Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
To be a vibrant Catholic Community
unified in its commitment
to growing disciples for Christ
Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney
Mob: 0417 279 437
Mob: 0417 279 437
Priest in Residence: Fr Phil McCormack
Mob: 0437 521 257
Mob: 0437 521 257
Postal Address: PO Box 362
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160
Secretary: Annie Davies / Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair: Jenny Garnsey
Parish Mass times for the Month: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com
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)
Care and Concern: If you are aware of anyone who is sick or in need of assistance in the Parish please visit them. Then, if they are willing and give permission, could you please pass on their names to the Parish Office. We have a group of parishioners who are part of the Care and Concern Group who are willing and able to provide some backup and support to them. Unfortunately, because of privacy issues, the Parish Office is not able to give out details unless prior permission has been given.
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Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.
Parish Prayer
Heavenly Father,
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.
Amen.
Eucharistic Adoration - Devonport: Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Weekday Masses 11th - 14th July, 2017
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
12noon
Devonport Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Next Weekend 15th & 16th July, 2017 Saturday Vigil: 6.00pm Penguin & Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Ministry Rosters 15th & 16th July, 2017
Ulverstone:
Penguin:
Latrobe:
Port Sorell:
Readings this week – Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A
First Reading: Zechariah 9:9-10
Second Reading: Romans 8:9, 11-13
Gospel: Matthew 11:25-30
PREGO REFLECTION:
As I begin my prayer today, I ask for the grace of a
child-like trust and confidence in the goodness of God.
I take all the time I
need to come to stillness and quiet in the presence of God.
I know that the
Lord accepts me in love just as I am, today and always.
I am God’s precious
child; I can be myself with the Lord in complete trust.
When I am ready, I read
Jesus’ words.
I do not hurry, but stay for a while with whatever word or phrase
seems significant for me.
Perhaps today I feel overburdened by what seems asked
of me in my life?
Gently and humbly, I share with the Lord whatever is weighing
heavily on me, asking him to share my burdens.
Does the Lord see my burdens in
the same way as I do?
In what ways is he inviting me?
To rest … to rely on him
… or...? I speak with Jesus as friend and saviour.
At the end of my prayer, I
thank God for his presence with me today.
I ask for whatever grace I need.
Our
Father...
Readings next week – Fifteenth
Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Sr Marie-Therese OCD, Fr Peter Cryan OCD,
Pat Wood, Victoria Webb, Robert Windebank & …,
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Frances Preston,
John Csoka, Pedro Reyes, Michael Byrne, Celina
Rego, Patricia
Woods, Fr
Liam O’Brearthuin OCD.
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 5th – 11th
July
May they rest in peace
Weekly
Ramblings
The work of preparing 88 Stewart Street for the Affordable Housing project has started (finally). I have to acknowledge that the whole process has been very different to what I expected and what I understood was to happen. There are a number of issues that I was unaware of and it would seem that there were a number of issues concerning the process that I misunderstood so I have asked Corey McGrath, the chair of our Finance Committee, to be the Liaison between the Parish, the builder and the Archdiocese. Hopefully this will decrease the chance of any other issues arising and me missing their importance.
Life moves to a slightly slower pace for the next fortnight as children and staff from our schools have a well-earned break. When the children return we will then move quickly towards celebrating the Sacrament of Confirmation in August and all that that entails.
On 15th September there will be the ordination to the Priesthood of Deacon Paschal Okpon. Paschal will come to the Parish on Sunday, 17th, to celebrate a Mass of Thanksgiving at 10.30am at OLOL followed by a function in the Parish Hall. If anyone would like to contribute to a gift that we could present to him on the day could you place your contribution in an envelope and put it on the collection plate at any of our Masses over the next month or so and a suitable gift will be obtained for him.
Please take care on the roads and in your homes,
ST VINCENT DE PAUL COLLECTION:
This weekend the St Vincent de Paul collection will be in
Devonport, Ulverstone, Port Sorell, Latrobe and Penguin to assist the work of
the St Vincent de Paul Society.
ST MARY'S
PENGUIN- GARDENING BEE ON SATURDAY 15TH JULY FROM 9.30AM. The rose gardens need a bit of
trimming and tidying up. With a few people there it should only take an
hour or two!!
ST MARY'S PENGUIN - CASSEROLE NIGHT AFTER MASS ON SATURDAY 15TH
JULY: 
We will need people to make big or
smaller casseroles. There will be a sheet at the back of the Church for
people to list what they can cook - whether it is a casserole or a
dessert. Always a good way to relax and chat with friends after Mass. We
hope you can join us!
FOOTY
TICKETS: Round 15 (30th June)
footy margin 35 – Winners; Bev Dickson, Chris George
BINGO - Thursday Nights - OLOL
Hall, Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm! Callers for Thursday 13th
July – Tony Ryan & Merv Tippett
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
PETITION –
TIMOR SEA BORDER
PETER’S
PENCE ANNUAL COLLECTION – SUNDAY 16TH July
THE JOURNEY
CATHOLIC RADIO PROGRAM:
SACRAMENTS BASIC COURSE:
INCHOATE DESIRE
An article by Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. The original can be found here
Sometimes while praying the Psalms, I’m caught looking quite uncomfortably into a mirror reflecting back to me my own seeming dishonesty. For example, we pray these words in the Psalms: My soul longs for you in the night. … Like a deer that yearns for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you my God. … For you alone do I long! For you alone do I thirst!
If I’m honest, I have to admit that a lot of times, perhaps most times, my soul longs for a lot of things that do not seem of God. How often can I honestly pray: For you, God, alone do I long. For you alone do I thirst! In my restlessness, my earthy desires, and natural instincts, I long for many things that don’t appear very God-focused or heavenly at all. I suspect that’s true for most of us for good parts of our lives. Rare is the mystic who can say those prayers and mean them with her full heart on any given day.
But human desire is a complex thing. There’s a surface and there’s a depth, and in every one of our longings and motivations we can ask ourselves this: What am I really looking for here? I know what I want on the surface, here and now, but what am I ultimately longing for in this?
This discrepancy, between what we’re aware of on the surface and what’s sensed only in some dark, inchoate way at a deeper level, is what’s captured in a distinction philosophers make between what’s explicit in our awareness and what’s implicit within it. The explicit refers to what we are aware of consciously (“I want this particular thing!’); whereas the implicit refers to the unconscious factors that are also in play but of which we are unaware. These we only sense, vaguely, in some unconscious part of our soul.
For instance, Karl Rahner, who was fond of this distinction and who puts it to good use in his spirituality, offers us this (crass though clear) example of the distinction between the explicit and the implicit within our motivation and desires. Imagine this, he says: A man, lonely and restless and depressed on a Saturday night, goes to a singles’ bar, picks up a prostitute and goes to bed with her. On the surface his motivation and desire are as undisguised as they are crass. He’s not longing for God in his bed on this particular night. Or is he?
On the surface, of course he’s not, his desire seems purely self-centered and the antithesis of holy longing. But, parsed out to its deepest root, his desire is ultimately a longing for divine intimacy, for the bread of life, for heaven. He’s longing for God at the very depth of his soul and at the very depth of his motivation, except he isn’t aware of this. Raw desire for immediate gratification is all that he’s consciously aware of at this time, but this doesn’t change his ultimate motivation, of which this is a symptom. At a deeper level, of which he is not consciously aware, he’s still longing for the bread of life, for God alone. His soul is still that of a deer, longing for clear flowing streams, except that on this given night another stream is promising him a more immediate tonic that he can have right now.
Recently I taught a course on the spirituality of aging and dying. Stealing a line from Goethe’s poem, Holy Longing, I entitled the course poetically: Insane for the Light. In a term paper, one of the students, a woman, reflecting on her own journey towards aging and dying, wrote these words:
“And then last night I began to think that dying is making love with God, the consummation after a lifetime of flirtations, encounters, meetings in the dark, and constant yearning, longing, and sense of loneliness that does make one insane for the light. I reflected on the Song of Songs and thought that it could be an analogy of how I see dying, not necessarily as the body’s disintegration and demise, but rather as the entire transition that I was born destined to make. I think of my life as a love story with its ups and downs like any love story, but always going in the direction of God with the finality of death being the wedding of the love between God and myself after a lifetime betrothal.”
She puts it as well as Rahner and the philosophers, though her words are more direct. She too, in analyzing her desire, points out there are levels, explicit and implicit, conscious and unconscious.
Yes, our lives, with all their tensions, restlessness, youthful immaturities, adult depressions, cold lonely seasons, times of doubt, times of desperation, breakdowns, and occasional irresponsible exuberance will surely be marked by flirtations and encounters that seem to exhibit desires that are not for the bread of life. But, they are, ultimately, and one day they will find and know their full consummation.
The Apostle Paul
The Evolution of the
Temple
The brilliant Anglican theologian, N. T. Wright, concludes
that we have largely missed Paul’s major theme. [1] After Luther, many thought
Paul’s great idea was “justification by faith” (Protestants) versus “works
righteousness” (Catholics). It makes a nice dualistic split, but Wright
believes the great and supreme idea of Paul is that the new temple of God is
the human person. In this insight, he offers us a superb example of
thin-slicing the texts and finding the golden thread. Once you see it, you
cannot not see it.
The first stone temple of the Jewish people was built around
950 BC. On the day of the dedication of “Solomon’s Temple,” the Shekinah glory
of YHWH (fire and cloud from heaven) descended and filled the Temple (1 Kings
8:10-13), just as it had once filled the Tent of Meeting (Exodus 40:34-35).
This became the assurance of the abiding and localized divine presence of YHWH
for the Jewish people. This naturally made Solomon’s Temple both the center and
centering place of the whole world, in Jewish thinking.
When the Babylonians destroyed the Temple and took the Jews
into exile (587 BC), it no doubt prompted a crisis of faith. The Temple was
where God lived! People like Ezra and Nehemiah eventually convinced the people
that they must go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple so God could be with
them again. Yet Wright points out there is no account of the fire and glory of
God ever descending on this rebuilt temple (515 BC). And this “Second Temple” is
the only temple Jesus would have ever known and loved.
The absence of visible Shekinah glory must have been a bit
of an embarrassment and worry for the Jewish people. Wright says it could
explain the growth of Pharisaism, a belief strong in Jesus’ time that if
liturgical and moral laws were obeyed more perfectly—absolute ritual,
priesthood, and Sabbath purity—then the Glory of God would return to the
Temple. This is the common pattern in moralistic religion: our impurity
supposedly keeps God away. They tried so hard, but the fire never descended.
They must have wondered, “Are we really God’s favorite and chosen people?”
(This is a common question for all of us in early-stage religion.)
