2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year C)

Mersey Leven Catholic Parish

Parish Priest:  Fr Mike Delaney
Mob: 0417 279 437; mdelaney@netspace.net.au

Assistant Priest: 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

(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)

Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160
Email: mlcathparish-dsl@keypoint.com.au

Secretary: Annie Davies / Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair:  Mary Davies

Mersey Leven Catholic Parish Weekly Newsletter: mlcathparish.blogspot.com.au

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.

PARISH OFFICE WILL RE-OPEN ON WEDNESDAY 27TH JANUARY, 2016

Weekday Masses 19th - 22nd January, 2016                            

Tuesday:            9:30am Penguin                                                   

Wednesday:       9:30am Latrobe                                                   

Thursday:         10.30am Karingal Nursing Home, Devonport

Friday:               9.30am Ulverstone                                                                    

Next Weekend 23rd & 24th January, 2016

Saturday Vigil:  6:00pm Penguin & Devonport

Sunday Mass:    8:30am Port Sorell

                          9.00am Ulverstone

                          10:30am Devonport,

                          11am Sheffield

                          5.00pm Latrobe 

Eucharistic Adoration:

Devonport:  Friday - 10am - 12 noon

Devonport:  Benediction - Recommence first Friday of February, 2016.

Prayer Groups:

Charismatic Renewal - Devonport (Emmaus House) Thursdays - 7:30pm 

Christian Meditation - Devonport, Emmaus House - Wednesdays 7pm. Recommencing 3rd February, 2016          

OLOL Piety Shop will be closed until 30th January, 2016

Your prayers are asked for the sick:  
John Charlesworth, Cath Smith, Haydee Diaz, Valentin Daug, Debbie Morris, Denise Payne, Hugh Hiscutt, Geraldine Roden, Joy Carter & …

Let us pray for those who have died recently: 
Justina Onyirioha, Ralph Wehse, Cavell Robertson, John Steele, Tom Edwards, Ben Brennan, Fr Peter McGrath OFM, Matthew Martin, Michael Quillerat, Sr Lorraine Sweeney, Greg Williams, Robert Pratt, Marie Williams, Guy d’Hondt, Louise Hanlon, Joan Stewart, and Sr Augustine Healy.

Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 14^th – 20^th Jan

Berna Adkins, Joanne Johnson, William Richardson, Heather Hall, Kerry Berwick, Brian Matthews, Patricia Lewis, Rex Radcliffe, Jean Von Schill and Joan Summers.

May they rest in peace

                                                                                   

Readings This Week; 2nd Sunday of the Year (C)

First Reading: Isaiah 62:1-5

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:4-11

Gospel:   John 2:1-11

PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL

I take myself to a quiet place to meet and be present with God in prayer. 

Maybe I simply follow the natural rhythm of my breathing as a means to become still and present. 

I read the Gospel story with love. 

Using my imagination, I enter into the story and see the events unfold around me. 

I see Christ enjoying this wedding with his friends and family at the start of his ministry. 

I sit with Jesus now and I wonder about the image I have of Jesus. 

How do I respond when I see Jesus relaxing, laughing and drinking? 

Is that a challenge to my image of Jesus? 

Or does it bring me Joy? 

I spend a few moments reflecting on this, then I talk with Jesus about what is in my heart. 

I ask him to help me understand how I feel. 

I listen. 

What do I sense when his mother speaks to him and he seems reluctant to help? 

Why? 

I notice Mary, with deep womanly intuition and loving confidence in her son, say those words: “Do whatever he tells you.” 

I allow the words of Mary to be directed to me: “(my name) do whatever he tells you”. 

I ask for the trust and courage to be able to do whatever Jesus calls me to do, confident that he will transform my actions with his loving presence. 

I finish my prayer with my own words of gratitude.

Readings Next Week; 3rd Sunday of the Year (C)

First Reading: Nehemiah 8:2-6, 8-10    

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:12-30   

Gospel:   Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21

                                                                         

WEEKLY RAMBLINGS

Over this summer time and the shorter version of the newsletter we are, obviously, only including limited information each week. Some things, however, still need to happen so could I ask that all those who are Lectors or Ministers of the Eucharist please check their rosters to ensure that they know when they are needed. Several times recently people have obviously had to come from the congregation to fill in whilst the rostered person has been sitting blithely unaware of their ‘role’.

This Sunday morning at OLOL the Filipino community are celebrating the Sinulog Festival in honour of the Holy Infant Jesus (Senior Santo Nino de Cebu). We welcome members of the Filipino community who are visitors to the Parish on this special day for the community. It is good to celebrate our differing cultural backgrounds and share in the faith experiences of the various communities who make up our Parish.

Please add to your diary the first of the Open Houses for 2015 – it will be held at the Devonport Parish House on Friday 5^th Feb from 6.30pm. As part of the gathering there will be an opportunity to discuss a couple of questions – more details next week.  By being a little cryptic this week I’m hoping that more people will wonder what it is all about and make an effort to come along an join in the discussion – or you might just say that I have nothing else to put in my ramblings and I really am!. Other dates for 2015 are Friday May 6^th and August 5^th in the community room at Ulverstone and November 4^th at the Parish House at Devonport

Please take care on the roads especially over these next few weeks as people complete their holidays and are busy about returning to 'normal' - mistakes can easily happen.

