Vincent J Massey, Gordon Thomas, Elwyn Gardiner, Mary Hannon, Martin J H Iffland, Rose Hamilton, Martin Crick, Frank Sullivan, Cecily Roach, Paul Brown, Frank De Wall, Bill Wenham

The deceased, members, friends, staff and benefactors of the St Vincent de Paul Society

a spirituality newsletter

By the time you receive this newsletter, the United Nations Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change will have been held. Politically, climate change has vast repercussions but those issues reach right down to our own broader view of the created universe and of our own spirituality.

The Christian and Catholic tradition has always valued life and put humans at the centre of the sacredness of life. What has not always been so strongly proclaimed is that every reality in our experience relates to the God of Creation: humans, animals, plants, the seasons, the planets. The providence of God, shown in the ongoing

and unfolding story of the created order is both the source of our hope and a spiritual responsibility. To sustain as well as to be sustained, a sense of the connectedness of all things, the limited and passing tenancy of the life of each of us, an understanding of the universal purpose of created things, which requires equitable use of the Earth’s resources, these are deeply spiritual themes.

To renew both our hope and our sense of responsibility, we could well re-read the World Peace Day, January 1, 1990, Message of Pope John Paul. It can be accessed through www.vatican.va/john-paul/peace

Yours sincerely, Bill Johnston, Spiritual Adviser, St Vincent de Paul Society NSW

Spiritual Adviser your Prayersfrom the remember in

The Good WordJ a n u a r y 2 0 1 0

Praying Lent

Hope without RiskHope without risk is not hope, Which is believing in risky loving,

Trusting others in the dark, The blind leap letting God take over.

- Helder Camara, The Desert is Fertile

Increasingly, good resources are being made available to help us participate well in the Church’s various seasons. In 2010 you might like to refer to the following:

The Archdiocese of Brisbane has Lenten resources available for use in parishes or groups. Details can be found at www.bne.catholic.net.au/lent

In New South Wales, the Diocese of Broken Bay through the Broken Bay Institute will be offering reflections for the weeks of Lent. These will be able to be accessed in hard copy or electronically at www.bbi.catholic.edu.au

The Jesuit fathers have a website to accompany the printed publication of Madonna. The November/December Issue, celebrating 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of the telescope to explore the heavens, can be found at:

www.madonnamagazine.com.au

To keep up with events in the local and world-wide church, this site covers daily a range of topics of interest to church members. There is a free subscription service which will have each day’s bulletin emailed directly to your home or workplace.

www.cathnews.com

Read our Spiritual Reflection Guides online.

www.vinnies.org.au/spiritualreflectionguides

web resources

The Australian Catholic Bishops annual Social Justice Sunday Statement was released last September. It was titled “And you will be my witnesses: young people and justice.” In response to the statement, a series of reflections have been developed by the NSW Vinnies WYD08 pilgrim group. The group developed the reflections at their WYD Reunion and Reflection day in late September. The reflections are easy to follow and each one focuses on a different section of the statement. It is not necessary to have read the entire statement to use the reflections. They call on the young to be witnesses and ambassadors for Justice, Peace and Hope. (

To download a copy of the reflections please go to the following website:

http://vinnies.org.au/files/NSW/Youth/Social_Justice_Statement_Vinnies_Youth_Reflections.pdf

Young People & Social Justice

Book RecommendationDom Helder Camara: Essential Writings

Francis McDonagh, who made the selection of texts and wrote the introduction, has spent the last twenty years following development and religious issues of Latin America, including a period of three years residence in Recife, Brazil, as a correspondent for The Tablet.

Camara’s involvement as one of the Catholic Bishops who issued the Medellin Declaration of 1968 is well known. Banned from the media in Brazil, he was a most influential speaker all over the world in the way that he linked the Christian gospel with the idea of liberation.

But it is in the joy-filled meditations and poems, the fruit of daily prayer and writing vigils between two and five each morning, that the essential Helder Camara is best seen. These writings are much the focus of McDonagh’s collection where we see, as one commentator described him, “a man of faith whose eyes are fixed on the future rather than the past”.

The collection is published by Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 2009

For the first ten members and/or volunteers who email or ring, we have free copies of Essential Writings by Dom Helder Camara.

Please email: rachel.irvine@vinnies.org.au or call (02) 9568 0287