Knowledge of this history now gives new and even more
meaning to what we call the Pentecost event (Acts 2:1-13). On that day, the
fire from heaven descended, not on a building, but on people! And all
peoples—not just Jews—were baptized and received the Spirit (Acts 2:38-41).
Paul understood this and spent much of his life drawing out the immense
consequences. In that moment, Christianity began to see itself as a universal
rather than a tribal or regional religion, which is why they very soon called
themselves “catholic” (universal) as early as the year 108 AD. Paul loved to say,
“You are the Temple!” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17, 2 Corinthians 6:16, Ephesians
2:21-22), and of course this morphs into his entire doctrine of corporate
humanity as the very Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-30).
References:
Universal Dignity in a
Debauched Empire
Paul offers a theological and ontological foundation for
human dignity and human flourishing that is inherent, universal, and
indestructible by any evaluation of race, religion, gender, sexuality,
nationality, class, education, or social position. He brings a deep new sense
of the dignity of every human person, which of course is a social and political
revolution and reveals the power of healthy religion. This is unheard of in
history up to then—and unrealized even now!
The Acts account of Pentecost goes out of its way to
emphasize that people from all over the world heard the Galileans speaking in
the pilgrims’ individual languages after the descent of heavenly fire and wind
(Acts 2:4-11). At least seventeen nations or groups are listed and “about three
thousand persons” from these disparate groups were baptized and received the
Holy Spirit that day (Acts 2:38-41). The message is clear: The Spirit of God is
clearly and completely democratic, unmerited, and inclusive.
One of the reasons Paul’s teachings had so much influence in
Asia Minor was that he restored human dignity at a time when perhaps four out
of five people were slaves, women were considered the property of men, temple
prostitution was a form of worship, and oppression and wholesale injustice
toward the poor and the outsider were the universal norm. Into this corrupt and
corrupting empire Paul shouts, “One and the same Spirit was given to us all to
drink!” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Paul levels the playing field: “You, all of you,
are sons and daughters of God, now clothed in Christ, where there is no
distinction between male or female, Greek or Jew, slave or free, but all of you
are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26-28).
This is quite amazing, considering the culture at the time! In
Paul’s estimation, the old world was forever gone and the new world was born.
This was impossible and frightening to some people, but utterly attractive and
hopeful to the 95% who had little dignity or power in the societies of that
time. Recent sociological studies say this explains Paul’s success in a
relatively short time, apart from attributing it to the Holy Spirit. Who does
not want to be told they are worthy and good?
No longer was the human body a cheap thing, degraded by
slavery and abuse. Paul is saying, “You are the very temple of God.” This
affirmation of dignity began to turn the whole Roman Empire around. When you
read Paul’s teaching on sexuality (2 Corinthians 6:14-18), it really isn’t the
moralistic purity code many of us were given. Paul is saying that your body has
dignity, so you have a right to demand respect and give respect! Because of
this understanding, a woman could claim her own dignity and refuse to give her
body away to every man who wanted it. (This probably explains the early
admiration of virginity in Christian circles.) A man was told to respect and
take responsibility for his body-temple.
This is a positive and dignifying message, not a
finger-shaking, moralistic one. It gives the ego appropriate and much needed
boundaries. Unfortunately, this morphed into guilt-based boundaries and
prohibitions, which seems to happen in most early-stage religion, since humans
carry their natural shame in their bodies. We do not see this in either Jesus
or Paul, even though we have projected it onto them.
Reference:
Paul as Nondual
Teacher
Meeting the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus changed
everything for Paul. He experienced the great paradox that the crucified Jesus
was in fact alive! And he, a “sinner,” was in fact chosen and beloved. This
pushed Paul from the usual either/or, dualistic thinking to both/and, mystical
thinking.
Not only did Paul’s way of thinking change, his way of being
in the world was also transformed. Suddenly the persecutor—and possibly
murderer—of Christians is the “chosen vessel” of Christ, chosen and sent “to
carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel” (Acts
9:15). This overcomes the often artificial line between perfectly good and
totally bad, between evil and virtue, which he believes cannot be resolved
merely by obeying laws (see Romans 7). The paradox has been overcome in Paul’s
very person. He now knows that he is both sinner and saint, as we too must
trust. Once the conflict has been overcome in you, and you realize you are a
living paradox and so is everyone else, you begin to see life in a truly
spiritual and compassionate way, which demands that you let go of your too easy
dualisms.
Paul often presents two seemingly opposing ideas, such as
weakness and strength, flesh and spirit, law and grace, faith and works, Jew
and Greek, male and female. Our normal, dualistic thinking usually wraps itself
fully around one side and then fully dismisses the other—thinking this is
truth—when it is much more just a need for control or righteousness. Like
Jesus, Paul invites you to wrestle with the paradox. If you stay with him in
the full text, you’ll see he usually comes to a reconciliation on a higher
level, beyond the conflict that he himself first illustrates. Many readers just
stay with the initial dualistic distinction he makes and then dislike Paul. It
seems you must first seek an often dualistic clarity about the tension—but then
grace takes you to a higher level of resolution instead of just choosing
sides. Some of us call this “third way”
thinking—beyond the usual fight or flight responses.
The dialectic that we probably struggle with the most is the
one Paul creates between flesh and spirit. I don’t think Paul ever intended for
people to feel that their bodies are bad; he was not a Platonist. After all,
God took on a human body in Jesus! Paul does not use the word soma, which
literally means “body.” I think what Paul means by sarx is the trapped self,
the small self, the partial self, or what Thomas Merton called the false self. Basically, spirit is the whole self, the Christ self that we were born into and
yet must re-discover. The problem is not between body and spirit; it’s between
part and whole. Every time Paul uses the word flesh, just replace it with the
word ego, and you will be much closer to his point. Your spiritual self is your
whole and True Self, which includes your body; it is not your self apart from
your body. We are not angels, we are embodied human beings.
References:
Life as Participation
After conversion, you don’t look out at reality; you look
out from reality. In other words, God is not “out there”: you are in God and
God is in you. You are in the middle of Reality! You’re a part of it. It’s a
mystery of participation. After his conversion experience, Paul is obsessed
with the idea that “I’m participating in something that’s bigger than me.” In
fact, he uses the phrase “in Christ” 164 times to describe this organic unity
and participation in Christ. “I live no longer, not I; but Christ lives in me”
(Galatians 2:20). “In Christ” is his code phrase for this new participatory
life.
This is a completely different experience of life. I don’t
have to fully write my private story. It’s being written with me and in me. I
am already a character on the stage. I am being used, I am being chosen, I am
being led. After conversion, you will know that your life is not about you; you
are about life. You are about God. You’re an instance of both the agony and the
ecstasy of God that is happening inside of you, and all you can do is say yes
to it. After transformation, it’s not about doing it right; it’s about being in
right relationship. It’s not about being correct; it’s about being connected.
After conversion, you don’t experience self-consciousness so
much as what the mystics call pure consciousness. Self-consciousness implies a
dualistic split, with me over here thinking about that over there. The mind
remains dualistic until you have a mystical experience. Then the subject/object
split is overcome. You can’t maintain it forever, but you’ll know it once in a
while, and you’ll never be satisfied with anything less. In unitive experience,
you’re freed from the burden of self-consciousness; you are living in, through,
and with another. That’s the same as the experience of truly being in love.
Falling and being in love, like unitive experience, cannot be sustained at the
ecstatic level, but it can be touched upon and then integrated within the rest
of your life.
True union does not absorb distinctions, but actually
intensifies them. The more one gives one’s self in creative union with another,
the more one becomes one’s self. This is mirrored in the Trinity: perfect
giving and perfect receiving between three who are all still completely
themselves. The more one becomes one’s True Self, the more capable one is of
not overprotecting the boundaries of one’s false self. You have nothing to
protect after transformation, and that’s the great freedom and the great
happiness we see in converted people. There’s no “little richard” here that I
need to protect because it’s precisely that little richard that got in the way
and has now passed away—with no noticeable losses. Or as Paul puts it, “Because
of Christ, I now consider my former advantages as disadvantages . . . all of it
is mere rubbish if only I can have a place in him” (Philippians 3:7-8).
Reference:
The Body of Christ
Paul had a concrete missionary strategy of building living
communities able to produce a visible and believable message. Yet for centuries
we’ve interpreted his message as if he is speaking about individuals being
privately “saved.” This has made Paul seem more like a mere moralist than the
mystic he is. Mystics tend to see things in wholes rather than getting
preoccupied with the parts.
Paul believes that corporate evil can only be overcome or
confronted with corporate good. He uses primitive yet powerful words for the
negative side of corporations, institutions, and nations: he calls them
“thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers” (Colossians 1:16). These are
not “bad angels” as much as collective attitudes that are almost impossible to
break. Because they are so widely shared as mass consciousness—the way we’re
programmed to think—they no longer look like evil and are hard to resist.
Murder is bad, but war is good; greedy people are bad, but capitalism is going
to save the world; ambition and pride are supposedly major sins, but not in the
good ol’ USA. Do you see the problem?
I’ve never heard a single sermon my entire life on the tenth
commandment—“Thou shalt not covet . . . anything that is thy neighbor’s”
(Exodus 20:17)—because coveting goods is the only game in town now. It’s called
capitalism and consumerism! In Paul’s thinking, those big cultural blind spots
can only be overcome by a group of people living and affirming and supporting
one another in an alternative lifestyle. Smaller groups like the Quakers,
Amish, Mennonites, and some Catholic religious orders were able to create
actual alternative cultures.
For Paul, community is the living organism that communicates
the Gospel message. Paul, like Jesus, wants to change culture here, not just
send people away to a far-off heaven later! If Christ’s cosmic message doesn’t
take form in a concrete group of people, then, as far as Paul is concerned, it
is an unbelievable message. An autonomous Christian is as impossible as an
independent arm or leg. Arms and legs exist only as parts. No single one of us
is the whole Christ, and “the eye cannot say to the hand, I do not need you” (I
Corinthians 12:21). Believers exist as parts of the whole, the Body of Christ.
Their very existence is an objective, shared state that Paul calls love or living
“in Christ.” When Paul says, “without love I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2),
he implies that he is inside of another Being who is Love.
Paul sees what we will eventually call the “communion of
saints” (by the fifth and sixth centuries) as an organism that is very alive,
real, and operative in this world. I like to call it an “energy field” created
by all those who share in the various parts of Christ. “Salvation” is thus
something we can participate in right here and now. When Paul addresses his letters
to “the saints,” he is clearly not speaking of our later idea of canonized
saints, but of those who make up his living communities and who are
participating in this shared life of love in this world.
