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 22nd – 25th August, 2017
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 11:00am Ulverstone (KSC Changeover Mass)
12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Next Weekend 26th & 27th August 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 26th & 27th August, 2017
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: M Gaffney, M Gerrand, H Lim 10:30am: J Phillips, K Pearce, P Piccolo
Ministers of Communion: Vigil: M Heazlewood, B Suckling, G Lee-Archer, M Kelly, P Shelverton
10.30am: M Sherriff, T & S Ryan, D Barrientos, M Barrientos
Cleaners 25th August: M & L Tippett, A Berryman 1st September: M.W.C.
Piety Shop 26th August: Louise Murfet 27th August: Digna French
Ulverstone:
Reader: D Prior
Ministers of Communion: B Deacon, J Allen, G Douglas, K Reilly
Cleaners: V Ferguson, E Cox Flowers: M Byrne Hospitality: S & T Johnstone
Penguin:
Greeters: G & N Pearce Commentator: Y Downes Readers: A Landers, A Guest
Ministers of Communion: E Nickols, T Clayton Liturgy: Sulphur Creek C Setting Up: F Aichberger
Care of Church: M Murray, E Nickols
Latrobe:
Reader: H Lim Minister of Communion: I Campbell, M Kavic Procession of gifts: Parishioners
Port Sorell:
Readers: P Anderson, L Post Ministers of Communion: B Lee Cleaners/Flowers/Prep: G Bellchambers, M Gillard
Readings this week – Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
Readings next week – Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Victoria Webb, Vern Cazaly, Dawn
Stevens, & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently: Kuppala Devadoss; Gertrude Koerner,
Reginald (Mick) Poole, Fred Melen, Mikhail Yastrebov, Olga Delaney, Joan Davidson,
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 16th – 22nd
August
May they rest in peace
Next
Saturday (26th) these children and their families will gather at
Sacred Heart Church for the next stage of their journey to become fully
initiated members of our Community as they prepare to receive the Eucharist for
the first time. These preparation sessions and the follow-up work done by their
families is wonderfully supported by our prayers and encouragement – please
continue to pray for them in the coming weeks.
I am
looking forward to next weekend (Sunday 27th) when we will be
running the next session of how we can move forward with Realising the Vision.
As mentioned in the flyer last weekend it will be an opportunity to find ways
to move forward in our Parish with your ideas and your input. The Forum starts
at 2pm at Sacred Heart Church and will conclude by 4pm. ALL ARE WELCOME.
We recently
received an Invitation addressed to the Parish for all Parishioners to the
Ordination to the Priesthood of the Rev Paschal Okpon. The ordination will
occur on Friday 15th September at St Mary’s Cathedral at 7.00pm. A
copy of the invitation can be found on the Noticeboards in all our Mass
Centres. The newly ordained Fr Paschal will be celebrating the 10.30am Mass on
Sunday 17th September at OLOL Church – this will be followed by a
light luncheon in the Hall. If anyone still wishes to contribute towards a gift
then please place your gift in an envelope marked with his name and deposit it
on the collection plate at any Mass and the monies will be collected and a
suitable gift obtained.
Please take care on the roads and in your homes,
KNIGHTS OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS:
- The AGM of the Knights of the
Southern Cross will be held on Sunday 20th August at OLOL Parish Hall
commencing at 4pm. This will be followed by a light tea and then
the August monthly meeting. Any men how are interested on joining the
group are invited to attend.
- The Annual Change-Over Mass of
the North West District of the Knights of the Southern Cross will be held
at Sacred Heart Church, Ulverstone on Thursday 24th August at 11am.
All members and their wives/partners are invited to attend the Mass and
the luncheon.
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.
BINGO - Thursday Nights
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 
Depth and Breadth
A Prime Attractor
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Art of Letting Go: Living the
Wisdom of St. Francis, disc 2 (Sounds True: 2010), CD.
The word “Protestant” is generally misunderstood. Martin Luther’s protest that led to the Protestant reformation was not, in fact, a protest against the Roman Catholic Church; properly understood, it was a protest for God. God, in Luther’s view, was being manipulated to serve human and ecclesial self-interest. His protest was a plea to respect God’s transcendence.
We need a new protest today, a new plea, a strong one, to not connect God and our churches to intolerance, injustice, bigotry, violence, terrorism, racism, sexism, rigidity, dogmatism, anti-eroticism, homophobia, self-serving power, institutional self-protection, security for the rich, ideology of all kinds, and just plain stupidity. God is getting a lot of bad press!
A simple example can be illustrative here: In a recent book that documents an extraordinary fifty-year friendship with his former coach, basketball legend (and present-day exceptional writer), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, shares why he became a Muslim. Raised a Roman Catholic, a graduate of Catholic schools, he eventually left Christianity to become a Muslim. Why?
In his own words: Because “the white people who were bombing churches and killing little girls, who were shooting unarmed black boys, who were beating black protestors with clubs loudly declared themselves to be proud Christians. The Ku Klux Klan were proud Christians. I felt no allegiance to a religion with so many evil followers. Yes, I was also aware that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was also a proud Christian, as were many of the civil rights leaders. Coach Wooden was a devout Christian. The civil rights movement was supported by many brave white Christians who marched side by side with blacks. When the KKK attacked, they often delivered even worse beatings to the whites, whom they considered to be race traitors. I didn’t condemn the religion, but I definitely felt removed from it.”
His story is only one story and by his own admission has another side to it, but it’s highly illustrative. It’s easy to connect God to the wrong things. Christianity, of course, isn’t the only culprit. Today, for instance, we see perhaps the worst examples of tying God to evil in the violence of ISIS and other such terrorist groups who are killing, randomly and brutally, in the name of God. You can be sure that the last words uttered, just as a suicide bomber randomly kills innocent people, is: God is great! What horrible thing to say as one is committing an act of murder! Doing the ungodly in the name of God!
And yet we so often do the same thing in subtler forms, namely, we justify the ungodly (violence, injustice, inequality, poverty, intolerance, bigotry, racism, sexism, the abuse of power, and rich privilege) by appealing to our religion. Silently, unconsciously, blind to ourselves, grounded in a sense of right and wrong that’s colored by self-interest, we give ourselves divine permission to live and act in ways that are antithetical to most everything Jesus taught.
We can protest, saying that we’re sincere, but sincerity by itself is not a moral or religious criterion. Sincerity can, and often does, tie God to the ungodly and justifies what’s evil in the name of God: The people conducting the Inquisition were sincere; the slave traitors were sincere; those who protected pedophile priests were sincere, racists are sincere; sexists are sincere; bigots are sincere; the rich defending their privilege are sincere; church offices making hurtful, gospel-defying pastoral decisions that deprive people of ecclesial access are very sincere and gospel-motivated; and all of us, as we make the kind of judgments of others that Jesus told us time and again not to make, are sincere. But we think that we’re doing this all for the good, for God.
