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
Assistant Priest: Fr Paschal Okpon
Mob: 0438 562 731
paschalokpon@yahoo.com
Priest in Residence: Fr Phil McCormack
Mob: 0437 521 257
Mob: 0437 521 257
Postal Address: PO Box 362
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160
Email: merseyleven@aohtas.org.au
Secretary: Annie Davies / Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair: Jenny Garnsey
Parish Mass times for the Month: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
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.
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Eucharistic Adoration - Devonport: Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Weekday Masses 29th May - 1st June, 2018
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 12noon Devonport … The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone … St Justin
12noon Devonport
Weekend Masses 2nd & 3rd June, 2018
Devonport:
Ulverstone:
Penguin:
Port Sorell:
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Mary Webb & ….
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Sr Janet
Sexton, Moya
Hickey, Maureen Roach
Let us pray for those whose anniversary
occurs about this time:
23rd – 29th May
May they
Rest in Peace
Readings this week – The Most Holy Trinity (Year B)
PREGO REFLECTION:
If it helps, I ask the Holy Spirit to pray in me and for me.
Here at the end of
his Gospel, St Matthew is describing the commissioning of his disciples.
I read
the text slowly, pausing as often as I need.
What strikes me? Where am I drawn?
Slowly I ponder what Jesus means for me today … what he has meant to me in the
past … what I would like him to mean to me in the future.
In what ways might I
want to share this knowledge of him with others?
I talk to the Lord about any
worries I have, and ask for greater trust in the transforming power of the
Spirit.
As I face the coming week, it might help to think of any graces I need:
encouragement, consolation, boldness …?
Perhaps I ask the Lord to deepen my
sense of his love and strength for me now, in this present moment.
The Lord has
promised to be with me always, even until the end of time.
How does this make
me feel?
I talk to him from the heart, perhaps offering him my coming week as I
try to be ever more willing to go out, confident that the Lord is there
alongside me.
When I am ready, I end my prayer. Our Father ...
Readings next week – The Body and
Blood of Christ (Year B)
Congratulations
to Marie Byrne on the occasion of your 80th
Birthday, Sunday 27th May.
Many happy returns Marie enjoy your special
day!
Weekly
Ramblings
To all those who were part of making last weekend’s
celebration for the Feast of Pentecost such a wonderful celebration I would
like to express my sincere thanks. A very special thanks to all who provided
food and who assisted in the preparations for the meal and the tidying up
afterwards – great effort everyone and thanks.
As we go forward with our journey towards making our Parish
Vision real in the life of our wider community I hope that future celebrations
might build on the successes of the past and create opportunities for us to
invite family and friends who might not get to Mass that often (or ever) to be
comfortable being part of our celebrations and feel free to join us more
regularly.
This weekend we will have the 2nd Meeting of the
new Parish Pastoral Team. As mentioned last weekend the members are - Mandy
Eden (Latrobe), Jenny Garnsey (Penguin), Glenys Lee-Archer, Michael Hendrey,
Christine Miller (all Devonport), Carol Seagar (Port Sorell & Our Lady of
Lourdes School) and Felicity Sly (Devonport). At this stage we are still
speaking to parishioners in the two areas (Ulverstone and Sheffield) which are
not represented in the present representation.
I forgot to mention last weekend the reason that Fr Smiley
wasn‘t there to concelebrate our whole of Parish Mass was that he has begun a
three week supply in George Town, allowing Fr Zammit to have holidays. He will
return on the 4th June.
Please continue to pray for the children in our Sacramental
Program – a few will receive the Creed at Mass this weekend, being unable to be
with us last week due to family commitments. Would you also pray for the Youth
Group as they continue their Alpha Youth series and especially as they prepare
for their Holy Spirit experience on the 8th and 9th June.
Please
take care on the roads and we look forward to seeing you next weekend.
MACKILLOP HILL SPIRITUALITY CENTRE
KNIGHTS OF
THE SOUTHERN CROSS:
MT ST VINCENT AUXILIARY: will be
holding a craft and cake stall on Sunday 10th June after 9:00am Mass
Sacred Heart Church Community Room. Bring a friend or two and your spare change and buy some goodies to
help support this great fundraiser!
PLANNED GIVING PROGRAMME:
Please note: The new envelopes (Blue in colour) should not be used until starting date 1st July, therefore once you start using them you need
to discard any old envelopes (yellow in colour) – thank you!
FOOTY
TICKETS:
Round 9 (Friday 18th May) Adelaide Crows
defeated Western Bulldogs by 37 points. Congratulations to the
following winners;, ……….. (Remember to check your tickets!) There
are still plenty of tickets to be sold at Devonport and Ulverstone each week,
so for a little bit of fun why not help support our Parish fundraiser and buy a
footy margin ticket (or two) $2.00 each. There are three prizes of $100.00 each
week. You’ve got to be in it to win it!!
