Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
Mob: 0417 279 437; mdelaney@netspace.net.au
Assistant Priest: Fr Alexander Obiorah
Mob: 0447 478 297; alexchuksobi@yahoo.co.uk
Postal Address:
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street , Devonport 7310
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160
Email: mlcathparish-dsl@keypoint.com.au
Email: mlcathparish-dsl@keypoint.com.au
Secretary: Annie Davies / Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair: Mary Davies
Pastoral Council Chair: Mary Davies
Parish Mass Times: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com
Parish Magazine: mlcathparishnewsletter.blogspot.com.au
Year of Mercy Blogspot: mlcpyom.blogspot.com.au
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Parents are asked to contact the Parish Office to make arrangements for attending a Baptismal Preparation Session and booking a Baptism date.
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)
Penguin - Saturday (5:15pm - 5:45pm)
Care and Concern: If you are aware of anyone who is in need of assistance and has given permission to be contacted by Care and Concern, please phone the Parish Office.
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Weekday Masses 2nd - 6th February, 2016
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 12 noon Devonport
Friday: 9.30am Ulverstone & Devonport
Satruday: 9:00am Ulverstone
Satruday: 9:00am Ulverstone
Next Weekend 6th & 7th February, 2016
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin & Devonport (Feast Day Celebration)
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9.00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport (Feast Day Celebration)
11am Sheffield
5.00pm Latrobe
Eucharistic Adoration:
Devonport: Friday - 10am - 12 noon
Devonport: Benediction
Prayer Groups:
Charismatic Renewal - Devonport (Emmaus House) Thursdays - 7:30pm
Christian Meditation - Devonport, Emmaus House - Wednesdays 7pm.
Ministry Rosters 6th & 7th February, 2016
Devonport:
Readers
Vigil: V Riley, A Stegmann
10:30am: A Hughes, T Barrientos, P Piccolo
Ministers of Communion
Vigil: M Doyle, M Heazlewood, S Innes, M Gerrand, P Shelverton, M Kenney
10:30am: F Sly, J Carter, E Petts
Cleaners 5th Feb: M.W.C. 12th Feb: M & L Tippett, A Berryman
Piety Shop 6th Feb: R McBain 7th Feb: P Piccolo Flowers: M O’Brien-Evans
Ulverstone:
Reader: Ministers of Communion: M Byrne, D Griffin, K Foster, R Locket
Cleaners: G & M Seen, C Roberts
Flowers: A Miller
Hospitality: M & K McKenzie
Penguin:
Greeters: G Hills-Eade, B Eade
Commentator: Y Downes
Reader: M Murray, R Fifita
Procession: J Barker, A Landers
Ministers of Communion: S Ewing, J Garnsey
Liturgy: Sulphur Creek J
Setting Up: S Ewing
Care of Church: M Murray, E Nickols
Latrobe:
Reader: Maria Chan
Ministers of Communion: P Marlow, M Eden
Procession: M Clarke
Music: Hermie
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Barry Aulich,
Jane Allen, John Charlesworth,
Kath Smith, Haydee Diaz, Geraldine Roden, Joy Carter &
…
Let us pray
for those who have died recently: Bruce Peters, Keitha Kean, Ans Swarte,
Monica Darke, Justina Onyirioha, Mary Rice, Ralph
Wehse, Cavell Robertson, John Steele and Tom Edwards.
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 28th January – 3rd February
Thomas Naylor, Noreen Sheehan, John Ryan, Thomas Kelly,
Elizabeth Mazey, Sheila Poole, Trevor Delaney, Sheila Bourke, Ruby Grubb,
Jason Pullen, Coral Hankey, Gusta Schneiders and Lorraine Horsmann.
May they Rest in Peace
Readings This Week: 4th Sunday of the Year (C)
First Reading: Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13
Gospel: Luke 4:21-30
PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY'S GOSPEL:
As I read this text slowly and prayerfully, I might like to imagine
myself in the company of worshippers at the synagogue.
I watch Jesus with
anticipation as he rises to speak of the text, from Isaiah, as being fulfilled
even as he speaks it.
How do I feel as I see the looks of approval from the crowd?
What are my
own feelings towards him?
Then I listen as he, seemingly, sets about trying to
win their disapproval.
How do I feel now as I see the crowd turn from
incredulity to outright hostility?
Do I expect such words from him?
Does the crowd really know him? Do I?
In
the company of the Lord, I may like to speak with him about times his word has challenged my own ways of thinking.
Perhaps it has been reflected in my attitude towards others, or in the times I
have been silent about what I believe?
As I speak from the heart, I might like to ask that I be given the grace
to stay in tune with the values of Jesus, even at the risk of personal
rejection from some other people.