                                                                           

AUSTRALIA DAY

There will be Mass on Tuesday 26th at Devonport and Penguin at 9.00am to celebrate our National Day to enable parishioners to be part of local community activities later in the morning. All welcome - please wear green/gold or both.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES FEAST DAY

The first of our Community Feast days for 2015 is Our Lady of Lourdes on Feb 11^th. There will be a blessing of all volunteers who support the Devonport Community at Masses on 6^th/7^th Feb (followed by a cuppa in the foyer).  On the actual Feast day (11^th) there will be Mass at midday followed by a counter meal at Molly Malone's for everyone who is interested. 

                                                                       

Misericordiae Vultus – The Face of Mercy

“We need constantly to contemplate the mystery of mercy. It is a wellspring of joy, serenity and peace. Our salvation depends on it…”     (par 2, MV)

Saint of the Week – St Vincent, deacon, martyr (January 22)

Born at Huesca, Spain, he became a deacon and served St Valerius at Saragossa until their martyrdom at Valencia during the persecutions under Emperor Diocletian (r. 284-305). St Valerius was exiled, but Vincent was cruelly tortured because he would not surrender the holy books. He converted the warden of the prison and then died. He was honored by Sts Augustine, Pope Leo I, and Prudentius, and is considered the patron saint of vinedressers in some regions of Spain.

                                                                          

Wisdom Lineage Summary

This article is taken from the daily email series from Fr Richard Rohr. You can subscribe to the emails by clicking here

The Perennial Tradition

As I shared in last week's meditations, the development of consciousness is a gradual, lifelong process. Though Spiral Dynamics and other models of development show a trajectory toward non-dual thinking and unitive experience, it's not typically a straightforward journey. We may catch a glimpse of Divine Reality, but often it's too much for our small self, and so we recoil until great love, suffering, or contemplative practice help us surrender a bit more.

We see this dance--three steps forward, two steps back--mirrored in sacred texts. Human authors at different levels of consciousness portray God in different ways. At times in most religious histories God has been described as violent, exclusive, and judgmental. It's easy to point the finger at other religions and forget our own religion's lower levels. For example, despite recent criticism, the Quran is not more violent than the Bible; our scriptures also hold many punitive, dualistic, and exclusionary passages. But also running throughout the world's sacred texts is the thread of God's desire for union, inclusivity, non-violence, forgiveness, mercy, and healing. I hope what we have taught this year can help you both see and connect these dots, and see where the positive trajectory is heading. [1] We are indeed slowly evolving toward love instead of punishment.

The things I teach come from a combination of inner and outer authority, drawn from personal experience and a long lineage of the "perennial tradition" as Aldous Huxley, Huston Smith, Ken Wilber, and many others have called it. I don't believe God expects us to start from zero and reinvent the wheel of faith in our one small lifetime. Thankfully, we can each participate in the "communion of saints," and draw upon the force field of the Holy Spirit. The Great Tradition, the perennial philosophy, has developed through the ages, and is an inherited gift.

The Perennial Tradition points to recurring themes and truths within all of the world's religions. At their most mature level, religions cultivate in their followers a deeper union with God, with each other, and with reality--or what is. The work of religion is to re-ligio--re-ligament or reunite what our egos and survival instincts have put asunder, namely a fundamental wholeness at the heart of everything. My calling (and the CAC's work in the last twenty-nine years) has been to retrieve and reteach the wisdom that has been lost, ignored, or misunderstood within the Judeo Christian Tradition. Any truth that keeps recurring and gathers humanity's positive energy is called wisdom and most assuredly has to be from the One Holy Spirit.          

Reference:

[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture As Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2007), 4. This is much of the theme of the entire book, in which I try to "connect the dots" pointing toward love.

My Wisdom Lineage

This year's meditations have explored the traditions, texts, and teachers that have had the greatest influence on my worldview and theology. Together they compose my "wisdom lineage." I've shared these elements not to persuade you that my way is the only or best path, but to illustrate that there are many different levels and understandings of truth. The ecumenical future of religion is becoming rather obvious. Either religion moves beyond its tribal mind or it has no chance of "saving the world," just as Pope Francis has taught and exemplified in recent visits to non-Christian cultures. The "emerging church" is gathering the scriptural, contemplative, scholarly, and justice-oriented wisdom from every part of the Body of Christ.

Here are my own lineage building blocks (You may listen to a short description of each at cac.org.):

•             "Bible" of Nature and Creation

•             Hebrew scriptures interpreted by the Prophets

•             Gospels, Incarnation, and Jesus

•             Paul as the first Christian mystic

•             Desert Fathers and Mothers

•             Patristic Period (particularly in the East)

•             Early Franciscanism (Bonaventure and Duns Scotus)

•             Non-dual thinkers of all religions

•             Orthopraxy in much of Buddhism and Hinduism

•             Unique witness of mythology, poetry, and art

•             Non-violent recovery of Gandhi and Martin Luther King

•             Much of the teaching of C. G. Jung

•             Scientific evidence from the Universe

•             Twelve-step Spirituality

•             Spiral Dynamics and Integral Theory

If truth is one (Ephesians 4:4-6), we must recognize we are all approaching that one divine truth from different angles, with different needs, in different eras, and with different starting points. But I find the final goal to be the same. We are moving toward ever greater union. Unity is not the same as uniformity; in fact, the unity the Spirit creates is precisely from reconciling differences (1 Corinthians 12:4-13). So my own path has been to find and emphasize the essentials so clearly that we can then easily see what the non-essentials are. In my experience, this confusion between essential and non-essentials, between means and ends, is the most common mistake of religious people in all religions, clergy and laity alike.  We make means and gifts (e.g., Bible, Sacraments, priesthood, church) into ends in themselves; the means then become idolatrous, and we lose our absolute God-centeredness and true perspective.