Paul does not make heroes of individuals, but it is
precisely as members of the Body that they “shine like stars” as “perfect
children of God among a deceitful and underhanded brood” (Philippians 2:15).
Paul sees his small communities as an adequate “leaven” by which God will
eventually change the whole debauched Roman Empire (Paul got the word “yeast”
or “leaven” from Jesus, see Matthew 13:33). Talk about patience and confidence!
References:
This article is taken from the Weekly Blog by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Baltimore. You can find the original of the blog here
We are approaching the 70-day countdown to our new building’s completion. Anyone who has been around our campus recently can see for themselves the amazing progress we’re making. Here’s a brief wrap up of where we are at this point.
The construction team has been working off of a day-to-day time-line from the first. This week some of our staff put together a similar time-line for our “move-in.” It begins on day “50,” Friday, July 21 and runs through our opening day, September 10. There is a dizzying amount of details to be organized and undertaken: installations for tech, lights, sound; liturgical and musical rehearsals; new procedures for ministers and staff; the list goes on and on. Obviously all of that can easily become overwhelming. But anticipating and scheduling them makes it more manageable (at least that’s what we’re telling ourselves).
As we move into our new spaces, more of our old space opens up for new uses. The most common question we get is “what are you going to do with the old church?” At some point this summer the pews will be removed and the space re-carpeted (the current carpet has been in place since the 80’s). The majority of this space will be a flexible, multi-purpose room we’ll use for the Time Traveler’s program, as well as our middle school and high school programs. We’re going to be calling it The Theatre. A portion of this space will also be carved out to form a Chapel for daily Mass, confessions, and a place of quiet prayer throughout the weekend.
The current Café-Pavilion will serve our 4th and 5th graders on Sunday mornings and be used during the week as an extension of our overcrowded office space. We’re calling it The Pavilion.
Our Sunday morning kids programs will take place in its current location in the Children’s Wing, the back section of which will be reserved for little kids. Kidzone and All Stars will be housed in this area we are collectively calling All Stars.
Other names to note: the new café will be The Vision Café, the new lobby will be called the Concourse, and the old lobby will be called the East Lobby. The new corridor between the two will be called the Glass Link. Still to be figured out this summer, how to arrange and use these spaces.
All this planning comes to an end, ready or not, on September 8, when Archbishop Lori will be dedicating the church and the altar. While this formal ceremony will be invitation only, plans are being made to live stream it. Meanwhile, everyone is invited to join us on Sunday, September 10 when we’ll be celebrating our first ever Masses in the new space and hosting a parish festival with food and fun and guided tours. Mark your calendars now.
Faith in the Old Testament
This week our article from the Thinking Faith website is a study of those characters in the Old Testament who might be considered to be ‘models of faith’. Contained within these narratives of personal relationships with God are valuable lessons that can shape our own responses to God and to the gift of faith. But, as Nicholas King SJ warns us, ‘Old Testament faith is no easy matter.’ The original article can be found here
We have been invited by the Pope to make this a ‘Year of Faith’, as a preparation for refreshing our work of spreading the gospel. It seems good, therefore, to take a look at what the Old Testament has to tell us about faith. It may be as well to face two common misunderstandings at the outset.
The first of these frequent errors is the notion that ‘faith’ is a matter of believing lots of impossible propositions, a series of sentences that the Church has drawn up to separate the wheat from the chaff, or the men from the boys, so that if you can tick all the boxes then you fit the mould of ‘Catholic’. That is not what the Bible understands by ‘faith’, however. A better model is that of a relationship, joyfully proclaimed, though sometimes uncomfortable to live, with the Loving Mystery, the Creator of the universe, to whom we give the deceptively simple name of ‘God’.
The second regular misapprehension is that the God of the Old Testament is an angry and violent deity, whom no rational being could possibly worship. Those who maintain this error have not troubled to sit down and read through the Old Testament (admittedly it is a bit long, and in places far from easy reading).
A further difficulty is that there is no Old Testament word for ‘faith’. The nearest word for it comes from the Hebrew root ’aman, which gives us the word ‘Amen’, meaning something like ‘trustworthy’ or ‘reliable’, and which produces a noun ’emeth, meaning ‘firmness’ or ‘constancy’ or ‘faithfulness’ or ‘truth’, and a host of other meanings that belong in that area. That is what to look for in people who have this quality that the New Testament will call ‘faith’.
Old Testament models of faith
So it seems that the best way of looking at ‘faith’ in what we call the ‘Old Testament’ (though Jewish friends make the challenging point that it is neither a testament nor old), might be to examine the behaviour of those who are thought to have faith; we shall take just three instances.
1. Abraham
The prime example of such a one is the figure of Abraham, who in Genesis 12:1-3, and at the age of 75, no less, is abruptly told by God, ‘Go from your land and from your relatives, and from your father’s house, to the land that I shall show you’. Then the text goes into poetry, as the Lord continues,
‘And I shall make you into a great nation, and I shall bless you,
I shall make your name great, and it shall be a blessing.
I shall bless those who bless you
And curse those who curse you,
And all the clans of the earth shall be blessed because of you’.
We are then dumbfounded as the narrator continues, ‘and Abram went, as YHWH had spoken to him’. There follows a series of adventures, some edifying, some less so, which you will do well to read in Genesis 12-24, and watch what it means to be an archetypal ‘person of faith’. For Abram (or Abraham, as he later becomes) now undergoes a series of rather alarming tests, which he more or less passes. However, he still, three chapters later, has no offspring, and in chapter 15 he raises the matter with God. God’s response is ‘“look, please, at the heavens, and count the stars, if you can count them.” And he said to him, “So shall your offspring be”.’ Then we hear Abram’s response, of which St Paul will later make a good deal: ‘And he put his trust in YHWH, and he reckoned it to him as an act of righteousness’. The point here is that, against all the odds, Abraham, as he will be finally named in Genesis 17:5, has a sufficiently profound relationship with God to trust what he has been told. We are invited to read and reflect, and then imitate.
The climax of Abraham’s faith journey comes in Genesis 22, the most chilling story in the entire Bible. Here he is a good deal more than a hundred years old (for Isaac has grown up, and his father was a centenarian when he was conceived), and to our bafflement God tells him (22:2), ‘Take, please, your son, your beloved, whom you love, Isaac, and go [this is the same Hebrew command as God used when he set off on his journey back in chapter 12] to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a sacrifice’. We watch in pain and incomprehension as Abraham obeys blindly; we listen to Isaac’s innocent question, ‘where is the sheep for the sacrifice?’ Abraham replies, and our fears are not one whit allayed, ‘God will look to it, my son’. With supreme artistry, the narrator places the neutral line, ‘and the two of them walked on together’ on either side of this frightening dialogue, and the very neutrality of it adds to the emotional content of the story. Now it turns out that Abraham was right to believe that God ‘will look to it’, and Isaac’s life is spared; but his faith was exercised at a price. The attentive reader will notice that Sarah, the boy’s mother, is not mentioned in the whole story (indeed the very next thing that she does is to die – 23:2), while Isaac never speaks to his father again. Old Testament faith is no easy matter.
2. David
Then there is David, a complex and ambiguous figure, about whom some robust stories are told between 1 Samuel 16 and 1 Kings 2 (you could do worse than read through these stories, if you want to see how faith works out in this extraordinary man’s life). His faith emerges in what he does, and in what happens to him. For example, when Saul’s servants are trying to persuade their king to make use of David’s musical gifts to heal Saul, they claim that ‘the Lord is with him’ (1 Samuel 16:18). We hear it on his own lips, as he asks Saul for the privilege of taking on Goliath in single combat: ‘the Lord, who delivered me from the power of the lion and the bear, will deliver me also from the power of this Philistine’; indeed, this fact of the Lord’s presence to David becomes the grounds for Saul’s hatred of him (1 Samuel 18:28-29).
God, normally named as ‘YHWH’ in these tales, is always there in the background, and David takes it as a matter of course that he should consult God before going out on campaign (23:4; cf 2 Samuel 2:1; 5:19, 23). It is a part of David’s piety that he will not slay the ‘Lord’s Anointed’ when he has the opportunity (24:7; 26:9-11, 23-24; cf 2 Samuel 1:14), and that he sees the gift of Abigail as God’s doing (25:32). When David’s camp is raided by Amalekites, and all the wives and children are captured, the narrator reports that ‘David proved himself strong in the Lord’, which is sometimes translated as ‘with renewed trust in the Lord’ (30:6). Moreover, when some of David’s troops are reluctant to distribute their spoils with those who did not go out to battle with them against the Amalekites, it is to generosity that he appeals in overruling them (30:23 - ‘what the Lord has given us’). At the same time he is also aware that the Lord represents a rather alarming power, and so, after the frightening death of Uzziah, the Ark of the Covenant is not brought into the City of David, but to the house of Obed-Edom the Hittite (2 Samuel 6:10); when he reverses this decision, David leaps and dances before the Lord as the Ark is after all brought into his city, to the undisguised contempt of his wife (6:14-22).
David also has to be corrected by God, however, once he has become king: the first occasion is when David had the bright idea of building a Temple for his deity, just like any other minor Near Eastern potentate, and has to be given a lesson on the meaning of ‘God’s House’, and, for that matter, of the ‘house of David’ (7:1-28). The second occasion is that of his disgraceful behaviour with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, when David had failed to do what kings are supposed to do and lead his army out on campaign. Instead he stays at home and commits adultery and murder, until the prophet Nathan is sent to speak to him (11:1-12-25), and David, quite unlike another minor Near Eastern potentate, is heard to say, ‘I have sinned with regard to YHWH’ (12:13). The third occasion is when, once again just like a megalomaniac ruler, he holds a census of Israel and Judah, against Joab’s advice and in arrogance against the Lord (2 Samuel 24:1-17); his repentance is once more an example to us all.
And it becomes more complex still, for after Absalom’s rebellion, in which David was certainly not without fault, David does not permit the Ark of the Covenant to come with him, and makes this expression of faith: ‘return the Ark of God to the City; if I find favour in the eyes of YHWH, he will bring me back, and will make me see it and its dwelling-place. And if he says “I am not pleased with you”, I am ready: let him do with me as it is good in his eyes’.(2 Samuel 15:25-26). It does not matter here whether David actually said these words. The point, so far as we are concerned, is the model of faith that this complex character puts before us: that he accepts, in advance and unconditionally, whatever God will do to him.
