Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney mob: 0417 279 437; email: mike.delaney@catholicpriest.org.au
Assistant Priest: Fr Augustine Ezenwelu mob: 0470 576 857
Postal Address: PO Box 362
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street
Office Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm
Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160
FaceBook: Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
Newsletter: mlcathparish.blogspot.com.au
Secretary: Annie Davies
Pastoral Council Chair: Mary Davies
Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: arrangements are made by contacting Parish Office.
Parents attend a Baptismal Preparation Session on first Tuesday of February, April, June, August, October and December.
Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist: Are received following a Family–centred, Parish-based, School-supported Preparation Program.
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults: prepares adults for reception into the Catholic community.
Marriage: arrangements are made by contacting one of our priests - couples attend a pre-marriage Program
Anointing of the Sick: please contact one of our priests
Reconciliation: Ulverstone - Fridays (10am - 10:30am)
Devonport - Saturday (5:15pm– 5.45pm)
Devonport - Saturday (5:15pm– 5.45pm)
Scripture Readings: 5th Sunday of the Year- Year A
FIRST READING: Isaiah 58:7-10
RESPONSORIAL PSALM (R.) A light rises in the darkness for the upright
SECOND READING: 1 Corinthians 2:1-5
GOSPEL ACCLAMATION Alleluia, alleluia!I am the light of the world, says the Lord; the man who follows me will have the light of life. Alleluia!
GOSPEL: Matthew 5:1-16
SECOND READING: 1 Corinthians 2:1-5
GOSPEL ACCLAMATION Alleluia, alleluia!I am the light of the world, says the Lord; the man who follows me will have the light of life. Alleluia!
GOSPEL: Matthew 5:1-16
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
I give myself the gift of time with Jesus. In the midst of
noise and activity, I find a quiet space and slow down in mind, body and
spirit.
I may like to imagine I am with the disciples, I am one of
them, listening to Jesus’ words.
Jesus is paying me and my companions an extraordinary
compliment! He is saying that we are the salt of the earth and more that that,
we are the light of the world!
Jesus uses simple, everyday examples, to illustrate the
value of salt and light, God given gifts which are rendered useless if hidden
or wasted.
I take a moment to ponder what this means to me.
Do Jesus’ words encourage me in my discipleship or do I
find them daunting; can Jesus’ words possibly apply to the likes of me? Am I
willing to use these vital qualities for the greater glory of God or would I
rather be ‘unseen’? I stay in the presence of Jesus for a while. I can tell him
how I feel, ask him for what I need, or simply BE in his company.
In the name of the Father and of the Son….Next Week: - 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A
FIRST READING: Ecclesiasticus 15:15-20
RESPONSORIAL PSALM (R.) Happy are they who follow the law of the Lord!
SECOND READING: 1 Corinthians 2:6-10
GOSPEL ACCLAMATION Alleluia, alleluia! Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth; you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the kingdom. Alleluia!
GOSPEL: Matthew 5:17 -37
SECOND READING: 1 Corinthians 2:6-10
GOSPEL ACCLAMATION Alleluia, alleluia! Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth; you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the kingdom. Alleluia!
GOSPEL: Matthew 5:17 -37
Masses Next Weekend: 15th - 16th February, 2014
Saturday Vigil: 6.00pm Penguin
Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell (L.W.C.)