God seems to honor and use each individual path. As Jesus put it, "There are many mansions in my Father's house" (John 14:2). Honestly, what else is possible? God clearly creates and allows diversity in endless forms. But it is also helpful to have reference to the common elements so that I know I am not alone and my ideas are not just my own but from the One Holy Spirit. If we can remember that we all came from God and are headed back to God, whatever circuitous route we take, I think it will help us be more humble and patient with each other. Each group and era has its own preferred symbols, rituals, scriptures, and words for things, but let's not ever let them get in the way of what they are all pointing to and leading us toward--union of the soul with God.

Reference:

Adapted from Richard Rohr, "The Authority of What Is," the Mendicant (Center for Action and Contemplation: January 2015).

Home Base

Your own wisdom lineage may be similar to or different from mine. My primary experience has been as a Franciscan in the Roman Catholic Church. This does not mean I can't understand or appreciate other traditions--as I've demonstrated this year--but it does give me a place to call home, a place from which to practice my faith in tangible ways, while rubbing against other human beings and organizational structures. We need the accountability of a single faith community, with all its imperfections, to keep us honest and real. There are no wide and strong branches without deep roots in one specific soil.

Matthew Fox describes how Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh "speaks of the centrality of going deep if we are to do inter-faith work when he says: 'Through the practice of deep looking and deep listening, we become free, able to see the beauty and values in our own and others' traditions.' Yet, to get to the point of seeing the beauty and value in others' traditions, one must look and listen deeply into one's own. One must practice some path along the journey that leads to depth. One must enter the well of mystical experience." [1]

I invite you to sink your roots deep in one place, in one particular tradition, even as you explore the wealth of wisdom to be found in other places. Otherwise you will get trapped in individualism and private superiority without any real testing laboratory in the ways of faith, hope, and practical love. Outside of a concrete community of relationships, you can imagine you are much more enlightened than you really are. Whatever tradition you claim, be open to letting it change you even as you challenge your church or community to also grow in maturity. As Step 12 of Alcoholics Anonymous says, we do have to somehow pass enlightenment on to fully have it ourselves. If you are not a link in the wisdom chain, you are not even a link after a while.

If I have grown at all in my decades as a priest, it's in part through this role of being a preacher and teacher. I have had to stand before crowds for years and describe what I thought I believed, and then I often had to ask myself later, "Do I really believe that myself?" In my attempts to communicate the Gospel, I usually found that I'd only scratched the surface of understanding. In sharing, in giving it away, you really own it for yourself and appreciate more fully its value, beyond what you first imagined when you just parroted the words.

This Substantial Mystery is a mystery of participation and never of private ownership. The One Spirit is held communally. There is a deep symbiosis in the Body of Christ between the one who thinks he or she is giving and the one who thinks he or she is receiving. In the Infinite Spirit, the flow is in both directions or there is no flow at all.

Reference:

[1] Matthew Fox, One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths (Tarcher: 2004), 22.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer (Paulist Press: 2014), 13.

Spiritual Authority

How do we know what we think we know? How and why do I, Richard Rohr, say the things I say with any kind of authority or confidence? Why should you trust these writings? How do you know these are not just my ideas or merely one biased opinion? These meditations are certainly expressed in my limited culture, understanding, and vocabulary. How could they not be? You have no basis for trusting these words unless I am living within and drawing from the entire Force Field of the Holy Spirit, which many Christians might call "the communion of saints," C. G. Jung would call "the collective unconscious," or Buddhists might call consciousness itself.

I usually try to first offer a deep "Yes" to that Force Field; but I also normally add an "And!" This is not to disagree with mainline orthodoxy at all, but simply add what every generation must and will add anyway "to bind you together in love and to stir your minds, so that your understanding may come to full development, until you really know God's secret in which all the jewels of wisdom and knowledge are hidden" (Colossians 2:2-3). There are many such passages in the Pauline corpus which seem to imply an expected evolution in thinking. It amazes me that we should have to prove the obvious to so many Christians, who for some sad reason prefer a static universe, which they presume they fully understand.

I have to risk writing, as every spiritual writer does, and I must be willing to be judged wrong by others more intelligent, wiser, later, and holier than I. But this is the leap that I and all others must also make in order to communicate that bit of the Great Truth of the Gospel to which we each have our own limited access. Paul also reassures me when he said that this Body of Christ is "groaning forward in one great act of giving birth" (Romans 8:22). Should we call it evolutionary Christianity? There is no other kind possible if the Holy Spirit is active and involved.

