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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PARISH OFFICE WILL RE-OPEN THIS WEDNESDAY 27TH JANUARY, 2016
Weekday Masses 26th - 29th January, 2016
Tuesday: 9:00am Penguin & Devonport - Australia Day
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 12 noon Devonport
Friday: 9.30am Ulverstone
Next Weekend 30th & 31st 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:
Jane Allen, 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: 21st – 27th
Jan
Josephine Last, Doris Williams, Bernard Mack, Barry Lyons,
Dorothy Bell, Nicola Tenaglia, Margaret Lockett, Joan Garnsey, Len Gaffney,
John Bilyk, Danielle Natoli and Lorraine Horsman.
May they rest in peace
First Reading: Nehemiah 8:2-6, 8-10
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:12-30
Gospel: Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL
After coming to some stillness, I allow myself time to
become familiar with this gospel. Jesus chooses to read out loud, and to make
his own, a passage of scripture that would have been very familiar those who
were listening; his friends and neighbours, the people with whom he grew up. In
prayer, I may like to try to become present to this event as it unfolds. I
listen afresh to his “mission statement”, perhaps reading it several times. I
may like to ponder God’s choice of priorities that Jesus embraces in the power
of the Spirit. How do I feel about them? Is there anything that I would like
him to have added? Perhaps I may like to spend time reflecting: ….. What are my
priorities? … In what ways are they like, or unlike, those of Jesus? How might
I describe my “mission statement” to my friends? I talk with Jesus about all
this in whatever way seems right for me. I ask for what I need, knowing that
the power of the Holy Spirit is with me, as it was for Jesus. I end my prayer
with gratitude.
Readings Next 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
WEEKLY
RAMBLINGS
I
said in my Ramblings last week that the 1st Open Houses for 2015
will start on February 5th – you will be pleased to know that I am
now in the correct year and it will actually be held on Friday, 5th
Feb 2016. However, the invitation to be part of this event still holds and,
truthfully, everyone is welcome. Wine, soft drink, tea/coffee, nibbles and
finger food are provided – BYO any other poison. The other dates mentioned were
correct – only the year was wrong.
As
I am typing this I can see out the window of the Office the Spirit of Tasmania
speeding off to Victoria on a day sailing. It seemed just a moment ago that it
was leaving the river yet now it is almost out of view. In many ways January is
doing the same – sorry about that! – I mean, reminding you that life is racing
on. But it is important to remember that we need to do things now to ensure
that the work of the Parish continues and not wait until tomorrow because
everything moves so quickly.
As
I mentioned last weekend I would hope that our Open House gatherings might
provide the chance to open up discussion about our Parish Plan, the
recommendations that can be found there and how we might go about realising
some of them in the Parish this year. A lot of work went into preparing the
Plan so making a good response to the effort of a great group of people is our
way, now, of saying thanks.
Our
Pastoral Plan asked the question – Where do we want to be in three to five
years time? I would like to hope that the Parish Pastoral Council (including
new members – nomination forms will be available within the next two weeks)
will find ways to help us move forward with answers to this question and that
we will be able to take some ‘big’ steps to enable further growth in our faith
and community life during this coming year.
Please take care on the roads as the holidays come to
an end and people head home to work and school.
AUSTRALIA DAY
There will be Mass next Tuesday 26th at Devonport and
Penguin at 9.00am to celebrate our National Day. Earlier time is to
enable parishioners to be part of local community activities later in the
morning. All welcome - please wear green/gold or both.
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 next Sunday (31st) - at 2 pm.
For further information contact Peter on 0419302435.
A Message from Rachel’s Vineyard - “He heals the broken hearted…” –
Psalm 147:3
If your heart is broken after abortion, wholeness and
healing are available. Attend a Rachel’s Vineyard retreat for healing after
abortion. Our next retreat is May 13th – 15th 2016. Contact Anne Sherston on
the confidential phone line 03 62298739 or 0478599241
“At times, we are called to gaze even more
attentively on mercy so that we may become a more effective sign of the
Father’s action in our lives...a time when the witness of believers might grow
stronger and more effective.”