BINGO - Thursday Nights - OLOL
Hall, Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
THE JOURNEY CATHOLIC RADIO PROGRAM
This week on the Journey, Fr Graham Schmitzer reflects on
the Gospel of Matthew, Bruce Downes, The Catholic Guy encourages us to Get
Spiritually Fit, and Marilyn Rodrigues, The Peaceful Parent, reminds us of the
importance of One-on-One Time. Our music is selected from various talented
music artists who help us to create a show about faith, hope, love and life. Go
to www.jcr.org.au
or www.itunes.jcr.org.au
where you can listen anytime and subscribe to weekly shows by email.
CELEBRATING 70 YEARS OF CARMEL IN TASMANIA – To mark the arrival of the first
Carmelites in Tasmania from Adelaide in 1948, all are warmly invited to join
the Carmelite Community for a Sung Mass of Thanksgiving celebrated by
Archbishop Porteous on Saturday 9th June 2018 at 9am at the
Carmelite Monastery, 7 Cambridge Street, Launceston. Mass will be
followed by morning tea.
ST VINCENT PALLOTTI SCHOLARSHIP: APPLICATIONS NOW
OPEN
Growing into Belonging
As we grow spiritually, we discover that we are not as
separate as we thought we were. Separation from God, self, and others is a deep
and tragic illusion. As we grow into deeper connection and union, the things
that once brought meaning and happiness to our small self no longer satisfy us.
We tried to create artificial fullness through many kinds of addictive
behaviour, but still feel empty and nothing, if we are honest. We need much
more nutritious food to feed our Bigger Self. Mere entertainments, time-fillers,
diversions, and distractions will no longer work.
At the more mature stages of life, we are able to allow the
painful and the formerly excluded parts to gradually belong within a growing,
unified field. This shows itself as a foundational compassion, especially
toward all things different from us and the many beings who “never had a
chance.” If you have forgiven yourself for being imperfect, you can now do it
for everybody else, too. If you have not forgiven yourself, I am afraid you
will likely pass on your sadness, absurdity, judgment, and futility to others.
“What goes around comes around.”
Many who are judgmental and unforgiving seem to have missed
out on the joy and clarity of the first childhood containment, perhaps avoided
the suffering of the mid-life complexity, and thus missed out on the great
freedom and magnanimity of the second half of life. We need to hold together
all the stages of life. For some strange, wonderful reason, it all becomes
quite “simple” as we approach our later years. The great irony is that we must
go through a lot of complexity and disorder (another word for necessary
suffering) to return to the second simplicity. There is no nonstop flight from
first to second naiveté, from initial order to resurrection. We must go through
the pain of disorder to grow up and switch our loyalties from self to God. Most
people just try to maintain their initial “order” at all costs, even if it is
killing them.
As we grow in wisdom, we realize that everything belongs and
everything can be received. We see that life and death are not opposites. They
do not cancel one another out; neither do goodness and badness. A radical,
almost nonsensical “okayness” characterizes the mature believer, which is why
they are often called “holy fools.” These wise ones do not have to deny,
dismiss, defy, or ignore reality anymore. What is, is gradually okay (which
does not mean you do not work for justice and truth, but this must be
accompanied by a primal yes!). What is, is still the greatest of teachers. At the
bottom of all reality is always a deep abiding goodness, or what Merton called
“the hidden wholeness.” [1]
[1] Thomas Merton, “Hagia Sophia,” Ramparts Magazine (March
1963), 66. Also see In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas
Merton, ed. Lynn R. Szabo (New Directions: 2005).
ON FRIENDSHIP
This article is copied from the website of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original page here
One of the richest experiences of grace that we can have this side of eternity is the experience of friendship.
Dictionaries define friendship as a relationship of mutual affection, a bond richer than mere association. They then go on to link friendship to a number of words: kindness, love, sympathy, empathy, honesty, altruism, loyalty, understanding, compassion, comfort, and (not least) trust. Friends, the dictionaries assert, enjoy each other’s company, express their feelings to each other, and make mistakes without fear of judgment from the other.
That basically covers things, but to better grasp the real grace in friendship a number of things inside that definition need explication.
First, as the Greek Stoics affirmed and as is evident in the Christian spirituality, true friendship is only possible among people who are practicing virtue. A gang is not a circle of friendship, nor are many ideological circles. Why? Because friendship needs to bring grace and grace is only found in virtue.