However in so many of our actions we are connecting God and church to narrowness, intolerance, rigidity, racism, sexism, favoritism, legalism, dogmatism, and stupidity. And we wonder why so many of our own children no longer go to church and struggle with religion.
The God whom Jesus reveals is the antithesis of much of religion, sad but true. The God whom Jesus reveals is a prodigal God, a God who isn’t stingy; a God who wills the salvation of everyone, who loves all races and all peoples equally; a God with a preferential love for the poor; a God who creates both genders equally; a God who strongly opposes worldly power and privilege. The God of Jesus Christ is a God of compassion, empathy, and forgiveness, a God who demands that spirit take precedence over law, love over dogma, and forgiveness over juridical justice. And very importantly, the God whom Jesus incarnates isn’t stupid, but is a God whose intelligence isn’t threatened by science, and a God who doesn’t condemn and send people to hell according to our limited human judgments.
Sadly, too often that’s not the God of religion, of our churches, of our spirituality, or of our private consciences.
God isn’t narrow, stupid, legalistic, bigoted, racist, violent, or vengeful, and it’s time we stopped connecting God to those things.
Faith in the Gospels
Scripture scholar Peter Edmonds SJ (a member of the Jesuit community at Stamford Hill, North London) begins this article by analysing the references to ‘faith’ in Matthew, Mark and Luke. How can we build a rich vision for a life of faith by looking at the different ways in which the evangelists use the word? This article has been slightly adapted as it was originally written for the Year of Faith (2012) The original of this article can be found here
An obvious question to ask is, ‘How is the word ‘faith’ used in the New Testament?’ The Greek word for ‘faith’ is pistis and it occurs in 24 of the 27 books that make up the New Testament. In this short article, we confine ourselves to the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke; surprisingly the word is never used in the gospel of John. With two exceptions, we will ignore occurrences of the related verb, ‘I believe’ (pisteuo) which by contrast is found 98 times in John’s gospel.
The Gospel of Mark: Believe in the Gospel
We begin with our first exception, because the first words spoken by Jesus in Mark include the word ‘believe’. He writes, ‘Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe (pisteuo) in the gospel”’ (Mark 1:14-15). Who, we ask, responded to this appeal by displaying the faith (pistis) that Jesus demanded? Those who know Mark’s gospel, call it the ‘gospel of paradox’. The paradox here is that it is not the disciples who Jesus called by the lake (1:16-20) or on the mountain (3:13-19) who give an example of faith, but people who appear only once in Mark’s gospel and are not heard of again. Their response can speak to us in this Year of Faith.
The word ‘faith’ (pistis) occurs five times in Mark. It is applied first to the four men who brought a paralysed man to Jesus by lowering him through the roof of the house where he was. Because of their faith, Jesus forgave the sins of this man (2:5). This first use of the word reminds us that faith shows itself in action. Paul made this point when he wrote to the Galatians of, ‘faith working itself out in love’ (Galatians 5:6). And we may note that where Jesus found faith, there he announced that sins were forgiven.
The second use of this word is addressed to the disciples of Jesus. In a boat on the lake of Galilee, they ran into a storm and panicked because they thought they were about to sink. Jesus calmed the storm and said to his disciples, ‘Have you still no faith?’ (4:40). Although previously they had witnessed the power of Jesus in healing and controversy, and heard his authority in teaching, in crisis they despaired. Here, as elsewhere in Mark’s gospel, the behaviour of the disciples of Jesus offers us a warning rather than an example. Solid faith, such as the disciples were yet to acquire, enables the believer to cope with the storms we meet with in our human experience.
The third occurrence of this word ‘faith’ in Mark is addressed by Jesus to a woman whom he has just cured. Her sickness had already lasted for twelve years. Her cure came in two stages. First she sought a cure by touching Jesus, but this led only to ‘fear and trembling’. It was only after falling down before Jesus and telling him ‘the whole truth’, that she found her cure complete and Jesus said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has saved you’(5:34). From her we learn how faith can grow; it implies a personal and confident relationship with the Lord.
The word ‘faith’ occurs a fourth time in Mark in his account of the cure of Bartimaeus. He was a blind beggar who heard that Jesus was passing by. Three times he pleaded with Jesus for mercy and for the restoration of his sight. His prayer was granted and Jesus said to him, as to the woman previously, ‘Go, your faith has saved you’ (10:52). Paradoxically, Bartimaeus ignored this instruction to go; instead he followed Jesus on the way that led to Jerusalem, the city where Jesus was to die. His faith had expressed itself in repeated and persevering prayer, despite discouragement from those standing by. His example teaches us to persevere in prayer to the person of Jesus. Faith encourages the habit of regular and persistent prayer. Greek Christian tradition in particular has valued this prayer of Bartimaeus, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me’ (10:47); monks of old repeated it, as they trudged off to their work in the fields.
Finally, Jesus spoke this word ‘faith’ to his disciples when they discovered that the fig tree that he had cursed the previous day had withered. He told them to ‘have faith in God’ (11:22), and then gave them a lesson on the power of prayer. Here is Jesus’s longest instruction of prayer in this gospel since there is no ‘Lord’s prayer’ in Mark. It consists of three sayings, two of which appeal more to prophetic exaggeration than to day-to-day reality. We do not really expect our prayer to move mountains or our every prayer to be answered, but prayer is to be from the heart, is to be confident and trusting, and is to include mutual forgiveness. As in the Bartimaeus story, we recognise the link between prayer and faith.
But perhaps the most memorable paradoxical saying about faith in Mark’s gospel is spoken by another of its minor characters. The word used here is not faith (pistis) but its opposite (apistia). The father of the epileptic boy, whom the disciples of Jesus were unable to cure, cried out to Jesus and said, ‘I believe. Help my unbelief’ (9:24). This prayer is included in one of the recommended prayers for th(e) Year of Faith:
Lord,
Let me see your face,
Know your heart
and experience your love in my life.
Strengthen in me
the precious gift of faith.
I believe Lord;
Help my unbelief.
Amen.[1]
The Gospel of Matthew: You of Little Faith
Matthew’s gospel is reckoned to be a revision of Mark’s, so it is now time to examine how he treats Mark’s references to ‘faith’. Jesus’s first public words in Matthew do not include the word ‘believe’. He simply asks for repentance (Matthew 4:17). His first use of the word ‘faith’ comes in his narrative of the cure of the centurion’s servant, an incident not reported by Mark. There Jesus announces that, ‘not even in Israel have I found such faith’ (8:10). Jesus is here dealing with a Gentile and this reminds us how, from the beginning, faith found a home in such outsiders. At the beginning of the gospel, Gentile Magi were the first to worship the child Jesus (2:11) and at its conclusion, another centurion ‘and those with him’ confessed Jesus as Son of God (27:54). Such texts encourage us to look for signs of faith outside our own group.
