People with a disability and their families
The dream of our Saviour and of his Church is to develop a society that is inclusive of everyone, thus putting into practice Jesus' command to love God and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves.
How often do we draw a line that can be sharp and divisive between whom we accept and whom we do not accept? How often instinctively, even unconsciously, we divide the people around us on that basis and, as a result, we frustrate, exclude or boycott some people. Despite our best intentions, people with a disability often feel excluded and marginalised, unappreciated and under-utilised even by the Church. Drawing such a line is a lie, because we all share the same human nature and dignity, we are all equally loved by God and we all have the offer of salvation in Jesus Christ – the promise and pledge that we will live forever. Jesus told us two things: that we are loved by God more than we could ever imagine and that we would live forever!
So, when we meet a person with a disability, Christ asks us to accommodate not draw a line and discriminate.
We should ask the Lord to take away our fears and our insecurity and to open our eyes so that our contact with all people will reveal to us the face of God in them.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ which reveals the truth and love of God, urges us as people with different abilities, to support each other, and to live out our calling as Christians to serve the community.
All of us can learn to become aware of the gifts and contributions people with disability share with their families, with our parish communities, as well as with the wider civic community.
By working together, we can empower people with disability to discover and use their gifts to enrich their families and communities.
We want people with disability, their families and their support workers to know God's tender love shown through the support of a welcoming and inclusive community.
Support for Parents
Once parents become aware their child may have a disability, may they be given the necessary supports and opportunities for growth and development before the birth, during the birth and after the birth of their child. Such parents can continue to model the love of Jesus Christ as they care for and support their children whom they love dearly.
In our Diocese, our Diocesan Advocate for People with Disability and their Families, Mrs Jacinta Wall, and our Diocesan Council for People with Disability and their Families through CatholicCare have worked hard to contact and support families through this important and necessary outreach in our Diocese – the Kingdom of God will not be complete without people with disability. We don't want people with disability to miss the opportunity to be part of a grace-filled community, nor do we want our members with a disability and their families to be unable to contribute their gifts to the community of faith, hope and love, because they have plenty to give.
God gives his spiritual gifts to every believer so as to build up the Body of Christ. What the world considers weakness is no barrier to God who works powerfully for good, both within us and through us. We are God's instruments!
If we don't have people with disability in our congregations – is this how Jesus would have meant it to be?
I would hope the Annual International Day for People with Disabilities and their Families, the constant reminder through provisions in our society for disabled parking, will lead to the growing awareness that these brothers and sisters of ours need to be in the mainstream of life.
I pray we will all discover personal connections to disability among our follow parishioners that perhaps we hadn't realised before: so that what we learn will help us make connections with neighbours with a disability whom we may have been avoiding.
The potential for our Church communities to communicate the grace of our presence and interest; to extend our relationships and to share in the lives of people with a disability and their families is enormous, but these rich and deep reservoirs of support can remain largely untapped unless we use the opportunities presented.
As we take these intentional steps, such as I'm suggesting, the attitudes in our hearts will begin to change, which is the deciding factor to people with a disability and their families, feeling welcome in our Church communities.
Sign of the Messiah
How do we know the Messiah has come? The lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, the poor, the disabled and the marginalised are included (Isaiah 35:6). We are to try and make the Reign of God in Christ a reality!
In the letter from St James (5-7:10), the metaphor of waiting for rain in a desert is give to us as a way of understanding what it was like to wait for Christ. It is a powerful image for Advent. In this season each year, we remember that humanity waited through a long, dry and exhausting period for the sign of new life in Jesus. For generations, people looked to the heavens for a sign that this would be the day when God's salvation would come. Then one night, in a way no one could have ever imagined, with no fanfare, a child burst forth into the world and established the final reign of God's love.
Advent is not the time when we pretend that Jesus hasn't come into our world and that we are the first ones to anticipate his coming at Christmas. It's a richer season that than. Advent is the time when we recall what it was like before Jesus came and how much we need Jesus Christ to keep coming again and again in our daily lives.
The First Reading and the Gospel (Matthew 11:2-11) today make it very clear that farmers never put down tools just because the rain comes. We're told that as a result of being soaked in the love of God, we are called to do all we can for those in our world who are lame, blind, deaf, lepers, poor, disabled and anyone on the margins of society.