I am, of course, trusting and hoping that what is contained here is much more than a bit of truth, precisely because I have found some serious validation in the Judeo-Christian scriptures, along with a clear consistency in the Great Tradition: two thousand years of Jewish interpretation and two thousand years of Christian interpretation, mystics, saints, Church councils, friends of God, theologians and philosophers of the ecumenical Body of Christ--and also the clear dots offered by all other religions, which Vatican II gave us permission to recognize and enjoy. [1] This is the force field of the Holy Spirit that you and I continue to be a part of whenever we are living, writing, and praying in loving union with God and God's work in the world.

I pray and hope that all I say and teach in these meditations comes from this place of loving union. There is nothing to be gained by rebellion, oppositional thinking, or any notion of superiority. To paraphrase St. Joan of Arc, I also pray: "If I am in your truth, God, keep me there. If I am not, God, put me there."

Reference:

[1] Nostra Aetate: Declaration on Non-Christian Religions (Vatican Council II: 1966), 1-2.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Yes, And . . .: Daily Meditations (Franciscan Media: 2013), 3-4.

Interpreting Scripture

I do not want you to think that these daily meditations are just my personal ideas and opinions. My ongoing education and my preaching have largely been based in the Judeo-Christian scriptures and Franciscan theology. I have often struggled with how much damage the Bible and the Church have done in human history, and I have often been amazed at how much good they've done too. There has to be a way to maximize these inherent possibilities for the good, the true, the beautiful--and the future. As I continue to say, God cannot expect each generation's search for wisdom to start at zero.

Without an honest and declared hermeneutic, we have no consistency or authority in our interpretation of the Bible. My methodology is very simple and maybe even seems naive--I attempt to interpret scripture as I see that Jesus did. Jesus did teach us in practice how to use the word of God, what to emphasize and what not to emphasize. It is rather clear in Jesus' usage that not all scriptures are created equal. He consistently ignored or even denied exclusionary, punitive, and triumphalist texts in his own Jewish scriptures in favor of passages that emphasized inclusion, mercy, and honesty. Check it out for yourself. He knew what passages were creating a highway for God and which passages were merely cultural, self-serving, paranoid, tribal, and legalistic additions. Jesus read his own inspired scriptures in a spiritual and highly selective way, which is why he was accused of "teaching with authority and not like our scribes" (Matthew 7:29). He even told the fervent and pious "teachers of the law" that they had entirely missed the point: "You understand neither the scriptures nor the power of God" (Mark 12:24).

The New Testament was written in Greek--a language which Jesus did not understand--and was composed thirty to seventy years after Jesus' death. We can conclude that the exact words of Jesus were apparently not that important for the Holy Spirit or for us. We have only a few snippets of Jesus' actual words in his native Aramaic. This should keep us all humble and searching for our own experience of the Risen Christ instead of arguing over Greek verbs and tenses. Literalism is invariably the lowest and least level of meaning. For deep readers, sacred texts open up the endless possibilities for life and love. For people who merely want to be right or to seek power, sacred texts are normally a disaster. Our Jewish ancestors called the deeper approach midrash, extrapolating from the story to find the truest message(s). The immature approach is obvious when scriptures are used to justify slavery, apartheid, Western capitalism, nationalism, consumerism, and almost any other "-ism" that serves our egocentricity.

What makes Jesus such a special Jew was that he said this divine election was first of all free, and therefore universal, and not bound by any ethnicity or era of time. Grace is inherent to our dignity as human beings. But he learned that and dared to believe it both from his enlightened reading of the Jewish scriptures (which put him at odds with the priestly class) and from his own God experience. He claimed them both. "The Law says and I say" he repeats seven times in a row (Matthew 5:17-48).

You have been loved and chosen so that you can pass on the experience, not hoard the experience. In fact, if you feel a need to guard it, as if it were limited or scarce, that is the certain evidence that you have not accessed the Infinite Source yourself. It has to start with some kind of "I get it" experience which should lead to "And everybody else does too!" As Ken Wilber so brilliantly says, "Religion starts elitist, but ends egalitarian. Always!"

Reference:

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Yes, And . . .: Daily Meditations (Franciscan Media: 2013), ix-xii, and Great Themes of Scripture: Old Testament (Franciscan Media: 1987), 112.

Perfect Love Casts Out Fear

What makes people so unkind and hurtful to one another? Sometimes the more petty and unnecessary it is, the more astounding it is. Where does this come from? Why is it much easier for humans to wrap themselves around problems, negativity, and blaming than around joy?

Humans make hard and impossible the very things they want the most! This tendency seems demonic. Such contrariness must be the meaning of any original wound or "sin." We really are our own worst enemy. It is not just that we send our unresolved pain and fear toward others, but that we choose to abide in them ourselves. We refuse resurrection on a regular basis and then wonder why we are unhappy. Maybe we just need to be told how deep and hidden the problem is, and that there is another way. Normally we have to see a model, we have to know or meet one enlightened person and let them rub off on us. All holiness is contagious and never a private possession. You don't acquire it, you fall into it. Like the Twelve-Step program, it "grows by attraction more than promotion." The proliferation of pulpits throughout the Christian world pretty much show that we over-relied on promotion, but even that was normally "saving the supposed saved."

