Here we are in Advent, the beginning of the new liturgical year, and oh boy, are we ready for a fresh start.

After a year which began with bushfires in Australia, then floods and of course the unexpected arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, people are weary and are looking to turn the page. Advent is the perfect season to slow down and re-set.

The feast of the Baptism of the Lord invites us to look at our own baptism in the Lord. Jesus, through his baptism in the river Jordan, begins his mission.

The Alice Springs community recently turned out in numbers to explore Christian Yoga as a Christ-centred form of prayer and meditation.

The Introduction to Christian Yoga was hosted by Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish, under the guidance of Fr Gilbert Carlo SVD, who was visiting from the Janssen Spirituality Centre in Victoria.

When Fr Kazimierz Niezgoda SVD left Poland as a young man to be a missionary in Papua New Guinea he figured he would stay there his whole life, and now, 51 years after he arrived, he still has no plans to leave.

“I was committed,” he says. “I knew I would stay.”