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
ssm77097@bigpond.com
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.
Weekday Masses 29th August – 2nd September, 2017
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
12noon Devonport
Saturday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Next Weekend 2nd & 3rd September 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 2nd & 3rd September, 2017
Devonport:
Ulverstone:
Penguin:
Latrobe:
Port Sorell:
Readers: G Bellchambers, G Duff; Ministers of Communion: P Anderson; Cleaners/Flowers/Prep: V Youd
PREGO REFLECTION:
As I come to my place of prayer, I ask the Holy Spirit to
help me be attentive to the encounter with the Lord in this Gospel.
I read this
familiar text very slowly.
Perhaps there is something striking me afresh or
touching me in some new way.
I pause often, allowing the words to seep into my
heart.
It may help to try to enter into the scene imaginatively by placing
myself in it.
But however I approach the text, I will have to face the question
sooner or later: ‘Who do you say I am?’ The disciples were confronted with it
in Caesarea Philippi; I myself in my own particular place and time. How does
this question sound to me?
In what tone of voice is it asked?
How have I
answered it in the past?
How would I like to respond now?
And in the future …?
Again, I ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen me.
Jesus called Simon Peter ‘happy’
because the truth he spoke was revealed to him from the Father.
I might like to
consider times when I have felt happy – or ‘blessed’ – through being close to
the truth ... even, perhaps, where this has involved some personal cost.
When
ready, I end my prayer in the company of the Lord, being attentive to him and
paying attention to anything I feel he might be saying to me.
I conclude with a
slow Our Father …
Readings next week – Twenty-Second Sunday
in Ordinary Time Year A
First Reading: Jeremiah 20:7-9
Second Reading: Romans 12:1-2
Gospel:
Matthew 16:21-27
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Rex Bates, Victoria Webb, Vern
Cazaly, Dawn Stevens, & …
May they rest in peace
Weekly
Ramblings
MacKillop Hill
Coffee Shoppe 10.30 – 12 noon
NB. Change of day and date - Tuesday 29th August
No booking necessary. Ph. 6428 3095 Email: mackillophill.forth@sosj.org.au
MT ST. VINCENT AUXILIARY
The Auxiliary will be holding a Cake and Craft stall at Mt. St Vincent Home on Wednesday 30th August 9.00am start.
FOOTY TICKETS: Round 22 (18th August) footy margin 3 – Winners; L Tippett, J Hyde, D&A Smith
Please Note: Tickets will not be sold this weekend as the next round is a Bye
BINGO - Thursday Nights
OLOL Hall, Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers for Thursday 31st August – Tony Ryan & Alan Luxton.
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
THE VERBUM DOMINI BIBLICAL & CATECHETICAL
INSTITUTE’S
next module of the Sacraments course will be on the biblical foundations of the
Eucharist. When: Saturday 9th September, 9am-2.30pm. Where: Pastoral Centre,
Church of the Apostles, 44 Margaret St, Launceston. Cost: FREE. Register: christine.wood@aohtas.org.au
or 6208-6236. Come even if you missed the first module. TCEO staff and teachers
received professional learning credits for attendance. Bring your bible and
lunch. Morning tea provided. All welcome.
JOHN WALLIS MEMORIAL LECTURE 2017 – delivered by Fr Frank Moloney SDB
– Guilford Young College, Hobart Campus. Thursday 21st September
2017 at 7:00pm. Lecture followed by supper. Donation $10 students/card holders
$5. RSVP by Thursday 14th September 2017 Eva Dunn 0417734503
eva.dunn@gmail.com
GRIEF TO GRACE – HEALING THE
WOUNDS OF ABUSE – is
a spiritual retreat for anyone who has suffered degradation or violation
through physical, emotional, sexual or spiritual abuse. The retreat will be
held April 8th – 13th 2018. To request an application contact Anne by emailing info@grieftograceaus.org.au
or phone 0407704539. For more information visit www.grieftograce.org
THE POWER OF RITUAL
This is an article by Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. The original article can be found here
I don’t always find it easy to pray. Often I’m over-tired, distracted, caught-up in tasks, pressured by work, short on time, lacking the appetite for prayer, or more strongly drawn to do something else. But I do pray daily; despite the fact that I often don’t want to and despite the fact that many times prayer can be boring and uninteresting. I pray daily because I’m committed to a number of rituals for prayer, the office of the Church, lauds and vespers, the Eucharist, and daily meditation.
And these rituals serve me well. They hold me, keep me steady, and keep me praying regularly even when, many times, I don’t feel like praying. That’s the power of ritual. If I only prayed when I felt like it, I wouldn’t pray very regularly.
Ritual practice keeps us doing what we should be doing (praying, working, being at table with our families, being polite) even when our feelings aren’t always onside. We need to do certain things not because we always feel like doing them, but because it’s right to do them.
And this is true for many areas of our lives, not just for prayer. Take, for example, the social rituals of propriety and good manners that we lean on each day. Our heart isn’t always in the greetings or the expressions of love, appreciation, and gratitude that we give to each other each day. We greet each other, we say goodbye to each other, we express love for each other, and we express gratitude to each other through a number of social formulae, ritual words: Good morning! Good to see you! Have a great day! Have a great evening! Sleep well! Nice meeting you! Nice to work with you! I love you! Thank you!
We say these things to each other daily, even though we have to admit that there are times, many times, when these expressions appear to be purely formal and seem not at all honest to how we are feeling at that time. Yet we say them and they are true in that they express what lies in our hearts at a deeper level than our more momentary and ephemeral feelings of distraction, irritation, disappointment, or anger. Moreover these words hold us in civility, in good manners, in graciousness, in neighborliness, in respect, and in love despite the fluctuations in our energy, mood, and feelings. Our energy, mood, and feelings, at any given moment, are not a true indication of what’s in our hearts, as all of us know and frequently need to apologize for. Who of us has not at some time been upset and bitter towards someone who we love deeply? The deep truth is that we love that person, but that’s not what we’re feeling at the moment.
If we only expressed affection, love, and gratitude at those times when our feelings were completely onside, we wouldn’t express these very often. Thank God for the ordinary, social rituals which hold us in love, affection, graciousness, civility, and good manners at those times when our feelings are out of sorts with our truer selves. These rituals, like a sturdy container, hold us safe until the good feelings return.
Today, in too many areas of life, we no longer understand ritual. That leaves us trying to live our lives by our feelings; not that feelings are bad, but rather that they come upon us as wild, unbidden guests. Iris Murdoch asserts that our world can change in fifteen seconds because we can fall in love in fifteen seconds. But we can also fall out of love in fifteen seconds! Feelings work that way! And so we cannot sustain love, marriage, family, friendship, collegial relationships, and neighborliness by feelings. We need help. Rituals can help sustain our relationships beyond feelings.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer used to give this instruction to a couple when he was officiating at their wedding. He would tell them: Today you are in love and you believe that your love can sustain your marriage. But it can’t. However your marriage can sustain your love. Marriage is a not just a sacrament, it’s also a ritual container.