Readings Next Week: 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time
First Reading: Isaiah 6:1-8
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Gospel: Luke 5:1-11
An invitation to all parishioners’ family and friends
Come one, come all to our first Open House for 2016 at
Parish House 90 Stewart Street Devonport, starting at 6:30pm.
Nibbles and drinks supplied (or bring your own poison!).
We would love to see you here!!!
WEEKLY
RAMBLINGS:
As
the office reopened this week the comment was made that, even in the space of a
few weeks a great deal can happen.
As
we celebrated the funeral of Bruce Peters on Thursday I reflected on the
wonderful gifts that Bruce, and so many other people, gave/ give, week in and
week out, quietly yet with a great love of God and the Church, to our community
and how all of us are just a little less
with their passing.
This
week the Parish Pastoral Council meets for the 1st time in 2016 –
nomination forms are available today inviting people to put forward names of
people who wish to play a role in this important group in our Parish. Please
take some time to think about someone who might be a suitable addition to the
Council as we move forward and work to implement our Parish Plan.
Next
Friday evening is the 1st of the Open Houses for 2016 and will be
held at the Parish House, 90 Stewart Street. As always this is an informal
night where parishioners have a chance to meet members of the Parish Community
from all different areas of our Parish – an opportunity we don’t have all that
often. Starting from 6.30pm there will be nibbles and drinks and all are
welcome.
Lenten
discussion groups will start shortly and forms are available in each of the
Mass Centres this weekend. We invite people to add their names so that groups
might be formed. If you are part of an existing group please still add your
name to the list so that we know what is happening.
Next
weekend (6th/7th Feb) we will be celebrating the Feast
Day of Our Lady of Lourdes with special prayer of Blessing at both Masses
followed by a cuppa after Mass. We invite all of the parishioners who regularly
attend either of these two masses (everyone else is also welcome) to stay for a
few minutes after Mass to celebrate this Feast.
Mass on Thursday 11th (actual Feast Day) will be 12noon as
usual and will be followed by lunch at Molly Malone’s.
Please take care on the roads and in your homes
ASH WEDNESDAY 10th
February, 2016 – MASS TIMES:
9:30am St
Patrick’s Church Latrobe,
12noon Our Lady of Lourdes Church Devonport,
7pm Sacred
Heart Church Ulverstone.
LITURGY PLANNING FOR LENT
2016
All are welcome to
assist in the preparation of our Lenten liturgies. A meeting will be held at
Emmaus House this Sunday 31st January 2016 at 2.00 pm. For
further information contact Peter on 0419302435.
LENTEN PROGRAM
This year’s Lenten Program will begin with discussion
groups starting the week of Ash Wednesday – 10th February. Some
groups have already been organized and there are sheets available this weekend
for parishioners to add their names if they want to join a group. If the times
don’t suit you, we would welcome more leaders to set up groups – just add your
name to the sheets so others can see the choices.
This year’s booklet is very attractively presented with
reflections and prayers to help us on our journey to Easter.
Groups meet each
week to share their experience of living their Christian faith and the
connection of daily life with the Sunday Gospels.
We encourage as many parishioners as possible to use this
opportunity to make the most of the season of Lent.
CWL ULVERSTONE: Meeting Friday 12th
February, Community Room Sacred Heart Church at 2pm.
HEALING MASS:
Catholic Charismatic Renewal, are sponsoring a
HEALING MASS with Fr Alexander Obiorah at St Mary’s Catholic Church Penguin Thursday
18th February 2016, commencing at 7.30pm.
All denominations are welcome to come and celebrate
the liturgy in a vibrant and dynamic way. After Mass, teams will be available
for individual prayer. Please bring a friend and a plate for supper and
fellowship in the adjacent hall. If you wish to know more or require transport,
please contact Celestine Whiteley 6424:
2043, Michael Gaffney 0447 018 068, Zoe Smith 6426:3073 or Tom Knaap 6425:2442
WORLD YOUTH DAY 2016 – NEW ITINERARY!
Due to recent incidents in Turkey, there has been a
change to the itinerary of the Tasmanian Pilgrimage to World Youth Day 2016.
Our pilgrimage will now feature Italy, including: Rome, Assisi and Milan en
route to our pilgrimage through Poland to Krakow for the WYD week and finishing
in beautiful Prague. Applications are now open! If you are 16-35 years as at
31st December 2016 and up for an amazing adventure and faith-inspiring
encounter you will never forget be sure to check it out and jump on board. Find
more information on this incredible opportunity at: www.wydtas.org.au or contact Rachelle
on rachelle.smith@aohtas.org.au or 0400 045 368.