Next, friendship is more than merely human, though it is wonderfully human. When it is genuine, friendship is nothing less than a participation in the flow of life and love that’s inside of God. Scripture tells us that God is love, but the word it uses for love in this case is the Greek word agape, a term which might be rendered as “family”, “community”, or “the sharing of life”. Hence the famous text (“God is Love”) might be transliterated to read: God is family, God is community, God is shared existence, and whoever shares his or her existence inside of community and friendship is participating in the very flow of life and love that is inside the Trinity.
But this isn’t always true. Friendship and family can take different forms. Parker Palmer, the contemporary Quaker writer, submits: “If you come here faithfully, you bring great blessing.” Conversely, the great Sufi mystic, Rumi, writes: “If you are here unfaithfully, you bring great harm.” Family and community can bring grace or block it. Our circle can be one of love and grace, or it can be a one of hatred and sin. Only the former merits the name friendship. Friendship, says St. Augustine, is the beauty of the soul.
Deep, life-giving friendship, as we all know, is as difficult as it is rare. Why? We all long for it in the depths of our soul, so why is it so difficult to find? We all know why: We’re different from each other, unique, and rightly cautious as to whom we give entry into our soul. And so it isn’t easy to find a soulmate, to have that kind of affinity and trust. Nor is it easy to sustain a friendship once we have found one. Sustained friendship takes hard commitment and that’s not our strong point as our psyches and our world forever shift and turn. Moreover, today, virtual friendships don’t always translate into real friendships.
Finally, not least, friendship is often hindered or derailed by sex and sexual tension. This is simply a fact of nature and a fact within our culture and all other cultures. Sex and sexuality, while they ideally should be the basis for deep friendship, often are the major hindrance to friendship. Moreover, in our own culture (whose ethos prizes sex over friendship) friendship is often seen as a substitute, and a second-best one at that, for sex.
But while that may be in our cultural ethos, it’s clearly not what’s deepest in our souls. There we long for something that’s ultimately deeper than sex – or is sex in a fuller flowering. There’s a deep desire in us all (be that a deeper form of sexual desire or a desire for something that’s beyond sex) for a soulmate, for someone to sleep with morally. More deeply than we ache for a sexual partner, we ache for a moral partner, though these desires aren’t mutually exclusive, just hard to combine.
Friendship, like love, is always partly a mystery, something beyond us. It’s a struggle in all cultures. Part of this is simply our humanity. The pearl of great price is not easily found nor easily retained. True friendship is an eschatological thing, found, though never perfectly, in this life. Cultural and religious factors always work against friendship, as does the omnipresence of sexual tension.
Sometimes poets can reach where academics cannot and so I offer these insights from a poet vis-à-vis the interrelationship between friendship and sex. Friendship, Rainer Marie Rilke suggests, is often one of the great taboos within a culture, but it remains always the endgame: “In a deep, felicitous love between two people you can eventually become the loving protectors of each other’s solitude. … Sex is, admittedly, very powerful, but no matter how powerful, beautiful, and wondrous it may be. If you become the loving protectors of each other’s solitude, love gradually turns to friendship.”
And as Montaigne once affirmed: “The end of friendship may be more important than love. The epiphanies of youth are meant to blossom and ripen into something everlasting.”
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
Amen.
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Arrangements are made by contacting Parish Office. Parents attend a Baptismal Preparation Session organised with a Priest.
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)
Eucharistic Adoration - Devonport: Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: First Friday each month.
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – Mondays 7pm Community Room Ulverstone
Weekday Masses 29th May - 1st June, 2018
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 12noon Devonport … The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone … St Justin
12noon Devonport
Weekend Masses 2nd & 3rd June, 2018
Saturday
Mass: 9:30am Ulverstone
Saturday
Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
6:00pm Devonport
Sunday
Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Ministry Rosters 2nd & 3rd June, 2018
Devonport:
Readers Vigil: M Stewart, B Paul, M Kelly 10:30am: J Phillips, K Pearce, J Henderson
Ministers of Communion:
Vigil: D Peters, M Heazlewood, T Muir, M
Gerrand, P Shelverton
10:30: F Sly, E Petts, K Hull, S
Arrowsmith
Cleaners. 1st June: M.W.C. 8th June: K.S.C.
Piety Shop 2nd
June: R McBain 3rd June: K Hull
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: B O’Rourke
Ministers of Communion:
M Murray, J
Pisarskis, C Harvey, P Grech
Cleaners: K.S.C Flowers: A Miller Hospitality: K Foster
Penguin:
Greeters: G & N Pearce Commentator: Y Downes
Readers: M & D Hiscutt
Ministers of
Communion: P Lade,
T Clayton Liturgy: Penguin
Setting Up: E Nickols Care of Church: M Bowles, M Owens
Port Sorell:
Readers: P Anderson, D Leaman Minister of Communion: T Jeffries
Clean/Flowers/Prepare: G Bellchambers, M Gillard
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Mary Webb & ….
