An Invitation to Prayer

This friday is the last session before the much-needed September break. We'll be having our very own Chaplain, Fr Thinh, as our guest speaker. The topic of the night will be "Prayer".
I know some of you may be thinking BORING with a capital B. Trust me, as someone who has sat through hour long prayer meetings as a high-school student, I know how the very word can lead to yawns. So this is your chance to find out how to make prayer more interesting! What makes prayer such an important aspect of spirituality? Why should we bother to pray if God already knows the words we are going to say?

Friday 18th September
6.30p.m @ the Chaplaincy

We'll also be playing games, having praise & worship and discussion groups during this time. Please do join us. =)

Donna

Youth Mass on Sunday!

Come join us and celebrate the Youth Mass together with Father Thinh!

This Friday's Social Justice Session:

To Know Your Name



Litany of Saints

This week's Monthly Mass

Come join us for our monthly mass this Friday!

Mass is at Newman College this week, not St. Carthage's so if you don't know how to get there, meet us in front of the Sidney Myer Asia building in uni at 6:10pm!

Dinner after mass will be at Ying Thai 2 on Lygon Street. Hope to see you all on Friday!

Who is God?

All the words in the dictionaries in all the languages of the world would not adequately describe/explain God. He says, "I Am who I Am" (Exodus 3:13-15). However, God is not unknowable as He reveals Himself to us in His own time like in the example of Moses and the Burning Bush (Exodus 3). The church teaches that God reveals himself so that we can know him personally and intimately. The CCC II. God Reveals His Name is a good place to read more about this.

These questions may help for a more personal approach to the question of Who is God?

1. How do you see God in relation to yourself? A friend, a parent, a teacher, a judge?
How does this affect the way you communicate with Him?

2. Has your relationship with God changed since you first came to know Him? How so? Why did it change?

3. What are your expectations of knowing God? Who do you want Him to be?

4. Someone who knows nothing of God asks you about Him. How do you describe God to them?

5. Imagine He were to stand in front of you right now. What would you do? What would you say?



Donna
Sessions Coordinator 09-10

Patient Trust by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We would like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet, it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability -
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually - let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time,
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming in you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

As mentioned, the overall theme for this semester is Faith & Reason. A major and more specific topic that often arises is Religion & Science. Here is short introduction to a man who immersed himself in the debate. Whether you agree with him or not, it is good to note that he kept to the faith even when his works were rejected.

Pierre Teilahrd de Chardin:
French philosopher and paleontologist known for his theory that man is evolving, mentally and socially, toward a final spiritual unity. Blending science and Christianity, declared that the human epic resembles “nothing so much as a way of the Cross.” Various of his theories brought reservations and objections from within the Roman Catholic Church and from the Jesuit order, of which he was a member. In 1962, the Holy Office issued a monitum, or simple warning, against uncritical acceptance of his ideas. His spiritual dedication, however, was not questioned. He stands among the very few leaders of thought in this century to integrate pure scientific research with a religious vocation. At an early point in his career this paleontologist and Jesuit priest made it his personal mission to reconstruct the most basic Christian doctrines from the perspectives of science and, at the same time, to reconstruct science from the perspectives of faith.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin
http://www.godweb.org/chardin.htm

Cardinal Casaroli, when he was the Vatican Secretary of State wrote the following:
"What our contemporaries will undoubtedly remember, beyond the difficulties of conception and deficiencies of expression in this audacious attempt to reach a synthesis, is the testimony of the coherent life of a man possessed by Christ in the depths of his soul. He was concerned with honoring both faith and reason, and anticipated the response to John Paul II's appeal: 'Be not afraid, open, open wide to Christ the doors of the immense domains of culture, civilization, and progress.'

http://www.traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_020_CasaroliTeilhard.htm


Donna Yeo,
Sessions Coordinator