Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
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
Weekday Masses 16th - 19th October
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin ... St Hedwig, St Margaret Mary Alacoque 
Weekend Masses 20th & 21st October
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
10:30am: B & N Mulcahy, K Hull Mowing of Lawns Presbytery: S Berryman
Ulverstone:
Penguin:
Port Sorell:
Readings this week –Twenty Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
Readings next week –Twenty Ninth
Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
Your prayers
are asked for the sick:
Marg Stewart, Glen Grantham, Joy Kiely, Charlotte Milic, Mary
Webb, Rosalinda Grimes & ….
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Let us pray for those whose anniversary
occurs about this time:
10th – 16th October May they Rest in Peace
Weekly
Ramblings
Archbishop Julian expressed a wish earlier in the year to
visit each Parish and hold a Mission event. I approached him asking that he
might come during our 30 days of Prayer and he accepted our invitation. He will
be at Our Lady of Lourdes on Tuesday, 23rd October commencing at
5pm. Further information is elsewhere in the Newsletter and on the Noticeboard.
The Palavra Viva Community will also be at Our Lady of
Lourdes next weekend to assist us in our 30 Days of Prayer. They will be here
on Saturday 20th & Sunday 21st for a number of
activities – please see the Noticeboard for Details.
Also I would like to draw your attention to the news that
this weekend Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Oscar Romero will be the Canonised.
Both giants of the 20th C these men witnessed the love of God in
different but powerful ways. I have included articles on both Saints in the
online edition of the newsletter this weekend - http://mlcathparish.blogspot.com/
Please
take care on the roads and I look forward to seeing you next weekend.
CATHOLIC MISSION CHURCH APPEAL:
Next weekend our parish will be
holding the annual Catholic Mission Church Appeal. This year we are invited to
help to heal a nation through education in Myanmar. Led by Cardinal Charles
Maung Bo, the Church is developing an alternative system of quality education,
with comprehensive teacher training programs and the establishment of new
schools, especially in remote areas. It has been called an ‘education
revolution’, and the potential impact is far-reaching. Please come prepared
next weekend and give generously to this important work. You will have an
opportunity to become an integral part of this inspiring work by joining as a
monthly giving partner. This regular contribution will directly support
education in Myanmar.
LUNCH: This Sunday 14th October at Gloria’s
Cafe Ulverstone 12noon -12:20pm. All welcome.
MACKILLOP
HILL:
PLENARY
COUNCIL 2020 - Your voice
matters!! Listening and Dialogue
gatherings responding to the question: What do you think
God is asking of us in Australia at this time?
Wednesday: 17th 24th & 31st
October 10am – 11:30 am Phone 6428:3095 Mobile 0418 367 769
PLENARY
COUNCIL 2020:
EILEEN O’CONNOR SERVANT OF GOD:
MISSION
EVENING:
Christ, our Hope and Joy is a Mission Evening to
be held in Our Lady of Lourdes Church Tuesday 23rd October commencing
at 5pm, concluding at 7pm. The Mission Evening is an initiative of the
Archbishop who will give the mission talk. The evening will include song,
testimony, preaching, adoration and prayer. All parishioners are encouraged to
attend this evening of spiritual renewal.
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
25th October.
SACRED
HEART CHURCH ROSTER:
2019
COLUMBAN ART CALENDARS: are now available from the Piety Shop at OLOL Church
Devonport and Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone. Cost $10.00 each.
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall,
Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
WAY TO ST JAMES
PILGRIMAGE: EARLY BIRD OFFER EXTENDED UNTIL THE 19TH OCTOBER:
WORLD YOUTH DAY SUPPORT:
PILGRIMAGE TO BRUNY ISLAND To start celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Missionary Sisters of Service in Launceston, a permanent, memorial plaque on Bruny Island will be blessed and dedicated on Sunday 25 November. A pilgrimage by bus will start in Launceston on the evening of Wednesday 21 November and finish with breakfast on Monday 26 November in Hobart. It will include the Sunday celebrations on Bruny Island. Most of the pilgrims are coming from the mainland. However, there are still a few places available. Should anyone be interested, please contact Sr Pat Quinn MSS (Toowoomba) as a matter of urgency on info@portiunculacentre.com or 0422 462 678
Two articles have been included in today's newsletter on the lives of Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Romero.
