To be a vibrant Catholic Community
unified in its commitment
to growing disciples for Christ
Resident Seminarian: Br Cris Mendoza Mob: 0408 389 216
chris_mendoza2080@yahoo.com
Postal Address: PO Box 362, Devonport
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 Prayer
Heavenly Father,
We thank you for gathering us together
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
You have charged us through Your Son, Jesus, with the great mission
of evangelising and witnessing your love to the world.
Send your Holy Spirit to guide us as we discern your will
for the spiritual renewal of our parish.
Give us strength, courage, and clear vision
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
We entrust our parish family to the care of Mary, our mother,
and ask for her intercession and guidance
as we strive to bear witness
as we strive to bear witness
to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.
Amen.
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 6th - 8th December, 2016
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe … St Ambrose
Thursday: 10:30am Eliza Purton
12noon Devonport
Friday: 9.30am Ulverstone
Mass Times Next Weekend 10th & 11th December, 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
Devonport:
Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Devonport: Benediction with Adoration - first Friday of each month.
Christian Meditation:
Devonport, Emmaus House - Wednesdays 7pm.
Prayer Group:
CCR Prayer meeting is currently in recession, recommencing Thursday 2nd February, 2017.
Enquiries phone Michael Gaffney 0447 018 068
Ministry Rosters 10th & 11th December, 2016
Readers: Vigil: P Douglas, T Douglas, M Knight 10:30am F Sly, J Tuxworth
Ministers of Communion: Vigil
B & B Windebank, T Bird, J Kelly, R Baker, Beau Windebank
10.30am: S Riley, M Sherriff, R Beaton, M O’Brien-Evans, D & M Barrientos
Cleaners 9th Dec: B Bailey, A Harrison, M Greenhill 16th Dec: K Hull, F Stevens, M Chan
Piety Shop 10th Dec: R McBain 11th Dec: P Piccolo Flowers: A O’Connor
Ulverstone:
Readers: E Cox Ministers of Communion: P Steyn, E Cox, C Singline, C McGrath
Cleaners: M McKenzie, M Singh, N Pearce Flowers: M Bryan
Hospitality: B O’Rourke, S McGrath
Penguin:
Greeters: A Landers, P Ravaillion Commentator: J Barker
Readers: Y Downes, M Murray
Readers: Y Downes, M Murray
Ministers of Communion: A Guest, J Garnsey
Liturgy: Sulphur Creek J Setting Up: T Clayton Care of Church: J & T Kiely
Liturgy: Sulphur Creek J Setting Up: T Clayton Care of Church: J & T Kiely
Latrobe:
Reader: H Lim Ministers of Communion: P Marlow, M Eden Procession: M Clarke
Port Sorell:
Readers: T Jeffries, L Post
Ministers of Communion: B Lee Clean/Flow/Prepare: B Lee, A Holloway
Ministers of Communion: B Lee Clean/Flow/Prepare: B Lee, A Holloway
Readings this Week: Second Sunday of Advent – Year A
First Reading: Isaiah 11:1-10
Second Reading: Romans 15:4-9
Gospel: Matthew 3:1-12
PREGO REFLECTION:
I enter into prayer with great care.
I slow down and become settled.
I read the gospel story a few times.
I pay attention to the details of the scene - where does it take place, who is there?
What about the figure of the Baptist, what does he look like, sound like...?
I imagine I am in the scene.
How does it feel to be there?
Am I startled, unsettled, indifferent, expectant or…?
I ask God’s Spirit to enlighten me.
Lord, what do you want to show me?
I hear the voice in the wilderness: 'repent and prepare a way'.
Does this speak to me in some way?
I turn to the Lord, the one who follows John the Baptist, the one who is more powerful than him.
I speak to him freely from the heart about my concerns, my joys, my hopes and ask him for the help I need today.
With great trust and patience, I listen to him.
When I am ready, I thank the Lord for being with me and pray that all I do this week will be in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
I slow down and become settled.
I read the gospel story a few times.
I pay attention to the details of the scene - where does it take place, who is there?
What about the figure of the Baptist, what does he look like, sound like...?
I imagine I am in the scene.
How does it feel to be there?
Am I startled, unsettled, indifferent, expectant or…?
I ask God’s Spirit to enlighten me.
Lord, what do you want to show me?
I hear the voice in the wilderness: 'repent and prepare a way'.
Does this speak to me in some way?
I turn to the Lord, the one who follows John the Baptist, the one who is more powerful than him.
I speak to him freely from the heart about my concerns, my joys, my hopes and ask him for the help I need today.
With great trust and patience, I listen to him.
When I am ready, I thank the Lord for being with me and pray that all I do this week will be in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
Readings Next Week: Third Sunday of Advent – Year A
First Reading: Isaiah 35:1-6, 10
Second Reading: James 5:7-10
Gospel: Matthew 11:2-11
Helen Willis, David Welch & ....
