope Francis reminds us of the ancient practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. 

By devoting more time to prayer, we enable our hearts to root out our secret lies and forms of self-deception, and then to find the consolation God offers. He is our Father and he wants us to live life well. 

Almsgiving sets us free from greed and helps us to regard our neighbour as a brother or sister. What I possess is never mine alone. How I would like almsgiving to become a genuine style of life for each of us! How I would like us, as Christians, to follow the example of the apostles and see in the sharing of our possessions a tangible witness of the communion that is ours in the Church! For this reason, I echo Saint Paul's exhortation to the Corinthians to take up a collection for the community of Jerusalem as something from which they themselves would benefit (cf. 2 Cor 8:10). This is all the more fitting during the Lenten season, when many groups take up collections to assists Churches and peoples in need. Yet I would also hope that, even in our daily encounters with those who beg for our assistance, we would see such requests as coming from God Himself. When we give alms, we share in God's providential care for each of His children. If through me God someone today, will He not tomorrow provide for my own needs? For no one is more generous than God.

Fasting weakens our tendency to violence; it disarms us and become an important opportunity for growth. On the one hand, it allows us to experience what the destitute and the starving have to endure. On the other hand, it expresses our own spiritual hunger and thirst for life in God. Fasting wakes us up. It makes us more attentive to God and neighbour. It revives our desire to obey God, who alone is capable of satisfy our hunger.

I would also like my invitation to extend beyond the bounds of the Catholic Church, and to reach all of you, men an women of good will, who are open to hearing God's voice. Perhaps, like ourselves, you are disturbed by the spread of iniquity in the world, you are concerned about the chill that paralyses hearts and actions, and you see a weakening in our  sense of being members of the one human family. Join us, then, in raising our plea to God, in fasting, and in offering whatever you can to our brothers and sisters in need!

God bless
​Deacon Tom

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Dear friends

Being afflicted with leprosy is horrendous and debilitating in so many ways. The most obvious manifestation of this contagious disease might be the mucous membranes and the lumps appearing all over the lepers’ skin or in severe cases disfigurement and deformities of the limbs. As ghastly and no doubt painful as this side of leprosy is
today’s first reading and gospel shows us other ways leprosy debilitates. 
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The first reading from Leviticus details how the leper must yell out, “unclean, unclean”, when people pass by and how they must live apart from the rest of the community. The gospel details how a desperate leper falls to his knees and pleads to be cured from his physical pain and the pain of isolation. What’s Jesus’ reaction to this nameless leper? Does he recoil in disgust and self-preservation? Does Jesus pretend he didn’t see him? No! Jesus goes against every taboo and reaches out his hand to touch the leper. This touch does more than heal the leper from his physical affliction. Jesus’ healing hand also breaks down the barriers of isolation and brings the leper back to community and communion. In 2018 ‘leprosy’ comes in many different guises. What will our response be to someone with a modern form of this ancient affliction?

God bless
​Deacon Tom

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Dear friends

The first reading on this 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time is a short section from the book of Job. Job is an extraordinary book and you probably already know the story well. Job is an affluent fellow who experiences devastating losses in wealth, health and family. Job is rightly puzzled by his predicament and today we hear a short section whereby Job converses with one of his friends.
 
In the seminary, I was fortunate enough to have an initiative and gifted scholar from America who helped our class navigate the wide expanse that is the book of Job. Our professor cleverly paired Job, an ancient text from the Hebrew scriptures, with the modern-day movie by the Coen brothers, A Serious Man (2009).
 
The protagonist in the movie, A Serious Man is a fellow named Larry. Larry is by all accounts a modern-day Job. At the start of both texts, the protagonists have all the trappings of the material world. The parallel continues as both Larry and Job fall triumphantly from grace. In the midst of their respective experiences, both suffer tremendously. Thus, both texts enviably ask the big question; what is the role of suffering in the world? And, where is God in suffering? Larry, like Job, learns that suffering has a purgatory and humbling effect that can provide a new perspective on life and one's relationship with God. In the ending of A Serious Man, a mysterious whirlwind ironically gives the character of Larry hope because in his ‘Jobian' world he yearns to be answered, as Job was, "the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind" (Job 38:1).
 
The wisdom revealed to both Job and Larry is true for us as well. That is, you are never alone in your suffering. Suffering is not proof of the absence of God as; "nothing can separate us from the love of God" (Rom 8:39). Jesus is Emmanuel, which means, God is with us.
 
God bless
​Deacon Tom