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Masses This Week: 10th - 14th February 2014
Monday No Mass
Tuesday 9.30am - Penguin
Wednesday 9.30am - Latrobe
Thursday 10.00am - Eliza Purton, 12noon Devonport
Friday 9.30am - Ulverstone.... Sts Cyril & Methodius
Ministry Rosters 15th & 16th
February, 2014
Devonport:
Readers:
Vigil: D Covington
Ministers of Communion: Vigil – T Muir,
M Davies, J Cox, M Gerrand, T Bird, S Innes - 10.30am: C Schrader, R Beaton, E McLagan, B & N Mulcahy, L
Hollister Cleaners 14th Feb: K Hull
Ulverstone:
Reader: K McKenzie Cleaners: Knights of the Southern Cross Flowers: M Swain
Ministers of Communion: T Leary, M
& K McKenzie, M O'Halloran Hospitality: K Foster
Penguin:
Greeters: A Landers, P Ravaillion Commentator: Readers: E Nickols , Y Downes
Procession: A Landers, A Hyland Ministers of Communion: J Garnsey,
S Ewing Music: L Keen
Liturgy: Penguin Setting Up: E Nickols
Care of Church: Y & R Downes
Port Sorell:
Readers: D Leaman, T Jeffries Ministers of Communion: E Holloway Clean/Flow &
Prepare: G Bellchambers, M Gillard
Eucharistic Adoration:
Devonport: Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus (starting again 31st January)
Devonport: Benediction with Adoration - first Friday of each Month.
Ulverstone: First Friday 11.45am-12.45pm and Third Sunday 5pm – 6pm.
Prayer Groups:
Christian Meditation - Devonport, Emmaus House - Wednesdays 7pm.
Charismatic Renewal - Ulverstone (Community Room) Every second and fourth Monday of the month 7:30pm - Devonport (Emmaus House) Thursdays - 7:30pm
Christian Meditation - Devonport, Emmaus House - Wednesdays 7pm.
Your prayers are asked for the sick:
June, Bourke, Mely
Phybus, Laura Vella, Kieran Simpson, Sandy Cowling, Maria Karajovanova, Shanon Breaden, Glen Clark, Jamie Griffiths, Jane Dutton, Anne Johnson & ...
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Sylvia Taylor, Sheila Bourke, Sheila Poole, Phil Green, Pat Lewis and Gerry Doyle.
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time:
Sharon Fellows-Glover, Ethel Kelcey, Colleen Cameron, Christopher
Cabalzar, Rita Wescombe, Mary Hunniford, Jacqueline Chisholm, Michael
Ravaillion, Venus Martin, Cesar S. Cortes Snr. Also Greta Cooper and deceased relatives of Helen
McLennan.
May they Rest in Peace
A warm welcome back to our school Principals, Peter Douglas (Sacred Heart Ulverstone), Clynton Sharvi (Our Lady of
The season of Lent is rapidly approaching and our
liturgical preparation will commence in earnest. A meeting to assist us in our
preparation for Lent/Easter will be held this Sunday 9th February 2pm at
Emmaus House, 88 Stewart Street
MACKILLOP HILL:
WOMEN & SPIRITUALITY:
Resumes Tuesday 11th February 7.30pm - 9.30pm - Enquiries:
Josephine Kelly Phone 6424:4633
CHRISTIAN MEDITATION:
Do you seek a regular short time of silent prayer to help
you get through your day/week? If so, you may like to join a small group of
people in our parish who are committed to the form of prayer known as Christian
Meditation. This prayer is based on
Scripture (such as Psalm 46:10 Be still and know that I am God) and follows the
teachings of John Main osb (www.wccm.org.au).
It is about experiencing the presence of God at the centre of our being.
Where? Emmaus House,
88 Stewart St
When? Every Wednesday
- 7pm
- 8pm no booking required.
What do you do? We
have a short reading or listen to a talk on Christian Meditation, then we spend
30 minutes in silent prayer and conclude with a prayer or song (usually about
45 minutes in total). Why not come along and experience this form of
prayer? All welcome.
CWL DEVONPORT: meeting Wednesday 12th
February, 2pm -Emmaus House. Reviews available at the Piety shop.
INVITATION: Catholic Women’s League is an organisation who have made a difference
in our Devonport Community since 1944. To help us celebrate our 70th birthday
we invite any woman of the parish and our Catholic Schools communities to join
us at 11am Mass on Tuesday 25th February followed by lunch at the Gateway Motel. For
catering purposes please ring Pat 6424:2597 or Kath 6424:6504 by Thursday 20th February
CWL
ULVERSTONE:
Meeting Friday 14th February, 2pm - Community Room
Ulverstone.