Pope Paul VI, a pope of dialogue
Paul will become the third pope
that Francis has made a saint since his election five years ago. The others are
John XXIII, who died in 1963, and John Paul II, who died in 2005. Both were
canonized together in 2014.
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
Weekday Masses 16th - 19th October
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin ... St Hedwig, St Margaret Mary Alacoque
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe … St Ignatius of
Antioch
Thursday: 10:00am Karingal … St Luke
Friday: 11:00am Mt St Vincent
Weekend Masses 20th & 21st October
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
6:00pm Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Ministry Rosters 20th & 21st October,
2018
Devonport:
Readers Vigil: M Kelly, R Baker, B Paul 10:30am: J Henderson, J Phillips, P Piccolo
Ministers of Communion:
Vigil: T Muir, M Davies, D Peters, J
Heatley
10:30am: B & N Mulcahy, K Hull Mowing of Lawns Presbytery: S Berryman
Cleaners: 19th Oct: M & L Tippett, A Berryman 26th Oct: P & T Douglas
Piety Shop: 20th Oct:
A Berryman 21st Oct: K Hull
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: J & S Willoughby Ministers of Communion: B Deacon, K Reilly
Cleaners: M McKenzie, M Singh, N Pearce Flowers: C Mapley Hospitality: Filipino Community
Penguin:
Greeters: Fifita Family Commentator: Readers: Fifita Family Ministers of Communion: A Guest, J Barker
Liturgy: Penguin Setting Up: E Nickols Care of Church: G Hills-Eade, T Clayton
Port Sorell:
Readers: G Duff, T Jeffries Minister of Communion: P Anderson Cleaners:
G Richey & G Wylie
Readings this week –Twenty Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
First Reading: Wisdom 7:7-11
Second Reading: Hebrews 4:12-13
Gospel: Mark 10:17-30
PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
I come to my place of prayer and take time to settle and
become aware of being in God’s presence. I read the Gospel a couple of times.
How do I feel? Eager, like the young man who came running up to Jesus, or weary
and anxious? I remember that God looks at me steadily and loves me ... As I
rest under God’s loving gaze, do I wish to ask him for anything? Or do I feel
he is asking something of me? I spend some time speaking to the Lord, or maybe
I prefer to remain silent in his love. I know that he knows everything,
understands everything. Do I share the apostles’ astonishment at Jesus’s words?
As I ponder the Lord’s invitation to follow him, I may want to ask for an even
greater trust in him for whom all things are possible. I slowly end my prayer
with a ‘Glory be to the Father ...’
Readings next week –Twenty Ninth
Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
First Reading: Isaiah 53:10-11
Second Reading: Hebrews 4:14-16
Gospel: Mark
10:35-45
Your prayers
are asked for the sick:
Marg Stewart, Glen Grantham, Joy Kiely, Charlotte Milic, Mary
Webb, Rosalinda Grimes & ….
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
James Ryan, Greg Spinks, Grace Money, Cheryl Anne Kingston, Maria
Suyatini, Joan Jarvis, Paul Reynolds, Herman & Luka Kappelhof, Iris
Bird, Maria Jakimow
Let us pray for those whose anniversary
occurs about this time:
10th – 16th October
Paul Blake, John Novaski, Bridie Murray, Ron Arrowsmith,
Peter Hays, Stella Smith, Josefina Turnbull, Peter Beard, Mary Lube, Mary Guthrie,
Peter McCormick, James Graham, Shirley Stafford, Valda Burford, Wayne Radford,
Winifred Byrne, Russell Doodt.
Weekly
Ramblings
There have been a number of additions to the events
organised for our 30 Days of Prayer – you can find some of them listed in our
newsletter this weekend as well as others which will be announced in our Mass
Centres at the end of Mass. As I have mentioned before these are not in any way
exclusive or restricted – if you wish to gather family or friends together to
chat then please feel free to do so. Again, I would encourage everyone to bring
their responses to Mass and place them in the Bowl at the entrance to the
Church so that they can be included in the Procession of Gifts at Mass.