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Mathilda Luyks, Robert Shepherd, Bernadette Maguire, Jim Suckling, James McLagan, Katrina Wilson, Doreen Traill, Damian Matthew, Nicole Fairbrother, Heath Hendricks, Aurora Barker.
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 30th November – 6th December
Margaret Delaney, Allan Morley, Cyril Knaggs, Arthur Cooke, Terence Murphy, Noreen Johnson, Cecilia Rootes, Iris Nickols, Lorraine Sullivan, Neville Tyrell, Marjorie Simpson, Peter Flynn, David Cooper & Rustica Bibera. Also Noreen & Len Burton, Joseph & Anne Charlesworth, Marie & Gary Trevena and all their relatives and friends.
May they Rest in Peace
WEEKLY RAMBLINGS:
During this past week Fr Alex received an appointment from Archbishop Julian to be the Administator of the Circular Head Parish commencing 9th January, 2017. There will be a Farewell at OLOL on Sunday 18th December following the 10:30am Mass. This is the 1st of these events - there will also be an opportunity for all the Mass Centres to have something after Mass at an appropriate time as can be arranged so that we, as a community, can say thanks for his presence and work in the Parish over these past two years. Fr Phil McCormack will be coming here to assist me in the Parish and I'm sure that you will make him feel very welcome.
Parents of children (in Grade 3 or above) who wish their child to be prepared for the Sacraments of Reconciliation, Confirmation and First Communion are invited to attend an Information Evening at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Devonport on Monday 20th February at 7pm and at Sacred Heart Church, Ulverstone on Tuesday 21st February also at 7pm. For further information or any questions please contact the Office.
Even as we promote so many events and activities in our newsletter I would hope that we are making time to prepare spiritually for the Feast of Christmas. I know that it can almost sound like a broken record but Advent really is a time of Spiritual Growth. Sometimes it can also be a time when we are able to say to the rest of the community that there really is more to the Season than just parties but we have to make a real and conscious choice to be different.
I recently mentioned that you might like to invite someone to join us for Mass to celebrate being part of the Mersey Leven Parish community - have you thought of asking someone to join you at one of our Parish Masses at Christmas time? Details of Mass times etc. are included at bottom of this newsletter.
Please take care on the roads and in your homes,
St Vincent de Paul Society:
Dear Parishioners, This weekend you will notice envelopes
on the seats promoting the Vinnies Christmas Appeal.
The Society is extremely grateful for the ongoing support
of Mersey Leven parish, through the distribution of Christmas Hampers, vouchers
and gifts the Society seeks to make Christmas a time of joy and hope for those
less fortunate in our communities. A tax-deductable receipt will be forwarded
to parishioners who have provided their name and address. If you wish to make a
direct debit or credit card donation this may be processed through our State
Office by phoning 63330822.
The empty crib has been placed in Our Lady of Lourdes Church Devonport and baskets in the foyer of Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone for the donation of non-perishable goods and gifts.
Thank you for helping Society members throughout the year with your generosity, especially at this special time of year as we prepare to celebrate the Nativity of our Lord, your help, helps our members and volunteers share
Joy and the hope that Jesus brings to our world.
SOLEMNITY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION:
Thursday 8th December the Church celebrates the Solemnity of our Blessed Mother, Mary. You are invited to join us for a Holy hour commencing at 10:50am at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Devonport and concluding with Benediction. Following the midday Mass the rosary will be recited.
ULVERSTONE CHRISTMAS PARTY FOR SENIORS:
The 2016 Ulverstone Christmas Party for seniors will be held on Thursday 8th December at 1.45pm in the Community Room, Sacred Heart Church. We hope that people who have previously contributed with cooking, or other assistance, will continue. Maybe you would like to do floral table decorations? Or delivering invitations to people unable to be handed theirs? Or wrapping little gifts? There are loads of little jobs, both before, and on the day, and all help will be very much appreciated. Most people who have attended before should have their invitation by now. If you do not have yours, or you have not attended the function before, but would like to this year, please approach Joanne Rodgers or Debbie Rimmelzwaan. We particularly welcome new parish members and hope you will come along for some entertainment, a cuppa and a chat.
SACRED
HEART CHURCH CHILDRENS MASS - CHRISTMAS EVE:
All children are welcome to
participate in the Children’s Mass (nativity play), 6pm Christmas Eve. Practise will take place Sunday 11th December during 9am
Mass. For more information please phone Charlie Vella 0417 307 781.
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall, Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers for Thursday 8th December – Merv Tippett & Terry Bird
CHRISTMAS SPRUCE UP SACRED HEART CHURCH ULVERSTONE & ST MARY'S CHURCH PENGUIN
ULVERSTONE: from 9am. Bring your gardening tools to a working bee to tidy up the gardens in readiness for Christmas. The KSC are inviting all parishioners to this working bee.
