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 17th - 20th October, 2017
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin … St Ignatius
of Antioch
11.00am Devonport ... Funeral late Josefina Turnbull
7.00pm Bridgewater ... Ordination to Diaconate of Br Cris Mendoza
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Parish
Calendar
Ministry Rosters 21st & 22nd October, 2017
Devonport: 
Cleaners. 20th Oct: M & R Youd 27th Oct: M & L Tippett, A Berryman
Ulverstone:
Penguin:
Latrobe:
Port Sorell:
Readings next week – Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
PREGO REFLECTION:
I ask to be aware of the Lord’s welcoming presence as I
still myself for prayer.
I rest here for a while, before turning reverently to
the Gospel.
Perhaps I watch Jesus from among the audience, noticing how he
tells this parable.
What strikes me about the king … the servants … the guests?
I notice how I feel. God is inviting me to share in his feast, too.
Everything
is ready … yet do I sometimes find reasons for turning him down?
I speak to the
Lord of this, trusting in his love and compassion for me.
At the end of the
parable, the king asks everyone to his feast, regardless of who they are, or
how they behave.
How might I help bring those around me to share in God’s
invitation?
I speak to the Lord as a trusted friend, asking for whatever I
need.
In time I end my prayer, perhaps with a slow sign of the cross.
Glory be
to the Father ...
Readings next week – Twenty-Ninth Sunday
in Ordinary Time Year A
First Reading: Isaiah 45:1. 4-6
Second Reading:
1 Thessalonians 1:1-5
Gospel: Matthew 22:15-21
Your prayers
are asked for the sick:
Ruth Munro, Matthew Gough, Allan Pearson, Rosemary Harcourt-Spencer,
Dolor Hewison, Romeo Gayo, Rex Bakes, Margaret Kenney, Victoria Webb, David Welch, Dawn
Stevens & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Josefina
Turnbull, Sr Marie Therese OCD, Beverley Ravanelli, Betty Lewis, Vern
Cazaly, Agnes Bonis, Joyce Landford, Jack Corcoran, Joe Sly, Cyril Smith.
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 11th
– 17th October
Weekly
Ramblings
Several Parishioners are going to Bridgewater on Tuesday
evening for Br Cris’ Diaconate ordination - I for one am looking forward to
that. As mentioned last weekend he will be in Tasmania until the beginning of
December and I am happy to announce that Archbishop Julian has appointed him to
work here in the Parish as a Deacon for these 6 weeks. He will participating in
all aspects of Parish life during that time so …
This weekend we have made an addition to the Weekly
Bulletin by including a ‘Parish Calendar’ – this is the 1st effort
and so it will probably change and be improved in the weeks to come. We have
included the Calendar because quite a few people have commented that something
might be mentioned here in the Weekly Ramblings as coming up but if you missed
a week then it is not easy to get the information later.
At the Pastoral Team Meeting on Wednesday we formalised the
planning for the Whole of Parish Mass for the 26th November to be
celebrated at Sacred Heart Church, Ulverstone and the Parish Forum (Next Step)
the following weekend, 3rd December. Both events are important for a
number of reasons – they are an opportunity for the Parish to gather and
celebrate together and to further developing our Parish Vision.
This weekend we have updated the information at the Bus
Stop with an invite to the Parish Forum (Next Step) – further details will be
included in the newsletter in coming weeks. This weekend we also have available
an information sheet with background to the changes in the way in which we are being
invited to pray the Prayers of Intercession. For some people this change has been a
challenge, for others it has been an opportunity to deepen their sense of prayer.
When I originally suggested the change it was because I wanted to make the
prayers a true occasion of prayer – not just something that we hurry through.
Please take care on the roads and in your homes,
NOVEMBER REMEMBRANCE BOOKS:
CARE AND CONCERN:
SACRED HEART SCHOOL FAIR: is fast approaching and will be held on 29th October. Sacred Heart School are asking for help with making cakes, slices and biscuits for the fair. The School will provide packaging, so all that is required is a list of the ingredients be supplied with the cake, slice or biscuits. These items can be left at Sacred Heart School on Saturday 28th or early Sunday morning 29th (Fair day). If you have any questions please contact Steven Smith 0411 522 630 or Claire Kelly 0400 042 435.