Finally the Court Historian brings the story of David (almost) to an end by placing a wonderful hymn of gratitude on David’s lips, to the God who has guided him all the way (though it delicately overlooks the sins that he has committed). When 2 Kings begins, David is almost at death’s door, and we have simply the intrigues by Bathsheba and Nathan to make sure that Solomon gets onto the throne. David’s final speech to his wife contains an oath by God: ‘as the Lord lives, who has rescued me from all trouble’ (1 Kings 1:29). Finally, in chapter 2, David is given a long speech, reminding Solomon above all that, ‘you are to keep the commands of YHWH your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his ordinances and decrees’. What we are invited to do is to take the whole life of this eminently human king and see how his faith in God informs every moment of his existence, even when he goes so spectacularly wrong. After that we can try to live as he did, always in the presence of God.
3. The Psalmist
Then there are the Psalms. I have headed this section, conventionally enough, ‘the Psalmist’, but there is no such person. Or, rather, there are too many. It used to be conventional to ascribe all the psalms to David: in the Deuteronomic History there is a suggestion that he was good at playing the harp (1 Samuel 16:16-18 &c), and many of the psalms have headings suggesting that David wrote them; but that some of those psalms simply cannot have been written as early as David’s life-time does not matter. The Book of Psalms has been organised carefully to present us with Israel’s faith, expressed in the songs of many different times; and if you want to know what the community gathered round the Temple, and the community that later survived the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, thought about their God, then listen thoughtfully and reflectively to these songs.
It may help you to know that the most common verb in the Psalms is ‘sing’, often in the imperative mood; and that has two implications. First of all, the singing is directed ‘upwards’, so to say, to Israel’s God; but, secondly, singing is also ‘sideways’, a community activity, something that all Israel does together. The songs come in many different kinds, and scholars have named many categories of psalm: there are laments, on the lips of an individual or the entire community; there are songs of thanksgiving or confidence (perhaps the loveliest and best-known of these is Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’), which often function as parts of the individual or community laments. Then there are hymns, or ‘psalms of praise’, songs of Zion, songs of God’s kingship, and ‘royal psalms’, which reflect on the relationship between God and the king, who represents the entire nation of Israel. There are ‘Wisdom psalms’ (a good example would be 119, the longest psalm of all), and ‘historical psalms’, which sing of how God has acted in Israel’s history, such as Psalm 106. There are many other kinds; but I hope that I have said enough here to encourage you to read them, and not switch off next time you are in church and the lector tells you ‘The response to the psalm is “Will ye no come back again?”’, or something like that. You will find in this collection of hymns something for your every mood, even anger against God: ‘How long, O Lord, how long?’ the poet sometimes angrily asks, just as the Book of Job does. (Job is another interesting model of Old Testament faith, but we have no space here to consider him. Read the book, instead).
Hineni: the daring response of Old Testament Faith
Finally, in this consideration of ‘Faith in the Old Testament’ as a background for our living out of the Year of Faith, I want to draw your attention to a single Hebrew word. It is hineni, which means, literally, ‘here I am’ or ‘behold, it’s me’. Sometimes it gets translated as ‘Ready!’; and, as that translation suggests, it is found on the lips of our models of Old Testament faith. You and I are therefore encouraged to have it on our lips when the call comes from the God of our faith. Most of the times when it is used in the Old Testament, I have to say, it is on God’s lips, often with more than a hint of menace: ‘look what I am about to do to the Amalekites’. Just occasionally, however, it is on the lips of human beings. The first time is in Genesis 22, which we looked at earlier, the story of Abraham agreeing to offer Isaac in sacrifice. Abraham says ‘hineni’ three times in the course of the story: first when God calls him (22:1); second, poignantly, when Isaac addresses him to ask where is the lamb for sacrifice (22:7 – and check how it is done into English in your favourite version); and thirdly, when the angel of the Lord addresses him from heaven (22:11) to stop him committing the murder.
So we might need to pause and reflect before saying ‘hineni’, but still go on to do it. The next time we hear it on human lips is when Jacob sends Joseph to go and visit his brothers (Genesis 37:13), who are looking after their father’s flocks in Shechem, and Joseph (who has enormously irritated his brothers by his dreams) is expressing his readiness to go and visit them. The upshot, of course, is that they kidnap him, but (thanks to the interventions of Reuben and Judah) do not kill him, and he ends up in Egypt, eventually to be reunited with them and with his father. But this happy ending comes only after God has led him through many adventures; and the next time a human utters the word is at Genesis 46:2, when God speaks to poor old Jacob, to encourage him to go down to Egypt and be reunited with Joseph.
The next time we hear the word, it is on the lips of Moses (Exodus 3:4), who, at this stage of his existence is a murderer on the run. He is looking after his father-in-law’s sheep, the burning bush addresses him and Moses responds, ‘hineni’. It is possible that he later came to regret this utterance of faith, for it is the start of his dangerous and demanding vocation to be the liberator appointed by God for Israel. There is not space here to go through all the unpleasant adventures, including accusations of genocide from the very people that he had liberated, but you will not waste your time if you read through from this point in the Book of Exodus to the death of Moses, far away in Deuteronomy 34:5. You may find yourself shifting nervously as you read, but be encouraged, for, in the end, there is no other way to go.
Samuel is the next human being to speak the word: he three times interrupts old Eli’s sleep, by saying to him, ‘hineni’, under the pardonable supposition that the priest had summoned him (1 Samuel 3:4, 6-8). Eli tells him that the next time, he is to say, ‘Speak, YHWH, for your servant is listening’. That is a phrase that should be on our lips, though we need to reflect on the lifetime of exigent service which Samuel now starts, involving him in difficult and demanding politics at the very highest level, even beyond the grave (see the compelling tale of the witch of Endor, and especially 1 Samuel 28:15). So that must be our response in faith; but it will not be an easy ride.
The next person to say ‘hineni’ in response to God’s invitation is King David himself (2 Samuel 15:26), indicating that he is ready to accept whatever punishment God may see fit to inflict, after Absalom’s rebellion. In that sense he is a model for us.
So also is the prophet Isaiah, the last person we shall look at who is unwise enough to say ‘hineni’. We find this in chapter 6 of Isaiah, the account of his original vision in the Temple ‘in the year when King Uzziah died’, when he has a vision of the presence of God and hears the seraphim (‘burning ones’) crying ‘Holy, holy, holy’ to each other. This brings him to the realisation that he is above his pay-grade, and he cries, ‘Woe is me – for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips’ (6:5); but this does not last long, for one of the ‘burning ones’ brings a burning coal and touches his lips with it. At that point, he hears God asking (6:8), ‘whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’, in response to which the prophet bounces up and down like an excited schoolboy and our hearts warm to him as he exclaims, ‘Hineni – send me!’. So starts the long and painful adventure of his career as a prophet.
So we should, in this Year of Faith, be cautious before saying ‘hineni’; nevertheless, if we are to make sense of our lives, that is what we are to do. Once you have heard the Lord’s invitation, ‘hineni’ is the only possible response. But, you have been warned, it will be a rough ride.
Conclusion: the fidelity of God
However, if that were the whole truth, what on earth would be the point? For the fact is that what the Old Testament teaches us is that faith is not something that we can do for ourselves, but, as the old Penny Catechism taught us, is ‘a gift of God’. What grounds the faith to which we are invited is nothing other than the undying, unconditional fidelity of God, for whose ‘steadfast love’ the word ’emeth, with which we started, was designed. It is God who is faithful, and therefore who evokes faith in us. This is what is in play at Exodus 19:5, when God tells Moses that, ‘if you really listen to my voice, and keep my covenant, you shall be my personal possession, among all the peoples’. Israel’s role (and therefore our role) is to remember what God has done, and this of course is what happens at the Passover Seder (see Exodus 13:3-16) and at the covenant renewal ceremony, when Israel declares before God, in beautifully alliterative Hebrew, ‘a wandering Aramean was my father’ (Deuteronomy 26:5). That is what Israel’s hymn-book sought to do, to remind God’s people of what God had done (and of the inevitably asymmetric relationship between YHWH and the community of Israel). For that, in the end, is what faith is in the Old Testament, and what we are invited to deepen in the course of this year: it is a relationship between God and the community that gathers round its God. That relationship is what makes Israel what it is; that relationship is what gives the Church its unique identity.
Nicholas King SJ is a tutor in Biblical Studies at Campion Hall, University of Oxford.
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
Amen.
Eucharistic Adoration - Devonport: Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: - first Friday of each month.
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – meetings will be held on Monday evenings in the Community Room, Ulverstone from 7pm.
Weekday Masses 11th - 14th July, 2017
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9.30am Latrobe
Thursday: 10:30am
Eliza Purton
12noon
Devonport Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Next Weekend 15th & 16th July, 2017 Saturday Vigil: 6.00pm Penguin & Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Ministry Rosters 15th & 16th July, 2017
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: P Douglas, T Douglas, B Paul
10:30am: A
Hughes, T Barrientos, P Piccolo
Ministers of Communion: Vigil:
T Muir, M Davies, M
Gerrand, M Kenney, D Peters, J Heatley
10.30am: B & N Mulcahy, L Hollister, K Hull, S
Samarakkody, R Batepola
Cleaners 14th
July: F Sly, M
Hansen, R McBain 21st July: P Shelverton, E Petts
Piety Shop 15th July:
H Thompson 16th July: O McGinley Flowers: B Naiker
Mower Roster at Parish House: July
- Tony Ryan
Ulverstone:
Reader: M McLaren Ministers of Communion: B Deacon, J Allen, G Douglas, K
Reilly
Cleaners: M Mott Flowers: A Miller Hospitality:
T Good Team
Penguin:
Greeters: A Landers, P Ravaillion Commentator: Readers: M Murray, T Clayton
Ministers of
Communion: J
Barker, M Hiscutt Liturgy: Penguin
Setting Up: E Nickols Care of Church: J & T Kiely
Latrobe:
Reader: M Eden Ministers of Communion: H Lim, I Campbell Procession of Gifts: M Clarke
Port Sorell:
Readers: L Post, E Holloway Ministers of Communion: P Anderson Cleaners/Flowers/Prep: G Wylie
Readings this week – Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A
First Reading: Zechariah 9:9-10
Second Reading: Romans 8:9, 11-13
Gospel: Matthew 11:25-30
PREGO REFLECTION:
As I begin my prayer today, I ask for the grace of a
child-like trust and confidence in the goodness of God.
I take all the time I need to come to stillness and quiet in the presence of God.
I know that the Lord accepts me in love just as I am, today and always.
I am God’s precious child; I can be myself with the Lord in complete trust.
When I am ready, I read Jesus’ words.
I do not hurry, but stay for a while with whatever word or phrase seems significant for me.
Perhaps today I feel overburdened by what seems asked of me in my life?
Gently and humbly, I share with the Lord whatever is weighing heavily on me, asking him to share my burdens.
Does the Lord see my burdens in the same way as I do?
