Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
OUR VISION
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
Finance Officer: Anne Fisher
Finance Officer: Anne Fisher
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.
PLENARY COUNCIL PRAYER
Come, Holy Spirit of Pentecost.
Come, Holy Spirit of the great South Land.
O God, bless and unite all your people in Australia
and guide us on the pilgrim way of the Plenary Council.
Give us the grace to see your face in one another
and to recognise Jesus, our companion on the road.
Give us the courage to tell our stories and to speak boldly of your truth.
Give us ears to listen humbly to each other
and a discerning heart to hear what you are saying.
Lead your Church into a hope-filled future,
that we may live the joy of the Gospel.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, bread for the journey from age to age.
Amen.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us.
St Mary MacKillop, pray for us.
Come, Holy Spirit of the great South Land.
O God, bless and unite all your people in Australia
and guide us on the pilgrim way of the Plenary Council.
Give us the grace to see your face in one another
and to recognise Jesus, our companion on the road.
Give us the courage to tell our stories and to speak boldly of your truth.
Give us ears to listen humbly to each other
and a discerning heart to hear what you are saying.
Lead your Church into a hope-filled future,
that we may live the joy of the Gospel.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, bread for the journey from age to age.
Amen.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us.
St Mary MacKillop, pray for us.
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
Ministry Rosters 15th & 16th September,
2018
Devonport: 
Ministers of Communion:
Vigil: T Muir, M Davies, D Peters, J
Heatley
10:30am: B & N Mulcahy, K Hull
Ulverstone:
Penguin:
Latrobe:
Port Sorell:
10:30am Meercroft
Weekend Masses 15th & 16th September
Saturday: 6:00pm Vigil Penguin
6:00pm Vigil Devonport
Sunday: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Readings this week –Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
I try to relax into this, resting in his loving
gaze.
When I am ready I read the text slowly a couple of times.
I may try and
imagine the scene ... Jesus is walking with his disciples, making his way back
to Galilee, when strangers bring him a deaf man with a speech impediment.
Perhaps
I notice Jesus’s humanity.
He gives the man privacy and all his attention.
Do I
sense this?
This miracle is accompanied by physical contact and involvement.
How
does that affect me?
As I contemplate the scene, I may consider in what ways I
am deaf or silent.
Can I hear Jesus’s words, ‘Be opened’ as addressed to me?
How
does that make me feel?
I reflect on the areas in myself and in my own life
where I would like to be more open to the Lord.
I speak to him about this, and
maybe offer these areas to his loving action.
Before I end my prayer, I give
God praise for ‘doing all things well’.
I finish with a ‘Glory be to the Father
…’
Readings next week –Twenty Fourth Sunday
in Ordinary Time (Year B)
Your prayers
are asked for the sick:
Deborah Leary, Edgar Nool, Mary Webb, Rosalinda Grimes & ….
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Let us pray for those whose anniversary
occurs about this time: 5th – 11th September
Weekly
Ramblings
As has been mentioned
previously the newly ordained Fr Fidelis will celebrate a Mass of Thanksgiving
at 11am at Star of the Sea, Burnie on Sunday 16th and parishioners have been
invited to attend that celebration. If you are going would you be so kind as to
notify the Burnie Wynyard Parish Office early this week to assist in
arrangements for the day.
Last weekend, together with
the PPT, I mentioned we will be celebrating 30 Days of Prayer and Fasting
commencing on 6th/7th October. As part of our program during this time we are
inviting parishioners to let us know whether they would be willing to host or
be part of a simple gathering for prayer and reflection in their own home -
similar in style to a Lenten Discussion group (but might only be one occasion).
Some information is available this weekend of opportunities that are already
part of the Communal Prayer life of the Parish and more will be made known as
we have the information.
Thanks to all who supported
our First Communicants and their families last weekend - please continue to
pray for them as they continue on their faith journey.
Please
take care on the roads and I look forward to seeing you next weekend.
FROM THE PARISH PASTORAL TEAM (FELICITY SLY – CHAIR):
There are 3 stages to the Plenary, and we are currently in Stage 1. In the
initial part of stage 1, we are invited to ponder three questions. The first
is: “What do you think God is asking of us in Australia at this time?” Submissions
to this question, and the two other questions are open now via the website
listed above. I will highlight the other two questions in future posts.