SACRAMENTAL ROGRAM:
Families with children in Grade 3 or above are invited to
participate in our family-centred, parish-based and school-supported
Sacramental Program to prepare to celebrate the sacraments of RECONCILIATION,
CONFIRMATION AND EUCHARIST in April and June next year.
Information Sessions to explain the preparation program
will be held on: Monday 24th February 7.00pm at Our Lady of Lourdes
Church , Stewart Street Sacred Heart
Church Alexandra Road
For
further information, please contact the Parish Office (6424 2783) or mlcathparish-dsl@keypoint.com.au
SACRED
HEART CHURCH CHOIR:
Church Choir practice takes place 7pm Thursday evenings beginning
13th February at Sacred
Heart Church
RELOCATION OF THE BELL
You are aware that planning is underway for the relocation
of the Bell Peter to the grounds of
Some copies of the text of the proposed
history are available at the rear of the church. Please make the time to read
it for historical accuracy and to see whether any significant milestone
regarding the bell has been omitted.
Please return any suggestions to Carey McIver or Jeff Cox
for consideration in finalising the content of the History Board no later than
March 9th 2014.
LEGION OF MARY: Meet every Wednesday in the
Community Room, Sacred Heart
Church
“Developing countries are disproportionately affected by
natural disasters. Research over the past decade reveals that on average, a
disaster will claim the lives of 1052 people in the poorest countries compared
with 23 people in the developed world. This is likely to continue as the poor
of the world are exposed to more weather-related disasters, and conflict and
political and economic crises in fragile states continue to disrupt effective
management of infrastructure and natural resources.”
From the Australian Catholic Bishop’s Social Justice
Statement 2013-2014: Lazarus at our Gate: A critical moment in the fight
against world poverty.
BINGO: Come along and have some fun with BINGO
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall, Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm! Callers for Thursday 13th February are Merv
Tippett and Bruce Peters.
Evangelii
Gaudium
‘A renewal of preaching
can offer believers, as well as the lukewarm and the non-practising, new joy in
the faith and fruitfulness in the work of evangelization. The heart of its
message will always be the same: the God who revealed his immense love in the
crucified and risen Christ. God constantly renews his faithful ones, whatever
their age...’
Sacraments
of Penance and Anointing of the Sick
Christ,
the physician of our soul and body, instituted these sacraments because the new
life he gives us in the sacraments of Christian initiation can be weakened and
even lost because of sin. Therefore, Christ willed that his Church should
continue his work of healing and salvation by means of these two sacraments.
From: Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic
Church: Paragraph 295
Prepared
& contributed by the Catholic Enquiry Centre http://www.catholicenquiry.com
Saint of the Week –St Scholastica (February 10)
Did
you know that St Scholastica was the sister of St Benedict? She gave her life
to God at an early age. After her brother went to Monte Cassino, where he
established his famous monastery, she took up her abode in the neighborhood at
Plombariola, where she founded and governed a monastery of nuns, about five
miles from that of St. Benedict. They had regular contact, and would often pray
together, at a nearby house (as she was not allowed to visit him in the
monastery).
On this
Wednesday, the Catholic Church in Australia
‘I was saying something
about freedom. He replied “Father, if freedom is all you have known, then you
have never known freedom." I sensed the horrible truth of that statement
again today.’
REFLECTION ON THE PRIESTHOOD by Fr Ron Rolheiser
REFLECTION ON THE PRIESTHOOD by Fr Ron Rolheiser
On the tenth anniversary of my
ordination, I published a reflection on the priesthood, intending it as a
challenge to the Catholic community to understand its priests more
empathically. Maybe I'm more mature today, though perhaps the years have also
blunted some of the courage and verve I had back then. So, twenty years later,
I share again the words I wrote when I was still a very young priest:
"Ten years a priest! I can say it out loud: They've been good years; full enough of giving and receiving. I have enjoyed the ministry and have been able to help some people even as I have been helped by others. There have been too some incredibly special moments, depth moments clearly touched by transcendence, and I have also tasted sufficient agony. I've no regrets.
