St. Francis Xavier – 3 December Francis Xavier was born on 7 April, 1506 at Javier, Kingdom of Navarre. He died on 3 December, 1552 aged 46 at on Shangchuan Island.  He met Ignatius of Loyola at the University of Paris where he was studying. Ignatius convinced Francis to do the  Spiritual Exercises . He subsequently became one of the first seven Jesuits who took vows of poverty and chastity at Montmartre, Paris in 1534. He was ordained a priest in 24 June, 1537.  In 1541, at the request of...

"  Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Luke’s scriptural quote goes beyond the familiar ‘prayers and thoughts’ refrain because it necessitates actions of seeking and knocking.  St Therese of Avila, a Spanish 16 th  century mystic put it this way: - “Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body...

Pope Francis … delivered a ringing plea to the world and his own Catholic Church to reject … the growing temptation to “demonise” those who are different.  Nov 19, 2016 - Vatican City (RNS)  “Dingo man,” named so because of his two pet dingoes with whom he shared residency in a station wagon parked on the roadside of an Australian rural church, adopted this location because of access to an ablution / shower block and the assumed...

I remember many years ago before I married, I spent some time assisting my friends who were the owners of a property, to start a new vineyard in the prime agricultural country of Poverty Bay, in NZ.  We had a large empty paddock, which was fairly level. We set about doing a survey to determine the best way to lay out the vineyard. We built a large shed to accommodate the tractor and other machinery. A water pump...

‘…knock and the door will be opened to you.   For everyone who asks receives;’   Matthew 7:7-8 It’s 1.00am and a knock at the presbytery door alerts Mt Isa’s 24/7 Parish Priest Fr. Mick Lowcock to the start of a new day. Given the closeness of his bedroom to the front door it probably does not take much knocking to awaken Fr Mick. Nevertheless, given the undoubted workload of his previous day, I guess it...

St Ignatius of Loyola’s feast day is coming up on the 31 st July and here at Faber we plan to celebrate with some enjoyable conversation over a simple lunch.     In this era of screen communication,  how long is it since you had a satisfying face to face conversation with someone? The sort of conversation that leaves you consoled and energised.  For me, one of the great gifts of Ignatius has been his transformation of an...

Often have I pondered how society could accept the installation of concentration camps in Nazi Germany as a consequence of increasing public racism towards the Jewish population. Rosie Glasser, a Dutch Jew and survivor of the Shoah, described this gradual process of increasing racial intolerance in her biography, “Dancing with the Enemy – My Family’s Holocaust Secret.”  “ Life was restricted in unprecedented ways, and the people who weren’t affected didn’t seem to care. There was...

There is a “burning bush” in my garden – an ancient callistemon tree which most of the year looks old and tired. But every now and again it bursts into bloom with a profusion of bright red bottle-brush blossoms. These attract the birds to feed on its nectar - rainbow lorrikeets and honey eaters who swing from branch to branch, sometimes dangling upside down to access the honey and simultaneously screeching joyously. Before the sun rises,...