January 2025

On January 1^st, as usual at Shinmeizan, we greeted in prayer the first dawn of the year and welcomed guests coming for the traditional new year’s visit to a Temple. 

On January 9^th, we held the traditional monthly retreat open to all. This year’s topic will be “Pilgrimage”, echoing the general theme of the Holy Year celebrated by the Catholic Church, and a popular practice both in the Shinto and the Buddhist tradition.

On January 13-14 a group of faithful from the Catholic Church of Tetori (Kumamoto) came for a couple of days of retreat, at the conclusion of their “100 weeks” long study of the Bible.

Among the guests who visited Shinmeizan this month, we wish to remember especially: Fr. Nuno Da Lima, of the Boa Nova Missionary Society, Pastor of the Cathedral Church of Osaka, the Ven. Hara Onin, Head of the Choenji Buddhist Temple (Nichiren School) of Kumamoto, and the Xaverian Missionaries Frs. Pio Pasini and Alessandro Turco, respectively from Miyazaki and Kumamoto.

Among the main activities online of this month, particularly meaningful has been, on January 16, the Italian version of the program “Shinmeizan: for a spirituality of silence and surrender” - requested after the first broadcast in English of last month – by the “International School of Silence” of the Rome based “School of meditation” (via zoom). (FOTO)