We/You have until Ash Wednesday (March 6) 2019
to respond. We/You can respond multiple times. The invitation is to a Listening
and Dialogue Encounter. This can happen multiple times, in organised groups, in
chats with friends and family, over meals, over coffee, in the playground, on
the street. There are support materials on the website to help guide the
discussion, and the materials acknowledge that there are many hurtful
experiences that need to be acknowledged, before the question above can be
answered.
I found the session to be a breath of fresh air in the challenges we
have faced, as Catholics, for many years. MLCP will facilitate some Listening
and Dialogue sessions, but you can start the process whenever and wherever you
wish.
LUNCH: THIS Sunday 9th September at
Blue Wren Tea Garden Ulverstone 12noon -12:20pm. All welcome.
CARE
& CONCERN:
The next gathering of the social group for afternoon tea
will be held this Tuesday 11th September, 2.00
pm at MacKillop Hill, Forth. We would be very pleased to welcome
parishioners who do not have the opportunity for social activity, including
those whose spouses/partners are now in residential care etc. Transport can be provided. If you would like to find out more, please
contact Mary Davies 6424:1183 / 0447 241 182, Margaret McKenzie 6425:1414 /
0419 392 937 or Toni Muir 6424:5296 / 0438 245 296. For catering purposes we would appreciate
your advising of your attendance to any of the above numbers.
CATHOLIC
CHARISMATIC RENEWAL TASMANIA:
Welcomes your attendance with Fr Alexander Obiorah and Fr
Paschal Okpon to the Charismatic healing Mass at St Mary’s Catholic Church Penguin
Thursday
20 September at 7pm. After Mass, teams will be available for individual
prayer. Please bring a friend and a plate for supper to share in the Hall. Contacts:
Celestine 6424:2043, Michael 0447 018 068, or Tom 6425 2442.
MT ZION PRAYER GROUP: Invite all parishioners to their
regular meeting on Monday 24th September at 7pm in the Community
Room, Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone. At this meeting John and Glenys
Lee-Archer will share with us their recent experiences in their pilgrimage to
Halifax and Baltimore. There will be ample opportunity to ask questions. There
will also be a number of songs of praise and worship. We look forward to your
company. Please bring a plate for supper.
MERSEY
LEVEN ROSARY GROUP:
The Mersey Leven Parish is holding its 16th annual
Rosary Pilgrimage around the 6 Churches of our Parish on Sunday 7th October. It is
also the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. We are praying especially for
Australia and its protection, peace, families, rekindling of our faith,
direction in our church and for the salvation of souls together with other
Catholics at locations across Australia and the whole world. In conjunction
with the forthcoming ’30 days of prayer’ event in our parish, starting on the
first weekend of October, it is a great opportunity for our parish to kick off
this event by joining in our pilgrimage. We encourage everyone to join us in
this occasion. A bus is
available for those needing transport but booking is highly essential.
Itinerary will be posted at the foyer in all churches. For further details
contact Hermie 0414 416 661 or Michael 0447 018 068.
BINGO - Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall,
Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers for Thursday 13th
September – Merv Tippett & Alan Luxton.
Solidarity with the World
This article is taken from the Daily Emails from Fr Richard Rohr OFM and the Center for Action and Contemplation. You can subscribe to receive the emails here
Following Jesus is not a “salvation scheme” or a means of
creating social order as much as it is a vocation to share the fate of God for
the life of the world. Some people are overly invested in religious ceremonies,
rituals, and rules about naming who’s in and who’s out. They love to protect
boundaries. Jesus did not come to create a spiritual elite or an exclusionary
system. He invited people to “follow” him by personally bearing the mystery of
human death and divine resurrection.
Carlo Carretto was an Italian monk who died in 1988. For many years he lived as a hermit in the Sahara Desert, translated the scriptures into the Tuareg language, and from the solitude of the desert wrote some extraordinary spiritual books. His writings and his faith were special in that they had a rare capacity to combine an almost childlike piety with (when needed) a blistering iconoclasm. He loved the church deeply, but he wasn’t blind to its faults and failures, and he wasn’t afraid to point out those shortcomings.