Negativity works in many immediate and seemingly good ways. It unites a fear-based group far more quickly than love does, especially if you do not recognize or admit your own fears. Fear unites the disparate parts of your own False Self. The ego moves forward by contraction, self-protection, and refusal, by saying no. Sad to say, contraction gives you focus, purpose, direction, superiority, and a strange kind of security. It takes your aimless anxiety, covers it up, and turns it into purposefulness and urgency, which shows itself in a kind of drivenness. But this drive is not peaceful or happy; it is filled with itself. It is filled with agenda and sees all of its problems as "out there," never "in here." Witness American political agendas, if you want an overwhelming example of this level of consciousness.

The soul, however, does not proceed by contraction but by expansion. It moves forward, not by exclusion, but by inclusion. It sees things deeply and broadly, not by saying no, but by saying yes, at least on some level, to whatever comes its way. Mary's kind of yes (Luke 1:38) does not come easily. It requires that you let down some of your ego boundaries, and none of us likes to do that. What I mean by Mary's kind of yes is an assent utterly given from beyond, no preconditions of worthiness required, a calm, wonderful ability to trust that someone else is in charge, and the foundations are good and going somewhere. It is a yes that is pure in motivation, open-ended in intent, and calm in confidence. Only grace can achieve such freedom in the soul, heart, or mind. We hardly know how to think this way by ourselves.

Jesus came to reveal and resolve the central and essential problem--humanity's tendency toward fear and hate. The pattern is so deep and habitual within humans that we even make religion itself into a clever cover for our disguised need to remain fearful and hateful. The ultimate disguise whereby you can remain a mean-spirited person is to do it for God or country. You are relieved of all inner anxiety; you can maintain your positive self-image and even some kind of moral high ground, while hidden underneath are "the bones of the dead and every kind of corruption," as Jesus said (Matthew 23:27).

Love is the totally enlightened, entirely nonsensical way out of this pattern. Love has to be worked toward, received, and enjoyed, first of all by recognizing our deep capacity for fear and hate. But remember, we gather around the negative space quickly, while we "fall into" love rather slowly, and only with lots of practice at falling. We'll spend the whole next year of meditations exploring this kind of Love.

Reference:

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer (Paulist Press: 2014), 65-70.

                                                                     

FOREVER BEING AHEAD OF OUR SOULS 

An article by Fr Ron Rolheiser - the original article can be found here 

Sometimes nothing is as helpful as a good metaphor.

In his book, The God Instinct, Tom Stella shares this story: A number of men who made their living as porters were hired one day to carry a huge load of supplies for a group on safari. Their loads were unusually heavy and the trek through the jungle was on a rough path. Several days into the journey they stopped, unshouldered their loads, and refused to go on. No pleas, bribes, or threats, worked in terms of persuading them to go on. Asked why they couldn’t continue, they answered: “We can’t go on; we have to wait for our souls to catch up with us.”

That happens to us too in life, except mostly we never wait for our souls to catch up. We continue on without them, sometimes for years. What’s meant by this? Mostly it means that we struggle to be in the present moment, to be inside our own skins, to be aware of the richness of our own experience. Mostly our experiences aren’t very soulful because we aren’t very present to them.  For example:

For the past twenty years, I’ve kept a journal, a diary of sorts. My intent in keeping this journal is to record the deeper things that I’m aware throughout each day; but mostly what I end up actually writing down is a simple chronology of my day, a daybook, a bare, no-frills, recounting of what I did from hour to hour. My diaries don’t much resemble Anne Frank’s diary, Dag Hammarskjold’s, Markings, Etty Hillesum’s, An Interrupted Life, or Henri Nouwen’s, Genesee Diary. My journals resemble more what you might get from a schoolboy describing his day at school, a simple chronology of what happened.  Yet when I go back and read an account of what I did each day, I’m always amazed as how rich and full life was on those days, except that I wasn’t much aware of it at the time. While actually living through those days, mostly I was struggling to get my work done, to stay healthy, to meet expectations, to carve out some moments of friendship and recreation amidst the pressures of the day, and to get to bed at a reasonable hour. There wasn’t a lot of soul there, just a lot of routine, work, and hurry.

I suspect that this is not atypical. Most of us, I suspect, live most of our days not very aware of how rich our lives are, forever leaving our souls behind:  For example, many is the woman who gives ten to fifteen years of her life to bearing and raising children, with all that entails, tending constantly to someone else’s needs, getting up at night to nurse a child, spending 24 hours a day on constant alert, sacrificing all leisure time, and putting a career and personal creativity on hold. And yet too often that same woman, later on, looks back on those years and wishes she could relive them – but, now, in a more soulful way, more deliberately aware of how wonderful and privileged it is to do precisely those things she did with so much dram and tiredness. Years later, looking back, she sees how rich and precious her experience was and how, because of the burden and stress, how little her soul was present then to what she was actually undergoing.

This can be multiplied with a thousand examples: We’ve all read accounts wherein someone shares what he or she would do differently if he or she had life to live over again. Mostly these stories rework the same motif:  Given another chance, I would try to enjoy it more the next time, that is, I would try to keep my soul more-present and more-aware.