Ritual not only can help sustain a marriage, it can also help sustain our prayer lives, our civility, our manners, our graciousness, our humor, our gratitude, and our balance in life. Be wary of anyone who in the name of psychology, love, or spirituality tells you that ritual is empty and you must rely on your energy, mood, and feelings as your guiding compass. They won’t carry you far.
Daniel Berrigan once wrote: Don’t travel with anyone who expects you to be interesting all the time. On a long journey there are bound to be some boring stretches. John of the Cross echoes this when talking about prayer. He tells us that, during our generative years, one of the biggest problems we will face daily in our prayer is simple boredom.
And so we can be sure our feelings won’t sustain us, but ritual practices can.
Franciscan Spirituality: Week 2
Joy
Despite many legitimate reasons for discouragement, Francis
of Assisi (1181-1226) was known as a man of deep and abiding joy. He knew that
after all was done and undone, he was still “the herald of the Great King.” Francis
told his friars that it was their vocation as God’s minstrels “to move people’s
hearts and lift them up to spiritual joy.” [1] They needed no other
justification for their life or ministry.
There Is Nothing to
Regret (God Uses Everything in Our Favor)
The Primacy of Love
I like how my long-time friend and fellow Franciscan, John
Quigley, summarizes Franciscan spirituality. He writes:
One Sacred Universe
Learning to See
Inner Authority
For the next few weeks my blog will be introducing readers to our new church facility so that when we move in you feel right at home!
We’ll begin in the “East Lobby.” Where in the world is the East Lobby you might ask? Well, it’s literally east of the new, main lobby, regulars will recognize it as the Old “Great Hall.”
When originally built, about 12 years ago, this space was intended to provide easy access to our kids and student programs, and wide open space for easy traffic flow. Very quickly though, as the parish grew, it started doubling as a video venue, densely clogged with chairs.
Well, the chairs will disappear and we’re giving the place a facelift as we return it to its original purpose. Entering the old front doors and proceeding thru the former main lobby, the East Lobby is where you can check in for all our kids and student programs. And it’s one stop check-in, no matter how many kids you have or what programs they’re in. Information and host ministers will always be available to help you out.
Kids 6 weeks to 4 years go to “ALL STARS,” in bright and safe new rooms in our kid’s wing. “Quest” is what we’re calling our kids small groups and kindergarten kids to grade 3 will love it. “Quest” will also be located in our kid’s wing. Kids in Grades 4 & 5 now graduate to a new program just for them we’re calling “Ignite.” “Ignite” will meet on Sunday mornings in the old Cafe Vista.
You can learn more about our kids programs, including schedule and times, and you can register online.
Besides “Ignite,” Café Vista, which we’re renaming The Pavilion, will be the place for parish meetings and smaller events.
One of the most frequently asked questions we’ve been asked since announcing we’re building a new church is what are we going to do with the old one. Glad you asked! With some retooling the old church is fast becoming our new Theatre. On Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings its where kids, grades 1-5 can join Time Travelers, our children’s Liturgy of the Word program. Our Middle School Program, Resurrection, will meet there on Sunday evenings, and high school students will gather in the Theatre for “Uprising” on Thursday nights.
More information about all those programs is available on our web site.
We’re also taking a portion of the old church and refashioning it as a Chapel. It will be available for quiet prayer before and after all weekend Masses, it’s where we’ll offer daily Mass during the week and celebrate smaller services too.
You can find the chapel just off the East Lobby.
Three weeks…and counting.
Jesus: Who Do You Think You Are? 2. Rahab, Ruth and Boaz
David M. Neuhaus SJ asks what we can learn from these women, and from the context in which their stories are told, as we continue to pose the question, Jesus: Who Do You Think You Are? The original of this article can be found here
The Gospel of Saint Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus Christ that takes us all the way from Abraham to ‘Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born’ (Matthew 1:16). In this supremely theological composition, Matthew weaves the new, ‘Jesus… who is called the Messiah’, into the fibres of the old, the generations of Israel before Jesus’s arrival. The text is read at Mass just before Christmas, tripping up many a priest who tries to get his tongue around the unfamiliar Hebrew names. However, those names veil some rather stunning surprises.
Among those many surprises, the one that always attracts my attention is the one hidden in the words ‘Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth’ (Matthew 1:5). The genealogy is a predominantly patriarchal affair: fathers having sons, from Abraham at the beginning, to Jacob, the father of Joseph, towards the end of the genealogy. The last surprise is that Jesus will be born of Mary, Joseph’s wife, whereas Joseph will be proclaimed a father who is not really a father by the angel who announces Mary’s pregnancy before Joseph has taken her into his home. The surprise of Mary’s role in the genealogy has been prefigured in the four other women mentioned in the text: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and the wife of Uriah. Each of these women veils a surprise in the unfolding of the generations. Let us examine in more detail the double surprise of Rahab and Ruth.
Rahab the Canaanite appears in chapters 2 and 6 in the Book of Joshua (the Book of Jesus if we are reading our bible in Greek). Her name, ‘wide as a road’, indicates with no small degree of crude humour her profession: a whore. The two men sent by Joshua as spies to Jericho spend the night in her home. Alien men in a prostitute’s house would not normally arouse suspicion. However, the king of Jericho has been warned of their coming and, assuming that the foreign men would be found in Rahab’s house, he orders her to bring them out. She defies the king by protecting the spies and then surprises us even more when she professes her faith: ‘The Lord your God is indeed God in heaven above and on earth below’ (Joshua 2:11). Introduced as a whore, she reminds us now of Lot refusing to deliver up the two angels to the clamouring mob in Sodom, but even more of other saviour women in Israel’s history, both Israelite and foreign: the midwives in Egypt, Shiphrah and Puah, who save the Israelite male children (Exodus 1); Yocheved, Miriam and Pharaoh’s daughter, who save the child Moses (Exodus 2); and Zipporah the Midianite, who saves Moses from God’s wrath (Exodus 4).
Rahab’s faith will save her and her entire family. Jericho is slated for destruction and the Book of Deuteronomy has already informed us of the fate of the cities that the Israelites will conquer in the land: ‘As for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive’ (Deuteronomy 20:16). Therefore the great surprise in Jericho is not that Joshua orders the slaughter of every living thing – ‘The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction’ (Joshua 6:17) – but rather that Rahab and her family are saved: ‘Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live because she hid the messengers we sent’ (Joshua 6:17). Dare we hope that all the townspeople gathered in her home and were saved with her because of her faith, and that nobody died on the day the walls of Jericho fell because they all found refuge in the wideness of her house?
Rahab’s story of faith is only half of the surprise in the Book of Joshua. The other half is revealed in chapter 7, which tells the story of the Israelite Achan’s betrayal. We might have been tempted to believe that God’s election of Israel sets up a permanent and impermeable border between ‘God’s chosen’ and the heathens, but Achan’s story, immediately following Rahab’s, further illustrates that this is far from true. Parallel to the surprise of Rahab’s faith is the sad tale of Achan’s betrayal of faith.
