Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
Parish Priest: Fr
Assistant Priest: Fr Alexander Obiorah Mob: 0447 478 297; alexchuksobi@yahoo.co.uk
Postal Address: Parish Office:
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Secretary: Annie Davies / Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair: Jenny Garnsey
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 2nd - 5th August, 2016
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe …St Dominic
Thursday: 12noon Devonport …St John Vianney
Friday: 9:30am
Ulverstone
12noon Devonport
Mass Times Next Weekend 6th & 7th August, 2016
Saturday Mass: 9:00am Ulverstone
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
Devonport (L.W.C)
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am
Ulverstone (L.W.C)
10:30am
Devonport
11:00am
Sheffield (L.W.C)
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 7.00pm
Meetings, with Adoration and Benediction are held each
Second Thursday of the Month in OLOL Church, commencing at 7.00 pm
Ministry Rosters 6th & 7th August 2016
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: M Kelly, B Paul, R Baker
10:30am J Phillips, K Pearce, P Picollo
Ministers of Communion: Vigil D Peters,
M Heazlewood,
S Innes, M Gerrand, P Shelverton, M Kenney
10.30am: F Sly, E Petts, K Hull, S Arrowsmith,
G Fletcher, S
Fletcher
12th
August: M&L
Tippett, A Berryman
Piety Shop 6th August: R Baker 7th August: K Hull
Flowers: M O’Brien-Evans
Ulverstone:
Reader: E Cox
Ministers of
Communion:
P Steyn, E
Cox, C Singline, J Landford
Cleaners: V
Ferguson, E Cox Flowers: M Bryan Hospitality:
B O’Rourke, S McGrath
Penguin:
Greeters: G & N Pearce Commentator: J Barker Readers: M Murray, R Fifta
Procession: T Clayton, E Nickols Ministers of Communion: M Hiscutt, J Garnsey
Liturgy: Pine Road Setting Up: A Landers Care of Church: G Hills-Eade, T Clayton
Latrobe:
Reader: M Chan Ministers of Communion: I Campbell, Z Smith
Procession: Parishioners
Port Sorell:
Readers: M Badcock, D Leaman Ministers of
Communion: T
Jeffries
Clean/Flow/Prepare: G Bellchambers, M Gillard
Readings Next Week: 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C
First Reading: Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23
Second Reading: Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11
Gospel: Luke 12:13-21
PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY'S GOSPEL:
As I come to my prayer, I remember that God is always with
me. In this special time, I come to some stillness in whatever way is helpful
for me so that I can be more aware of his presence. When I am ready, I read the
Gospel passage. Jesus continues to teach his disciples how best to respond to
the call to follow him. Slowly I ponder Jesus’ words. What do I notice? I may
want to reflect on what provides security for me. Do I choose to rely on
material wealth like the man in the parable… or are there other sources of
security for me...my reputation, my work, my family, ... or….? I talk with the
Lord about whatever emerges as I reflect. What would “making myself rich in the
sight of God” mean for me? If it helps, I may like to consider what provided
security for Jesus. On what did he rely? I speak with the Lord about all that
is in my mind and heart. Whatever I discover in my prayer, I end by turning to
the Lord who loves me totally. I may like to ask for the freedom to choose
Jesus’ way to security; to want and to choose whatever will best allow him to
deepen his life in me.
Readings Next Week: 19th Sunday in
Ordinary Time – Year C
First Reading: Wisdom 18:6-9
Second Reading: Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19
Gospel: Luke 12:32-48
Your prayers are asked for the sick:
Jean Bowden, Elaine Milic, Little Archer, Graeme Wilson, Reg Hinkley,
Taya Ketelaar-Jones, Haydee Diaz, Maureen Clarke, Connie Fulton,
Joan Singline & ...
Taya Ketelaar-Jones, Haydee Diaz, Maureen Clarke, Connie Fulton,
Joan Singline & ...
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Barry Stuart, John Thomas, Bebing
Veracruz, Evelyn
O’Rourke, Gwen McCormack, David Marquis, Melody Hicks & Elaine Winkel
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 27th
July – 2nd August
Joseph Hiscutt, Andrea Wright,
Dorothy Hawkes, Peggy Kelly, Mary Beaumont, Nita Anthony, Enis Lord, Vicky
Bennett, Maisie King, Shirley Mooney, Molly Walsh, Helga Walker, Terence
Maskell, Kathleen Bellchambers, Dorothy Smeaton, Jean Fox, Jack O’Rourke, Nancy
Padman, and Tadeusz Poludniak.
May they Rest in Peace
WEEKLY
RAMBLINGS:
My time without Fr Alex has begun and already I’m busy!!!
Why did he leave me!!! Actually holidays are wonderful times to be renewed and
although sometimes they are busy about family things and/or travel they help us
recreate so I pray that Fr Alex will have a really great time at home in
Nigeria with his family and friends..
My recent holidays were a chance for me to touch base with
friends that I’ve made over the years and to deepen already special
friendships. Since my previous visit to Ireland a number of friends had passed
away so it was a chance to spend time and talk about memories. And we don’t
necessarily have to travel far to catch up with friends - I did that last week
when I flew to Melbourne to be at the Corpus Christ College Jubilarians Mass and
Dinner.
