Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney mob: 0417 279 437;
email: mike.delaney@catholicpriest.org.au
Assistant Priests:
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.
Weekday
Masses 13th -17th January, 2015
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 10:30am
Karingal
Friday: 11:00am Mt St Vincent
Next
Weekend 17th & 18th 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: Every Friday 10am - 12noon,
concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Devonport: Benediction with Adoration - first Friday of
each month.
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
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Helen Williams, Shanon Breaden, Shirley White, Tom
Knaap, Kath Smith, Peg Leary & ...
Let us pray for those who
have died recently:
Roy Beechey, Virginia Miller, Max
Anderson, Emily Duggan, Vonda Parker, Br Gerald Shiel (Former principal of St
Brendan College), Audrey Cassidy and Fr Tom Garvey.
Let us pray for those whose
anniversary occurs about this time: Gerard Reynolds, Brett Hunniford, Gerald
Kramer, Kelvin French, Bridget Richards, Bernice Vidler, Gerry Doyle, Berna
Adkins, Joanne Johnson and William Richardson.
May they rest in peace
FIRST READING
RESPONSORIAL PSALM
(R.) You will draw water joyfully from the springs of
salvation.
SECOND READING
GOSPEL ACCLAMATION
Alleluia, alleluia! John saw Jesus approaching him, and
said: This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Alleluia!
GOSPEL Mark 1:7-11
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL
As I go to my place of prayer, I try to become aware that
it is God who calls me to this time of listening to the gospel today. I begin
my prayer in stillness, with gratitude and reverence. When I am ready, I read
the gospel slowly, perhaps several times, paying attention to any phrase that
has particular meaning for me.
After a while, I might lay the text aside and picture the
gospel scene in my imagination. Perhaps I put myself in the scene, watching the
actions, hearing the voices. If I find this difficult, perhaps I might envisage
describing the story to a small child.
What am I thinking and feeling as I engage with the gospel
story? I talk with my Lord, as one friend to another.
Jesus gives me a greater gift than baptism with water
alone: he gifts me the Holy Spirit - the living presence of God within. I thank
God for the gift of his presence with me always. I ask the Holy Spirit to guide
me today, perhaps asking for a greater trust, a deeper faith, …..or whatever
gift I need.
God the Father also calls me, “My beloved child”. I take
time to allow the reality of his love for me to sink in. How do I feel now as I
consider the depths of his love for me?
I end my prayer slowly...Glory be to the Father........
First Reading
Second Reading
Gospel: John 1:35-42
WEEKLY RAMBLINGS
On Monday afternoon Fr Alexander and I (and three
parishioners) farewelled Fr Augustine - who left with huge a case and bag and
was allowed on without paying excess baggage - very lucky! This is the email I
received after inquiring if he had arrived home safely: yes. I arrived home at Australian
time, 6:26 am Wednesday. my family welcomed me well. three priests were at the
airport to receive me. I have seen my archbishop and he welcomed me with a hug.
he asked me to come tomoro Thursday and collect a posting letter. he sent me to
a parish in Onitsha called Holy Spirit parish Omagba
in Onitsha
thanks. my regards to all. my mum appreciate all who sent greetings. thanks again. I'm happy.
thanks. my regards to all. my mum appreciate all who sent greetings. thanks again. I'm happy.
On Friday I was in Sydney
Next weekend we have the Annual Sinulog Festival (details
below) - a significant Festival for the Filipino community and all
parishioners are encouraged to support them over this next week. They are also participating in a Novena
leading up to the Festival - details are on the Notice Board in all Churches.
There are two significant events coming up in February. The
first Open House for 2015 will be held on Fri 6th at the Parish House,
Devonport. Again, food, wine and soft drink will be provided - please BYO other
drinks. On Sat 7th/Sun 8th we will be
celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes with a thanks for all those
wonderful parishioners who support the Devonport community week by week. After Mass there will be a cuppa in the Foyer of the Church. Then
on Wednesday (11th - actual Feast Day) there will be Mass at OLOL at 12noon
followed by a counter meal at Molly Malone's Hotel for anyone and everyone to join
us in our Devonport Feast Day.
FYI: 2015 marks the end of the Decade of
the Millennium Development Goals - most have been forgotten or ignored. The Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) are the world's time-bound and quantified targets
for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions - income poverty, hunger,
disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion-while promoting gender
equality, education, and environmental sustainability - www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/.
Stay Safe on the roads and in your homes
OLOL: New readers rosters are available
and can be collected from the sacristy.
VOLUNTEERS: Help is needed to fill rosters in the various Church
communities - if you can help please tell Fr Mike, Fr Alexander or someone in
the local Community or the Parish Office in February.
SINULOG FESTIVAL: The Sinulog Festival in honour of
the Holy Infant Jesus, Sr. Sto. Nino de Cebu, will be celebrated on
Sunday, 18th Jan, at Our Lady of Lourdes during the 10:30am mass; followed by a
procession to the Parish Hall for final celebration, gathering and fellowship.
Please bring a plate to share. Everyone Welcome!