Achan, son of Carmi of the tribe of Judah, an Israelite, takes part in the conquest of Jericho. God’s command to take no booty from Jericho is crystal clear: ‘keep away from the things devoted to destruction, so as not to covet and take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel an object for destruction, bringing trouble upon it. But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the Lord; they shall go into the treasury of the Lord’ (Joshua 6:18-19). Achan steals from God and hides the booty in his tent. His crime will only be unveiled when the Israelites meet defeat in the next round of battle, trying to conquer the town of Ai. Abandoned by God, the Israelites are beaten back and Joshua (Jesus), crying out to God, is informed of the sin that has entered the people through Achan. Achan’s fate is the same as that reserved for Jericho. This sad tale of betrayal is echoed in the Acts of the Apostles (chapter 5) in the tale of Ananias and Sapphira, the first two to die after Pentecost because of their betrayal in stealing from what had been given to the Lord.
The parallel between Rahab and Achan drives home that God seeks fidelity and will not always find it among the ones who claim to be God’s chosen ones. Instead, faith will sometimes radiate from those places least expected, even the house of a Canaanite whore.
It is interesting to note that Matthew is the only biblical writer to tell us that Rahab was the mother-in-law of Ruth. In the Old Testament, they are seemingly unrelated. Ruth is not a whore but a Moabite, a member of a despised people. The Law of Moses states without ambiguity: ‘No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord (…) You shall never promote their welfare or their prosperity as long as you live’ (Deuteronomy 23:3;6). These peoples, purportedly descended from the incestuous relations between Lot and his daughters (Genesis 19:37-38), tried to curse Israel on the way to the land (Numbers 22-24).
Ruth’s story follows the description of the darkness that falls on Israel in the land in the days of the Judges. Sin is everywhere in the last five chapters of the Book of Judges as the people is described as falling into idolatry and civil war, these being perhaps among the most violent chapters in the Bible. The oft-repeated refrain in these chapters also concludes the book: ‘In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes’ (Judges 21:25). The King of Israel, God, who had brought the people out of Egypt into the land of milk and honey, had been brutally booted out of the story by a people living in sin. Whereas they were chosen to proclaim the Kingdom of God by lives lived in faith, their choices had led them far astray.
The Book of Ruth opens with the evocation of the time of the judges. Ruth, the Moabite wife of an Israelite who has died, swears fidelity to her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi, and returns with her after the loss of Naomi’s two sons to their ancestral land of Bethlehem. As they set out, Ruth makes a profession of faith that has immortalised her as an ideal of faith for Jews and Christians: ‘Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God’ (Ruth 1:16). The Moabite woman has not only been admitted to the assembly of the Lord, but she has become a model of faith.
This admittance into the assembly of the Lord despite what the Law states can only make sense if we realise that Bethlehem in the final chapters of the Book of Judges is the very epicentre of the darkness of sin. The priest that initiates the idolatry and the woman whose horrible death will provoke the civil war that rages in Israel are both from Bethlehem. How will God bring light into the world if the people God has chosen to be a light to the nations has chosen darkness instead of light? God needs a new Abraham, who is willing to leave ‘land, kindred and father’s house’ (Genesis 12:1), to open a way for God’s re-entry into history. God finds that new Abraham in Ruth the Moabite, who comes to dark Bethlehem radiating the light of her faith.
In Bethlehem, Ruth will begin a new life, marrying Boaz and becoming the great-grandmother of King David. Matthew tells us that Ruth the Moabite not only receives a new husband to replace Chilion, son of Naomi, but alongside Naomi, she receives a new mother-in-law, Rahab, the Canaanite whore, herself a shining light of faith.
The presence of Rahab and Ruth in the genealogy of Jesus should shock us at first: a whore and a Moabite. As we meditate on these two surprising women of faith during this Advent season, both unexpected radiant lights in the genealogy, let us be less quick to judge those who seem to be outsiders. Light can shine from the most unexpected places and if we let it, it will penetrate our darkness too.
Fr David M. Neuhaus SJ serves as Latin Patriarchal Vicar within the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. He is responsible for Hebrew-speaking Catholics in Israel as well as the Catholic migrant populations. He teaches Holy Scripture at the Latin Patriarchate Seminary and at the Salesian Theological Institute in Jerusalem and also lectures at Yad Ben Zvi.
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
Amen.
Weekday Masses 29th August – 2nd September, 2017
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
12noon Devonport
Saturday: 9:30am Ulverstone
12noon Devonport
Saturday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Next Weekend 2nd & 3rd September 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 2nd & 3rd September, 2017
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: V Riley, A Stegmann, M Stewart; 10:30am: A Hughes, T Barrientos, P Piccolo.
Ministers of Communion: Vigil:
D Peters, M
Heazlewood, T Muir, M Gerrand, P Shelverton, M Kenney
10.30am: F Sly, E Petts, K Hull, S Arrowsmith, S Samarakkody,
R Batepola
Cleaners 1st
September: M.W.C.; 8th September: P & T Douglas
Piety Shop 2nd
September: R McBain; 3rd September: P Piccolo
Ulverstone:
Reader: R Locket Ministers of
Communion: M Mott, M Fennell, J Jones, T Leary;
Cleaners: V
Ferguson, E Cox; Flowers: M Webb; Hospitality:
M McLaren.
Penguin:
Greeters: S Ewing, J Garnsey Commentator: E Nickols; Readers: J Barker, T Clayton;
Ministers of
Communion: S Ewing,
J Garnsey; Liturgy: Pine Rd; Setting Up: A Landers;
Care of Church: G Hills-Eade, T Clayton
Latrobe:
Reader: S Ritchie Minister of Communion: B Ritchie, Z Smith; Procession of
gifts: M
Clarke
Port Sorell:
Readers: G Bellchambers, G Duff; Ministers of Communion: P Anderson; Cleaners/Flowers/Prep: V Youd
Readings this week – Twenty-First Sunday
in Ordinary Time Year A
First Reading: Isaiah 22:19-23
Second Reading: Romans 11:33-36
Gospel:
Matthew 16:13-20
PREGO REFLECTION:
As I come to my place of prayer, I ask the Holy Spirit to
help me be attentive to the encounter with the Lord in this Gospel.
I read this
familiar text very slowly.
Perhaps there is something striking me afresh or
touching me in some new way.
I pause often, allowing the words to seep into my
heart.
It may help to try to enter into the scene imaginatively by placing
myself in it.
But however I approach the text, I will have to face the question
sooner or later: ‘Who do you say I am?’ The disciples were confronted with it
in Caesarea Philippi; I myself in my own particular place and time. How does
this question sound to me?
In what tone of voice is it asked?
How have I
answered it in the past?
How would I like to respond now?
And in the future …?
Again, I ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen me.
Jesus called Simon Peter ‘happy’
because the truth he spoke was revealed to him from the Father.
I might like to
consider times when I have felt happy – or ‘blessed’ – through being close to
the truth ... even, perhaps, where this has involved some personal cost.
When
ready, I end my prayer in the company of the Lord, being attentive to him and
paying attention to anything I feel he might be saying to me.