For most of us, I fear, our souls will only catch up with us when, finally, we are in a retirement home, with diminished health, energy, and opportunity to work. It seems we need to first lose something before we fully appreciate it. We tend to take life, health, energy, and work for granted, until they are taken away from us. Only after the fact do we realize how rich our life has been and how little of those riches we drank in at the time.

Our souls eventually do catch up with us, but it would be good if we didn’t wait until we were in the retirement home for this to happen. Like the porters who dropped their loads and stopped, we need regularly to stop and wait for our souls to catch up.

Early on in his priesthood, when Pope Francis was in charge of school, he would at a certain point each day have the public address system cut in and interrupt the work that was going on in each classroom with this announcement:  Be grateful. Set your horizon. Take stock of your day.

We all need, regularly, to lay down our burdens for a minute so our souls can catch up with us.

                                                                 

4 WAYS TO MAKE YOUR CHURCH A PLACE OF MERCY THIS YEAR

From the blog by Fr Michael White. The original can be found here

Pope Francis has declared an “Extraordinary” Jubilee Year of Mercy, which will run through November 20, 2016. What is that? It is actually a perfect opportunity to make church matter by following God’s call to extend mercy to the lost and broken. Here are four areas we’ve been trying in our parish, and we hope will grow over the course of the year.

Be Restorers

God calls us not just to “change” the world, but “restore” it. Catholics already have a longstanding tradition for restoring the world around us- they’re called the Corporal Works of Mercy. Use this year to integrate mercy by starting or developing a Missions team. Over the years, we’ve expanded to a few different international missions, but it starts small. Instead of just planning the occasional day trip, which can foster the mentality that mission work is just another extracurricular activity for Christians, facilitate a church partnership with a local homeless shelter, soup kitchen, or other service, and start a team who will invest time and build trust.

Get Personal

For mercy to become dynamic, it must become specific, which means rooted in real person-to-person relationships. We call these the Spiritual Works of Mercy. In the past, it has often been the job of a small, highly trained group of ministers to meets everyone’s needs, but this too often reinforces the notion that mercy isn’t every Christian’s call. To make mercy a part of our church culture, develop small groups as a way to foster spiritual healing and comfort, understanding, and instruction. Watch people begin to take responsibility for their brother and sister, and not rely just on your staff.

Be Like the Father

Without prayer, mercy becomes a pseudonym for social activism, not the path for discipleship. But Christian mercy is about becoming, as the theme of the year states, “Merciful Like the Father,” and Jesus found this call primarily in his time in silent prayer with his Father. Lent is an opportune time to make this connection. Try hosting an event like additional Eucharistic Adoration or preach about the sacrament of reconciliation and then make it available with extended hours.

Be a Light to Families

Without a doubt, much of the conversation about mercy has been framed around the debates regarding marriage and family life in the Church, but our efforts sometimes seem to generate more heat than light. How does your church communicate mercy? In our current Nativity message series, which is all about building happy families, we made sure to include some evening workshops that reinforce the message we try to communicate. These include qualified speakers about parenting and cyber-safety, and a “date night” where couples can spend some time together and then renew their vows.

                                                       

St Mark the Pastor

An article from the website - Thinking Faith - on the place of Mark the Evangelist in the life of the Church. The original article, by Fr Peter Edmonds sj, can be found here

Each year on 25th April, (26th in Australia) the Church celebrates the feast of St Mark. 

Who is this Mark? He is usually identified with a young man we meet in the Acts of the Apostles. This Mark was a member of the first Christian community in Jerusalem, whose mother offered refuge to Peter when he escaped from Herod’s prison (Acts 12:12). We also know of a Mark who was a companion of Paul and Barnabas on their missionary travels (Acts 13:5), but who at a certain point left them, causing Paul to refuse to invite him to join him on a later journey (Acts 13:13; 15:38). But there may well have been a reconciliation, since the name of Mark is mentioned in some Pauline letters (Colossians 4:10 and Philemon 24). There is also a Mark mentioned as ‘my son, Mark’ in the conclusion of the First Letter of Peter (1 Peter 5:13). But we must be aware that Mark was a very common name in those days, and we have no guarantee that these several references to ‘Mark’ refer to the same person and that this Mark was the one who wrote the gospel we know as the ‘Gospel according to Mark’.

The real reason why the Church selects a special day in honour of Mark is to show her profound appreciation of the gospel that bears his name. But just as the missionary achievement of Mark in the Acts of the Apostles is overshadowed by those of Paul and Barnabas, so too his gospel has lived in the shade of three gospels of greater length and popularity which we know as Matthew, Luke and John. It is true that the current Lectionary of the Catholic Church for the Sunday Eucharist since 1969 uses Mark as the most common Sunday gospel in its Year B of the cycle; for various reasons this gospel receives less exposure than do Matthew in Year A and Luke in Year C.

Despite the greater use of the other gospels in the Church, Mark’s gospel is a treasure to be discovered and deserves its day of celebration in the Church’s calendar. Like many buried treasures, Mark’s gospel has to be dug up layer by layer. One way of approaching this work of excavation is to move step by step by asking four probing questions in four continuous readings of the gospel.

· The first question concerns the story that this gospel tells.