In what ways is he inviting me?
To rest … to rely on him … or...? I speak with Jesus as friend and saviour.
At the end of my prayer, I thank God for his presence with me today.
I ask for whatever grace I need.
Our Father...
I take all the time I need to come to stillness and quiet in the presence of God.
I know that the Lord accepts me in love just as I am, today and always.
I am God’s precious child; I can be myself with the Lord in complete trust.
When I am ready, I read Jesus’ words.
I do not hurry, but stay for a while with whatever word or phrase seems significant for me.
Perhaps today I feel overburdened by what seems asked of me in my life?
Gently and humbly, I share with the Lord whatever is weighing heavily on me, asking him to share my burdens.
Does the Lord see my burdens in the same way as I do?
In what ways is he inviting me?
To rest … to rely on him … or...? I speak with Jesus as friend and saviour.
At the end of my prayer, I thank God for his presence with me today.
I ask for whatever grace I need.
Our Father...
Readings next week – Fifteenth
Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A
First Reading: Isaiah 55:10-11
Second Reading: Romans 8:18-23
Gospel:
Matthew 13:1-23
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Sr Marie-Therese OCD, Fr Peter Cryan OCD,
Pat Wood, Victoria Webb, Robert Windebank & …,
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Frances Preston,
John Csoka, Pedro Reyes, Michael Byrne, Celina
Rego, Patricia
Woods, Fr
Liam O’Brearthuin OCD.
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 5th – 11th
July
Marcella
Rech, Marjorie Parsissons, Donald Barry, Jean Dynan, Evelyn O’Rourke, Margaret McCormack,
Geoffrey Jamieson, Judith Polga, Patrick Milnes, Lorraine Brown, Melody Hicks,
Gwen McCormack, Elaine Winkel, Patrick Kelcey, Imelda
Cameron, Brian O’Neill, Frances Gerrand and Clarrie Byrne. Also Cornelius
O’Halloran.
May they rest in peace
Weekly
Ramblings
Life moves to a slightly slower pace for the next fortnight as children and staff from our schools have a well-earned break. When the children return we will then move quickly towards celebrating the Sacrament of Confirmation in August and all that that entails.
On 15th September there will be the ordination to the Priesthood of Deacon Paschal Okpon. Paschal will come to the Parish on Sunday, 17th, to celebrate a Mass of Thanksgiving at 10.30am at OLOL followed by a function in the Parish Hall. If anyone would like to contribute to a gift that we could present to him on the day could you place your contribution in an envelope and put it on the collection plate at any of our Masses over the next month or so and a suitable gift will be obtained for him.
Please take care on the roads and in your homes,
ST VINCENT DE PAUL COLLECTION:
This weekend the St Vincent de Paul collection will be in
Devonport, Ulverstone, Port Sorell, Latrobe and Penguin to assist the work of
the St Vincent de Paul Society.
ST MARY'S
PENGUIN- GARDENING BEE ON SATURDAY 15TH JULY FROM 9.30AM. The rose gardens need a bit of
trimming and tidying up. With a few people there it should only take an
hour or two!!
ST MARY'S PENGUIN - CASSEROLE NIGHT AFTER MASS ON SATURDAY 15TH
JULY:
We will need people to make big or
smaller casseroles. There will be a sheet at the back of the Church for
people to list what they can cook - whether it is a casserole or a
dessert. Always a good way to relax and chat with friends after Mass. We
hope you can join us!
FOOTY
TICKETS: Round 15 (30th June)
footy margin 35 – Winners; Bev Dickson, Chris George
BINGO - Thursday Nights - OLOL
Hall, Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm! Callers for Thursday 13th
July – Tony Ryan & Merv Tippett
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
PETITION –
TIMOR SEA BORDER
Archbishop Julian Porteous has
passed on to The Tasmanian Catholic Justice and Peace Commission a Petition to
the House of Representatives regarding the Timor Sea Border between Australia
and Timor Leste (East Timor). The petition is being sent to all Dioceses in
Australia by the Sisters of St Joseph NSW and others concerned about ongoing
justice for the people of Timor Leste, our closest neighbours. The TCJPC wishes
to support the call for the Australian Government to act in fairness and good
faith in finalizing a permanent maritime border between Australia and
Timor-Leste. The lack of a border has meant that Timor Leste has lost several billion
dollars of tax revenue owed to them from oil and gas fields that instead went
to Australia.
The Tasmanian
Catholic Justice and Peace Commission is inviting us as parishioners to sign
this Petition which is available this
Sunday and can be found in all Mass Centres.
PETER’S
PENCE ANNUAL COLLECTION – SUNDAY 16TH July
Peter’s Pence Collection provides
the Holy Father with the financial means to respond to those who are suffering
as a result of war, oppression, natural disaster, and disease. Your support
goes directly to supporting Pope Francis and his charitable works.
The Peter’s Pence Collection
derives its name from an ancient custom. In Ninth-Century England, King Alfred
the Great collected money, a ‘pence’ from landowners as financial support for
the Pope. Today, the Peter’s Pence Collection supports the Pope’s philanthropy
by giving the Holy Father the means to provide emergency assistance to those
affected by natural disaster, war, oppression and disease. Pope Francis
encourages us to “Open our eyes and see the misery of the world, the wounds of
our brothers and sisters who are denied their dignity, and let us recognise
that we are compelled to heed their cry for help!”
Envelopes will be available at all Mass Centres next weekend.
THE JOURNEY
CATHOLIC RADIO PROGRAM:
This week on the Journey Nick
Weir reads the Gospel of Matthew. Sr Hilda inspires us with her Wisdom from the
Abbey about Love, Our very own Trish McCarthy encourages us to “Go and make
Disciples” in her Milk and Honey segment and Bruce Downes, The Catholic Guy
reminds us to “Be Persistent in Humble Prayer”. Our music this week
is such a great compliment to our program, helping us to create a show for you
that is all about faith, hope, love and life. Go to www.jcr.org.au or www.itunes.jcr.org.au where
you can listen anytime and subscribe to weekly shows by email.
SACRAMENTS BASIC COURSE:
A new FREE course for adults on the Sacraments will be
offered by the Verbum Domini Biblical & Catechetical Institute over four
Saturdays starting July 29 (9am-2.30pm) at the Pastoral Centre, Launceston.
Module 1 will provide a fresh look at the biblical basis of Baptism and
Confirmation and how these sacraments are so necessary for our Christian life.
TCEO teachers can obtain professional learning credit for attendance.
Parishioners, RCIA team members, and catechists are encouraged to attend. Register:
call Dr Christine Wood 6208:6236. Information: https://hobart.catholic.org.au/
INCHOATE DESIRE
An article by Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. The original can be found here
Sometimes while praying the Psalms, I’m caught looking quite uncomfortably into a mirror reflecting back to me my own seeming dishonesty. For example, we pray these words in the Psalms: My soul longs for you in the night. … Like a deer that yearns for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you my God. … For you alone do I long! For you alone do I thirst!
If I’m honest, I have to admit that a lot of times, perhaps most times, my soul longs for a lot of things that do not seem of God. How often can I honestly pray: For you, God, alone do I long. For you alone do I thirst! In my restlessness, my earthy desires, and natural instincts, I long for many things that don’t appear very God-focused or heavenly at all. I suspect that’s true for most of us for good parts of our lives. Rare is the mystic who can say those prayers and mean them with her full heart on any given day.
But human desire is a complex thing. There’s a surface and there’s a depth, and in every one of our longings and motivations we can ask ourselves this: What am I really looking for here? I know what I want on the surface, here and now, but what am I ultimately longing for in this?
This discrepancy, between what we’re aware of on the surface and what’s sensed only in some dark, inchoate way at a deeper level, is what’s captured in a distinction philosophers make between what’s explicit in our awareness and what’s implicit within it. The explicit refers to what we are aware of consciously (“I want this particular thing!’); whereas the implicit refers to the unconscious factors that are also in play but of which we are unaware. These we only sense, vaguely, in some unconscious part of our soul.
For instance, Karl Rahner, who was fond of this distinction and who puts it to good use in his spirituality, offers us this (crass though clear) example of the distinction between the explicit and the implicit within our motivation and desires. Imagine this, he says: A man, lonely and restless and depressed on a Saturday night, goes to a singles’ bar, picks up a prostitute and goes to bed with her. On the surface his motivation and desire are as undisguised as they are crass. He’s not longing for God in his bed on this particular night. Or is he?
On the surface, of course he’s not, his desire seems purely self-centered and the antithesis of holy longing. But, parsed out to its deepest root, his desire is ultimately a longing for divine intimacy, for the bread of life, for heaven. He’s longing for God at the very depth of his soul and at the very depth of his motivation, except he isn’t aware of this. Raw desire for immediate gratification is all that he’s consciously aware of at this time, but this doesn’t change his ultimate motivation, of which this is a symptom. At a deeper level, of which he is not consciously aware, he’s still longing for the bread of life, for God alone. His soul is still that of a deer, longing for clear flowing streams, except that on this given night another stream is promising him a more immediate tonic that he can have right now.
Recently I taught a course on the spirituality of aging and dying. Stealing a line from Goethe’s poem, Holy Longing, I entitled the course poetically: Insane for the Light. In a term paper, one of the students, a woman, reflecting on her own journey towards aging and dying, wrote these words:
“And then last night I began to think that dying is making love with God, the consummation after a lifetime of flirtations, encounters, meetings in the dark, and constant yearning, longing, and sense of loneliness that does make one insane for the light. I reflected on the Song of Songs and thought that it could be an analogy of how I see dying, not necessarily as the body’s disintegration and demise, but rather as the entire transition that I was born destined to make. I think of my life as a love story with its ups and downs like any love story, but always going in the direction of God with the finality of death being the wedding of the love between God and myself after a lifetime betrothal.”
She puts it as well as Rahner and the philosophers, though her words are more direct. She too, in analyzing her desire, points out there are levels, explicit and implicit, conscious and unconscious.
Yes, our lives, with all their tensions, restlessness, youthful immaturities, adult depressions, cold lonely seasons, times of doubt, times of desperation, breakdowns, and occasional irresponsible exuberance will surely be marked by flirtations and encounters that seem to exhibit desires that are not for the bread of life. But, they are, ultimately, and one day they will find and know their full consummation.
The Apostle Paul
This article is taken from the daily email published by Fr Richard Rohr OFM. You can subscribe by clicking here
The Evolution of the
Temple
The brilliant Anglican theologian, N. T. Wright, concludes
that we have largely missed Paul’s major theme. [1] After Luther, many thought
Paul’s great idea was “justification by faith” (Protestants) versus “works
righteousness” (Catholics). It makes a nice dualistic split, but Wright
believes the great and supreme idea of Paul is that the new temple of God is
the human person. In this insight, he offers us a superb example of
thin-slicing the texts and finding the golden thread. Once you see it, you
cannot not see it.