PENGUIN: from 9:30am. Anyone who can help for an hour or two will be most welcome. A BBQ will be held after Mass (17th Dec). Please bring a salad and/or sweet. Meat will be provided. We hope you can join us!!
CHRISTMAS MASS TIMES 2016
OUR LADY OF LOURDES STEWART STREET
Christmas Eve 6.00pm Children’s Mass
8.00pm Vigil Mass
Christmas Day 10.30am Mass
ST PATRICK’S, GILBERT STREET
Christmas Day 9.30am Mass
HOLY CROSS HIGH, STREET, SHEFFIELD
Christmas Day 11.00am Mass
ST JOSEPH’S MASS CENTRE, ARTHUR STREET
Christmas Day 8.00am Mass
SACRED HEART ALEXANDRA ROAD, ULVERSTONE
Christmas Eve 6.00pm Children’s Mass
Christmas Day 9.00am Mass
Christmas Eve 8.00pm Vigil Mass
RECONCILIATION: will be celebrated in preparation for Christmas at:
Our Lady of Lourdes Church Devonport on Monday 19th December at 7:00pm
Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone on Tuesday 20th December at 7:00pm
THE END OF THE WORLD
Taken from an original article by Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. The original of the article cane be found here
People are forever predicting the end of the world. In Christian circles this is generally connected with speculation around the promise Jesus made at his ascension, namely, that he would be coming back, and soon, to bring history to its culmination and establish God’s eternal kingdom. There have been speculations about the end of the world ever since.
This was rampant among the first generation of Christians. They lived inside a matrix of intense expectation, fully expecting that Jesus would return before many of them died. Indeed, in John’s Gospel, Jesus assures his followers that some of them would not taste death until they had seen the kingdom of God. Initially this was interpreted to mean that some of them would not die before Jesus returned and the world ended.
And so they lived with this expectation, believing that the world, at least as they knew it, would end before their deaths. Not surprisingly this led to all kinds of apocalyptic musings: What signs would signal the end? Would there be massive alterations in the sun and the moon? Would there be great earthquakes and wars across the world that would help precipitate the end? Generally though the early Christians took Jesus’ advice and believed that it was useless and counterproductive to speculate about the end of the world and about what signs would accompany the end. The lesson rather, they believed, was to live in vigilance, in high alert, ready, so that the end, whenever it would come, would not catch them asleep, unprepared, carousing, and drunk.
However, as the years moved on and Jesus did not return their understanding began to evolve so that by the time John’s Gospel is written, probably about seventy years after Jesus’ death, they had begun to understand things differently: They now understood Jesus’ promise that some of his contemporaries would not taste death until they had seen the kingdom of God as being fulfilled in the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was, in fact, already back and the world had not ended. And so they began to believe that the end of the world was not necessarily imminent.
But that didn’t change their emphasis on vigilance, on staying awake, and on being ready for the end. But now that invitation to stay awake and live in vigilance was related more to not knowing the hour of one’s own death. As well, more deeply, the invitation to live in vigilance began to be understood as code for God’s invitation to enter into the fullness of life right now and not be lulled asleep by the pressures of ordinary life, wherein we are consumed with eating and drinking, buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage. All of these ordinary things, while good in themselves, can lull us to sleep by keeping us from being truly attentive and grateful within our own lives.
And that’s the challenge that comes down to us: Our real worry should not be that the world might suddenly end or that we might unexpectedly die, but that we might live and then die, asleep, that is, without really loving, without properly expressing our love, and without tasting deeply the real joy of living because we are so consumed by the business and busy pressures of living that we never quite get around to fully living.
Hence being alert, awake, and vigilant in the biblical sense is not a matter of living in fear of the world ending or of our lives ending. Rather it is a question of having love and reconciliation as our chief concerns, of thanking, appreciating, affirming, forgiving, apologizing, and being more mindful of the joys of living in human community and within the sure embrace of God.
Buddha warned against something he called, “slouching”. We slouch physically when we let our posture break down and become slothful. Any combination of tiredness, laziness, depression, anxiety, tension, over-extension, or excessive pressure can bring down our guard and make our bodies slouch. But that can also happen to us psychologically and morally. We can let a combination of busyness, pressure, anxiety, laziness, depression, tension, and weariness break down our spiritual posture so that, in biblical terms, we “fall asleep”, we cease being vigilant, we are no longer alert.
We need to be awake spiritually, not slouching. But the end of the world shouldn’t concern us, nor should we worry excessively about when we will die. What we should worry about is in what state our dying will find us. As Kathleen Dowling Singh puts in her book, The Grace in Aging: “What a waste it would be to enter the time of dying with the same old petty and weary thoughts and reactions running through our mind.”