Like Mark, Matthew uses the word ‘faith’ in connection with the men who brought the paralytic to Jesus (9:2) and in a shorter version of her cure, Jesus told the woman who had been sick for twelve years, ‘Your faith has saved you’ (9:22). When Jesus cured two blind men, in a passage that resembles the cure of Bartimaeus in Mark, he said, ‘According to your faith, be it done to you’ (9:29). Both in this narrative and in that of the cure of the Canaanite woman, to whom he said, ‘Woman, great is your faith’ (15:28), Matthew links the readiness of Jesus to heal with the faith demonstrated by those in need.
What is special in Matthew is an expression used four times in this gospel, once in Luke and never in Mark. The Greek word is oligopistos, best translated as ‘person of little faith’. In Matthew’s account of the storm on the lake, Jesus says to his disciples, ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith?’ (8:26) He addressed them again in these terms when they confused his words about the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees with ordinary bread: ‘You of little faith, why are talking about having no bread?’ (16:8) In Matthew’s account of the cure of the epileptic boy, Jesus makes no mention of the faith of the father as in Mark; rather he tells his disciples that it was because of their ‘little faith’ that they were unable to cure the boy (17:20). He had already addressed them in these terms in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘Will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith’? (6:30) Finally, Jesus told Peter that it was because of his ‘little faith’ that he began to sink in his attempt to walk on the water (14:31).
Commentators on Matthew suggest that the disciples in this gospel represent the members of Matthew’s Church. In this Year of Faith, Matthew challenges the Church of today to acknowledge its ‘little faith’, as he did his disciples when they failed to cure the epileptic boy. ‘If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there and nothing will be impossible for you”’ (17:20). A similar saying about faith moving mountains is included in Matthew’s account of the withered fig-tree which he reproduces from Mark (21:21). Again faith and prayer go together.
The Gospel of Luke: Increase Our Faith
At first sight, Luke adds little to what we have noted in Mark and Matthew. Once more the word faith is used in connection with those who brought the paralytic to Jesus (Luke 5:20) and with the centurion whose servant was healed (7:9). Four times in Luke, in contrast to the two occasions in Mark and Matthew, we find the expression, ‘Your faith has saved you’. Jesus addresses it not only to the woman cured of her haemorrhages (8:48) and to the blind man whom Mark calls Bartimaeus (18:42), but also to the woman ‘in the city who was a sinner’ (7:37, 50) and to the leper who returned to praise God (17:19). Such salvation is a theme in Luke, as John the Baptist proclaimed in his preaching, ‘All flesh shall see the salvation of God’ (3:6). Only in Luke is Jesus called saviour, as the angels announced to the shepherds (2:11).
While Matthew challenged his community because of its ‘little faith’, generally Luke is kinder to the disciples of Jesus than his predecessors. In describing the storm on the lake, Jesus asked his disciples, ‘Where is your faith?’ (Luke 8:25), in contrast to the ‘no faith’ of Mark and the ‘little faith’ of Matthew. As they approached Jerusalem, the disciples asked him, ‘Increase our faith’ (17:5), as previously they had asked him to teach them how to pray (11:1). He told them a parable about a widow who pleaded with an unjust judge. His conclusion was a lament, ‘When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? ’ (18:8) At the last supper, Jesus prayed for Peter ‘that your own faith may not fail’ (22:32). Once more we note the link between faith and prayer.
The Johannine Writings: Conquer the World
While the gospel of John does not include the noun ‘faith’, it does contain nearly a hundred instances of the verb, ‘I believe’ (pisteuo). We include here our second example of the use of this verb, namely the beatitude which Jesus addressed to Thomas who had doubted, and to all who hear this gospel, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’ (John 20:29). The noun ‘faith’, however, does occur once in the letters of John: ‘And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?’ (1 John 5:4-5). Here indeed is encouragement for this Year of Faith! May our faith conquer the world!
Growing in faith
We learn from the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke that as we grow in our knowledge of the goodness and love of God, so will we grow in our faith. This ought to be our hope during this Year of Faith. The last time that Matthew uses the word pistis (faith) occurs is to record Jesus’s words to the scribes and the Pharisees, the bluntest of his addresses to them in all the gospels: ‘For you tithe mint, dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith’ (23:23). May Jesus not have to make the same lament over us.
[1] Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster, 2012
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 22nd – 25th August, 2017
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 11:00am Ulverstone (KSC Changeover Mass)
12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Next Weekend 26th & 27th August 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 26th & 27th August, 2017
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: M Gaffney, M Gerrand, H Lim 10:30am: J Phillips, K Pearce, P Piccolo
Ministers of Communion: Vigil: M Heazlewood, B Suckling, G Lee-Archer, M Kelly, P Shelverton
10.30am: M Sherriff, T & S Ryan, D Barrientos, M Barrientos
Cleaners 25th August: M & L Tippett, A Berryman 1st September: M.W.C.
Piety Shop 26th August: Louise Murfet 27th August: Digna French
Ulverstone:
Reader: D Prior
Ministers of Communion: B Deacon, J Allen, G Douglas, K Reilly
Cleaners: V Ferguson, E Cox Flowers: M Byrne Hospitality: S & T Johnstone
Penguin:
Greeters: G & N Pearce Commentator: Y Downes Readers: A Landers, A Guest
Ministers of Communion: E Nickols, T Clayton Liturgy: Sulphur Creek C Setting Up: F Aichberger
Care of Church: M Murray, E Nickols
Latrobe:
Reader: H Lim Minister of Communion: I Campbell, M Kavic Procession of gifts: Parishioners
Port Sorell:
Readers: P Anderson, L Post Ministers of Communion: B Lee Cleaners/Flowers/Prep: G Bellchambers, M Gillard
Readings this week – Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
First Reading: Isaiah 56: 1. 6-7
Second Reading: Romans 11: 13-15. 29-32
Gospel: Matthew 15:21-28
PREGO REFLECTION:
As I begin my prayer today, I take my time to become still
before the Lord in whatever way is best for me.
When I am ready, I read the
Gospel slowly, maybe several times.
Then, setting the text to one side, I
picture the scene, watching events unfold, or perhaps accompanying one of the
characters in the story:
Jesus seeking rest;
the woman shouting her need for
help;
the curious bystanders watching;
the disciples embarrassed and wanting
quiet;
the woman persisting in her asking ...
Listening to the dialogue between
Jesus and the disciples, and Jesus and the woman, I notice what I am feeling
and thinking.
What do I want to say to the woman?
And to Jesus?
I know that I
can speak freely with the Lord, just as I am.
I too come to kneel at Jesus’s
feet.
What is my deepest need today?
I ask Jesus.
I listen for what my Lord
might say to me.
I end my prayer slowly, perhaps asking for the faith and
confidence to trust God for all my needs.
Our Father...