· The second is to examine the portrait of Jesus that it presents.

· The third is to follow the career of those characters that after Jesus are considered the most important, namely the disciples of Jesus.

· The fourth and final question follows logically after the first three, asking which figures in this gospel story does the author want its readers and hearers to take as models and exemplars in their own life of discipleship, those whom we may call the ‘little people’ of Mark.

The Story of Mark
The first challenge is to grasp Mark’s story. It is a good exercise for the reader to try to make a two or three page summary of this. Such a summary would surely note the beginning and end of the gospel. For example, the first verse of Mark gives us a title for the whole work and a title for Jesus, its major character. The work is a ‘gospel’, an euangelion, a good news, which echoes the joyful proclamation made centuries before by the prophet Isaiah who pronounced how beautiful were the feet of those who brought good news of peace and salvation (Isaiah 52:7). It is a gospel about Jesus, the major character whom he calls the Christ and Son of God. The reader already knows what Peter confesses half way through the story, ‘You are the Christ’ (Mark 8:29), and what the centurion would proclaim once Jesus had died, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son’ (Mark 15:39). Yet paradoxically, the gospel ends with flight and fear, with terror and amazement (Mark 16:8). It is with this verse that most experts on this gospel find the conclusion of the story rather than with Mark 16:8b-20, which was added later.

There are several ways of dividing Mark’s work. What follows is one that has been found useful. Unlike a modern author, Mark does not offer a foreword or a preface, but he does provide a prologue which gives the reader information helpful for understanding the story he is about to tell. This ‘prologue’ of Mark presents to his readers quotes from the Old Testament; the proclamation of John the Baptist about the ‘stronger one’ who was to come; the coming of Jesus to the Jordan river to be baptised; and his subsequent testing by Satan in the desert (Mark 1:2-13). None of this privileged information, shared with Mark’s readers, was available to the characters in the account of Jesus which follows.

The gospel narrative can be divided into three major blocks or ‘acts’. In the first ‘act’, we learn about the public ministry of Jesus in Galilee which concludes with the question of Jesus to bewildered disciples in the boat, ‘Do you not yet understand?’ (1:14-8:21). The second act consists of the journey of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem. Peter confesses Jesus as ‘the Christ’, but when Jesus warns his disciples three times about his coming suffering, death and resurrection and its relevance for their own lives, they misunderstand and resist his message. The block ends with the story of Bartimaeus who, unlike the disciples, recognises his blindness and is able to follow Jesus ‘on the way’ (8:22-10:52). The third act is set in Jerusalem. Jesus enters the city, engages in controversies in the Temple with the authorities who plot to arrest and kill him, speaks his final words to his disciples and shares a final meal with them, is arrested and executed through crucifixion. He is buried but when the women visit his tomb, they are told that he was not there but was risen (11:1-16:8). The final verses of Mark follow as a sort of epilogue, providing a summary of various appearances which are related in other gospels; they are written in a different style from the rest of the gospel, and are commonly considered as added by a different writer (16:9-20).

The Jesus of Mark
Having grasped the overall outline of the story, it is now time to read through it again, this time concentrating on how Mark portrays Jesus who is its major character. There is something of a tension here, because along with Peter, the reader has to accept this Jesus as The Christ (8:29) and, with the centurion on Calvary, as The Son of God (15:39). He is presented as one who teaches with authority (1:22,27) and has power over nature, demons, disease and death (4:35-5:43). He even does what God does in forgiving sins (2:50), calming storms (4:39), walking on water (6:48), and appearing in glory on the mountain of Transfiguration (9:2).

Yet at the same time, Jesus is human, even weak: he gets angry (3:5), shows ignorance (5:30), and is ‘without honour in his own country’ (6:4). As Son of Man, ‘he must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again’ (8:31). This is sometimes called the ‘second story’ of Jesus in Mark. Having struggled to accept Jesus as the ‘stronger one’ as the first stage of proper understanding, the hearer of this gospel must recognise him as the one who has to die in shame upon a cross. And this communicates a message for the Christian life of the reader, who is one who wants to follow this Jesus (8:34).

A third element essential to Mark’s portrayal of Jesus is the assurance of Jesus that he would return ‘in the glory of his Father with the holy angels’ (8:38). Not only would Peter and his disciples see him in Galilee after he has been raised from the dead (16:7), but they were to keep awake and be ready for the day of the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory (13:26,37). He warned those who condemned him that they would see ‘the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Father, and coming with the clouds of heaven’ (14:62).

The Disciples of Jesus
If in our second reading of Mark, we concentrated on the figure of Jesus, in a third reading we are to concentrate on the role of those called disciples. Jesus is never alone in this gospel; he is always accompanied by disciples who were appointed, ‘to be with him, and to be sent out to preach and to cast out demons’ (3:14-15). Jesus told them that it was to them that the mystery of the kingdom of God was being given (4:11). Sometimes they are examples to the reader, as in their ready response to the call of Jesus by the lakeside (1:16-20) and in their going off on mission on his behalf (6:12-13). On their return, they gathered around Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught (6:30). They continued to follow him even when they were amazed and afraid (10:32). They readily obeyed his instructions to prepare the Passover meal (14:16).