But, still, what about the question of when the world will end?
Perhaps, given the infinity of God, it will never end. Because when do infinite creativity and love reach their limit? When do they say: “Enough! That’s all! These are the limits of our creativity and love!”
Learning to
Love
Taken from the daily email series from Fr Richard Rohr. You can subscribe to receive the emails here
I did not know what love was until I
encountered one that kept opening, and opening, and opening. —Christian
Wiman [1]
If your only
goal is to love, there is no such thing as failure. Francis of Assisi succeeded
in living in this single-hearted way and thus turned all failure on its head
and even made failure into success. His intense eagerness to love made Francis’
whole life an astonishing victory for the human and divine spirit; he showed
how human and divine can work beautifully together.
That
eagerness to love is the core and foundation of St. Francis’ spiritual genius.
He encountered a love that just kept opening to him, and then he passed on the
same by opening and opening and opening to the increasingly larger world around
him. Francis willingly fell into the “bright abyss,” as poet and faith writer
Christian Wiman calls it, where all weighing and counting are unnecessary and
even burdensome. After Francis’ conversion, he lived the rest of his life in a
different economy—the nonsensical economy of grace, where two plus two equals a
hundred and deficits are somehow an advantage.
Such
transformation of the soul, both in the inflowing and in the outflowing, was
the experiential heart of the Gospel for Francis. He brought the mystery of the
cross to its universal application (far beyond the Christian logo), for he
learned that both receiving love and letting go of it for others are always a
very real dying to our present state. Whenever we choose to love we will—and
must—die to who we were before we loved. So we often hold back. Our former self
is taken from us by the object of our love. We only realize this is what has
happened after the letting go or we would probably always be afraid to
love.
This
metaphor from Martin Laird can help us see how contemplation is good practice
for this transformative inner stance of love:
The contemplative’s inner stance is not one
of being swept downriver along with everything else. The contemplative’s repose
is not a passive state but an engaged, silent receptivity, “an ever moving
repose,” as St. Maximus the Confessor calls it. [2] Like a riverbed, which is
constantly receiving and letting go in the very same moment. Vigilant
receptivity and nonclinging release are one and the same for this riverbed
awareness as it constantly receives all coming from upstream while at the very
same moment releasing all downstream. [3]
References:
[1]
Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (Farrar,
Straus and Giroux: 2013), 23.
[2] St.
Maximus the Confessor, Quaestionis ad Thalassium 64, in Patrologia Graeca
90.760A, Martin Laird’s translation. See also Augustine, Confessions 1.4
(trans. Chadwick, 5).
[3] Martin
Laird, A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation (Oxford
University Press: 2011), 79.
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
(Franciscan Media: 2014), 191-192.
Solidarity
with Pain
Both Francis
and Clare of Assisi lost and let go of all fear of suffering; all need for
power, prestige, and possessions; any need for their small self to be
important; and they came out the other side knowing something essential—who
they really were in God and thus who they really were. Their house was then
built on “bedrock,” as Jesus says (Matthew 7:24).
Francis and
Clare had an ability to really change and heal people, which is often the fruit
of suffering and various forms of poverty, since the false self does not
surrender without a fight to its death. If suffering is “whenever we are not in
control” (my definition), then you see why some form of suffering is absolutely
necessary to teach us how to live beyond the illusion of control and to give
that control back to God. Then we become usable instruments because we can
share our power with God’s power (Romans 8:28).
Such a
counterintuitive insight surely explains why these two medieval dropouts,
Francis and Clare, tried to invite everyone into their happy run downward, to
that place of “poverty” where all humanity finally dwells anyway. They
voluntarily leapt into the very fire from which most of us are trying to
escape, with total trust that Jesus’ way of the cross could not, and would not,
be wrong. They trusted that Jesus’ way was the way of solidarity and communion
with the larger world which is indeed passing away and dying, but always with
great resistance. They turned such resistance into a proactive welcoming prayer
instead. By God’s grace, they could trust the eventual passing of all things
and where they are passing to. They did not wait for liberation later—after
death—but grasped it here and now.
When we try
to live in solidarity with the pain of the world and do not spend our lives
running from necessary suffering, we will encounter various forms of
“crucifixion.” Many say pain is physical discomfort, but suffering comes from
our resistance, denial, and sense of injustice or wrongness about that pain. I
know that is very true for me. This is the core meaning of suffering on one
level or another, and we all learn it the hard way. Pain is the rent we pay for
being human, some say; but suffering is usually optional. The cross was Jesus’
voluntary acceptance of undeserved pain as an act of total solidarity with all
of the pain of the world. Reflection on this mystery of love can change your
whole life.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
(Franciscan Media: 2014), 20-21.