MERSEY LEVEN CATHOLIC PARISH
Holy Week
& Easter Ceremonies 2016
DEVONPORT: Our Lady of Lourdes
Church, Stewart Street, 6424 2783
Good Friday Commemoration of the
Passion 3.00pm
Holy
Saturday EASTER
VIGIL 7.00pm
Easter
Sunday Easter
Mass 11.00am
PORT SORELL: St Joseph Wilson Street
Good Friday Stations of the Cross 10.00am
Easter Sunday Easter
Mass 8.00am
LATROBE: St Patrick’s Church, Gilbert Street
Good Friday Stations of the Cross 11.00am
Easter Sunday Easter
Mass 9.30am
SHEFFIELD: Holy Cross
Church
Good Friday Stations of the Cross 11.00am
Easter Sunday Easter
Mass 11.00am
ULVERSTONE: Sacred Heart
Church
Holy Thursday Mass
of the Lord’s Supper 7.30pm
(Adoration till 9pm followed by Evening
Prayer of the Church)
Good Friday Commemoration of the Passion 3.00pm
Easter Sunday Easter
Mass 9.30am
PENGUIN: St Mary’s Church, Braddon Street
Good Friday Stations
of the Cross 11.00am
Easter Sunday Easter
Mass 8.00am
Reconciliation
Monday 21st March - Our Lady of Lourdes 7pm
Wednesday 23rd March - Sacred Heart 7pm
Misericordiae Vultus – The Face of Mercy
Pope Francis officially began the Jubilee Year of Mercy on December 8, 2015. It also was the Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception and coincided with the 50th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council. In par 4 of the Bull of Indiction (a letter to the Church, explaining the rationale for the special, year-long celebration), he explained why he chose this date:
“The Church feels a great need to keep this event alive...The walls which too long had made the Church a kind of fortress were torn down and the time had come to proclaim the Gospel in a new way...We recall the poignant words of St John XXIII when, opening the Council, he indicated the path to follow: ‘Now the Bride of Christ wishes to use the medicine of mercy rather than taking up the arms of severity...” (Par 4)
Saint of the Week – St Blaise, Bishop, martyr (February 3)
St Blaise (also spelled Blase and Blasius) was a 3rd century physican who became Bishop of Sebaste, in Armenia. This was the time of persecution under Licinius, so St. Blaise hid out in a cave on Mt. Argeus. The following is an extract from one of the pieces of writing about his time in the wild:
“...the birds of heaven brought to him meat for to eat. And it seemed to him that they came to serve him and accompany him, and would not depart from him till he had lift up his hands and blessed them. And also sick men came to him and anon were cured and healed.”
While there, a regional prince sent out a hunting party. When they came across St Blaise, they saw he was surrounded by wild animals. According to legend, they could not kill any of the beasts themselves and reported back to the prince.
He ordered them to bring St Blaise “and all the Christian men with him”, to him. They did and St Blaise went on to perform many miracles and preach while in the prince’s court.
One day, the legend continues, a woman whose son was dying from a fish bone stuck in his throat, approached St Blaise, asking him to heal her boy. . St Blaise placed his hands upon her son and, successfully, prayed for healing.
St Blaise eventually confronted the prince about his worship of various gods that he described as “fiends”. The outraged ruler had St Blaise imprisoned, where he continued to defy him and would not worship the prince’s gods.
As a final punishment, the prince had St Blaise’s flesh torn from him by wool combs and then beheaded, along with seven women and two children.
THE KISS OF GOD ON THE SOUL
An article by Fr Ron Rolheiser. The original article can be found here
What is the real root of human loneliness? A flaw within our make-up? Inadequacy and sin? Or, does Augustine’s famous line, You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you, say it all?
Augustine’s adage, for all its merit, is not quite enough. We are infinite souls inside finite lives and that alone should be enough to explain our incessant and insatiable aching; except there is something else, that is, our souls enter the world bearing the brand of eternity and this gives all of our aching a particularized coloring.
There are various explanations of this: For example, Bernard Lonergan, the much-esteemed theologian and philosopher, suggests that human soul does not come into the world as a tabla rasa, a pure, clean sheet of paper onto which anything can be written. Rather, for him, we are born with the brand of the first principles indelibly stamped inside our souls. What does he mean by this?
Classical theology and philosophy name four things that they call transcendental, meaning that they are somehow true of everything that exists, namely, oneness, truth, goodness, and beauty. Everything that exists somehow bears these four qualities. However these qualities are perfect only inside of God. God, alone, is perfect oneness, perfect truth, perfect goodness, and perfect beauty. However, for Lonergan, God brands these four things, in their perfection, into the core of the human soul.
Hence we come into the world already knowing, however dimly, perfect oneness, perfect truth, perfect goodness, and perfect beauty because they already lie inside us like an inerasable brand. Thus we can tell right from wrong because we already know perfect truth and goodness in the core of our souls, just as we also instinctively recognize love and beauty because we already know them in a perfect way, however darkly, inside ourselves. In this life, we don’t learn truth, we recognize it; we don’t learn love, we recognize it; and we don’t learn what is good, we recognize it. We recognize these because we already possess them in the core of our souls.