My initial fears on entering the seminary had centred around loneliness and boredom. These have been non-issues. The spectres of pressure, over-intensity, and burnout cast a much more threatening shadow.
And I've survived, and survived with enough enthusiasm to hoist a few drinks to celebrate the event and to look forward to the future.
As I look ahead, I would like to offer a reflection to the Catholic community vis-a-vis its priests:
Roman Catholics still understand a priest too much in terms of his cultic role. There is undue significance given to the cultic powers a priest has been given to preside at Eucharist and administer the sacraments. Partly because of this the priest is too easily cast in the role of the tribal medicine man. Like the medicine man, he is respected and revered because he is feared. But he is not genuinely loved, nor understood, because he is never perceived and accepted as being fully human like the rest of us. Too frequently, with all but our very closest friends, we are made to feel out-of-the-ordinary, medicine men.
More debilitating still is the Catholic community's understanding of the priest as a sexual being. Bottomline, a priest is expected to act as if were not a being full of sexual complexity. Please do not misunderstand this: What I'm pleading for is not that the Catholic community invite or condone sexual weakness and irresponsibility in its priests. Nor should it invite a priest to be simply "one of the boys."
The issue is one of accepting a priest's full humanity, including his sexuality and the necessary complexity that follows from that. The priest need not a be handed a license to be irresponsible, but he needs to be handed the feeling that he is understood and accepted fully as he is, including his complexities and sexuality.
Unfortunately, that is rarely afforded us and, consequently, we must pretend, pretend that we are eunuchs. No eunuch can preach effectively to the full-blooded. That is why we are politely listened to, even as it is taken for granted that we have nothing vital to say about real life.
A priest generally finds himself in a no-win situation: If he seemingly understands life too clearly, including its earthier aspects of sex and sin, then he draws the suspicion of the Catholic community. Conversely, if he radiates the innocence and naivete the community wants of him, he is relegated to the realm of the insignificant, still allowed to do his magic, but no full-blooded person turns to him for genuine understanding and guidance.
It's an interesting speculation as to why the Catholic community wants its priests to radiate naivete and non-complexity. I suspect it's because, deep down, we're all a little afraid our own complexity and somehow if father goes through life pretending that he has no shadow, we can also more easily pretend that we haven't got one either.
Finally, we tend to leave no room for our priests to be weak. I am not speaking here of weak in the moral sense, but weak in the way Jesus was weak and in the way that any truly sensitive person is: vulnerable, not always together, emotionally over-wrought, chronically over-extended, and prone to cry very needy tears at times. We demand instead someone who projects that all is well all the time and who bleeds only ichor.
And so my plea is this: Please don't, consciously or unconsciously, ask your priest to dress in medieval clothes, to stay in the sanctuary, and to be so timid as to be unable to dare the perilous task of living. Let him be himself: complex, weak, sexed, masculine, involved, needy, and free not to pretend. Priests are tired of being cast in the clothing of senility while everyone is crying to be young, tired of being cast as eunuchs without real blood, sinew and passion.
Small wonder hardly anyone wants to join us!
We need, priests and community together, to risk some new directions. There are risks in this of course, but, as Goethe once put it; 'The dangers of life are infinite and safety is among them'."
"Ten years a priest! I can say it out loud: They've been good years; full enough of giving and receiving. I have enjoyed the ministry and have been able to help some people even as I have been helped by others. There have been too some incredibly special moments, depth moments clearly touched by transcendence, and I have also tasted sufficient agony. I've no regrets.
My initial fears on entering the seminary had centred around loneliness and boredom. These have been non-issues. The spectres of pressure, over-intensity, and burnout cast a much more threatening shadow.