I conclude with a
slow Our Father …
Readings next week – Twenty-Second Sunday
in Ordinary Time Year A
First Reading: Jeremiah 20:7-9
Second Reading: Romans 12:1-2
Gospel:
Matthew 16:21-27
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Rex Bates, Victoria Webb, Vern
Cazaly, Dawn Stevens, & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently: George Flack, Trevor Smith, Veronica Ygosse, Gertrude
Koerner, Alexander Obiorah (Snr), Kuppala Devadoss, Reginald (Mick) Poole, Fred
Melen, Mikhail Yastrebov, Olga Delaney, Joan
Davidson
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 23rd – 29th
August - Bernard
Hensby, Jean Flight, Vincenzo De Santis, Lyn Chessell, Nial McKee, Len Burton,
Joseph Hawkes, Michael Cassidy, Jack Page, Robert Lee, Rita Stokes, Dulcie McCormack.
May they rest in peace
Weekly
Ramblings
This weekend is one of those weekends that happen every now
and then and I almost feel overwhelmed with all that is happening.
Traditionally the last Sunday in August is Migrant and
Refugee Sunday when we are reminded that there are thousands of children, women
and men who have been forced from their homes and are seeking assistance in
other countries so that they might have basic rights of freedom, health and
education.
This weekend we have also been asked to address some issues
relating to the upcoming plebiscite – something that is not an easy task given
the various challenges that exist whenever the Church speaks into our community
at this time. I will be addressing this issue in my homily but there are three
things that I would ask of all parishioners: i) Please vote; ii) please take a
copy of the material that is available today; and iii) if you are able to
assist in distributing leaflets in your local area please add your name to the
list in the foyer.
This Sunday is also our Parish Forum when I have invited
parishioners to join me in taking the next step towards Realising Our Parish
Vision.
On Saturday we also worked with the children of our Parish
who are taking the next step in their preparation for First Eucharist which
will be celebrated next weekend.
What a messy weekend – yet it is something like the story
of our daily lives. In life things happen and we simply get on with whatever we
need to do. I would like to pray that good things will come out of all of these
activities because, ultimately it is God’s plan that we are living out and not
something that we do for our own personal satisfaction.
Please take care on the roads and in your homes,
MacKillop Hill
Coffee Shoppe 10.30 – 12 noon
NB. Change of day and date - Tuesday 29th August
No booking necessary. Ph. 6428 3095 Email: mackillophill.forth@sosj.org.au
MT ST. VINCENT AUXILIARY
The Auxiliary will be holding a Cake and Craft stall at Mt. St Vincent Home on Wednesday 30th August 9.00am start.
FOOTY TICKETS: Round 22 (18th August) footy margin 3 – Winners; L Tippett, J Hyde, D&A Smith
Please Note: Tickets will not be sold this weekend as the next round is a Bye
BINGO - Thursday Nights
OLOL Hall, Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers for Thursday 31st August – Tony Ryan & Alan Luxton.
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
THE JOURNEY CATHOLIC RADIO PROGRAM – AIRS 3 Sept
2017
This week on the Journey, the Gospel of Mathew is read to
us by Nick Weir. We hear from Sr Hilda with her Wisdom from the Abbey on
Gods Choice, The inspirational Sam Clear encourages us to ask the question, How
Far To The Shops in his Walking the Walk segment, and Fr Dave Callaghan reminds
us of The Words In Our Lives. Our carefully selected music helps to
create a show 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.
THE VERBUM DOMINI BIBLICAL & CATECHETICAL
INSTITUTE’S
next module of the Sacraments course will be on the biblical foundations of the
Eucharist. When: Saturday 9th September, 9am-2.30pm. Where: Pastoral Centre,
Church of the Apostles, 44 Margaret St, Launceston. Cost: FREE. Register: christine.wood@aohtas.org.au
or 6208-6236. Come even if you missed the first module. TCEO staff and teachers
received professional learning credits for attendance. Bring your bible and
lunch. Morning tea provided. All welcome.
JOHN WALLIS MEMORIAL LECTURE 2017 – delivered by Fr Frank Moloney SDB
– Guilford Young College, Hobart Campus. Thursday 21st September
2017 at 7:00pm. Lecture followed by supper. Donation $10 students/card holders
$5. RSVP by Thursday 14th September 2017 Eva Dunn 0417734503
eva.dunn@gmail.com
MARYKNOLL RETREAT & SPIRITUALITY CENTRE: Retreat & Reflection Days to be held October/November
2017 – please see Church Noticeboard for Flyer.
GRIEF TO GRACE – HEALING THE
WOUNDS OF ABUSE – is
a spiritual retreat for anyone who has suffered degradation or violation
through physical, emotional, sexual or spiritual abuse. The retreat will be
held April 8th – 13th 2018. To request an application contact Anne by emailing info@grieftograceaus.org.au
or phone 0407704539. For more information visit www.grieftograce.org
THE POWER OF RITUAL
This is an article by Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. The original article can be found here
I don’t always find it easy to pray. Often I’m over-tired, distracted, caught-up in tasks, pressured by work, short on time, lacking the appetite for prayer, or more strongly drawn to do something else. But I do pray daily; despite the fact that I often don’t want to and despite the fact that many times prayer can be boring and uninteresting. I pray daily because I’m committed to a number of rituals for prayer, the office of the Church, lauds and vespers, the Eucharist, and daily meditation.
And these rituals serve me well. They hold me, keep me steady, and keep me praying regularly even when, many times, I don’t feel like praying. That’s the power of ritual. If I only prayed when I felt like it, I wouldn’t pray very regularly.
Ritual practice keeps us doing what we should be doing (praying, working, being at table with our families, being polite) even when our feelings aren’t always onside. We need to do certain things not because we always feel like doing them, but because it’s right to do them.
And this is true for many areas of our lives, not just for prayer. Take, for example, the social rituals of propriety and good manners that we lean on each day. Our heart isn’t always in the greetings or the expressions of love, appreciation, and gratitude that we give to each other each day. We greet each other, we say goodbye to each other, we express love for each other, and we express gratitude to each other through a number of social formulae, ritual words: Good morning! Good to see you! Have a great day! Have a great evening! Sleep well! Nice meeting you! Nice to work with you! I love you! Thank you!
We say these things to each other daily, even though we have to admit that there are times, many times, when these expressions appear to be purely formal and seem not at all honest to how we are feeling at that time. Yet we say them and they are true in that they express what lies in our hearts at a deeper level than our more momentary and ephemeral feelings of distraction, irritation, disappointment, or anger. Moreover these words hold us in civility, in good manners, in graciousness, in neighborliness, in respect, and in love despite the fluctuations in our energy, mood, and feelings. Our energy, mood, and feelings, at any given moment, are not a true indication of what’s in our hearts, as all of us know and frequently need to apologize for. Who of us has not at some time been upset and bitter towards someone who we love deeply? The deep truth is that we love that person, but that’s not what we’re feeling at the moment.
