RETREATS – A TIME TO REFLECT AND BE REFRESHED

Every year in the month of September all the clergy (Cardinal, Archbishop, Bishops and Priests) in Peninsular Malaysia will make their annual retreat for six days starting from Sunday evening till Friday evening. There will always be three locations of retreat centers: two in Cameron Highlands, one in Penang Island and the other in Plentong, Johor. Every year I choose to go for my annual retreat in Penang - I love Penang for certain reasons.

This year the retreat was conducted by Bishop Mylo Hubert from the Diocese of Pasig, Philippines. I still remember having attended his retreat back in 1995 which was 22 years ago when I was in the seminary in College General, Penang. He was then, a priest.

This year my annual retreat has offered me an opportunity to stop, listen and reflect on my priestly journey. This retreat was enjoyable, relaxing and uplifting. I had a very good prayerful experience and a truly uplifting retreat. Bishop Mylo’s lovely encouraging words and his personal priestly life stories have brought enlightenment to me. On the first day itself he spoke a lot on mercy and compassion and how we can reach out to one another. This provided me an opportunity to be truly reflect upon my own life as a priest and my ministry with wonderful people which I work with now. I do ask myself from time to time in what way have I experienced God’s mercy and compassion? I found the insights are more thought provoking and these have enhanced my realisation as to what my true calling is in my priestly life. I have been emotionally felt a sense of peace within myself. I have enjoyed my time at the retreat and gained a lot from it, a lot of meaning and understanding of my gift of the priesthood and my personal prayer life.

At night, we were given some free time for personal reflection and relaxation. This is the time we meet each other and share our thoughts, feelings and reflections of the day. I too enjoyed meeting my priest friends from the other dioceses, whom I have not met for some time. On most of the night some of us went out for supper. I enjoyed eating Penang Char Koay Teow which is a favourite of mine. It was a very joyful balance between sessions, sharing and fellowship.

This weekend (22^nd – 24^th September) we are having our Parish Retreat. The Parish Retreat committee has worked very hard these past two months to recruit more participants to register for this weekend’s retreat. We have about 570 participants. I would like to congratulate all of you for working so hard to make this event a very significant and memorable one for our parish. We hope all those who have registered for this weekend retreat will pray that you will receive more strength to grow in your faith. Some of the participants are from different parishes and I hope you have met new people and you have made new relationships with them.

As your retreat draws to a close make a few practical commitments to improve your prayer life daily. I pray and hope you will have a refreshing and revitalising weekend retreat and deepen your relationship with God and one another. For the next couple of weeks do make a point to write down those thoughts and commitments in your notebooks. I hope everyone had a wonderful retreat and I am sure all of you are looking forward to the next one.

We thank God for the gift of our retreat masters, Rev Frs Jacob Arimpur and Arun Louis and we pray that the Lord grant them wisdom, understanding and strength they need to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

PARISH RETREAT: NURTURING THE SOUL

Many of you have attended spiritual formation programmes, motivational talks, meditations and personal or group retreats either in our own parish, in our country or overseas.  All these are aimed at raising your self-awareness, personal growth, conversion and to help you remove the blocks that have been keeping you stuck in negative patterns.

We are just 5-6 days away from our Parish Retreat for the year 2017. There are about 400 people (300 for English session and 100 for Tamil session) have signed up for this weekend retreat. We are not going to accept anymore registration except for the Tamil session alone. Registration has been closed last Sunday itself.

We are in the third-quarter of the year and I am proud that many of you have invested your time in this Parish Retreat.  It is a great way to recharge our spiritual battery and to refresh our relationship with God.

In our spiritual journey there are many things that block us from experiencing the Lord’s presence, personal enlightenment and self-awareness.

Six reasons to attend the Parish Retreat:

a    a) Self-Discovery: At times we become stagnant and lose sight of who we are in our lives.  Many of us have been ignorant of our true selves for too long. This retreat is a time for self-discovery and to find our purpose in life.

      b) Self Acceptance: The path to spiritual growth must start with loving and nurturing oneself.  This retreat may help you to move from self-improvement to self-acceptance of yourself as you are right now and you may be able to see a new life with new possibilities and embrace yourself as who you really are!

     c) Self Awareness: When you can catch the dynamics in your thoughts and emotions before you act, you can let go of old patterns and re-align yourself to stay spiritually connected.  The Holy Spirit will teach you steps to self-awareness.

     d) Spiritual Practice: The world seems to be in a rush! Do you have a spiritual practice to keep you calm amidst the stress of life? What do you do daily to nurture your spiritual self? It is important to take 15-30 minutes of your time every day for quiet contemplation and to integrate your body, mind and spirit.  This retreat will give you an opportunity to take a break from the noise of this fast-paced world and to reflect on what is important to us and to reset our priorities.

      e) Transformation: This weekend retreat is designed for you to begin your journey towards attaining life-transforming habits and deeper intimacy with God.  As you make time and space for this retreat, I strongly believe it will offer you the heart of transformation in your life.

f) Release Your Anger: There are many reasons why we get angry. We keep this anger, hatred, hurt and revenge bottled up within.  If we are full of hatred, fear and anger we cannot grow in our faith and these toxic negative forces will surely harm our relationship with others!  This retreat will be an opening path to forgiveness and your relationship will grow better as you learn to appreciate and love others.