Late in life, when his health forced him to leave the desert he retired to a religious community in his native Italy. While there, late in life, he read a book by an atheist who took Jesus to task for a phrase in the Sermon on the Mount where he says: “Seek and you shall find”, meaning, of course, that if you seek God with an honest heart you will find God. The atheist had entitled his book, I Sought and I Didn’t Find, arguing from his own experience that an honest heart can seek God and come up empty.
Carretto wrote a book in reply called: I Sought and I Found. For him, Jesus’ counsel rang true. In his own search, despite encountering many things that could indicate the absence of God, he found God. But he admits the difficulties, and one of those difficulties is, at times, the church. The church can, and sometimes does, through its sin, make it difficult for some to believe in God. Carretto admits this with a disarming honesty but argues that it’s not the whole picture.
Hence his book combines his deep love for his faith and his church with his refusal to not turn a blind eye to the very real faults of Christians and the churches. At one point in the book he gives voice to something which might be described as an Ode to the Church. It reads this way:
How much I must criticize you, my church and yet how much I love you!
How you have made me suffer much and yet owe much to you.
I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.
You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness.
Never in this world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, and yet never in this world have I touched anything more pure, more generous, and more beautiful.
Many times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet how often I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms!
No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even though not completely you.
Then, too – where would I go? To build another church?
But I cannot build another without the same defects, for they are my own defeats I bear within me.
And again, if I build one, it will be my Church, and no longer Christ’s.
No, I am old enough to know that I am no better than others.
I shall not leave this Church, founded on so frail a rock, because I should be founding another one on an even frailer rock: myself.
And then, what do rocks matter?
What matters is Christ’ promise, what matters is the cement that binds the rocks into one: the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit alone can build the Church with stones as ill‐hewn as we.
This is an expression of a mature faith; one which isn’t so romantic and idealistic that it needs to be shielded from the darker side of things and one which is real enough so as not to be so cynical that it blinds itself to the evident goodness that also emanates from the church. In truth, the church is both horribly compromised and wonderfully grace-filled. Honest eyes can see both. A mature heart can accept both. Children and novices need to be shielded from the dark underbelly of things; scandalized adults need to have their eyes opened to the evident goodness that’s also there.
Many people have left the church because it has scandalized them through its habitual sins, blind spots, defensiveness, self-serving nature, and arrogance. The recent revelations (again) of sexual abuse by priests and the cover-up by church authorities have left many people wondering whether they can ever again trust the church’s structure, ministers, and authorities. For many, this scandal seems too huge to digest.
Carlo Carretto’s Ode, I believe, can help us all, whether scandalized or pious. To the pious, it can show how one can accept the church despite its sin and how denial of that sin is not what’s called for by love and loyalty. To the scandalized, it can be a challenge to not miss the forest for the trees, to not miss seeing that, in the church, frailty and sin, while real, tragic, and scandalous, never eclipse the superabundant, life-giving grace of God.
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.
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart of Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – Mondays 7pm Community Room Ulverstone
Ministry Rosters 15th & 16th September,
2018
Devonport:
Readers Vigil: V Riley, A Stegman, B Suckling 10:30am: E Petts, K Douglas, K Pearce
Ministers of Communion:
Vigil: T Muir, M Davies, D Peters, J
Heatley
10:30am: B & N Mulcahy, K Hull
Cleaners: 14th Sept: P Shelverton, E Petts 21st Sept: M.W.C.
Piety Shop: 15th Sept:
R Baker 16th Sept: K Hull
Presbytery
Mower roster - Sept:
T Ryan
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: R Locket
Ministers of
Communion: M Mott,
W Bajzelj, J Jones, T Leary
Cleaners: K.S.C. Flowers: C Stingel Hospitality: M & K McKenzie
Penguin:
Greeters: J Garnsey, S Ewing Readers: J Garnsey, T Clayton Ministers of Communion: S Ewing, J Barker
Liturgy: Pine Road Setting Up: F Aichberger Care of Church: M Bowles, J Reynolds
Latrobe:
Reader: M Chan Minister of Communion: Z Smith Procession of Gifts: M Clarke
Port Sorell:
Readers: D Leaman, T Jeffries Minister of Communion: B Lee
Cleaners: C Howard
Weekday Masses 11th - 14th September
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 10:30am Eliza Purton ... St John Chrysostom
12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
10:30am Meercroft
10:30am Meercroft
Weekend Masses 15th & 16th September
Saturday: 6:00pm Vigil Penguin
6:00pm Vigil Devonport
Sunday: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Readings this week –Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
First Reading: Isaiah 35:4-7
Second Reading: James 2:1-5
Gospel: Mark 7:31-37
PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
As I begin my prayer, I take the time to become aware of
God’s all enveloping presence.
