Readings for Feast of Saint Martha

            Luke 10:

 Jesus came to a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. 

She had a sister called Mary, who sat down at the Lord’s feet and listened to him speaking. 

Now Martha who was distracted with all the serving said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister is leaving me to do the serving all by myself? Please tell her to help me.’

 But the Lord answered: ‘Martha, Martha,’ he said ‘you worry and fret about so many things, and yet few are needed, indeed only one. It is Mary who has chosen the better part; it is not to be taken from her.’

John 11:

 The whole is greater than the part

234. An innate tension also exists between globalization and localization.

We need to pay attention to the global so as to avoid narrowness and banality. Yet we also need to look to the local, which keeps our feet on the ground. 

Together, the two prevent us from falling into one of two extremes. In the first, people get caught up in an abstract, globalized universe, falling into step behind everyone else, admiring the glitter of other people’s world, gaping and applauding at all the right times.

At the other extreme, they turn into a museum of local folklore, a world apart, doomed to doing the same things over and over, and incapable of being challenged by novelty or appreciating the beauty which God bestows beyond their borders.

HK woman jailed for drugs in Auckland

This website's Tanzania File
(stopping Africans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from Tanzanian inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's South America file 
(stopping South Americans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from South American inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's Hong Kong file
(encouraging local drug addicts to come off drugs)

Please join me in praying for one part of the world each day of the week:

Sun: Africa        Mon: Europe & Russia     Tues: South Asia      Wed: East Asia  
Thurs: S.E. Asia & Pacific       Frid: South America       Sat: Central & North America 
  
Jesus, today, Tuesday,  please bless the people of Africa

And join me praying for prisoners in one part of China each day of the month:

On this 29th of the month,  Jesus please bless the prisoners of Chongqing

2 Kings 1:

Ahaziah, king of Israel, was seriously ill after a fall. He tried to send messengers to the temple of a false god to ask about his future.

But the Lord sent Elijah the prophet to intercept the messengers
and tell them that the king would die.

The king sent 50 soldiers to arrest Elijah but as they approached Elijah, fire from heaven destroyed them.

The king sent another 50 soldiers.
They too were destroyed by fire from heaven.

A third group of 50 was sent. They begged Elijah to spare them. The Lord told Elijah to go with them to the king.

Elijah then told the king to his face that he would soon die because he had tried to ask a false god about his future. Not long after this, Ahaziah died.

Psalm 125:

Those who put their trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, that cannot be shaken.

Jerusalem, the mountains surround her, so the Lord surrounds his people, now and forever.

Lord,  please increase my trust in you....and help me be more aware of your protecting presence

Acts 2:

The crowd was deeply moved by Peter's words, and asked "What should we do?"   Peter replied "You must repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then you too will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit". That day about 3,000 people were baptized

These remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to a life of sharing and caring, to the Breaking of Bread, and to prayer

Many miracles were worked by the apostles, and this made a deep impression on everyone. Each day the Lord added new members to their group

Jesus, please help me remain faithful to the Christian way of life

Matthew 14:

Once after Jesus had been healing and teaching many people all afternoon,  his disciples said to him "It's getting late and the people need to go and eat".

Jesus replied "They don't need to go. You feed them". The disciples replied "We have only 5 loaves and 2 fish".

Jesus got the people to sit on the grass. There were about 20,000 of them. Then he blessed the loaves and fish.

He handed the loaves and fish to his disciples. His disciples gave them to the crowd.

Everyone had plenty to eat.
They even had 12 baskets of leftovers.

                

(what can you see?!)

233: Realities are greater than ideas. This principle has to do with incarnation of the word and its being put into practice: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is from God”. 

The principle of reality, of a word already made flesh and constantly striving to take flesh anew, is essential to evangelization. It helps us to see that the Church’s history is a history of salvation, to be mindful of those saints who inculturated the Gospel in the life of our peoples and to reap the fruits of the Church’s rich bimillennial tradition, without pretending to come up with a system of thought detached from this treasury, as if we wanted to reinvent the Gospel. 

At the same time, this principle impels us to put the word into practice, to perform works of justice and charity which make that word fruitful.

 Not to put the word into practice, not to make it reality, is to build on sand, to remain in the realm of pure ideas and to end up in a lifeless and unfruitful self-centredness and gnosticism.

Cocaine suspect arrested at HK airport

This website's Tanzania File
(stopping Africans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from Tanzanian inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's South America file 
(stopping South Americans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from South American inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's Hong Kong file
(encouraging local drug addicts to come off drugs)

Please join me in praying for one part of the world each day of the week:

Sun: Africa        Mon: Europe & Russia     Tues: South Asia      Wed: East Asia  
Thurs: S.E. Asia & Pacific       Frid: South America       Sat: Central & North America 
  
Jesus, today, Monday,  please bless the people of Africa

And join me praying for prisoners in one part of China each day of the month:

On this 28th of the month,  Jesus please bless the prisoners of Beijing

For 17th Sunday of the Year 

Indonesia: new president thanks bishops for encouraging Catholics to vote

First case of ebola reported in Africa's most populous city Lagos
Death marks new and alarming cross-border development in world's biggest epidemic spreading across three countries

Gutenberg Bible, the book that 'changed the world', on display in Melbourne

232:  Ideas – conceptual elaborations – are at the service of communication, understanding, and praxis. 