Prayer as
Surrender
One must
fully recognize that mystics like Francis and Clare lived from a place of
conscious, chosen, and loving union with God; such union was realized by
surrendering to it, not by achieving it.
Surrender to
Another, participation with Another, and divine union are finally the same
thing. Once we have experienced this union, we look out at reality from a much
fuller Reality that now has eyes beyond and larger than our own. This is
precisely what it means to “live in Christ” (en Christo), to pray “through
Christ,” or to do anything “in the name of God,” phrases with which Christians
are quite familiar.
Such a
letting go of our own small vantage point is the core of what we mean by
conversion, but also what we mean by Franciscan “poverty.” Poverty is not just
a life of simplicity, humility, restraint, or even lack. Poverty is when we
recognize that myself—by itself—is powerless and ineffective. John’s Gospel
puts it quite strongly when it says that a branch that does not abide in Jesus
“is withered and useless” (John 15:6). The transformed self, living in union,
no longer lives in shame or denial of its weakness, but even lives with
rejoicing because it does not need to pretend that it is any more than it
actually is—which is now more than enough!
After the
sixteenth century, the Poor Clares only learned the older tradition of the
prayer of quiet through their own desire and through the Holy Spirit (Romans
8:26). As far as I know, contemplation was no longer systematically taught
anywhere. By the time I joined the Franciscan Order, our elders gave us the
scaffolding (telling us to “say” the Office, “attend” the Mass), but seldom the
substance of prayer. “Fighting distractions” is an impossible goal (“Don’t
think of an elephant”); it sent us on the wrong course toward willful
concentration instead of the willing prayer of receptivity (e.g., Mary’s “Let
it be,” Luke 1:38). Almost all thinking is obsessive, but no one taught us
that. I am sad to say that many of my contemporaries just gave up, either by
formally leaving, or worse, by staying and no longer even trying.
The “how” of
letting go is so counter to ego consciousness that it has to be directly
taught, and it can only be taught by people who know the obstacles and have
experienced surrender as the path to overcoming them. The contemplative mind,
which is really prayer itself, is not subject to a mere passing on of objective
information. It must be practiced and learned, just like playing the piano or
basketball. I do suspect that the Poor Clares’ overwhelming emphasis on poverty
and letting go gave them a head start in understanding prayer as surrender more
than a performance that somehow pleased God. They were already experts in
self-emptying (kenosis) and letting go. In other words, “poverty” (inner non-acquisition)
is first of all for the sake of prayer, never an end in itself.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
(Franciscan Media: 2014), 30-31, 145-146.
Dying with
Christ
My good
friend and colleague, Franciscan Sister Ilia Delio, writes:
God is radically involved with the world,
empowering the world toward fullness in love, but God is unable to bring about
this fullness without the cooperation of humans. Human and divine cannot
co-create unto the fullness of life without death as an integral part of life.
Isolated, independent existence must be given up in order to enter into broader
and potentially deeper levels of existence. Bonaventure speaks of life in God
as a “mystical death,” a dying into love: “Let us, then, die and enter into the
darkness; let us impose silence upon our cares, our desires and our imaginings.
With Christ Crucified let us pass out of this world to the Father.” [1] [2]
Contemplative
prayer is one way to practice imposing “silence upon our cares, our desires and
our imaginings.” Contemplative practice might be twenty minutes of “dying,” of
letting go of the small mind in order to experience the big mind, of letting go
of the false self in order to experience the True Self, of letting go of the
illusion of our separation from God in order to experience our inherent union.
Prayer is quite simply a profound experience of our core—who we are, as Paul
says, “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).
Delio
continues:
Only by dying into God can we become one
with God, letting go of everything that hinders us from God. Clare of Assisi
spoke of “the mirror of the cross” in which she saw in the tragic death of
Jesus our own human capacity for violence and, yet, our great capacity for
love. [3] Empty in itself, the mirror simply absorbs an image and returns it to
the one who gives it. Discovering ourselves in the mirror of the cross can
empower us to love beyond the needs of the ego or the need for
self-gratification. We love despite our fragile flaws when we see ourselves
loved by One greater than ourselves. In the mirror of the cross we see what it
means to share in divine power. To find oneself in the mirror of the cross is
to see the world not from the foot of the cross but from the cross itself. How
we see is how we love, and what we love is what we become. [4]
True life
comes only through many, many journeys of loss and regeneration wherein we
gradually learn who God is for us in a very experiential way. Letting go is the
nature of all true spirituality and transformation, summed up in the mythic
phrase: “Christ is dying. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” Following
Christ is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world, not a
requirement for going to heaven in the next world.
References:
[1]
Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum 7.6., translated by Ewert H. Cousins,
Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St.
Francis (Paulist Press: 1978), 16.