I try to relax into this, resting in his loving gaze.
When I am ready I read the text slowly a couple of times.
I may try and imagine the scene ... Jesus is walking with his disciples, making his way back to Galilee, when strangers bring him a deaf man with a speech impediment.
Perhaps I notice Jesus’s humanity.
He gives the man privacy and all his attention.
Do I sense this?
This miracle is accompanied by physical contact and involvement.
How does that affect me?
As I contemplate the scene, I may consider in what ways I am deaf or silent.
Can I hear Jesus’s words, ‘Be opened’ as addressed to me?
How does that make me feel?
I reflect on the areas in myself and in my own life where I would like to be more open to the Lord.
I speak to him about this, and maybe offer these areas to his loving action.
Before I end my prayer, I give God praise for ‘doing all things well’.
I finish with a ‘Glory be to the Father …’
I try to relax into this, resting in his loving gaze.
When I am ready I read the text slowly a couple of times.
I may try and imagine the scene ... Jesus is walking with his disciples, making his way back to Galilee, when strangers bring him a deaf man with a speech impediment.
Perhaps I notice Jesus’s humanity.
He gives the man privacy and all his attention.
Do I sense this?
This miracle is accompanied by physical contact and involvement.
How does that affect me?
As I contemplate the scene, I may consider in what ways I am deaf or silent.
Can I hear Jesus’s words, ‘Be opened’ as addressed to me?
How does that make me feel?
I reflect on the areas in myself and in my own life where I would like to be more open to the Lord.
I speak to him about this, and maybe offer these areas to his loving action.
Before I end my prayer, I give God praise for ‘doing all things well’.
I finish with a ‘Glory be to the Father …’
Readings next week –Twenty Fourth Sunday
in Ordinary Time (Year B)
First Reading: Isaiah 50:5-9
Second Reading: James 2:14-18
Gospel: Mark
8:27-35
Your prayers
are asked for the sick:
Herman
Kappelhof, Joy Kiely, Charlotte Milic, Carmel Covington, Trish Ridout,
Deborah Leary, Edgar Nool, Mary Webb, Rosalinda Grimes & ….
Deborah Leary, Edgar Nool, Mary Webb, Rosalinda Grimes & ….
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Helene De Lafontaine, Fr Peter Wood MSC, Christine McGee, Joan Daley, Peter Shaw, Maurice
Vanderfeen, Natasha Gowans, Hilario Abarquez, Andrew McLennan, Antonia (Toni) Ross, Nilo Floresta, Tony Barker, Anthony Shaddock-Johnston
Let us pray for those whose anniversary
occurs about this time: 5th – 11th September
Gwendoline Jessup, Robert Adkins, Terence Doody, Mary Jean
Davey, Fransicka Bondy, Edward McCarthy, John Smith, Joan Scully, Jenny Richards, Roma Magee, Fabrizio Zolati,
Cameron McLaren, Russell Foster, Fr. Tom Bresnehan, Joan Williams, Rodney O’Rourke, Margaret Wesley and David Windridge.
May they Rest in
Peace
Weekly
Ramblings
During the months of July,
August and September quite a number of priests celebrate their Ordination
Anniversaries - this is an important time for remembering these priests and
their ministry amongst us. Next Friday evening, 14th, the newest priest for the
Archdiocese will be ordained at the Cathedral at a ceremony commencing at 7pm.
The Rev Fidelis Udousoro will join Archbishop Julian and 13 active Diocesan
priests (there are 9 retired men some still helping in different ways around
the Diocese) as part of the Church in Tasmania. These are Diocesan priests are
assisted in their work by 10 other priests working on Visa’s for various
lengths of time along with a number of Religious Order priests in several
parishes who serve our Church in Tasmania.
As has been mentioned
previously the newly ordained Fr Fidelis will celebrate a Mass of Thanksgiving
at 11am at Star of the Sea, Burnie on Sunday 16th and parishioners have been
invited to attend that celebration. If you are going would you be so kind as to
notify the Burnie Wynyard Parish Office early this week to assist in
arrangements for the day.