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall,
Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
JOURNEY TO CARMEL THE BEAUTIFUL MOUNTAIN: A weekend retreat on Carmelite
Spirituality at the Emmanuel Centre, Launceston. Friday 20th – 22nd
October. Fr Paul Maunder OCD Retreat Director. Cost for weekend $170.00
includes all meals and accommodation. Bookings are essential to Robert Archer
6396:1389.
THE JOURNEY CATHOLIC RADIO PROGRAM – AIRS 22 October:
Time
is running out for the Marriage Law Postal Survey:
The Marriage Law Postal Survey has 3 weeks to go.
Catholics should be engaged in this democratic process. If you have not done so
already please fill in your survey form and return it by post to the ABS by the
end of October.
Wholeness
You shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.
—Matthew 5:48
Jesus is not calling us to live without making mistakes or
to achieve some impossible level of perfection. He calls us, as Jack
Jezreel—founder of JustFaith Ministries—says, to love without exception.
Jezreel reflects on this invitation to wholeness in the Center for Action and
Contemplation’s journal Oneing:
We are either a people who love, embrace, and enter into a
caring posture with our family, friends, neighbors, strangers, and even enemies
(real or imagined) or we will spend our lives mercilessly trying to define who
is lovable and who is not, who is worthy and who is not, who deserves my
attention and who does not. Inevitably, we will end up loving people who look
like us, think like us, and pledge allegiance to the same flag—and we will
exclude the rest. In this truly useless pursuit, we will separate ourselves
from God (through tribal worship), from the world’s good (by avoiding healing
and restoration), and from our very souls (through self-pre¬occupation with
ego).
In effect, the wisdom of Jesus describes the powerful, but
often neglected, bridge between spiritual insight and social action/real
compassion. In fact, the wisdom of Jesus seems to suggest that the link is even
more intimate than a bridge; it is the collapse of the two categories
altogether. The separation of spirituality from action is a false one. In other
words, we are not called to do spiritual prac¬tices—prayer, study, meditation,
retreat, ritual—and then make our way, now inspired, to the work of mercy and
justice. In fact, it might be argued that, if anything, it’s just the reverse:
Love those who strug¬gle with poverty and suffer abandonment and the effect is
that we will find ourselves on a path that leads to maturity, prayer, wisdom,
and Christ-likeness. If, however, we choose to avoid engagement and community
with those who suffer, we will certainly live an incom¬plete life, including an
incomplete spiritual life.
To put it rightly, I think, the practice of prayer and the
practice of compassion are both necessary and complementary spiritual
practices. . . . We are called to be both activists and mystics, missionaries
of love and contemplatives, great lovers and deep thinkers. And, in all of
that, the spiritual journey can happen; in all of that, we can be made whole;
in all of that, the world can be made whole. . . . Personal transformation and
social transformation are one piece. . . .
The true spiritual quest is not that I become whole.
Informed by the belief that the world is birthed by God and is precious and
sacred and one, the true spiritual quest is that the world become whole—and we
along with it.
Reference:
LANGUAGE AS OPENING OR CLOSING OUR MINDS
This article is taken from the website of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article here
Thirty years ago, the American Educator, Allan Bloom, wrote a book entitled, The Closing of the American Mind. This was his thesis: In our secularized world today our language is becoming ever-more empirical, one-dimensional, and devoid of depth and this is closing our minds by stripping us of the deeper meanings inside our own experience. For Bloom, how we name an experience determines to a large extent its meaning.
Twenty years earlier, in rather provocative essay, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Philip Rieff had already suggested something similar. For Rieff, we live our lives under a certain “symbolic hedge”, namely, a language and set of symbols within which we interpret our experience. And that hedge can be high or low and consequently so too will be the meaning we derive from any experience. Experience can be rich or shallow, depending on the language by which we interpret it.
Take this example: A man has a backache and sees his doctor. The doctor tells him that he’s suffering from arthritis. This brings the man some initial calm. But he isn’t satisfied and sees a psychologist. The psychologist tells him that his symptoms are not just physical but that he is also suffering from mid-life crisis. This names his pain at a deeper level and affords him a richer understanding of what he is undergoing. But he’s still dissatisfied and sees a spiritual director. The spiritual director, while not denying him arthritis and mid-life crisis, tells him that he should understand this pain as his Gethsemane, as his cross to carry.