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Lorraine
Clarke, Conrado Nares, Fr John Williams, Epie Howlett, James Leith,
Sr Janet Sexton, Moya Hickey, Maureen Roach
Sr Janet Sexton, Moya Hickey, Maureen Roach
Let us pray for those whose anniversary
occurs about this time:
23rd – 29th May
23rd – 29th May
Jack
Choveaux, Bridget Stone, Shirley Keenan, Dianne McMullen, Joseph Mantuano, Ida
Penraat, George Batten, Tracie Cox, Joseph Sallese, Lorraine Keen, Dalton
Smith, Robert & Frances Roberts, Mary Marlow, Graeme Garland, Pamela Jack, Bernard
Stubbs, Vera Tolson, Mary Hyland, Beryl Purton, Rita Beach, Miss Barbara O’Rourke
and Nanette O’Brien. Also Aileen & Gerard Reynolds.
May they
Rest in Peace
Readings this week – The Most Holy Trinity (Year B)
First Reading: Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40
Second Reading: Romans 8:14-17
Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20
PREGO REFLECTION:
I offer this time to the Lord and try, gently, to settle.
If it helps, I ask the Holy Spirit to pray in me and for me.
Here at the end of his Gospel, St Matthew is describing the commissioning of his disciples.
I read the text slowly, pausing as often as I need.
What strikes me? Where am I drawn?
Slowly I ponder what Jesus means for me today … what he has meant to me in the past … what I would like him to mean to me in the future.
In what ways might I want to share this knowledge of him with others?
I talk to the Lord about any worries I have, and ask for greater trust in the transforming power of the Spirit.
As I face the coming week, it might help to think of any graces I need: encouragement, consolation, boldness …?
Perhaps I ask the Lord to deepen my sense of his love and strength for me now, in this present moment.
The Lord has promised to be with me always, even until the end of time.
How does this make me feel?
I talk to him from the heart, perhaps offering him my coming week as I try to be ever more willing to go out, confident that the Lord is there alongside me.
When I am ready, I end my prayer. Our Father ...
If it helps, I ask the Holy Spirit to pray in me and for me.
Here at the end of his Gospel, St Matthew is describing the commissioning of his disciples.
I read the text slowly, pausing as often as I need.
What strikes me? Where am I drawn?
Slowly I ponder what Jesus means for me today … what he has meant to me in the past … what I would like him to mean to me in the future.
In what ways might I want to share this knowledge of him with others?
I talk to the Lord about any worries I have, and ask for greater trust in the transforming power of the Spirit.
As I face the coming week, it might help to think of any graces I need: encouragement, consolation, boldness …?
Perhaps I ask the Lord to deepen my sense of his love and strength for me now, in this present moment.
The Lord has promised to be with me always, even until the end of time.
How does this make me feel?
I talk to him from the heart, perhaps offering him my coming week as I try to be ever more willing to go out, confident that the Lord is there alongside me.
When I am ready, I end my prayer. Our Father ...
Readings next week – The Body and
Blood of Christ (Year B)
First Reading: Exodus 24: 3-8
Second Reading: Hebrews 9:11-15
Gospel: Mark
14:12-16. 22-26
Many happy returns Marie enjoy your special
day!
Weekly
Ramblings
To all those who were part of making last weekend’s
celebration for the Feast of Pentecost such a wonderful celebration I would
like to express my sincere thanks. A very special thanks to all who provided
food and who assisted in the preparations for the meal and the tidying up
afterwards – great effort everyone and thanks.
As we go forward with our journey towards making our Parish
Vision real in the life of our wider community I hope that future celebrations
might build on the successes of the past and create opportunities for us to
invite family and friends who might not get to Mass that often (or ever) to be
comfortable being part of our celebrations and feel free to join us more
regularly.
This weekend we will have the 2nd Meeting of the
new Parish Pastoral Team. As mentioned last weekend the members are - Mandy
Eden (Latrobe), Jenny Garnsey (Penguin), Glenys Lee-Archer, Michael Hendrey,
Christine Miller (all Devonport), Carol Seagar (Port Sorell & Our Lady of
Lourdes School) and Felicity Sly (Devonport). At this stage we are still
speaking to parishioners in the two areas (Ulverstone and Sheffield) which are
not represented in the present representation.
I forgot to mention last weekend the reason that Fr Smiley
wasn‘t there to concelebrate our whole of Parish Mass was that he has begun a
three week supply in George Town, allowing Fr Zammit to have holidays. He will
return on the 4th June.
Please continue to pray for the children in our Sacramental
Program – a few will receive the Creed at Mass this weekend, being unable to be
with us last week due to family commitments. Would you also pray for the Youth
Group as they continue their Alpha Youth series and especially as they prepare
for their Holy Spirit experience on the 8th and 9th June.