Readings next 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
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Victoria Webb, Vern Cazaly, Dawn
Stevens, & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently: Kuppala Devadoss; Gertrude Koerner,
Reginald (Mick) Poole, Fred Melen, Mikhail Yastrebov, Olga Delaney, Joan Davidson,
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 16th – 22nd
August
Lionel
Rosevear, Beverley Graham, Allen Cruse, Philip Hofmeyer, Colin Hodgson,
Nicolaas Knaap, Margaret Sheehan, Nicolle Gillam-Barber, Cheryl Leary, Kathleen
Laycock, Rita Groves, Cathy Thuaire, Kevin Court, Patricia Anne Smith. Also
Muriel Xavier, Joyce Barry, Barbara Curtis, Hedley Stubbs, Elizabeth Robertson.
Deceased members of Robertson, Ravaillion & Proctor Families, Sheridan,
Bourke & Knight Families.
May they rest in peace
Weekly
Ramblings
This
weekend we welcome Archbishop Julian who comes to confer the Sacrament of
Confirmation on 24 young members and one adult member of our Parish Community. Those
being confirmed at Our Lady of Lourdes are: Luca Adams, Lexine Biong, Mia
Birch, Ella Curran, Jack Dunn, Lily Farr, Liam Garrigan, Lace Kelly, Ava
Lakeland, Joshua Lundstedt, Alexander O’Grady, Thomas O’Grady, William O’Grady,
Joshua Parsons, Tom Ryan, Matilda Spaulding, Jasmine Turner, Tom Williams and
Angela Maloney. Those being confirmed at Sacred Heart are: Logan Beaven-Duncan,
Keenan Harbach, Conor Kelly, Tristan McGrath, Sybille O’Rourke and Josef Tucker. Congratulations
to these confirmandi and their families – may the Holy Spirit continue to fill
them with life and love.
Next
Saturday (26th) these children and their families will gather at
Sacred Heart Church for the next stage of their journey to become fully
initiated members of our Community as they prepare to receive the Eucharist for
the first time. These preparation sessions and the follow-up work done by their
families is wonderfully supported by our prayers and encouragement – please
continue to pray for them in the coming weeks.
I am
looking forward to next weekend (Sunday 27th) when we will be
running the next session of how we can move forward with Realising the Vision.
As mentioned in the flyer last weekend it will be an opportunity to find ways
to move forward in our Parish with your ideas and your input. The Forum starts
at 2pm at Sacred Heart Church and will conclude by 4pm. ALL ARE WELCOME.
We recently
received an Invitation addressed to the Parish for all Parishioners to the
Ordination to the Priesthood of the Rev Paschal Okpon. The ordination will
occur on Friday 15th September at St Mary’s Cathedral at 7.00pm. A
copy of the invitation can be found on the Noticeboards in all our Mass
Centres. The newly ordained Fr Paschal will be celebrating the 10.30am Mass on
Sunday 17th September at OLOL Church – this will be followed by a
light luncheon in the Hall. If anyone still wishes to contribute towards a gift
then please place your gift in an envelope marked with his name and deposit it
on the collection plate at any Mass and the monies will be collected and a
suitable gift obtained.
Please take care on the roads and in your homes,
KNIGHTS OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS:
- The AGM of the Knights of the Southern Cross will be held on Sunday 20th August at OLOL Parish Hall commencing at 4pm. This will be followed by a light tea and then the August monthly meeting. Any men how are interested on joining the group are invited to attend.
- The Annual Change-Over Mass of
the North West District of the Knights of the Southern Cross will be held
at Sacred Heart Church, Ulverstone on Thursday 24th August at 11am.
All members and their wives/partners are invited to attend the Mass and
the luncheon.
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 21 (11th August)
footy margin 48 – Winners; Win Stolp, Nick Dalton-Smith
BINGO - Thursday Nights
OLOL Hall, Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm! Callers for Thursday 24th
August – Merv Tippett & Terry Bird.
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
NATURAL FERTILITY AWARENESS WEEK 21ST – 27TH AUGUST
2017
Did you know a woman’s health is often reflected in her
fertility? Learning The Billings Ovulation Method® can alert a woman to
underlying health problems.
If you would like to be able to manage your fertility
naturally and to monitor your reproductive health accredited Billing Teachers
are available to assist you throughout Australia.
For further information ring Billings LIFE on 1800 335 860
or visit www.billings.life
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
Franciscan
Spirituality: Week 1
This is taken from the Daily email produced by Fr Richard Rohr OFM and the Centre for Contemplation. You can subscribe here
Depth and Breadth
One reason so many people have lost heart today is that we
feel both confused and powerless. The forces against us are overwhelming:
consumerism, racism, militarism, individualism, patriarchy, the corporate
juggernaut. These “powers and principalities” seem to be fully in control. We
feel helpless to choose our own lives, much less a common life, or to see any
overarching meaning. The world is so complex, and we are so small. What can we
do but let the waves of history carry us and try to keep afloat somehow?
But maybe we can at least look for some patterns, or for
those who found the patterns. Let’s turn to a thirteenth-century Italian who
has one of the longest bibliographies of anyone in history: Francis of Assisi
(1181-1226). His simple wisdom has attracted many cultures and religions and
continues to resonate eight hundred years later.
Saint Francis stepped out into a world being recast by the
emerging market economy. He lived amid a decaying old order in which his father
was greedily buying up the small farms of debtors, moving quickly into the new
entrepreneurial class. The Church seems to have been largely out of touch with
the masses. But Francis trusted a deeper voice and a bigger truth. He sought
one clear center—the Incarnate Jesus—and moved out from there.
Francis understood everything from this personalized
reference point. He followed Jesus in at least three clear ways. First, Francis
delved into the prayer depths of his own tradition, as opposed to mere
repetition of tired formulas. Second, he sought direction in the mirror of
creation, as opposed to mental and fabricated ideas or ideals. Third, and most
radically, he looked to the underside of his society, to the suffering, for an
understanding of how God transforms us. In other words, Francis found both
depth and breadth—and a process to keep him there.
The depth was an inner life where all shadow, mystery, and
paradox were confronted, accepted, and forgiven—and God was encountered. The
breadth was the ordinary and sacred world itself.
Francis showed us the process for staying at the center:
entering into the world of human powerlessness. In imitation of Jesus, he chose
“poverty” as his honest and truthful lens for seeing everything. Francis set
out to read reality through the eyes and authority of those who have “suffered
and been rejected”—and, with Jesus, come out resurrected. This is the
“privileged seeing” of those who have been initiated by life. It is the true
baptism of “fire and Spirit” with which, Jesus says, we must all be baptized
(see Mark 10:39).
For Francis, the true “I” first had to be discovered and
realigned (the prayer journey into the True Self). He then had to experience
himself situated inside of a meaning-filled cosmos (a sacramental universe).
Francis prayed, “Who are you, God? And who am I?” Finally, he had to be poor
(to be able to read reality from the side of powerlessness). He realized that
experiencing reality from the side of money, success, and power is to leave
yourself out of sympathy with 99% of the people who have ever lived.
