Nineteenth Sunday of the Year

Jesus shows us a world where our lives intersect with others: away from self-focus, self-centredness and self-concern, to relationship, to community. Problems can arise when our worlds intersect. But we also get in touch with who we are. When we allow another person into our lives we allow in the God who calls us to forget self, to leave narrowness, to come alive and be in touch with our hearts. Are we allowed a sheltered world, or is there room in my heart for one more person? The world we live and love in is larger than the one we create. Many people do this by choice. They move out of their comfort zones to engage with people who are homeless, have been drug and alcohol affected, are living with HIV/AID’s, or people out of prison needing to assured they can start again.

Eighteenth Sunday of the Year

Television commercials, billboards, and the internet suggest we do not have enough and incomplete. We will be complete and happy if we purchase their products. They also assure us that if we buy the products they advertise that we will be complete. Our culture often equates consumption with satisfaction; possessions with happiness and personal worth; and material wealth with the good life.

About the organisation

The Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education has, for the last 26 years,  challenged popular beliefs and dominant cultural values, asked the difficult questions, and looked at life from the standpoint of the minority, the victim, the outcast and the stranger. As a community of many faith backgrounds and none, our work is built on Catholic Social Teaching principles and Gospel values as we strive for a world in which:

• The needs of the poor take priority over the wants of the rich;
• The freedom of the dominated takes priority over the liberty of the powerful; and;
• The participation of marginalised groups - and of the marginalised earth itself - takes priority over the preservation of an order which excludes them.