Saint of the Week – St Angela Merici (January 27)
Angela Merici was born on March 21, 1474 at
Desenzano, Lake Garda, Italy. She made a vow of virginity before she was 10
years old and persuaded her older sister to do the same. Her parents died when
she was only 10 years old. Together, with her older sister, she moved to the
nearby town of Salo, to live with her uncle. She and her only sister, who was
three years older, loved each other very much.
But soon Angela’s sister followed her parents in
a sudden death. Her passing left Angela disconsolate because it occurred before
her sister could receive the last sacraments of the Church. Angela lost herself
in prayer and good works. Although she had great faith, she could not help but
wonder if her sister was safe in heaven.
One day, during harvest, Angela was alone in
the fields when she experienced a life-changing vision: The heaven’s opened and
angels and young women came toward her singing a melody, surrounded by light.
One of the young girl's was Angela’s sister and she spoke, telling her that God
wanted her to establish a company of consecrated virgins. Since then she has
been known as a Saint, thanks to her spiritual life and her capacity to
understand and help people.
Pope Francis, the hermeneutic of conspiracy and the ‘Three F’s’
This is an article, written by Peter Bannister, taken from the Thinking Faith Website - the original can be found here
Surely nobody following Church developments since the election of Pope Francis in March 2013 with even moderate attention can have failed to notice that a major characteristic of his Pontificate thus far has been the perhaps unparalleled polarisation of opinion, in and outside Catholicism, concerning the present holder of the Petrine Office. While his rapturous American reception in September indicated the Pope’s unflagging popularity on the world stage, the rise of a strange and disturbing parallel phenomenon also needs to be acknowledged: statements from a growing number of those professing to be Christians that Pope Francis is variously a Communist infiltrator, doctrinal pyromaniac or even the False Prophet of the Apocalypse. For those readers who may think I exaggerate, let me suggest a brief exercise in ‘applied sociology of religion’. First type ‘Pope Francis False Prophet’ into an internet video search engine. Sort results by number of views. You may well be surprised to discover the size of the audience for conspiratorial narratives concerning Jorge Mario Bergoglio. If you then re-shuffle the results by publication date you will also realise that such narratives are proliferating rapidly, the latest trigger being the Pope’s January 2016 video expressing his prayer intentions regarding inter-religious dialogue. If you can stomach it, complete this little exercise by watching a few minutes of the latest anti-Francis videos and measuring the distance of your jaw from the floor.
Much of this anti-Papal invective is naturally extremely crude, and the first reaction to it might be simple amusement at what any thinking viewer ought to be able to dismiss as nothing more than the latest ‘urban legend’. I would, however, like to contend that such a reaction, though understandable, would be mistaken on several counts.
Firstly, that this material is manifest nonsense is unfortunately anything but self-evident. Far too many of us probably know at least one colleague, friend or family member adhering to conspiracy theories absorbed from ‘alternative’ information sources such as the infamousInfoWars news site of American right-wing activist Alex Jones. This is no laughing matter inasmuch that allowing one’s worldview to be moulded by such new mythologies can have extremely damaging psychological and relational consequences. Conspiracy theories are truly habit-forming and obsession-inducing, substantial amounts of mental and emotional energy being required in order to maintain belief in them when faced with external reality. Considerable cognitive dissonance is provoked when conspiracy theories’ frequent grain of truth (after all, human beings do conspire) is confronted with real-life evidence apparently contradicting the theory, and dealing with this dissonance comes at a price.
Once accepted as interpretive frameworks for understanding the world, conspiratorial narratives often estrange their advocates from those around them, with whom they no longer have a shared logic facilitating two-way communication. My guess is that many of us feel powerless to converse rationally with such individuals and attempt to avoid them whenever possible. Mutual exasperation is guaranteed whenever certain subjects are broached, not primarily because our opinions differ, but rather because our understandings of what constitutes reasoned discourse are incompatible. It is truly difficult when someone tells you with a straight face that your views are the result of brainwashing by a CIA mind control programme (or for that matter by Jesuit propaganda, which for some conspiracy theorists amounts to the same thing). Implicit in the popular rise of the conspiratorial mindset is a crisis of rationality, which in itself is a social phenomenon requiring serious investigation.