Reference:
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), 3-5.
A Prime Attractor
One day, Brother Masseo approached Brother Francis to test
his humility and asked in a pointed way “Why after you? Why after you? Why does
the whole world come running after you, Francis?” [1] We are still asking that
question eight centuries later. Francis is what some call a “prime
attractor”—one who moves history and humanity forward just by being who he is.
More than any other follower of Jesus, Francis of Assisi has
been called a “second Christ.” He is taken seriously by all world religions.
When Pope John Paul II wanted to gather the leaders of all the world religions
to have a respectful interfaith dialogue in the 1980s, the only city that they
could agree to meet in was Assisi, because the memory of St. Francis does not
carry any negative baggage, even to other religions.
I live in New Mexico, where the first Franciscan arrived in
1539, beginning a long and checkered history here. I am afraid the Order had
lost much of Francis’ simplicity by then, because, like the Church itself, we
had aligned ourselves with power, war, and empire (in our case, the Spanish
Empire) for protection. Strange, since this is precisely what Francis refused
to do in order to keep his structural, Gospel, and personal freedom. But at
least we still accompanied the poor, the indigenous, and the immigrants, and
had not lost Francis’ sense of adventure into ever-new worlds.
In Francis’ worldview, the sun, moon, animals, plants, and
elements are all shown reverence and even personal subjectivity as “brother” and
“sister.” He is the patron saint of ecology, animals, and peacemaking—because
he understood that the entire circle of life has a Great Lover at the center of
it all. He is the only Christian man ever known to attempt two or three trips
to dialogue with the “enemy” during the tragic Crusades against Muslims in the
Holy Land, telling the Christians they were wrong for crusading and persecuting
these children of God! He is truly a universal man, addressing the same issues
that are still urgent and important in our own time: creation, nonviolence, and
the foundational justice issue—living a simple, shared life in this world—which
alone makes sisterhood and brotherhood possible. Francis knew there is enough
for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.
References:
[1] The Little Flowers of St. Francis, chapter 10.
Adapted from Richard Rohr’s foreword to Mirabai Starr’s
book, Saint Francis of Assisi: Brother of Creation (Sounds True: 2013), vii-ix;
The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of St. Francis, disc
1 (Sounds True: 2010), CD; and
Richard Rohr with John Feister, Hope Against Darkness: The
Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety (St. Anthony
Messenger Press: 2001), 109.
Rule of the Gospel
In the beginning of the Franciscan Rule, Saint Francis says,
“The Rule and the life of the Friars Minor is to simply live the Gospel.” [1]
In fact, the first Rule that he started writing around 1209 is simply a
collection of quotes from the New Testament. When Francis sent it off to Rome,
the pope looked at it and said, “This is no Rule. This is just the Gospel.” You
can just hear Francis saying, “Yes . . . that is the point. It is just the
Gospel. We don’t need any other Rule except the Gospel!”
To be a Franciscan is nothing other than always searching
for “the marrow of the Gospel” as he called it. [2] Francis said the purpose
and goal of our life is to live the marrow or core of the Gospel. Honestly, the
core is so simple that it’s hard to live. It’s so clear that the mind almost
insists on making it complicated. It is so nondual that the only way you can
get control of it again is to descend into some little dualistic, divisive
right or wrong—and that is what most individuals and groups do.
When Francis read the Beatitudes, Jesus’ inaugural discourse,
he saw that the call to be poor stood right at the beginning: “How blessed are
the poor in spirit!” Henceforward, Francis’ reading of the Gospel considered
poverty to be “the foundation of all other virtues and their guardian.” [3] The
other virtues receive the kingdom only in promise; poverty, however, is
invested with heaven now, without delay. “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven”
(Matthew 5:3). Present tense!
As a result, Franciscan spirituality has never been an
abstraction. It is grounded in Jesus’ specific instructions to his disciples,
not ideology or denominational certitudes. Francis’ living of the Gospel was
just that: simple lifestyle. It was the Incarnation continuing in space and
time. It was the presence of the Spirit taken as if it were true. It was being
Jesus more than just worshiping Jesus. At its best, Franciscan life is not
words or even ethics. It is flesh—naked flesh—unable to deny its limitations,
unable to cover its wounds. Francis called this inner nakedness “poverty.”
This pure vision of life attracted thousands to a new
freedom in the Church and in ministry. Religious communities had become more
and more entangled with stipends and rich land holdings. Members lived
individually simple lives but were corporately secure and even comfortable. The
begging, or mendicant, orders were born to break that dangerous marriage
between ministry and money. Francis did not want his friars to preach salvation
(although they did that, too) as much as he wanted them to be salvation. He
wanted them to model and mirror the life of Jesus in the world, with all of the
vulnerability that would entail. Today, many people use the phrase “preach the
Gospel at all times, and when necessary use words” to describe Francis’ desire
to serve God in every moment.
References:
[1] Francis of Assisi, “The Later Rule” (1223), chapter 1.
See Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press,
1999), 100.
[2] Thomas of Celano, “The Remembrance of the Desire of a
Soul,” chapter 158. See Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 2 (Hyde Park,
NY: New City Press, 2000), 380.
[3] From Prologue of “Sacred Exchange between St. Francis
& Lady Poverty,” Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1 (Hyde Park, NY:
New City Press, 1999), 529.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Franciscan Mysticism: I AM That
Which I Am Seeking, disc 3 (CAC: 2012), CD, MP3 download; and
Richard Rohr with John Feister, Hope Against Darkness: The
Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety (St. Anthony
Messenger Press: 2001), 111-112.
Voluntary Poverty
Francis was born in 1181 in Assisi, Italy. Europe and the
Muslim world had already endured two crusades. The third crusade began when
Francis was a boy, and the fourth when he was twenty-one. In short, the world
was obsessed with war, fear, and security. Assisi itself joined in an ongoing
war with Perugia, a neighboring city. Francis rode off to fight and was taken
prisoner by the Perugians in 1202. In 1204, the Christians of the West sacked
and looted Constantinople (present day Istanbul).
Shortly after that, Francis came out of prison dazed,
disillusioned, and feeling there must be something more than all this cruelty
and aggression. Francis seemed to realize that there is an intrinsic connection
between violence and the need to protect one’s possessions, perks, and
privileges. His own father was one of the first generation of propertied
businessmen in the new trading class of Europe. One biographer found city
records of twelfth century Assisi showing that Pietro De Bernadone, Francis’
father, was indeed buying up the lands of the poor. Francis recognized that his
father’s obsession with money had in many ways destroyed his father’s soul. And
so, in some ways overreacting to his father, Francis set out on a radically
different path.
Francis concluded that the only way out of such a world was
to live a life of voluntary poverty, or what he called a life of
“non-appropriation,” and to simply not be a part of the moneyed class.