And I've survived, and survived with enough enthusiasm to hoist a few drinks to celebrate the event and to look forward to the future.
As I look ahead, I would like to offer a reflection to the Catholic community vis-a-vis its priests:
Roman Catholics still understand a priest too much in terms of his cultic role. There is undue significance given to the cultic powers a priest has been given to preside at Eucharist and administer the sacraments. Partly because of this the priest is too easily cast in the role of the tribal medicine man. Like the medicine man, he is respected and revered because he is feared. But he is not genuinely loved, nor understood, because he is never perceived and accepted as being fully human like the rest of us. Too frequently, with all but our very closest friends, we are made to feel out-of-the-ordinary, medicine men.
More debilitating still is the Catholic community's understanding of the priest as a sexual being. Bottomline, a priest is expected to act as if were not a being full of sexual complexity. Please do not misunderstand this: What I'm pleading for is not that the Catholic community invite or condone sexual weakness and irresponsibility in its priests. Nor should it invite a priest to be simply "one of the boys."
The issue is one of accepting a priest's full humanity, including his sexuality and the necessary complexity that follows from that. The priest need not a be handed a license to be irresponsible, but he needs to be handed the feeling that he is understood and accepted fully as he is, including his complexities and sexuality.
Unfortunately, that is rarely afforded us and, consequently, we must pretend, pretend that we are eunuchs. No eunuch can preach effectively to the full-blooded. That is why we are politely listened to, even as it is taken for granted that we have nothing vital to say about real life.
A priest generally finds himself in a no-win situation: If he seemingly understands life too clearly, including its earthier aspects of sex and sin, then he draws the suspicion of the Catholic community. Conversely, if he radiates the innocence and naivete the community wants of him, he is relegated to the realm of the insignificant, still allowed to do his magic, but no full-blooded person turns to him for genuine understanding and guidance.
It's an interesting speculation as to why the Catholic community wants its priests to radiate naivete and non-complexity. I suspect it's because, deep down, we're all a little afraid our own complexity and somehow if father goes through life pretending that he has no shadow, we can also more easily pretend that we haven't got one either.
Finally, we tend to leave no room for our priests to be weak. I am not speaking here of weak in the moral sense, but weak in the way Jesus was weak and in the way that any truly sensitive person is: vulnerable, not always together, emotionally over-wrought, chronically over-extended, and prone to cry very needy tears at times. We demand instead someone who projects that all is well all the time and who bleeds only ichor.
And so my plea is this: Please don't, consciously or unconsciously, ask your priest to dress in medieval clothes, to stay in the sanctuary, and to be so timid as to be unable to dare the perilous task of living. Let him be himself: complex, weak, sexed, masculine, involved, needy, and free not to pretend. Priests are tired of being cast in the clothing of senility while everyone is crying to be young, tired of being cast as eunuchs without real blood, sinew and passion.
Small wonder hardly anyone wants to join us!
We need, priests and community together, to risk some new directions. There are risks in this of course, but, as Goethe once put it; 'The dangers of life are infinite and safety is among them'."
Beatitudes for Teachers
Blessed are you who are called to teach,
for you walk in the footsteps of the Master.
Blessed are you who sow peace and harmony in the staffroom,
yours will be the joy of the Lord.
Blessed are you who plant seeds of hope in
youthful hearts,
for you will inherit the dawn.
Blessed are you who are sensitive to the cries of
youth today,
for they yearn for the coming of the Kingdom.
Blessed are you when you anguish now because your
students are difficult,
for one day they will thank you for your loving
concern.
Blessed are you when efficiency is moderated by
compassion and empathy,
for the deeper secret of education is yours.
Blessed are you when you reach out to the Lord in
your students,
for you will surely find him and rejoice.
Blessed are you who lead young people in the paths
of justice and peace,
for you will shine like stars for all eternity.
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