Some mystics gave this a mythical expression: The taught that the human soul comes from God and that the last thing that God does before putting a soul into the body is to kiss the soul. The soul then goes through life always dimly remembering that kiss, a kiss of perfect love, and the soul measures all of life’s loves and kisses against that primordial perfect kiss.
The ancient Greek Stoics taught something similar. They taught that souls pre-existed inside of God and that God, before putting a soul into a body, would blot out the memory of its pre-existence. But the soul would then be always unconsciously drawn towards God because, having come from God, the soul would always dimly remember its real home, God, and ache to return there.
In one rather interesting version of this notion, they taught that God put the soul into the body only when the baby was already fully formed in its mother’s womb. Immediately after putting the soul into the body, God would seal off the memory of its pre-existence by physically shutting the baby’s lips against its ever speaking of its pre-existence. That’s why we have a little cleft under our noses, just above center of our lips. It’s where God’s finger sealed our lips. That is why whenever we are struggling to remember something, our index finger instinctually rises to that cleft under our nose. We are trying to retrieve a primordial memory.
Perhaps a metaphor might be helpful here: We commonly speak of things as “ringing true” or “ringing false”. But only bells ring. Is there a bell inside us that somehow rings in a certain way when things are true and in another when they are false? In essence, yes! We nurse an unconscious memory of once having known love, goodness, and beauty perfectly. Hence things will ring true or false, depending upon whether or not they are measuring up to the love, goodness, and beauty that already reside in a perfect form at the core of our souls.
And that core, that center, that place in our souls where we have been branded with the first principles and where we unconsciously remember the kiss of God before we were born, is the real seat of that congenital ache inside us which, in this life, can never be fully assuaged. We bear the dark memory, as Henri Nouwen says, of once having been caressed by hands far gentler than we ever meet in this life.
Our souls dimly remember once having known perfect love and perfect beauty. But, in this life, we never quite encounter that perfection, even as we forever ache for someone or something to meet us at that depth. This creates in us a moral loneliness, a longing for what we term a soulmate, namely, a longing for someone who can genuinely recognize, share, and respect what’s deepest in us.
Love - Week
2
What You
Seek Is What You Are
Any
authentic spirituality will emphasize a real equivalence and mutuality between
the one who sees and what can be seen. There is a symbiosis between the
heart/mind of the seer and what they will pay attention to. All being can
rightly be spoken of with "one voice" as John Duns Scotus put it.
What I am you also are, and so is the world. Creation is one giant symphony of
mutual sympathy. Or, as Augustine loved to say, "In the end there will
only be Christ loving himself."
To
understand this, I must know that I am, at least in part, the very thing I am
seeking. In fact that is what makes me seek it! But most do not know this good
news yet. God cannot be found "out there" until God is first found
"in here," within ourselves, as Augustine profoundly expressed in his
Confessions in many ways. Then we can almost naturally see God in others and in
all of creation too. What you seek is what you are. The search for God and the
search for our True Self are finally the same search. Francis' all-night
prayer, "Who are you, O God, and who am I?" is probably a perfect
prayer, because it is the most honest prayer we can offer.
A heart
transformed by this realization of oneness knows that only love "in
here," in me, can spot and enjoy love "out there." Fear,
constriction, and resentment are seen by spiritual teachers to be an inherent
blindness that must be overcome. Those emotions cannot get you anywhere,
certainly not anywhere good. Thus all mystics are positive people--or they are
not mystics! Their spiritual warfare is precisely the work of recognizing and
then handing over all of their inner negativity and fear to God. The great
paradox here is that such a victory is total gift from God and yet somehow you
must want it very much (Philippians 2: 12-13).
The central
practice in Franciscan mysticism, therefore, is that we must remain in love
(John 15:9). Only when we are eager to love can we see love and goodness in the
world around us. We must ourselves remain in peace, and then we will find peace
over there. Remain in beauty, and we will honor beauty everywhere. This concept
of remaining or abiding (John 15:4-5) moves all religion out of any esoteric
realms of doctrinal outer space where it has for too long been lost. There is
no secret moral command for knowing or pleasing God, or what some call
"salvation," beyond becoming a loving person in mind, heart, body,
and soul. Then you will see what you need to see.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
(Franciscan Media: 2014), 7-10.
The Hidden
Secret
Bonaventure,
the Franciscan philosopher and theologian, taught, "We are each loved by
God in a particular and incomparable way, as in the case of a bride and
bridegroom." Francis and Clare of Assisi knew that the love God has for
each soul is unique and made to order, which is why any "saved"
person feels beloved, chosen, and even "God's favorite." Many
biblical characters also knew and experienced this specialness. Divine intimacy
is always and precisely particular and made to order--and thus
"intimate."