But I wonder if we sometimes have a ‘holiday’ mentality in
our relationship with God? What I mean is that it happens sometimes when I’m in
the right time and right place and then it is good but other times it might
just be ‘sometimes’ contact. Part of my dream/hope for our Parish is that we
all grow from where we are into an even deeper relationship with Jesus and that
means to be in contact with him every moment of every day - it is part of our
Christian Journey and my hope is that we can grow together in what this means.
Being with friends and growing together also needs a social
factor - so (again) I’m inviting people to join me at the August Open House at
the Ulverstone Community Room next Friday evening (5th) from 6.30pm. Food and
wine will be provided - please feel free to bring anything else that you might
like.
I spoke to Lorraine McCarthy (Catholic Alpha Co-ordinator)
on Monday and she will be here in Mersey Leven on Sunday 21st August. We will
gather in the Community Room at Ulverstone from 1.00pm to 4.00pm and explore
what we need to do if we are to begin Alpha in the Parish and how we go about
taking the first steps. There is a list
in the Church Porch for you to place your names if you are interested in
listening to Lorraine and what might be possible.
Please take care on
the roads,
Mersey Leven Parish Community welcomes and congratulates
Charlie Grace French who is being
baptised this weekend.
God
Bless Doreen Hainsworth on her 80th Birthday
Sunday
31st July, 2016.
KNIGHTS OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS:
The Annual General Meeting of the Knights of the Southern
Cross will be held this Sunday 31st July at Emmaus House,
Devonport commencing with the shared tea at 6pm. Any men interested in
the Knights are invited to come along.
ST PATRICK’S LATROBE CHURCH CLEANING ROSTER:
We are in urgent need of volunteers to join our cleaning roster at St Pat’s Church, Latrobe. If you are able to assist please contact Irene Campbell 6426:2128 – (more hands, lighter the work load!!)
OUR LADY OF LOURDES LITURGY COMMITTEE:
The next meeting will be on Thursday 4th August at Emmaus
House at 4.15pm. If you have anything you wish to bring up for
discussion please contact Felicity Sly 0418 301 573 or Kath Pearce 6424:6504.
OUR LADY OF LOURDES 125 YEAR CELEBRATION:
This year Our Lady of Lourdes School is celebrating our 125
Year Anniversary. During the week beginning Monday 8 August we will be hosting
a number of events at our school. These include a Whole School Mass, celebrated
by Archbishop Julian Porteous, on August 9 at 9:30 am; tours through the school
and a Cocktail Evening on Friday August 12, in the McCarthy Centre. Tickets for
the Cocktail Evening may be purchased from the school office for $20. For
further enquiries, or if you have any memorabilia to share, please call Mary
Sherriff on 0400 871 998.
FOOTY POINTS MARGIN TICKETS: Round
18 – North Melbourne won by 40 points Winners: J Clarke, D Cornelius, C Wells.
BINGO
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall,
Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers for Thursday 4th August – Jon Halley & Rod Clark
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for
news, information and details of other Parishes.
Today
marks World Youth Day 2016. We celebrate the gift of all young people in our
community and recognise the wonderful contribution they make to our Church and
to our world. Our 30 Tasmanian WYD pilgrims have had a very full, inspiring,
and spirit-filled week learning, meeting and encountering people, places and
events. Hearing from Pope Francis and being immersed in the vibrancy and spirit
of millions of faithful young people that can only be described as an encounter
with the spirit of God. Today the entire contingent of WYD pilgrims from across
the world, priests, bishops, cardinals, leaders, and Pope Francis are gathered
together as Pope Francis celebrates the Final WYD Mass.
Check
out all the photos and comments from our WYD pilgrims and show your support on
our Tasmanian Pilgrims facebook page: www.facebook.com/taswyd16.
Prayer Vigil: Sunday 31st July 3.30am (AEST)
Final WYD Mass: Sunday 31st July 6.00pm (AEST)
N.B. These will also be available to watch after
the completion of the live streaming
ST VIRGILS OLD SCHOLARS LUNCHEON: will be held at Pedro's Restaurant near the Wharf at Ulverstone on
Saturday 3rd September starting at 12:30pm for a 1:00 pm sit down. People
wishing to attend can ring Terry Leary 0487 771 153, Peter Imlach 0417 032 614
or Mark Waddington at St Virgils College Austins Ferry 6249:4569.
SUICIDE AND MENTAL HEALTH
an article by Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. The original article can be found here
As young boy, I longed to be a professional athlete but I had to soon accept the unwelcome fact that I simply wasn’t gifted with an athlete’s body. Speed, strength, coordination, instinct, vision, I got by in ordinary life with what I had been given of these, but I wasn’t physically robust enough to be an athlete.
It took some years to make peace with that, but it took me even longer, well into mid-life, before I came to both acknowledge and give thanks for the fact that, while I wasn’t blessed with an athlete’s body, I had been given a robust mental health, and that this was a mammoth undeserved blessing, more important for life than an athlete’s body. I had often wondered what it would be like to have an athlete’s body, to possess that kind of speed, strength, and grace, but I had never wondered what it must be like not to have a strong, steady, resilient mind, one that knows how to return a lob, split a defense, not be afraid of contact, absorb a hit, and not let the rigors of the game break you.