Archbishop Julian expressed a wish earlier in the year to
visit each Parish and hold a Mission event. I approached him asking that he
might come during our 30 days of Prayer and he accepted our invitation. He will
be at Our Lady of Lourdes on Tuesday, 23rd October commencing at
5pm. Further information is elsewhere in the Newsletter and on the Noticeboard.
The Palavra Viva Community will also be at Our Lady of
Lourdes next weekend to assist us in our 30 Days of Prayer. They will be here
on Saturday 20th & Sunday 21st for a number of
activities – please see the Noticeboard for Details.
Also I would like to draw your attention to the news that
this weekend Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Oscar Romero will be the Canonised.
Both giants of the 20th C these men witnessed the love of God in
different but powerful ways. I have included articles on both Saints in the
online edition of the newsletter this weekend - http://mlcathparish.blogspot.com/
Please take care on the roads and I look forward to seeing you next weekend.
CATHOLIC MISSION CHURCH APPEAL:
‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who
announces peace,
who brings good news…’ Isaiah 52:7
Next weekend our parish will be
holding the annual Catholic Mission Church Appeal. This year we are invited to
help to heal a nation through education in Myanmar. Led by Cardinal Charles
Maung Bo, the Church is developing an alternative system of quality education,
with comprehensive teacher training programs and the establishment of new
schools, especially in remote areas. It has been called an ‘education
revolution’, and the potential impact is far-reaching. Please come prepared
next weekend and give generously to this important work. You will have an
opportunity to become an integral part of this inspiring work by joining as a
monthly giving partner. This regular contribution will directly support
education in Myanmar.
Appeal envelopes will be on church pews next weekend for you to support
this worthwhile cause.
Freecall 1800 257 296
catholicmission.org.au/Myanmar
LUNCH: This Sunday 14th October at Gloria’s Cafe Ulverstone 12noon -12:20pm. All welcome.
MACKILLOP
HILL:
PLENARY
COUNCIL 2020 - Your voice
matters!! Listening and Dialogue
gatherings responding to the question: What do you think
God is asking of us in Australia at this time?
Wednesday: 17th 24th & 31st
October 10am – 11:30 am Phone 6428:3095 Mobile 0418 367 769
PLENARY
COUNCIL 2020:
You are invited to join and contribute to a series of
Listening and Dialogue gatherings. You could choose to join one, two or three
gatherings which will be held at Parish House, 90 Stewart Street Devonport, October
18th, 25th November 1 from 10am –
11:30am. Please contact Clare Kiely-Hoye 0418 100 402 if you wish to
attend.
EILEEN O’CONNOR SERVANT OF GOD:
On 17 August 2018 it was announced
that the Holy See has recognised the holiness and virtue of Australian woman Eileen
O’Connor, with the cause for her canonisation opened by the Vatican’s Congregation
for the Causes of Saints. As
part of our 30 days of Prayer a series of one-hour information and prayer sessions
are being offered to:
·
Learn
about Eileen’s life and charism.
·
Reflect
on her life as an answer to “What is God asking of me at this time?”
·
Explore
our personal response to God’s call.
Times and dates:
·
Friday
19 October – Parish House 90 Stewart St Devonport
– 7pm
·
Sunday
21 October – Holy Cross 42 High St Sheffield
- after 11am Mass
·
Thursday
25 October – Sacred Heart 4 Alexandra St Ulverstone – 7pm
·
Sunday
– 28 October – St Patrick 195 Gilbert St Latrobe – after 5pm Mass
There is no need to register. If
you have questions or require further information contact Giuseppe Gigliotti on
0419 684 134 or on gigli@comcen.com.au
MISSION
EVENING:
Christ, our Hope and Joy is a Mission Evening to
be held in Our Lady of Lourdes Church Tuesday 23rd October commencing
at 5pm, concluding at 7pm. The Mission Evening is an initiative of the
Archbishop who will give the mission talk. The evening will include song,
testimony, preaching, adoration and prayer. All parishioners are encouraged to
attend this evening of spiritual renewal.