If we only expressed affection, love, and gratitude at those times when our feelings were completely onside, we wouldn’t express these very often. Thank God for the ordinary, social rituals which hold us in love, affection, graciousness, civility, and good manners at those times when our feelings are out of sorts with our truer selves. These rituals, like a sturdy container, hold us safe until the good feelings return.
Today, in too many areas of life, we no longer understand ritual. That leaves us trying to live our lives by our feelings; not that feelings are bad, but rather that they come upon us as wild, unbidden guests. Iris Murdoch asserts that our world can change in fifteen seconds because we can fall in love in fifteen seconds. But we can also fall out of love in fifteen seconds! Feelings work that way! And so we cannot sustain love, marriage, family, friendship, collegial relationships, and neighborliness by feelings. We need help. Rituals can help sustain our relationships beyond feelings.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer used to give this instruction to a couple when he was officiating at their wedding. He would tell them: Today you are in love and you believe that your love can sustain your marriage. But it can’t. However your marriage can sustain your love. Marriage is a not just a sacrament, it’s also a ritual container.
Ritual not only can help sustain a marriage, it can also help sustain our prayer lives, our civility, our manners, our graciousness, our humor, our gratitude, and our balance in life. Be wary of anyone who in the name of psychology, love, or spirituality tells you that ritual is empty and you must rely on your energy, mood, and feelings as your guiding compass. They won’t carry you far.
Daniel Berrigan once wrote: Don’t travel with anyone who expects you to be interesting all the time. On a long journey there are bound to be some boring stretches. John of the Cross echoes this when talking about prayer. He tells us that, during our generative years, one of the biggest problems we will face daily in our prayer is simple boredom.
And so we can be sure our feelings won’t sustain us, but ritual practices can.
Franciscan Spirituality: Week 2
This article is taken from the Daily email produced by Fr Richard Rohr OFM and the Centre for Contemplation. You can subscribe here
Joy
Despite many legitimate reasons for discouragement, Francis
of Assisi (1181-1226) was known as a man of deep and abiding joy. He knew that
after all was done and undone, he was still “the herald of the Great King.” Francis
told his friars that it was their vocation as God’s minstrels “to move people’s
hearts and lift them up to spiritual joy.” [1] They needed no other
justification for their life or ministry.
To illustrate what he meant by joy, Francis shared this dialogue
with Brother Leo:
One winter day when he and Brother Leo were walking along
the road to Assisi from Perugia, Francis called out to Leo in the bitter cold
five times, each time telling him what perfect joy was not: “Brother Leo, even
if a Friar Minor gives sight to the blind, heals the paralyzed, drives out
devils, gives hearing back to the deaf, makes the lame walk, and restores
speech to the dumb, and what is more brings back to life a man who has been
dead four days, write that perfect joy is not in that.” And so he continued
with different enumerations of success and even spiritual enjoyment. And when
he had been talking this way for a distance of two miles, Brother Leo in great
amazement asked him: “Father, I beg you in God’s name to tell me where perfect
joy is then to be found?”
And Francis replied: “When we come to the Portiuncula,
soaked by the rain and frozen by the cold, all soiled with mud and suffering
from hunger, and we ring at the gate of our friary and the brother porter comes
and says angrily: ‘Who are you?’ and we say: ‘We are two of your brothers.’ And
he contradicts us, saying, ‘You are not telling the truth. Rather you are two
rascals who go around deceiving people and stealing what they give to the poor.
Go away!’ and he does not open for us, but makes us stand outside in the snow
and rain, cold and hungry until night falls—then if we endure all of those
insults and cruel rebuffs patiently, without being troubled and without
complaining, and if we reflect humbly and lovingly that the porter really knows
us. Oh, Brother Leo, write that perfect joy is to be found there!
“And if we continue to knock and the porter comes out in
anger, and drives us away with curses and hard blows saying ‘Get away from
here! Who do you think you are?’ and if we bear it patiently and take the
insults with joy and love in our hearts. Oh, Brother Leo, write down that this
is perfect joy! . . . And now hear the conclusion: Above all the graces and
gifts of the Holy Spirit which Christ gives to his friends is that of
conquering oneself and willingly enduring sufferings, insults, humiliations,
and hardships for the love of Christ.” [2]
Now that is an alternative universe! Here we see a truly
nonviolent and liberated man. Clearly this is a different kind of “I” that is
speaking here, an “I” hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). Rediscovering
this joyous and free True Self is the goal of all transformation and journeys
toward holiness.
References:
[1] The Assisi Compilation, chapter 83. See Francis of
Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 2 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), 186.
[2] The Little Flowers of St. Francis, chapter 8. See St.
Francis of Assisi: Omnibus of the Sources, ed. Marion A. Habig (Franciscan
Herald Press: 1973), 1318-1320.
Adapted from Richard Rohr with John Feister, Hope Against
Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety (St.
Anthony Messenger Press: 2001), 118-119.
There Is Nothing to
Regret (God Uses Everything in Our Favor)
Toward the end of his life, Saint Francis told the friars,
“Let us begin, brothers, to serve the Lord God, for up until now we have done
little or nothing.” [1] That enigmatic sense of beginning again at the end of
life, at the end of an era, in the middle of so much failure, when we just want
to rest and put the past behind us, that is the gift for reconstruction that we
want to discover in these meditations. It makes Francis a man for all seasons,
particularly for seasons of winter and death, when we do not know how, much
less want, to begin again.
Francis also said as he lay dying, “I have done what is
mine; may Christ teach you what is yours!” [2] We cannot change the world
except insofar as we have changed ourselves. We can only give away who we are.
We can only offer to others what God has done in us. We have no real mental or
logical answers. We must be an answer. We only know the other side of the
journeys that we have made ourselves. Francis walked to the edge and thus he
could lead others to what he found there.
All the conflicts and contradictions of life must find a
resolution in us before we can resolve anything outside ourselves. Only the
forgiven can forgive, only the healed can heal, only those who stand daily in
need of mercy can offer mercy to others. At first it sounds simplistic and even
individualistic, but it is precisely such transformed people who can finally
effect profound and long-lasting social change.
It has something to do with what we call quantum theology.
[3] The cosmos is mirrored in the microcosm. If we let the mystery happen in
one small and true place, it moves from there! It is contagious, it is
shareable, it reshapes the world. Thus, both Jesus and Francis had no pragmatic
social agenda for reform. They just moved outside the system of illusion, more
by ignoring it than fighting it and quite simply doing it better. They knew
that “the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better” (one of the
Center for Action and Contemplation’s core principles). [4] Jesus and Francis
moved to a much larger place that we call holiness/wholeness in God, and from
there they could deal kindly with all smaller and confined places. Nothing
threatened them; everything elated them, reflecting their own infinite
abundance.
Don’t waste any time dividing the world into the good guys
and the bad guys. Hold them both together in your own soul—where they are
anyway—and you will have held together the whole world. You will have overcome
the great divide in one place of spacious compassion. You, little you, will
have paid the price of redemption. God takes it from there, replicating the
same pattern in another conscious human life.
