An annual Advent Gathering was organised by the Hong Kong Catholic Charismatic Service Committee on December 1, the First Sunday of Advent at the Sing Yin Secondary School in Clearwater Bay Road, Kowloon. The afternoon’s event carried the theme, Unity in Diversity, with Father Jay Francis Flandez, chaplain of the Filipino Chaplaincy sharing about the importance of diversity in a community. The hall was filled with 500 attendants.
Father Flandez reminded us that diversity means that we need one another and we must help each other. Our diversity or differences help us to love God and our neighbours. Humility and mutual respect is also needed in a community. Our diverse gifts is for the good of the Church. It is because of our uniqueness that we become whole.
The priest said that the world today has become individualistic. One reason is the popularity of the gadgets and technology which has made us forget about people around us. “We must break the evils of materialism and build up our community, powered not by gadgets but by the Word of God.”
Father Flandez urged us not to be afraid to express our real self as a child of God.
“We are afraid to express our faith, our true self, as a child of God because we want to conform to the world,” he pointed out. “Do not be conformed to this world but we have to transform the world,” he urged.
The afternoon’s event concluded with a Mass celebrated by Father Lawrence Lee Len and Father Flandez. SE