The first stone temple of the Jewish people was built around
950 BC. On the day of the dedication of “Solomon’s Temple,” the Shekinah glory
of YHWH (fire and cloud from heaven) descended and filled the Temple (1 Kings
8:10-13), just as it had once filled the Tent of Meeting (Exodus 40:34-35).
This became the assurance of the abiding and localized divine presence of YHWH
for the Jewish people. This naturally made Solomon’s Temple both the center and
centering place of the whole world, in Jewish thinking.
When the Babylonians destroyed the Temple and took the Jews
into exile (587 BC), it no doubt prompted a crisis of faith. The Temple was
where God lived! People like Ezra and Nehemiah eventually convinced the people
that they must go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple so God could be with
them again. Yet Wright points out there is no account of the fire and glory of
God ever descending on this rebuilt temple (515 BC). And this “Second Temple” is
the only temple Jesus would have ever known and loved.
The absence of visible Shekinah glory must have been a bit
of an embarrassment and worry for the Jewish people. Wright says it could
explain the growth of Pharisaism, a belief strong in Jesus’ time that if
liturgical and moral laws were obeyed more perfectly—absolute ritual,
priesthood, and Sabbath purity—then the Glory of God would return to the
Temple. This is the common pattern in moralistic religion: our impurity
supposedly keeps God away. They tried so hard, but the fire never descended.
They must have wondered, “Are we really God’s favorite and chosen people?”
(This is a common question for all of us in early-stage religion.)
Knowledge of this history now gives new and even more
meaning to what we call the Pentecost event (Acts 2:1-13). On that day, the
fire from heaven descended, not on a building, but on people! And all
peoples—not just Jews—were baptized and received the Spirit (Acts 2:38-41).
Paul understood this and spent much of his life drawing out the immense
consequences. In that moment, Christianity began to see itself as a universal
rather than a tribal or regional religion, which is why they very soon called
themselves “catholic” (universal) as early as the year 108 AD. Paul loved to say,
“You are the Temple!” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17, 2 Corinthians 6:16, Ephesians
2:21-22), and of course this morphs into his entire doctrine of corporate
humanity as the very Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-30).
References:
[1] See N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God
(Fortress Press: 2013), two-book fourth volume in his series Christian Origins
and the Question of God.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, an unpublished talk, February
2015 at the Center for Action and Contemplation.
Universal Dignity in a
Debauched Empire
Paul offers a theological and ontological foundation for
human dignity and human flourishing that is inherent, universal, and
indestructible by any evaluation of race, religion, gender, sexuality,
nationality, class, education, or social position. He brings a deep new sense
of the dignity of every human person, which of course is a social and political
revolution and reveals the power of healthy religion. This is unheard of in
history up to then—and unrealized even now!
The Acts account of Pentecost goes out of its way to
emphasize that people from all over the world heard the Galileans speaking in
the pilgrims’ individual languages after the descent of heavenly fire and wind
(Acts 2:4-11). At least seventeen nations or groups are listed and “about three
thousand persons” from these disparate groups were baptized and received the
Holy Spirit that day (Acts 2:38-41). The message is clear: The Spirit of God is
clearly and completely democratic, unmerited, and inclusive.
One of the reasons Paul’s teachings had so much influence in
Asia Minor was that he restored human dignity at a time when perhaps four out
of five people were slaves, women were considered the property of men, temple
prostitution was a form of worship, and oppression and wholesale injustice
toward the poor and the outsider were the universal norm. Into this corrupt and
corrupting empire Paul shouts, “One and the same Spirit was given to us all to
drink!” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Paul levels the playing field: “You, all of you,
are sons and daughters of God, now clothed in Christ, where there is no
distinction between male or female, Greek or Jew, slave or free, but all of you
are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26-28).
This is quite amazing, considering the culture at the time! In
Paul’s estimation, the old world was forever gone and the new world was born.
This was impossible and frightening to some people, but utterly attractive and
hopeful to the 95% who had little dignity or power in the societies of that
time. Recent sociological studies say this explains Paul’s success in a
relatively short time, apart from attributing it to the Holy Spirit. Who does
not want to be told they are worthy and good?
No longer was the human body a cheap thing, degraded by
slavery and abuse. Paul is saying, “You are the very temple of God.” This
affirmation of dignity began to turn the whole Roman Empire around. When you
read Paul’s teaching on sexuality (2 Corinthians 6:14-18), it really isn’t the
moralistic purity code many of us were given. Paul is saying that your body has
dignity, so you have a right to demand respect and give respect! Because of
this understanding, a woman could claim her own dignity and refuse to give her
body away to every man who wanted it. (This probably explains the early
admiration of virginity in Christian circles.) A man was told to respect and
take responsibility for his body-temple.
This is a positive and dignifying message, not a
finger-shaking, moralistic one. It gives the ego appropriate and much needed
boundaries. Unfortunately, this morphed into guilt-based boundaries and
prohibitions, which seems to happen in most early-stage religion, since humans
carry their natural shame in their bodies. We do not see this in either Jesus
or Paul, even though we have projected it onto them.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, an unpublished talk, February
2015 at the Center for Action and Contemplation.
Paul as Nondual
Teacher
Meeting the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus changed
everything for Paul. He experienced the great paradox that the crucified Jesus
was in fact alive! And he, a “sinner,” was in fact chosen and beloved. This
pushed Paul from the usual either/or, dualistic thinking to both/and, mystical
thinking.
Not only did Paul’s way of thinking change, his way of being
in the world was also transformed. Suddenly the persecutor—and possibly
murderer—of Christians is the “chosen vessel” of Christ, chosen and sent “to
carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel” (Acts
9:15). This overcomes the often artificial line between perfectly good and
totally bad, between evil and virtue, which he believes cannot be resolved
merely by obeying laws (see Romans 7). The paradox has been overcome in Paul’s
very person. He now knows that he is both sinner and saint, as we too must
trust. Once the conflict has been overcome in you, and you realize you are a
living paradox and so is everyone else, you begin to see life in a truly
spiritual and compassionate way, which demands that you let go of your too easy
dualisms.
Paul often presents two seemingly opposing ideas, such as
weakness and strength, flesh and spirit, law and grace, faith and works, Jew
and Greek, male and female. Our normal, dualistic thinking usually wraps itself
fully around one side and then fully dismisses the other—thinking this is
truth—when it is much more just a need for control or righteousness. Like
Jesus, Paul invites you to wrestle with the paradox. If you stay with him in
the full text, you’ll see he usually comes to a reconciliation on a higher
level, beyond the conflict that he himself first illustrates. Many readers just
stay with the initial dualistic distinction he makes and then dislike Paul. It
seems you must first seek an often dualistic clarity about the tension—but then
grace takes you to a higher level of resolution instead of just choosing
sides. Some of us call this “third way”
thinking—beyond the usual fight or flight responses.
The dialectic that we probably struggle with the most is the
one Paul creates between flesh and spirit. I don’t think Paul ever intended for
people to feel that their bodies are bad; he was not a Platonist. After all,
God took on a human body in Jesus! Paul does not use the word soma, which
literally means “body.” I think what Paul means by sarx is the trapped self,
the small self, the partial self, or what Thomas Merton called the false self. Basically, spirit is the whole self, the Christ self that we were born into and
yet must re-discover. The problem is not between body and spirit; it’s between
part and whole. Every time Paul uses the word flesh, just replace it with the
word ego, and you will be much closer to his point. Your spiritual self is your
whole and True Self, which includes your body; it is not your self apart from
your body. We are not angels, we are embodied human beings.
References:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Jesus as Liberator/Paul as
Liberator (CAC: 2009), MP3 download;
St. Paul: The Misunderstood Mystic (CAC: 2014), CD, MP3
download;
Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation, disc 4
(Franciscan Media: 2012), CD; and
A New Way of Seeing . . . A New Way of Being: Jesus and Paul
(CAC: 2007), CD, MP3 download.
Life as Participation
After conversion, you don’t look out at reality; you look
out from reality. In other words, God is not “out there”: you are in God and
God is in you. You are in the middle of Reality! You’re a part of it. It’s a
mystery of participation. After his conversion experience, Paul is obsessed
with the idea that “I’m participating in something that’s bigger than me.” In
fact, he uses the phrase “in Christ” 164 times to describe this organic unity
and participation in Christ. “I live no longer, not I; but Christ lives in me”
(Galatians 2:20). “In Christ” is his code phrase for this new participatory
life.
This is a completely different experience of life. I don’t
have to fully write my private story. It’s being written with me and in me. I
am already a character on the stage. I am being used, I am being chosen, I am
being led. After conversion, you will know that your life is not about you; you
are about life. You are about God. You’re an instance of both the agony and the
ecstasy of God that is happening inside of you, and all you can do is say yes
to it. After transformation, it’s not about doing it right; it’s about being in
right relationship. It’s not about being correct; it’s about being connected.
After conversion, you don’t experience self-consciousness so
much as what the mystics call pure consciousness. Self-consciousness implies a
dualistic split, with me over here thinking about that over there. The mind
remains dualistic until you have a mystical experience. Then the subject/object
split is overcome. You can’t maintain it forever, but you’ll know it once in a
while, and you’ll never be satisfied with anything less. In unitive experience,
you’re freed from the burden of self-consciousness; you are living in, through,
and with another. That’s the same as the experience of truly being in love.
Falling and being in love, like unitive experience, cannot be sustained at the
ecstatic level, but it can be touched upon and then integrated within the rest
of your life.
True union does not absorb distinctions, but actually
intensifies them. The more one gives one’s self in creative union with another,
the more one becomes one’s self. This is mirrored in the Trinity: perfect
giving and perfect receiving between three who are all still completely
themselves. The more one becomes one’s True Self, the more capable one is of
not overprotecting the boundaries of one’s false self. You have nothing to
protect after transformation, and that’s the great freedom and the great
happiness we see in converted people. There’s no “little richard” here that I
need to protect because it’s precisely that little richard that got in the way
and has now passed away—with no noticeable losses. Or as Paul puts it, “Because
of Christ, I now consider my former advantages as disadvantages . . . all of it
is mere rubbish if only I can have a place in him” (Philippians 3:7-8).
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as
Participation, discs 1 and 2, (Franciscan Media: 2012), CD.
The Body of Christ
Paul had a concrete missionary strategy of building living
communities able to produce a visible and believable message. Yet for centuries
we’ve interpreted his message as if he is speaking about individuals being
privately “saved.” This has made Paul seem more like a mere moralist than the
mystic he is. Mystics tend to see things in wholes rather than getting
preoccupied with the parts.