Last weekend, together with
the PPT, I mentioned we will be celebrating 30 Days of Prayer and Fasting
commencing on 6th/7th October. As part of our program during this time we are
inviting parishioners to let us know whether they would be willing to host or
be part of a simple gathering for prayer and reflection in their own home -
similar in style to a Lenten Discussion group (but might only be one occasion).
Some information is available this weekend of opportunities that are already
part of the Communal Prayer life of the Parish and more will be made known as
we have the information.
Please
take care on the roads and I look forward to seeing you next weekend.
FROM THE PARISH PASTORAL TEAM (FELICITY SLY – CHAIR):
Between
15 and 20 MLCP parishioners attended the plenary session, hosted by
Burnie-Wynyard Parish, and led by Lana Turvey-Collins. Lana provided
information on what a Plenary is, what authority it holds within the Catholic
Church in Australia, when we can expect any decisions made to be implemented,
and how the process will operate. I invite you to access the Plenary 2020
website at plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au to read about the Plenary firsthand.
There are 3 stages to the Plenary, and we are currently in Stage 1. In the initial part of stage 1, we are invited to ponder three questions. The first is: “What do you think God is asking of us in Australia at this time?” Submissions to this question, and the two other questions are open now via the website listed above. I will highlight the other two questions in future posts.
We/You have until Ash Wednesday (March 6) 2019 to respond. We/You can respond multiple times. The invitation is to a Listening and Dialogue Encounter. This can happen multiple times, in organised groups, in chats with friends and family, over meals, over coffee, in the playground, on the street. There are support materials on the website to help guide the discussion, and the materials acknowledge that there are many hurtful experiences that need to be acknowledged, before the question above can be answered.
I found the session to be a breath of fresh air in the challenges we have faced, as Catholics, for many years. MLCP will facilitate some Listening and Dialogue sessions, but you can start the process whenever and wherever you wish.
There are 3 stages to the Plenary, and we are currently in Stage 1. In the initial part of stage 1, we are invited to ponder three questions. The first is: “What do you think God is asking of us in Australia at this time?” Submissions to this question, and the two other questions are open now via the website listed above. I will highlight the other two questions in future posts.
We/You have until Ash Wednesday (March 6) 2019 to respond. We/You can respond multiple times. The invitation is to a Listening and Dialogue Encounter. This can happen multiple times, in organised groups, in chats with friends and family, over meals, over coffee, in the playground, on the street. There are support materials on the website to help guide the discussion, and the materials acknowledge that there are many hurtful experiences that need to be acknowledged, before the question above can be answered.
I found the session to be a breath of fresh air in the challenges we have faced, as Catholics, for many years. MLCP will facilitate some Listening and Dialogue sessions, but you can start the process whenever and wherever you wish.
LUNCH: THIS Sunday 9th September at
Blue Wren Tea Garden Ulverstone 12noon -12:20pm. All welcome.
CARE
& CONCERN:
The next gathering of the social group for afternoon tea
will be held this Tuesday 11th September, 2.00
pm at MacKillop Hill, Forth. We would be very pleased to welcome
parishioners who do not have the opportunity for social activity, including
those whose spouses/partners are now in residential care etc. Transport can be provided. If you would like to find out more, please
contact Mary Davies 6424:1183 / 0447 241 182, Margaret McKenzie 6425:1414 /
0419 392 937 or Toni Muir 6424:5296 / 0438 245 296. For catering purposes we would appreciate
your advising of your attendance to any of the above numbers.
CATHOLIC
CHARISMATIC RENEWAL TASMANIA:
Welcomes your attendance with Fr Alexander Obiorah and Fr
Paschal Okpon to the Charismatic healing Mass at St Mary’s Catholic Church Penguin
Thursday
20 September at 7pm. After Mass, teams will be available for individual
prayer. Please bring a friend and a plate for supper to share in the Hall. Contacts:
Celestine 6424:2043, Michael 0447 018 068, or Tom 6425 2442.
MT ZION PRAYER GROUP: Invite all parishioners to their
regular meeting on Monday 24th September at 7pm in the Community
Room, Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone. At this meeting John and Glenys
Lee-Archer will share with us their recent experiences in their pilgrimage to
Halifax and Baltimore. There will be ample opportunity to ask questions. There
will also be a number of songs of praise and worship. We look forward to your
company. Please bring a plate for supper.