This is a vital message for us to hear today because there are some who tell us that all we ever have to do "is to look after our own backyard." Advent reminds us that by welcoming Jesus Christ we have to welcome and care for all God's children, not just God and me – Christianity means "Here comes everyone!" Everywhere is our backyard because that's where our brothers and sisters live. May we gain from Christ this Christmas the generosity to see that the desert is meant to bloom for all people, not just a few of us lucky enough to live in an oasis.
We are to be generous to others because God in Jesus has been lavishly good to us, and God's goodness remains a most powerful sign of God's salvation that is seen more so in deeds than in words.
Lisa Frenz wrote in 2003, "As Christ welcomed all who came to him, regardless of social status, wealth, family, ethnicity, race, gender, holiness, righteousness, purity, illness, disability, limitations, intelligence, mental health, ability, religion, faith, or commitment..... So, do we welcome all who come, all who are sent, all who join us. For God has called us all to be one family in Christ."
MULTI FAITH PRAYER FOR PEACE
In greeting you all, I acknowledge the Abbess and her Community, Members of Jewish, Muslim & Hindu Faiths and my fellow Christians from the Anglican and Uniting Churches:
On this day, 1st January, each year inspired by the birth of Jesus, the Prince of our Peace and of our reconciliation with God and with each other, the Popes, since 1968 have declared 1st January "The World Day of Peace" – a day throughout the world to pray for peace.
This year, Pope Benedict has named the freedom to practice one's religious faith as a path to peace. Because, he says it is well-known that in many parts of the world there are various ways of restricting or denying people the freedom to practice their religious convictions by discriminating against them or by marginalising them or worse still by committing acts of violence against religious minorities.
The human right to practice one's faith as a believer is part of the charter of human rights.
Pope Benedict says, "It is inconceivable that believers should have to suppress a part of themselves - their faith - in order to be part of any community as a citizen."
"We, human beings, cannot be fragmented and separated from what we believe, because what we believe in, and hold as religious faith, has an impact on our lives and on our personalities."
Moreover, the religious dimension of life makes a significant and inspirational contribution to the wider community promoting justice, truth, goodness, compassion, reconciliation and peace, by respecting the dignity of each human being, as well as caring for the animal world and the environment and its ecology.
So I pray: "Lord, all nations form one humanity, one community, because all peoples ultimately stem from the one stock which you, Lord, created to populate the entire earth."
Lord, we all, as human beings, share a common destiny, because you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you, the Source of all we have and are. In you, Lord, we 'live and move and have our being.' (Acts 17:28)
Lord, your providential care for all of us, your evident goodness in the beauty of creation, and your will to save us from evil and from the malice that can be in our hearts is available to all.
Lord, help us all in our search for you, who are the ultimate Source of love, truth, goodness, compassion, reconciliation and peace.
Lord, we Christians believe you have revealed yourself to the world by sending your Son, Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary. This we celebrate at Christmas proclaiming: Glory to God in the highest and peace to God's people on earth.
So, we pray: Lord, may enemies begin to speak to one another. May those who were estranged join hands in friendship. May nations seek the way of peace together. We pray you Lord, to give us understanding that puts an end to strife; mercy that quenches hatred; and forgiveness that overcomes vengeance. Strengthen our resolve to give witness to the love of Jesus Christ by the way we live. Great and loving God, grant us peace and empower us to proclaim the message of peace, justice and harmony to all with whom we come into contact. Amen."
TV CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
Christianity, like atheism, is a belief system because an atheist is a person who believes that there is no God.
Russian Author, Fydor Dostoevsky, in one of his novels wrote "If there is no God, all things are permitted."
Someone said: "Ok, what do you put on a Christmas card to people who do not believe; who do not seem to have the gift of faith in God?" Well, some of my friends and acquaintances maintain they are atheists, but their actions give the lie to what they say. Some of them are amongst the most caring and just people I know. I call them 'non-practicing atheists.'
Christmas is a time I remember them, I pray for them and I celebrate with them, because if nothing else, the joy of Christ the Saviour's birth is a special time to say thanks to so many for the friendship and support they have given us over the year.