Secondly, while many ‘alternative media’ sources portraying a Pope Francis in league with the Antichrist may strike readers of Thinking Faith as primitive or culturally alien, this should not blind us to their sociological impact or significance as barometers of our times. Our reading habits and professional activities can sometimes delude us into thinking that not only the world but also the universal Church consists solely of those holding advanced degrees, but to ignore the very real importance of ‘popular religion’ is at best to hold a naïve view of the religious practice of 95% of the world’s Christians and at worst to engage in culpable intellectual snobbery. In largely neglecting popular piety as an object of serious study, academic theology bears some responsibility for the fact that fundamentalist religious narratives within Christianity have gone largely unchecked in recent years. This is an ethical as well as an intellectual issue: it is worth remembering that ‘instructing the ignorant’ (rather than sneering at them from a distance or simply refusing to engage with them) is one of the seven works of spiritual mercy highlighted by Francis in this Jubilee Year. Herein definitely lies what might be politely termed a ‘growth opportunity’: broadly speaking, the academic theological community has neither been able to make itself intelligible to a broad audience nor to dialogue constructively and respectfully with those who are far more likely to consult World Net Daily or Matt Drudge than First Things orCommunio. Initiating such dialogue is challenging, because it is clearly insufficient to attempt to ‘instruct the ignorant’ using thought-categories and vocabulary which they cannot understand: any successful pedagogical approach must begin from within their paradigms, a translation requiring much effort as well as unfashionable intellectual humility.
Thirdly, although much current anti-Francis diatribe stems from a distinctly ‘low-brow’ U.S. fundamentalist Evangelical constituency unfortunately still prone to unreconstructed anti-Catholicism, the attribution of conspiratorial intentions to the Pope also characterises a surprising number of Catholic sources other than the ‘usual suspects’, i.e. confirmed enemies of Vatican II. These vary from the overtly defiant, such as the well-known Italian journalist Antonio Socci (whose 2014 book Non è Francesco openly proclaimed Pope Francis’ election to have been technically illegitimate) or Franciscan Br Alexis Bugnolo’s blog From Rome, to the more subtly disgruntled pronouncements of the doggedly conservative Rorate-Caeli or the widely-followedLifesitenews. Nor are Catholic commentators embedded within mainstream media immune to viewing the Pope as a ‘plotter’, as was recently demonstrated by the acrimonious dispute between many American Catholic academics and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat following the publication of his 17 October 2015 article entitled ‘The Plot to change Catholicism’ during the Synod on the Family. I leave it to others to tackle the rights and wrongs of the ongoing spat between Douthat and his critics, but I would like to highlight some more general questions needing to be asked regarding this intensifying anti-Papal backlash and the unprecedented severity of its language. Why has this emerged now? What were the conditions of possibility for its emergence and – perhaps most intriguingly – why have Pope Francis’ detractors surfaced simultaneously in constituencies which at first glance would appear totally heterogeneous, but which find themselves in an ad hoc convergence whose very improbability requires explanation?
Here one major contributory factor is surely the role of the internet and social media in the instantaneous propagation of ideas, however wild and unsubstantiated. Blogs, Wikileaks, Facebook and Twitter have proved themselves hugely powerful tools for creating a cultural climate in which anyone can say virtually anything about anyone – including the Pope – with more or less total impunity, reaching a global audience within seconds. This is a profound sociological shift with immense and unpredictable ramifications for the dissemination of ‘information’, creating a situation as volatile as that engendered by the invention of the printing press just prior to the Reformation, as the late Phyllis Tickle noted in her controversial but highly observant book The Great Emergence (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008). The determined internet blogger – whether hosted by a major media outlet, such as Douthat, or a ‘lone ranger’, such as Socci or Bugnolo – can now effectively create a personal virtual fortress for ideas whose impact would often appear to be directly proportionate to their degree of sensationalism.