 

Please note that we shall end the Retreat with the Eucharistic Adoration from 2.00 – 3.30 pm on 24^th September.  During this time we shall include a healing service and so we invite parishioners to bring the home-bound, elderly and sick people to come to church for this particular healing session.

To everyone who will be attending the Parish Retreat, have a wonderful and fruitful time with the Lord.  Blessings to you!

THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT

In every relationship you will constantly be called on to forgive and to ask for pardon. Forgiveness is costly. Every relationship is built not on a perfection, but on our ability to ask for forgiveness and upon our willingness to extend forgiveness to those who have wronged us.

Matthew’s gospel (MT 18:21-35) describes the tremendous debt forgiven by the king and the small debt the servant refused to forgive. The servant had not really experienced forgiveness because he didn’t know how to forgive. God dismisses or lets go of our offensive behavior toward Him through His mercy and love. But the servant couldn't forgive his fellow brother who had small debt towards him.

Before we are able to forgive, we must understand how much we have been forgiven so that with God’s help we can wipe the account clean for those who have wronged us.


It's too hard to forgive on your own. If you are truly willing, God will enable you, but you must humble yourself and cry out to Him for help. Pray for your enemies and those who abuse and misuse you. Pray for their happiness.

SEASON OF CREATION 2017

In 2015, Pope Francis established 1 September as an annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, inspired by the example of the Orthodox Churches who have observed this day since 1989.

On 1 September 2017, Christians all over the world came together to celebrate the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, uniting with one purpose: to steward the Earth. This Day of prayer, “Season of Creation” will last from 1 September to 4 October 2017 (Feast of St. Francis of Assisi).

Pope Francis wishes to remind us that: “Christians are called to “an ecological conversion whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them.” Thus, “living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.” (Laudato Si’, no. 217).

The Holy Father invites all Christians to offer our contribution towards overcoming the ecological crisis which humanity is living through. Therefore, first of all we must draw from our rich spiritual heritage the reasons which feed our passion for the care of creation, always remembering that for believers in Jesus Christ, the Word of God who became man for us, “the life of the spirit is not dissociated from the body or from nature or from worldly realities, but lived in and with them, in communion with all that surrounds us.” The ecological crisis therefore calls us to a profound spiritual conversion: Christians are called to “an ecological conversion whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them.”

The annual World Day of prayer for the Care of Creation offers to individual believers and to the community a precious opportunity to renew our personal participation in this vocation as custodians of creation, raising to God our thanks for the marvellous works that He has entrusted to our care, invoking his help for the protection of creation and his mercy for the sins committed against the world in which we live in

. The celebration of the Day on the same date as the Orthodox Church will be a valuable opportunity to bear witness to our growing communion with our orthodox brothers. We live in a time where all Christians are faced with identical and important challenges and we must give common replies to these in order to appear more credible and effective. Therefore, this Day can involve, in some way, other Churches and ecclesial Communities and be celebrated in union with the initiatives that the World Council of Churches is promoting on this issue.

Let us pray today and throughout the year for the Care of the Earth: God our Father and Creator, we give you thanks for the wonder of creation which inspires us, the fruit of the Earth which feeds us, the beauty of nature which grounds us, and the joy of life which gives us hope. Heal the places where your creation has been marred, and restore all creatures to the splendor of your glory, that all may delight once again in your goodness. Praise be to you! Amen.

Here are some suggestions: We invite every parishioner to ‘go green’.  We also invite you to go meatless on Fridays and fast at least once a month. Do volunteer yourselves to save people and planet.

Extract from POPE FRANCIS’ LETTER ANNOUNCING THE “WORLD DAY OF PRAYER FOR THE CARE OF CREATION.”

DON'T LET OUR HEART HARDEN!

The gospel text, “If your brother does something wrong, go and have it out with him alone…” (MT 18: 15) reveals to us another element of living faithfully - how to nurture and maintain our relationships.

God wants us to love as He loves us, even loving those whose sins may have directly harmed us in some way. This is hard. Sometimes we are not particularly forgiving and merciful towards those who sin against us.

Our sinfulness is exhibited by our sins against God in thought, word and deed. We seek God’s forgiveness that is always freely given. But when we are offended or hurt others, our human response is to revenge those who offended us. We harm or tarnish others by gossiping.

Forgiveness is a constant and we need to forgive one another totally. This is not only for the sake of the relationship, but also for our own physical, spiritual and emotional health.

Don’t let our hearts harden against others but help ourselves to go to them with Christ’s love and forgiveness.