References:
[1] Thomas of Celano, The Life of Saint Francis: The Second
Book, chapter 6. See Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1 (Hyde Park, NY:
New City Press, 1999), 273.
[2] Thomas of Celano, The Remembrance of the Desire of a
Soul, chapter 162. See Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 2 (Hyde Park,
NY: New City Press, 2000), 386.
[3] See Diarmuid O’Murchu, Quantum Theology: Spiritual
Implications of the New Physics, rev. ed. (The Crossroad Publishing Company:
2004).
[4] “The Eight Core Principles of the Center for Action and
Contemplation,” https://cac.org/about-cac/missionvision/.
Adapted from Richard Rohr with John Feister, Hope Against
Darkness: The Transforming Vision of
Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety (St. Anthony Messenger Press: 2001),
120-121.
The Primacy of Love
I like how my long-time friend and fellow Franciscan, John
Quigley, summarizes Franciscan spirituality. He writes:
It is not easy to put into a capsule the spirit and gifts of
Franciscan thinking. Its hallmarks are simplicity, reverence, fraternity,
ecumenism, ecology, interdependence, and dialogue. Its motto and salutation is
“Peace and All Good!”
Francis believed that God was nonviolent, the God of Peace.
This belief may be a simple presupposition for us today, but at the time when
the Christian church was waging a Holy Crusade against its enemies, the
Saracens, Francis’ interpretation of the Gospel life and its demands was revolutionary.
Francis saw it from the viewpoint of the poor, especially from the place of the
poor, naked, suffering Christ. He had deep devotion to the God who is revealed
as nonviolent and poor in the stable of Bethlehem, as abandoned on the cross,
and as food in the Eucharist. God’s meekness, humility, and poverty led Francis
to . . . [identify] with the minores, the lower class within his society, and
he passionately pointed to the Incarnation as the living proof of God’s love.
He frequently cried out in exasperation with the world “Love is not loved!”
The experiences of God’s love revealed to Francis our
fragile and temporary place within creation. He knew that we share this earth,
our loves and work with all of God’s creatures, our brothers and sisters.
Unlike the monastic life, which strove to domesticate nature and to bring it
under control, Francis expected to live lightly on the earth, a burden to
neither the earth nor to those who fed and clothed him.
There are many lively legends about Francis and Clare, which
soon took philosophical and theological weight through luminaries like
Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, who together serve as the guide and canon for the
Franciscan tradition. These seminal stories and the insights that arise from
them have given impetus to specific themes in Franciscan philosophy and
theology. They include the idea that Jesus did not assume flesh to correct Adam
and Eve’s sin; rather, Jesus would have taken flesh whether we had sinned or
not. Love by its very nature wants to be one with its beloved, so our salvation
has been announced and realized by an Incarnate God. The suffering and death of
Jesus confirms for us how deep and committed is God’s love in the Incarnation.
[Jesus affirms what Creation already shouted! Nature itself is the first Bible.
—RR]
Each individual existence—person, plant, stone, amoeba—is
absolutely precious. Each has a certain unique “thisness,” which cannot be
completely shared or described by another. Each creature of God must attain the
full measure of its own uniqueness, its “thisness” before the full expression
of God’s love can be realized in creation.
Simplicity is another Franciscan theme and sign of God’s
love. We should multiply words, explanations, and actions only when necessary,
[Francis] tells us. Others may say that we come to understand God by analogies.
The Franciscan perspective is that we can have a direct effect and univocal
understanding of God by reflecting and understanding our experiences as human
beings. Finally, everything, every scripture, every law, every action, history
itself is to be interpreted in the light of the primacy of Love and Christ over
all [the Cosmic and Universal Christ].
Reference:
John Quigley, “Brothers,” in Richard Rohr: Illuminations of
His Life and Work , edited by Andreas Ebert and Patricia C. Brockman (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 1993), 5-6.
One Sacred Universe
Often, without moving his lips, [Francis] would meditate
within himself and drawing external things within himself, he would lift his
spirit to higher things. —Thomas of Celano [1]
Francis of Assisi must have known, at least intuitively,
that there is only one enduring spiritual insight and everything else follows
from it: The visible world is an active doorway to the invisible world, and the
invisible world is much larger than the visible. This is the mystery of
incarnation, the essential union of the material and the spiritual worlds—or
simply “Christ.”
Our outer world and its inner significance must come
together for there to be any wholeness—and holiness. The result is both deep
joy and a resounding sense of coherent beauty. What was personified in the body
of Jesus was a manifestation of this one universal truth: Matter is, and has
always been, the hiding place for Spirit, forever offering itself to be
discovered anew. Perhaps this is exactly what Jesus means when he says, “I am
the gate” (John 10:7). Francis and his female companion, Clare, carried this
mystery to its full and lovely conclusions. Or, more rightly, they were fully
carried by it. They somehow knew that the beyond was not really beyond, but in
the depths of here.
All we need is right here and right now—in this world. This
is the way to that! Heaven includes earth. Time opens us up to the timeless;
space opens us up to spacelessness, if we only take them for the clear doorways
that they are. There are not sacred and profane things, places, and moments.
There are only sacred and desecrated things, places, and moments—and it is we
alone who desecrate them by our blindness and lack of reverence. It is one
sacred universe, and we are all a part of it.
The realization that the concrete opens us up to the
universal might be the only fully trustworthy or possible path anyway, because
that is how we sensate humans operate. Abstract ideology will not get us very
far, and much common religion is ideology more than real encounter with
Presence. We all must start with our anecdotal experience, and then build from
there. What else can we do? Good spiritual teachers show us how to build from
there! Wise people, Scripture, and Tradition point to which experiences are
worth looking at and which are perhaps detours or dead ends.
When religion becomes mere ideology (or even mere theology),
the rubber never hits the road again. As Pope Francis says, people all over the
world are rejecting this top-down form of religion—and they should because this
is not the path of Christ himself. Saint and pope show us how to build on a
solid foundation of experiential, practical, and very ordinary spirituality.
References:
[1] Thomas of Celano,
The Second Life of St. Francis, chapter 61. See St. Francis of Assisi: Omnibus
of the Sources, ed. Marion A. Habig (Franciscan Herald Press: 1973), 440.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative
Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), xiv, 6-7, 269.
Learning to See
Most religious searches begin with one massive
misperception. People tend to start by making a very unfortunate, yet
understandable, division between the sacred and the profane worlds. Early stage
religion focuses on identifying sacred places, sacred time, and seemingly
sacred actions that then leave the overwhelming majority of life unsacred.
People are told to look for God in certain special places and in particular
events—usually, it seems, ones controlled by the clergy. Perhaps this is
related to the clergy’s need for job security, which is only natural. Early
stage religion has limited the search for God to a very small field and thus it
is largely ineffective—unless people keep seeing and knowing at larger levels.