Notice all three diagnoses speak of the same pain but that each places that pain under a different symbolic hedge. Language speaks at different levels and only a certain language speaks at the level of the soul. Recently we have been helped to understand this through the work of Carl Jung and a number of his disciples, notably James Hillman and Thomas Moore, who have helped us to understand more explicitly the language of the soul and how that language uncovers deep archetypes within us.
We see the language of soul, among other places, in some of our great myths and fairy tales, many of them centuries old. Their seeming simplicity can fool you. They may be simple, but they’re not simplistic. To offer one example, the story of Cinderella: The first thing to notice in this story is that the name, Cinderella, is not a real name but a composite of two words: Cinder, meaning ashes; and Puella, meaning the eternal girl. This is not a simple fairy tale about a lonely, beaten-down young girl. It’s a myth that highlights a deep structure within the human soul, namely, that before our souls are ready to wear the glass slipper, be the belle of the ball, to marry the prince, and to live happily ever after we must first spend some necessary time sitting in the ashes, suffering humiliation, and being purified by a time in the dust.
Notice how this story speaks in its own way of our spirituality of “lent”, a season of penance, wherein we mark ourselves with ashes in order to enter a desert of our own making.
Cinderella is a story that shines a tiny light into the depth of our souls. Many of our famous myths do that, though nothing shines a light into the soul as deeply as does scripture, the bible. Its language and symbols name our experience in a way that both honors the soul and helps us plumb the genuine depth inside our experiences.
For example: We can be confused, or we can be inside the belly of the whale. We can be helpless before an addiction, or we can be possessed by a demon. We can vacillate in our prayer lives between fervor and dark nights, or we can vacillate between being with Jesus ‘in Galilee’ or with him in ‘Jerusalem’. We can be paralyzed as we stand before a globalization that’s overwhelming, or we can be standing with Jesus on the borders of Samaria in a first conversation with a Syro-Phoenician woman. We can be struggling with fidelity and with keeping our commitments in relationships, or we can be standing with Joshua before God, receiving instructions to kill off the Canaanites if we are to sustain ourselves in the Promised Land. We can be suffering from arthritis, or we can be sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane.
The language we use to understand an experience make a huge, huge difference in what that experience means to us. In The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom uses a rather earthy, but highly illustrative, example to explain this. He quotes Plato who tells us that during their breaks his students sit around and tell wonderful stories about the meaning of their immortal longings. My students, Bloom laments, sit around during their breaks and tell stories about being horny.
We are losing the language of the soul and we are poorer for it.
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 17th - 20th October, 2017
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin … St Ignatius
of Antioch
11.00am Devonport ... Funeral late Josefina Turnbull
7.00pm Bridgewater ... Ordination to Diaconate of Br Cris Mendoza
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 10:30am
Karingal
Friday: 11:00am Mt St Vincent
Next Weekend 21st & 22nd October, 2017
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin L.W.C.
Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell L.W.C.
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport L.W.C.
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Parish
Calendar
17th Oct: 7pm Ordination of Brother Cris Mendoza –
Bridgewater
18th Oct: Parish Office closed.
24th Oct: 2pm Care & Concern Bereavement meeting - MacKillop
Hill.
3pm
Parish Finance Meeting – Parish House
29th Oct: Sacred Heart School Fair, Ulverstone
1st Nov: (All Saints Day):
9:30am
Mass Latrobe;
12noon
Mass Devonport;
7pm
Mass Ulverstone
2nd Nov: (All Souls Day):
12noon
Mass Devonport;
7pm
Mass Ulverstone - Annual Mass for Deceased Relatives and Friends
3rd Nov: 6:30pm Open House – Devonport
8th Nov: 6:30pm Parish Pastoral Team Meeting – Parish
House
13th-17th
Nov: Diocesan Retreat – Maryknoll
26th Nov: 11am Whole of Parish Mass - Ulverstone.
