Malacca Johore Diocese News Update #187

Aug 30, 2024

Greetings dear friends of MJD
Mpox fear is rising. Pay rise for civil service expected. Inflation and spiralling price hikes may follow. Disgruntled voices against the PM are on the rise. The opposition claims to form the government, is here again. Clamouring to join the BRICS. Iskandar Malaysia sees investments in Johor. It is not a time to be complacent, nor celebrate. There’s no guarantee of or of being cocksure about tomorrow. Remember the wheat and the darnel parable. Learn to live with uncertainty and unpredictably.

“Re-energising Times”: Scott Hahn introduced Rick Warren to 14,000 people at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia (2015). There, he challenged them with the wisdom of God’s Word and the Catholic Tradition, and concluded with these words:

"In today’s society, materialism is idolised, immorality is glamorised, truth is minimised, sin is normalised, divorce is rationalised, and abortion is legalised.

In TV and movies, crime is legitimised, drug use is minimised, comedy is vulgarised, sex is trivialised, the Bible is fictionalised, churches are satirised, God is marginalised, and Christians are demonised.

The elderly are dehumanised, the sick are euthanised, the poor are victimised, the mentally ill are ostracised, immigrants are stigmatised, and children are tranquilised.

In families around the world, our manners are uncivilised, speech is vulgarised, faith is secularised, and everything is commercialised.

“Unfortunately, Christians, you and I, are often disorganised and demoralised, our faith is compartmentalised, and our witness is compromised.

So what do we need? We need to revitalise our worship, minimise our differences, mobilise our members, and evangelise the lost, and we need to re-energise our families.” Amen, dear brother, AMEN!

A Thought For The Week: Socrates
An acquaintance came to Socrates and said: Have you heard what people are saying about your friend?

Then Socrates replied: Let me ask you three questions before you tell me about my friend?

The first question: Are you sure of the correctness of what you are going to tell me? The friend said: People are saying it. I don’t know if it’s true or wrong.

The second question: Is what you are going to tell me a good thing? The friend said: No, it is not good!

The third question: is what you are going to tell me useful for me? The friend said: No, it is not useful at all.

Then Socrates told him: If what you are telling me is neither true, nor good, nor even useful to me, then why are you telling me this?

The lesson from Socrates: It is always bad to speak about the absent. It is cowardly to talk about a person, when we did not dare say anything while the person or persons were present.

Announcements For the Week:

1. September is dedicated as the Season of Creation, with the World Day of the Poor and the Migrant Sunday slotted in.

2. The Clergy will be away for their Annual Retreat during the month of September. Pray for them.

3. Coming next: The Novenas and the Feast of the Santa Cruz Chapel Malim, the Padre Pio Centre, Ulu Tiram and the Catholic Nurses’ National Conference in Melaka.

QnQ? Q ask: We try and try to be the best Catholic that we can, and yet we fail. Why?

1. Most of us approach religion, not God. We follow a manual, stick to our dos and don’ts, and subscribe to a ‘switch on, switch off’ God relationship.

2. Jesus undid that. He introduced Himself as a person and, at the same time, a process; as the Son of God but also “the Way” — the way of the cross; and as the goal and the means.

3. We find God when we undo religion as Jesus did. He finds God among the impure instead of among the pure. The simple found Him in the stable, among the poor, sinners and the tax collectors, and the suffering.

Meister Eckhart said: God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction…removing the blocks, handed down or acquired. “To die and thus to become” is the pattern of transformation in the entire physical and biological world. Why not humans? (Richard Rohr)

4. “Little by little, breath by breath, love dissolves the illusions and fears born of our estrangement and distance, from the infinite love that is our very life.” (James Finley). It is not about being perfect. It is about being connected.

See the Holy Spirit @ work: Were it not for the work of the Holy Spirit there would be no gospel, no faith, no church, no Christianity in the world at all.” — J.I.Packer

Something to tickle you: Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. – Martin Luther King, Jr Bishop Bernard Paul