In Franciscan (and true Christian) mysticism, there is
finally no distinction between sacred and profane. The whole universe and all
events are sacred, serving as doorways to the divine for those who know how to
see. In other words, everything that happens is potentially sacred if we allow
it to be. Our job as humans is to make admiration of reality and adoration of
God fully conscious and intentional. Then everything is a prayer and an act of
adoration. As the French friar Eloi Leclerc (1921-2016) beautifully paraphrased
Francis, “If we knew how to adore, then nothing could truly disturb our peace.
We would travel through the world with the tranquility of the great rivers. But
only if we know how to adore.” [1]
For those who have learned how to see fully,
everything—absolutely everything—is “spiritual.” This eventually and ironically
leads to what the Lutheran mystic Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) called
“religionless Christianity.” [2] Bonhoeffer saw that many people were moving beyond
the scaffolding of religion to the underlying and deeper Christian experience
itself. Once we can accept that God is in all situations, and that God can and
will use even bad situations for good, then everything and everywhere becomes
an occasion for good and an encounter with God.
God’s plan is so perfect that even sin, tragedy, and painful
deaths are used to bring us to divine union, just as the cross was meant to
reveal. God wisely makes the problem itself part of the solution. It is all a
matter of learning how to see rightly, fully, and therefore truthfully.
References:
[1] Eloi Leclerc, The Wisdom of the Poor One of Assisi,
trans. Marie-Louise Johnson (Pasadena, CA: Hope Publishing House: 1992), 72.
[2] Letter from Bonhoeffer to Eberhard Bethge dated April
30, 1944. See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard
Bethge (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 278-282.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Franciscan Mysticism: I AM that
which I Am Seeking, disc 1 (CAC: 2012), CD, MP3 download; and
Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
(Franciscan Media: 2014), 10-11.
Inner Authority
Might the authority of those who suffer bring the diverse
cultural and social worlds together? —Johann Baptist Metz [1]
This profound question about suffering from a modern German
theologian succinctly and precisely expresses the religious breakthrough that
Christ has offered humanity. It is also foundational to understanding the
unique Franciscan view of the world. True Gospel authority, the authority to
heal and renew, is not finally found in a hierarchical office, a theological
argument, a perfect law, or a rational explanation. The Crucified revealed to
the world that the real power that changes people and the world is an inner
authority that comes from those who have lost, let go, and are re-found on a
new level. Twelve-Step programs have come to the same conclusion in our time.
Both Francis and Clare had this kind of inner authority that
is still part of their essential message for the world. They let go of all fear
of suffering, all need for power, prestige, and possessions, and the need for
their small self to be important. They came to know something essential—who
they really were in God and thus who they really were. Their house was then
built on “bedrock,” as Jesus says (Matthew 7:24).
Such an ability to really change and heal people is often
the fruit of suffering and various forms of poverty, since the false self does
not surrender without a fight to its death. If suffering is “whenever we are
not in control” (which is my definition), then you see why some form of
suffering is absolutely necessary to teach us how to live beyond the illusion
of control and to give that control back to God. Then we become usable
instruments, because we can share our power with God’s power (Romans 8:28).
Such a counterintuitive insight surely explains why these
two medieval dropouts—Francis and Clare—tried to invite us all into their happy
run downward, to that place of “poverty” where all humanity finally dwells anyway.
They voluntarily leapt into the very fire from which most of us are trying to
escape, with total trust that Jesus’ way of the cross could not, and would not,
be wrong. They trusted that his way was the way of solidarity and communion
with the larger world, which is indeed passing away and dying. By God’s grace,
they could trust the eventual passing of all things, and where they were
passing. They did not wait for liberation later—after death—but grasped it here
and now.
References:
[1] Johann Baptist Metz, “In the Pluralism of Religious and
Cultural Worlds: Notes Toward a Theological and Political Program,” Cross
Currents 49 (2), Summer 1999, 227-236. His classic book, Poverty of Spirit,
offers a deep reflection on Christ’s self-emptying love.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative
Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), 19-21.
THREE WEEKS AND COUNTING #NEWCHURCHCOUNTDOWN
This post is taken from the very excited Fr Michael White as he and his Parish prepare to move into a new building. The original post can be found here
For the next few weeks my blog will be introducing readers to our new church facility so that when we move in you feel right at home!
We’ll begin in the “East Lobby.” Where in the world is the East Lobby you might ask? Well, it’s literally east of the new, main lobby, regulars will recognize it as the Old “Great Hall.”
When originally built, about 12 years ago, this space was intended to provide easy access to our kids and student programs, and wide open space for easy traffic flow. Very quickly though, as the parish grew, it started doubling as a video venue, densely clogged with chairs.
Well, the chairs will disappear and we’re giving the place a facelift as we return it to its original purpose. Entering the old front doors and proceeding thru the former main lobby, the East Lobby is where you can check in for all our kids and student programs. And it’s one stop check-in, no matter how many kids you have or what programs they’re in. Information and host ministers will always be available to help you out.
Kids 6 weeks to 4 years go to “ALL STARS,” in bright and safe new rooms in our kid’s wing. “Quest” is what we’re calling our kids small groups and kindergarten kids to grade 3 will love it. “Quest” will also be located in our kid’s wing. Kids in Grades 4 & 5 now graduate to a new program just for them we’re calling “Ignite.” “Ignite” will meet on Sunday mornings in the old Cafe Vista.
You can learn more about our kids programs, including schedule and times, and you can register online.
Besides “Ignite,” Café Vista, which we’re renaming The Pavilion, will be the place for parish meetings and smaller events.
One of the most frequently asked questions we’ve been asked since announcing we’re building a new church is what are we going to do with the old one. Glad you asked! With some retooling the old church is fast becoming our new Theatre. On Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings its where kids, grades 1-5 can join Time Travelers, our children’s Liturgy of the Word program. Our Middle School Program, Resurrection, will meet there on Sunday evenings, and high school students will gather in the Theatre for “Uprising” on Thursday nights.
More information about all those programs is available on our web site.
We’re also taking a portion of the old church and refashioning it as a Chapel. It will be available for quiet prayer before and after all weekend Masses, it’s where we’ll offer daily Mass during the week and celebrate smaller services too.
You can find the chapel just off the East Lobby.
Three weeks…and counting.
David M. Neuhaus SJ asks what we can learn from these women, and from the context in which their stories are told, as we continue to pose the question, Jesus: Who Do You Think You Are? The original of this article can be found here
Jesus: Who Do You Think You Are? 2. Rahab, Ruth and Boaz
David M. Neuhaus SJ asks what we can learn from these women, and from the context in which their stories are told, as we continue to pose the question, Jesus: Who Do You Think You Are? The original of this article can be found here
The Gospel of Saint Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus Christ that takes us all the way from Abraham to ‘Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born’ (Matthew 1:16). In this supremely theological composition, Matthew weaves the new, ‘Jesus… who is called the Messiah’, into the fibres of the old, the generations of Israel before Jesus’s arrival. The text is read at Mass just before Christmas, tripping up many a priest who tries to get his tongue around the unfamiliar Hebrew names. However, those names veil some rather stunning surprises.