The Mersey Leven Parish is holding its 16th annual
Rosary Pilgrimage around the 6 Churches of our Parish on Sunday 7th October. It is
also the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. We are praying especially for
Australia and its protection, peace, families, rekindling of our faith,
direction in our church and for the salvation of souls together with other
Catholics at locations across Australia and the whole world. In conjunction
with the forthcoming ’30 days of prayer’ event in our parish, starting on the
first weekend of October, it is a great opportunity for our parish to kick off
this event by joining in our pilgrimage. We encourage everyone to join us in
this occasion. A bus is
available for those needing transport but booking is highly essential.
Itinerary will be posted at the foyer in all churches. For further details
contact Hermie 0414 416 661 or Michael 0447 018 068.
FOOTY
TICKETS: Bye – No Footy (Friday 31st August)
BINGO - Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall,
Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers for Thursday 13th
September – Merv Tippett & Alan Luxton.
Solidarity with the World
This article is taken from the Daily Emails from Fr Richard Rohr OFM and the Center for Action and Contemplation. You can subscribe to receive the emails here
Following Jesus is not a “salvation scheme” or a means of
creating social order as much as it is a vocation to share the fate of God for
the life of the world. Some people are overly invested in religious ceremonies,
rituals, and rules about naming who’s in and who’s out. They love to protect
boundaries. Jesus did not come to create a spiritual elite or an exclusionary
system. He invited people to “follow” him by personally bearing the mystery of
human death and divine resurrection.
Those who agree to carry and love what God loves, both the
good and the bad of history, and to pay the price for its reconciliation within
themselves—these are the followers of Jesus (Philippians 3:10-12). They are the
leaven, the salt, the remnant, the mustard seed that God can use to transform
the world. The cross is the dramatic image of what it takes to be such a usable
one for God.
A saint is one who somehow voluntarily chooses to trust the
daily paradox of life and death as the two sides of everything. We, too, can
walk this path of welcoming disappointment and self-doubt, by “suffering” the
full truth of reality. Our vocation is a willingness to hold—and transform—the
dark side of things instead of reacting against them, denying them, or projecting
our anxiety elsewhere. Without such a willingness to hold the very real tension
of paradox, most lives end in negativity, blaming, or cynicism. Holding does
not necessarily mean fully reconciling. It is indeed a “suffering” of reality
which implies some degree of patience, humility, and forgiveness.
We do not have to do this to make God love us. That is
already taken care of. We do it to love God back and to love what God loves and
how God loves!
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of
Contemplative Prayer (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 1999, 2003), 179-180;
and
Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi
(Franciscan Media: 2014), 22-23.
AN ODE TO THE CHURCH
This article is taken from the archives of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article and many others here
Carlo Carretto was an Italian monk who died in 1988. For many years he lived as a hermit in the Sahara Desert, translated the scriptures into the Tuareg language, and from the solitude of the desert wrote some extraordinary spiritual books. His writings and his faith were special in that they had a rare capacity to combine an almost childlike piety with (when needed) a blistering iconoclasm. He loved the church deeply, but he wasn’t blind to its faults and failures, and he wasn’t afraid to point out those shortcomings.
Late in life, when his health forced him to leave the desert he retired to a religious community in his native Italy. While there, late in life, he read a book by an atheist who took Jesus to task for a phrase in the Sermon on the Mount where he says: “Seek and you shall find”, meaning, of course, that if you seek God with an honest heart you will find God. The atheist had entitled his book, I Sought and I Didn’t Find, arguing from his own experience that an honest heart can seek God and come up empty.
Carretto wrote a book in reply called: I Sought and I Found. For him, Jesus’ counsel rang true. In his own search, despite encountering many things that could indicate the absence of God, he found God. But he admits the difficulties, and one of those difficulties is, at times, the church. The church can, and sometimes does, through its sin, make it difficult for some to believe in God. Carretto admits this with a disarming honesty but argues that it’s not the whole picture.
Hence his book combines his deep love for his faith and his church with his refusal to not turn a blind eye to the very real faults of Christians and the churches. At one point in the book he gives voice to something which might be described as an Ode to the Church. It reads this way:
How much I must criticize you, my church and yet how much I love you!
How you have made me suffer much and yet owe much to you.