Franciscans wear a rope around their waist as a sign that they carry no money,
since the leather belt in Francis’ time also served as a wallet. Francis knew
that once you felt you owned anything, then you would have to protect it and
increase it. That is the inherent nature of greed—there is never enough. For some
reason this is no longer considered a capital sin in our capitalist society. In
fact, I have never heard anyone confess an offense against the tenth
commandment. “Coveting our neighbor’s goods” is the very nature of our society.
Today the need for simplifying goes beyond an avoidance of
violence. Our planet is in grave peril largely due to greed, overconsumption,
and reckless exploitation. While most of us are not like Francis, willing to
dive into a life of voluntary poverty, we must all make choices and decisions
to do our part to follow these wise words of an unknown speaker: “live simply
so that others may simply live.”
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Art of Letting Go: Living the
Wisdom of St. Francis, discs 1 and 2 (Sounds True: 2010), CD.
Solidarity
Francis went beyond voluntary poverty in his effort to find
a way out of the world of comparison, competition, greed, and the violence that
comes with it. He also felt that he had to live in close proximity to and even
solidarity with the excluded ones in his society. If we are not marginalized
ourselves in some way, we normally need to associate with some marginalized
group to have an enlightened Gospel perspective and to be converted to
compassion. We call this “the preferential option for the poor.” Jesus himself
both lived and taught this quite explicitly. Francis was one of the first well
known Christians to make this practice clear, and this very phrase is now
included in the official documents of many religious communities around the world.
Francis literally changed sides or teams. He was raised in
upper Assisi, as one of those who considered themselves the majores or upper
class. In the lower part of town lived the minores or the lower class. Francis
actually moved even further down, into the plain below Assisi where there was a
leper colony. (The word “leper” generally refers to the excluded ones. “Lepers”
did not always have the contagious disease of leprosy, but they were the people
society deemed unacceptable, unworthy, or shameful for any number of reasons.)
On that plain was an abandoned, ruined church, which Francis
physically rebuilt. The “Portiuncula,” or “little portion” of the large
Benedictine holdings, is the birthplace and home of the Franciscan Order.
Although Franciscans do not legally own the church, each year, on August 2, we
piously pay the good Benedictines with a basket of fish to be allowed to “use”
it for another year.
Members of religious communities usually place initials
after their names to indicate their particular Order. We Franciscans use
O.F.M., Ordo Fratum Minorum—Latin for the little brothers, or the “Order of the
Minor Brothers.” Francis told us to move down the social class ladder. We were
not to identify with the upper class, nor with the climb toward success, power,
and money. We were to find our place not in climbing but in descending. This
Franciscan vision is utterly countercultural to the worldview of Western
society. We were to be mendicants, or beggars, which would help keep us as
humble receivers rather than ecclesiastical consumers and producers.
Francis resisted priesthood because, I believe, he was
deeply aware of all that invariably comes with priestly ordination (education,
titles, privilege, human respect, income, special clothing, and the need to
protect the establishment or institution). He wanted his followers to be “blue
collar” ministers who lived close to the people in every way rather than “white
collar” superiors. However, poor Francis was not long in his grave before the
Church started ordaining as many Franciscan men as possible—who soon wore stiff
white Roman collars. It gave us access, credibility, status, and stipends in
academia, church, and society. I know that it was probably inevitable, and not
all bad, but it is indeed dangerous for the soul.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative
Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), Chapters 2, 3, and
Afterword.
Inherent Dignity
If we look at all the wars of history, we’ll see that God
has unwittingly been enlisted on both sides of the fight. It’s easy to wonder
what God does when both sides are praying for God’s protection. If I’m to trust
Jesus as the archetypal pattern of God’s presence and participation on Earth, I
believe God is wherever the suffering is. I believe this because that is
precisely what Jesus does. The awakened and aware—like Jesus and Francis of
Assisi—go where people are suffering, excluded, expelled, marginalized, and
abused. And there they find God. I know that doesn’t sound very churchy or
religious. But I look at the lives of Jesus and Francis, the primary people on
whose teachings I have built my life, and I gain courage to believe it, because
that’s what they did.
Jesus, a quintessential Jew, makes heroes of the outsiders
and underdogs in his parables and stories. We can see why the priests didn’t
like him. Francis, following Jesus, was also non-exclusionary and a
bridge-builder. In 1219, Francis tried to stop the crusaders from attacking
Muslims in Damietta. After being captured by Egyptian soldiers, Francis met
with Sultan Malik al-Kamil, who also sought peace. [1] Together they talked
about prayer, faith, and mystical spirituality. Francis honored and respected
the Islamic religion, even before his encounter with the Sultan. In his
original Rule, Francis instructed friars who traveled to Muslim lands not to
engage in argument or disputes, and to accept local authority, even if it meant
making themselves vulnerable. [2] He wanted them to carry the Gospel, not take
up crusaders’ weapons. We need such a message today.
Imagine, brothers and sisters, how different Western history
and religion could have been if we had walked so tenderly and lovingly upon the
earth, as Francis and Jesus did. Imagine what the world would be like if we treated
others with inherent and equal dignity and respect, seeing the divine DNA in
ourselves and everyone else too—regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender,
nationality, appearance, or social class. Nothing less offers the world any
lasting future.
Unfortunately, many people can’t see their own belovedness.
If you can’t honor the Divine Indwelling—the indwelling presence of the Holy
Spirit— within yourself, how could you see it in anybody else? You can’t. All
awareness, enlightenment, aliveness, and transformation begins with recognizing
that your DNA is divine and unearned as is everyone else’s. This is also a kind
of building from the bottom up. Such foundational value moves you from a
commodity culture, where everything is bought and sold, to a world of reverence,
mutual respect, and love. You realize that life, creation, people, animals, and
the earth itself are all imbued with intrinsic worth and are to be respected
for their own sake.
Every creature carries the DNA, or Imago Dei, of the
Creator, and it shall not be taken from them.
References:
[1] See Paul Moses, The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades,
Islam and Francis of Assisi’s Mission of Peace (Image: 2009).
[2] Francis of Assisi, “The Earlier Rule” (1209/10), chapter
16. See Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1 (Hyde Park, NY: New City
Press, 1999), 74. Francis likely added this chapter to the Rule around 1213.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Art of Letting Go: Living the
Wisdom of St. Francis, disc 2 (Sounds True: 2010), CD.
GOD NEEDS BETTER PRESS
This is an article by Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. The original article can be found here
The word “Protestant” is generally misunderstood. Martin Luther’s protest that led to the Protestant reformation was not, in fact, a protest against the Roman Catholic Church; properly understood, it was a protest for God. God, in Luther’s view, was being manipulated to serve human and ecclesial self-interest. His protest was a plea to respect God’s transcendence.