Ideas disconnected from realities give rise to ineffectual forms of idealism and nominalism, capable at most of classifying and defining, but certainly not calling to action.

What calls us to action are realities illuminated by reason. Formal nominalism has to give way to harmonious objectivity. Otherwise, the truth is manipulated, cosmetics take the place of real care for our bodies.

 We have politicians – and even religious leaders – who wonder why people do not understand and follow them, since their proposals are so clear and logical. Perhaps it is because they are stuck in the realm of pure ideas and end up reducing politics or faith to rhetoric. Others have left simplicity behind and have imported a rationality foreign to most people.

This website's Tanzania File (last updated July 24)
(stopping Africans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from Tanzanian inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's South America file 
(stopping South Americans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from South American inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's Hong Kong file
(encouraging local drug addicts to come off drugs)

Please join me in praying for one part of the world each day of the week:

Sun: Africa        Mon: Europe & Russia     Tues: South Asia      Wed: East Asia  
Thurs: S.E. Asia & Pacific       Frid: South America       Sat: Central & North America 
  
Jesus, today, Sunday,  please bless the people of Africa

And join me praying for prisoners in one part of China each day of the month:

On this 27th of the month,  Jesus please bless the prisoners of Tibet

For Feast of Joachim and Anne 

St Anne de Beaupre, Canada

Realities are more important than ideas

231: There also exists a constant tension between ideas and realities. Realities simply are, whereas ideas are worked out. There has to be continuous dialogue between the two, lest ideas become detached from realities.

It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone, of images and rhetoric. So a third principle comes into play: realities are greater than ideas. 

This calls for rejecting the various means of masking reality: angelic forms of purity, dictatorships of relativism, empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real, brands of ahistorical fundamentalism, ethical systems bereft of kindness, intellectual discourse bereft of wisdom.

China executes Japanese man

This website's Tanzania File (last updated July 24)
(stopping Africans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from Tanzanian inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's South America file 
(stopping South Americans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from South American inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's Hong Kong file
(encouraging local drug addicts to come off drugs)

Please join me in praying for one part of the world each day of the week:

Sun: Africa        Mon: Europe & Russia     Tues: South Asia      Wed: East Asia  
Thurs: S.E. Asia & Pacific       Frid: South America       Sat: Central & North America 
  
Jesus, today, Saturday,  please bless the people of Africa

And join me praying for prisoners in one part of China each day of the month:

On this 26th of the month,  Jesus please bless the prisoners of Xinjiang

2 Cor 4: 

230:  The message of peace is not about a negotiated settlement but rather the conviction that the unity brought by the Spirit can harmonize every diversity. 

It overcomes every conflict by creating a new and promising synthesis.

 Diversity is a beautiful thing when it can constantly enter into a process of reconciliation and seal a sort of cultural covenant resulting in a “reconciled diversity”.

 As the bishops of the Congo have put it: “Our ethnic diversity is our wealth… It is only in unity, through conversion of hearts and reconciliation, that we will be able to help our country to develop on all levels”

This website's Tanzania File (last updated July 24)
(stopping Africans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from Tanzanian inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's South America file 
(stopping South Americans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from South American inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's Hong Kong file
(encouraging local drug addicts to come off drugs)

Please join me in praying for one part of the world each day of the week:

Sun: Africa        Mon: Europe & Russia     Tues: South Asia      Wed: East Asia  
Thurs: S.E. Asia & Pacific       Frid: South America       Sat: Central & North America 
  
Jesus, today, Friday,  please bless the people of Africa

And join me praying for prisoners in one part of China each day of the month:

On this 25th of the month,  Jesus please bless the prisoners of Ningxia

I Kings 22: 

Some false prophets encouraged the king of Israel and the king of Judah to go to war.

Micah, a true prophet of the Lord,
warned the kings not to go to war.

The men of Israel and Judah were defeated in the war. Ahab, the king of Israel, died in the war.

Dear Lord, please protect leaders from "hawkish" advisers!

Psalm 124:

Indeed all too full is our soul with the scorn of the rich, with the proud man's disdain.

"If the Lord had not been on our side", this is Israel's song.

If the Lord had not been on our side when people rose against us, then would they have swallowed us alive when they were angry with us.

Blessed be the Lord who did not let us become a prey for their teeth.

Our life, like a bird, has escaped
from the snare of the hunter. Indeed the snare has been broken
and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. 

Thank you God for helping us escape: from sorrow, guilt, anxiety, sickness ... and from death

Acts 2:

Peter said to the crowd "You know that Jesus of Nazareth was a man from God. You know all about the miracles he worked

This same Jesus has been raised from the dead by God. There are many witnesses to his resurrection

Jesus has been taken up to God's right hand. He has received the Holy Spirit from the Father. He has poured out the Holy Spirit on us

Know for sure that Jesus whom you crucified is the Messiah and he is Lord"

Jesus, Messiah Lord, please pour your Holy Spirit into my heart

Matthew 14:

Not long after Jesus began traveling and teaching, King Herod arrested John the Baptist and put him in prison.