There is, however, also a second major factor driving many of the promoters of the ‘Pope Francis as False Prophet’ narrative, and which is as much of a taboo subject for academic theology as is popular religion: eschatology. It is a fact that many of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s most vociferous critics are primarily appealing to tendentious interpretations either of Biblical prophecy, private post-Biblical ‘revelation’ (most notably the disputed ‘St Malachy’ prophecy or ‘Prophecy of the Popes’) or else a combination of both. Perhaps the most puzzling figure in this respect is Catholic theologian Kelly Bowring, whose unashamed assertion that Pope Francis is most probably the False Prophet of the Book of Revelation can be demonstrated to have been highly influenced by the now thoroughly debunked heavenly ‘messages’ of a self-proclaimed Irish seer known by the pseudonym Maria Divine Mercy. ‘MDM’ was recently exposed in the Irish press as a cynical hoax operated by Dublin PR professional Mary Carberry, but not before her supposed end-time revelations had been given credence by millions of Catholics from Switzerland to Nigeria, constituting what must rank as one of the biggest religious scams in modern history.
This is a somewhat difficult area to discuss because questions of private revelation and mystical phenomena, once taken seriously by heavyweight Catholic intellectuals such as Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karl Rahner, Jean Guitton or Gabriel Marcel (not to mention a certain Joseph Ratzinger), have of late largely vanished from view in ‘highbrow’ theological circles. Partly because scandals such as that involving MDM have equated an interest in mysticism with the lunatic fringe, and partly because much academic theology either displays lingering traces of the demythologising, anti-supernaturalist currents of the 1960s and 1970s or else focuses its attention chiefly on postmodern hermeneutics to the detriment of religious phenomenology. There is, however, a curious tension here between academic theology’s silence concerning church-approved Marian apparitions with an eschatological dimension such as Fatima, and the way in which the actions of both the present Pontiff and his two immediate predecessors have evidently been shaped by a close attention to private revelation. It should be recalled that one of Pope Francis’ first acts was to dedicate his pontificate to Our Lady of Fatima, while his Bull of Indiction Misericordiae Vultus announcing the present Jubilee referred explicitly to the ‘great apostle of mercy’ Faustina Kowalska, the Polish mystic rehabilitated and canonised by John Paul II in 2000. It was St Faustina whose mystical experiences in the 1930s led to the incorporation of Divine Mercy Sunday into the Church’s liturgical calendar – visions with inescapable eschatological connotations (Faustina’s diary notably contains the famous prophecy that it would be from Poland that the spark would come to prepare the world for Christ’s final coming).
Curiously, in terms of an underlying eschatological framework, Pope Francis and his demonisers would seem to have more in common than it might at first appear. It would seem that it is not only American fundamentalists waiting impatiently for The Pre-Tribulation Rapture who think about the coming of the Son of Perdition; there are, for example, unmistakable apocalyptic overtones in the Pope’s repeated references to and recommendation of Robert Hugh Benson’s dystopian fiction The Lord of the World (1907) centred around the Anti-Christ figure Julian Felsenburgh. Not a few commentators (including John L Allen and the recently retired Cardinal George of Chicago) have moreover intuited a connection between the Pope’s reading of Benson and the urgency with which he has evidently approached a Pontificate coinciding with what he has insisted on several occasions is an incipient Third World War.
This implicit Papal apocalypticism is an area of investigation at the mention of which some readers may well be shuffling their feet nervously. This is fully understandable, yet the documented evidence of Francis’ statements reminds us that any serious attempt to comprehend the strange phenomenon of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his often not-so-cultured despisers must be open to the question of the Pope’s repeated references to the ‘Three F’s’: Fatima, Faustina and Felsenburgh. They are invitations to commentators, theologians and all interested parties to widen their horizons; the challenge is to do so with charity, sobriety and without emotional hysteria. Bernard Lonergan’s famous methodological watchword remains as relevant (and unfortunately as little-followed) as ever: ‘be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible’.
Paris-based interdisciplinary researcher Peter Bannister is the author of the e-book No False Prophet: Pope Francis and his not-so-cultured despisers.