The inner
knowledge of God's love is described as joy itself (John 15:11). This inner
knowing is itself the Indwelling Presence. But which comes first? Does feeling
safe and held by God allow you to deal with others in the same way? Or does
human tenderness allow you to imagine that God must be the same, but infinitely
so? I do not suppose it really matters where you start; the important thing is
that you get in on the big secret from one side or the other.
Yes,
"secret," or even "hidden secret," is what writers like the
Psalmist (25:14), Paul, Rumi, Hafiz, Bonaventure, Lady Julian, and many mystics
called it. And for some sad reason, it seems to be a well-kept secret. Jesus
praises God for "hiding these things from the learned and the clever and
revealing them only to the little ones" (Matthew 11:25). Well, what is it
that the learned and the clever often cannot see?
The big and
hidden secret is this: an infinite God seeks and desires intimacy with the
human soul. Once you experience such intimacy, only the intimate language of
lovers describes what is going on for you: mystery, tenderness, singularity,
specialness, changing the rules "for me," nakedness, risk, ecstasy,
incessant longing, and of course also, necessary suffering. This is the
mystical vocabulary of the saints.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
(Franciscan Media: 2014), xviii,
163-165.
Scripture as
God's Self-Disclosure
Only those
who truly know their need for the Beloved know how to receive the gift of the
Beloved without misusing such love. A mutually admitted emptiness is the
ultimate safety net for all love, and in the Scriptures, even God is presented
as somehow "needing" us, and even "jealous" for our love
(Exodus 20:5, 34:14). Basically love works only inside humility. My father, St.
Francis, fell in love with the "humility" of God, a word that most of
us would not even think could apply to God.
Fullness in
a person cannot permit love because there are no openings, no handles, no
give-and-take, and no deep hunger. It is like trying to attach two inflated
balloons to one another. Human vulnerability gives the soul an immense head
start on its travels--maybe the only start for any true spiritual journey.
Thus, the Risen Christ starts us off by revealing the human wounds of God,
God's solidarity with human suffering. God begins with self-disclosure from the
divine side, which ideally leads to self-disclosure from our side.
The Bible
first opened up for me in the 1960's when the Second Vatican Council said that
divine revelation was not God disclosing ideas about God but actually God
disclosing "himself" [sic]. Scripture and religion itself became not
mere doctrines or moralisms for me, but love-making, an actual mutual exchange
of being and intimacy.
The mystics,
and those like Moses (Exodus 33:12-23), Jesus (John 5:19-20), and John (1 John
1:1-3) who personally claim to know God, are always aware that they have been
let in on a big and wondrous love secret. Anyone not privy to an inner
dialogue, that is, some kind of I-Thou relationship, would call such people
presumptuous, emotional, foolish, or even arrogant. How could they presume to
claim an actual union with the divine? But this is without doubt "the
mystery of God, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). As John says, "Anyone who loves is born
of God and knows God . . . for God is love" (1 John 4:7-8). Such an
amazing, but seldom-quoted line, lets us in on the big secret and also makes it
universal and available to all.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass:
2013), 166-168.
Intimacy
Today is
called "The Twelfth Day of Christmas" perhaps because it took at
least twelve days, and then some, for the self-disclosure of God to slam into
our consciousness. Intimacy is another word for trustful, tender, and risky
self-disclosure. None of us can go there without letting down our walls,
manifesting our deeper self to another, and allowing the flow to happen. Often
such vulnerability evokes and allows a similar vulnerability from the other
side. Such was the divine hope in the humble revelation of God in the human
body of Jesus. My mind and mouth stumble to even imagine it or dare to think it
could be true. Yet Christians dare to
claim this reality.
Such human
intimacy is somewhat rare and very hard for all of us, but particularly for men
and for all who deem themselves to be important people, that is, those who are
trained to protect their boundaries, to take the offensive, and to be afraid of
all weakness or neediness. God seems to have begun thawing this glacial barrier
by coming precisely in male form as Jesus, who then exposes maleness itself as
also naked, needy, and vulnerable. Most cultures would say that is
mind-blowing, heart-exploding, and surely impossible. Thus, the transmission of
the secret, the inner mystery of God, continues in space and time primarily
through what Jesus calls again and again "the little ones" and
"the poor in spirit," which he himself became.
I think that
many men, celibate men even more, are very afraid of intimacy, of baring their
deepest identity to another human or even to God. Yet people who risk intimacy
are invariably happier and much more real people. They feel like they have lots
of "handles" that allow others to hold onto them and that allow them
to hold onto themselves. People who avoid intimacy are imprisoned in a small
and circumscribed world. Intimacy is the only gateway into the temple of human
or divine love.
Healthy
sexuality creates an obvious and ideal container for true intimacy, at least
now and then. Unfortunately, the physical act of sex, which is meant to be a
moment of embodied and experienced intimacy, is often not intimate at all. Both
healthy celibacy and sexual encounter demand deep and true intimacy, yet
celibacy and sex can also be the most effective avoidance of it.
