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Rosemary Taouk

Rosemary Taouk has followed in her fathers footsteps in defence and serves as an aeronautical engineer.

Read more here: http://catholicoutlook.org/raaf-officer-rosemary-chooses-love-thy-neighbour-anzac-day/

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While the Nativity fast may no longer be an obligation, in the madness leading up to Christmas, it can be a perfect preparation to welcome Christ into our lives. Fasting is a discipline that teaches us to gain control, because so often the source of our sin is a loss of control. By gaining control over something so simple as food, we can move to gain control of those things that really distancing us from God. Fasting is a time to pick your medicine and to remove the obstacles and encounter Christ. Fasting allows families to bring the liturgical season into the home. It signals to children that there is a preparation in the lead up to the feast and creates habits that many will keep with them for a lifetime. For many of us growing up in societies and communities where food is plentiful and so easily wasted, abstinence and fasting also allows us to remember and teach our children that others in the world have very little. A generation of children is growing up thinking meat comes from the unlimited supply in the supermarket, rather than a real animal who has been slaughtered and which is part of God’s Creation. Fasting and abstinence is a reminder that we are a part of a wider humanity and part of Creation which we should never take for granted. It is for this reason that a commitment to abstinence and fasting should not mean replacing it with costly dinner eat outs or wasteful fast food. That would render the purpose pointless. Consider growing some of your own vegetables so that your family can understand the effort and resources that go into food. It is possible that initially the Maronite Nativity fast would have been 40 days (like the rest of the Eastern Church). The prescribed times of the fast change and reduced over time. The prescribed fast now begins on on 15 December to co-incide with the Christmas Novena and requires abstinence from meat and dairy. We encourage you to consider beginning a fast starting on the 15 December and engaging with the Maronite Christmas Novena, so that you are preparing the manger of your own heart to receive Christ this Christmas. We will be sharing resources to help. #maronite #livingmaronite #Maronite #findchristinthewilderness #livingmaronite This Sunday the forerunner is calling us to prepare ourselves. ‘...we have managed to make Christmas an event, a passing fancy, an exhausting endurance exercise, stripped of reflection by the pressure of social protocols. But judging from the scripture of the season, Christmas is surely meant to be an attitude toward life, not a carnival. It is meant to be arrived at slowly and lived succulently. Christmas is not meant to be simply a day of celebration; it is meant to be a month of contemplation.... Advent is an excursion through scripture meant to give depth and emotional stability to the days for which there are no songs, no tinsel, no flashing lights to distract us from its raw, tart marrow. Unless we can reclaim Advent, the lack of it will show dearly in the way we go through the rest of life itself.’ Sr Joan Chittister. Prepare yourself and you can start by attending Liturgy and hearing about the one that was himself was sent to call us go prepare. #maronite #johnthebaptist #livingmaronite #prepare #christmasadvent Why did John the Baptist need to come as the Forerunner to Christ? The fourth week of the Season of the Glorious Birth of Our Lord is the birth of John the Baptist. John is referred to as the forerunner, a messenger of God and the last Prophet. All the previous prophets in some way revealed God’s plan. John is the last prophet because he was the one that would finally reveal Jesus’ true identity. As we saw at the Visitation last week, he revealed Christ’s identity while he was still in his mother’s womb. The birth of John the Baptist itself was prophesised. John’s ministry fulfilled a prophecy of the Old Testament. In Isaiah 40 it was prophesised that someone would prepare the way for the Lord. Our liturgy also highlights the role of John. “You will go prepare the way before the Lord, who will come to save the world.” Entrance Hymn John is preparing the way for Jesus, he asks the people to repent their sins and baptises them in the river Jordon. But why did Jesus need a forerunner? Mary I. Coloe, in her book ‘Dwelling in the Household of God,’ explains that in the Jewish wedding tradition, a friend or witness goes to ‘prepare the way’ for the groom and to announce his coming to the bridal household so they are on notice and can prepare themselves for the groom’s coming. Similarly, John was sent as friend and witness to arrange things before Jesus’ arrival. The announcement is not for the groom’s sake, rather it for the household’s sake. The Forerunner was sent so that the community, the household of God, could prepare themselves for Christ’s coming. In the same way, John is calling us, the Church, to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ the “beloved Son!” (Matthew 3:17). So in the lead up to Christmas what are you doing to prepare yourself and your family for Christ’s coming? Over the next few weeks you may consider fasting, focusing on your prayer life, forgiving people who have hurt you, seeking forgiveness from those you have hurt, going to Mass more regularly, praying the rosary as a family, giving to the poor and doing works of mercy. The feast of the immaculate conception emphasises Mary’s purity and virginity, before and after her conception and also after the birth of Jesus. It recognises that Mary was always intended to be the Mother of God. On this blessed feast let us pray in the words of the anonymous Syriac poet: “Blessed are you, Mary, born in poverty, you became mother of the Lord of Kings: He whose glory filled the heavens Dwelt in your womb in sacred fashion. Blessed are your breasts which lovingly suckled Him, Blessed your tongue that eagerly sang to Him, Your arms clasped Him, and you became the chariot Conveying the Fiery One!” (Prayer from Sebastian Brock, Bride of Light – Hymns on Mary from the Syriac Churches) Read more about this feast at the link in our bio. #maronite #livingmaronite #immaculateconception #mary #catholic The Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary is celebrated on 8 December. The Immaculate Conception was declared a dogma of the Catholic Church by Pius IX in 1854. The teaching has sometimes been surrounded by debate both before and after the proclamation of the dogma including and within the early Catholic Church itself. For that reason it is important we familiarise ourselves with the actual teaching and on what it is based. The feast commemorates the conception of Mary in the womb of Ann. Mary was conceived in perfect holiness, without stain because she was to receive the Word of God. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception recognises that Mary was born without the stain of sin. That is because she would be the vessel of salvation. The temple which would carry Christ in his humanity. The origin of the feast is ancient. In the Eastern Church the commemoration of the birth of Mary has existed since at least the fifth century. The Syriac Father St Ephrem as early as the fourth century proclaimed: ‘There is in you, Lord, no stain, nor any spot in your mother.’ ‘You Jesus and your mother are the only ones who are beautiful in all aspects. Because in you, O Lord, there is no deformation, and in your mother, there is no stain.’ Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us always. Click on the link in the bio to learn more. #maronite #livingmaronite #catholic #immaculateconception #mary #ephrem #syriac

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