Love - Week
1
Our
Foundation Is Love
In the
coming year of Daily Meditations I will be exploring a theme close to all of
us--Love. The most powerful, most needed, and most essential teaching is always
about Love. Love is our foundation and love is our destiny. It is where we come
from and where we're headed. As St. Paul famously says, "So faith, hope,
and love remain, but the greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13:13).
My hope,
whenever I speak or write, is to help clear away the impediments to receiving,
allowing, trusting, and participating in a foundational Love. God's love is
planted inside each of us as the Holy Spirit who, according to Jesus,
"will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you"
(John 14:26). Love is who you are.
All I can do
is remind you of what you already know deep within your True Self and invite
you to live connected to this Source. John the Evangelist writes, "God is
love, and whoever remains in love, remains in God and God in him [and
her]" (1 John 4:16). The Judeo-Christian creation story says that we were
created in the very "image and likeness" of God--who is love (Genesis
1:26; see also Genesis 9:6). Out of the Trinity's generative, loving
relationship, creation takes form, mirroring its Creator.
We have
heard this phrase so often that we don't get the existential shock of what
"created in the image and likeness of God" is saying about us. If we
could believe it, we would save ourselves ten thousand dollars in therapy! If
this is true--and I believe it is--our family of origin is divine. It is saying
that we were created by a loving God to be love in the world. Our core is
original blessing, not original sin. Our starting point is positive and, as it
is written in the first chapter of the Bible, it is "very good"
(Genesis 1:31). We do have a good place to go home. If the beginning is right,
the rest is made considerably easier, because we know and can trust the clear
direction of our life's tangent.
The great
illusion we must all overcome is the illusion of separateness. It is the
primary task of religion to communicate not worthiness but union, to reconnect
people to their original identity "hidden with Christ in God"
(Colossians 3:3). The Bible calls this state of separateness "sin."
God's job description is to draw us back into this primal and intimate
relationship. "My dear people, we are already children of God; what we
will be in the future has not yet been fully revealed, and all I do know is
that we shall be like God" (1 John 3:2).
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr,
Things
Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2007), 27-28, 29.
Journey to
the Center
Both God's
truest identity and our own True Self are Love. So why isn't it obvious? How do
we find what is supposedly already there? Why should we need to awaken our
deepest and most profound selves? And how do we do it? By praying and
meditating? By more silence, solitude, and sacraments? Yes to all of the above,
but the most important way is to live and fully accept our present reality.
This solution sounds so simple and innocuous that most of us fabricate all
kinds of religious trappings to avoid taking up our own inglorious, mundane,
and ever-present cross of the present moment.
As James
Finley says, "The greatest teacher of God's presence in our life is our
life." For some reason, it is easier to attend church services than quite
simply to reverence the real--the "practice of the presence of God,"
as some of our saints have called it. Making this commitment doesn't demand a
lot of dogmatic wrangling or managerial support, just vigilance, desire, and
willingness to begin again and again. Living and accepting our reality will not
feel very spiritual. It will feel like we are on the edges rather than dealing
with the essence. Thus most run toward more esoteric and dramatic postures
instead of bearing the mystery of God's suffering and God's joy inside
themselves. But the edges of our lives--fully experienced suffered, and
enjoyed--lead us back to the center and the essence, which is Love.
We do not
find our own center; it finds us. Our own mind will not be able to figure it
out. We collapse back into the Truth only when we are spiritually naked and
free--which is probably not very often. We do not think ourselves into new ways
of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking. In other words, our
journeys around and through our realities, or "circumferences," lead
us to the core reality, where we meet both our truest self and our truest God.
We do not really know what it means to be human unless we know God. And, in
turn, we do not really know God except through our own broken and rejoicing
humanity.
In Jesus,
God tells us that God is not different from humanity. Thus Jesus' most common
and almost exclusive self-name is "The Human One" or "A Son of
Humanity." He uses the term seventy-nine times in the four Gospels. Jesus'
reality, his cross, is to say a free "yes" to what his humanity daily
asks of him. It seems that we Christians have been worshiping Jesus' journey
instead of doing his journey. The worshiping feels very religious; the latter
just feels human and ordinary. We are not human beings on a journey toward
Spirit, we are already spiritual beings on a journey toward becoming fully
human, which for some reason seems harder precisely because it is so ordinary.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 17-20.
