ParishNews

Dear Friends in Christ, The theme of ‘community’ is central to today’s liturgy. We read in the Acts of the Apostles of the fidelity that marked the early Christian community – a fidelity to the ‘teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers’ [Acts 2:42]. For the…

Sessions of Preparation for First Eucharist, 2 May 2017 The Sacraments of Initiation program will recommence with sessions of preparation for First Eucharist on Tuesday 2 May 2017 at 7.30pm  at  St Patrick’s Cathedral Hall. For any other information regarding the Sacramental Process for Children already Baptised please contact Meg Gale: sacrament@stpatscathedral.com.au Further to the…

Today we celebrate the great solemnity of Easter – a time when “God our Father by raising Christ…has conquered the power of death and opened for us the way to eternal life” (Opening Prayer for Easter Sunday morning Mass). Knowing and living by this fact we can indeed proclaim the words of the Responsorial Psalm…

Dear Friends, With this Sunday’s liturgy we enter into the most sacred and solemn week of the Church’s year. It is begun amid the ‘Hosannas’ of Palm Sunday and ends with the ‘Alleluias’ of Easter. In between, we are invited to journey with Jesus to Jerusalem, and more especially to Calvary and to the Empty…

With this, the Fifth Sunday of Lent, we are challenged to consider perhaps the most daunting element of our human existence ~ that of death, resurrection and eternal life. The after-life, our existence beyond the moment of death, what happens to us when we die, have been issues that have fascinated the minds of people…

This Sunday we encounter the second lengthy Gospel reading from John (9:1-41).  It relates the story of Jesus’ encounter with the man born blind.  Like last week’s Gospel [John 4:5-42] it is about the coming to faith of an individual after their chance meeting with Jesus.  What makes this episode more enthralling is the fact…

The Gospel for the next three weeks will be taken from the Gospel of John: 4:5-52 (The Samaritan Woman); 9: 1-41 (The Man Born Blind) and 11:1-45 (The Raising of Lazarus). Each of these passages gives us a tremendous amount for our prayer, meditation and spiritual life. The figure of the Samaritan woman is important…

As we hear in today’s Gospel of the Transfiguration of the Lord [Matthew 17:1-9], I am reminded of the words of a Slim Dusty song: ‘Looking Forward, Looking Back’: Looking forward, looking back, I’ve come a long way down the track Got a long way left to go… …making sense of what I’ve seen… …There…

We are at the beginning of another season on Lent.  It is a time when we are invited on a journey of renewal, recovery, repentance and hope.  The Liturgy of the Word for the Mass of Ash Wednesday, that we celebrated just a few days ago for the beginning of Lent places before us the…

The 1997 film ‘As Good As It Gets’ had Jack Nicholson starring in the role of Melvin Udall, a New York novelist who suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Melvin ate at the same restaurant each day, at the same table, using plastic disposable cutlery rather than the restaurant’s as they may be contaminated. Melvin also feared…