Are you a silent spectator at Mass? Situated in the parish pew, the words of the Mass words seem to pass you by - like reading a paragraph of a novel only to arrive at the end without even the slightest comprehension of the text. The rote responses depart your mouth lacking intention and intonation while your thoughts wander listless and unchecked into the day ahead…
“Bring us back to you, Lord! Bring us back!” cries the author of the Book of Lamentations. We’ve probably all experienced the feeling of a sudden rush of realisation, in a clear moment in the midst of the flux and drama of life, that - by a little or a lot - we’ve turned away from our God…
Listen is such a little word, as Margaret Guenther says in her book on spiritual direction. “To listen” suggests a skill mostly untaught and somewhat taken for granted. Yet we’re doing it all the time, often oblivious to its amazing power…
An ongoing series of profiles - part of our basket of stories - in which we talk to Catholic lay people in the diocese about their day-to-day life and work in light of the call of the laity to “consecrate the world itself to God, everywhere offering worship by the holiness of their lives” in “the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the world” (Lumen Gentium).
Well, I’m the second child (of five) of Nancy and Tame and yeah, we were a Catholic family. My dad worked on the railways…
The Chosen - YouTube series review
I’m a little late to catch on to all the hype around The Chosen series. Season 2 is well underway, and at the time of writing this, I’ve only just finished episode four of Season 1. I’m officially hooked. Despite all the recommendations I was uninterested at first, with an “I’ve seen it all before” attitude, but finally I decided that if they were bothering with a second season there might just be some substance to this new take on the life of Jesus…
You are invited to read and download this special companion for this season of Advent.
What a year it has been! Sometimes times of trial make us revisit spiritual wisdom and rediscover the truth. God’s ways are mysterious. Perhaps the first truth to reflect on is that the first Christmas was not what Mary and Joseph wanted it to be. They had to introduce their newborn son with no room in the inn but instead into a smelly stable. In poverty the Lord was born. What does that teach us? …
Nearly forty years of service in the Catholic Church was honoured on 8 August when Shirley Page received the Benemerenti Medal from Bishop Steve Lowe.
The papal award was a complete surprise for Shirley who wondered why Bishop Steve and Fr Richard Laurenson turned up at her daughter’s home where Shirley was celebrating her ninetieth birthday. Shirley was heard to ask, “What’s he [the bishop] doing here?” …
You are invited to read this special edition of Kete Kōrero for our school communities across the diocese.
The Kete Kōrero team are grateful to have had a couple of their contributors recognised at the Australasian Catholic Press Association Awards (ACPA) awards last week…
The team that put together our Kete Kōrero magazine are thrilled to have won the following at the Australasian Religious Press Association Awards (ARPA) awards on Saturday 4th September…
I’m a civil designer. I model the roads you drive on, and the water pipes under them - stormwater, wastewater. I size it all up, do all the calculations, then model it to make sure it’ll all fit where it needs to go, then send that to the contractors.
I got into this in my late twenties after spending some time as a professional cyclist. I did a bit of triathlon at high school and road cycling was my strength so I went with that and joined a New Zealand development team based in France.
Aquinas College began our “Belong, Believe, Become” journey in 2019 when we were invited to attend the Oceania Equipping School as the New Zealand representatives. The vision of the Equipping School is to inspire and equip Catholic schools to become centres of evangelisation with new ardour, expressions, connections, and experiences to develop a sense of belonging, believing and becoming.
The cheerful jangle of the ukulele makes an appearance on many contemporary pop tunes. Vance Joy’s hit Riptide and Jason Mraz’s I’m Yours get the foot tapping with their opening chords — that chunky strum, clean and simple. On her song You and I, Ingrid Michaelson sings, “Don’t you worry there my honey/We might not have any money /But we’ve got our love to pay the bills” over a sweet ukulele line.
“A wise woman for all seasons and ‘mother’ of the diocese'"
On Wednesday, we farewelled one of the people who played a pivotal role at the 'birth' of our diocese. Here we pay tribute to Val and her contribution to the life of the diocese.
The seven sacraments are invitations to us average Catholic people to step into the life and light of God’s grace, which is simply, as philosopher Peter Kreeft puts it, “another name for love, undeserved love”. In the concrete realities of the sacrament rituals, the words, actions and physical elements which we experience in real and direct ways, we can trust that here, right now, God is acting in our lives.
Mary stands before us as the model of Christian discipleship in so many ways. Given to us as our mother by Jesus as he hung on the cross may she inspire us in our following of her Son, so we might more fully live his life, mission and mediatorship until we come to the fullness of all he has won for us. She stands before us as an example of how we might live our diocesan vision statement.
“It is two years since we were last here on Holy Tuesday for the Chrism Mass; it is good to be back.”
Here in New Zealand, we celebrate Chrism Mass on the Tuesday of Holy Week. This is to make it possible for all parish priests to join together in a day of contemplation followed by the renewal of vows and concelebration of the Chrism Mass and then have time to travel back to their parishes in time for the Paschal Triduum.
Bishop Steve Lowe celebrated Mass at St Mattihew's Catholic Church Hamilton, on March 13 2021 to launch the 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines celebrations in New Zealand. Approximately 200 people attended the celebration.
