14th July 2011
The second Sunday of July is traditionally celebrated in the various Catholic dioceses in the region of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Malaysia Singapore and Brunei. This year Bible Sunday fell on 14th July 2011.
As usual, various activities are organised on this Sunday to bring out the importance of the written Word of God in the lives of individual Catholics.
In the Vicariate of Brunei Brunei Darussalam, for example, the three parishes commemorated Bible Sunday with activities such as Bible enthronement, Bible quizzes and competitions. After one of the Sunday morning masses, parishioners were invited to the parish Hall to participate in a program where the Bible is given prominence through song, dance and sharings by members of the community.
The Church of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception in Seria took the opportunity to officially unveil their hand written volume of the New Testament. This took several months to carry out. Each Sunday, at one of the masses, a family would come forward and receive the unfinished manuscript. They would also receive good quality paper to write on their contribution. In this way, many families has this special experience of "writing the Bible"!
This year one of the highlights was the implementation of a Bible Reading survey for committed Catholic youths, which was recommended to all the Diocesan Bible Commissions to undertake in their individual dioceses.. The results of the survey will be compiled and it is hoped that it will give us a better insight into the role of the Bible in their lives.
As has been the practice for several years already, on behalf of the Regional Biblical Commission, Archbishop John Ha of Kuching prepared a Bible Sunday Message based on the Apostolic Exhortation "Verbum Domini". This was sent to the various Catholic newspapers for publication to coincide with Bible Sunday. The message was also translated into Tamil, Bahasa Malaysia and Mandarin. In Brunei, the message was disseminated through handouts distributed to the faithful during weekend Masses and priests' homilies were dedicated to expounding on the Bible's importance in lay Catholic spirituality.