3rd Dec: 2-4pm Parish Forum - Ulverstone
Ministry Rosters 21st & 22nd October, 2017
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: M Kelly, B Paul, R Baker 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 & M Barrientos
Cleaners. 20th Oct: M & R Youd 27th Oct: M & L Tippett, A Berryman
Piety Shop 21st Oct:
L Murfet 22nd October: D French
Mowing of Lawns Parish House - October: Steve Berryman
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: E Cox
Ministers of
Communion: E Reilly, M & K McKenzie, M O’Halloran
Cleaners: M Mott Flowers: M Byrne Hospitality:
S & T Johnstone
Penguin:
Greeters: A Landers, P Ravaillion Commentator: Y Downes Readers: A Landers, A Guest
Ministers of
Communion: T
Clayton, M Murray Liturgy: Sulphur Creek C Setting Up: F Aichberger
Care of Church: M Bowles, M Owen
Latrobe:
Reader: P Cotterill Ministers of
Communion: M
Mackey, H Lim Procession: J Hyde
Port Sorell:
Readers: D Leaman, T Jeffries Ministers of Communion: P Anderson Cleaners/Flowers/Prep: A Holloway, B Lee
Readings next week – Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
First Reading: Isaiah 25:6-10
Second Reading: Philippians 4:12-14. 19-20
Gospel: Matthew 22:1-14
PREGO REFLECTION:
I ask to be aware of the Lord’s welcoming presence as I
still myself for prayer.
I rest here for a while, before turning reverently to the Gospel.
Perhaps I watch Jesus from among the audience, noticing how he tells this parable.
What strikes me about the king … the servants … the guests?
I notice how I feel. God is inviting me to share in his feast, too.
Everything is ready … yet do I sometimes find reasons for turning him down?
I speak to the Lord of this, trusting in his love and compassion for me.
At the end of the parable, the king asks everyone to his feast, regardless of who they are, or how they behave.
How might I help bring those around me to share in God’s invitation?
I speak to the Lord as a trusted friend, asking for whatever I need.
In time I end my prayer, perhaps with a slow sign of the cross.
Glory be to the Father ...
I rest here for a while, before turning reverently to the Gospel.
Perhaps I watch Jesus from among the audience, noticing how he tells this parable.
What strikes me about the king … the servants … the guests?
I notice how I feel. God is inviting me to share in his feast, too.
Everything is ready … yet do I sometimes find reasons for turning him down?
I speak to the Lord of this, trusting in his love and compassion for me.
At the end of the parable, the king asks everyone to his feast, regardless of who they are, or how they behave.
How might I help bring those around me to share in God’s invitation?
I speak to the Lord as a trusted friend, asking for whatever I need.
In time I end my prayer, perhaps with a slow sign of the cross.
Glory be to the Father ...
Readings next week – Twenty-Ninth Sunday
in Ordinary Time Year A
First Reading: Isaiah 45:1. 4-6
Second Reading:
1 Thessalonians 1:1-5
Gospel: Matthew 22:15-21
Your prayers
are asked for the sick:
Ruth Munro, Matthew Gough, Allan Pearson, Rosemary Harcourt-Spencer,
Dolor Hewison, Romeo Gayo, Rex Bakes, Margaret Kenney, Victoria Webb, David Welch, Dawn
Stevens & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Josefina
Turnbull, Sr Marie Therese OCD, Beverley Ravanelli, Betty Lewis, Vern
Cazaly, Agnes Bonis, Joyce Landford, Jack Corcoran, Joe Sly, Cyril Smith.
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 11th
– 17th October
Bridie
Murray, Ron Arrowsmith, Peter Hays, Stella Smith, Peter Beard, Mary Lube, Mary
Guthrie,
James Graham, Shirley Stafford, Valda Burford, Wayne Radford, Winifred
Byrne, Russell Doodt and
Jock Donnachie.