Please
take care on the roads and we look forward to seeing you next weekend.
MACKILLOP HILL SPIRITUALITY CENTRE
SPIRITUALITY IN THE COFFEE
SHOP: Monday, 28th
May 10:30am -12 noon. Come and discuss the issues about faith and life that
matter to you! Morning tea & good
company! No booking necessary!
KNIGHTS OF
THE SOUTHERN CROSS:
Next meeting will be held this Sunday 27th May at 4pm, Community
Room Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone. All men welcome to attend.
MT ST VINCENT AUXILIARY: will be
holding a craft and cake stall on Sunday 10th June after 9:00am Mass
Sacred Heart Church Community Room. Bring a friend or two and your spare change and buy some goodies to
help support this great fundraiser!
PLANNED GIVING PROGRAMME:
New envelopes are being distributed during June. If you are
not already part of this programme and would like to join, or do not wish to
continue giving, please contact the Parish office.
Please note: The new envelopes (Blue in colour) should not be used until starting date 1st July, therefore once you start using them you need
to discard any old envelopes (yellow in colour) – thank you!
FOOTY TICKETS:
Round 9 (Friday 18th May) Adelaide Crows
defeated Western Bulldogs by 37 points. Congratulations to the
following winners;, ……….. (Remember to check your tickets!) There
are still plenty of tickets to be sold at Devonport and Ulverstone each week,
so for a little bit of fun why not help support our Parish fundraiser and buy a
footy margin ticket (or two) $2.00 each. There are three prizes of $100.00 each
week. You’ve got to be in it to win it!!
BINGO - Thursday Nights - OLOL
Hall, Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers for Thursday 31st
May – Rod Clark & Graeme Rigney.
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
THE JOURNEY CATHOLIC RADIO PROGRAM
This week on the Journey, Fr Graham Schmitzer reflects on
the Gospel of Matthew, Bruce Downes, The Catholic Guy encourages us to Get
Spiritually Fit, and Marilyn Rodrigues, The Peaceful Parent, reminds us of the
importance of One-on-One Time. Our music is selected from various talented
music artists who help us to create a show about faith, hope, love and life. Go
to www.jcr.org.au
or www.itunes.jcr.org.au
where you can listen anytime and subscribe to weekly shows by email.
CELEBRATING 70 YEARS OF CARMEL IN TASMANIA – To mark the arrival of the first Carmelites in Tasmania from Adelaide in 1948, all are warmly invited to join the Carmelite Community for a Sung Mass of Thanksgiving celebrated by Archbishop Porteous on Saturday 9th June 2018 at 9am at the Carmelite Monastery, 7 Cambridge Street, Launceston. Mass will be followed by morning tea.
ST VINCENT PALLOTTI SCHOLARSHIP: APPLICATIONS NOW
OPEN
The St Vincent Pallotti Scholarship Trust offer
scholarships to enable lay people to further their understanding and skills in
leadership/ministry or a specialised activity, such as promoting faith
enhancement, social justice and pastoral care.
Applications close 23rd July 2018. Details and application: http://www.pallottine.org.au/scholarships/st-vincent-pallotti-scholarship-for-lay-ministry.html
Growing into Belonging
This reflection is taken from the daily emails from Fr Richard Rohr OFM. You can subscribe and receive the emails by clicking here
As we grow spiritually, we discover that we are not as
separate as we thought we were. Separation from God, self, and others is a deep
and tragic illusion. As we grow into deeper connection and union, the things
that once brought meaning and happiness to our small self no longer satisfy us.
We tried to create artificial fullness through many kinds of addictive
behaviour, but still feel empty and nothing, if we are honest. We need much
more nutritious food to feed our Bigger Self. Mere entertainments, time-fillers,
diversions, and distractions will no longer work.
At the more mature stages of life, we are able to allow the
painful and the formerly excluded parts to gradually belong within a growing,
unified field. This shows itself as a foundational compassion, especially
toward all things different from us and the many beings who “never had a
chance.” If you have forgiven yourself for being imperfect, you can now do it
for everybody else, too. If you have not forgiven yourself, I am afraid you
will likely pass on your sadness, absurdity, judgment, and futility to others.
“What goes around comes around.”
Many who are judgmental and unforgiving seem to have missed
out on the joy and clarity of the first childhood containment, perhaps avoided
the suffering of the mid-life complexity, and thus missed out on the great
freedom and magnanimity of the second half of life. We need to hold together
all the stages of life. For some strange, wonderful reason, it all becomes
quite “simple” as we approach our later years. The great irony is that we must
go through a lot of complexity and disorder (another word for necessary
suffering) to return to the second simplicity. There is no nonstop flight from
first to second naiveté, from initial order to resurrection. We must go through
the pain of disorder to grow up and switch our loyalties from self to God. Most
people just try to maintain their initial “order” at all costs, even if it is
killing them.
