The Melbourne Mission has been busy running a variety of faith formation courses that are targeted towards different subgroups of the community. For example, we ran a Made for Love course for young adults that heavily referenced the Theology of the Body. The feedback by the many young adults present was that they appreciated the depth of formation they received out of the Catholic vision of love and relationships. We also ran a Foundations course that provided participants with practical teaching on the foundational elements of the faith.
Fr Justin coordinated the sacrament programme which is specifically tailored to not only teaching the young people in engaging and creative ways, but also forming their parents, who are the first educators of the faith to their children.
A key focus of the year is to encourage an atmosphere of Spirit-led prayer and worship. Our monthly worship nights have been much attended with people opening their hearts in praise. We have also hosted several all-night prayer vigils following these worship nights as a chance for the parishioners to sit before the Lord in adoration and intercede for our community.
Lastly, we have offered prayer ministry once a month following our Sunday Masses to encourage parishioners to open up to the life transforming grace of the Holy Spirit.
A key way that we have provided parishioners with a chance to go deeper in relationship with God and discover their spiritual gifts is the Charismata course. The Melbourne MGL Catholic mission and the DOJ Community collaborated in running this course which ran for several Thursday evenings and included a one-day retreat. This inspired the participants to grow closer to Jesus as Fr Steve Tynan and Br Michael Last presented engaging talks on how to encounter the Holy Spirit. The participants had a chance to be baptised in the Holy Spirit as the MGLs and DOJs prayed for a rich outpouring of the Spirit. Fr Justin Uzabeaga and Sr Fiona Shanahan presented workshops on various charismatic gifts and provided practical teaching on discerning one’s charisms. This course and retreat day provided rich experiences of creative prayer methods and the participants were led through various activities that allowed them to practice the spiritual gifts.
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