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
25th October.
SACRED
HEART CHURCH ROSTER:
If you are able to assist with
Sunday morning hospitality, cleaning of the Church, arranging flowers, reading,
or a Minister of Communion, please contact the Parish Office 6424:2783 or
Joanne Rodgers 6425:5818 (also if you are no longer able to continue on the
roster).
2019
COLUMBAN ART CALENDARS: are now available from the Piety Shop at OLOL Church
Devonport and Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone. Cost $10.00 each.
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall,
Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers for Thursday 18th
October - Tony Ryan & Terry Bird.
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
WAY TO ST JAMES
PILGRIMAGE: EARLY BIRD OFFER EXTENDED UNTIL THE 19TH OCTOBER:
Have you
registered yet for the Way to St James Pilgrimage which will be held on January
11th and 12th 2019? Early bird registrations have been extended by one week so
make the most of this opportunity to be a part of this wonderful two-day walk
through the scenic Huon Valley to the Church of St James in Cygnet. You can
register here at www.waytostjames.com.au/register/
For more information, please feel free to contact Leanne Prichard on 0409434784
or at leanne.prichard@catholic.tas.edu.au
You
will be pleased to learn that dozens of pilgrims have now registered for the
Way to St James in January 2019. Yet there may be a few others amongst yourselves or circle of friends who are
still to make a decision. To help in that regard, we are extending the Early
Bird pricing out to 19th October.
WORLD YOUTH DAY SUPPORT:
The Archdiocese of Hobart has
organised a pilgrimage to World Youth Day in Panama in January 2019. There are
a number of young adults with leadership potential who are struggling to meet
the cost of the pilgrimage. If you able to offer financial assistance please
email youth@aohtas.org.au or call
Tomasz on 0400 045 368. I invite you to pray for these pilgrims as they look to
embark on this journey to become
young Christian leaders in our community.
CANONISATION
This weekend will see the canonisation of Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Oscar Romero and 4 others (Francesco Spinelli, diocesan priest, founder of the Institute of the Sisters Adorers of the Most Holy Sacrament; Vincenzo Romano, diocesan priest; Maria Katharina Kasper, virgin, founder of the Institute of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ; and Nazaria Ignacia de Santa Teresa de Jesús (née: Nazaria Ignacia March Mesa), founder of the Congregation of the Missionary Crusaders of the Church).Two articles have been included in today's newsletter on the lives of Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Romero.
Pope Paul VI, a pope of dialogue
Born Giovanni Battista Enrico
Antonio Maria Montini on Sept. 26 September 1897, Pope Paul VI led the Catholic
Church from 1963 until his death on August 6, 1978.
Succeeding John XXIII, Paul VI
continued the Second Vatican Council - which he closed in 1965 - implementing
its numerous reforms.
He wanted a Church that was in
dialogue with the modern world. He treated the theme of dialogue at great
length in his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, released on Aug. 6, 1964, exactly 14
years before his death. In it, he wrote he felt a “vocation” to dialogue
between the Church and the world.
Faced with the issue of whether
to change the Church’s longstanding opposition to artificial birth control,
Paul VI penned his landmark encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, delivering a
strong “no” to change and reaffirming the Church’s teaching on contraception.
Even though his papacy lasted for another 10 years, this would be his last
encyclical.
Once described by Pope Benedict
XVI as “superhuman,” Paul VI governed the Church in the turbulent
post-conciliar phase. In the words of Francis, he was a man who “knew how to
witness, in difficult years, to the faith in Jesus Christ.”
The future saint was also a
consummate Vatican insider, having worked in the Secretariat of State from 1922
to 1945, and he was one of the closest aides and advisors to Pope Pius XII.
Pope Francis has spoken
repeatedly about his predecessor, and earlier this year he confirmed that Paul
VI would be made a saint before 2018 was over.