Among those many surprises, the one that always attracts my attention is the one hidden in the words ‘Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth’ (Matthew 1:5). The genealogy is a predominantly patriarchal affair: fathers having sons, from Abraham at the beginning, to Jacob, the father of Joseph, towards the end of the genealogy. The last surprise is that Jesus will be born of Mary, Joseph’s wife, whereas Joseph will be proclaimed a father who is not really a father by the angel who announces Mary’s pregnancy before Joseph has taken her into his home. The surprise of Mary’s role in the genealogy has been prefigured in the four other women mentioned in the text: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and the wife of Uriah. Each of these women veils a surprise in the unfolding of the generations. Let us examine in more detail the double surprise of Rahab and Ruth.
Rahab the Canaanite appears in chapters 2 and 6 in the Book of Joshua (the Book of Jesus if we are reading our bible in Greek). Her name, ‘wide as a road’, indicates with no small degree of crude humour her profession: a whore. The two men sent by Joshua as spies to Jericho spend the night in her home. Alien men in a prostitute’s house would not normally arouse suspicion. However, the king of Jericho has been warned of their coming and, assuming that the foreign men would be found in Rahab’s house, he orders her to bring them out. She defies the king by protecting the spies and then surprises us even more when she professes her faith: ‘The Lord your God is indeed God in heaven above and on earth below’ (Joshua 2:11). Introduced as a whore, she reminds us now of Lot refusing to deliver up the two angels to the clamouring mob in Sodom, but even more of other saviour women in Israel’s history, both Israelite and foreign: the midwives in Egypt, Shiphrah and Puah, who save the Israelite male children (Exodus 1); Yocheved, Miriam and Pharaoh’s daughter, who save the child Moses (Exodus 2); and Zipporah the Midianite, who saves Moses from God’s wrath (Exodus 4).
Rahab’s faith will save her and her entire family. Jericho is slated for destruction and the Book of Deuteronomy has already informed us of the fate of the cities that the Israelites will conquer in the land: ‘As for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive’ (Deuteronomy 20:16). Therefore the great surprise in Jericho is not that Joshua orders the slaughter of every living thing – ‘The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction’ (Joshua 6:17) – but rather that Rahab and her family are saved: ‘Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live because she hid the messengers we sent’ (Joshua 6:17). Dare we hope that all the townspeople gathered in her home and were saved with her because of her faith, and that nobody died on the day the walls of Jericho fell because they all found refuge in the wideness of her house?
Rahab’s story of faith is only half of the surprise in the Book of Joshua. The other half is revealed in chapter 7, which tells the story of the Israelite Achan’s betrayal. We might have been tempted to believe that God’s election of Israel sets up a permanent and impermeable border between ‘God’s chosen’ and the heathens, but Achan’s story, immediately following Rahab’s, further illustrates that this is far from true. Parallel to the surprise of Rahab’s faith is the sad tale of Achan’s betrayal of faith.
Achan, son of Carmi of the tribe of Judah, an Israelite, takes part in the conquest of Jericho. God’s command to take no booty from Jericho is crystal clear: ‘keep away from the things devoted to destruction, so as not to covet and take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel an object for destruction, bringing trouble upon it. But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the Lord; they shall go into the treasury of the Lord’ (Joshua 6:18-19). Achan steals from God and hides the booty in his tent. His crime will only be unveiled when the Israelites meet defeat in the next round of battle, trying to conquer the town of Ai. Abandoned by God, the Israelites are beaten back and Joshua (Jesus), crying out to God, is informed of the sin that has entered the people through Achan. Achan’s fate is the same as that reserved for Jericho. This sad tale of betrayal is echoed in the Acts of the Apostles (chapter 5) in the tale of Ananias and Sapphira, the first two to die after Pentecost because of their betrayal in stealing from what had been given to the Lord.
The parallel between Rahab and Achan drives home that God seeks fidelity and will not always find it among the ones who claim to be God’s chosen ones. Instead, faith will sometimes radiate from those places least expected, even the house of a Canaanite whore.
It is interesting to note that Matthew is the only biblical writer to tell us that Rahab was the mother-in-law of Ruth. In the Old Testament, they are seemingly unrelated. Ruth is not a whore but a Moabite, a member of a despised people. The Law of Moses states without ambiguity: ‘No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord (…) You shall never promote their welfare or their prosperity as long as you live’ (Deuteronomy 23:3;6). These peoples, purportedly descended from the incestuous relations between Lot and his daughters (Genesis 19:37-38), tried to curse Israel on the way to the land (Numbers 22-24).
Ruth’s story follows the description of the darkness that falls on Israel in the land in the days of the Judges. Sin is everywhere in the last five chapters of the Book of Judges as the people is described as falling into idolatry and civil war, these being perhaps among the most violent chapters in the Bible. The oft-repeated refrain in these chapters also concludes the book: ‘In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes’ (Judges 21:25). The King of Israel, God, who had brought the people out of Egypt into the land of milk and honey, had been brutally booted out of the story by a people living in sin. Whereas they were chosen to proclaim the Kingdom of God by lives lived in faith, their choices had led them far astray.
The Book of Ruth opens with the evocation of the time of the judges. Ruth, the Moabite wife of an Israelite who has died, swears fidelity to her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi, and returns with her after the loss of Naomi’s two sons to their ancestral land of Bethlehem. As they set out, Ruth makes a profession of faith that has immortalised her as an ideal of faith for Jews and Christians: ‘Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God’ (Ruth 1:16). The Moabite woman has not only been admitted to the assembly of the Lord, but she has become a model of faith.
This admittance into the assembly of the Lord despite what the Law states can only make sense if we realise that Bethlehem in the final chapters of the Book of Judges is the very epicentre of the darkness of sin. The priest that initiates the idolatry and the woman whose horrible death will provoke the civil war that rages in Israel are both from Bethlehem. How will God bring light into the world if the people God has chosen to be a light to the nations has chosen darkness instead of light? God needs a new Abraham, who is willing to leave ‘land, kindred and father’s house’ (Genesis 12:1), to open a way for God’s re-entry into history. God finds that new Abraham in Ruth the Moabite, who comes to dark Bethlehem radiating the light of her faith.
In Bethlehem, Ruth will begin a new life, marrying Boaz and becoming the great-grandmother of King David. Matthew tells us that Ruth the Moabite not only receives a new husband to replace Chilion, son of Naomi, but alongside Naomi, she receives a new mother-in-law, Rahab, the Canaanite whore, herself a shining light of faith.
The presence of Rahab and Ruth in the genealogy of Jesus should shock us at first: a whore and a Moabite. As we meditate on these two surprising women of faith during this Advent season, both unexpected radiant lights in the genealogy, let us be less quick to judge those who seem to be outsiders. Light can shine from the most unexpected places and if we let it, it will penetrate our darkness too.
Fr David M. Neuhaus SJ serves as Latin Patriarchal Vicar within the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. He is responsible for Hebrew-speaking Catholics in Israel as well as the Catholic migrant populations. He teaches Holy Scripture at the Latin Patriarchate Seminary and at the Salesian Theological Institute in Jerusalem and also lectures at Yad Ben Zvi.