I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.
You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness.
Never in this world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, and yet never in this world have I touched anything more pure, more generous, and more beautiful.
Many times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet how often I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms!
No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even though not completely you.
Then, too – where would I go? To build another church?
But I cannot build another without the same defects, for they are my own defeats I bear within me.
And again, if I build one, it will be my Church, and no longer Christ’s.
No, I am old enough to know that I am no better than others.
I shall not leave this Church, founded on so frail a rock, because I should be founding another one on an even frailer rock: myself.
And then, what do rocks matter?
What matters is Christ’ promise, what matters is the cement that binds the rocks into one: the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit alone can build the Church with stones as ill‐hewn as we.
This is an expression of a mature faith; one which isn’t so romantic and idealistic that it needs to be shielded from the darker side of things and one which is real enough so as not to be so cynical that it blinds itself to the evident goodness that also emanates from the church. In truth, the church is both horribly compromised and wonderfully grace-filled. Honest eyes can see both. A mature heart can accept both. Children and novices need to be shielded from the dark underbelly of things; scandalized adults need to have their eyes opened to the evident goodness that’s also there.
Many people have left the church because it has scandalized them through its habitual sins, blind spots, defensiveness, self-serving nature, and arrogance. The recent revelations (again) of sexual abuse by priests and the cover-up by church authorities have left many people wondering whether they can ever again trust the church’s structure, ministers, and authorities. For many, this scandal seems too huge to digest.
Carlo Carretto’s Ode, I believe, can help us all, whether scandalized or pious. To the pious, it can show how one can accept the church despite its sin and how denial of that sin is not what’s called for by love and loyalty. To the scandalized, it can be a challenge to not miss the forest for the trees, to not miss seeing that, in the church, frailty and sin, while real, tragic, and scandalous, never eclipse the superabundant, life-giving grace of God.
A time to keep silence
Pope Francis refused to answer reporters’ questions about a letter released on Sunday by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, instead urging reporters to draw their own conclusions about the former papal nuncio’s accusations. Austen Ivereigh explains that the roots of Francis’ response might be found in an article that Jorge Mario Bergoglio wrote in 1990, in which he claims silence is sometimes the only way to let the spirits reveal themselves.
‘When it’s our turn to live through a difficult situation, sometimes it happens that silence is not a virtuous act but is the only option, one imposed by circumstances.’
‘Read the statement attentively and you make your own judgment. I will not say a single word about this.’
The first quotation is the opening of one of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s most powerful Jesuit articles, ‘Silencio y Palabra’ (‘Silence and Word’), which he wrote during the first months of his ‘desert’ period in the Argentine city of Córdoba, in 1990.
The second is what he told journalists on Sunday 26 August during a 45-minute press conference in flight to Rome from Dublin. What he described as a ‘statement’ was an incendiary 11-page ‘Testimony’ released that morning, penned by a 77-year-old retired Vatican diplomat to the United States. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s purpose was made clear at its conclusion: to call for the pope to resign in disgrace on the grounds of complicity with sex-abuse cover-up.
You can read the complete article on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
Pope Francis refused to answer reporters’ questions about a letter released on Sunday by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, instead urging reporters to draw their own conclusions about the former papal nuncio’s accusations. Austen Ivereigh explains that the roots of Francis’ response might be found in an article that Jorge Mario Bergoglio wrote in 1990, in which he claims silence is sometimes the only way to let the spirits reveal themselves.
‘When it’s our turn to live through a difficult situation, sometimes it happens that silence is not a virtuous act but is the only option, one imposed by circumstances.’
‘Read the statement attentively and you make your own judgment. I will not say a single word about this.’
The first quotation is the opening of one of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s most powerful Jesuit articles, ‘Silencio y Palabra’ (‘Silence and Word’), which he wrote during the first months of his ‘desert’ period in the Argentine city of Córdoba, in 1990.
The second is what he told journalists on Sunday 26 August during a 45-minute press conference in flight to Rome from Dublin. What he described as a ‘statement’ was an incendiary 11-page ‘Testimony’ released that morning, penned by a 77-year-old retired Vatican diplomat to the United States. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s purpose was made clear at its conclusion: to call for the pope to resign in disgrace on the grounds of complicity with sex-abuse cover-up.
You can read the complete article on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
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