[2] Ilia
Delio, Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness (Orbis
Books: 2015), 82.
[3] Ilia
Delio, Clare of Assisi: A Heart Full of Life (Franciscan Press: 2007), 26-41.
[3] Ilia
Delio, Making All Things New, 82-83.
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 1999, 2003), 21, 178.
Humility and
Honesty
The only
people who grow in truth are those who are humble and honest. This is
traditional Christian doctrine and is, in effect, the maxim of Alcoholics
Anonymous. Without those two qualities—humility and honesty—we just don’t grow.
If we try to use religion to aggrandize the self, we will end up just the
opposite: proud and dishonest. Humility and honesty are really the same thing.
A humble person is simply someone who is naturally honest about their own
truth. You and I came along a few years ago; we’re going to be gone in a few
more years. The only honest response to such a mystery is humility.
Growth in
the spiritual life takes place not by acquisition of something new. It isn’t
like the acquisition of new information, which some call “spiritual
capitalism.” In reality our growth is “a treasure hidden in a field” (Matthew
13:44). It is only discovered by the release of our current defense postures,
by letting go of fear and our attachment to self-image. Then the inner gift
lies present and accounted for! Once our defenses are out of the way and we are
humble and poor, truth is allowed to show itself. God could not risk giving
truth to proud and power hungry people; they will always abuse it. Truth shows
itself when we are free from ideology, fear, and anger.
Being so
certain that “I know” won’t get you anywhere, spiritually speaking. The truth
is, “I don’t really know anything!” Our real heroes might be those who know
they don’t know, like Forrest Gump! Perhaps Gump is a metaphor for what we call
beginner’s mind. Only such non-knowing is spacious enough to hold and not
distort wisdom.
Similarly,
meaning is not created; it is discovered. There is nothing new under the sun in
terms of the soul. Our universe is an enchanted one. The twentieth century
added nothing to the wisdom of the soul. It was all there already. It is still
all there. You’re not going to be appreciably better than your grandma (or some
pre-modern ancestor), even with all your education; in fact, I hope you’re as
free as she was when you die. I hope you can say “I love you” as she did when
you die. The great patterns are always the same: either fear or love, illusion
or love. Healthy religion is always about love. All we can do is get out of the
way.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 1999), 120-121.
Big Life
Includes Small Deaths
All the world
can give us is small thinking, a small mind. But small mind, without the
unitive experience of big mind, makes us feel unbearably alone. We feel lost,
existentially guilty, and often fragile and powerless. A lot of guilt is not
about this or that particular sin; it’s often a guilt about not having yet
lived. We call that essential or primal guilt. It’s deeper than guilt for an
offense we can name. It feels like shame, not about anything in particular, but
about who we are and who we aren’t. Many of us suffer from this primal shame.
It hides in the unconscious and is not easily available for healing. Grace has
to search it out and turn it into patient goodness instead.
There is a
certain fear of death that comes from not having lived yet. I had to face death
myself through three different experiences with cancer. I don’t think I was
terribly afraid of death each time, even though I knew it might be near,
because I knew that I had already lived. Once you know that you have touched
upon the Great Mystery itself, you are not so afraid of death. But there’s an
existential terror about losing what you’ve never found. Something in us says,
“I haven’t done ‘it’ yet.” I haven’t experienced the stream of life yet. I
haven’t touched the real, the good, the true, and the beautiful—which is, of
course, what we were created for.
When we know
we have experienced the stream of life, we will be able to lie on our deathbed
like Francis and say, “Welcome, sister death.” I’m not afraid to let go of life
because I have life. I am life. I know life is somehow eternal—so broad and
deep it can even contain death!—and another form of life is waiting for me. It
is the last threshold, but I’ve been over this threshold before. I think this
is what Paul means when he speaks of “reproducing the pattern of his death and
knowing the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). It is an actual
pattern that we must live through at least once—and then we understand
something forever.
But if we’ve
never lived, we will be terrified of death. We will have no assurance that this
isn’t the end. As Catherine of Siena said, “It’s heaven all the way to heaven.”
And I would add, it’s hell all the way to hell. So choose heaven now. The only
people who are not in heaven are those who do not want to be there.
Reference:
Adapted from
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 1999), 164-165.
The O Antiphons
A soothing balm for traumas
At the end of a year characterised by upheaval and distress, lifestyle gurus are advocating the Danish practice of hygge as the cure for whatever has ailed us in 2016. In a way, this kind of re-engagement with a disordered reality is what Advent is all about: ‘In the darkness in Advent we imagine that a new child is coming, that a saviour is coming.’ This act of imagination, to which the O Antiphons give voice, is prophetic and radical says Karen Eliasen as she introduces the ancient texts which are the subject of Thinking Faith’s Advent reflections this year.
