Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney Mob: 0417 279 437; mike.delaney@aohtas.org.au
Assistant Priest: Fr Alexander Obiorah Mob: 0447 478 297; alexchuksobi@yahoo.co.uk
Postal Address: Parish Office:
(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: Jenny Garnsey
Parish Mass Times: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com
Parish Magazine: mlcathparishnewsletter.blogspot.com.au
Year of Mercy Blogspot: mlcpyom.blogspot.com.au
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Parents are asked to contact the Parish Office to make arrangements for attending a Baptismal Preparation Session and booking a Baptism date.
Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist: Are received following a Family–centred, Parish-based, School-supported Preparation Program.
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults: prepares adults for reception into the Catholic community.
Marriage: arrangements are made by contacting one of our priests - couples attend a Pre-marriage Program
Anointing of the Sick: please contact one of our priests
Reconciliation: Ulverstone - Fridays (10am - 10:30am)
Devonport - Saturday (5:15pm– 5.45pm)
Penguin - Saturday (5:15pm - 5:45pm)
Care and Concern: If you are aware of anyone who is in need of assistance and has given permission to be contacted by Care and Concern, please phone the Parish Office.
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Weekday Masses 17th - 20th May, 2016
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am
Latrobe
Thursday: 10:30am Karingal
Friday: 11:00am Mt St Vincent
Mass Times Next Weekend 21st & 22nd May,
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
Every
Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Devonport: Benediction with Adoration - first Friday of
each month.
Legion of Mary: Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone, Wednesdays, 11am
Christian Meditation:
Devonport, Emmaus House - Wednesdays 7pm.
Prayer Group:
Charismatic Renewal
Devonport, Emmaus House - Thursdays 7.30pm
Ministry Rosters 21st & 22nd May, 2016
Devonport:
10:30am J Phillips, K Pearce, P Piccolo
Ministers of Communion: Vigil M
Heazlewood, B&J Suckling, G Lee-Archer, M Kelly, P Shelverton
10.30am: M Sherriff, T&S Ryan, D Barrientos, M Barrientos,
M O.Brien-Evans
Cleaners 20th May: B Bailey, A Harrison, M Greenhill
27th May: K Hull, F Stevens, M Chan
Piety Shop 21st May: L Murfet
22nd May: D French Flowers: M Breen
Ulverstone:
Reader: S Willoughby
Ministers of Communion: B Deacon, J Allen, G Douglas, K Reilly
Ministers of Communion: B Deacon, J Allen, G Douglas, K Reilly
Cleaners: M
McKenzie, M Singh, N Pearce
Flowers: A Miller
Hospitality: Filipino Community
Flowers: A Miller
Hospitality: Filipino Community
Penguin:
Greeter: G Hills-Eade, B Eade Commentator: Y Downes Readers: T Clayton, A Landers
Procession: M & D Hiscutt Ministers of Communion: E Nickols, A Guest
Liturgy: Penguin Setting Up: E Nickols Care of Church: M Murray, E Nickols
Latrobe:
Reader: S Ritchie Ministers of Communion: B Ritchie, I Campbell
Procession: M Clarke Music: Hermie
Procession: M Clarke Music: Hermie
Port Sorell:
Readers: P Anderson, E Holloway Ministers of
Communion: D
Leaman, B Lee Clean/Flow/Prepare: G Wylie
Readings this Week: Pentecost Sunday - Year C
First Reading: Acts: 2:1-11
Second Reading: Romans 8:8-17
Gospel: John 14:15-16, 23-26
PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAYS GOSPEL:
However long or short a time I have for my prayer, I start
by taking a few moments to remember that the Holy Spirit is always with me, to
teach me, to inspire my desire to pray and to help me whenever I ask. I notice
what I am thinking and how I am feeling as I come to my prayer. I begin slowly,
coming to some quiet, asking for what I need. When I am ready, I read the words
of Jesus, one line at a time. I stay with any words that resonate for me,
savouring them gently and allowing their meaning for me to deepen. Perhaps I
talk with Jesus, the Father or the Holy Spirit about them… or simply continue
to listen quietly. After some time I read further, until another word or phrase
strikes me... Jesus said, “If you love me you will keep my word…” What “word”
is Jesus asking me to keep today? How is he calling me to love him in my
particular circumstances? I end my prayer with gratitude and praise: Glory be
to the Father….
Readings
Next Week: The Most Holy Trinity – Year C
First Reading: Proverbs 8:22-31
Second Reading: Romans 5:1-5
Gospel: John 16:12-15
Your prayers are asked
for the sick:
Joan Singline, John Kirkpatrick, Connie Fulton, Lorna Jones, Geraldine Roden, Joy Carter &...
Let us pray for those who
have died recently:
Peter Wilson, Sonal
Perera, Anthony (Andy) Smith, Olga Andruszko, Maureen McManus, Bernadette Williams, Fr Terry Southerwood, Lola O’Halloran, Kath Smith,
Kathy Clark and Harry Cartwright.
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 11th
– 17th May
Joan Bonner, John Nickols, Ernest
Wilkins, Norah Lillas, Emily Reynolds, Ethel Dooley, Audrey Enniss, Marian
Hamon, Tas Glover, Sylvia Street, Julia Windridge, Doreen & James Burdon, Mollie Stevenson, Kathleen
Laycock and Kit Hayes.
May they Rest in Peace
WEEKLY
RAMBLINGS:
Towards the end of last week
Emeritus Archbishop Adrian sent out a note telling us that he had received good
news from his surgeon who doesn’t want to see him for another 5 months. He is
currently with his sister and her family in Queensland recovering so whilst he
is no longer on our sick list I hope that you will continue to remember him in
your prayers.
This weekend we celebrate with the
whole Parish our faith and life as Parishioners of Mersey Leven Catholic
Parish. Thanks to all those who have been able to make this celebration a sign
of our unity – I pray that we will continue to grow in our understanding of
what being one Parish can mean.
We also welcome this weekend the
young people of our Parish who are part of the Sacramental Program as they come
forward to receive a copy of the Creed – the statement of our Faith. Please
continue to pray with and for them as they continue their journey of faith.
At our whole of Parish Mass I also
hope that we will be able to commission the four young people from the Parish
who will be attending World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland in July (work
commitments allowing). Thanks to all those who have supported our fundraising
efforts for them through my weight loss effort - final weigh-in is next
Thursday (19th) with details in next weekend’s newsletter. Also, we were able
to raise over $600 from the Mother’s Day Raffle and the Open House – thank you.
Congratulations to Freda Stevens (Devonport) and Anne Guest (Penguin) – our two
winners of the raffle.
At the Parish Pastoral Council
Meeting on Wednesday night we farewelled three long serving members of the
Council – Mary Davies, Toni Muir and Bev Naiker. I had asked them to remain on
the PPC beyond their terms when I first arrived and they graciously accepted
that invitation. Following elections for positions the new Chair is Jenny
Garnsey; Ed Riley was elected Vice Chair and the secretary position was held
over until next meeting. Thanks to all the members of the PPC for their
contribution to the Parish.
Until next week
take care in your homes and on the roads
Mersey Leven Catholic Community
would like to congratulate
Hugh
and Joan Hiscutt
On their 65th Wedding Anniversary
Celebrated 12th May, 2016.
Mersey Leven Parish Community welcome
and congratulate ….
Aidan Fernando &
Parker McConnell
on their baptism this weekend.
MT ST VINCENT AUXILIARY: will be holding a craft and
cake stall after Mass on Sunday 5th June in the Community Room,
Ulverstone.
NORTH WEST JUSTICE NETWORK:
All parishioners are invited to attend a forum called
“Women in the Church” to be held at Sacred
Heart Catholic Church Community Room, Ulverstone on Tuesday 24 May 2016 at 7.00pm. Dr Trish Hindmarsh will
open the forum with an address and discussion will follow. Dr Hindmarsh is well
known to us as a teacher and the former Director of Catholic Education in
Tasmania. Trish received her initial formation as a Josephite until
1980. In Sydney Trish was Coordinator of the Mission and Justice
Education adult education program. She and her husband, Vin, were
house-parents to homeless teenagers in Sydney and have worked with the
Josephite Sisters in the Warmun Aboriginal community in the Kimberley.
Trish and Vin moved to Tasmania in 2005 and their flight to Stowport from the
metropolis of Sydney fits in with Trish’s interest in justice, peace and ecology!
Trish was a founding member of the Catholic Earthcare Australia Committee and
has been an active member of Women and the Australian Church (WATAC) since its
beginnings in 1986. She is a currently a member of the Tasmanian Catholic
Justice and Peace Commission and Australian representative on the Women’s
Ordination Worldwide (WOW) International Committee.
FOOTY POINTS MARGIN TICKETS: Round
7 – Hawthorn by 46 points -
Winners; W Bajzelj, M Milton, Charlies Angels
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall, Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers for Thursday 19th
May – Rod Clark & Merv Tippett
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
WALK WITH CHRIST – HOBART CITY, SUNDAY 29TH MAY
1:15 TO 3:00 pm.
Celebrate the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ by
walking with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament through the city of Hobart. Be at
St Joseph's Church (Harrington St) by 1.15 pm, and walk with us to St Mary's
Cathedral for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament concluding with Benediction at
3:00pm. Prayer intentions written in the 'Book of Life' can be found in
the foyer at Our Lady of Lourdes this weekend, Sheffield next Sunday and then
will be sent to Hobart to be taken on the procession and presented at the
Cathedral. 
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF MERCY
This article is from the website of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. The original article can be found here
Among the Ten Commandments, one begins with the word “remember”: Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day”. It reminds us to recall something we already know. There are commandments of mercy written into our very DNA. We already know them, but we need to remember them more explicitly. What are they?
The Ten Commandments of Mercy:
1 Remember that mercy lies deepest in God’s heart.
Few things so much approximate the essence of God as does mercy. Mercy is God’s essence. Scripture uses words such as loving-kindness and compassion to try to define what constitutes God’s mercy, but the central biblical concept, captured in the Hebrew concept of hesed, connotes a relationship that loves, embraces, and forgives even when, and especially when, we cannot measure up or deserve what’s given us
2 Remember that mercy is the essence of all true religion.
Inside religion and spirituality, within all faiths, three things try to lay claim to what’s central: proper religious practice, outreach to the poor, and compassion. Ultimately they are not in opposition, but complementary pieces of one religious whole. But for religious practice and outreach to the poor to be an extension of God’s love and not of human ego, they need to be predicated upon compassion, mercy. Deepest inside of every religion is the invitation: Be compassionate, merciful, as God is compassionate.
3 Remember that we all stand forever in need of mercy.
There is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who converts than over ninety-nine righteous persons. Does God love sinners more than the righteous? There are no righteous persons. It’s rather that we feel God’s love more when we admit that we’re sinners. None of us ever measure up. But, as St. Paul so consolingly teaches, the whole point is that we don’t have to measure up. That’s what mercy means. It’s undeserved, by definition.
4 Remember that, having received mercy, we must show mercy to others.
We only receive and appropriate God’s mercy and the mercy of others when we extend that same mercy to others. Mercy has to flow through us. If we don’t extend it to others we become self-indulgent and too harsh on others.
5 Remember that only the practice of mercy sets us free.
Receiving and giving mercy is the only thing that frees from our congenital propensity to self-seek, self-justify, and judge others. Nothing frees us more from the tyranny of ego than does the practice of mercy.
6 Remember that mercy is not opposed to justice, but is its fulfillment.
Mercy, as Walter Kasper so aptly puts it, is not “a kind of fabric softener that undermines the dogmas and commandments and abrogates the central and fundamental meaning of truth.” That’s the accusation the Pharisees made against Jesus. Mercy is where justice is meant to terminate.
7 Remember that only the practice of mercy will make God’s Kingdom come.
Jesus promised us that someday the meek will inherit the earth, the poor will eat plentiful, rich food, and all tears will be wiped away. That can only happen when mercy replaces self-interest.
8 Remember that mercy needs too to be practiced collectively.
It is not enough for us to be merciful in our own lives. Mercy is marginalized in a society that doesn’t sufficiently attend to those who are weak or needy, just as it is marginalized in a church that is judgmental. We must create a society that is merciful and a church that is merciful. Mercy, alone, enables the survival of the weakest.
9 Remember that mercy calls us to do works both spiritual and physical.
Our Christian faith challenges us to perform mercy in a double way, corporeally and spiritually. The classic corporal works of mercy are: Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, cloth the naked, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead. The classic spiritual works of mercy are: instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, comfort the afflicted, admonish the sinner, forgive offenses, bear wrongs patiently, and pray for the living and the dead. God has given us different gifts and all of us are better at some of these than at others, but mercy is manifest in all of them.
10 Remember that our lives are a dialogue between God’s mercy and our weaknesses.
The only thing at which we are adequate is being inadequate. We are forever falling short at something, no matter the strength of our sincerity, good intention, and willpower. Only mercy, receiving it and giving it, can lead us out of the choppy waters of our own anxieties, worry, and joylessness. Only in knowing mercy do we know gratitude.
This year, 2016, Pope Francis has asked us all to live a year of mercy, to contemplate the mystery of mercy “as a wellspring of joy, serenity, and peace.” Mercy, he believes, is the secret to putting a credible face to God, to putting a credible face to our churches, and to walking with steadiness inside our own lives.
Paul Week 2
History Is on an Inevitable Course
As I shared
last week, Paul believed that history and all of creation are headed toward a
radical union, which he called pleroma, "the fullness" (Colossians
1:19, Ephesians 1:10). But the journey is presented as slow and grueling, as
you can sense in his ecstatic and paramount writing in Romans 8:18-39. Read
this passage, beautifully paraphrased by Eugene Peterson:
I don't
think there is any comparison between the present hard times and the coming
good times. This created world itself can hardly wait for what is coming next.
Everything in creation is being more or less held back now. God reins it in
until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the
same moment. Meanwhile the joyful anticipation deepens.
All around
us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the
world are simply birth pangs. We are also feeling the birth pangs. That is why
waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant
mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. But the longer we wait, the larger we
become, and the more joyful our expectancy. [This is what I call
"negativity capability," or the rubber band pulled back which
increases the momentum forward.]
So, what do
you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't
hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and
exposing [the Godself] to the worst by sending [God's] own Son, is there
anything else [God] wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? . . . Do you think
anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for
us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not
homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing. . . . None of this fazes
us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing--nothing
living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable
or unthinkable--absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of
the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us."[1]
Reference:
[1] Eugene
H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (NavPress:
1993), 322-323.
God Is Humble Enough to Be Anonymous
I think the
notion of love has been seriously minimized by today's popular understanding of
love, as we see with Valentine's Day. This secular holiday reveals a very
unsustainable notion of love as romance, infatuation (ignis fatuus, false
fire), impassioned sex, sentimental words, romantic gift giving, etc. It
eventually creates cynicism and disillusionment because the promise is so high
but incomplete. It is never the whole story. When we experience love as different
than culture's portrayal, we wonder what is wrong with us and we try to light
the same false fire again and again.
Don't get me
wrong, there is an important place for romance. It can often serve as the great
invitation. We need to be led to the gate of the temple to know that there is a
temple, but mere romantic infatuation is never the temple itself. [1] It
doesn't go far enough or deep enough, can never be sustained, and sets us up
for a huge letdown. As author Jack Kornfield cleverly titled his book, After
the Ecstasy, the Laundry! Both Jesus and Paul present a much more enduring,
stable, and philosophical notion of love as the very nature of being itself.
This love is not at all dependent on changeable feelings.
Paul's
supreme masterpiece of poetry, philosophy, and theology--which is read at most
weddings--is, of course, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. Paul gets this substantial
notion of love, "which alone lasts," from Jesus who makes it into an
actual commandment, in fact the commandment. For both Jesus and Paul, if you
don't live in love, you just don't live at all. Paul knows that love is the
very structure of the universe, and a place where we must learn to rest and
abide (John 15:1-5) at all costs. Read 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 slowly and see
how Paul treats love as a state of being and an infinite source, from which the
entire Christian life can be drawn: "Love is . . .," "Love does
not," and "Love never comes to an end." We exist inside of love,
and occasionally we realize it and live out of our deepest purpose and
identity. Love is not something we do now and then; love is who we are all the
time. This is true because we are created "in the image and likeness"
(imago et similitudo) of God (Genesis 1:26).
Who is this
God? For both Jesus and Paul, God is an Infinite Flow--which we eventually call
Trinity. God is much more a verb than a noun. All things exist inside of that
Flow, come out from that Flow, and return to that Flow. Only for a while are we
allowed to choose to act from within this Flow consciously, freely, and
happily; or alternatively, to resist it. The very nature of Being is communion,
infinite generosity, and unhindered giving and receiving between three, which
then becomes the template for the whole universe, from atoms to galaxies.
It's not
that this Being we call God occasionally decides to love; love is the very
nature and shape of God, who cannot not love! The Flow is always and forever in
one positive direction. We ourselves are already participating in this love,
this divine "dance" (perichoresis) of Being, even when we do not know
how to enjoy it or consciously join in the dance. We are still dancing anyway.
Divine Life knows and sustains us in our deepest being (Acts 17:28), even when
we fail to say thank you. This is the humility and anonymity of God.
The
surprising emphasis in Paul's work is not, therefore, on "saving"
isolated individuals here and there, but much more on naming reality truthfully
and completely. The individual is caught up in the corporate Flow, and in fact
cannot know himself or herself outside of that one corporate Flow. We surrender
to this shared heaven. We do not win it or attain it separately.
References:
[1] For more
on this theme see Richard Rohr, Gate of the Temple: Spirituality and Sexuality
(CAC: 1991), CD and MP3 download.
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, "Introduction to the 2016 Daily Meditations,"
https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/;
The Divine
Dance: Exploring the Mystery of Trinity (CAC: 2004), disc 1 (CD, MP3 download);
and Great Themes
of Paul: Life as Participation (Franciscan Media: 2002), disc 9 (CD).
The Four Loves
There are
many different kinds of love. Ancient Greeks had multiple distinct words for
what we try to cover with our single word "love"; these include
philia (friendship), eros (passion), storge (familial love), and agape
(infinite or divine love). I sometimes fear that our paucity of words reveals
an actual narrowness of experience.
For Paul,
agape love is the Great Love that is larger than you. It is the Great Self, the
God Self. It's not something you do. It's something that you learn to live
inside of even while you already participate in it. Paul's oft used expression
for living in love is en Christo or in Christ. This way of being is something
you fall into more than you manufacture, just as our wonderful English phrase
puts it--falling in love. This love is unconditional, always present, and comes
without any stipulations except the falling itself. We will only allow
ourselves to fall into love when we give up control, consciously or
unconsciously. It will often feel like a falling and a faltering, an ecstatic
humiliation.
The ego will
resist and say, "Why am I doing this to myself? And yet I long to do
it!" Normally, something must lead you to the edge of your present
resources so you have to push your reset button to access a power greater than
yourself. Most of us just don't go there without a push or a fall or a
seduction of some kind.
In 1
Corinthians Chapter 12, Paul explains how we, precisely in our togetherness and
participation, are Christ's Body. Yet each of us is a different part of this
Great Wholeness. He lists the many differing gifts of the Spirit. In closing,
he writes: "Earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I am going to show you
the best way of all" (1 Corinthians 12:31). Then, in his attempt to try to
describe this agape or divine love, Paul writes his most poetic chapter in all
his letters. He seems to run out of adjectives and superlatives to express the
fullness of love.
Paul is not
describing human friendship (philia), affection of parents for children
(storge), or even passionate desire (eros); he is describing what it is like to
live inside of an Infinite Source--where all the boundaries change, feelings
are hardly helpful at all, and all the gaps are filled in from the other side.
So you see why I say that any Valentine's notion of love is totally inadequate
and can even send you down an impossible and disappointing road if you try to
conjure up such romantic dedication within yourself. We have to take breathing
lessons and develop larger lungs to live inside of such a new and open horizon.
It does not come naturally until we draw upon it many times, and then it
becomes the only natural, the deep natural, the true natural. You have then
returned home and can even practice the other kinds of love with much greater
ability and joy.
References:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation (Franciscan Media:
2002), discs 7, 9, and 11 (CD);
and
"The Most Profound Chapter in the Bible," a homily on January 31,
2016, https://cac.org/the-most-profound-chapter-in-the-bible/.
Love Never Fails
Paul says
some pretty extraordinary things in 1 Corinthians 13. Let's look at some of his
points carefully.
If I speak
with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a
noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
This hits
close to home for me. Paul points out that I might give a wonderful sermon, but
if I don't do it out of God's love for the people right in front of me, it
won't be as powerful as when I'm participating in divine love. God will still
use even lesser loves, but Paul recognizes that human feelings and preferences
are quite unreliable. Our affections are fickle and will finally change and
fall short when our conditions or requirements are not met.
If I have
the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge;
Among
others, Paul is talking to the intellectuals and the academics, the Greeks of
his day--and likely to most of us. This is the common temptation to substitute
knowledge for actual love or service.
and if I
have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
Here he's
challenging religious people who make a task of religion itself, who try to be
moral and "believe" through will power. This often passes for
religion, but it is faith without love so it is not true faith. Paul might also
be criticizing the common mistake of those we call conservatives or "true
believers."
And if I
give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be
burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
Apparently,
you can even be a progressive and generous social activist; but if you're just
doing it to be holier than thou, or out of oppositional energy, you are still
outside of the Big Mystery. Self-proclaiming heroics on the Left can be just as
unloving as self-proclaiming religion on the Right.
Then Paul
tries to describe the mystery of love, and he finally has to resort to listing
almost fifteen descriptions. He talks about love not as simply an isolated
virtue, but as the basis for all virtue. It is the underlying, generous energy
that gives itself away through those living inside of love.
Love is
patient, love is kind and is not jealous;
If I'm
jealous, then I'm not in love. When you are inside this mystery of love, you
operate differently, and it's not in a guarded, protective way.
love does
not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly [it is never rude]; it
does not seek its own [advantage], is not provoked [it does not take offense or
store up grievances],
So every time
you and I take offense (how many times a day is that?), we're not "in
love."
[Love] does
not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness [in
the mistakes of others], but rejoices with the truth;
The Germans
have a word for delighting in someone else's misfortune--schadenfreude. Maybe
we do not have an English word for it because we take it as normal. I hope not.
[Love] bears
all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
And then
Paul ends with this: Love never fails. [1]
Paul is
touching upon something that's infinite; it can therefore include all and has
an endless ability to pour itself out. When you're in love, you're operating
from this foundational sense of abundance, not from scarcity or fear. There is
an inherent generosity of spirit, of smile, of gesture, of readiness, of
initial acceptance that you immediately sense from any person who is standing
inside this Flow. Honestly, you can tell the difference between someone
"in love" and someone "not in love" in the first five
seconds of almost any encounter. The all-important point, however, is that if
your primary motivation is to love, there is no such thing as failure--except
in your failure to draw love from an ever deeper level.
References:
[1] 1
Corinthians 13:1-8, NASB (The Lockman Foundation).
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, "Today Is a Time for Mercy," December 10, 2015,
https://cac.org/richard-rohr-on-mercy-mp3/;
and
"Introduction to the 2016 Daily Meditations," https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/.
Vulnerability--Even in God!
Paul's
encounter with the Eternal Christ on the Damascus Road must have sparked his
new and revolutionary consciousness. He recognized that he had been chosen by
God even "while breathing murderous threats" (Acts 9:1), and that the
God who chose him was a crucified God and not an "Omnipotent" or an
"Almighty" God. In fact, Paul only uses the word "Almighty"
for God once (2 Corinthians 6:18), and then he is quoting the Hebrew
Scriptures. This is quite significant considering his tradition and training.
Paul's image of God was instead someone crucified outside the city walls in the
way a slave might be killed, and not of a God appearing on heavenly clouds.
Christ was not the strong, powerful, military Messiah that the Jews had been
waiting for throughout their history. He was in fact quite the opposite. This
was Jesus' great revelation, surprise, and a scandal that we have still not
comprehended. God is not what we thought God could or should be!
Paul, like
few others, read his own tradition honestly and recognized that Yahweh
consistently chose the weak to confound the strong (1 Corinthians 1:17-31). He
saw this in Israel itself, the barren wives of the patriarchs, the boy David
forgotten in the fields, the rejected prophets, and finally Jesus on the cross.
This becomes Paul's revolutionary understanding of wisdom that is still
offensive and even disgusting to much of the world and even the church. Only
vulnerability allows all change, growth, and transformation to happen--even in
God. Who would have imagined this?
Paul's view
of himself, of God, and of reality itself was completely turned on its head. He
had to re-image how divine power worked and how humans changed. All he knew for
sure at the beginning was that it was not what anyone expected. Paul went off
to "Arabia" for some time to test his ideas against what he thought
he was taught, to slowly allow the full metamorphosis of his soul. (Is this not
the necessary path for all of us?) Only later does Paul have the courage to
confront Peter and James in Jerusalem (Galatians 1:16-21), and then a full
fourteen years later he tells Peter "to his face" that Peter is wrong
(2:11) for imposing non-essentials on people that only give them an incorrect
understanding of their correctness or righteousness. (Apparently Peter, the
first Pope, was himself fallible, and he too had to learn how to be wrong to
grow up!)
It takes all
of us a long time to move from power to weakness, from glib certitude to
vulnerability, from meritocracy to the ocean of grace. Strangely enough, this
is especially true for people raised in religion. In Paul's letters, he
consistently idealizes not power but powerlessness, not strength but weakness,
not success but the cross. It's as if he's saying, "I glory when I fail
and suffer because now I get to be like Jesus--the naked loser--who turned any
notion of God on its head." Now the losers can win, which is just about
everybody.
The
revelation of the death and resurrection of Jesus forever redefines what
success and winning mean, and it is not what any of us wanted or expected. On
the cross, God is revealed as vulnerability itself (the Latin word vulnus means
wound). The path to holiness is so different than any of us would have wished or
imagined; and yet after the fact, we will all recognize that it was our
littleness and wrongness that kept the door to union and love permanently
wedged open every day of our life. In fact, there is no way to close it.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation (Franciscan Media:
2002), disc 3 (CD).
The Law and Grace
Paul's
letters to the Romans and Galatians are a tour de force on the pure meaning of
grace and the serious limitations of morality and religion to lead you to God.
"Cursed be the law," Paul even says (Galatians 3:13). No wonder he
has been called a "moral anarchist" by people who are still seeking
any well-disguised path of "self-realization." But it seems
Christianity has paid little heed to Paul's revolutionary message, or even to
Jesus who says six times in a row, "The law says, but I say!"
(Matthew 5:21-45). Both Jesus and Paul knew that rules and requirements were
just to get you seriously engaged with the need for grace and mercy; they were
never an end in themselves (read Romans 7:7ff).
"If you
keep the law, the law will keep you," we students were told on the first
day in the seminary. As earnest young men anxious to succeed, we replied,
"Yes, Father!" We knew how to survive in any closed system. I'm
afraid we spent so much time in that world that it became the whole agenda.
Canon Law was quoted much more often to us than the Sermon on the Mount before
the reforms of Vatican II, and now the young priests are being taught in much
the same way as I was. A strong emphasis on law and order makes for a sane
boarding school, or an organized anything, for that matter. I really get that.
It probably made it much easier for the professors to get a good night's sleep
with one hundred twenty young men next door. But it isn't anywhere close to the
Gospel. The Gospel was not made to help organizations run smoothly. The full
Gospel actually creates necessary dilemmas for the soul much more than
resolving the organizational problems of institutions. Fortunately, the Gospel
is also a profound remedy for any need to rebel or be an iconoclast.
We come to
God not by doing it right but, surprise of surprises, we come to God by doing
it wrong. We are justified not by good works, but by faith in an Infinite Mercy
that we call grace. It has nothing to do with past performance or future plans
for an eternal nest egg. All it requires is a deep act of confidence in a
loving God. It is so hard to believe that this imperfect, insignificant
creature that I am could somehow bear the eternal mystery. God can only grow
bigger as we grow smaller, as John the Baptist put it (John 3:30). If we try to
grow bigger by any criteria except divine mercy itself we only grow in love
with our own image in a self-created mirror. That is normally called
narcissism.
How could
God love me so unconditionally, we all ask? This was Paul's struggle as well,
and it led him to his cataclysmic conclusion. God loved Paul in his
unworthiness, "while he was yet a sinner" as he puts it (Romans 5:8).
Therefore he did not have to waste the rest of his life trying to become worthy
or prove his worthiness, to himself or to others.
We seem to
think God will love us if we change. Paul clearly knows that God loves us so we
can change. The only people who change, who are transformed, are people who
feel safe, who feel their dignity, and who feel loved. When you feel loved,
when you feel safe, and when you know your dignity, you just keep growing!
That's what loving people do for one another--offer safe relationships in which
we can change. This kind of love is far from sentimental; it has real power. In
general, you need a judicious combination of safety and necessary conflict to
keep moving forward in life.
Paul has
fallen in love with a God who has loved him "for nothing." For the
rest of his life, Paul is happy to give God all the credit and he stops trying
to validate himself by any means whatsoever. This creates a very different kind
of person, someone who is utterly free. Paul knows that "the gift far
outweighed the fall" (Romans 5:15) and he lives inside the gift all his
remaining days. He never looks back to law or religion for his self-validation,
but becomes the ultimate reformer of all self-serving religion, not just
Judaism and Christianity. At least Judaism has been honest about its dislike of
Paul. Christians have pretended we love him while overwhelmingly ignoring his
revolutionary and life changing insights.
References:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, St. Paul: The Misunderstood Mystic (CAC: 2014), CD, MP3 download;
and Great
Themes of Paul: Life as Participation (Franciscan Media: 2002), disc 7 (CD).
5 REASONS I PREACH IN MESSAGE SERIES
This article is taken from the blog by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Baltimore, USA. The original blog can be found here
This past week, our “Message Team” met for an all day off-site to finalize our plans for our message series for the upcoming year. The message team consists of 7 people on staff who meet each week to help develop and evaluate my weekend messages. A few times a year we take extra time to do long range planning. We spend a lot of time brainstorming, researching, and finally writing our messages and at this point they’re all in series. A message series is an approach to preaching that explores a single theme over the course of multiple weekends (we tend to prefer 4 to 6 weeks…3 is too short and 7 seems to long).
The idea of the message series is something we picked up when we decided to start learning from the growing evangelical churches around the country, and its really transformed our approach to preaching and teaching- and ultimately to reaching the unchurched and forming disciples.
Here are 5 reasons I love preaching in message series.
#1. Series Make Preaching Prep Easier
If you are a priest, deacon, or minister of another faith tradition and preach regularly, you will appreciate this one. There is less preparation because I don’t begin from a blank slate each week. I’m not immediately worried Monday morning what I will preach about next Sunday. It still takes work, of course, but it feels more natural and cohesive.
#2. Series Unify the Year
Message series force us to look ahead to the whole year. That’s a discipline, but it pays off big. We find it helps us sync up with the whole liturgical year. It also helps us sync up with important events or themes we want to emphasize that are happening in the life of the parish or the culture more generally. For example, we’re planning a series called “8th Grade Faith” for this fall that coincides with back-to-school, and one on the topic of Grace and Truth that leads us through Advent. Series also help us better reach goals we set around events like Stewardship weekend, small groups launch, or new ministers push.
#3. Series Encourage People to Come Back
Message encourages people to come back and hear the rest of the message. Message series help build “momentum,” as we say. It doesn’t leave people guessing what you will say, and even encourages people to invite someone to church if there’s something they know someone needs to hear.
#4. Series Focus on Life-Change and Application
A series helps us focus on the purpose of a message: life-change. Message series are designed to be relevant and practical. During our off-site message meetings, we talk about the needs, stresses, and challenges of the people in our community (including our own challenges) and use that as the jumping off point for series topics.
#5. Series Connect Us With Other Churches
Here’s another plainly practical point for those considering this approach. There are plenty of resources online for helping you establish great message series. From topic ideas, starter-guides, even inspirations for artwork, there is a growing amount of content out there making it easier than ever to give message series a try. It’s there to be helpful. As our friend Pastor Rick Warren always says, “Use my stuff because we’re all on the same team!”
The Ascension and Pentecost with St Luke
Our series, Keeping Lent with St Luke, in which we looked at this year’s Sunday gospels during Lent, mostly taken from Luke’s Gospel, can fittingly close with considering how St Luke described the Ascension of Our Lord (Lk 24:46-53), and the sending of the Holy Spirit to his followers on the feast of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-11).
Shalom!
One passage we have already considered (24:34-49), in which St Luke describes the risen Lord’s appearance on the evening of his resurrection to his disciples collected in the upper room, begins with Jesus addressing his terrified disciples with the reassuring words: ‘Peace be with you.’ This was not simply the commonplace Jewish greeting, Shalom. The risen Lord was conferring on his community the benefits of his death and resurrection, the great messianic gift of peace: peace firmly established between themselves and their Father in heaven, and peace created among themselves as the newly adopted family of God. In this way Jesus not only exemplified the instruction that he gave earlier to his disciples, that when they entered a house they should wish ‘peace’ to all who were present (10:5-6). He was also now bringing the journey of Luke’s Gospel to completion by fulfilling the promise proclaimed by the angels at Bethlehem at its start: that Jesus would bring about ‘peace among those whom God favours’ (2:14).
After he had convinced his frightened disciples that he was real and not a ghost, Jesus repeated the message which had been given to the women early that morning at the empty tomb (24:1-8). He had given the same message later in the day to the disciples on the way to Emmaus (24:26-27), ‘opening their minds’ to understand that his death and resurrection as Messiah had been necessary in order to fulfil Scripture, and to make it possible for ‘repentance and forgiveness of sins to be proclaimed in his name to all nations’ (24:47). Now, however, he introduced a new note: with the words ‘you are witnesses of these things’ (24:48) he commissioned his disciples as his emissaries with the apostolic authority to preach their experience of Christ.
‘You are witnesses’ (24:48)
The conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel, which is quite independent from that of Luke, records the famous commission given by the risen Jesus to his ‘eleven disciples’ on the mountain top in Galilee: ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ (Mt 28:16-20). By contrast, the closing of Luke’s Gospel has a different purpose. It is a much less formal statement, not providing a detailed rounding off of events, because Luke plans to continue his narrative into a second volume. Moreover, he does not describe the risen Jesus and his disciples as returning north to his native Galilee, as he would have been aware Mark had done in his Gospel (Mk 16:7). Instead, he telescopes places, as it were, having Jesus remain in Jerusalem and preferring to keep our attention fixed there theologically. This was the centre of Israel to which Jesus had been drawn to fulfil his destiny, like former prophets, and it was also the point from which the early Christian Church was going to spread the message of the risen Christ throughout the world, as Luke would narrate.
In fact, we learn from Jesus in this resurrection passage that the disciples were to stay in Jerusalem until they received ‘what my Father promised’, that is, ‘until you have been clothed with power from on high’ (24:49). Jesus appears to have in mind here the prophecy that had been made about him by John the Baptist, that someone was coming who would replace John’s water baptism with ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire’ (3:16). And, indeed, Luke subsequently opens his account of the Acts of the Apostles by having Jesus explain that ‘the promise of the Father’ was that ‘you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now’ (Acts 1:4-5).
At first reading, this appearance narrative seems to go on to describe how Jesus then led his disciples out from the upper room to Bethany for his final departure from them (24:50). However, Luke does not connect the events together, but just describes them as happening one after the other; and it is unlikely that we are intended to conclude that late in the evening of Easter Sunday Jesus would lead his followers out of the city to Bethany for a final farewell in the dark (24:50-51). This is confirmed by the opening chapter of Luke’s sequel, which tells us that after his resurrection, the risen Jesus was planning to spend more time instructing his followers, before departing from them later to return to his Father (Acts 1:1-5).
At the eventual Ascension of Jesus from Bethany (24:50-53), Luke informs us in his gospel that the apostles ‘worshipped him’, thus providing us with a final acknowledgement of Jesus’s divinity; and he describes how they ‘returned to Jerusalem with great joy’, evidently strengthened not only by his resurrection and his returning to them and by their faith in his supporting presence, but also by his formal commissioning of them now as ‘witnesses of these things’ which had to happen to the Messiah (24:48). It is then typical of Luke, and characteristic of his theology of Jerusalem and the Temple, that he concludes his narrative, for the moment, by describing that while they awaited the promised initiative of God, Jesus’s followers were ‘continually in the temple blessing God’ (24:32). The Temple was the focal point in Jerusalem which had been central to Jesus’s ministry, as we saw in reflecting on the woman taken in adultery, and the place where Luke’s whole Gospel had initially started (1:8-17) with the message of the angel to Zechariah foretelling the birth of Jesus’s forerunner, John the Baptist.
The gift of the Spirit
Opening the Acts of the Apostles, his sequel to his gospel, Luke tells us how after his crucifixion, Jesus ‘presented himself alive’ to his apostles, ‘appearing to them over the course of forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God’ until they would receive ‘the promise of the Father’, and be ‘baptised with the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 1:3-5) so they could become ‘my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judaea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8). After Jesus had formally departed from them, Luke continues, the apostles returned to the upper room ‘where they were staying’, ‘constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers’ (Acts 1:12-14). It was while they were all together there at prayer, on the festival day of Pentecost, Luke tells us, that they received the gift of the Holy Spirit which had been promised them by Jesus and the Father, experienced like a powerful gale blasting throughout the house, and appearing as tongues of fire dividing and resting on each individual. ‘All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the spirit gave them ability’ (Acts 2:1-4).
As so often in the Bible, what appears at first sight to be simple description can turn out to be rich with theological allusion and significance. The forty days spent by Jesus remaining with his disciples, devoted to instructing them further ‘about the kingdom of God’ (Acts 1:3), recalls, as we saw in an earlier article, the spiritual experience of his own forty days of prayer and planning before beginning his ministry, as well as the forty days spent with God by Moses and Elijah, and above all the forty years of God’s preparing the people of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. Forty days, a period lasting some six weeks, is a sacred term in the Bible referring to time spent in God’s presence, which is still revered in Christianity in the period of Lent.
It does not seem, however, that Jesus spent all this time continuously with his disciples, as he had in his public life, but that he appeared to them from time to time. The twenty-first chapter of St John’s Gospel, describing Jesus meeting his apostles by the lakeside, provides the outstanding instance of this, but there are also suggestions that other events described in the Gospels, as we have seen, originally occurred as post-resurrection appearances, such as Jesus’s walking on the waters, even the feeding of the five thousand, and especially perhaps the scene of Peter’s impassioned confession of his sinfulness before Jesus (Lk 5:3-11), which seems to make much more sense if it occurred after his denial of Jesus (22:54-62).
The gift of the Holy Spirit being conferred on the disciples to empower them to fulfil their mission of preaching Jesus throughout the world recalls for us that, according to Luke, Jesus himself was regularly influenced by the Holy Spirit (1:35; 2:26-7; 3:22; 4:1; 4:14; 10:21; 11:13; 12:12), notably in his claim in the Nazareth synagogue that he was beginning his ministry in the very power of the Spirit (4:18-21), the consequence being that his apostles would continue his work in the Spirit. The reference to their being enabled ‘to speak in other languages,’ as the following verses in Acts describe in detail (2:5-12), provides us with a picture of how the gospel was now, under the power of the Spirit, to be preached and understood in every country throughout the world. It may also, as some Fathers suggested, refer back to the event of the tower of Babel (Gen 11:1-9), whose builders aimed at reaching up to heaven, when God punished their ambitious pride by confusing their language and creating disunity among them – an early ‘Fall’ story; the implication now being that the Holy Spirit was reversing Babel and restoring unity among God’s human creatures by introducing a common tongue of mutual love among them.
Moreover, reference to the Spirit of God being given now to Jesus’s disciples points back to the great Old Testament promises of God, that in coming Messianic times ‘a new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you’ (Ez 36:26). These were the days foretold by Jeremiah, Luke implies, that ‘are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah’ (Jer 31:31). This was to be no less than the ‘new covenant’ which Luke tells us (22:20) Jesus instituted in his blood at the Last Supper, the new covenant by which, according to Jeremiah, ‘I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’ (Jer 31:33).
‘A law will go forth from Sion’ (Is 2:3)
There is thus an intriguing theological connection between the gift of the Holy Spirit which the Church is now celebrating and the Mosaic Law which was given by God of old to the people of Israel. In fact, the annual feast of Pentecost, the day when Luke tells us the Holy Spirit was conferred on the apostles (Acts 2:1), was the traditional celebration in Jerusalem to commemorate God’s giving of the Law to the people of Israel on the ‘fiftieth’ day (the Greek pentekosta) after they left Egypt. Some fifty days after their hasty Passover meal and their escape from the Egyptians into the wilderness, the Israelites reached Mount Sinai and camped there. It was there, we are told, in simple but breathtaking words, that ‘Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God’ (Ex 19:17); and that God established his covenant and gave his law to the Israelites, creating them as his special chosen people and conferring the law, or Torah (instruction), on them as a charter of national identity and dignity they were to cherish (Ex 19:1-6).
The feast of Pentecost thus annually celebrated the giving of the Law, but as the Israelites came historically to show themselves disobedient to God they were dramatically punished by God’s allowing them to be expelled from their land into exile in Babylon. Their prophets, including Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as we have seen above, began to predict a time of consolation in the future when a forgiving God would confer a ‘new law’ and a ‘new covenant’ on Israel, and God’s rule would then spread through Israel to the whole world. This was all summed up in the prophecy of Isaiah that ‘a law will go forth from Sion’, that is, from Jerusalem (Is 2:3).
In his sermon at Pentecost explaining to the bewildered Israelites what was going on (Acts 2:14-16), Peter recalled another prophecy, that of Joel (2:28-32), that God was going to pour out his Spirit on all flesh. Thomas Aquinas was to sum up the whole prophetic drama of the gift of the Spirit to the early Church at Pentecost when he observed in his Summa Theologiae that ‘the feast of Pentecost was celebrated after fifty days to recall the benefit of the giving of the law’ (I-II, 102.4 ad 10), and further that ‘the feast of Pentecost in which the old law was given was succeeded by the feast of Pentecost in which “the law of the Spirit of life” (Rom 8:2) was given’ (I-II, 103, 3 ad 4).
St Paul’s reference in the Letter to the Romans to ‘the law of the Spirit of life’, quoted by Aquinas, brings together the idea of God’s new law as the gift of the Holy Spirit, as the prophets had foretold, but Aquinas added a new theological richness by clarifying that the new law is actually the Holy Spirit himself (ST I-II, 106.1 et ad 1). In true Scholastic style he examines the idea of the ‘new law’ of the Gospel and he makes a remarkable distinction between the ‘principal’ element of the new law as the very presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, and the ‘secondary’ element of the new law as everything which disposes us to receive that presence of the Spirit into ourselves or which then helps us express that presence in our lives. Thus the Gospels themselves, the Church, the sacramental system and the whole structure of the Christian religion are important as part of the law of the gospel, Aquinas recognised. But they are all of only ‘secondary’ importance, paling into insignificance compared with what Aquinas pointed out was the ‘principal’ element of the new law, which St Augustine described as ‘the very presence of the Holy Spirit’ within us as God’s dynamic power and influence.
The age of the Spirit
We live our lives now in the age of the Spirit of Christ, whose dynamic expansion of the Christian community throughout the Mediterranean world Luke went on to describe, sometimes in idealised terms, in his second volume, which has occasionally been more appropriately called the Acts of the Holy Spirit. With the gift of the Spirit of Christ on the Apostles at Pentecost the Christian dispensation was brought to its fullness. The Fourth Eucharistic Prayer puts it well: ‘that we might no longer live for ourselves but for him, he sent the Holy Spirit from you, Father, as his first gift to those who believe, to complete his work on earth and bring us the fullness of grace’.
The gift of the Spirit is aimed at breaking the crust of our self-concern, and opening our minds and hearts to Jesus and to one another. We are enabled in this mysterious way to share in the very inner life of God, by which the Father, his Son and their Holy Spirit perpetually communicate with each other, and invite us to be caught up into their plan to receive and share their life and mutual love as created in their image. The Spirit of God, who brooded over the earth at creation (Gen 1:2), was given at the incarnation to Jesus, the Word made flesh, to form Jesus the Christ through his life, death and resurrection into a fitting human instrument through whom the Spirit could then be communicated to his followers at Pentecost and create the Church. St Albert the Great once put it well when he observed that the Holy Spirit is ‘the first gift, in whom all other gifts are given’.
Jack Mahoney SJ is Emeritus Professor of Moral and Social Theology in the University of London and author of The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition, Oxford, 1987.
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