John was the last prophet. His job was to announce that the long-awaited Messiah, the Saviour, had finally arrived. His job was also to encourage people to repent, to turn their lives around. John used the ceremony of baptism to help that process of repentance. But Jesus had no sins. Jesus was the Savior. Jesus had no need to repent, and therefore no need to be baptized. And yet, he shows up by the river and gets in line anyway.

Why? Because Jesus wants to make sure that we know that he loves us. And so, when he saved us from sin, he did so from close by. By getting baptized, Jesus expressed his desire to take our place, to take the punishment for our sins upon himself, so as to free us from them.

Later, on the cross, he actually did take them on himself. This was why he came. This was his mission. And this is still his mission. He still wants to save us by coming close to us, to make sure that we know that he loves us. 

The Catholic Church teaches that we have an obligation to go to Mass every Sunday. Mass is a celebration of the Eucharist. Many people do not understand why the Church requires Mass every Sunday. The answer is found within the Ten Commandments passed on to Moses several millennia ago.

The Ten Commandments, which were the believed to be the laws and moral code handed down by God, tells believers in the Third Commandment to "Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day."For the Christians, the Sabbath was Sunday, which was the day of Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead. The Church says that you have an obligation to fulfill the Third Commandment by refraining from unnecessary work on Sunday and by participating in Mass, your chief form of worship as Christians.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "You shall attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation and rest from servile labor." The obligation is binding every Sunday. It is a holy day of obligation, a day for you to grow in your faith, and you are required to attend to the extent that you are able to do so.

Private Worship is Not Enough.  From the earliest days of the Church, Christians have understood that being a Christian is not a private matter. You are called to be Christians together. While you should engage in the private worship of God throughout the week, your primary form of worship is public and communal, which is why Sunday Mass is so important. 

Fr. David

Please note that the Parish Council Meeting will be held on Monday, January 13^th at 7:45 PM in the Parish Hall. 

All are welcome to attend.  

 There is one thing that every human heart is absolutely starving for: someone to trust. Someone who not only will promise to never let you down, never judge you, never abandon you, but someone with enough goodness and enough power to keep that promise. That someone is God.

The coming of the Wise Men to adore the baby Jesus is one of the Bible's most beautiful proofs of God's faithfulness. The Wise Men came from the non-Jewish world; they represent the nations. By coming to Christ, they enter into the light of salvation bringing gifts.

This shows us that God is good - because he kept his promise. It also shows us that God is all-powerful - the ups and downs of history are under his control. All of God's goodness and power are ours, because we belong to Christ, and Christ is the incarnation of God's faithfulness. 

What does Catholic mean?Catholic means universal.Catholic comes from the Greek word "katholikos," which means "according to the whole."To be Catholic means that we have the whole Bible and we go out to the whole world. To be Catholic means that we have the fullness God revealed in Jesus Christ. The Bible says in Christ Jesus, the fullness of God dwells in bodily form. In Jesus, God himself dwells in our body. In Jesus is established His Church, his community gathered to worship God.

Jesus gave us everything –when Jesus was on the cross, when Jesus gave the Eucharist at the last supper. He give you and me the fullness of truth, the fullness of revelation. He handed that down through the apostles, and through his apostles and the other disciples, he gave us the whole the sacred scripture. Not only that, but in Matthew 28: 19, Jesus said: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations."

Very, very early in the history of the church, a man named Ignatius of Antioch was captured by the Romans. He was in chains as a prisoner on the way to Rome, to be ground by the teeth of lions. To be killed for the faith. On his way he wrote letters to different churches or Christian communities. One of those letters was to the Christian community in Smyrna. He said: "Where Christ Jesus is there, there is the Catholic Church." People of Smyrna knew what he was talking about. So we know that the term Catholic Church was used for the church at least before 107 AD and led through the prayer of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, we can live in communion with Jesus.We want to not just take bits and pieces of the faith.We don't just want pick and choose the thing in the Bible that we like and throw out parts that we don't, but we want to be close to God.We know the whole thing, the genuine thing, and we want to go out to the whole world.

