Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney mob: 0417 279 437;
email: mike.delaney@catholicpriest.org.au
Assistant Priests:
Fr Augustine Ezenwelu mob: 0470 576 857
Fr Alexander Obiorah Mob: 0447 478 297; alexchuksobi@yahoo.co.uk
Postal Address: PO Box 362, Devonport 7310
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street, Devonport 7310
Office Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday,Thursday 10am-3pm
Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160
FaceBook: Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
Weekly Newsletter: mlcathparish.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: podomatic.com/mikedelaney
Parish Magazine: mlcathparishnewsletter.blogspot.com.au
Secretary: Annie Davies/Anne Fisher Pastoral Council Chair: Mary Davies
Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.
Readings this Week
FIRST READING
RESPONSORIAL PSALM
(R.) Happy
are those who fear the Lord and walk in his ways.
SECOND READING
GOSPEL ACCLAMATION
Alleluia, alleluia! In the past God spoke to our fathers
through the prophets; now he speaks to us though his Son. Alleluia!
GOSPEL: Luke 2:22-40
FIRST READING
SECOND READING
GOSPEL: Matthew 2: 1-12
Weekday
Masses 30th Dec - 3rd Jan, 2015
Tuesday: 9:30am
Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am
Latrobe
Thursday: 9:30am
Ulverstone, 12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone & Devonport
Saturday: 9:00am
Ulverstone
Next
Weekend 3rd & 4th January, 2015
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin & Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell, 9am Ulverstone,
10:30am Devonport, 11am Sheffield
5pm Latrobe
Eucharistic
Adoration:
Devonport: Recommences 9th January, 2015.
Devonport: Benediction - Recommence first Friday of
February, 2015.
Prayer Groups:
Charismatic Renewal - Devonport (Emmaus House)
Thursdays - 7:30pm - Recommencing 5th February, 2015
Christian Meditation - Devonport, Emmaus House - Wednesdays 7pm. Recommencing
4th February, 2015
OLOL Piety Shop will be closed until 31st
January, 2015
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Josephine Bailey, Audrey Mitchell, Bridget Stone, Shanon Breaden, Shirley White, Tom
Knaap, Kath Smith, &.....
Let us pray for those who
have died recently: Emily Duggan, Max Anderson, Audrey Cassidy, Fr Tom
Garvey, Darryl Duggan, Errol Northrop and Gwen Thorp.
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: Kathleen Sheehan, Brian Salter, Grant Dell, Mavis Wise,
Thelma Batt, Barbara George, Pearl Sheridan, William Cousins, Bill Kruk, Ian Stubbs and Nicola
Tenaglia.
May they rest in peace
Fr Mike:
As mentioned over the past few weeks we will be having an
abbreviated newsletter during January with the readings, some rosters, names of
those who have died and also those whose anniversaries occur about this time as
well as prayers for the sick and any other information that is appropriate.
Last year this information was available only on the internet on our Newsletter
Blog but this year it will be in both places.
A reminder that on New Year’s Eve there will be the
Pilgrimage between the Churches at Latrobe commencing at the Baptist Church
This weekend also marks the completion of my first year as
PP of Mersey Leven Parish – still at least 9 years to go!! Thank you for your
support and prayers during this time.
May 2015 be a time of life and growth for our Parish and
peace and joy for our world.
THE NON-VIOLENCE OF GOD
An article by Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. The original article can be found at http://ronrolheiser.com/the-non-violence-of-god/#.VJ3aKV4ABA
In his deeply insightful book, Violence Unveiled, Gil Bailie takes us through a remarkable section of the diaries of Captain James Cook, the famed British scientist and explorer. Visiting the Island of Tahiti in 1777, Cook was taken one day by a local tribal Chief to witness a ritual where a man was sacrificed as an offering to the god, Eatooa. The man was being sacrificed in hope that this particular god would give the tribe some assistance in an upcoming war. Cook, though friendly to the local peoples, could not conceal his detestation for what he considered both a barbaric and superstitious act. In a conversation with the tribal Chief afterwards, Cook told the Chief, through an interpreter, that in England they would hang a man for doing that.
Cook found the idea of killing someone to appease God to be abhorrent. Yet, as the great irony inside this story makes clear, we have never stopped killing people in God’s name, we have only changed the nomenclature. They called it human sacrifice; we call it capital punishment. In either case, someone dies because we feel that God needs and wants this death for some divine reason.
All peoples, right up to this day, have always done violence in God’s name, believing that the violence is not only justified but is in fact necessitated by God. God, it is argued, needs us to do this violence in his name. For this reason, ancient cultures often offered human sacrifice. During the medieval ages, as a Christian church, we had the Inquisition believing that God wanted us to kill people who were in doctrinal error. Today we see a new form of this in a number of extremist Islamic groups who believe that God wants infidels of all kinds put to death for the sake of religious purity.
We have forever justified killing and other forms of violence in God’s name, often pointing to texts in scripture, which seemingly, show God as ordering violence in his name. But, in this, we have been wrong. Despite a number of texts which, on the surface, seem to indicate that God is ordering violence (but which are really archetypal and anthropomorphic in nature and do not justify that interpretation) we see, if we read the bible from beginning to end, a progressive revelation (or at least a progressive realization on our part) of the non-violence of God, a revelation that ends in Jesus who reveals a God of radical non-violence. Our faulty idea of the God of the Old Testament who seemingly orders the extermination of whole peoples is indeed primitive and superstitious when placed beside the concept of the Father of Jesus who sends his son into the world as a helpless infant and then lets him die helpless before a mocking crowd. The God whom Jesus reveals is devoid of all violence and asks that we no longer do violence in God’s name.
To offer just one example: In John’s Gospel (8, 2-11), we see the story of the woman who has been caught in adultery. As John tells the story: A crowd of pious persons bring her to Jesus and tell him that they have caught her in the very act of committing adultery and that Moses (their primary interpreter of God’s will) has ordered that, for this offense, she needs to be put to death. Jesus, for his part, says nothing, instead he bends down and begins to write on the ground with his finger. Then, looking up, he tells them: “Let the person among you without sin cast the first stone!” Then he bends down and writes for a second time with his finger. Unbelievably they get the message and lay down their stones and go away.
What has happened here? The key for interpretation is Jesus’ gesture of writing on the ground with his finger. Who writes with his finger? Who writes twice? God does. And what God writes with his finger and writes twice are the Ten Commandments, and he had to write them twice because Moses “broke” them the first time. Coming down the mountain, carrying the tablets of the commandments, Moses caught the people in the very act of committing idolatry and he, gripped in a fever of religious and moral fervor, broke the tables of stone on the golden calf and on peoples’ heads. Moses was the first person to break the commandments and he broke them physically, thinking violence needed to be done for God’s cause. Then, having broken them, he needed to go up the mountain a second time and have them rewritten by God; but before rewriting them, God gave Moses a stern message: Don’t stone people with the Commandments! Don’t do violence in my name! The people who wanted to stone the woman caught in adultery understood Jesus’ gesture. Their divine interpreter, Moses, had it wrong.
Too often, though, we are still, in a variety of forms, stoning people with the Commandments, falsely believing that God wants this violence.
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