I believe
vulnerable intimacy is the entrance into and the lynchpin between all human and
divine love. It does not matter which comes first; it is just important that we
pass through this gate of fear and find what lives inside us--and on the other
side of the gate.
Intimate
love is the true temple that we all desire. This longing seems to be hardwired
into our beings in spite of our survival instincts. You have to want to love
and to be loved very badly or you will never go to this strange temple and will
never find your True Self. So God obliges and creates you in just that way,
with a bottomless and endless need to be loved and to love. Today, the Feast of
Epiphany, is symbolized and enacted by three important men who fell to their
knees, finding themselves seduced by the vulnerability of God--sleeping in
straw among the animals.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass:
2013), 168, 170, 171-174.
Love Is Who
You Are
Your True
Self is who you are, and always have been in God; and at its core, it is love
itself. Love is both who you are and who you are still becoming, like a
sunflower seed that becomes its own sunflower. Most of human history has
referred to the True Self as your "soul" or "your participation
in the eternal life of God." The great surprise and irony is that
"you," or who you think you are, have nothing to do with your True
Self's original creation or its ongoing existence. This is disempowering and
utterly empowering at the same time. There's nothing you can do to make God
love you more; and there's nothing you can do to make God love you less. All
you can do is nurture your True Self, which is saying quite a lot. It is love
becoming love in this unique form called "me."
According to
St. Paul (Romans 8:28), becoming my True Self seems to be a fully cooperative
effort, affirmed in my own limited experience. God never forces himself/herself
on us or coerces us toward life or love by any threats whatsoever. God seduces
us, yes; coerces us, no (Jeremiah 20:7; Matthew 11:28-30). Whoever this God is,
he or she is utterly free and utterly respects our own human freedom. Love
cannot happen in any other way. Love flourishes inside freedom and then
increases that freedom even more. "For freedom Christ has set us
free!" shouts St. Paul in his critique of all legalistic religion
(Galatians 5:1).
We are
allowed to ride life's and love's wonderful mystery for a few years--until life
and love reveal themselves as the same thing, which is the final and full
message of the Risen Christ--life morphing into a love that is beyond space and
time. He literally "breathes" shalom and forgiveness into the
universal air (John 20:22-23). We get to add our own finishing touches of love,
our own life breath to the Great Breath, and then return the completed package
to its maker in a brand-new but also same form. It is indeed the same
"I," but now it is in willing union with the great "I AM"
(Exodus 3:14). It is no longer just one, but not two either.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass:
2013), 177-178.
Love Is
Stronger than Death
I believe
the meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus is summed up in the climactic line
from the Song of Songs (8:6) that I translate as "love is stronger than
death." If the blank white banner that the Risen Christ usually holds in
Christian art should say anything, it should say: "Love will win!"
Love is all that remains. Love and life are finally the same thing, and you
know that for yourself once you have walked through death.
Love has
you. Love is you. Love alone, and your deep need for love, recognizes love
everywhere else. Remember that you already are what you are seeking. Any fear
"that your lack of fidelity could cancel God's fidelity, is absurd"
(Romans 3:3), says Paul. Love has finally overcome fear, and your house is
being rebuilt on a new and solid foundation. This foundation was always there,
but it took us a long time to find it. "It is love alone that lasts"
(1 Corinthians 13:13). All you have loved in your life and been loved by is
eternal and true. Two of the primary metaphors of final salvation are Noah's
ark (Genesis 6:19) and "the Peaceable Kingdom" (Isaiah 11:6-9).
Interestingly enough, both are filled with images of animals--as worth saving
and as representative of paradise regained.
My fellow
Franciscan friar, Father Jack Wintz, has written a theologically solid book on
why we can consider all things loved, loving, and lovable as participating in
eternity, including animals. [1] What made us think we were the only ones who
loved and are lovable? If unconditional love, loyalty, and obedience are the
tickets to an eternal life, then my black Labrador, Venus, will surely be there
long before me, along with all the dear animals in nature who care for their
young at great cost to themselves and accept their fate far better than most
humans.
References:
[1] Jack
Wintz, OFM, Will I See My Dog in Heaven? (Paraclete Press: 2009).
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass:
2013), 178-179.
You could graduate today with first-class honours in divinity in most British universities knowing next to nothing about Thomas Aquinas. On the other hand, fifty years ago, in Catholic colleges and seminaries, you might have heard of no one else: an even worse state of affairs, you might think!
There was always more of interest in Aquinas than just his apologetics and natural law ethics. The narrow picture of his work that suggests otherwise derives from the textbooks simplifying Aquinas’s ideas that the authorities in the Catholic Church imposed on seminarians, from the 1870s, as the hoped-for antidote to the subversion of the student clergyman’s faith by the allurements of ‘modern thought’ (Protestant private judgment, fideism, Cartesian consciousness, German idealism, Marxism etc.).
