NEWSLETTER INSERTS FOR 20TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

‘Baptism is God's most beautiful and magnificent gift....We call it gift, grace, anointing, enlightenment, garment of immortality, bath of rebirth, seal, and most precious gift. It is called gift because it is conferred on those who bring nothing of their own; grace since it is given even to the guilty; Baptism because sin is buried in the water; anointing for it is priestly and royal as are those who are anointed; enlightenment because it radiates light; clothing since it veils our shame; bath because it washes; and seal as it is our guard and the sign of God's Lordship’.

St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 40, 3-4.

‘Many of those who are humiliated are not humble. Some react to humiliation with anger, others with patience, and others with freedom. The first are culpable, the next harmless, the last just.’

St Bernard of Clairvaux

‘If you lack self-knowledge you will possess neither the fear of God nor humility’.

St Bernard of Clairvaux

‘If the One whom I love, the greatest gift of my life, is close to me, than even in difficulties I can experience in the depth of my heart a joy that is greater than any suffering’.

Joseph Ratzinger

‘Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice’.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas

'We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendor of which no machine can ever replace'.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas

‘A parish exists to offer people the possibility of a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. The desire to meet Jesus Christ as a living Person is deep within the human heart even if people can’t put words on it. Young people today want authenticity. They don’t want just a system of religion. They want something more personally meaningful. Pope Benedict put it well when he said: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. All faith life in parishes or communities starts with the encounter with Jesus Christ. While we might disagree about this or that aspect of liturgy, parish inclusion or particular devotions, it’s important to remember that the first task of any parish is enabling people to meet and know Jesus Christ who is alive”.

Bishop Brendan Leahy, From Parish Consultation Report, Diocese of Limerick, June 2026.

‘We rejoice in being part of the Church which is the house of all the peoples across the world and a family that is held together by faith and prayer. May our shared life of faith in the Church be a sign of a new humanity where differences and flags never divide us but unite us in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ as brothers and sisters of him and children of our one Father who created us all. Amen’.

Fr Billy Swan