Jesus Christ is born for us – come let us adore him!
Have a Happy Christmas and a blessed New Year!
How often do we draw a line that can be sharp and divisive between whom we accept and whom we do not accept? How often instinctively, even unconsciously, we divide the people around us on that basis and, as a result, we frustrate, exclude or boycott some people. Despite our best intentions, people with a disability often feel excluded and marginalised, unappreciated and under-utilised even by the Church. Drawing such a line is a lie, because we all share the same human nature and dignity, we are all equally loved by God and we all have the offer of salvation in Jesus Christ – the promise and pledge that we will live forever. Jesus told us two things: that we are loved by God more than we could ever imagine and that we would live forever!
So, when we meet a person with a disability, Christ asks us to accommodate not draw a line and discriminate.
We should ask the Lord to take away our fears and our insecurity and to open our eyes so that our contact with all people will reveal to us the face of God in them.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ which reveals the truth and love of God, urges us as people with different abilities, to support each other, and to live out our calling as Christians to serve the community.
All of us can learn to become aware of the gifts and contributions people with disability share with their families, with our parish communities, as well as with the wider civic community.
By working together, we can empower people with disability to discover and use their gifts to enrich their families and communities.
We want people with disability, their families and their support workers to know God's tender love shown through the support of a welcoming and inclusive community.
Support for Parents
Once parents become aware their child may have a disability, may they be given the necessary supports and opportunities for growth and development before the birth, during the birth and after the birth of their child. Such parents can continue to model the love of Jesus Christ as they care for and support their children whom they love dearly.
In our Diocese, our Diocesan Advocate for People with Disability and their Families, Mrs Jacinta Wall, and our Diocesan Council for People with Disability and their Families through CatholicCare have worked hard to contact and support families through this important and necessary outreach in our Diocese – the Kingdom of God will not be complete without people with disability. We don't want people with disability to miss the opportunity to be part of a grace-filled community, nor do we want our members with a disability and their families to be unable to contribute their gifts to the community of faith, hope and love, because they have plenty to give.
God gives his spiritual gifts to every believer so as to build up the Body of Christ. What the world considers weakness is no barrier to God who works powerfully for good, both within us and through us. We are God's instruments!
If we don't have people with disability in our congregations – is this how Jesus would have meant it to be?
I would hope the Annual International Day for People with Disabilities and their Families, the constant reminder through provisions in our society for disabled parking, will lead to the growing awareness that these brothers and sisters of ours need to be in the mainstream of life.
I pray we will all discover personal connections to disability among our follow parishioners that perhaps we hadn't realised before: so that what we learn will help us make connections with neighbours with a disability whom we may have been avoiding.
The potential for our Church communities to communicate the grace of our presence and interest; to extend our relationships and to share in the lives of people with a disability and their families is enormous, but these rich and deep reservoirs of support can remain largely untapped unless we use the opportunities presented.
As we take these intentional steps, such as I'm suggesting, the attitudes in our hearts will begin to change, which is the deciding factor to people with a disability and their families, feeling welcome in our Church communities.
Sign of the Messiah
How do we know the Messiah has come? The lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, the poor, the disabled and the marginalised are included (Isaiah 35:6). We are to try and make the Reign of God in Christ a reality!
In the letter from St James (5-7:10), the metaphor of waiting for rain in a desert is give to us as a way of understanding what it was like to wait for Christ. It is a powerful image for Advent. In this season each year, we remember that humanity waited through a long, dry and exhausting period for the sign of new life in Jesus. For generations, people looked to the heavens for a sign that this would be the day when God's salvation would come. Then one night, in a way no one could have ever imagined, with no fanfare, a child burst forth into the world and established the final reign of God's love.
Advent is not the time when we pretend that Jesus hasn't come into our world and that we are the first ones to anticipate his coming at Christmas. It's a richer season that than. Advent is the time when we recall what it was like before Jesus came and how much we need Jesus Christ to keep coming again and again in our daily lives.
The First Reading and the Gospel (Matthew 11:2-11) today make it very clear that farmers never put down tools just because the rain comes. We're told that as a result of being soaked in the love of God, we are called to do all we can for those in our world who are lame, blind, deaf, lepers, poor, disabled and anyone on the margins of society.