As we grow in wisdom, we realize that everything belongs and
everything can be received. We see that life and death are not opposites. They
do not cancel one another out; neither do goodness and badness. A radical,
almost nonsensical “okayness” characterizes the mature believer, which is why
they are often called “holy fools.” These wise ones do not have to deny,
dismiss, defy, or ignore reality anymore. What is, is gradually okay (which
does not mean you do not work for justice and truth, but this must be
accompanied by a primal yes!). What is, is still the greatest of teachers. At the
bottom of all reality is always a deep abiding goodness, or what Merton called
“the hidden wholeness.” [1]
[1] Thomas Merton, “Hagia Sophia,” Ramparts Magazine (March
1963), 66. Also see In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas
Merton, ed. Lynn R. Szabo (New Directions: 2005).
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality
for the Two Halves of Life (Jossey-Bass: 2011), 113-115;
Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The
Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 55-56, 61; and
How Do We Get Everything to Belong? disc 3 (Center for
Action and Contemplation: 2004), CD, MP3 download.
ON FRIENDSHIP
This article is copied from the website of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original page hereOne of the richest experiences of grace that we can have this side of eternity is the experience of friendship.
Dictionaries define friendship as a relationship of mutual affection, a bond richer than mere association. They then go on to link friendship to a number of words: kindness, love, sympathy, empathy, honesty, altruism, loyalty, understanding, compassion, comfort, and (not least) trust. Friends, the dictionaries assert, enjoy each other’s company, express their feelings to each other, and make mistakes without fear of judgment from the other.
That basically covers things, but to better grasp the real grace in friendship a number of things inside that definition need explication.
First, as the Greek Stoics affirmed and as is evident in the Christian spirituality, true friendship is only possible among people who are practicing virtue. A gang is not a circle of friendship, nor are many ideological circles. Why? Because friendship needs to bring grace and grace is only found in virtue.
Next, friendship is more than merely human, though it is wonderfully human. When it is genuine, friendship is nothing less than a participation in the flow of life and love that’s inside of God. Scripture tells us that God is love, but the word it uses for love in this case is the Greek word agape, a term which might be rendered as “family”, “community”, or “the sharing of life”. Hence the famous text (“God is Love”) might be transliterated to read: God is family, God is community, God is shared existence, and whoever shares his or her existence inside of community and friendship is participating in the very flow of life and love that is inside the Trinity.
But this isn’t always true. Friendship and family can take different forms. Parker Palmer, the contemporary Quaker writer, submits: “If you come here faithfully, you bring great blessing.” Conversely, the great Sufi mystic, Rumi, writes: “If you are here unfaithfully, you bring great harm.” Family and community can bring grace or block it. Our circle can be one of love and grace, or it can be a one of hatred and sin. Only the former merits the name friendship. Friendship, says St. Augustine, is the beauty of the soul.
Deep, life-giving friendship, as we all know, is as difficult as it is rare. Why? We all long for it in the depths of our soul, so why is it so difficult to find? We all know why: We’re different from each other, unique, and rightly cautious as to whom we give entry into our soul. And so it isn’t easy to find a soulmate, to have that kind of affinity and trust. Nor is it easy to sustain a friendship once we have found one. Sustained friendship takes hard commitment and that’s not our strong point as our psyches and our world forever shift and turn. Moreover, today, virtual friendships don’t always translate into real friendships.
Finally, not least, friendship is often hindered or derailed by sex and sexual tension. This is simply a fact of nature and a fact within our culture and all other cultures. Sex and sexuality, while they ideally should be the basis for deep friendship, often are the major hindrance to friendship. Moreover, in our own culture (whose ethos prizes sex over friendship) friendship is often seen as a substitute, and a second-best one at that, for sex.
But while that may be in our cultural ethos, it’s clearly not what’s deepest in our souls. There we long for something that’s ultimately deeper than sex – or is sex in a fuller flowering. There’s a deep desire in us all (be that a deeper form of sexual desire or a desire for something that’s beyond sex) for a soulmate, for someone to sleep with morally. More deeply than we ache for a sexual partner, we ache for a moral partner, though these desires aren’t mutually exclusive, just hard to combine.
Friendship, like love, is always partly a mystery, something beyond us. It’s a struggle in all cultures. Part of this is simply our humanity. The pearl of great price is not easily found nor easily retained. True friendship is an eschatological thing, found, though never perfectly, in this life. Cultural and religious factors always work against friendship, as does the omnipresence of sexual tension.