Loving the
Presence in the Present
Love people
even in their sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest
love on earth. Love all of God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand of
it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the
plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine
mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better
every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an
all-embracing love.
--Fyodor
Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
We cannot
attain the presence of God because we're already in the presence of God. What's
absent is awareness. Little do we realize that God's love is maintaining us in
existence with every breath we take. As we take another, it means that God is
choosing us now and now and now. We have nothing to attain or even learn. We
do, however, need to unlearn some things.
To become
aware of God's loving presence in our lives, we have to accept that human
culture is in a mass hypnotic trance. We're sleep-walkers. All great religious
teachers have recognized that we human beings do not naturally see; we have to
be taught how to see. Jesus says further, "If your eye is healthy, your
whole body is full of light" (Luke 11:34). Religion is meant to teach us
how to see and be present to reality. That's why the Buddha and Jesus say with
one voice, "Be awake." Jesus talks about "staying watchful"
(Matthew 25:13, Luke 12:37, Mark 13:33-37), and "Buddha" means
"I am awake" in Sanskrit.
Prayer is not
primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a stance. It's a
way of living in the Presence, living in awareness of the Presence, and even of
enjoying the Presence. The contemplative is not just aware of God's Loving
Presence, but trusts, allows, and delights in it.
All
spiritual disciplines have one purpose: to get rid of illusions so we can be
present. These disciplines exist so that we can see what is, see who we are,
and see what is happening. What is is love. It is God, who is love, giving away
God every moment as the reality of our life. Who we are is love, because we are
created in God's image. What is happening is God living in us, with us, and
through us as love.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 28-31.
Begin Again
in Each Moment
One of
Jesus' favorite visual aids is a child. Every time the disciples get into head
games, he puts a child in front of them. He says the only people who can
recognize and be ready for what he's talking about are the ones who come with
the mind and heart of a child. This is what we call "beginner's
mind." The older we grow, the more we've been betrayed and hurt and
disappointed, the more barriers we put up to the primal delight and curiosity
of small children. We must never presume that we see. We must always be ready
to see anew. But it's so hard to go back and be able to say, "I don't know
anything."
Say to
yourself: "I don't know anything." Imagine you are an erased
blackboard, ready to be written on, a tabula rasa. For by and large, what
blocks spiritual learning is the assumption that we already know, or that we
don't need to know. We have to pray for the immense guidance that is offered us
in the beginner's mind. We need to say with the blind man, "Lord, I want to see."
Spirituality
is about seeing. It's about intimate relationship with things rather than
achieving results or meeting requirements. Once you see fully, the rest
follows. You don't need to push the river, because you are already in the
river. God's life of love is being lived within you, and you must simply learn
how to say yes to that life. If you exist on a level where you can see how
"everything belongs," you can trust the flow and trust the life. This
Life is so large and deep and spacious that it even includes its opposite,
death. This is the only true life available to us. As Paul wrote to the
Colossians, "You have died [the small ego self], and the life you now have
is hidden with Christ in God [the Godself]. When Christ is revealed--and he is
your life--you too will be revealed in all your glory with him"
(Colossians 3:3-4).
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 33-34.
Love within
Me
Great
religion seeks utter awareness and full consciousness, so that we can, in fact,
receive all. Everything belongs and everything can be received. We don't have
to deny, dismiss, defy, or ignore. What is, is okay. What is, is the great
teacher.
The purpose
of prayer and religious seeking is to see the truth about reality, to see what
is. And at the bottom of what is is always goodness. The foundation is always
love.
Enlightenment
is to see and touch the big mystery, the big pattern, the Big Real. Jesus
called it the kingdom of God; Buddha called it enlightenment. Philosophers
might call it Truth. Many of us see it as a Foundational Love. Here is a mantra
you might repeat throughout your day to remind yourself of this:
God's life
is living itself in me. I am aware of life living itself in me.
God's love
is living itself in me. I am aware of love living itself in me.