Yet their behaviour at other times reveals cause for disappointment and alarm. Three times they failed when in a boat with Jesus: they panicked during the storm (4:38); and again when he came to them walking on the water (6:50); and yet again when they failed to grasp his warning about the leaven of the Pharisees (8:21). On the road to Jerusalem, they three times refused to heed his warning about his coming suffering (8:32; 9:34; 10:37). In Jerusalem, when agitated and distressed in Gethsemane, he appealed to them to keep awake; they fell asleep (14:37) and when the mob that came to arrest him, seized him, they all ran away (14: 50). Peter, the first name in the list of the Twelve (3:16), denied three times that he ever knew Jesus (14:68, 70, 71). There is no mention of the disciples in the account of the death of Jesus, and whereas the disciples of John the Baptist had been at hand to bury John after his being put to death by Herod (6:29), the disciples of Jesus played no part in his burial.

Yet if we feel ourselves justified in condemning these disciples for apostasy and infidelity in their following of Jesus, we are brought up short when we read the message of the young man speaking to the women at the empty tomb, ‘Go and tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee’ (16:7). If we condemn them, Jesus did not.

The ‘little people’ in Mark
If then those whom we may call the ‘official disciples’ of Jesus in Mark’s story prove ambiguous and unreliable role models for imitation, we need to read through this gospel a fourth time, concentrating on those characters who come on to the gospel stage but once, and who on each occasion do or say something that can be admired and imitated by the reader. To each of them we may apply the words that Jesus spoke about the woman of Bethany who anointed his feet: ‘Wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her’ (14:9).

This unnamed woman is just one of many such ‘little people’ in this gospel. We may recall the request of the Gerasene demoniac ‘to be with Jesus’s (5:18), an echo of Jesus’s invitation to the Twelve (3:14); the confession of the woman with the haemorrhage who, by telling Jesus ‘the whole truth’, was freed from her fear and trembling (5:33); and Jesus’s words to Jairus before he raised his daughter, ‘Do not fear, only believe’ (5:36). After reading the deaf resistance of the disciples to the message of the cross on their way to Jerusalem (8:32; 9:34; 10:37), it is a relief for us to admire the three-fold prayer for sight of Bartimaeus who eagerly followed Jesus on the way (10:51). Jesus had warned that those who wanted to be his followers must take up the cross; Simon of Cyrene did this literally on Jesus’s road to Calvary (15:21). Also on Calvary were the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee; these, unlike the invisible disciples, watched the cross from afar (15:40-41), and they became the first to hear the news of the resurrection when they came to the tomb (16:6).

We can add others to this list of ‘little people’, a list in fact of equal length to the ‘official list’ of the Twelve in which Mark gives of the names of Peter and his companions (3:16-19). So we remember the lively and courageous faith of the Syro-Phoenician woman (7:28) and the astonishing prayer of the father of the epileptic boy who prayed, ‘I believe, help my unbelief’ (9:24). We appreciate the contribution of the scribe whom Jesus encountered in the Temple and whom he declared to be ‘not far from the kingdom of God’. He had asked Jesus about the greatest commandment and added his own comment to the words of Jesus which echoed the prophet Hosea (12:33). Soon after, we read of the widow in the temple whose trust in God allowed her to put both her coins in the collection box (12:44). We meet two more of these ‘little people’ after the death of Jesus in the persons of the pagan centurion who had supervised the execution and the respected member of the council that had condemned Jesus. The first confessed Jesus as ‘The Son of God’ (15:39) and the second took courage to ask Pilate for the body of Jesus and buried him (15:43-46). We have listed twelve such characters. You might like to add more as a result of this fourth reading of the text.

Mark the Pastor
Just as there is uncertainty about the precise identity of Mark – whether he was in fact the person whom Peter in his letter referred to as his ‘son’, whether he was the John Mark who accompanied Paul and Barnabas on their missionary travels – there is also uncertainty about the purpose and circumstances of this gospel. But it may well have had its origin in Rome in the time of Nero in his later years (AD 68). We know from the Roman historian Tacitus that the Christians there were under grave threat from the Roman authorities who were blaming them for a great fire that had recently devastated the city. Many, unjustly accused, paid with their lives. Others denied that they were Christians and apostasised. It was dangerous to be a Christian in those days. Mark was writing for such people. The Jesus whom they professed to follow was one who had willingly walked to Jerusalem, the city of his enemies where he knew he faced death. His disciples had struggled in many ways unsuccessfully to remain faithful to their calling but Jesus, despite their failings, summoned them to meet him again in Galilee. Thanks to Mark, memories and traditions were repeated of ‘little people’ who had said or done something that in turn instructed and encouraged the ‘little people’ of that small group of Christians in Rome. What Mark wrote has a call on our attention today. As we read it or listen to his words, we can join ourselves in spirit and imagination with that group of poor Christians in Rome centuries ago. We know that like the seed in Jesus’s parable that was sown in good soil, it can produce a hundred fold (4:20). As the shortest of the gospels, it might seem as insignificant as the mustard seed described in another parable of Jesus, but it can become a great tree in whose branches we can all find shelter (4:32). We celebrate it every year on 25 April.




Peter Edmonds SJ is a tutor in biblical studies at Campion Hall, University of Oxford.