Paul believes that corporate evil can only be overcome or
confronted with corporate good. He uses primitive yet powerful words for the
negative side of corporations, institutions, and nations: he calls them
“thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers” (Colossians 1:16). These are
not “bad angels” as much as collective attitudes that are almost impossible to
break. Because they are so widely shared as mass consciousness—the way we’re
programmed to think—they no longer look like evil and are hard to resist.
Murder is bad, but war is good; greedy people are bad, but capitalism is going
to save the world; ambition and pride are supposedly major sins, but not in the
good ol’ USA. Do you see the problem?
I’ve never heard a single sermon my entire life on the tenth
commandment—“Thou shalt not covet . . . anything that is thy neighbor’s”
(Exodus 20:17)—because coveting goods is the only game in town now. It’s called
capitalism and consumerism! In Paul’s thinking, those big cultural blind spots
can only be overcome by a group of people living and affirming and supporting
one another in an alternative lifestyle. Smaller groups like the Quakers,
Amish, Mennonites, and some Catholic religious orders were able to create
actual alternative cultures.
For Paul, community is the living organism that communicates
the Gospel message. Paul, like Jesus, wants to change culture here, not just
send people away to a far-off heaven later! If Christ’s cosmic message doesn’t
take form in a concrete group of people, then, as far as Paul is concerned, it
is an unbelievable message. An autonomous Christian is as impossible as an
independent arm or leg. Arms and legs exist only as parts. No single one of us
is the whole Christ, and “the eye cannot say to the hand, I do not need you” (I
Corinthians 12:21). Believers exist as parts of the whole, the Body of Christ.
Their very existence is an objective, shared state that Paul calls love or living
“in Christ.” When Paul says, “without love I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2),
he implies that he is inside of another Being who is Love.
Paul sees what we will eventually call the “communion of
saints” (by the fifth and sixth centuries) as an organism that is very alive,
real, and operative in this world. I like to call it an “energy field” created
by all those who share in the various parts of Christ. “Salvation” is thus
something we can participate in right here and now. When Paul addresses his letters
to “the saints,” he is clearly not speaking of our later idea of canonized
saints, but of those who make up his living communities and who are
participating in this shared life of love in this world.
Paul does not make heroes of individuals, but it is
precisely as members of the Body that they “shine like stars” as “perfect
children of God among a deceitful and underhanded brood” (Philippians 2:15).
Paul sees his small communities as an adequate “leaven” by which God will
eventually change the whole debauched Roman Empire (Paul got the word “yeast”
or “leaven” from Jesus, see Matthew 13:33). Talk about patience and confidence!
References:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as
Participation, disc 9 (Franciscan Media: 2012), CD; and
St. Paul: The Misunderstood Mystic (CAC: 2014), CD, MP3
download.
SUMMER BUILDING UPDATE
This article is taken from the Weekly Blog by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Baltimore. You can find the original of the blog here
We are approaching the 70-day countdown to our new building’s completion. Anyone who has been around our campus recently can see for themselves the amazing progress we’re making. Here’s a brief wrap up of where we are at this point.
The construction team has been working off of a day-to-day time-line from the first. This week some of our staff put together a similar time-line for our “move-in.” It begins on day “50,” Friday, July 21 and runs through our opening day, September 10. There is a dizzying amount of details to be organized and undertaken: installations for tech, lights, sound; liturgical and musical rehearsals; new procedures for ministers and staff; the list goes on and on. Obviously all of that can easily become overwhelming. But anticipating and scheduling them makes it more manageable (at least that’s what we’re telling ourselves).
As we move into our new spaces, more of our old space opens up for new uses. The most common question we get is “what are you going to do with the old church?” At some point this summer the pews will be removed and the space re-carpeted (the current carpet has been in place since the 80’s). The majority of this space will be a flexible, multi-purpose room we’ll use for the Time Traveler’s program, as well as our middle school and high school programs. We’re going to be calling it The Theatre. A portion of this space will also be carved out to form a Chapel for daily Mass, confessions, and a place of quiet prayer throughout the weekend.
The current Café-Pavilion will serve our 4th and 5th graders on Sunday mornings and be used during the week as an extension of our overcrowded office space. We’re calling it The Pavilion.
Our Sunday morning kids programs will take place in its current location in the Children’s Wing, the back section of which will be reserved for little kids. Kidzone and All Stars will be housed in this area we are collectively calling All Stars.
Other names to note: the new café will be The Vision Café, the new lobby will be called the Concourse, and the old lobby will be called the East Lobby. The new corridor between the two will be called the Glass Link. Still to be figured out this summer, how to arrange and use these spaces.
All this planning comes to an end, ready or not, on September 8, when Archbishop Lori will be dedicating the church and the altar. While this formal ceremony will be invitation only, plans are being made to live stream it. Meanwhile, everyone is invited to join us on Sunday, September 10 when we’ll be celebrating our first ever Masses in the new space and hosting a parish festival with food and fun and guided tours. Mark your calendars now.
Faith in the Old Testament
This week our article from the Thinking Faith website is a study of those characters in the Old Testament who might be considered to be ‘models of faith’. Contained within these narratives of personal relationships with God are valuable lessons that can shape our own responses to God and to the gift of faith. But, as Nicholas King SJ warns us, ‘Old Testament faith is no easy matter.’ The original article can be found here
We have been invited by the Pope to make this a ‘Year of Faith’, as a preparation for refreshing our work of spreading the gospel. It seems good, therefore, to take a look at what the Old Testament has to tell us about faith. It may be as well to face two common misunderstandings at the outset.
The first of these frequent errors is the notion that ‘faith’ is a matter of believing lots of impossible propositions, a series of sentences that the Church has drawn up to separate the wheat from the chaff, or the men from the boys, so that if you can tick all the boxes then you fit the mould of ‘Catholic’. That is not what the Bible understands by ‘faith’, however. A better model is that of a relationship, joyfully proclaimed, though sometimes uncomfortable to live, with the Loving Mystery, the Creator of the universe, to whom we give the deceptively simple name of ‘God’.
The second regular misapprehension is that the God of the Old Testament is an angry and violent deity, whom no rational being could possibly worship. Those who maintain this error have not troubled to sit down and read through the Old Testament (admittedly it is a bit long, and in places far from easy reading).
A further difficulty is that there is no Old Testament word for ‘faith’. The nearest word for it comes from the Hebrew root ’aman, which gives us the word ‘Amen’, meaning something like ‘trustworthy’ or ‘reliable’, and which produces a noun ’emeth, meaning ‘firmness’ or ‘constancy’ or ‘faithfulness’ or ‘truth’, and a host of other meanings that belong in that area. That is what to look for in people who have this quality that the New Testament will call ‘faith’.
Old Testament models of faith
So it seems that the best way of looking at ‘faith’ in what we call the ‘Old Testament’ (though Jewish friends make the challenging point that it is neither a testament nor old), might be to examine the behaviour of those who are thought to have faith; we shall take just three instances.
1. Abraham
The prime example of such a one is the figure of Abraham, who in Genesis 12:1-3, and at the age of 75, no less, is abruptly told by God, ‘Go from your land and from your relatives, and from your father’s house, to the land that I shall show you’. Then the text goes into poetry, as the Lord continues,
‘And I shall make you into a great nation, and I shall bless you,
I shall make your name great, and it shall be a blessing.
I shall bless those who bless you
And curse those who curse you,
And all the clans of the earth shall be blessed because of you’.
We are then dumbfounded as the narrator continues, ‘and Abram went, as YHWH had spoken to him’. There follows a series of adventures, some edifying, some less so, which you will do well to read in Genesis 12-24, and watch what it means to be an archetypal ‘person of faith’. For Abram (or Abraham, as he later becomes) now undergoes a series of rather alarming tests, which he more or less passes. However, he still, three chapters later, has no offspring, and in chapter 15 he raises the matter with God. God’s response is ‘“look, please, at the heavens, and count the stars, if you can count them.” And he said to him, “So shall your offspring be”.’ Then we hear Abram’s response, of which St Paul will later make a good deal: ‘And he put his trust in YHWH, and he reckoned it to him as an act of righteousness’. The point here is that, against all the odds, Abraham, as he will be finally named in Genesis 17:5, has a sufficiently profound relationship with God to trust what he has been told. We are invited to read and reflect, and then imitate.
The climax of Abraham’s faith journey comes in Genesis 22, the most chilling story in the entire Bible. Here he is a good deal more than a hundred years old (for Isaac has grown up, and his father was a centenarian when he was conceived), and to our bafflement God tells him (22:2), ‘Take, please, your son, your beloved, whom you love, Isaac, and go [this is the same Hebrew command as God used when he set off on his journey back in chapter 12] to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a sacrifice’. We watch in pain and incomprehension as Abraham obeys blindly; we listen to Isaac’s innocent question, ‘where is the sheep for the sacrifice?’ Abraham replies, and our fears are not one whit allayed, ‘God will look to it, my son’. With supreme artistry, the narrator places the neutral line, ‘and the two of them walked on together’ on either side of this frightening dialogue, and the very neutrality of it adds to the emotional content of the story. Now it turns out that Abraham was right to believe that God ‘will look to it’, and Isaac’s life is spared; but his faith was exercised at a price. The attentive reader will notice that Sarah, the boy’s mother, is not mentioned in the whole story (indeed the very next thing that she does is to die – 23:2), while Isaac never speaks to his father again. Old Testament faith is no easy matter.
2. David
Then there is David, a complex and ambiguous figure, about whom some robust stories are told between 1 Samuel 16 and 1 Kings 2 (you could do worse than read through these stories, if you want to see how faith works out in this extraordinary man’s life). His faith emerges in what he does, and in what happens to him. For example, when Saul’s servants are trying to persuade their king to make use of David’s musical gifts to heal Saul, they claim that ‘the Lord is with him’ (1 Samuel 16:18). We hear it on his own lips, as he asks Saul for the privilege of taking on Goliath in single combat: ‘the Lord, who delivered me from the power of the lion and the bear, will deliver me also from the power of this Philistine’; indeed, this fact of the Lord’s presence to David becomes the grounds for Saul’s hatred of him (1 Samuel 18:28-29).