May they rest in peace
Weekly
Ramblings
Several Parishioners are going to Bridgewater on Tuesday
evening for Br Cris’ Diaconate ordination - I for one am looking forward to
that. As mentioned last weekend he will be in Tasmania until the beginning of
December and I am happy to announce that Archbishop Julian has appointed him to
work here in the Parish as a Deacon for these 6 weeks. He will participating in
all aspects of Parish life during that time so …
This weekend we have made an addition to the Weekly
Bulletin by including a ‘Parish Calendar’ – this is the 1st effort
and so it will probably change and be improved in the weeks to come. We have
included the Calendar because quite a few people have commented that something
might be mentioned here in the Weekly Ramblings as coming up but if you missed
a week then it is not easy to get the information later.
At the Pastoral Team Meeting on Wednesday we formalised the
planning for the Whole of Parish Mass for the 26th November to be
celebrated at Sacred Heart Church, Ulverstone and the Parish Forum (Next Step)
the following weekend, 3rd December. Both events are important for a
number of reasons – they are an opportunity for the Parish to gather and
celebrate together and to further developing our Parish Vision.
Please take care on the roads and in your homes,
NOVEMBER REMEMBRANCE BOOKS:
November is the month we remember
in a special way all those who have died. Should you wish anyone to be
remembered, write the names of those to be prayed for on the outside of an
envelope and place the clearly marked envelope in the collection basket at Mass
or deliver to the Parish Office by Thursday
26th October.
CARE AND CONCERN:
“Siloam” is the name of a group which meets under the
banner of Care and Concern. We focus on aspects of grief and loss often
experienced following the death of a loved one by offering the opportunity
simply to share and talk about where we are at this time.
The next meeting will be Tuesday 24th October -
2.00 pm at MacKillop Hill, 123 William Street, Forth. Anyone is welcome to join us. If you require transport please phone Marg McKenzie
6425:1414.
AUSTRALIAN CHURCH WOMEN: will host an ecumenical service at
Wesley Vale Community Church Friday 27th October at 1:30 pm. All
welcome. A plate please. Inquiries – Kath Pearce 6424:6504
SACRED HEART SCHOOL FAIR: is fast approaching and will be held on 29th October. Sacred Heart School are asking for help with making cakes, slices and biscuits for the fair. The School will provide packaging, so all that is required is a list of the ingredients be supplied with the cake, slice or biscuits. These items can be left at Sacred Heart School on Saturday 28th or early Sunday morning 29th (Fair day). If you have any questions please contact Steven Smith 0411 522 630 or Claire Kelly 0400 042 435.
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall,
Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers
for Thursday 19th October – Tony Ryan & Terry Bird.
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
JOURNEY TO CARMEL THE BEAUTIFUL MOUNTAIN: A weekend retreat on Carmelite
Spirituality at the Emmanuel Centre, Launceston. Friday 20th – 22nd
October. Fr Paul Maunder OCD Retreat Director. Cost for weekend $170.00
includes all meals and accommodation. Bookings are essential to Robert Archer
6396:1389.
THE JOURNEY CATHOLIC RADIO PROGRAM – AIRS 22 October:
This week on the Journey, our very own Fr Graham Schmitzer
reflects on the Gospel of Matthew. Sr Hilda shares her Wisdom from the Abbey
with ‘The Cry Of The World, Trish McCarthy reminds us ‘Jesus, The Way To The
Father’, and Sam Clear evokes Forgiveness in his Walking the Walk
segment. The music this week is very powerful and fitting to our
inspirational God spots. Go to www.jcr.org.au
or www.itunes.jcr.org.au where
you can listen anytime and subscribe to weekly shows by email.
Time is running out for the Marriage Law Postal Survey:
The Marriage Law Postal Survey has 3 weeks to go.
Catholics should be engaged in this democratic process. If you have not done so
already please fill in your survey form and return it by post to the ABS by the
end of October. Time is running out for the Marriage Law Postal Survey:
Wholeness
This article is taken from the daily email series by Fr Richard Rohr OFM. You can subscribe to receive these emails here
You shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.
—Matthew 5:48
Jesus is not calling us to live without making mistakes or
to achieve some impossible level of perfection. He calls us, as Jack
Jezreel—founder of JustFaith Ministries—says, to love without exception.