You cannot
not live in the presence of God. This is not soft or sentimental spirituality,
but ironically demands confidence that must be chosen many times and surrender
that is always hard won.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 54-57.
Seeing the
Divine Image
You cannot
earn God. You cannot prove yourself worthy of God. Knowing God's presence is
simply a matter of awareness, of enjoying the now, of deepening one's own
presence. There are moments when it happens. Then life makes sense. Once I can
see the Mystery here, and trust the Mystery even in this piece of clay that I
am, then I can also see it in you. I am able to see the divine image in myself,
in you, and eventually in all things. Finally the seeing is one. How you see
anything is how you will see everything.
Jesus pushes
seeing to the social edge. Can you see the image of Christ in the least of your
brothers and sisters? He uses that as his only description of the final
judgment (Matthew 25). Nothing about commandments, nothing about church
attendance--simply a matter of our ability to see. Can we see Christ in the
"nobodies" who can't play our game of success? In those who cannot
reward us in return? When we can see the image of God where we are not
accustomed to seeing the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own.
Finally,
Jesus says we have to love and recognize the divine image even in our enemies.
He teaches what many thought a leader could never demand of his followers: love
of the enemy. Logically that makes no sense. But soulfully it makes absolute
sense, because in terms of the soul, it really is all or nothing. Either we see
the divine image in all created things, or we don't see it at all. We see it
once, and the circle keeps moving outward, widening its embrace.
The
Christian vision is that the world is a temple. If that is true, then our
enemies are sacred, too. Who else created them but God? The ability to respect
the outsider is probably the litmus test of true seeing. And it doesn't stop
with human beings and enemies and the least of the brothers and sisters. It
moves to frogs and pansies and weeds. Everything becomes enchanting with true
sight. One God, one world, one truth, one suffering, and one love. All we can
do is participate. I hope you enter the New Year with this awareness and an
intention to join in with all your heart, mind, and body!
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 55, 57-59.
ON BOWING AND RAISING OUR HEADS
An article by Fr Ron Rolheiser. The original article can be found here
At end of every Roman Catholic liturgy, there is an invitation given to the people to receive a blessing. That invitation is worded this way: Bow your heads and pray for God’s blessing. The idea behind that, obviously, is that a blessing can only truly be received in reverence, in humility, with head bowed, with pride and arrogance subjugated and silent.
A bowed head is a sign of humility and is understood, almost universally, as our proper spiritual posture. Spiritual writers have rarely questioned or felt the need to nuance the notion that spiritual health means a head bowed in humility. But is it really that simple?
Admittedly there is a lot of wisdom in that. A head bowed in reverence is a sign of humility. Moreover pride heads the list of deadly sins. Human pride is congenital, deep, and impossible to uproot. It can be redeemed and it can be crushed, but it always remains in us, necessarily so. There is no health without pride, but pride can also derail health. There is something inside of human nature, inherent in our very individuality and freedom, which does not like to bend the knee before what is higher and superior. We guard our pride fiercely and it is no accident that the archetypal image of resistance to God is expressed in Lucifer’s inflexible, pride-anchored statement: I will not serve!
Moreover we do not like to admit weakness, finitude, dependence, and interdependence. Thus all of us have to grow and mature to a place where we are no longer naive and arrogant enough to believe that we do not need God’s blessing. All spirituality is predicated on humility. Maturity, human and spiritual, is most evident in someone whom you see on his or her knees praying.
But, while pride can be bad, sometimes pride and arrogance are not the problem. Rather our struggle is with a wounded and broken spirit that no longer knows how to stand upright. It is one thing to be young, healthy, strong, arrogant, and unaware of how fragile and finite we are (and that illusion can survive and stay with us into old age); but it is quite another thing to have one’s heart broken, one’s spirit crushed, and one’s pride taken away. When that happens, and it happens to all of us if we are half-sensitive and live long enough, wounded pride does some very negative things in us, it cripples us so that we can no longer truly get off our knees, stand upright, raise our heads, and receive love and blessing.