Sometimes poets can reach where academics cannot and so I offer these insights from a poet vis-à-vis the interrelationship between friendship and sex. Friendship, Rainer Marie Rilke suggests, is often one of the great taboos within a culture, but it remains always the endgame: “In a deep, felicitous love between two people you can eventually become the loving protectors of each other’s solitude. … Sex is, admittedly, very powerful, but no matter how powerful, beautiful, and wondrous it may be. If you become the loving protectors of each other’s solitude, love gradually turns to friendship.”
And as Montaigne once affirmed: “The end of friendship may be more important than love. The epiphanies of youth are meant to blossom and ripen into something everlasting.”
LITURGICAL BULLIES
This is taken from the blog by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Baltimore. You can find the original blog here
We have just completed a two-week Rebuilt Book Tour, which brought us to Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, and Vienna. Among many other observations we made there, here’s one: most all of our hosts seemed more relaxed about liturgy than many of the churchpeople we encounter here in the States. Not in the sense that they abuse rubrics or disregard rules. Rather, they just struck us as more at ease with the whole subject, it appears to be less polemical.
For example, in all of our conferences, not a single liturgical question was even once raised. That has never happened to us in our own country. Notwithstanding that our conferences aren’t even about liturgy, the subject always comes up, often in a combative way and sometimes in a disruptive one. This was underscored for me on returning home and finding two lengthy letters (written not to me, but to the bishop) from two of our most consistent current critics detailing their most recent allegations of our liturgical crimes (neither of the authors are parishioners, and none of their allegations were substantive, by the way).
Don’t really know if it is an American phenomenon or not, but it seems there are always at least a few people in every parish we’ve encountered who carve out for themselves the role of liturgical bullies. I’m not talking about people who have legitimate concerns about legitimate, substantive liturgical abuses. I’m talking about people who go to Mass looking for something to question or complain about and are never disappointed. Then, they run home and get online to make their comments known to anyone who will listen, or fire off an angry missive to the pastor, or, better yet, to the bishop.
They complain about the liturgy. It’s their apparent contribution to the Body of Christ.
And here’s the thing: liturgical bullies are always abusive, the exercise, in and of itself, is an expression of cruelty. That’s because it shows no consideration for the concerns, cares, or motivation of others, only a personalized view of rules and rule keeping. Here are a few more observations I’ve made over the course of many years on the receiving end of this cruel behavior:
- Obsessed with rules as this attitude is, it is rarely based in a very solid understanding or appreciation of the Liturgy.
- It is typically ignorant of the aesthetic of the Liturgy and unconcerned with the beauty or joy or spirit of the celebration.
- Logic, like charity, is usually not a part of their consideration. Anger, arrogance, condescension and exaggeration are their preferred tools. While abusive to their subjects, the practice is also narcissistic.
Liturgical bullies are divisive and demoralizing in the life of the Church. To grow healthy parishes we need to marginalize their voices and avoid their conversations.
This is taken from the blog by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Baltimore. You can find the original blog here
We have just completed a two-week Rebuilt Book Tour, which brought us to Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, and Vienna. Among many other observations we made there, here’s one: most all of our hosts seemed more relaxed about liturgy than many of the churchpeople we encounter here in the States. Not in the sense that they abuse rubrics or disregard rules. Rather, they just struck us as more at ease with the whole subject, it appears to be less polemical.
For example, in all of our conferences, not a single liturgical question was even once raised. That has never happened to us in our own country. Notwithstanding that our conferences aren’t even about liturgy, the subject always comes up, often in a combative way and sometimes in a disruptive one. This was underscored for me on returning home and finding two lengthy letters (written not to me, but to the bishop) from two of our most consistent current critics detailing their most recent allegations of our liturgical crimes (neither of the authors are parishioners, and none of their allegations were substantive, by the way).
Don’t really know if it is an American phenomenon or not, but it seems there are always at least a few people in every parish we’ve encountered who carve out for themselves the role of liturgical bullies. I’m not talking about people who have legitimate concerns about legitimate, substantive liturgical abuses. I’m talking about people who go to Mass looking for something to question or complain about and are never disappointed. Then, they run home and get online to make their comments known to anyone who will listen, or fire off an angry missive to the pastor, or, better yet, to the bishop.
They complain about the liturgy. It’s their apparent contribution to the Body of Christ.
And here’s the thing: liturgical bullies are always abusive, the exercise, in and of itself, is an expression of cruelty. That’s because it shows no consideration for the concerns, cares, or motivation of others, only a personalized view of rules and rule keeping. Here are a few more observations I’ve made over the course of many years on the receiving end of this cruel behavior:
Liturgical bullies are divisive and demoralizing in the life of the Church. To grow healthy parishes we need to marginalize their voices and avoid their conversations.