And that recognition was bought and paid for by some of the most painful moments of my life. As I aged, year after year, I began to see a number of my former classmates, colleagues, trusted mentors, acquaintances of all kinds, and dear friends lose their battle with mental health and sink, slowly or rapidly, into various forms of clinical depression, mental paralysis, mental anguish, dementia of various kinds, dark personality changes, suicide, and, and worst of all, even into murder.
Slowly, painfully, haltingly, I came to know that not everyone has the internal circuits to allow them the sustained capacity for steadiness and buoyancy. I also came to learn that one’s mental health is really parallel to one’s physical health, fragile, and not fully within one’s own control. Moreover just as diabetes, arthritis, cancer, stroke, heart attacks, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and multiple sclerosis, can cause debilitation and death, so too can mental diseases wreak deadly havoc inside the mind, also causing every kind of debilitation and, not infrequently, death, suicide.
How might one define robust mental health? Robust mental health is not to be confused with intelligence or brilliance. It’s neither. Rather it is steadiness, a capacity to somehow always be anchored, balanced, buoyant, and resilient in the face of all that life throws at you, good and bad. Indeed, sometimes it can be a positive blockage to creativity and brilliance. Some people, it seems, are just too grounded and sane to be brilliant! And brilliant people, gifted artists, poets, musicians, not infrequently struggle to stay solidly grounded. Brilliance and steadiness are frequently very different gifts. Through the years that I have been writing on suicide, I have received many letters, emails, and phone calls, with anguished concerns about understanding mental health. One letter came for a woman, a brilliant psychoanalyst, somewhat anxious about her own steadiness and that of her family, who wrote: “Everyone in my family is brilliant, but none of us is very steady!” Of course, we all know families where the reverse is true.
In short, we need a better understanding of mental health; perhaps not so much among doctors, psychiatrists, and mental health professionals, where there is already a considerable understanding of mental health and where valuable research goes on, but within the culture at large, particularly as this pertains to suicide.
When we see someone suffering from a physical disability or a bodily disease, it’s easy to understand this limitation and be moved to empathy. But this is predicated largely on the fact that we can see, physically see, the disability or the sickness. We may feel frustrated, helpless, and even angry in the face of what we see, but we generally understand. We get it! Nature has dealt this person a particular hand of cards, no one’s to blame!
But that’s not the situation with mental health. Here the disability or sickness is not so overt or easily understood. This is particularly true where the breakdown of a person’s mental health results in suicide. For centuries, this has been badly misdiagnosed, not least morally and religiously. Today, more and more, we claim to understand, even as we don’t really understand. A deeper, more-intuitive eye is still required. We still don’t really understand mental fragility.
Our physical health can be robust or fragile, the same for our mental health. In both cases, how strong we are depends a lot upon the hand of cards we were dealt, our genetic endowment and the environment that shaped us. We don’t get to order our bodies and minds from a catalogue, and nature and life don’t always deal the cards evenly.
We need to better understand mental health and mental breakdown. Psychologically and emotionally, we are not immune to all kinds of cancers, strokes, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. And they too can be terminal, as is the case with suicide.
Participation
- Week 2
Taken from the daily email from Fr Richard Rohr. You can subscribe to the emails here
Faith as Participation
Many
scholars over the years have pointed out that what is usually translated in
Paul's letters as "faith in Christ" would be more accurately
translated as "the faith of Christ." It's more than a change of prepositions.
It means we are all participating in the faith journey that Jesus has already
walked. We are forever carried inside of the "Corporate Personality"
that Jesus always is for Paul (citations too numerous to count!). That's a very
different understanding of faith than most Christians enjoy.
Most people
think having faith means "to believe in Jesus." But, "to share
in the faith of Jesus" is a much richer concept. It is not so much an
invitation as it is a cosmic declaration about the very shape of reality. By
myself, I don't know how to have faith in God, but once we know that Jesus is
the corporate stand in for everybody, we know we have already been taken on the
ride through death and back to life. (It is rather hard to read Paul and not
get this point.) All we can do now is make what is objectively true fully
conscious for us. We are all participating in Jesus' faith walk with varying
degrees of resistance and consent.
Remember,
it's God in you that loves God. You, on your own, don't really know how to love
God. It's Christ in you that recognizes Christ. It's the Holy Spirit, whose
temple you are (see 1 Corinthians 3:16), that responds to the Holy Spirit. Like
recognizes like. That's why all true cognition is really recognition
("re-cognition" or knowing something again). Only so far as you have
surrendered to Christ and allowed the Christ in you to come to fullness can you
love Christ. It's Christ in you that recognizes and loves Christ.
"Faith"
is not an affirmation of a creed, an intellectual acceptance of God, or
believing certain doctrines to be true or orthodox (although those things might
well be good). Yet that seems to be what many Christians have whittled faith
down to. Such faith does not usually change your heart or your lifestyle. I'm
convinced that much modern atheism is a result of such a heady and really
ineffective definition of faith. We defined faith intellectually, so people
came up with intellectual arguments against it and then said, "I don't
believe in God."
Both Jesus' and
Paul's notion of faith is much better translated as foundational confidence or
trust that God cares about what is happening right now. This is clearly the
quality that Jesus fully represents and then praises in other people.