 On Monday 30 December, St Anne's was part of an international online meditation meeting with participants from the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM).The meditation was led by Fr. Laurence Freeman is a Benedictine monk and Director of the World Community of Christian Meditation. He has been championing meditation for more than 40 years.

Meditators plugged into the meeting from Hong Kong, France, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, the US, Brazil, and Portugal.It was estimated about 70 people took part, including our Fr. Paulus and Fr. David. The meeting was to pray for peace in Hong Kong and how to bring about peace through meditation.

Today the Church offers us the feast of the Holy Family. We celebrate and remember Mary and Joseph, who, with Jesus, give hope and inspiration to every family.

One element jumps out of today's gospel which is vital for every family. Listening.

Listening is an essential part of every happy family. There also three most important words in a family are "Please, Thank You, and I'm Sorry." All of these words imply listening.

And yet if people are going to truly listen to each other, there's a previous step. We have to listen to God. Today, Joseph offers an example of that.

God tells Joseph in a dream to take Jesus and Mary and go to Egypt. Joseph must have been used to listening to God, because it says that he arose and took them away by night. In other words, he didn't wait! He acted at once.

But God wasn't finished. Three times God changed Joseph's plans; three times Joseph listened and acted. He didn't argue with God. He didn't point out how inconvenient a trip to Egypt was at that moment. 

The pregnancy of Mary takes place before she went to live with Joseph, not because of a human deviation, but because of the divine will. God himself made fun of the law of legal purity in such a way as to make the Messiah be born among us!

If Joseph had acted according to the requirements of the law of that time, he would have had to denounce Mary and possibly she would have been stoned. Pregnancy before marriage is irregular and according to the law of legal purity, she should be punished with the death penalty (Deut 22:20).

But Joseph, because he is just, does not obey the requirements of the law of purity. His justice is greater. Instead of denouncing, he prefers to respect the mystery which he does not understand and decides to abandon Mary in secret. The greatest justice of Joseph saves both the life of Mary and that of Jesus.

Thus, Matthew sends an important message to the communities of Palestine and Syria. It is as if he said, "Behold, what would happen if the rigorous observance were followed, which certain Pharisees demand from you! They would put the Messiah to death!" Later Jesus will say, "If your justice is not greater than that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven" (Mt 5:20). 

Due to the holiday season, many members of the Filipino Community Group's volunteers will be going home for Christmas.  For this reason, we need to cancel the 5th Sunday Tagalog Mass temporarily.  It will resume on March 29, 2020. 

John the Baptist had given everything to God. He had left his home and his family. He lived in total poverty. And even if you eat them with honey, locusts are still bugs.

John the Baptist had preached the Kingdom of God; he had given everything to prepare the way for Jesus. And what's his apparent reward? He's in prison. It seems that God is hidden from him. He hears about the miracles that Jesus is doing, and yet he remains in prison.

He sends his friends to ask the most important question; everything hinges on this question. He asks Jesus: "Who are you?" "Are you the meaning of my life? Are you the mercy of God made visible? I have given everything – even my freedom – for God. Are you his face among us?"

And the answer that Jesus gives to John's question can seem a bit cryptic. He doesn't say, "Obviously... Of course I'm the one who is to come. All your difficulties and sufferings are over!"

Jesus is telling John, "You don't have to understand everything. You're not God. All I ask is that you listen and look at what I've done and continue to do in your life and in the lives of others."

We all have our John the Baptist moments, when nothing seems clear, when Christmas may seem far away. And in those moments, Jesus is telling us, "Look, and listen." 

On the occasion of our beloved Pope Francis' 83rd birthday, the Holy See Study Mission, together with the Diocese of Hong Kong, is organizing the following events :

• A concert to be held on 15th December, Sunday evening, 8:00 PM at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception at 16 Caine Road.
• A mass to be presided by His Eminence Cardinal John Tong on the 21st December, Saturday afternoon, 5:00 PM at Christ the King Chapel, Causeway Bay.

You are all cordially invited to participate in these joyous events. For details, please refer to the relevant poster.