We have just completed a two-week Rebuilt Book Tour, which brought us to Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, and Vienna. Among many other observations we made there, here’s one: most all of our hosts seemed more relaxed about liturgy than many of the churchpeople we encounter here in the States. Not in the sense that they abuse rubrics or disregard rules. Rather, they just struck us as more at ease with the whole subject, it appears to be less polemical.
For example, in all of our conferences, not a single liturgical question was even once raised. That has never happened to us in our own country. Notwithstanding that our conferences aren’t even about liturgy, the subject always comes up, often in a combative way and sometimes in a disruptive one. This was underscored for me on returning home and finding two lengthy letters (written not to me, but to the bishop) from two of our most consistent current critics detailing their most recent allegations of our liturgical crimes (neither of the authors are parishioners, and none of their allegations were substantive, by the way).
Don’t really know if it is an American phenomenon or not, but it seems there are always at least a few people in every parish we’ve encountered who carve out for themselves the role of liturgical bullies. I’m not talking about people who have legitimate concerns about legitimate, substantive liturgical abuses. I’m talking about people who go to Mass looking for something to question or complain about and are never disappointed. Then, they run home and get online to make their comments known to anyone who will listen, or fire off an angry missive to the pastor, or, better yet, to the bishop.
They complain about the liturgy. It’s their apparent contribution to the Body of Christ.
And here’s the thing: liturgical bullies are always abusive, the exercise, in and of itself, is an expression of cruelty. That’s because it shows no consideration for the concerns, cares, or motivation of others, only a personalized view of rules and rule keeping. Here are a few more observations I’ve made over the course of many years on the receiving end of this cruel behavior:
- Obsessed with rules as this attitude is, it is rarely based in a very solid understanding or appreciation of the Liturgy.
- It is typically ignorant of the aesthetic of the Liturgy and unconcerned with the beauty or joy or spirit of the celebration.
- Logic, like charity, is usually not a part of their consideration. Anger, arrogance, condescension and exaggeration are their preferred tools. While abusive to their subjects, the practice is also narcissistic.
Liturgical bullies are divisive and demoralizing in the life of the Church. To grow healthy parishes we need to marginalize their voices and avoid their conversations.
Discernment in a time of tribulation: Pope
Francis and the Church in Chile
This is an article published on the ThinkingFaith.org website. You can find the complete article by clicking here
Last month, Pope Francis wrote to the bishops of Chile to say sorry for his initial response to the clerical abuse crisis in the country. The pope’s apology and his insistence on the need for renewal in the Church are informed by texts that he has been drawing on for thirty years, says Austen Ivereigh. Writing in 1987, Jorge Mario Bergoglio described letters written by Jesuits during the Society’s suppression as ‘a marvel of criteria of discernment’ – how have these criteria been applied in the pope’s recent words and actions?
An obscure five-page prologue from Pope Francis’ past, published this month by the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica, reveals something of the ‘spiritual strategy’ he is currently pursuing with Chile’s troubled Church, as well as sharing vital discernment wisdom culled from the dark days of the suppression of the Society of Jesus that could be helpful for modern-day Catholics beleaguered by social change.
Francis first drew attention to his text – a 2,000-word preface to Las Cartas de la Tribulación, an Argentine translation into Spanish of eight letters by Jesuit superiors general from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – when he quoted from it in a powerful address in Santiago’s cathedral on 16 January. That speech to priests and religious on the second day of his Chile visit, charted a roadmap out of the desolation of persecution and failure, through the example of St Peter’s betrayal being forgiven by the risen Christ.
This is an article published on the ThinkingFaith.org website. You can find the complete article by clicking here
Last month, Pope Francis wrote to the bishops of Chile to say sorry for his initial response to the clerical abuse crisis in the country. The pope’s apology and his insistence on the need for renewal in the Church are informed by texts that he has been drawing on for thirty years, says Austen Ivereigh. Writing in 1987, Jorge Mario Bergoglio described letters written by Jesuits during the Society’s suppression as ‘a marvel of criteria of discernment’ – how have these criteria been applied in the pope’s recent words and actions?
An obscure five-page prologue from Pope Francis’ past, published this month by the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica, reveals something of the ‘spiritual strategy’ he is currently pursuing with Chile’s troubled Church, as well as sharing vital discernment wisdom culled from the dark days of the suppression of the Society of Jesus that could be helpful for modern-day Catholics beleaguered by social change.
Francis first drew attention to his text – a 2,000-word preface to Las Cartas de la Tribulación, an Argentine translation into Spanish of eight letters by Jesuit superiors general from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – when he quoted from it in a powerful address in Santiago’s cathedral on 16 January. That speech to priests and religious on the second day of his Chile visit, charted a roadmap out of the desolation of persecution and failure, through the example of St Peter’s betrayal being forgiven by the risen Christ.