A recent article in The Guardian, by its fashion editor no less, offers an intelligently interesting commentary on a fad-phenomenon hitting the lifestyle consumer markets these days in full force. Strictly secular in mood and intent, the article nevertheless has a title and content in which the Christian reader can readily enough detect Advent concerns: ‘Hygge – a soothing balm for the traumas of 2016’. [1] In one form or another, balm and trauma taken together are the great Advent themes, just as they were the themes of the ancient Hebrew prophets in whom the Church’s Advent texts are rooted. But hygge, a Danish word tricky to translate referring to an experience of serious cosiness (it does not partake of twee sentimentality) and low-key conviviality (nor does it partake of guffawing loudness), also shares an appreciation of softly-lit stillness – a kind of attractive midnight-ness – with the Advent season. It is no coincidence that although hygge for Danes is a year-round praxis, it is at Christmas time that its peak expression kicks in. That a fashion editor’s article in a mainstream secular newspaper can offer rich pickings for engaging with the liturgical season of Advent should come as no surprise. The secular world is no less interested in perceiving the disordered (to use an Ignatian term) world for what it is and yearning deeply for something to change than the Church is. But what might come as a surprise is the concluding take on hygge expressed in the very last sentence of The Guardian’s article: ‘Hygge is more radical than you might think.’ It suggests that there is more to hygge than sedation against an unpalatable dire reality, that at the core of hygge there lies a potential for an imaginative quickening with which to re-engage in a new way with that unpalatable reality.
And so too, of course, is Advent more radical than we might think, and at its core similarly beats an act of the imagination. The Advent liturgical readings powerfully remind us every year of the passions of the great Hebrew prophets, of the furore of their messianic desires and hopes – remind us that their passions and desires hold as true for us today as they did for Israel then. Isaiah excels in articulating the tension in Israel’s experience of seesawing between balm and trauma – between God’s mercy and God’s justice. All of this – the complex and dynamic relationship between God and the recited story of Israel and us as listeners to that story; the lyricism and passion of the prophet Isaiah; and that yearning for radical change from dire realities that spans across all times and cultures – all of this contributes to the beautiful form and content of that most ancient of Advent texts, the O Antiphons.
Placing hygge and the O Antiphons alongside each other may seem forced. The association of hygge with anything radical may not sit well at all with anyone who takes ‘radical’ conscientiously. The kind of conversation that characterizes hygge does not allow for the heated sentiments and passionate voices of radical ideas, especially of the political kind. In the same way, we may feel that a proper Advent ought to be a reflective time of passive waiting, of low-volume, nonconflictual aesthetics rather than a time to express our heartfelt desires for radical change. Most of us can probably without much ado happily imagine ourselves succumbing with relief to the sensuous immediacies of such a censored Advent-hygge: lighting a candle or two, pouring a glass of something mulled, sinking with gentle appreciation into an old comfy chair, bantering sweet pleasantries with another’s dear presence … and perhaps listening with half an ear to a CD of the O Antiphons (or more familiarly, the hymn based on the O Antiphons, ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel’) playing softly in the background.[2] From such a vantage point, the fundamental radicalness of the Hebrew prophets brought to us by the O Antiphons may be the very last thing on anyone’s mind. This is the danger of the Advent-hygge, sedation by the wistful atmosphere into forgetting, even if only momentarily, dire realities. But these texts are not meant to sedate us; they are meant to radicalise us, in the very noblest sense of that word, into something new in response to those dire realities. And that radicalisation starts in the imagination, the aspect of ourselves that Advent stillness is geared to cultivate quietly but steadily and patiently.
Old testament scholar Walter Brueggemann calls this hope-filled disposition towards imagining the seemingly impossible (hence the direness) but deeply desired radical change the prophetic imagination. He writes of this disposition: ‘The prophet engages in futuring fantasy. The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation.’[3] So if instead of listening at home to the O Antiphons with half an ear, we were to take ourselves off to Vespers to listen with two whole ears and more to the O Antiphons in their liturgical setting, we might find our own ‘futuring fantasy’ engaged (rather than sedated) as that prerequisite to ‘implementation’. In Vespers, one evening at a time, the seven O Antiphons each in turn respond (as antiphons functionally do) to the Magnificat. We are expected to listen with Advent patience to the unfolding story of how God far away in heaven moves closer to us listeners here on earth and becomes ‘God with us’. Both space and time are stretched to their utmost in all directions in the account of how Wisdom somewhere in the universe starts out as God’s creative word and eventually finishes up as the saviour king Emmanuel whose birth in our own hearts, in our own prophetic imaginations that can begin to implement, we the listeners await every Advent. What that implementation might conceivably radically involve is laid out in black and white in the Magnificat: all is turned upside down. This is the promise that the O Antiphons respond to and imaginatively quicken into effect.