The Mass schedule for Christmas & New Year 2019-2020 can be found next to the Parish Bulletin at the back of the church. 

Fr. Paulus was one of the first Carmelites working in Hong Kong.  He moved to Hong Kong in October 2013 from Indonesia.  Fr. Paulus joins us from St. Teresa's Church in Kowloon, where he was the assistant parish priest from Apr 2016.  He might be a familiar face to some parishioners as he had stayed in St. Anne's in the past, and he would also occasionally celebrate Mass when Fr. John (McAuley) was away. 

Please note that confessions in both Chinese and English will be heard on Friday, Dec 20^th, at 7:30 PM.Two priests will be available.  

Today is enter to the new season of our liturgical calendar. The season of Advent year A. So, what is the reason for another Advent? The word "advent" comes from the Latin "ad-venire", meaning to come to, to come towards.

This season spotlights the three comings of Christ: the first, 2000 years ago; the last, sometime in the future; and the ongoing - Christ's constant coming into our lives through his grace, his providence, and his sacraments.

We live in the final age of human history, the age which will end in Christ's second coming, the destruction of the cosmos as we know it, and the creation of a new heavens and earth - the full establishment of Christ's Kingdom, as today's Readings described.

In today's Gospel, Jesus has explained to his Apostles that the age of the Church will be marked by both wonderful growth and also painful persecution. He has explained that Jerusalem, the epicenter of the Old Covenant, will be destroyed to make definitive way for the New Covenant. He has explained that the world itself will eventually be destroyed to make way for the new heavens and the new earth.

God wants us to know that our time is limited, that our lives and history itself will come to an end. He wants us to know this, because he wants us to use our limited time wisely, living as true Christians.

Jesus considers this lesson to be so important that he dedicates four separate parables to it before he finishes the conversation, driving the lesson home. Jesus knew how easily even the most faithful disciple can fall into the trap of thinking that this earthly life is the goal, and not merely the path.

Fr. Paulus Waris Santoso, O.Carm 

Due to the holiday season, many members of the Filipino Community Group's volunteers will be going home for Christmas. For this reason, we need to cancel the 5th Sunday Tagalog Mass temporarily. It will resume on March 29, 2020.  

 The Solemnity of Christ the King, which every Catholic throughout the entire world is celebrating today, is a new thing. It was established by Pope Pius XI in 1925 in an encyclical letter called Quas primas.

The pope was writing this encyclical in 1925, when the world was still trying to recover from World War I, which had devastated Europe and shattered modernity's hopes for unlimited progress based solely on human reason.

1925 was also only a few years after the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, which had given birth to the world's first explicitly atheist totalitarian regime: Soviet communism. Everywhere the pope looked, he saw human societies abandoning Christian values and trying to build paradise on earth through other means.

But if humanity had been able to perfect itself by itself, without God's help, then Jesus Christ would never have come to earth.

Pope Pius XI instituted today's Solemnity as a way to remind the world that to reject Christ, either in private life or in public life, is to reject our only hope, and to accept him is to accept salvation.

As Pope Pius IX wrote: "...When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony... That these blessings may be abundant and lasting in Christian society, it is necessary that the kingship of our Saviour should be as widely as possible recognized and understood, and to that end nothing would serve better than the institution of a special feast in honour of the Kingship of Christ." (Quas primas, 19, 21)

Fr. Paulus Waris Santoso, O.Carm

St Anne's will hold a pot-luck Christmas Party on Dec 1st at 12:30 in the Parish Hall. Parishioners are asked to bring a dish to share for this pot-luck. There is a suggested donation of $40 or more to cover the cost of drinks and supplies.

As we just celebrated St Anne's 60th Anniversary with a Mass and Dinner, we will not have the Annual Parish BBQ this year. 

Volunteers are needed to help out on Dec 8th at the Cheshire Home Christmas Party. St Anne's will be providing food, a Christmas tree, presents and our Filipino sisters will be performing for the residents of the Cheshire Home. Please contact Linda Law at 9832 0239 or Sister Wu for more information.