A Christian Brother who has helped preserve and promote the languages of Australia’s First Peoples on the NSW mid-north coast is one of three Religious to receive Queen’s Birthday Honours.

There is a time in the afternoon when the sunshine reaches our kitchen bench, which I always thought was clean. It shows all the dust, crumbs and smudges from the last person cleaning it. If I am at home and see it, I pick up spray and a cleaning cloth and try to clean it better, but quite often the surface stays the way it is – unnoticed – until someone feels that there is something sticky or dirty and cleans it, reflects Sr Grace Roclawska CSFN in Catholic Outlook.

The Marist Brothers Province of Australia celebrated the feast day of founder St Marcellin Champagnat with the launch of three short films on contemporary expressions of Marist spirituality in Australia.

Two new faith-based digital initiatives – from the Redemptorists and the Jesuits – have launched in recent weeks, bringing spirituality resources for students, teachers and families right to people’s phones or laptops.

When Pope Francis encouraged priests to “Take on the smell of the sheep” by getting out and being with the people, he might not have imagined how two Divine Word Missionaries would put his words into actions by spending time on vast cattle stations in rural Queensland.