Clare is 27 years old and lives in the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. She works as a Health Extension Officer  at the Det Health Centre in PNG. She is helping to improve child and maternal health.

Fourth Sunday of Lent 14th March

Care for God’s creation has always been an important part of Christian tradition. In this week’s Project Compassion story we meet Clare from the Southern Highlands in Papua New Guinea. Clare works in the maternity ward, supporting local women to have access to safe maternity services. She also works as an educator on maternal health issues and provides ongoing support to mothers about child health, nutrition and prevention of disease. Your donation to Caritas Australia’s Project Compassion helps PNG communities to have access to safe maternity and child health facilities as well as primary health care.

Caritas Chile has been active for 30 years.  Caritas Australia will support Caritas Chile from our donations to Project Compassion this Lent.

THE WAY OF THE CROSS—A LENTEN DEVOTION

Tuesday 6.30pm at OLMC Church—all prayers taken from Sacred Scripture.

Our Parish Lenten Exercise

A brief report on our Parish Lenten Exercise is available on our Parish Blog. Just click on this link HERE to get there and you can leave comments and feedback if you wish.

Fourth Sunday of Lent

Called to be Healing and Hope

We have reached the half-way mark of Lent 2010 and today we listen to the Pharisees criticizing Jesus ‘this man welcomes sinners and eats with them’ (Luke 15:2).  In answer to the criticism, Jesus gives the parable of the forgiving father who has two sons.  A better title of the parable is ‘The Forgiving Father’ rather than the Prodigal Son because Jesus gives us a powerful lesson on our sin and God’s forgiveness, making the parable one of the best known parts of the Gospel.  If we look at a few details of the story, the parable has even more ‘bite’.
The younger son in asking for his inheritance early was as good as saying to his father, ‘I wish you were dead’.  This son sank until he was in the ‘gutter’ feeding the pigs because pigs are unclean animals to the Jews and touching them rendered the son unclean as well.
The elder son became lost also.  He changed places with the younger son and became the one who was alienated and outside the feast.
The father was consistent throughout—he went outside to meet the elder son, now lost, to tell him ‘All I have is yours’.  God’s boundless forgiveness is seen in the abundant feast of the fattened calf—a very expensive and rare meal.
As Christians we believe there is always hope and a promise of forgiveness for those to turn again to God.  God never tires of seeking the lost.
A significant occasion to encounter our forgiving and welcoming God is at the celebration of Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Though sin is a personal act, the effect of sin goes beyond the individual; hence sin is communal.  To celebrate God’s forgiveness, we shall have a communal celebration of the Sacrament on Tuesday 30 March at 7.45pm in St Anne’s Church.  We are endeavouring to recruit a few priests to offer sacramental forgiveness.

The Pastoral Team

Report on our Parish Lenten Exercise

About sixty parishioners attended the day, with another eighteen formal apologies.  Our facilitator was Jill Gibbs of Community for a Better World, an international Catholic group promoting renewal in the Church and in society.
Jill began taking up the theme of Bishop Costelloe’s homily at the Altar Dedication when he preached on our being the sacrament of Christ.  As sacrament, we are to be an effective sign of communion by having loving, faithful and responsible relationships.
We thought about Neighbourhoods as a pastoral strategy for building up the Church at grassroots.  Jesus used a strategy of dividing a large crowd into small more manageable groups (Mark 6:39).
After morning tea, we sat in our neighbourhood groups using the resource ‘Journey Together’.  The first chapter  has the theme ‘The Parish—A community called to holiness’.  The hall was abuzz with talk, even laughter—joy being a sign of the Holy Spirit as St Paul wrote (Galatians 5:22).
After a shared lunch, we discussed how to further develop the Neighbourhoods under four aspects:  gathering, serving, communicating and representing.
After Saturday, Jill helped with some planning to implement what was discussed at the above meeting.  We thank Jill for her assistance and we are grateful that her oncologist in Brisbane allowed her to travel to us.  Please keep her in your prayers.

Fr Kevin

MASS TIMES THIS WEEK

Parish Priest
Rev Kevin McIntosh

Priest
Rev Bert Fulbrook SDB

Pastoral Associates
Mrs Irene Morse
Mr Richard Hallett

Pastoral Coordinator
Mrs Lyn Plummer

Phone:     03 9744 1060

Fax:         03 9744 7786

                 Email:       parishoffice@olmcsunbury.org.au

NEW EMAIL ADDRESS:  Due to the overwhelming amount of spam received on ‘info@olmcsunbury.org.au’, we have had to change our email address to parishoffice@olmcsunbury.org.au

                   Postal Address:     101 Riddell Road, Sunbury 3429

For posting items on the Parish Website olmcsun@tpg.com.au