I remember as a child, growing up on a farm, watching something that was then called “breaking a horse”. The men would catch a young colt which had until then run completely free and they would, through a rather brutal process, force the young colt to submit to halter, saddle, and human commands. When the process was finished, the colt was now compliant to human commands. But the process of breaking the horse’s freedom and spirit was far from gentle, and thus yielded a mixed result. The horse was now compliant, but part of its spirit was broken.
That’s an apt image for the journey, both human and spiritual. Life, in ways that are far from gentle, eventually breaks our spirit, for good and for bad, and we end up humble, but we also end up somewhat wounded and unable to (metaphorically) stand upright. Conscripted humility has a double effect: On the one hand, we find that we more-naturally genuflect before what is higher; but, on the other hand, because the pain of our brokenness, as is so often the case with pain, we focus more upon ourselves than on others and we end up handicapped. Bruised and fragile, we are unable to properly give and receive and are stuttering and reticent in sharing the goodness and depth of our own persons.
Spirituality and religion have, for the most part, been too one-sided on this. They have perennially been vigilant about pride and arrogance (and, admittedly, these are real and are forever the deadly sins). But spirituality and religion have been too slow to lift up the fallen. We all know the dictum that the task of spirituality is to afflict the comforted and comfort the afflicted. Historically, religion and spirituality, while not always being very successful with the former, have been too-negligent of the latter.
Pride and arrogance are the deadliest of all vices. However wounded pride and a broken spirit can equally derail us.
So, perhaps when the church blesses its congregation at the end of a liturgy, it might, instead of saying: Bow your heads and pray for God’s blessing, say instead: Those of you who think you are not in need of this blessing: Please bow your heads and pray for God’s blessing. Meanwhile those of you who feel beaten, broken, and unworthy of this blessing: Raise your heads to receive a love and gift that you have long despaired of ever again receiving.
5 TRAPS EVERY LEADER NEEDS TO AVOID
Taken from the weekly blog by Fr Michael White. The original can be found here
Leadership is more art than science. That means it grows through practice and willingness to learn from your mistakes. Your effectiveness and success as a leader gets compromised when you fall into unhealthy “traps” of thinking and acting. Here are just five traps I’ve seen and experienced time and time again. If any of these sound like you, don’t be discouraged; It happens to every leader at different situations in life, from the young and aspiring to the seasoned expert- you just get better at overcoming.
The Comparison Trap
Great leaders around us should inspire and drive us, but paying too much attention to others’ success has crippled many otherwise gifted people. God calls individual leaders to a specific place and time. Your leadership will be unique. So even if you could do everything exactly like that other person, it’s unlikely God is calling you to. Maybe your measurement of success is very different than someone else. Keep your eye on your goals, not that other guy’s.
The Celebrity Trap
A leader without any critics probably means they aren’t moving people beyond their zone of comfort. That’s not a leader – that’s a manager. Being a celebrity is also different than being likable- celebrities have an aura of being “untouchable” and not relatable. It is a superficial and image-driven leadership. The opposite is the “Servant Leader.” Become intimate with the struggles and issues of those you serve.
The Loner Trap
Many leaders get the bad idea that they can’t be successful unless they go at it alone. Leadership can be lonely at times, but leadership is not done in isolation. Jesus spent time alone in prayer, but gave real responsibility to carry out his mission to his disciples. The best church leaders know how to surround themselves with gifted people who will bring out the best in one another and the good of the Church. For us imperfect people, we need accountability to sharpen our character and integrity.
The Control Trap
Not only is an overly controlled and managed approach completely ineffective, it’s also selfish. It is not God’s way of equipping his people for the mission. Leadership is less about control and more about positive influence. Influence empowers others with the skills and motivation to meet challenges and solve problems themselves, not become dependent on you.
The Superhero Trap
Related to the Control Trap is the Superhero trap. It’s not so much micromanaging others’ tasks as just trying to do everything yourself. The danger isn’t just an inflated ego. When people see how well you accomplish everything, they will expect more and more of you, and less and less of themselves. It’s the perfect path to self-destruction. A superhero’s greatest enemy is always themself. Know your limits; give yourself margin.
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