In describing this dynamic between heaven and earth, between creation then and there and us here and now, the O Antiphons textually and theologically take their cue from Isaiah. They steadfastly work their way through a series of brief but evocative references to ancient Israel’s history of kings and covenants and ideals. Optimism flares thrillingly high around kingship and a just society, but the reality of Israel’s story is far from so pretty. Kings are wicked, covenants are broken, Israel is wayward, and divine wrath and punishment abound. The story that Isaiah tells is a balm-and-trauma story writ large whose seeming contradiction between mercy and justice in the relationship between Yahweh and Israel fuels the whole messianic enterprise. All we have to do to recognise that pattern is look back to Egypt where an enslaved Israel cries out in a mix of pain and desire for something to change: ‘The Israelites were groaning under their bondage and cried out; and their cry for help from the bondage rose up to God,’ in the immediate wake of which we read a dizzying series of verbs describing God’s response: God ‘heard … remembered … looked upon … took notice’.[4] Can a deepest desire for God’s attention to us be more succinctly put, that he should engage with us in such an all-consuming way, and exactly so at that moment he actually seems the furthest away? For it is out of that attention that the messianic story, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, begins to manifest. God hears, and the rest, so to speak, is history as the story of Moses takes off. What is it about this cry that elicits such a riveted response from God? Israel has by this time been in bondage for a few centuries, and undoubtedly has cried out plenty of times before. But this time the cry is different, and I can imagine that the element making this particular cry different to God so that he responds with such focused attention is akin to an Advent stillness in the heart of the crier – a stillness that waits and allows the prophetic imagination to take hold. In the grip of that imagination Israel cries out her desire for closeness to a God fully engaged with her in her dire reality – that is, her desire for a God who saves, for a God who gives life. I can imagine that Israel in Exodus 2 cries out something beginning with ‘O’ which is informed by themes of a just society uncannily like those of the O Antiphons. To cry out ‘O Emmanuel’ from the pit of our desires to be set free (as the last O Antiphon has it) is to choose life, new life, even as it appears that death is all around us.
If we are exhorted to do just that, choose life over death, in Advent, so is the Israel of Exodus. Moses at the end of his days reminds Israel of this crucial choice in his rousing sermon to the Israelites on the verge of entering the Promised Land: ‘I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life – if you and your offspring would live – by loving the LORD your God, heeding his commands, and holding fast to him’.[5] It is not for nothing that the second antiphon, O Adonai, mentions Moses by name – it is the God of Moses who steps once more into the breach between life and death in Advent. Isaiah, to whom the O Antiphons are so heavily indebted, is the prophet who has by far the most to pronounce on this breach as he repeatedly makes use of both warrior imagery and birth imagery to relay God’s fundamental engagement with his people who are faced existentially with the choice between life and death. These two kinds of imagery are scattered liberally but separately throughout all of Isaiah, except for one unique appearance cheek and jowl in Isaiah 42 where the prophet combines God, cry, and life and death in one great and single but shocking mixed metaphor: ‘The LORD goes forth like a warrior, Like a fighter He whips up his rage. He yells, He roars aloud, He charges upon His enemies. I have kept silent far too long, Kept still and restrained Myself; Now I will scream like a woman in labour, I will pant and I will gasp.’[6]
Overwhelming divine energies are needed for the kind of radical change we so deeply desire, energies that border on chaos, energies that only God can fully release – the roars of a warrior and the screams of a birthing woman. Between the lines of the Isaiah-informed O Antiphons lies the imaginative bedrock of such energies that are fuelled directly by Life and Death. In the darkness in Advent we imagine that a new child is coming, that a saviour is coming. That is what the prophetic imagination hooks into in Advent as it imagines the near-impossible and chooses life in the most dire of realities. It is in fact, every Advent, a matter of life and death, or rather, of choosing life every time, which is why the season, like its secular and more trivial cousin hygge, is ‘more radical than you might think’.
Karen Eliasen works in spirituality at St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Centre, North Wales.
[1] Read the article on hygge by Jess Cartner-Morley at https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/oct/18/hygge-a-soothing-balm-for-the-traumas-of-2016
[2] A beautiful modern setting of the O Antiphons, with a minimal solo flute accompaniment incorporating the familiar Advent hymn, can be heard at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4dCLJ_9a7Q (It is an amateur clip which unfortunately does not identify the composer) Apart from the plainchant, the most familiar traditional version is probably that of M. A. Charpentier (late 17th C) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLABi7jRAZ0 .
[3] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Fortress Press, 1978), a stirring Old Testament theology classic itself written in lyrical prophetic style.
[4] Exodus 2:23-25. All Old Testament quotes from The Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh.
[5] Deuteronomy 30:19-20
[6] Isaiah 42:13-14
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