Even though Humanae Vitae has
garnered much of the discussion over the legacy of his predecessor, for Francis
there’s another document that is “the greatest pastoral document written to
date” - Paul VI’s 1975 exhortation on evangelization, Evangelii Nuntiandi (On
Proclaiming the Gospel).
In Evangelii Nuntiandi, Paul VI
wrote that the Church itself “has a constant need of being evangelized,” and
that people today listen “more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if
he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”
“The world calls for, and
expects from us, simplicity of life, the spirit of prayer, charity towards all,
especially towards the lowly and the poor, obedience and humility, detachment
and self-sacrifice. Without this mark of holiness, our word will have
difficulty in touching the heart of modern man. It risks being vain and
sterile,” Paul wrote.
Paul will become the third pope
that Francis has made a saint since his election five years ago. The others are
John XXIII, who died in 1963, and John Paul II, who died in 2005. Both were
canonized together in 2014.
Archbishop Óscar Romero: setting the record straight
Seeing firsthand the poverty and
repression of rural farmworkers led him to change
SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR — The
conventional wisdom about Óscar Romero goes like this: When a right-wing death
squad killed a priest friend of his soon after he became archbishop, Romero —
until then a staunch conservative — experienced a dramatic, indeed
life-changing, conversion.
The conventional wisdom is gravely mistaken.
I told his story in ReVista: Harvard
Review of Latin America (Spring 2016): Fr.
Paul Schindler remembers the day when Óscar Romero sat beside him, trembling.
Romero knew he wasn't among friends. The scene was a clergy meeting in early
1977, and many of the priests were furious: a man they'd clashed with — Romero —
had just been named as the new archbishop.
As the meeting was ending, Romero — who hadn't yet been installed — was
asked if he'd like to say a few words. For all Schindler knew, they would be
the last words he'd ever hear from him. Discouraged at the prospect of working
under [Romero] ... Schindler had told his bishop back in Cleveland that he'd
decided to return home after eight years of parish work in El Salvador.
"He walked to the front of the room and began to speak," said
Schindler, "and after a half hour, I said to myself, 'I'm not going
anywhere.' "
Having packed his bags, Schindler decided to unpack them and continue
working in El Salvador after hearing Romero. This was before Romero took office
as archbishop, and before the slaying of Romero's priest friend, Jesuit Fr.
Rutilio Grande.
What had happened? Unbeknownst to
Schindler — and to many others — Romero had changed during an extended stay, in
the mid-'70s, far from the capital city. In the early '70s, as an auxiliary
bishop in San Salvador, he was seen as highly conservative; that was the period
when he drew the ire of the priests who were so upset by the news of his
appointment as archbishop. But in 1974, he was named bishop of the rural
diocese of Santiago de María. There, he drew close to farmworkers and
catechists who were targeted by the military. What he saw led him to a major
shift in outlook.
During Romero's first year in
Santiago de María, the National Guard massacred farmworkers in the village of
Tres Calles. After visiting the scene, Romero wrote a letter to the
then-president, Col. Arturo Molina, expressing his "firm protest" for
… the way in which a "security force" had wrongfully acted, as if it
had the right to mistreat and kill. … [I went there] to console the families
that had been attacked … by a squad of National Guardsmen. On the way to their
homes, I stopped to pray by the body of a still-unburied victim who had been
shot in the head. His wife and mother were beside him, weeping. When I arrived
at the houses that had been invaded by the armed forces, it broke my heart to
hear the bitter laments of the widows and orphans who, sobbing inconsolably,
told me about the attack.
As Kevin Clarke recounted in Oscar
Romero: Love Must Win Out: "Romero later visited the local [National
Guard] commander to protest the massacre. The officer shrugged the killings off
as a trivial accounting with local malefactors, and [said], pointing a finger
at Romero, 'Cassocks are not bulletproof.' "
Romero was beginning to get the
picture.
When he arrived in the diocese,
landowners insisted he shut down a local pastoral center that offered training
aligned with the church's post-Vatican II thinking. The landowners were
especially upset by a priest who taught there. They claimed he was a communist.
One night, Romero went to the center
and, without the priest knowing it, stood outside his classroom, listening to
his presentation. Romero found nothing unorthodox in it and, when asked later
about the priest, commented, "If he's a communist, I'm a Martian."
