Message From The Bishop - Year of Maronite Spirituality
Dearly beloved,
The journey of the Year of Maronite Spirituality has started in our Eparchy with the celebration of the Feast of St Maroun. For the next twelve months, our Eparchy will be focusing on the Maronite spirituality and heritage, with the motto: A Journey towards Holiness in Today’s World.
This year was announced as a result of the recommendation of the Maronite Diocesan Assembly. I am pleased to announce that we have started implementing these recommendations with the establishment of the two Maronite Offices for Family and for Youth.
There are seven foundations to living our Maronite spirituality and faith. These are:
- A prayer life. Prayer is essential to build a relationship with Christ. We are called to pray individually, as a family and as a community. “Pray, hope, and don’t worry. God is merciful and will hear your prayer,” writes Padre Pio.
- Reading the Bible. We cannot love our faith if we do not know it. And the Bible is the source of our faith.
- The Sacraments. The celebration of the Sacraments is a vital part of the life of the Church, especially the Eucharist. There is no greater gift that God can give us.
- The Saints. The Saints and holy Martyrs are bright examples of the faith for us. Reading about their lives and their writings helps us grow in faith and knowledge.
- The Liturgical Seasons. Throughout the year, the Church family celebrates the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, as well as feasts and saints. This journey we take together, as a community, brings us together as one family and strengthens our faith.
- Charity. Actions speak louder than words. If we attend mass every Sunday and know our faith but do not live it, we are but “a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal” (1Cor13:1). Works of love are a necessary part of our spirituality.
- Mary. We honour and love Mary because Jesus did so. Mary prays with us and for us and she leads us to her Son.
As we celebrate the Sunday of the Righteous and the Just, we look up to and honour the Glorified Church in heaven. We hope to live by their example of holiness and heroism so that, we too, may be drawn by the immense love of the Father, saved by the sacrifice of the Son, and sanctified by the descent of the Holy Spirit, so that we attain unity in the faith … to the extent of the full stature of Christ (Eph 4:13).
Bishop Antoine Charbel Taraby
The Life of The Spirit Is Manifested In Us
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
On Saturday 2 February, we celebrated the feast of the Presentation of Christ to the Temple. In this feast we remembered, O Heavenly Father, the gift that Joseph and Mary had offered to the world when they presented to you the child Jesus in the temple. On this occasion, we present to you all the children in our families, we commend them to your sublime will and entrust their future to you so your graces work in the world through them as they become your holy tools.
On this fourth Sunday of the Glorious Epiphany of the Lord, we offer ourselves to God as we reflect with our Mother the Church on the Gospel of Jesus and the Samaritan woman, to learn from him how to draw from the water of life. This passage of the Gospel leads us to think of Christ the Son of God, the giver of the true water of life to those who seek it so they never thirst again.
Christ has opened the gates for us to worship God in the spirit and made us realise that there is no true worship to God outside the law of the spirit. The spirit makes us die from the works of the body in order for us to worship God in his new order. The life of the spirit is manifested in us when we bear fruit to God and at the moment in which His life triumphs in us.
Let us stand before God like the Samaritan woman did at Jacob’s Well and ask ourselves: our we being led by the spirit of truth? Are we truly searching for the water of eternal life? Are we ready today to quit our old habits and let the spirit of God renew us from within and nourish our inner human for our own good and the good of the universal Church?
Let us open our hearts and minds today to the mystery of the Son as manifested in the depth of time, and let us work on creating new spaces in our lives and on digging new wells at the bottom of our souls to hold in them the water of eternal life.
On a parish note, “the old nights are back” is the theme which the Committee of the Elderly in our parish has coined for activities it has prepared for the end of this week, bringing us back to the old beautiful time in our villages and their evenings and customs. Our village customs reflect the beauty of the family spirit of love and friendship between us. Come to enjoy and remember together the old days through these activities which will be held at the hall of the Cathedral for three days, on 6, 7 and 8 February.
On Wednesday this week, the preparatory classes for the children of the First Holy Communion in the Parish will start. Around 100 children will participate in the spiritual and sacramental preparations for the next 5 months. We pray for them and thank the teachers for volunteering and for their work and love. On Wednesday evening, a new initiative will be launched in the parish under the name of “The Living Word.” It is an initiative of religious education in English for our youth and other parishioners to have more depth in our faith which is built on the Word. The sessions of The Living Word will be held every Wednesday at 8.00 pm, in English.
We pray to you O Lord and ask your Holy Spirit to work in us and lead us to salvation through your Son Jesus, from whom we draw the water of life which is never exhausted.
O Lamb of God…
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
In the first Sunday after the Theophany, the Church offers us the testimony of John the Baptist about the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John the Baptist said it in the spirit of prophecy as he saw the whole Mystery of Redemption in just one moment, the moment of the
sacred baptism in the Jordan River.
John had been awaiting that moment, the moment of sighting the Lamb of God to announce Him to everyone and lead all people to Him. This was essentially his mission, to pave the way for the Lord then disappear so the New Testament would start. In just one sentence captured by John the
Evangelist in today’s Gospel, John the Baptist summarised his role in comparison with the role of the Lord: “behind me comes one who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” (John 1: 30).
Baptism is first and foremost an initiative from God who speaks to us before we answer Him, who has accepted us before we became worthy to accept Him and who took our sins and our death to give us life.
In his epistle today, Saint Paul urges the Corinthians with divine authority, but also with the humility of Christ, to return to the teaching of the Church, obedience and repentance. His objective was to fight false ideas about faith. He seemed tough with his words, but he assured them that his rigorism, as well as his authority, were not to destroy them but to build them up.
What about us who have been baptised and believe, do we bear witness to our faith in our daily lives? Do our deeds express our words and are our words consistent with our deeds? In our life journey, do we know that it is Christ who carries us and liberates us by His cross of love and His victorious resurrection?
O Lord, illuminate our paths to announce your truth like John and disappear as he did so you appear through us.
On a parish note, the committee and teachers of the First Holy Communion of our children have started the preparation for the Sacrament’s program this year. The enrolment deadline ends soon. It is an important phase in the lives of our children as we give them through it the treasure of faith preserved in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
We hope that this time is a period of rest to recharge our energy so we start strong with the Lord Jesus in this new year, whether in our parish, at work or in our families.