Jezreel reflects on this invitation to wholeness in the Center for Action and
Contemplation’s journal Oneing:
We are either a people who love, embrace, and enter into a
caring posture with our family, friends, neighbors, strangers, and even enemies
(real or imagined) or we will spend our lives mercilessly trying to define who
is lovable and who is not, who is worthy and who is not, who deserves my
attention and who does not. Inevitably, we will end up loving people who look
like us, think like us, and pledge allegiance to the same flag—and we will
exclude the rest. In this truly useless pursuit, we will separate ourselves
from God (through tribal worship), from the world’s good (by avoiding healing
and restoration), and from our very souls (through self-pre¬occupation with
ego).
In effect, the wisdom of Jesus describes the powerful, but
often neglected, bridge between spiritual insight and social action/real
compassion. In fact, the wisdom of Jesus seems to suggest that the link is even
more intimate than a bridge; it is the collapse of the two categories
altogether. The separation of spirituality from action is a false one. In other
words, we are not called to do spiritual prac¬tices—prayer, study, meditation,
retreat, ritual—and then make our way, now inspired, to the work of mercy and
justice. In fact, it might be argued that, if anything, it’s just the reverse:
Love those who strug¬gle with poverty and suffer abandonment and the effect is
that we will find ourselves on a path that leads to maturity, prayer, wisdom,
and Christ-likeness. If, however, we choose to avoid engagement and community
with those who suffer, we will certainly live an incom¬plete life, including an
incomplete spiritual life.
To put it rightly, I think, the practice of prayer and the
practice of compassion are both necessary and complementary spiritual
practices. . . . We are called to be both activists and mystics, missionaries
of love and contemplatives, great lovers and deep thinkers. And, in all of
that, the spiritual journey can happen; in all of that, we can be made whole;
in all of that, the world can be made whole. . . . Personal transformation and
social transformation are one piece. . . .
The true spiritual quest is not that I become whole.
Informed by the belief that the world is birthed by God and is precious and
sacred and one, the true spiritual quest is that the world become whole—and we
along with it.
Reference:
Jack Jezreel, “To Love Without Exception,” “Perfection,”
Oneing, vol. 4, no. 1 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2016), 49-50, 52.
Learn more about JustFaith Ministries at
justfaith.org/about-us/history-mission/.
LANGUAGE AS OPENING OR CLOSING OUR MINDS
This article is taken from the website of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article here Thirty years ago, the American Educator, Allan Bloom, wrote a book entitled, The Closing of the American Mind. This was his thesis: In our secularized world today our language is becoming ever-more empirical, one-dimensional, and devoid of depth and this is closing our minds by stripping us of the deeper meanings inside our own experience. For Bloom, how we name an experience determines to a large extent its meaning.
Twenty years earlier, in rather provocative essay, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Philip Rieff had already suggested something similar. For Rieff, we live our lives under a certain “symbolic hedge”, namely, a language and set of symbols within which we interpret our experience. And that hedge can be high or low and consequently so too will be the meaning we derive from any experience. Experience can be rich or shallow, depending on the language by which we interpret it.
Take this example: A man has a backache and sees his doctor. The doctor tells him that he’s suffering from arthritis. This brings the man some initial calm. But he isn’t satisfied and sees a psychologist. The psychologist tells him that his symptoms are not just physical but that he is also suffering from mid-life crisis. This names his pain at a deeper level and affords him a richer understanding of what he is undergoing. But he’s still dissatisfied and sees a spiritual director. The spiritual director, while not denying him arthritis and mid-life crisis, tells him that he should understand this pain as his Gethsemane, as his cross to carry.
Notice all three diagnoses speak of the same pain but that each places that pain under a different symbolic hedge. Language speaks at different levels and only a certain language speaks at the level of the soul. Recently we have been helped to understand this through the work of Carl Jung and a number of his disciples, notably James Hillman and Thomas Moore, who have helped us to understand more explicitly the language of the soul and how that language uncovers deep archetypes within us.
We see the language of soul, among other places, in some of our great myths and fairy tales, many of them centuries old. Their seeming simplicity can fool you. They may be simple, but they’re not simplistic. To offer one example, the story of Cinderella: The first thing to notice in this story is that the name, Cinderella, is not a real name but a composite of two words: Cinder, meaning ashes; and Puella, meaning the eternal girl. This is not a simple fairy tale about a lonely, beaten-down young girl. It’s a myth that highlights a deep structure within the human soul, namely, that before our souls are ready to wear the glass slipper, be the belle of the ball, to marry the prince, and to live happily ever after we must first spend some necessary time sitting in the ashes, suffering humiliation, and being purified by a time in the dust.