We need a new protest today, a new plea, a strong one, to not connect God and our churches to intolerance, injustice, bigotry, violence, terrorism, racism, sexism, rigidity, dogmatism, anti-eroticism, homophobia, self-serving power, institutional self-protection, security for the rich, ideology of all kinds, and just plain stupidity. God is getting a lot of bad press!
A simple example can be illustrative here: In a recent book that documents an extraordinary fifty-year friendship with his former coach, basketball legend (and present-day exceptional writer), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, shares why he became a Muslim. Raised a Roman Catholic, a graduate of Catholic schools, he eventually left Christianity to become a Muslim. Why?
In his own words: Because “the white people who were bombing churches and killing little girls, who were shooting unarmed black boys, who were beating black protestors with clubs loudly declared themselves to be proud Christians. The Ku Klux Klan were proud Christians. I felt no allegiance to a religion with so many evil followers. Yes, I was also aware that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was also a proud Christian, as were many of the civil rights leaders. Coach Wooden was a devout Christian. The civil rights movement was supported by many brave white Christians who marched side by side with blacks. When the KKK attacked, they often delivered even worse beatings to the whites, whom they considered to be race traitors. I didn’t condemn the religion, but I definitely felt removed from it.”
His story is only one story and by his own admission has another side to it, but it’s highly illustrative. It’s easy to connect God to the wrong things. Christianity, of course, isn’t the only culprit. Today, for instance, we see perhaps the worst examples of tying God to evil in the violence of ISIS and other such terrorist groups who are killing, randomly and brutally, in the name of God. You can be sure that the last words uttered, just as a suicide bomber randomly kills innocent people, is: God is great! What horrible thing to say as one is committing an act of murder! Doing the ungodly in the name of God!
And yet we so often do the same thing in subtler forms, namely, we justify the ungodly (violence, injustice, inequality, poverty, intolerance, bigotry, racism, sexism, the abuse of power, and rich privilege) by appealing to our religion. Silently, unconsciously, blind to ourselves, grounded in a sense of right and wrong that’s colored by self-interest, we give ourselves divine permission to live and act in ways that are antithetical to most everything Jesus taught.
We can protest, saying that we’re sincere, but sincerity by itself is not a moral or religious criterion. Sincerity can, and often does, tie God to the ungodly and justifies what’s evil in the name of God: The people conducting the Inquisition were sincere; the slave traitors were sincere; those who protected pedophile priests were sincere, racists are sincere; sexists are sincere; bigots are sincere; the rich defending their privilege are sincere; church offices making hurtful, gospel-defying pastoral decisions that deprive people of ecclesial access are very sincere and gospel-motivated; and all of us, as we make the kind of judgments of others that Jesus told us time and again not to make, are sincere. But we think that we’re doing this all for the good, for God.
However in so many of our actions we are connecting God and church to narrowness, intolerance, rigidity, racism, sexism, favoritism, legalism, dogmatism, and stupidity. And we wonder why so many of our own children no longer go to church and struggle with religion.
The God whom Jesus reveals is the antithesis of much of religion, sad but true. The God whom Jesus reveals is a prodigal God, a God who isn’t stingy; a God who wills the salvation of everyone, who loves all races and all peoples equally; a God with a preferential love for the poor; a God who creates both genders equally; a God who strongly opposes worldly power and privilege. The God of Jesus Christ is a God of compassion, empathy, and forgiveness, a God who demands that spirit take precedence over law, love over dogma, and forgiveness over juridical justice. And very importantly, the God whom Jesus incarnates isn’t stupid, but is a God whose intelligence isn’t threatened by science, and a God who doesn’t condemn and send people to hell according to our limited human judgments.
Sadly, too often that’s not the God of religion, of our churches, of our spirituality, or of our private consciences.
God isn’t narrow, stupid, legalistic, bigoted, racist, violent, or vengeful, and it’s time we stopped connecting God to those things.
Faith in the Gospels
Scripture scholar Peter Edmonds SJ (a member of the Jesuit community at Stamford Hill, North London) begins this article by analysing the references to ‘faith’ in Matthew, Mark and Luke. How can we build a rich vision for a life of faith by looking at the different ways in which the evangelists use the word? This article has been slightly adapted as it was originally written for the Year of Faith (2012) The original of this article can be found here
An obvious question to ask is, ‘How is the word ‘faith’ used in the New Testament?’ The Greek word for ‘faith’ is pistis and it occurs in 24 of the 27 books that make up the New Testament. In this short article, we confine ourselves to the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke; surprisingly the word is never used in the gospel of John. With two exceptions, we will ignore occurrences of the related verb, ‘I believe’ (pisteuo) which by contrast is found 98 times in John’s gospel.
The Gospel of Mark: Believe in the Gospel
We begin with our first exception, because the first words spoken by Jesus in Mark include the word ‘believe’. He writes, ‘Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe (pisteuo) in the gospel”’ (Mark 1:14-15). Who, we ask, responded to this appeal by displaying the faith (pistis) that Jesus demanded? Those who know Mark’s gospel, call it the ‘gospel of paradox’. The paradox here is that it is not the disciples who Jesus called by the lake (1:16-20) or on the mountain (3:13-19) who give an example of faith, but people who appear only once in Mark’s gospel and are not heard of again. Their response can speak to us in this Year of Faith.
The word ‘faith’ (pistis) occurs five times in Mark. It is applied first to the four men who brought a paralysed man to Jesus by lowering him through the roof of the house where he was. Because of their faith, Jesus forgave the sins of this man (2:5). This first use of the word reminds us that faith shows itself in action. Paul made this point when he wrote to the Galatians of, ‘faith working itself out in love’ (Galatians 5:6). And we may note that where Jesus found faith, there he announced that sins were forgiven.
The second use of this word is addressed to the disciples of Jesus. In a boat on the lake of Galilee, they ran into a storm and panicked because they thought they were about to sink. Jesus calmed the storm and said to his disciples, ‘Have you still no faith?’ (4:40). Although previously they had witnessed the power of Jesus in healing and controversy, and heard his authority in teaching, in crisis they despaired. Here, as elsewhere in Mark’s gospel, the behaviour of the disciples of Jesus offers us a warning rather than an example. Solid faith, such as the disciples were yet to acquire, enables the believer to cope with the storms we meet with in our human experience.
The third occurrence of this word ‘faith’ in Mark is addressed by Jesus to a woman whom he has just cured. Her sickness had already lasted for twelve years. Her cure came in two stages. First she sought a cure by touching Jesus, but this led only to ‘fear and trembling’. It was only after falling down before Jesus and telling him ‘the whole truth’, that she found her cure complete and Jesus said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has saved you’(5:34). From her we learn how faith can grow; it implies a personal and confident relationship with the Lord.