This was because John had told Herod he was breaking the Law
by living with Herodias,  his brother's wife.

During a birthday party for Herod,
the daughter of Herodias danced. Her dancing so pleased Herod
that he said he would give her anything she wanted.

Herodias told her to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a dish.
Herod then had John beheaded.

John's disciples came and buried the body.

Jesus, please give the world good leaders, and protect people from bad leaders like Herod

229: This principle, drawn from the Gospel, reminds us that Christ has made all things one in himself: heaven and earth, God and man, time and eternity, flesh and spirit, person and society.  The sign of this unity and reconciliation of all things in him is peace. Christ “is our peace” (Eph 2:14 ).

The Gospel message always begins with a greeting of peace, and peace at all times crowns and confirms the relations between the disciples.

 Peace is possible because the Lord has overcome the world and its constant conflict “by making peace through the blood of his cross”  

But if we look more closely at these biblical texts, we find that the locus of this reconciliation of differences is within ourselves, in our own lives, ever threatened as they are by fragmentation and breakdown.  If hearts are shattered in thousands of pieces, it is not easy to create authentic peace in society.

New letter (in Swahili with English summary) from a Tanzanian inmate in a HK prison
- warning people about the drug enforcers

This website's Tanzania File (last updated July 24)
(stopping Africans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from Tanzanian inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's South America file 
(stopping South Americans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from South American inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's Hong Kong file
(encouraging local drug addicts to come off drugs)

Please join me in praying for one part of the world each day of the week:

Sun: Africa        Mon: Europe & Russia     Tues: South Asia      Wed: East Asia  
Thurs: S.E. Asia & Pacific       Frid: South America       Sat: Central & North America 
  
Jesus, today, Thursday,  please bless the people of Africa

And join me praying for prisoners in one part of China each day of the month:

On this 24th of the month,  Jesus please bless the prisoners of Inner Mongolia

To you have I lifted up my eyes,
you who dwell in the heavens.

My eyes, like the eyes of slaves
on the hand of their lords.

Like the eyes of a servant on the hand of her mistress, so our eyes are on the Lord our God till he show us mercy.

Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy. We are filled with contempt.

Indeed all too full is our soul with the scorn of the rich, with the proud man's disdain.

Acts 2:

When  people heard the apostles' group speaking in many different languages, some said the apostles were drunk

Peter stood up with the Eleven and said to the crowd: These people are not drunk. It's only 9am....too early to drink. What is happening is what God said through the prophet Joel:

'I, the Lord, will pour out my spirit on all peoples. They will prophesy and see visions. I will pour out my spirit on everyone'

Come Holy Spirit, fall afresh on all peoples, all nations

229: In this way it becomes possible to build communion amid disagreement, but this can only be achieved by those great persons who are willing to go beyond the surface of the conflict and to see others in their deepest dignity.

 This requires acknowledging a principle indispensable to the building of friendship in society: namely, that unity is greater than conflict.

 Solidarity, in its deepest and most challenging sense, thus becomes a way of making history in a life setting where conflicts, tensions and oppositions can achieve a diversified and life-giving unity. 

This is not to opt for a kind of syncretism, or for the absorption of one into the other, but rather for a resolution which takes place on a higher plane and preserves what is valid and useful on both sides.

This website's Tanzania File
(stopping Africans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from Tanzanian inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's South America file 
(stopping South Americans from being tricked into bringing drugs to HK)
- letters  from South American inmates  in Hong Kong prisons

This website's Hong Kong file
(encouraging local drug addicts to come off drugs)

Please join me in praying for one part of the world each day of the week:

Sun: Africa        Mon: Europe & Russia     Tues: South Asia      Wed: East Asia  
Thurs: S.E. Asia & Pacific       Frid: South America       Sat: Central & North America 
  
Jesus, today, Wednesday,  please bless the people of Africa

And join me praying for prisoners in one part of China each day of the month:

On this 23rd of the month,  Jesus please bless the prisoners of Guangxi

Vatican II & Renewal (1)

16 Documents of Vatican II

A Call to Action
Assn Catholic Priests Ireland
Bp Pat Power
Bp Geoff Robinson
Bruce Duncan
Catalyst for Renewal
Catholica
Catholics for Ministry  
Catholics for Renewal 
STANDUP4VATICAN2
The Swag
VII - Voice of the Church
We Are Church

Excellent articles on Mission
  Hugh McMahon SSC

Vatican II - Renewal (2)

Hans Küng: 
 Letter to bishops  

Revolution to stop authoritarianism 

Fr Joseph Ratzinger: 
Writings on Vat II 

Robert Mickens:  
Vatican Implosion

Nicholas Lash:     Vatican II: 
Of Happy Memory - and Hope?

Robert McNally:  
Crisis & Criticism in the Church 

Priests 9 Masses a day
 - need to ordain married men

The evil of compulsory celibacy

Link between compulsory celibacy and sexual abuse

Why are women not being
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This website's 
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