Notice how this story speaks in its own way of our spirituality of “lent”, a season of penance, wherein we mark ourselves with ashes in order to enter a desert of our own making.
Cinderella is a story that shines a tiny light into the depth of our souls. Many of our famous myths do that, though nothing shines a light into the soul as deeply as does scripture, the bible. Its language and symbols name our experience in a way that both honors the soul and helps us plumb the genuine depth inside our experiences.
For example: We can be confused, or we can be inside the belly of the whale. We can be helpless before an addiction, or we can be possessed by a demon. We can vacillate in our prayer lives between fervor and dark nights, or we can vacillate between being with Jesus ‘in Galilee’ or with him in ‘Jerusalem’. We can be paralyzed as we stand before a globalization that’s overwhelming, or we can be standing with Jesus on the borders of Samaria in a first conversation with a Syro-Phoenician woman. We can be struggling with fidelity and with keeping our commitments in relationships, or we can be standing with Joshua before God, receiving instructions to kill off the Canaanites if we are to sustain ourselves in the Promised Land. We can be suffering from arthritis, or we can be sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane.
The language we use to understand an experience make a huge, huge difference in what that experience means to us. In The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom uses a rather earthy, but highly illustrative, example to explain this. He quotes Plato who tells us that during their breaks his students sit around and tell wonderful stories about the meaning of their immortal longings. My students, Bloom laments, sit around during their breaks and tell stories about being horny.
We are losing the language of the soul and we are poorer for it.
Thinking about the Council
Ian Linden looks at the history of the Catholic Church in the fifty years since Pope John XXIII’s announcement of the Second Vatican Council. To what extent can the Church be described as a ‘World Church’? He is a Professorial Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and Director of the Faiths Act project of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. He is the author of Global Catholicism: Diversity and Change since Vatican II, published by Hurst on 19 January 2009.
The first public announcement of the Second Vatican Council was made in the Basilica of St. Paul-outside-the-Walls fifty eight years ago, on Sunday 25 January 1959, the feast of the conversion of St Paul and the end of the – widely ignored in Rome – annual Octave for Christian Unity. Seventeen cardinals were present. Pope John XXIII’s sermon had been billed as a reflection on the ‘Church of Silence’, code-name for the persecuted Church in communist countries, and it was indeed silence that greeted his announcement: a frozen silence some thought, an ‘impressive and devout silence’[1] others later wrote.
You can find the rest of the article on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
Ian Linden looks at the history of the Catholic Church in the fifty years since Pope John XXIII’s announcement of the Second Vatican Council. To what extent can the Church be described as a ‘World Church’? He is a Professorial Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and Director of the Faiths Act project of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. He is the author of Global Catholicism: Diversity and Change since Vatican II, published by Hurst on 19 January 2009.
The first public announcement of the Second Vatican Council was made in the Basilica of St. Paul-outside-the-Walls fifty eight years ago, on Sunday 25 January 1959, the feast of the conversion of St Paul and the end of the – widely ignored in Rome – annual Octave for Christian Unity. Seventeen cardinals were present. Pope John XXIII’s sermon had been billed as a reflection on the ‘Church of Silence’, code-name for the persecuted Church in communist countries, and it was indeed silence that greeted his announcement: a frozen silence some thought, an ‘impressive and devout silence’[1] others later wrote.
You can find the rest of the article on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
The first public announcement of the Second Vatican Council was made in the Basilica of St. Paul-outside-the-Walls fifty eight years ago, on Sunday 25 January 1959, the feast of the conversion of St Paul and the end of the – widely ignored in Rome – annual Octave for Christian Unity. Seventeen cardinals were present. Pope John XXIII’s sermon had been billed as a reflection on the ‘Church of Silence’, code-name for the persecuted Church in communist countries, and it was indeed silence that greeted his announcement: a frozen silence some thought, an ‘impressive and devout silence’[1] others later wrote.
You can find the rest of the article on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
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