This is a vital message for us to hear today because there are some who tell us that all we ever have to do "is to look after our own backyard." Advent reminds us that by welcoming Jesus Christ we have to welcome and care for all God's children, not just God and me – Christianity means "Here comes everyone!" Everywhere is our backyard because that's where our brothers and sisters live. May we gain from Christ this Christmas the generosity to see that the desert is meant to bloom for all people, not just a few of us lucky enough to live in an oasis.
We are to be generous to others because God in Jesus has been lavishly good to us, and God's goodness remains a most powerful sign of God's salvation that is seen more so in deeds than in words.
Lisa Frenz wrote in 2003, "As Christ welcomed all who came to him, regardless of social status, wealth, family, ethnicity, race, gender, holiness, righteousness, purity, illness, disability, limitations, intelligence, mental health, ability, religion, faith, or commitment..... So, do we welcome all who come, all who are sent, all who join us. For God has called us all to be one family in Christ."
MULTI FAITH PRAYER FOR PEACE
In greeting you all, I acknowledge the Abbess and her Community, Members of Jewish, Muslim & Hindu Faiths and my fellow Christians from the Anglican and Uniting Churches:
On this day, 1st January, each year inspired by the birth of Jesus, the Prince of our Peace and of our reconciliation with God and with each other, the Popes, since 1968 have declared 1st January "The World Day of Peace" – a day throughout the world to pray for peace.
This year, Pope Benedict has named the freedom to practice one's religious faith as a path to peace. Because, he says it is well-known that in many parts of the world there are various ways of restricting or denying people the freedom to practice their religious convictions by discriminating against them or by marginalising them or worse still by committing acts of violence against religious minorities.
The human right to practice one's faith as a believer is part of the charter of human rights.
Pope Benedict says, "It is inconceivable that believers should have to suppress a part of themselves - their faith - in order to be part of any community as a citizen."
"We, human beings, cannot be fragmented and separated from what we believe, because what we believe in, and hold as religious faith, has an impact on our lives and on our personalities."
Moreover, the religious dimension of life makes a significant and inspirational contribution to the wider community promoting justice, truth, goodness, compassion, reconciliation and peace, by respecting the dignity of each human being, as well as caring for the animal world and the environment and its ecology.
So I pray: "Lord, all nations form one humanity, one community, because all peoples ultimately stem from the one stock which you, Lord, created to populate the entire earth."
Lord, we all, as human beings, share a common destiny, because you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you, the Source of all we have and are. In you, Lord, we 'live and move and have our being.' (Acts 17:28)
Lord, your providential care for all of us, your evident goodness in the beauty of creation, and your will to save us from evil and from the malice that can be in our hearts is available to all.
Lord, help us all in our search for you, who are the ultimate Source of love, truth, goodness, compassion, reconciliation and peace.
Lord, we Christians believe you have revealed yourself to the world by sending your Son, Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary. This we celebrate at Christmas proclaiming: Glory to God in the highest and peace to God's people on earth.
So, we pray: Lord, may enemies begin to speak to one another. May those who were estranged join hands in friendship. May nations seek the way of peace together. We pray you Lord, to give us understanding that puts an end to strife; mercy that quenches hatred; and forgiveness that overcomes vengeance. Strengthen our resolve to give witness to the love of Jesus Christ by the way we live. Great and loving God, grant us peace and empower us to proclaim the message of peace, justice and harmony to all with whom we come into contact. Amen."
TV CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
Christianity, like atheism, is a belief system because an atheist is a person who believes that there is no God.
Russian Author, Fydor Dostoevsky, in one of his novels wrote "If there is no God, all things are permitted."
Someone said: "Ok, what do you put on a Christmas card to people who do not believe; who do not seem to have the gift of faith in God?" Well, some of my friends and acquaintances maintain they are atheists, but their actions give the lie to what they say. Some of them are amongst the most caring and just people I know. I call them 'non-practicing atheists.'
Christmas is a time I remember them, I pray for them and I celebrate with them, because if nothing else, the joy of Christ the Saviour's birth is a special time to say thanks to so many for the friendship and support they have given us over the year.
Jesus Christ is born for us – come let us adore him!
Have a Happy Christmas and a blessed New Year!