God refuses
to be known intellectually. God can only be loved and known in the act of love;
God can only be experienced in communion. This is why Jesus
"commands" us to move toward love and fully abide there. Love is like
a living organism, an active force-field upon which we can rely, from which we
can draw, and we can allow to pass through us. Read 1 Corinthians 13, Paul's
masterpiece on the eternal state of love, as if you are reading it for the
first time, and you will see that he equates confidence in God and confidence
in love as the same thing. I am afraid you can believe doctrines (e.g., virgin
birth, biblical inerrancy, Real Presence in bread and wine, etc.) to be true
and not enjoy such a radical confidence in love or God at all. I have met many
such merely intellectual believers.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation (Franciscan Media:
2002), disc 9 (CD).
Turning toward Participation
Some of the
most exciting and fruitful theology today is being described as the "turn
toward participation." Religion as participation is a rediscovery of the
Perennial Tradition that Plotinus, Gottfried Leibniz, Alan Watts, Aldous
Huxley, and so many saints and mystics have spoken of in their own ways. It
constantly recognizes that we are a part of something, more than we are
observing something or "believing" in something.
The work of
the German philosopher Karl Jaspers and the English scholar Owen Barfield have
given me a schema for understanding how we actually moved away from deep
participatory experience into the present "desert of
nonparticipation," as Barfield calls it. [1] Today each autonomous
individual is on his or her own, especially progressive academic types, making
for a very neurotic world. I will take several days to explain this, as it is a
kind of panoramic view of human history.
Roughly
before 800 BC, it seems, most people connected with God and reality through
myth, poetry, dance, music, fertility, and nature. Jaspers calls this Pre-axial
Consciousness. Although it was a violent world focused on survival, people
still knew that they belonged to something cosmic and meaningful. They
inherently participated in what was still an utterly enchanted universe where
the "supernatural" was everywhere. This was the pre-existent
"church that existed since Abel" spoken of by St. Augustine, St.
Gregory the Great, and recently by the Second Vatican Council. Barfield calls
this state of mind "original participation."
What Jaspers
calls Axial Consciousness emerged worldwide with the Eastern sages, the Jewish
prophets, and the Greek philosophers, coalescing around 500 BC. It laid the
foundations of all the world's religions and major philosophies. It was the
birth of systematic and conceptual thought. In the East, it often took the form
of the holistic thinking that is found in Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism, which
allowed people to experience forms of participation with reality, themselves,
and the divine. In the West, the Greek genius gave us a kind of mediated
participation through thought, reason, and philosophy. At the same time, many
mystics seemed to enjoy real participation, even though it was usually seen as
a very narrow gate available to only a few.
Among the
people called Israel there was a dramatic realization of intimate union and
group participation with God. They recognized the individually enlightened
person like Moses or Isaiah, but they did something more. The notion of
participation was widened to the Jewish group and beyond, at least for many of
the Hebrew prophets. The people as a whole were being saved; participation was
historical and not just individual. The Bible documented the salvation of
history itself, which is why we have to endure all those "unholy"
historical books. Both the loving and the accusatory language in the Bible is
not addressed primarily to individuals, but to Israel as a whole. Yahweh's
concern is first of all societal; the covenant is with the people of Israel,
much more than with individual personalities. It is amazing that we have
forgotten or ignored this, making salvation all about private persons going to
heaven or hell, which is surely a regression from the historical and even
cosmic notion of salvation. This larger concern was always found more in the
contemplative Eastern Church than in Western individualism.
Both the
Hebrew Scriptures and experience created a matrix into which a new realization
could be communicated, and Jesus soon offered the world full and final
participation in his own very holistic teaching. This allowed Jesus to speak of
true union at all levels: with oneself, with the neighbor, with the outsider,
with the enemy, with nature, and--through all of these--with the Divine. The
net and sweep of participation was total. Given this, it is so sad and strange
that we created a Christian religion with many separate denominations--often
known for elitism, boundary keeping, and exclusion.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey Bass:
2013), 108, 112-114.
Drawn from Within
Although
Jesus' message of "full and final participation" was periodically
enjoyed and taught by many unknown saints and mystics, the vast majority of
Christians made Christianity into a set of morals and rituals, instead of an
all embracing
mysticism of
the present moment. Moralism (as opposed to healthy morality) is the reliance
on largely arbitrary purity codes, needed rituals, and dutiful
"requirements" that are framed as prerequisites for enlightenment.
Every group and individual usually begins this way, and I guess it is
understandable. People look for something visible, seemingly demanding, and
socially affirming to do or not do rather than undergo a radical transformation
of the mind and heart. It is no wonder that Jesus so strongly warns against
public prayer, public acts of generosity, and visible fasting in his Sermon on
the Mount (Matthew 6:1-18). Yet that is what we still do!
Any external
behavior that puts you on moral high ground is always dangerous to the ego
because, as Jesus says, "you have received your reward" (Matthew
6:2). Moralism and ritualism allow you to be independently "good"
without the love and mercy of God and without being of service to anybody else
for that matter. That's a far cry from the full and final participation we see
Jesus offering or any outpouring love of the Trinity.
Our
carrot-on-the-stick approach to religion is revealed by the fact that one is
never quite pure enough, holy enough, or loyal enough for the presiding group.
