27th Sunday (Ordinary Time – A)

This is a slideshow presentation based on Matthew 21:33-43, the Gospel reading for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A). You may embed this slideshow into your own blog/website or download the original PowerPoint/Pdf file so you may use it in your liturgical celebrations.

Gospelr: Microblogging God's Word

Gospelr is the twitter for Christians. According to its developers, the purpose of this microblogging technology is “to provide an effective communication medium for sharing thoughts, ideas, words of encouragement, prayer requests, daily scripture readings/devotionals, and more to friends, staff, ministries, family, and others.”

I have been maintaining a Twitter account since October 2007 and I use it not only to update my friends about my whereabouts but also as a ministry platform. My tweets are mostly quotes about faith, praying, joy, celebrating life and spreading God’s Word. In short, Gospelr is exactly how I want Twitter to be.

The fact that there are people out there who want to code, develop and make use of the latest technologies for evangelization amazes me. Gospelr is another example that popular web applications and services can serve the Church and its mission.

Two things that make me want to use Gospelr is its being Twitter-integrated (what you post in Gospelr will also appear in Twitter and vice versa) and the developer’s promise that they will soon make a WordPress plugin (my site is powered by WordPress).

Christianize Your Firefox

There are more than 250 themes available for Firefox. You can find all of them here. If you want to “Christianize” your browsing experience, I recommend that you use the Bible Fox theme.  As you can see in the screenshot, the icons used in this theme are familiar Christian symbols (fish, dove, cross, church, etc). This theme is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It is compatible with Firefox 3.0.

Ubuntu Christian Edition users do not have to install this skin because Bible Fox is the default Firefox theme of their distro. It might interest you to know that this theme averages more than 8,000 downloads per week.

International Eucharistic Congress

The 49th International Eucharistic Congress is currently being held in Quebec, Canada. The theme of the weeklong (June 15-22) assembly is “The Eucharist, Gift of God for the Life of the World.” The program of activities includes a mix of artistic and religious celebrations, workshops, symposia and catecheses.

The organizers have created a media portal where visitors can follow the Congress live via streaming media. Videos of the liturgical celebrations, homilies, conferences, testimonies and other important events are available for free. A number of documentaries are also included in the list of videos for online viewing. It is best to start with the “Just Added” folder because it contains the latest video resources.

The text of the multilingual Congress theme song can be downloaded in PDF format but you have to visit this page to listen to the audio. You can also listen to a good number of Gregorian chants recorded for the Congress here. The Theological Document prepared for the Congress is available in seven languages and can be downloaded from this page.

Firefox 3 Packages for Fedora 9

The latest stable version of Firefox is out now.  Click here to download the best browser on the planet and be part in making a Guinness World Record today.

I have two Linux boxes – one runs Ubuntu 8.04 and the other Fedora 9. In Ubuntu, all I have to do is to let the Update Manager do the job. In Fedora, on the other hand,  I have to download and install Firefox 3.0 manually. Well, at least my “yum update” command did not yield any Firefox upgrade (I wish Livna were that fast in updating its repository). And since I am too lazy to go through all the process of installing from a Tarball, I tried to look for RPM packages. I found the Firefox 3 packages for Fedora 9 here. Here are the direct links to the packages:

Firefox-3.0-1.fc9.i386.rpm (24775 KB)
Firefox-3.0-1.fc9.src.rpm (36096 KB)
Firefox-3.0-1.fc9.x86_64.rpm (24329 KB)

Firefox Download Day

Firefox wants to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours on June 17, 2008. And I have just pledged to download my most favorite browser to help make it come true. As of this writing, 876,074 people from all corners of the globe have already vowed to download Firefox 3 on Download Day.

You too can make your pledge by clicking here. I am writing this post using Firefox 3 Beta 5 running on OpenSuse 11 RC1 and I can attest to the fact that Firefox really gives you “increased security, blinding speed and cool new features that will change the way you use the Web.” Firefox is absolutely free, no strings attached.

If you want to watch a demo of the features of Firefox 3, please click here. If you want to know what else you can do to help spread Firefox, visit this page.

Experiencing God Everywhere

Other6 is a website that asks two simple questions: Where have you found God today? Where do you need to find God today?

The website (www.other6.net) invites its visitors to share their experiences of finding God in everyday situations. Some people experience God through liturgical celebrations, the sacraments and the bible. But finding God is not just about making contact with him through prayer, but also about experiencing Him in the most ordinary situation, good or bad. You do not have to wait for Sunday to be close to God, He is just as intimate the other6 days of the week.

And this is exactly what people are writing about and posting in Other6. Some people find God while gardening or watching a sunset or being with their co-workers. Here are a few examples of what visitors have posted: