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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Monday: 11.00am -
Devonport (Funeral)
Tuesday: 9:30am
- Penguin
Ash Wednesday: 9:30am - Latrobe
12noon -
Devonport
7:00pm -
Ulverstone
Thursday: 12noon
- Devonport
Friday: 9:30am - Ulverstone
Saturday: 9:00am - Ulverstone
Next Weekend 13th & 14th February,
2016
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin &
Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am
Ulverstone
10:30am
Devonport
11:00am
Sheffield
5:00pm
Latrobe
Eucharistic Adoration:
Devonport: Friday - 10am - 12 noon
Devonport: Benediction
Prayer Groups:
Charismatic Renewal - Devonport (Emmaus House) Thursdays - 7:30pm
Christian Meditation - Devonport, Emmaus House - Wednesdays 7pm.
Ministry Rosters 13th & 14th February, 2016
Devonport:
Readers
Vigil: A McIntyre,
M Williams, C Kiely-Hoye
10:30am:
F Sly, J Tuxworth, K Von Bibra
Ministers of Communion
Vigil:
B & B
Windebank, T Bird, J Kelly, T Muir, Beau Windebank
10:30am: J DiPietro, S Riley, F Sly, M Sherriff
19th Feb: B Bailey, A Harrison, M Greenhill
Piety Shop 13th
Feb: H Thompson
14th
Feb: O McGinley Flowers: A O’Connor
Ulverstone:
Reader: D Prior Ministers of Communion: M Murray, J Pisarskis, C Harvey, P
Grech
Cleaners: M McKenzie, M Singh, N Pearce Flowers: C Stingel
Hospitality: M Byrne, G Doyle
Penguin:
Greeters: Fifita Family Commentator: J Barker Reader: J Garnsey
Procession: T Clayton, E Nickols Ministers of Communion: M Hiscutt, M Murray
Liturgy: Sulphur Creek C Setting Up: M Murray Care of Church: G Hills-Eade, T Clayton
Latrobe:
Reader:
M Eden Ministers of Communion: H Lim, M Mackey
Procession: I Campbell Music: Jenny
Port Sorell:
Reader: M
Badcock, G Duff Ministers of Communion: B Lee, V Duff
Clean/Flowers/Prep: G Bellchambers, M Gillard
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Ali Drummond, Jane Allen, John Charlesworth, Kath Smith, Haydee Diaz,
Geraldine
Roden, Joy Carter & …
Let us pray
for those who have died recently: Lance Cox,
Lachie Berwick, Robert Hatton, Barry Aulich, Bruce Peters,
Brian Barrett, Keitha
Kean, Ans Swarte, Monica Darke,
Justina Onyirioha, Mary Rice and Ralph Wehse.
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time:
3rd – 9th
February
Frank Meagher, Mick Groves, Pamela Haslock, Joan Nolan,
Basil Cassidy, Darrell Smith, Betty Hodgson, Sylvia Strange,
David Rutherford, Vera Crabtree, Lawrence
McGuire, Harold Hawkes,
Andrew Cooper, Asuncion Carcuevas and Jack Dunn.
May they Rest in Peace
Readings this Week: 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time
First Reading: Isaiah 6:1-8
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Gospel: Luke 5:1-11
PREGO REFLECTION:
I take time to read this passage slowly and prayerfully,
conscious that the Lord is here right now, desiring my company, wherever I may
be.
Perhaps I am inspired to place myself in the scene ...
watching how Jesus talks to the crowds …
noticing his invitation to Simon Peter …
his words of reassurance and affirmation …
the response that he inspires.
What particularly touches me here?
Jesus uses Peter’s everyday skills to do something unexpected and remarkable …
made possible only because Peter chooses to trust him.
Are there ways in which the Lord is inviting me to ‘put out into the deep’, even though I may lack conviction or courage?
Is there anything I need to let go of to help me follow Jesus with greater freedom?
I speak to the Lord as a trusted friend, asking for whatever I need.
When I am ready, I end my prayer, grateful for this time spent in his presence.
Perhaps I am inspired to place myself in the scene ...
watching how Jesus talks to the crowds …
noticing his invitation to Simon Peter …
his words of reassurance and affirmation …
the response that he inspires.
What particularly touches me here?
Jesus uses Peter’s everyday skills to do something unexpected and remarkable …
made possible only because Peter chooses to trust him.
Are there ways in which the Lord is inviting me to ‘put out into the deep’, even though I may lack conviction or courage?
Is there anything I need to let go of to help me follow Jesus with greater freedom?
I speak to the Lord as a trusted friend, asking for whatever I need.
When I am ready, I end my prayer, grateful for this time spent in his presence.
Readings Next Week: First Sunday of Lent
First Reading:Deuteronomy 26:4-10
Second Reading: Romans 10:8-3
Second Reading: Romans 10:8-3
Gospel: Luke 4:1-15
For receiving the Devonport City Council
Citizen of the Year Award for 2016.
Citizen of the Year Award for 2016.
Toni has made an outstanding contribution to the
community over 25 years through her work with St. Vincent de Paul, managing
local Vinnies shops, before becoming the Devonport Regional Manager of the
workshops and shop, all in a voluntary capacity, until her recent retirement.
Toni has also held many other roles including board member of the Mount St. Vincent nursing home, a member of the Devonport Mayor’s Charitable Trust Fund and numerous other committees.
Well done Toni, the whole Parish Community are very proud of you!
Toni has also held many other roles including board member of the Mount St. Vincent nursing home, a member of the Devonport Mayor’s Charitable Trust Fund and numerous other committees.
Well done Toni, the whole Parish Community are very proud of you!
(Photo –
Mrs Toni with the Devonport Mayor Steve Martin – short and tall of it all!!)
WEEKLY
RAMBLINGS:
I
started last week’s ramblings by saying that quite a lot had happened over the
weeks of January. Sadly, our Parish has been touched again by death. Firstly
the passing of Lance Cox, a man who has been a significant member of the Parish
for many years; the death of Lachie Berwick, a young lad who has inspired many;
on Wednesday evening Mass was celebrated in Kingston for the late Justine
Onyirioha by her son, Fr Anthony, and as well as there has been the deaths of
other friends and relatives within and outside the Parish. We pray for the
families of all the bereaved and ask the Lord to grant all those who have died
eternal rest.
This
weekend we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and as part of the
celebration we give thanks for all those who assist in making our weekly
liturgy possible; from the cleaners and ‘flower people’ through the Lectors,
Special Ministers, musicians and altar servers, people who set up and clean up
after Mass - way too many people to mention. As well there are all of you who
are parishioners who support the Parish in so many other ways - a sincere
thanks to everyone.
Please take care on the roads and in your homes
ASH WEDNESDAY 10th
February, 2016 – MASS TIMES:
9:30am St
Patrick’s Church Latrobe,
12noon Our Lady of Lourdes Church Devonport,
7pm
Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone.
LENTEN PROGRAM
This year’s Lenten Program will begin with discussion
groups starting the week of Ash Wednesday – 10th February. Some
groups have already been organized and there are sheets available this weekend
for parishioners to add their names if they want to join a group.
Clare Kiely-Hoye
will be co-ordinating a Lenten Program at Emmaus House Devonport beginning Tuesday 9th February, then every
Monday (15th Feb) until 14th March from 10am – 11:30am.
If you would like to join please contact Clare on 6428:2760 or the Parish
Office 6424:2783.
CWL ULVERSTONE: Meeting Friday 12th
February, Community Room Sacred Heart Church at 2pm.
HEALING MASS:
Catholic Charismatic Renewal, are sponsoring a
HEALING MASS with Fr Alexander Obiorah at St Mary’s Catholic Church Penguin Thursday
18th February 2016, commencing at 7.30pm.
All denominations are welcome to come and celebrate
the liturgy in a vibrant and dynamic way. After Mass, teams will be available
for individual prayer. Please bring a friend and a plate for supper and
fellowship in the adjacent hall. If you wish to know more or require transport,
please contact Celestine Whiteley 6424:
2043, Michael Gaffney 0447 018 068, Zoe Smith 6426:3073 or Tom Knaap 6425:2442
Callers 11th
February Tony Ryan & Alan Luxton.
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE
WORLD YOUTH
DAY 2016 – APPLY NOW!
Looking for an adventure? A faith-inspiring encounter? The
buzz of millions of young people gathered together? An experience of Pope
Francis? Have you considered World Youth Day 2016? Join other young Tasmanians
on Pilgrimage through Rome, Assisi and Milan; Czestochowa, Auschwitz, Krakow
& Prague for a life-changing experience you won’t soon forget! Applications
are open and now is the time to jump on board! If you are 16-35 years (as
at 31st December 2016) and are at all interested please contact
Rachelle ASAP on rachelle.smith@aohtas.org.au or 0400 045 368. You can also find
more information on this incredible opportunity at: www.wydtas.org.au
GRACEFEST
TASMANIA 2016
‘Gracefest’ is an exciting event for Tasmanian Christian
youth, ages 15-25, being run by the Archdiocese of Hobart. On Saturday
March 5, 6-10pm, at St Peter’s Hall next to St Mary’s Cathedral, the
evening of prayer and worship will include special performances from Christian
singer, Steven Kirk. Food for sale, festival for free! Fully supervised.
Attendance by registration: www.gracefesttasmania.org.au/
Dear Friends,
It is my pleasure to welcome you to the 50th
year of Project Compassion. This year’s theme is “Learning more, creating
change.”
As Pope Francis says “Education is an act of hope”,
so this year Project Compassion celebrated the power of learning, and the many
ways in which Caritas Australia is working with local partners around the world
to provide vital learning and renewed hope to children, women and men most
vulnerable to extreme poverty and injustice.
This theme of “Learning more, creating change” is
explored through six feature stories for the six weeks of Lent. These stories
demonstrate how education, training and sharing knowledge empowers individuals
and community to transform their futures and create lasting change.
Together we can empower the world’s poorest people
with the opportunity to learn, grow and create change. Lent sharpens our
awareness of prayer and the importance of doing good work. Teresa of Avila
reminds us to act with selflessness and compassion when she says: “Christ has
no body now on earth but yours…Yours are the eyes through which to look out
with Christ’s compassion to the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to
go about doing good.”
My blessings
to you and your family
Yours
sincerely,
MERSEY LEVEN CATHOLIC PARISH
Holy Week & Easter Ceremonies 2016
DEVONPORT: Our Lady of Lourdes Church
Good Friday: Commemoration of the Passion 3.00pm
Holy Saturday: EASTER VIGIL 7.00pm
Easter Sunday: Easter Mass 11.00am
PORT SORELL: St Joseph’s Mass Centre
Good Friday: Stations of the Cross 10.00am
Easter Sunday: Easter Mass 8.00am
LATROBE: St Patrick’s Church
Good Friday: Stations of the Cross 11.00am
Easter Sunday Easter Mass 9.30am
SHEFFIELD: Holy Cross Church
Good Friday: Stations of the Cross 11.00am
Easter Sunday: Easter Mass 11.00am
ULVERSTONE: Sacred Heart Church
Holy Thursday: Mass of the Lord’s Supper 7.30pm
(Adoration till 9pm followed by Evening Prayer of the Church)
Good Friday: Commemoration of the Passion 3.00pm
Easter Sunday: Easter Mass 9.30am
PENGUIN: St Mary’s Church
Good Friday: Stations of the Cross 11.00am
Easter Sunday: Easter Mass 8.00am
Reconciliation
Monday 21st March - Our Lady of Lourdes 7pm
Wednesday 23rd March - Sacred Heart 7pm
Saint of the Week – St Valentine (February 14)
Father Frank O'Gara of Whitefriars Street Church in Dublin, Ireland, tells the real story of the
man behind the holiday -- St Valentine.
"He was a Roman Priest at a time of the emperor Claudius II who persecuted the Church at
that particular time," Father O'Gara explains.
"He also had an edict that prohibited the marriage of young people. This was based on the
hypothesis that unmarried soldiers fought better than married soldiers because married
soldiers might be afraid of what might happen to them or their wives or families if they died."
"I think we must bear in mind that it was a very permissive society in which Valentine lived,"
says Father O'Gara. "Polygamy would have been much more popular than just one woman
and one man living together. And yet some of them seemed to be attracted to Christian faith.
But obviously the church thought that marriage was very sacred between one man and one
woman for their life and that it was to be encouraged. And so it immediately presented the
problem to the Christian church of what to do about this."
"The idea of encouraging them to marry within the Christian church was what Valentine was
about. And he secretly married them because of the edict."
Valentine was eventually caught, imprisoned, tortured, and beheaded for performing
marriage ceremonies against command of the emperor.
Words of Wisdom
“In today’s society, in which forgiveness is so rare, mercy is ever more important.”
Pope Francis, via Twitter on January 22, 2016
Meme of the Week
Incarnation
- Week 1
This is a compilation of the daily emails sent out from the Center for Action and Contemplation by Fr Richard Rohr. You can subscribe to these emails here
God Is Not
"Out There"
I often say
that incarnation is the Christian trump card. It is the overcoming of the gap
between God and everything else. It is the synthesis of matter and spirit.
Without incarnation, God remains separate from us and from creation. Because of
incarnation, we can say, "God is with us!"In fact, God is in us, and
in everything else that God created. We all have the divine DNA; everything
bears the divine fingerprint, if the mystery of embodiment is true.
God, who is
Love, incarnates as the universe beginning with the Big Bang approximately 13.8
billion years ago. Then 2,000 years ago, God incarnates as Jesus of Nazareth,
when humanity was ready for what Martin Buber would call the "I-Thou"
relationship and to personally comprehend that this mystery could be met,
engaged with, and even loved. So matter and spirit have always been one, ever
since God decided to manifest God's self in the first act of creation
(Ephesians 1:3-10; Colossians 1:15-20).
It is
crucial that we understand the importance of incarnation. This became so clear
to me in a chance encounter with a recluse near the Abbey of Our Lady of
Gethsemani in Kentucky, when I did a retreat at Thomas Merton's hermitage in
1985. A recluse is a hermit's hermit. Recluses come into the community only for
Christmas and Easter. The rest of the time, they stay in the forest alone with
God and themselves.
I was
walking down a little trail when I saw this recluse coming toward me. Not
wanting to interfere, I bowed my head and moved to the side of the path, intending
to walk past him. But as we neared each other, he said, "Richard!"
That surprised me. He was supposed to be a recluse. How did he know I was
there? Or who I was?
He said,
"Richard, you get chances to preach and I don't. When you're preaching,
just tell the people one thing: God is not 'out there'! God bless you."
And he abruptly continued down the path. Now I have just told you what he
ordered me to do. God is not out there!
The belief
that God is "out there" is the basic dualism that is tearing us all
apart. Our view of God as separate and distant has harmed our understandings of
our sexuality; of our relationship to food, possessions, and money; and of our
relationship to animals, nature, and our own incarnate selves. This loss is
foundational as to why we live such distraught and divided lives. Jesus came
precisely to put it all together for us and in us. He was saying, in effect,
"To be human is good! The material and the physical can be trusted and
enjoyed. This world is the hiding place of God and the revelation of God!"
The final
stage of incarnation is resurrection! This is no exceptional miracle only done
once in the body of Jesus. It is the final and fulfilled state of all
embodiment. Now even the new physics tells us that matter itself is a
manifestation of spirit, and spirit or shared consciousness is the real thing.
[1] Matter also seems to be eternal. We do say in the Creed that we believe in
"the resurrection of the body," whereas many of us--still followers
of Plato more than Jesus--only believe in the eternal nature of the soul.
References:
[1] For more
on quantum physics and incarnation, see Diarmuid O'Murchu, Quantum Theology:
Spiritual Implications of the New Physics (The Crossroad Publishing Company:
1997, 2004).
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 117-119.
Negative
Capability
The genius
of the biblical revelation is that we will come to God through "the
actual," the here and now, or quite simply what is. As Paula D'Arcy says,
"God comes to us disguised as our life." But for most
"religious" people this is actually a disappointment! They seemingly
would rather have church services than ordinary life. The Bible moves us from
sacred place (why the temple had to go) or sacred action (why the law had to be
relativized) or mental belief systems (why Jesus had no prerequisites in this
regard) to time itself as sacred time. "I am with you always, yes, to the
very end of time" is the last verse of Matthew's Gospel (28:20). And space
itself is sacred space, "the whole world is filled with his glory"
(Psalm 72:19).
Life is not
about becoming spiritual beings nearly as much as about becoming human beings,
following the lead of Jesus in his incarnation. We already are spiritual
beings, inherently so; but as is evident from the daily newspaper, we have a
very hard time being basically human. We just don't know, honor, or recognize
that we are from the beginning "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians
3:3). The Bible tries to let you in on the secret, by slowly revealing God in
the most ordinary. That's why so much of the text seems so mundane, practical,
specific and, frankly, unspiritual! Don't you get tired of the wars,
adulteries, rapes, murders, and the machinations of kings in the Bible? Yet
this very pull back can create a "negative capability" that thrusts
you toward a positive answer, as you search for resolution and presence.
Speaking of
mundane or ordinary, let me give you what might seem like a silly example from
my own life. Several years ago I was standing in the cleaning supplies aisle at
a local supermarket, staring at boxes of laundry detergent. Something came over
me and all of a sudden everything was wonderful. For a moment, the veil parted
and I knew, "This is it! It doesn't get any better than this." I must
have stood there for five minutes, smiling at the Tide boxes. Fortunately, no
one else was in that aisle. Who of us would think a sacred experience like this
could happen in an American supermarket? But it can. The division between
secular and sacred breaks down when you learn how to see. It's all good. It's
all okay. And the life oozes and shines through everything. For just a moment,
I tasted the real. In a box of Tide!
Let me state
it clearly: a central breakthrough in the biblical revelation is that God is
manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, and can even
be revealed through the sinful and the evil. This is quite different than you
might assume, that God is only offering us the pure, the spiritual, the right
idea, or the ideal anything. This is why Jesus stands religion on its head! We
Catholics used to speak of "actual grace" in this light. That is why
I say it is our experiences that transform us--if we are willing to experience
our experiences all the way through, even and most especially the hard and
wounding ones. They create a "negative capability" by increasing both
our endless need and our desperate desire.
References:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media:
2010), 15-17; and True Self/False Self (Franciscan Media: 2003), disc 4.
Integrating
Human and Divine Love
God is
always given, incarnate in every moment and present to those who know how to be
present themselves. [1] It is that simple and that difficult. To be present in
prayer can be like the experience of being loved at a deep level. I hope you
have felt such intimacy alone with God. I promise you it is available to you.
Maybe a lot of us just need to be told that this divine intimacy is what we
should expect and seek. We're afraid to ask for it; we're afraid to seek it. It
feels presumptuous. We can't trust that such a love exists--and for us. But it
does.
Often the
imagery used to illustrate the human-divine relationship is erotic, because it
is the only adequate language to describe the in-depth contemplative
experience. I have often wondered why God would give us creatures such a strong
and constant fascination with one another's image, form, and face. What is the
connection between our human passion and knowing God? Are all relationships a
school of communion?
Healthy
religion, as the very word re-ligio ("rebinding") indicates, is the
task of putting our divided realities back together again: human and divine,
male and female, heaven and earth, sin and salvation, mistake and glory. The
mystics--such as John of the Cross, Teresa of Ávila, and the author of The Song
of Songs in the Bible--are those who put it together very well. The Sufi mystic
Shams-ud-din Mohammed Hafiz (c. 1320-1389) writes Persian poetry with such
integration between human love and divine love that the reader often loses the
awareness of which is which. Let the distinctions fall away as you read Hafiz's
poem "You Left a Thousand Women Crazy":
Beloved,
Last Time,
When you
walked through the city
So beautiful
and so naked,
You left a
thousand women crazy
And
impossible to live with.
You left a
thousand married men
Confused
about their gender.
Children ran
from their classrooms,
And teachers
were glad you came.
And the sun
tried to break out
Of its royal
cage in the sky
And at last,
and at last,
Lay its
Ancient Love at Your feet. [2]
Yes, Hafiz
is talking about God's abundant presence walking through the streets of time
and city, but his images come from human fascinations and feelings. Yes, he is
talking about seething human desire, but he is also convinced that it is a
sweet path to God. Why has this integration, this coincidence of seeming
opposites, occurred with relative rarity in much of organized religion? It is
more common in native spiritualities, Hinduism, and among the Islamic and
Catholic mystics, who move beyond fast food religion to the mystery itself.
One would
think that the religious tradition that would have most welcomed this
integration, would have been Christianity. After all, Christianity is the only
religion that believes God became a living human body (John 1:14)--a full,
concrete, and physical enfleshment or "Incarnation." We call this
incarnation "Jesus." If the Word became flesh, then God is saying
flesh is good, just as God did at Creation (Genesis 1:31). Yet sometimes other
religious traditions seem to bow before this mystery better than Christians do.
I think that is the exact meaning and prediction of the three wise men from the
East who "fell to their knees and did him homage" (Matthew 2:11).
References:
[1] Richard
Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2008), 16.
[2] Daniel
Ladinsky, I Heard God Laughing: Renderings of Hafiz (Sufism Reoriented: 2000),
93.
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 135-138.
Bearing the
Mystery of God
Jesus is the
great synthesis for us, the icon of the whole mystery--all at once. "In
his body lives the fullness of divinity, and in him you too find your own
fulfillment" (Colossians 2:9-10). Despite this, Christianity has relegated
the body to a shadowy realm. We are clearly not very at home in our bodies. But
Jesus came to show us that it is our human experience that we must and can
trust. It is our necessary and good beginning point. In fact, after the
incarnation, the material world necessarily becomes the privileged place for
the divine encounter. But most of us are still shooting for the stars. We are
looking at ascents and "higher states of consciousness" and moral
perfectionism, while Jesus quite simply comes "and lives among us."
Religious
images were once quite erotic: passionate, suffering, naked, bleeding,
familial, and relational. Catholicism at its best understood this very well,
especially in art and the use of relational language: father, sister, mother
superior, brother. Sacramentalism was overwhelmingly tactile, liturgy was
drama, and music was sensuous and satisfying. Eventually many of the religious
images were hidden in cathedral basements. However, through the research of art
historians the older tradition is being brought to light: the still scandalous
tradition of the enfleshment of God. [1]
I imagine
you may be thinking and feeling, "This is dangerous stuff!" And it is
dangerous stuff, but so is the Gospel itself. Just as we have domesticated the
Gospel to make it into a means of social order and control, we have also
avoided the scandal of the incarnation to avoid God in the material world or,
as Mother Teresa put it, "in his most distressing disguise." If you
think we are moving far from orthodoxy, just look at that perennial touchstone
of orthodoxy, the Eucharist. [2] There it is again: Real Presence in physical
bread and intoxicating wine! "Body of Christ" we say, as we place the
bread in the hands or mouths of believers. The act is intentionally shocking,
sexual, oral, mystical, and momentous. Only after thousands of
"communions" does its truth dawn on us, and the mystery of God's
incarnation in Christ then consciously continues again on this earth. We bear
the mystery of God.
References:
[1] For more
on sensuality in religious art, see Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in
Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion, (The University of Chicago Press: 1997).
[2] For more
on the Eucharist, see Richard Rohr, Eucharist as Touchstone (Center for Action
and Contemplation: 2000), CD, MP3 download.
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 138-142.
Reflecting
God
We have
created a terrible kind of dualism between the spiritual and the so-called
non-spiritual. This dualism is precisely what Jesus came to reveal as a lie.
The principle of incarnation proclaims that matter and spirit have never been
separate. Jesus came to tell us that these two seemingly different worlds are
and always have been one. We just couldn't see it until God put them together
in his one body (see Ephesians 2:11-20). "In [Christ Jesus] you also are
being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit"
(Ephesians 2:22). [1]
Thomas Aquinas
(1224-1274) said, "Creation is the primary and most perfect revelation of
the Divine." The original incarnation actually happened about 13.8 billion
years ago with the moment we now call "The Big Bang." That is when
God decided to materialize and to self-expose. This was the "Cosmic
Christ" through which God has "let us know the mystery of his
purpose, the hidden plan he so kindly made from the beginning in Christ as a
plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and
on earth" (Ephesians 1:9-10). [2]
Jesus the
Christ is the very concrete truth revealing and standing in for the universal
truth. I think this is precisely what he is referring to when he constantly
calls himself "The Son of the Human." Paul writes, "The fullness
is founded in him . . . everything in heaven and everything on earth"
(Colossians 1:19-20). Franciscan philosopher John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308)
says Christ was the very "first idea" in the mind of God, and God has
never stopped thinking, dreaming, and creating the Christ. "The immense
diversity and pluriformity of this creation more perfectly represents God than
any one creature alone or by itself," adds Thomas Aquinas in his Summa
Theologica (47:1). [3] Each manifestation is revealing a different part of the
eternal mystery of God and therefore inherently deserves respect and reverence.
[4]
This
includes you too! Being human is just a little less than God (Psalm 8:6). To
trust this gives us an extraordinary dignity that we have in our very human
nature, because we are in fact "sons and daughters of God." We are
created in the image of God, we come forth from God, and we will return to God.
We each uniquely reflect part of the mystery of God in between! We must find
out what part of the mystery is ours to reflect. All I can give back to God is
what God has uniquely given to me--nothing more and nothing less. [5]
References:
[1] Adapted
from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media:
2010), 17.
[2] Adapted
from Richard Rohr, "Creation as the Body of God," Radical Grace, Vol.
23, No. 2 (Center for Action and Contemplation: April-June 2010), 3, 22.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Adapted
from Richard Rohr, Franciscan Mysticism: I AM That Which I Am Seeking (Center
for Action and Contemplation: 2012), disc 3 (CD, MP3 download).
[5] Adapted
from Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 96-97.
The Face of
the Other
It was
probably St. Francis who first brought attention to the humanity of Jesus.
Paintings of Jesus, prior to the life of St. Francis, largely emphasized Jesus'
divinity, as they still do in most Eastern icons. Francis is said to have
created the first live nativity. Before the thirteenth century, Christmas was
no big deal. The emphasis was entirely on the high holy days of Easter, as it
seems it should be. But for Francis, incarnation was already redemption. For
God to become a human being among the poor, born in a stable among the animals,
meant that it's good to be a human being, that flesh is good, and that the
world is good--in its most simple and humble forms.
In Jesus,
God was given a face and a heart. God became someone we could love. While God
can be described as a moral force, as consciousness, and as high vibrational
energy, the truth is, we don't (or can't?) fall in love with abstractions. So
God became a person "that we could hear, see with our eyes, look at, and
touch with our hands" (1 John 1:1). The brilliant Jewish philosopher
Emmanuel Levinas says the only thing that really converts people is "the
face of the other." He develops this at great length and with great
persuasion. When the face of the other (especially the suffering face) is
received and empathized with, it leads to transformation of our whole being. It
creates a moral demand on our heart that is far more compelling than the Ten
Commandments. Just giving people commandments on tablets of stone doesn't
change the heart. It may steel the will, but it doesn't soften the heart like
an I-Thou encounter can. So many Christian mystics talk about seeing the divine
face or falling in love with the face of Jesus. There is no doubt that was the
experience of Francis and Clare. I think that's why Clare uses the word
"mirroring" so often. We are mirrored not by concepts, but by faces
delighting in us, giving us the face we can't give to ourselves. It is the gaze
that does us in!
Jesus taught
us what God is like through his words, his actions, his very being, making it
clear that "God is love" (I John 4:8). If God is Trinity and Jesus is
the face of God, then it is a benevolent universe. God is not someone to be
afraid of, but is the Ground of Being and is on our side. [1]
References:
[1] This is
the second of seven themes that form the basis of the Living School curriculum
and CAC's annual CONSPIRE conferences. Learn more at
cac.org/living-school/program-details/lineage-and-themes/.
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Franciscan Mysticism: I AM That Which I Am Seeking (Center for
Action and Contemplation: 2012), discs 2-3 (CD, MP3 download).
A SHIRT OF FLAME
An article by Fr Ron Rolheiser. The original can be found here
They say that the book you most need to read finds you when you most need to read it. I’ve had that experience many times, most recently with Heather King’s book, Shirt of Flame, A Year with Saint Therese of Lisieux.
The title of the book is borrowed from T. S. Eliot’s, Four Quartets, where he famously suggests that Love itself, God, is behind the torment we often feel in our fiery desires and that the burning we feel there is an “intolerable shirt of flame.”
King writes this book from a fiery context within her own life: She is a free-lance journalist and writer, single, divorced, an alcoholic in recovery, reconciling some darkness in her past, dealing with a paralyzing obsession because the man she is in love with will not respond to her, risking the financial stability of a career in law for the insecurity of being a free-lance writer, and struggling with the sense of being an outsider to normal family, marriage, and community, an orphan at all the banquets of life. And so she sets off for a year to immerse herself in one of the most intriguing saints of all time, Therese of Lisieux, in an attempt is to see whether Therese might be a moral and spiritual compass by which to sort out her own life. The result is a powerful, deeply insightful, adult, book.
King recognizes in Therese’s soul, inside the soul of a saint, inside someone who could seemingly give up everything for God, the same fiery desires that she feels within her own soul. And King recognizes too that those fires can both purify or destroy, redeem or torment, turn someone into a great saint or a great sinner. So she lets Therese’s fire shed light on her own fires. And since what is most personal and private inside of us, if revealed, is also the most universal, by revealing her own deep, private struggles, her book sheds light on the universal human struggle. However, the book is self-revealing but never exhibitionist, a tricky formula that she handles well.
For example, drawing upon a famous incident in Therese’s life when as a little girl, asked by her older sister who presented her with a velvet sewing-basket full of color balls to pick one thing from a basket, Therese said: “I choose all!” and took the entire basket and walked away. King reflects upon her own struggle to, as Kierkegaard said, will the one thing: Here’s the parallel she draws to her own life”: “’I choose all!’ said Therese, and the further I progressed, the more I saw that the human dilemma is to want it all. I wanted to be celibate, and I wanted wantonly to give myself to a spouse, I wanted dark secrets, noise, lights, mania, and the stimulation of a city, and I wanted to plant a garden, tend animals, and live on a farm. I wanted to live in the same place all my life, and I wanted to travel every inch of the globe before I died. I wanted to sit utterly still, and I was also driven to be constantly on the move. I wanted to be hidden and anonymous, and I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be close to my family, and I wanted to leave my family behind. I wanted to devote my life to activism, and I wanted to devote my life to contemplation. I wanted to give everything to God, and I didn’t know how! I longed to give my undivided self, and I couldn’t!”
Reflecting on Therese’s vow of poverty, King writes: “Poverty is never, never voluntary. Poverty consists precisely in all the ways you absolutely don’t want to be poor.” Drawing upon the German poet, Gertrud von le Fort who wrote that when her soul was most in anguish everything around her in effect said: “But you are nothing!”, Kings writes: “At last someone had told my story. For the last ten years especially, I had been in anguish and ‘they’ – my husband, the person I loved, the legal profession, the medical profession when I had cancer, the publishing industry – had said in so many words: ‘But you are nothing.’ Everywhere I turned: a blank wall. Everything I had hoped for: ashes. Everything I had worked for: ‘But you are nothing’. … One morning in the shower, I wept to Christ: ‘I don’t love you and you don’t love me either!’” We’ve all been there.
If you are struggling with faith, with brokenness in your life, with an obsession, with an addiction, with a gnawing sense that your life is not what it should be, with the sense of being the outsider, an orphan at all the banquets of life, and, most of all, with the sense you don’t love Jesus and he doesn’t love you either, that you are nothing, then let this book find you. It’s a book for those who think they might be too sick to be helped by a doctor.
CONTINUING PAUL'S CONVERSION
An article taken from the Thinking Faith Website - the original article cane be found here
Paul’s experience on the Road to Damascus was far from an isolated event in his life or the life of the Church, says Fr Harry Elias. It was the first step on a path of an ongoing conversion which we are called to continue today.
For Paul, there was only one God: the God of Israel. The God who made covenants with Noah, Abraham and David, and promised a Kingdom where He Himself will rule. It was this God, the God of Paul’s ancestors, ‘who had set me apart before I was born and called me’ and ‘through his grace was pleased to reveal his Son to [or in] me so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles.’ (Galatians 1:15-16).
This is important for our understanding of what happened to Paul on the Damascus Road. He did not find a new God; he met, in Jesus, the risen Lord (see, for example, Acts 22:6-11). What did this mean for Paul, and what does it mean for us?
Paul’s recognition of Jesus as risen Lord meant a conversion in his reading of the scriptures that he knew so well already. His new reading drew on the early Church’s conviction that Jesus’s life, death and resurrection had been foretold, had happened ‘according to the scriptures’ (1Corinthians 15:3-4), as well as on early Jewish Christian apologetic, reflected for example in the speech of Stephen (Acts 7). Paul began to read those scriptures as prefigurations, echoes, of the coming of Christ, convinced now that Christ was the telos or fulfilment of the Law (Romans 10:4), the fulfilment of the narrative of God’s covenantal faithfulness in the new covenant through which God would ‘take away [Israel’s] sins’(Romans 11:27).
A striking example of Paul’s reading of the scriptures with Christ as telos is in a passage from Galatians in which Paul connects strongly with his mission to the Gentiles. He argues that through Christ, all nations gain blessings for themselves, and furthermore, even become co-heirs of God’s promise to Abraham: he saw in a new light the fulfilment of the promise made to Abraham and his ‘seed’. Although this ‘seed’ was generally understood to be as numerous as the stars of heaven or as the dust of the earth (Genesis 26:4, 28:13-14), Paul identifies it first of all as one person, Christ (Galatians 3:16). Thus, he argues, the implementation of the promise was not through Moses and the Law, but in the seed that is Christ, because the seed of God could not be a mediator (of Gods), as Moses was of angels, since God is one (Galatians 3:19-20). He takes for granted that Christ is the Son of God (Galatians 4:4). His argument may seem tortuous, but his confidence rests above all on revelation by the Spirit, not only to him but also to the apostles and prophets (Ephesians 3:1-6).
Paul insisted that no practice – notably food laws nor the practice of circumcision, which for the Jews was their badge of identity as the chosen people – should stand in the way of Gentile believers being regarded as the brethren of the Lord and so of Jewish believers. Nowadays, the Spirit seems to be asking us not to allow any differences to stand in the way of treating every creature as the brethren of the Lord and thereby our brothers and sisters as well. The groundbreaking Vatican II Document Nostra Aetate says (§5) ‘We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God.’ In line with this, Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato si’ points out: ‘Everything is related, and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage’ (§92), and in that union he includes our Sister, Mother Earth (§1).
It seems to me possible to approach others not only as our brothers and sisters in the one creation but also as sharers of a common hope. Paul’s initial approach to the Corinthians was: ‘to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified’ (1 Corinthians 2:2). Paul compared the faith of the crucified Christ to the faith of Abraham in the God ‘who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist’, hoping against hope in God’s promise to him being fulfilled (Romans 4:17,18,21). This kind of hope arises indeed out of the human condition faced as it is with grief over sin, loss and death. I myself ground this hope in my faith in the crucified and risen Lord but I thank God for his merciful love in granting this hope to others no matter what faith they would ground it in.
History shows us just how difficult it is to change an identity built into us through the centuries in order to include those who are not only very different in their practices but in the past have been treated as enemies. Paul had to face bitter opposition and even threats of assassination – both from those who felt circumcision and food laws were essential requirements, as well as from rulers who saw belief that Jesus is Lord undermining worship of Caesar and the stability of civic life. Even now, for Christians with different backgrounds, to live up to an identity which is to be all inclusive, where all are one in Christ through faith (Galatians 3:26-28), is a slow and painful process. However, the effect of two sides reaching out to each other in the rereading of their own and one another’s narratives (as well as in practical matters) - a rereading that is continually ‘on pilgrimage’- of itself creates brotherly ties, besides driving out the exclusiveness in our hearts and in our different narratives regarding God’s mercy. In any such efforts, then, we can be said to be continuing Paul’s conversion so as to enable the new creation to inch closer to the completion of Christ’s mission when the One God appears by becoming all in all (1Corinthians 15:28).
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