Obedience is normally a higher virtue than love. This process of "sin
management" has kept us clergy in business. There are always outsiders to
be kept outside. Hiding around the edges of this search for moral purity are
evils that we have readily overlooked: slavery, sexism, wholesale classism, greed,
pedophilia, national conquest, gay oppression, and the oppression of native
cultures. Almost all wars were fought with the full blessing of Christians. We
have, as a result, what some cynically call "churchianity" or
"civil religion" rather than deep or transformative Christianity.
The good
news of an incarnational religion, a Spirit-based morality, is that you are not
motivated by any outside reward or punishment but actually by participating in
the Mystery itself. Carrots are neither needed nor helpful. "It is God,
who for [God's] own loving purpose, puts both the will and the action into
you" (see Philippians 2:13). It is not mere rule-following behavior but
your actual identity that is radically changing you. Henceforth, you do things
because they are true, not because you have to or you are afraid of punishment.
Now you are not so much driven from without (the false self method) but you are
drawn from within (the True Self method). The generating motor is inside you
now instead of a lure or a threat from outside.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey Bass:
2013), 102-106.
Intelligent and Heartfelt Participation
What I have
seen is the totality recapitulated as One,
Received not
in essence but by participation.
It is just
as if you lit a flame from a live flame:
It is the
entire flame you receive.
--St. Symeon
the New Theologian (949-1022) [1]
Jesus'
rather evident message of "full and final participation"--of union
with oneself, others, and God--was probably only fully enjoyed by a small
minority of Christians throughout history. The Desert Fathers and Mothers, the
early Eastern Fathers (such as St. Symeon), the early Celts who were outside
the Roman Empire, some monasteries and hermits, and the constant recurrence of
mystics and holy people let us know that there was a deep underground stream to
Christianity, but it was hardly ever the mainline tradition in any of our
denominations. Only contemplatives, whether conscious or "hidden,"
knew how to be in unitive consciousness--through their nondual and inclusive
way of processing the moment.
Unfortunately,
the monumental insights of the Axial Age (800-200 B.C.E.) that formed all of us
in foundational and good ways began to dry up and wane, descending into the
extreme headiness of some Scholastic philosophy (1100-1700), the antagonistic
mind of most church reformations, and the rational literalism of the
Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although the
reformations were inevitable, good, and necessary, they also ushered in the
"Desert of Nonparticipation," as Owen Barfield called it, where
hardly anyone belonged, few were at home in this world, and religion at its
worst concentrated on excluding, condemning, threatening, judging, exploiting
new lands and peoples, and controlling its own members by shame and guilt--on
both the Catholic and Protestant sides. Despite some fortunate exceptions,
during this period we almost lost the "alternative processing
system," which I would call contemplation. We just argued, proved, and
disproved--the very opposite of the contemplative mind and heart. The ongoing
life of the Trinity was an unknown part of Christian spirituality, which
defeated us at our foundations.
Karl
Jaspers, Owen Barfield, and Ewert Cousins, each in his own way, foresaw the
coming of a Second Axial Consciousness, when the best of each era would combine
and work together: the pre-rational, the rational, and the trans-rational. We
live in such a time now! In this consciousness, we can now make use of the
unique contribution of every era to enjoy intuitive and body knowledge, along
with rational critique and deeper synthesis, thus encouraging both intelligent
and heartfelt participation "with our whole heart, soul, mind, and
strength," as Jesus puts it (Mark 12:30).
Whenever the
Spirit descends anew, the forces of resistance become all the stronger, even in
the world religions. This is very obvious in our time and in our politics
today. So we must each do our part to further what some call "the
Work," "the Great Turning," and "the Refounding" in
our own lifetime. We must rebuild from the very bottom up, and that means
restoring the inherent sacrality of all things--no exceptions--and all the past
mistakes must be included as teaching opportunities and not just things to
stop, hate, or destroy. We have a unique chance to reconnect all the links in
"the great chain of being." It is time for the relational nature of
God, the foundational Trinity as the shape of God, to be roundly
re-appreciated, making interfaith respect much easier.
References:
[1] J.
Koder, Syméon le Nouveau Théologien: Hymnes, Sources Chrétiennes (Éditions
du Cerf, Paris: 1969), 157-158.
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass:
2013), 107, 114-117.
Divinization: A Lost Pearl
The Greek
word theosis, often used by the Eastern Fathers of the church, is probably best
translated as "divinization." [1] Although usually taught in the more
mystical and Trinitarian Eastern Church, it was largely lost in the more
practical, carrot-on-the-stick emphasis of the Western Church.
Every time
the Christian church divided or separated, each group lost one half of the
Gospel message. That seems to have been true in the Great Schism of 1054, when
the patriarchs of East and West mutually excommunicated one another. The loss
of Christian wholeness continued in 1517 with the protesting and needed
reformations of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and Henry VIII, then
again with our split from science at the time of Galileo, and many times since.
Almost all of our Judeo-Christian history reflects a split from the feminine.
Both sides always lose something good. This is the very sad result of dualistic
thinking, which is incapable of comprehending, much less experiencing, the
mystical, nonviolent, or nondual level of anything ("not totally one but
not two either"). The contemplative non-dual mind should be religion's
unique gift to society. It "greases the wheels" of spiritual
evolution, as Ken Wilber says.