This kind of Thomism was already being challenged in Catholic circles in the 1920s by what would come to be called Transcendental Thomism: Jesuits like Joseph Maréchal and Pierre Rousselot. Enthusiasm for Aquinas shown by lay philosophers such as Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain helped to renew Catholic thinking about metaphysics, aesthetics and political theory in advance (as it turned out) of the Second Vatican Council.[1]
One result of the reorientation of Catholic theology after the Second Vatican Council, however, was the disappearance of Thomist apologetics and natural law ethics: the new emphasis on biblical and early-Christian studies, existentialism and phenomenology in philosophy, the social sciences, and so on, eclipsed Aquinas. Now, however, due especially to North American scholars, but with antecedents in the work of lay Catholics before the Council, there is a remarkable return to the thought of Aquinas, at least in some areas.
Aquinas’s One God
Building on scholarly research on the historical context, David Burrell shows that, instead of his focus lying mainly in demonstrating God’s existence as in pre-Vatican II apologetics, Aquinas has a phased or layered conception of the One God. God as source and goal of all that exists, the God of whose reality knowledge was attained by the pre-Christian philosophers – literally ‘wisdom-lovers’ and effectively themselves religious; secondly, that same God self-revealed as the Lord whom the people of the Law of Moses were commanded to obey; and thirdly, the very same God, of whom knowledge has been communicated by Christ to the Apostles and thus to Christian believers: God as Trinity.[2]
This takes for granted a certain reading of ancient Greek philosophy as itself religious and virtually theological. Moreover, centuries before Aquinas, Jewish philosophers such as Philo of Alexandria (c.20BC-c.50AD) envisaged God as the metaphysical first principle of the universe: perfectly simple, unchangeable, and so on. Aquinas’s One God may be approached, that is to say, not as the first step towards ‘the God of the philosophers’, oblivious to Scripture, but as a late moment in the long tradition of considering the God of the Septuagint in the light of a Platonising metaphysics that dates back at least to Philo. In short, in the context of interaction with Jewish and Muslim thinkers, David Burrell shows how Aquinas fashioned his doctrine of God and of creation by drawing on the work of Ibn Sina (980-1037) and Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204), retracing the immense effort of conceptual clarification in the three traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as it comes together in the Middle Ages. Burrell offers not mere historical scholarship but an invitation to rethink the doctrine of God as such, in what we might, somewhat anachronistically, call an ‘ecumenical’ and ‘inter-religious’ way.
Analytical Thomism
A second way of learning from Aquinas was inaugurated by the lay Catholics Elizabeth Anscombe, in her Intention, in which she demythologises modern notions of will[3]; and Peter Geach (her husband), who did the same for notions of mental states in his Mental Acts, in which he was openly contemptuous of ‘decadent Scholasticism’ and the work of ‘many of [Aquinas’s] professed followers’.[4]
The assumption in mainstream philosophy since the seventeenth century has been that there were – are – two major centres of interest: first, the ‘Cartesian’ conception of the self, with direct access by means of introspection to our interiority and thus tending towards solipsism; and second, if we are to have knowledge, the need to posit intervening entities of some kind - mental images, sense data or whatever - that stand between our minds and the objects that exist in ‘the external world’, thus laying us open to the charge that we have no direct knowledge of the world around us. In contrast, Aquinas thinks of the objects in the world as potentially intelligible and becoming so as our intellectual potentialities are realised, so there is nothing intervening between the mind and the world (neatly put in Latin: intellectus in actu est intelligibile in actu). While it would be exaggeration to claim that this turn to Aquinas is transforming current debates about the relationship between mind and world, there is at least this plausible third position on the table between out-and-out Cartesian mind/body dualism, and the much commoner and indeed dominant physicalist/materialist brain/mind identity theories. Under the heading of Analytical Thomism, this position has been labelled the ‘mind-world identity theory’ by John Haldane: of course we can often be mistaken or misled but most of the time how the world seems to us is how the world really is.[5]
Virtue Ethics
Thirdly, consider the advance of ‘virtue ethics’, increasingly engaged with Aquinas. The key intervention originally was Anscombe’s attack on modern moral philosophy in 1958.[6] Back then, when moral philosophers were split between utilitarianism and Kantian duty for duty’s sake, Anscombe dismissed the former as barely worthy of being called moral philosophy at all, and concentrated on exposing the latter as continuing surreptitiously to feed off reverence for divine command ethics as promulgated in Scripture. Now that belief in divine law has been largely abandoned, so she contended, concern with such notions as duty, obligation and the like, had become senseless. While Protestants at the time of the Reformation did not deny the existence of divine law, their most characteristic doctrine was that the law was given by God, not to be obeyed, but to show sinful humankind’s incapacity to obey it, even by grace: this applied particularly to the requirements of ‘natural law’. Anscombe’s proposal in her groundbreaking essay was that the best course was to abandon any further attempt to make sense of duty or obligation, and to return instead to Plato and Aristotle. Should we do this, we would then find that ‘philosophically there is a huge gap, at present unfillable as far as we are concerned’ – a gap which needs to be filled, she proposed, by ‘an account of human nature, human action, the type of characteristic a virtue is, and above all of human “flourishing”’.
