November in the Catholic tradition is a month of remembrance of the dead. To begin this, All Saints’ Day is celebrated on the 1st, and All Souls’ Day on the 2nd. These are not nationally recognised holidays and are no longer holy days of obligation in Australia, but the Church continues to encourage prayers of the faithful for the departed during this time.
On October 12th and 13th, Janita, Kim, and Chloe from the Understanding Faith team attended the National RE Symposium at the Dubbo Regional Theatre and Convention Centre. This conference is organised by BBI-TAITE, The Australian Institute of Theological Education, with this year’s theme of ‘Rethinking RE: Context Diversity and Pedagogy’.
Saints are those who are recognised as having an exceptional degree of holiness or likeness to God. It comes from the Greek work ‘hagious’ which means “consecrated to God”. October is a great month to reflect on the Saints of the Catholic Church as we celebrate many of the Churches greatest.
See below for some information about 7 Saints who celebrate their feast days in October.
Dementia Action Week takes place from the 18th to the 24th of September, with this year’s theme of ‘Act Now for a Dementia-Friendly Future’. The focus of this campaign is to reduce the stigmas around dementia and to reduce discrimination experienced by individuals living with dementia. During this time, we are encouraged to learn more about the needs of these individuals, and ways to support them.
On the 14th of September, we celebrate ‘R U OK? Day’, with this year’s theme of “I’m here to hear.” This is a national day of action to remind Australians to check in with those around them to see if they’re doing OK, and how to spot the signs if someone is struggling during these conversations.
Today begins Pope Francis’ Season of Creation, which will continue until October 4th. This time invites everyone to see and acknowledge that we, as stewards of the earth, are interlocked with it, rather than separate from it. It is a time to be thankful for everything given and entrusted to us.
At the start of August we completed a content update for both the Primary and Secondary resources. Some things could potentially be displaying incorrectly on your devices. To be able to see these new changes, you will need to clear your cache. To do this, select your browser menu dropdown and locate “History”, and select clear history. From the clear history options, you can select and deselect what you wish. After this, you will need to refresh your page and sign in. We recommend selecting “Cookies” and “Cache” then Clear Now. The updates included are listed below.
On Monday, we said goodbye to Lisbon and made our way to Fatima for the day. Although the extreme temperatures and the nearby fires fueling the heat even more, we were all looking forward to arriving in and exploring Fatima. We went on a guided tour and were able to see where the angel Gabriel appeared to the Three Children of Fatima, where Our Lady first appeared to the Children, the Church of Fatima and the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima, which is the home of the tombs of the Three Children.
On Monday we celebrated our final Mass in Spain before making our way to Lisbon. On our way, we stopped in at Santarem and visited the Holy Miracle Church of St Stephen, which contains the oldest recorded Eucharistic Miracle! Once arriving in Lisbon, we had the afternoon at leisure – most of us took the advantage of finding the closest laundromat.
We have just wrapped up the first week of our Pilgrimage for World Youth Day. On Sunday the 23rd of July, a group of young adults from the Diocese of Lismore flew out of Brisbane and arrived in Dubai 14 hours later. We had a 2 hour layover before another 7 hour flight to Madrid, Spain. Continue to read below a more in depth recount of what this first week has looked like for us pilgrims.