So let's
reintroduce "divinization," this Gospel "pearl of great
price" to the Western Church, both Roman and Protestant, and to the
secular seeker. [2] In case you think this is some old dangerous heresy,
consider this statement from John Paul II in 1995: "The venerable and
ancient tradition of the Eastern Churches, that is the teaching of the
Cappadocian Fathers on divinization (theosis), passed into the tradition of all
the Eastern Churches and is part of their common heritage. This can be
summarized in the thought already expressed by St. Irenaeus at the end of the
second century: 'God passed into humanity so that humanity might pass over into
God.'" [3] The pope was surely acknowledging that the Western Church, both
Catholic and Protestant, had largely lost its belief in divinization or had
even denied its possibility. No wonder we suffer from such universal lack of self-esteem
and such cultural self-loathing in our world now.
The shining
and oft-quoted "proof text" here is 2 Peter 1:3-4, where the inspired
author writes, "Divine power has given us everything we need for life and
godliness through our knowledge of God, who called us to share in the divine
glory and goodness. In bestowing these gifts, God has given us the guarantee of
something very great and wonderful to come. Through them you'll be able to
share the divine nature." [4]
There you
have it: We are called to participate in the very nature of God, which is Love.
References:
[1] Michael
J. Christensen and Jeffery a. Wittung, eds., Partakers of the Divine Nature:
The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition (Farleigh
Dickinson University Press: 2007). This excellent collection will give you the
history, loss, and development of the theme of "deification" in the
Christian tradition.
[2] If you
want to do your own research here, the fathers of the church to study are St.
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, St. Basil, St. Athanasius, and St. Irenaeus in
the West; and St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximus the
Confessor, Pseudo Macarius, Diadochus, and St. Gregory Palamas in the East. The
primary texts are in the Philokalia collection and the teachings of the
Hesychastic monks.
[3] (St.)
Pope John Paul II, "Orientale Lumen," Apostolic Letter of May 2,
1995, I:6.
[4] The Inclusive
New Testament (AltaMira Press: 2004).
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass:
2013), 117-119.
Giving Birth to God
Many of the
early teachers of the Christian Church believed in an ontological, metaphysical,
objective union between humanity and God, which alone would allow Jesus to take
us "back with him" into the life of the Trinity (John 17:23-24, 14:3,
12:26). This was how many in the Early Church understood and experienced
"participation." It proclaimed our core identity as the beginning
point (Ephesians 1:3-12), not external practices of any type. We had thought
our form was merely human, but Jesus came to tell us that our actual form is
human-divine, just as he is. Jesus was not much interested in proclaiming
himself the exclusive or exclusionary Son of God, but he went out of his way to
communicate an inclusive sonship and daughterhood to the crowds. We were to
imitate him more than worship him, it seems. Paul used words like "adopted"
(Galatians 4:5) and "coheirs with Christ" (Romans 8:17) to make the
same point. "Adoptionism" was much stronger in the Early Church than
the later Lutheran emphasis on individual "justification."
The awesome
and even presumptuous message of divinization is supported by Genesis 1:27
where we are told that we are "created in the image and likeness of
God." Many tomes of theology have been written to clarify this quote. The
word "image" describes our objective DNA that marks us as creatures
of God from the very beginning. It is the Holy Spirit living within us as a
totally gratuitous gift from the moment of our conception. "Likeness"
is our personal appropriation and gradual realization of this utterly free gift
of the image of God. We all have the same objective gift, but how we
subjectively say yes to it is quite different. We already have image; we choose
likeness.
We come to
appreciate "Full and Final Participation" through Jesus, who clearly
believed that God was not so much inviting us into a distant heaven, but
inviting us into the Godself as friends and co-participants now. I am not
talking about a perfect psychological or moral wholeness in us, which is never
the case, and is why many dismiss this doctrine of divinization--or feel
incapable of it. I am talking about a divinely implanted "sharing in the
divine nature," which is called the indwelling spirit or the Holy Spirit
(see Romans 8:14-17). This is the totally positive substratum on which we must
and can build and rebuild a civilization of life and love.
As Sr. Ilia
Delio says so well, "Christian life is a commitment to love, to give birth
to God in one's own life and to become midwives of divinity in this evolving
cosmos. We are to be wholemakers of love in a world of change. Teilhard [de
Chardin] saw that creativity and invention would forge the modern path of
evolution, but he also saw that science alone cannot fulfill the cosmic longing
for completion. God rises up at the heart of cosmic evolution through the power
of love, which science and technology can facilitate but not surpass. The
future of the earth, therefore, lies not in science and technology, but in the
spiritual power of world religions and the power of love. We are born out of
love, we exist in love and we are destined for eternal love. . . . [I]t is time
to reinvent ourselves in love." [1]
References:
[1] Ilia
Delio, "Love at the Heart of the Universe," Oneing, Vol. 1 No. 1
(Center for Action and Contemplation: 2013), 22.
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass:
2013), 119-122.
Ignatius of Loyola:
‘Placed with the Son’
A homily preached by Fr Michael Holman sj. The original article can be found here
A few years ago, six or seven years ago to be more precise, I was fortunate to participate in a training programme in the Jesuit headquarters in Rome. We were sixteen on the course. The worldwide Society of Jesus which St Ignatius founded was well represented. There were men from North America and Europe; from Zambia and Malawi and Rwanda; from Goa, Madras, the Punjab and Calcutta; from Japan and even China.