God, normally named as ‘YHWH’ in these tales, is always there in the background, and David takes it as a matter of course that he should consult God before going out on campaign (23:4; cf 2 Samuel 2:1; 5:19, 23). It is a part of David’s piety that he will not slay the ‘Lord’s Anointed’ when he has the opportunity (24:7; 26:9-11, 23-24; cf 2 Samuel 1:14), and that he sees the gift of Abigail as God’s doing (25:32). When David’s camp is raided by Amalekites, and all the wives and children are captured, the narrator reports that ‘David proved himself strong in the Lord’, which is sometimes translated as ‘with renewed trust in the Lord’ (30:6). Moreover, when some of David’s troops are reluctant to distribute their spoils with those who did not go out to battle with them against the Amalekites, it is to generosity that he appeals in overruling them (30:23 - ‘what the Lord has given us’). At the same time he is also aware that the Lord represents a rather alarming power, and so, after the frightening death of Uzziah, the Ark of the Covenant is not brought into the City of David, but to the house of Obed-Edom the Hittite (2 Samuel 6:10); when he reverses this decision, David leaps and dances before the Lord as the Ark is after all brought into his city, to the undisguised contempt of his wife (6:14-22).
David also has to be corrected by God, however, once he has become king: the first occasion is when David had the bright idea of building a Temple for his deity, just like any other minor Near Eastern potentate, and has to be given a lesson on the meaning of ‘God’s House’, and, for that matter, of the ‘house of David’ (7:1-28). The second occasion is that of his disgraceful behaviour with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, when David had failed to do what kings are supposed to do and lead his army out on campaign. Instead he stays at home and commits adultery and murder, until the prophet Nathan is sent to speak to him (11:1-12-25), and David, quite unlike another minor Near Eastern potentate, is heard to say, ‘I have sinned with regard to YHWH’ (12:13). The third occasion is when, once again just like a megalomaniac ruler, he holds a census of Israel and Judah, against Joab’s advice and in arrogance against the Lord (2 Samuel 24:1-17); his repentance is once more an example to us all.
And it becomes more complex still, for after Absalom’s rebellion, in which David was certainly not without fault, David does not permit the Ark of the Covenant to come with him, and makes this expression of faith: ‘return the Ark of God to the City; if I find favour in the eyes of YHWH, he will bring me back, and will make me see it and its dwelling-place. And if he says “I am not pleased with you”, I am ready: let him do with me as it is good in his eyes’.(2 Samuel 15:25-26). It does not matter here whether David actually said these words. The point, so far as we are concerned, is the model of faith that this complex character puts before us: that he accepts, in advance and unconditionally, whatever God will do to him.
Finally the Court Historian brings the story of David (almost) to an end by placing a wonderful hymn of gratitude on David’s lips, to the God who has guided him all the way (though it delicately overlooks the sins that he has committed). When 2 Kings begins, David is almost at death’s door, and we have simply the intrigues by Bathsheba and Nathan to make sure that Solomon gets onto the throne. David’s final speech to his wife contains an oath by God: ‘as the Lord lives, who has rescued me from all trouble’ (1 Kings 1:29). Finally, in chapter 2, David is given a long speech, reminding Solomon above all that, ‘you are to keep the commands of YHWH your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his ordinances and decrees’. What we are invited to do is to take the whole life of this eminently human king and see how his faith in God informs every moment of his existence, even when he goes so spectacularly wrong. After that we can try to live as he did, always in the presence of God.
3. The Psalmist
Then there are the Psalms. I have headed this section, conventionally enough, ‘the Psalmist’, but there is no such person. Or, rather, there are too many. It used to be conventional to ascribe all the psalms to David: in the Deuteronomic History there is a suggestion that he was good at playing the harp (1 Samuel 16:16-18 &c), and many of the psalms have headings suggesting that David wrote them; but that some of those psalms simply cannot have been written as early as David’s life-time does not matter. The Book of Psalms has been organised carefully to present us with Israel’s faith, expressed in the songs of many different times; and if you want to know what the community gathered round the Temple, and the community that later survived the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, thought about their God, then listen thoughtfully and reflectively to these songs.
It may help you to know that the most common verb in the Psalms is ‘sing’, often in the imperative mood; and that has two implications. First of all, the singing is directed ‘upwards’, so to say, to Israel’s God; but, secondly, singing is also ‘sideways’, a community activity, something that all Israel does together. The songs come in many different kinds, and scholars have named many categories of psalm: there are laments, on the lips of an individual or the entire community; there are songs of thanksgiving or confidence (perhaps the loveliest and best-known of these is Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’), which often function as parts of the individual or community laments. Then there are hymns, or ‘psalms of praise’, songs of Zion, songs of God’s kingship, and ‘royal psalms’, which reflect on the relationship between God and the king, who represents the entire nation of Israel. There are ‘Wisdom psalms’ (a good example would be 119, the longest psalm of all), and ‘historical psalms’, which sing of how God has acted in Israel’s history, such as Psalm 106. There are many other kinds; but I hope that I have said enough here to encourage you to read them, and not switch off next time you are in church and the lector tells you ‘The response to the psalm is “Will ye no come back again?”’, or something like that. You will find in this collection of hymns something for your every mood, even anger against God: ‘How long, O Lord, how long?’ the poet sometimes angrily asks, just as the Book of Job does. (Job is another interesting model of Old Testament faith, but we have no space here to consider him. Read the book, instead).
Hineni: the daring response of Old Testament Faith
Finally, in this consideration of ‘Faith in the Old Testament’ as a background for our living out of the Year of Faith, I want to draw your attention to a single Hebrew word. It is hineni, which means, literally, ‘here I am’ or ‘behold, it’s me’. Sometimes it gets translated as ‘Ready!’; and, as that translation suggests, it is found on the lips of our models of Old Testament faith. You and I are therefore encouraged to have it on our lips when the call comes from the God of our faith. Most of the times when it is used in the Old Testament, I have to say, it is on God’s lips, often with more than a hint of menace: ‘look what I am about to do to the Amalekites’. Just occasionally, however, it is on the lips of human beings. The first time is in Genesis 22, which we looked at earlier, the story of Abraham agreeing to offer Isaac in sacrifice. Abraham says ‘hineni’ three times in the course of the story: first when God calls him (22:1); second, poignantly, when Isaac addresses him to ask where is the lamb for sacrifice (22:7 – and check how it is done into English in your favourite version); and thirdly, when the angel of the Lord addresses him from heaven (22:11) to stop him committing the murder.
So we might need to pause and reflect before saying ‘hineni’, but still go on to do it. The next time we hear it on human lips is when Jacob sends Joseph to go and visit his brothers (Genesis 37:13), who are looking after their father’s flocks in Shechem, and Joseph (who has enormously irritated his brothers by his dreams) is expressing his readiness to go and visit them. The upshot, of course, is that they kidnap him, but (thanks to the interventions of Reuben and Judah) do not kill him, and he ends up in Egypt, eventually to be reunited with them and with his father. But this happy ending comes only after God has led him through many adventures; and the next time a human utters the word is at Genesis 46:2, when God speaks to poor old Jacob, to encourage him to go down to Egypt and be reunited with Joseph.
The next time we hear the word, it is on the lips of Moses (Exodus 3:4), who, at this stage of his existence is a murderer on the run. He is looking after his father-in-law’s sheep, the burning bush addresses him and Moses responds, ‘hineni’. It is possible that he later came to regret this utterance of faith, for it is the start of his dangerous and demanding vocation to be the liberator appointed by God for Israel. There is not space here to go through all the unpleasant adventures, including accusations of genocide from the very people that he had liberated, but you will not waste your time if you read through from this point in the Book of Exodus to the death of Moses, far away in Deuteronomy 34:5. You may find yourself shifting nervously as you read, but be encouraged, for, in the end, there is no other way to go.
Samuel is the next human being to speak the word: he three times interrupts old Eli’s sleep, by saying to him, ‘hineni’, under the pardonable supposition that the priest had summoned him (1 Samuel 3:4, 6-8). Eli tells him that the next time, he is to say, ‘Speak, YHWH, for your servant is listening’. That is a phrase that should be on our lips, though we need to reflect on the lifetime of exigent service which Samuel now starts, involving him in difficult and demanding politics at the very highest level, even beyond the grave (see the compelling tale of the witch of Endor, and especially 1 Samuel 28:15). So that must be our response in faith; but it will not be an easy ride.
The next person to say ‘hineni’ in response to God’s invitation is King David himself (2 Samuel 15:26), indicating that he is ready to accept whatever punishment God may see fit to inflict, after Absalom’s rebellion. In that sense he is a model for us.
So also is the prophet Isaiah, the last person we shall look at who is unwise enough to say ‘hineni’. We find this in chapter 6 of Isaiah, the account of his original vision in the Temple ‘in the year when King Uzziah died’, when he has a vision of the presence of God and hears the seraphim (‘burning ones’) crying ‘Holy, holy, holy’ to each other. This brings him to the realisation that he is above his pay-grade, and he cries, ‘Woe is me – for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips’ (6:5); but this does not last long, for one of the ‘burning ones’ brings a burning coal and touches his lips with it. At that point, he hears God asking (6:8), ‘whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’, in response to which the prophet bounces up and down like an excited schoolboy and our hearts warm to him as he exclaims, ‘Hineni – send me!’. So starts the long and painful adventure of his career as a prophet.
So we should, in this Year of Faith, be cautious before saying ‘hineni’; nevertheless, if we are to make sense of our lives, that is what we are to do. Once you have heard the Lord’s invitation, ‘hineni’ is the only possible response. But, you have been warned, it will be a rough ride.
Conclusion: the fidelity of God
However, if that were the whole truth, what on earth would be the point? For the fact is that what the Old Testament teaches us is that faith is not something that we can do for ourselves, but, as the old Penny Catechism taught us, is ‘a gift of God’. What grounds the faith to which we are invited is nothing other than the undying, unconditional fidelity of God, for whose ‘steadfast love’ the word ’emeth, with which we started, was designed. It is God who is faithful, and therefore who evokes faith in us. This is what is in play at Exodus 19:5, when God tells Moses that, ‘if you really listen to my voice, and keep my covenant, you shall be my personal possession, among all the peoples’. Israel’s role (and therefore our role) is to remember what God has done, and this of course is what happens at the Passover Seder (see Exodus 13:3-16) and at the covenant renewal ceremony, when Israel declares before God, in beautifully alliterative Hebrew, ‘a wandering Aramean was my father’ (Deuteronomy 26:5). That is what Israel’s hymn-book sought to do, to remind God’s people of what God had done (and of the inevitably asymmetric relationship between YHWH and the community of Israel). For that, in the end, is what faith is in the Old Testament, and what we are invited to deepen in the course of this year: it is a relationship between God and the community that gathers round its God. That relationship is what makes Israel what it is; that relationship is what gives the Church its unique identity.
Nicholas King SJ is a tutor in Biblical Studies at Campion Hall, University of Oxford.
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