The word ‘faith’ occurs a fourth time in Mark in his account of the cure of Bartimaeus. He was a blind beggar who heard that Jesus was passing by. Three times he pleaded with Jesus for mercy and for the restoration of his sight. His prayer was granted and Jesus said to him, as to the woman previously, ‘Go, your faith has saved you’ (10:52). Paradoxically, Bartimaeus ignored this instruction to go; instead he followed Jesus on the way that led to Jerusalem, the city where Jesus was to die. His faith had expressed itself in repeated and persevering prayer, despite discouragement from those standing by. His example teaches us to persevere in prayer to the person of Jesus. Faith encourages the habit of regular and persistent prayer. Greek Christian tradition in particular has valued this prayer of Bartimaeus, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me’ (10:47); monks of old repeated it, as they trudged off to their work in the fields.
Finally, Jesus spoke this word ‘faith’ to his disciples when they discovered that the fig tree that he had cursed the previous day had withered. He told them to ‘have faith in God’ (11:22), and then gave them a lesson on the power of prayer. Here is Jesus’s longest instruction of prayer in this gospel since there is no ‘Lord’s prayer’ in Mark. It consists of three sayings, two of which appeal more to prophetic exaggeration than to day-to-day reality. We do not really expect our prayer to move mountains or our every prayer to be answered, but prayer is to be from the heart, is to be confident and trusting, and is to include mutual forgiveness. As in the Bartimaeus story, we recognise the link between prayer and faith.
But perhaps the most memorable paradoxical saying about faith in Mark’s gospel is spoken by another of its minor characters. The word used here is not faith (pistis) but its opposite (apistia). The father of the epileptic boy, whom the disciples of Jesus were unable to cure, cried out to Jesus and said, ‘I believe. Help my unbelief’ (9:24). This prayer is included in one of the recommended prayers for th(e) Year of Faith:
Lord,
Let me see your face,
Know your heart
and experience your love in my life.
Strengthen in me
the precious gift of faith.
I believe Lord;
Help my unbelief.
Amen.[1]
The Gospel of Matthew: You of Little Faith
Matthew’s gospel is reckoned to be a revision of Mark’s, so it is now time to examine how he treats Mark’s references to ‘faith’. Jesus’s first public words in Matthew do not include the word ‘believe’. He simply asks for repentance (Matthew 4:17). His first use of the word ‘faith’ comes in his narrative of the cure of the centurion’s servant, an incident not reported by Mark. There Jesus announces that, ‘not even in Israel have I found such faith’ (8:10). Jesus is here dealing with a Gentile and this reminds us how, from the beginning, faith found a home in such outsiders. At the beginning of the gospel, Gentile Magi were the first to worship the child Jesus (2:11) and at its conclusion, another centurion ‘and those with him’ confessed Jesus as Son of God (27:54). Such texts encourage us to look for signs of faith outside our own group.
Like Mark, Matthew uses the word ‘faith’ in connection with the men who brought the paralytic to Jesus (9:2) and in a shorter version of her cure, Jesus told the woman who had been sick for twelve years, ‘Your faith has saved you’ (9:22). When Jesus cured two blind men, in a passage that resembles the cure of Bartimaeus in Mark, he said, ‘According to your faith, be it done to you’ (9:29). Both in this narrative and in that of the cure of the Canaanite woman, to whom he said, ‘Woman, great is your faith’ (15:28), Matthew links the readiness of Jesus to heal with the faith demonstrated by those in need.
What is special in Matthew is an expression used four times in this gospel, once in Luke and never in Mark. The Greek word is oligopistos, best translated as ‘person of little faith’. In Matthew’s account of the storm on the lake, Jesus says to his disciples, ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith?’ (8:26) He addressed them again in these terms when they confused his words about the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees with ordinary bread: ‘You of little faith, why are talking about having no bread?’ (16:8) In Matthew’s account of the cure of the epileptic boy, Jesus makes no mention of the faith of the father as in Mark; rather he tells his disciples that it was because of their ‘little faith’ that they were unable to cure the boy (17:20). He had already addressed them in these terms in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘Will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith’? (6:30) Finally, Jesus told Peter that it was because of his ‘little faith’ that he began to sink in his attempt to walk on the water (14:31).
Commentators on Matthew suggest that the disciples in this gospel represent the members of Matthew’s Church. In this Year of Faith, Matthew challenges the Church of today to acknowledge its ‘little faith’, as he did his disciples when they failed to cure the epileptic boy. ‘If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there and nothing will be impossible for you”’ (17:20). A similar saying about faith moving mountains is included in Matthew’s account of the withered fig-tree which he reproduces from Mark (21:21). Again faith and prayer go together.
The Gospel of Luke: Increase Our Faith
At first sight, Luke adds little to what we have noted in Mark and Matthew. Once more the word faith is used in connection with those who brought the paralytic to Jesus (Luke 5:20) and with the centurion whose servant was healed (7:9). Four times in Luke, in contrast to the two occasions in Mark and Matthew, we find the expression, ‘Your faith has saved you’. Jesus addresses it not only to the woman cured of her haemorrhages (8:48) and to the blind man whom Mark calls Bartimaeus (18:42), but also to the woman ‘in the city who was a sinner’ (7:37, 50) and to the leper who returned to praise God (17:19). Such salvation is a theme in Luke, as John the Baptist proclaimed in his preaching, ‘All flesh shall see the salvation of God’ (3:6). Only in Luke is Jesus called saviour, as the angels announced to the shepherds (2:11).
While Matthew challenged his community because of its ‘little faith’, generally Luke is kinder to the disciples of Jesus than his predecessors. In describing the storm on the lake, Jesus asked his disciples, ‘Where is your faith?’ (Luke 8:25), in contrast to the ‘no faith’ of Mark and the ‘little faith’ of Matthew. As they approached Jerusalem, the disciples asked him, ‘Increase our faith’ (17:5), as previously they had asked him to teach them how to pray (11:1). He told them a parable about a widow who pleaded with an unjust judge. His conclusion was a lament, ‘When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? ’ (18:8) At the last supper, Jesus prayed for Peter ‘that your own faith may not fail’ (22:32). Once more we note the link between faith and prayer.
The Johannine Writings: Conquer the World
While the gospel of John does not include the noun ‘faith’, it does contain nearly a hundred instances of the verb, ‘I believe’ (pisteuo). We include here our second example of the use of this verb, namely the beatitude which Jesus addressed to Thomas who had doubted, and to all who hear this gospel, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’ (John 20:29). The noun ‘faith’, however, does occur once in the letters of John: ‘And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?’ (1 John 5:4-5). Here indeed is encouragement for this Year of Faith! May our faith conquer the world!
Growing in faith
We learn from the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke that as we grow in our knowledge of the goodness and love of God, so will we grow in our faith. This ought to be our hope during this Year of Faith. The last time that Matthew uses the word pistis (faith) occurs is to record Jesus’s words to the scribes and the Pharisees, the bluntest of his addresses to them in all the gospels: ‘For you tithe mint, dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith’ (23:23). May Jesus not have to make the same lament over us.
[1] Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster, 2012
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