To the surprise of many, this was my very first visit to Rome. So before, in between and after class – but, I can truthfully say, never missing a class – I set off to see some of the sights of the Eternal City
Our headquarters suits the would-be tourist down to the ground: it’s as close to the Vatican City as it is possible for anywhere outside the Vatican City to be. Turn left outside the front door, make your way along a cobbled street towards Bernini’s colonnade and in two minutes you are standing in St Peter’s Square.
As maybe you would expect from a training programme of this kind, there was no shortage of trips and tours organised to the many places in the city connected with the Society. We toured the Church of the Gesù and prayed at the tomb of Ignatius himself; we were guided around the rooms, in the Jesuit residence next door, where Ignatius had lived in the last years of his life as General of the Order; we visited the Roman College he had founded in 1550, or rather its successor the Gregorian University, where one morning we met the Jesuit faculty and were then entertained to lunch.
The visit which meant most to me took place later that same afternoon. We were asked if we would like to take a trip by train to a suburban town some twelve kilometres to the north-west of the centre of Rome. Most of us signed up to go.
Being men more accustomed to leading than to being led, there were the inevitable disputes. Was it better to walk to the station by this road or that? Having agreed the walking route, three promptly took the bus! Once on the train at the Stazione San Pietro there was another animated discussion: it was four stops, no it was six stops, no eight! After what seemed more like seven the train pulled in to our destination. We alighted and we were led, with great confidence, out one door of the station, across a car park to a bus stand where we all promptly did a U turn, went back into the station and out the door on the opposite side.
Five minutes and only one further mishap later we arrived and were standing inside our destination: a small chapel, measuring no more than six metres by six metres, dedicated to Our Lady, in the town of La Storta, by the side of the Via Cassia, a busy highway in the midst of the Friday afternoon rush hour. This is where we all wanted to be since it was here, long ago in 1537, that, in a sense, it all began.
Ignatius was travelling on foot from Vicenza to Rome with his first companion, Peter Faber, and with Diego Laynez, who more than twenty years later would succeed him as the second General of the Jesuits. It was here in this chapel that something happened to Ignatius, an experience that made a branding-iron impression upon him. If you want to know what it was that shaped and drove him and gave him and his first Jesuit companions their identity; if you want to know what still gives Jesuits and those others who follow the Ignatian way their identity today, then look to what happened in that chapel, one afternoon in the autumn of 1537. That’s why we wanted to be there, since it was there, in a real sense, that it all began.
When it came to describing the event himself, Ignatius used few words; his companion on that journey, Diego Laynez, gives a fuller report. Ignatius had for some time been praying earnestly for what it seemed mattered more than anything else. Ignatius was a man of big desires and when he sensed God wanted to give him something, he put his all and everything into obtaining it. Diego Laynez tells us that Ignatius was praying that he might be ‘placed with the Son’ and that he was determined to get all the help he could to obtain this grace: he was praying to Mary that she might intercede with Jesus to obtain from the Father this singular grace, to be ‘placed with the Son’.
Any journey was a pilgrimage for Ignatius. ‘Pilgrimage’ was a metaphor he also applied to his life which he understood as a journey with God and to God. So as they entered the village of La Storta and saw the shrine at the side of the road they called in to pray. As Ignatius prayed, it became clear to him that the Father had indeed ‘placed him with the Son’. Indeed, it was so clear to him that he had been ‘placed with the Son’ that, no matter what happened afterwards, he would never doubt that his prayer had been answered.
Facing us in that chapel that Friday afternoon was a mural of the scene as Diego Laynez had described it: Ignatius was being received by Jesus. This was not the Jesus of the nativity, not the Jesus of the hidden life, nor the Jesus of the Resurrection. Rather, Ignatius was there alongside Jesus who was carrying his cross.
This became, one might say, Ignatius’s core experience, one to which he constantly referred. The rest of his life lived it out; the decisions he took lived it out; the Society he founded was to live it out. When Ignatius died in 1556 and his Jesuit brothers looked through his notes about the many matters that he had dealt with as Jesuit General, they found again and again references to ‘when the Father was placing me with his Son’.
So when Ignatius and his first companions wondered what name their new religious congregation might take, it was clear that it had to take the name ‘the Company of Jesus’, since Jesus alone was their head. It was Jesus who had taken them all into his company, and that made them companions of him, companions of each other, friends in the Lord together, alongside Jesus, carrying his cross.
Their desire to live alongside Jesus, carrying his cross, set them free to make their specifically Jesuit contribution to the Church. It set them free to go where the need was greatest, to the frontiers, to those places where often no one else would go or could go, and when necessary to accept the suffering this involved. So Francis Xavier went to the furthest geographical frontiers of the Church, to India, to Japan, dying in sight of China; Peter Faber went to its internal frontiers, to Germany and to those frontiers where one interpretation of Christianity met another; and Ignatius himself went to arguably the toughest frontier of them all, to those places where the comfort of the past met the uncertainties of the future, as he accompanied and encouraged the Church in change.
And what was their motivation for it all? Not a policy programme, not a manifesto, but a relationship. Ignatius was a man in love. He had given his life for the Jesus who had given his life for him; that Jesus who made himself so affectively present that Ignatius, that hardened war veteran, could weep at the very thought of him. It wasn’t a matter of just doing his work; it had to be always more. Ignatius wanted to do that work as Jesus would have done it, with the mind of Jesus, with the heart of Jesus, always with the poor alongside Jesus, himself another Jesus. He wanted the name of Jesus to be deeply imprinted upon him. One day in 1544, holding the host at Mass, he found himself saying spontaneously that he would never abandon Jesus, not for all the world.
