Tuesday 30 April 2019
Archbishop launches
ÔÇÿ2019 Winter Appeal for LifeLinkÔÇÖ
ÔÇ£This Winter, stretch out your hands to help our people in need… just as Jesus does with us”.
The Archbishop’s annual Winter Appeal raises much needed funds which the Church directs, through LifeLink, to Archdiocesan welfare agencies which help care for people in real need in the community… especially during winter.
In his message to parishioners this year, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB writes:
ÔÇ£At a time when the failings of so many in the Church are now so obvious to us all, and the faith of many of us in the Church has been and continues to be tested, it is good for us to remember the promise of Jesus that he would be with us always even to the end of the world. We may fail the Lord, often and badly, but the Lord will never fail us. He will bring about the renewal of the Church in ways that we perhaps cannot even imagine.
ÔÇ£In dark times we are called to put our faith in the Lord ÔÇô he is the only one who will never disappoint us. For myself, I am convinced that the only way forward for the Church is to set ourselves firmly on the path which the Good Shepherd lays out before us. We believe him to be the face of GodÔÇÖs mercy and compassion, and we also believe that this is why he has called the Church into being and continues to sustain the Church in spite of our failures”
The Archbishop says ÔÇ£Pope Francis has a deep understanding of this dimension of our Catholic faith and speaks about it often. In the homily he preached for the World Day of the Poor in November, 2018, he said this:
ÔÇ£I ask for the Church and for you the grace to find the Lord Jesus in the hungry brother, the thirsty, the stranger, the one stripped of clothing and dignity, the sick and imprisoned, but also the doubtful, the ignorant, the obstinate in sin, the afflicted, the offensive, the bad-tempered and the annoying.
We Christians cannot stand with arms folded in indifference or thrown up in the air in helpless resignation. As believers, we must stretch out our hands as Jesus does with us, freely and lovingly offering help to the poor and all those in need”.
The Scriptures remind us that God always hears the cry of those in need. What we sometimes forget, however, is that God often, and indeed normally, seeks to respond to the needs of his people through us. As disciples of Jesus we are called to open our eyes to see the needs, to listen for the cries of our helpless and suffering brothers and sisters, and to reach out with love and compassion to do what we can to help them.
How? There are many ways of course but the purpose of this letter is to recall that in our Archdiocese one of the ways in which we can respond practically and positively to those in need in our community, is by generously supporting the work of Church organisations such as LifeLink. LifeLink Catholic Caring agencies, on behalf of us all, provide emergency housing, counselling support, emergency food and accommodation, employment & training programmes, migrant & refugee assistance, disability and respite support, refuge for women and children escaping domestic violence and more.
More than 34,000 Western Australian families and individuals will be helped by a LifeLink agency this year.
Archbishop Timothy hopes that together, as one Catholic family,
we will help raise a minimum of $300,000 for people in need this winter.
We ask for your generous support.