UNDERSTANDING AND APPRECIATING OUR DIFFERENCES
An article by Fr Ron Rolheiser. The original can be found at http://ronrolheiser.com/understanding-and-appreciating-our-differences/#.VLBFUyuUfAY
But what if what separates us, what if what makes other persons, churches, and faiths seem foreign and strange is also a grace, a difference intended by God? Can we think of our differences, as we think of our unity, as a gift from God? Most religions, including Christianity, would answer affirmatively.
Thus in both the Jewish and the Christian scriptures there is the strong, recurring motif that God’s message to us generally comes through the stranger, the foreigner, from the one who is different from us, from a source from which we would never expect to hear God’s voice. Added to this is the notion that when God speaks to us we generally experience it as a surprise, as something unexpected, and as something that does not easily square with our normal expectations as to how God should work and how we should learn. There’s a reason for this. Simply put, when we think we are hearing God’s voice in what’s familiar, comfortable, and secure, the temptation is always to reshape the message according to our own image and likeness, and so God often comes to us through the unfamiliar.
Moreover, what’s familiar is comfortable and offers us security; but, as we know, real transformative growth mostly happens when, like the aged Sarah and Abraham, we are forced to set off to a place that’s foreign and frightening and that strips us of all that is comfortable and secure. Set off, God told Sarah and Abraham, to a land where you don’t know where you’re going. Real growth happens and real grace breaks in when we have to deal with what is other, foreign, different. Learn to understand, writes John of the Cross, more by not understanding than by understanding. What’s dark, unfamiliar, frightening, and uninvited will stretch us in ways that the familiar and secure cannot. God sends his word to the earth through “angels” and they’re not exactly something we’re familiar with.
If this is true, then our differences are also a grace. Accordingly, seeing things differently does not mean that we are not seeing the same things. Accordingly, different notions about God and different ways of speaking about God do not mean that we’re speaking of a different God. The same holds true for our churches, having difference concepts of what it means to be church does not necessarily mean that there isn’t some deeper underlying unity inside our diversity. Similarly for how we conceive of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, how we imagine Christ as being really present inside of bread and wine, can take many forms and can be spoken of in different ways, without it meaning that we’re speaking of a different reality.
John Paul II, addressing an interfaith gathering, once commented that “there are differences in which are reflected the genius and spiritual riches of God to the nations.” Christian de Cherge, after a lifetime of dialogue with Islam, suggests that our differences have a “quasi-sacramental function”, that is, they help to give real flesh in this world to the riches of God, who is ineffable and can never be captured in any one expression.
Our differences then are part of the mystery of our unity. Real unity, which needs to reflect the richness of God, does not exist in uniformity and homogenization, but only in bringing into harmony many different gifts and richness, like a beautiful bouquet of flowers brings together of a variety of different flowers inside one vase. Our legitimate differences are rooted inside of the same God.
This has implications for every area of our lives, from how we receive immigrants in our countries, to how we deal with different personalities inside our families and places of work, to how we deal with other Christian denominations and other religions. Without endorsing a naive syncretism and without denying the rightful place for discernment, it must still be affirmed that our differences, conceived as an expression of a deeper unity that we cannot yet conceive, open us up more fully to the deep unfathomable, ineffable mystery of God and, at the same time, prevents us from making an idol of our own ideas, our own religious traditions, our own ways of understanding faith, and our own theologies and ideologies. Moreover, accepting differences as being intended by God and as the presence of grace in our lives should prevent us from constructing our identity, particularly our religious identity, on the basis of opposition to others and the unhealthy need to forever protest our own uniqueness and truth against what’s other.
God loves us all equally. Difference, then, understood as part of the mystery of unity, should help keep us humble and honest enough to let others take their proper place before God.
Remembering Wisdom
An email reflection by Fr Richard Rohr - posted on 6th January 2015
Cynthia Bourgeault, a core faculty
member of the Center for Action and Contemplation's (CAC) Living School, writes in her book, The Wisdom Way of Knowing:
"Wisdom is an ancient tradition, not limited to one particular religious
expression but at the headwaters of all the great sacred paths.... One of the
greatest losses in our Christian West has been the loss of memory (in fact,
almost a collective amnesia) about our own Wisdom heritage" (The Wisdom
Way of Knowing: Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart, p. 4). And
I would add, how could we possibly honor or include any other wisdom tradition,
when we do not even know our own?!
Cynthia continues: "The real Source of Wisdom lies in a
higher or more vivid realm of divine consciousness that is neither behind us
nor ahead of us but always surrounding us.... [Wisdom] seems to go underground
for a while; one loses the thread. Then, in ways inexplicable to linear
causality, it pops up again. It re-creates itself over and over, so it seems,
in the minds and hearts of those who have been taught (or discovered on their
own) how to listen and see. It never really goes away, and it always comes back
in a fresh new form, customized to the conditions of the world" (pp.
25-26). As Augustine said, it is "forever ancient and forever new."
We pick up and follow the thread where we find it--in the
Bible, through Jesus' life and teachings, in the writings of the Desert Fathers
and Mothers, in the mystics of all ages and faiths, in art and psychology and
myth and science. Wisdom is all around, inviting us to hear and understand--and
it is not at all the same as merely knowing correct facts and information. We have
confused intelligence/knowledge with true wisdom for far too long now. They are
not the same at all (Isaiah 11:2, 1 Corinthians 12:8), although both are
finally necessary.
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