Such it was to be ‘placed with the Son’.
The chapel in which we stood that Friday afternoon was not the original chapel in which Ignatius had seen these things that mattered so clearly: that was long gone. This one had been built just thirty years before, replacing a shrine the US Air Force had unhelpfully blasted to bits as the Allies made their way towards Rome in 1944.
Writing to the Society of Jesus as we made preparations seven years ago to celebrate the Jubilees of Ignatius and his first companions, Fr General Kolvenbach, then our superior general, asked us to remember that Ignatius, Francis Xavier and Peter Faber are not history lessons, but men whose spirit is to be lived today.
It was Fr Pedro Arrupe, the superior general of the Society in the fifteen years following the Second Vatican Council, who had been responsible for the rebuilding of the Chapel at La Storta. I have only the dimmest personal memories of this remarkable man who bore an uncanny resemblance to Ignatius himself. But his memory was alive for us that afternoon in La Storta, for in so many ways he is the one who tells us what it means to live the spirit of Ignatius and the first companions; tell us what it means to be ‘placed with the Son’ today. And that ‘us’ includes Pope Francis whose affection for Fr Arrupe is clear and who prayed at his tomb in the Gesù Church this morning.
Many of us have heard before, but it’s worth hearing again, how Fr Arrupe was famously asked in an interview a question that took him by surprise since the interview was about other topics entirely. ‘Fr Arrupe, what does Jesus Christ mean for you?’ ‘For me,’ Arrupe replied, ‘Jesus Christ is everything. For me, Jesus Christ is everything….Take Jesus from my life and everything would collapse – like a human body from which someone had taken the heart, the bones, the head. For me, Jesus Christ is everything.’
To be a follower of Ignatius in today’s Church, as Pope Francis shows, is to be one for whom Jesus Christ is everything, one who desires nothing more than that Jesus be everything for every other man and woman today and who dares to say so. A follower of Ignatius is one who makes his or her faith in Jesus known by living the Gospel of Jesus as Jesus lived it, with the whole of life, and who makes it credible by living with the poor, for the poor, amongst the poor, following Christ poor. A follower of Ignatius is one who has encountered Christ and helps others meet him too; one who can bring Christ to the toughest issues of our time; one who can travel with people who struggle with those issues, knowing that he or she often struggles with them as well – creatively, one hopes, but faithfully and truthfully too.
As this evening we all gather to give thanks to God for the gift of Ignatius to the Church, please pray for all who follow the way of Ignatius, for us Jesuits, and above all for our brother Pope Francis, that the spirit of Ignatius might be alive in us. Please pray that we might want nothing more than to be placed with the Son carrying his cross and so truly be companions of Jesus in our service of the Church and of all God’s good people today.
Michael Holman SJ is Principal of Heythrop College, University of London.
FOUR STEPS TOWARD MORE SPIRITUALLY MATURE DISCIPLES
Taken from the weekly blog by Fr Michael White, pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Baltimore. The original blog can be found here
Mature plants produce fruit. The same goes for disciples. The truth is, there are church people who have attended church their whole lives and have never taken a single step forward in spiritual maturity. I don’t mean to stand in judgment of any one person or parish. It happens here at Nativity too – it will never disappear completely. It just means this is a job that needs to be ongoing and intentional. Here are four steps we currently take for growing spiritually mature disciples.
Create Rungs
Spiritual maturity happens through a series of steps. One of the most common metaphors the great Catholic spiritual masters, like John of the Cross or Theresa of Avila, used was a ladder. Why? Because it had steps, or rungs. Figure out where you want people to go in their faith, and then outline steps to take them there.
Foster Commitment
Maturity only happens through further commitment. It’s a lie our culture sells when it tells us to commit to nothing – leave your options open because something better might come along. That doesn’t produce healthy marriages or careers, and certainly not healthy disciples. Have ministers sign covenants for their ministry: it’s a personal covenant they are making with God to serve with consistency and integrity.
Provide Coaching
Only spiritually mature disciples can produce others. That seems obvious, but parish leaders get this wrong all the time. We give responsibility to people who aren’t ready, which can stunt their spiritual growth. It’s not their fault – they just lack a certain kind of wisdom and need guidance. Don’t rush to fill a position just because you need a warm body – you could stunt the growth of a whole group. One recent trend here at Nativity is toward training ministry coaches who spend one-on-one time with new member ministers.
Insure Accessibility
A sign of growing spiritual maturity is the move from just a Sunday to a daily practice of prayer or devotion. Daily Mass is an excellent practice we promote at Nativity, as many parishes do, but we also realize that this just isn’t an option, at least consistently, for many working people with families to take care of.
What easy and accessible practices does your church promote that encourages their prayer lives during the week? Our parish believes small groups are essential for weekly spiritual growth. At Nativity, we also share a daily devotional email called “Worship Fully” that anyone can subscribe. It’s a brief unpacking of the weekend’s message every day of the week that only takes a couple minutes. It’s not the pinnacle of spiritual devotion, but it’s a great start to the day for anyone, or accessible to those not ready for more intense, traditional devotions.
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