While not explicitly mentioning Aquinas, Anscombe’s provocative sally signalled the return to Aristotle (rather than Plato, as it turned out) and the massive expansion of interest in ‘virtue ethics’, particularly since the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, who recognised her essay as the catalyst.[7] Instead of treating the happiest outcome for the greatest number of people as the criterion for the right course of action to follow, or alternatively submitting to the imperative call of duty, we should focus on describing the virtues that go to making the kind of people whose character would invite us to trust and consult them.
Summa contra Gentiles
On the other hand, we need not write off natural theology. One of the major achievements in recent Anglo-American philosophical theology is the reading of Thomas’s Summa contra Gentiles that is offered by Norman Kretzmann.[8] In that book, we have not just a monumental achievement of medieval philosophy, but a vast thought experiment that should be studied on its own, for itself (and so independently of the Summa Theologiae): a great work of philosophy that offers the best available natural theology in existence. Kretzmann holds that, prescinding from appeals to divine revelation as evidence and justification, it remains possible, desirable, indeed inescapable, for us to investigate by means of analysis and argument, the question of the existence and nature of God and the relation of everything else to God considered as reality’s first principle. For Kretzmann, there is nothing misguided in reasoning about God: on the contrary, it is now, as it was before the birth of Christianity, and quite independently of personal religious allegiances, a worthwhile and enjoyable intellectual endeavour.
There is a good deal else one could mention but these are some of the debates in which appealing to Thomas Aquinas seems worthwhile.
Fergus Kerr OP is a Dominican priest based in Edinburgh. He is the Editor of New Blackfriars, and the author of Theology after Wittgenstein (1986) and After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (2002).
THE CHANGING CHALLENGE OF
ENGAGING THE UNCHURCHED
Taken from the weekly blog by Fr Michael White. The original blog can be found hereDid you know that medical textbooks need constant updating? It’s not because the human body changes- it’s because constantly new methods and information about the body become available that compel doctors to evaluate and revise their practice of medicine.
Perhaps there’s an important lesson here for the Church and our practice of ministry. Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow, but everything else in constantly changing: communication, culture, current events, circumstances, everything.
As church leaders, it’s important we engage in vigilant and constant evaluation and about our methods and strategies for reaching the unchurched and awakening the faithful in our pews. Here are five important ones:
Get Their Attention
In today’s unchurched culture “church” has become irrelevant. People don’t so much reject it as never even consider it. In our community families are absorbed in a culture that doesn’t need church, at least that’s the attitude. They don’t see themselves as “lost” anyway, they’re just busy. Evangelization is first of all just getting people’s attention. That’s why we do Christmas Eve at the Maryland State Fair.
Make An Invitation
There was a time when churches could count on the individual and cultural expectation that going to church was an important duty. Not anymore. At this point it almost goes without saying, but it bears repeating- unchurched people attend church because they are invited, not because they’re obliged.
But I’ll be honest- I don’t see the problem. In fact, it’s more of a relief. It’s more authentic and exciting to invite, not guilt, family and friends back to church (which, incidentally, Jesus never did, and neither should the Church).
Be Different
It is important to understand that the thought process of most unchurched people in the “church shopping” culture is not in terms of “this church” or “that church,” but “your church” or “no church.” In this situation, “better” isn’t really the operative word. “Different” is. The church is not here to be “better” than the world, but to transform it by being different.
Engage
People can go anywhere for entertainment, and lets face it, that’s just not a battle the Church will ever win if we wanted to anyways. But neither should churches bore their congregations with boring and bad liturgy and music.
There is a middle ground here. A truly excellent experience is one that is engaging, not simply entertaining or just insipid. To this end, churches can actually learn a lot from the most successful, enduring companies and organizations when it comes to hospitality, operations, and communications. And often times, the key is simplicity- less may be more.
Be Strategic
If your church is blessed to be growing, one issue always comes up. More people bring more needs and demands that require more programs, right? But programs can become entitlements for insiders, shrines to the past, silos for volunteers and staff and, in the process slow your growth down.
Strategic ministries, on the other hand, have a clearly defined vision and purpose, but always leave room for healthy growth and adaptability, ministries that are outwardly focused and easy to change. People today embrace values like spontaneity and authenticity. These values are best reflected in ministries that are simple and strategic, not overly programmed.