Still, he did close the center —
temporarily. When his decision was challenged, he agreed to reconsider it, and
eventually, to the consternation of the landowners, he reopened the center.
Romero was appalled by the suffering
of itinerant farmworkers — often entire families, including spouses and
children — who came to the area to work in the coffee harvest. Obliged to spend
the chilly nights sleeping outdoors on the ground, they often ended up sick.
Earlier, Romero had quoted approvingly the passage in Pope Leo XIII's
encyclical on labor and capital (Rerum Novarum, 1891) that condemned the
practice of workers being "handed over, alone and defenseless, to the
inhumanity of owners." Now, he opened church buildings at night to offer
them food and shelter, and often spent his evenings with them, hearing about
their travails.
Undaunted by the owners' hostility,
Romero regarded the land reform issue as so important that he scheduled a
three-day conference on the subject for the priests and laity of the diocese,
inviting experts from San Salvador to come and give the talks. Years later, one
of the experts, Rubén Zamora, said, "I still have this image of him at
those talks: sitting at a schoolchild's desk in the front row, taking notes,
listening very attentively. You could see he really wanted to learn. His
concern was, how could the church help?"
These experiences and others are
detailed in a book whose title is a quote from Romero: In Santiago de María, I
Came Face to Face With Misery (edited by Zacarías Díez and Juan Macho Merino,
1995). He was so affected by what he saw there that when he returned to San
Salvador in 1977 and gave the talk that turned Paul Schindler around, it was clear
that he himself had been turned around.
I asked María López Vigil, a
journalist, editor and author of Monseñor Romero: Memories in Mosaic, how she
saw Romero's evolution:
People have almost mechanically
related Romero's conversion to the killing of Rutilio and the surrounding
events. I think that's excessive. … It wasn't ideas that changed [Romero]. It
was reality. That's basic. When he was an auxiliary bishop in San Salvador, his
contact with reality was limited by his job [secretary of the bishops' conference]
and by the office he worked in. When he was in Santiago de María, at a time of
repression, he drew near to the farmworkers in their suffering, their work, and
their commitments as catechists, and all of that changed him. I think it's
important to highlight that so as not to oversimplify his process of
conversion. What happened to Rutilio was the culmination of a journey he had
been on.
Disputing the 'Rutilio miracle'
Surely the killing of Grande was
painful for Romero, given how close they were, but it was not the
"miracle" that some — peace activist John Dear, for example — insist
it was. "Suddenly," wrote Dear in NCR, "the nation had a
towering figure in its midst. … Standing over Grande's dead body that night,
Romero was transformed into one of the world's great champions for the poor and
oppressed."
But Romero wasn't "suddenly …
transformed" or "converted"; his change was a process that had
been going on for several years before Grande's murder.
It's also important to rebut Dear's
claim about who Romero had been earlier: "He sided with the greedy
landlords, important power brokers, and violent death squads." That
egregious falsehood has absolutely no basis in fact. On the contrary: Even
before his time in Santiago de María, Romero had denounced as
"unjust" those laws that favored "the interests of legislators and
the ruling minority."
The feature film "Romero"
is another of the culprits fostering the belief that Romero's change was all
about the killing of Grande. In addition to its other falsehoods (e.g., the
film has Romero being arrested and jailed and, on another occasion, detained
and stripped, and it has one of the Jesuit priests who worked with Grande
taking up arms — none of which happened), "Romero" invents a rupture
between Grande and Romero just before Grande was killed, with Grande angrily
saying to Romero:
This is a total fabrication. Romero
did know what was going on, and Grande, far from breaking with him, was
constantly standing up for him, trying to convince reluctant priests to give
him a chance. A rupture between the two? No way. Of course, if you've decided
that your film will present Grande's murder as a "road to Damascus"
moment in which Romero, like Paul, was suddenly "converted," the
rupture narrative sets things up nicely. There's only one problem: It's not
true.
In fact, Romero objected to people
speaking of his "conversion." Salvadoran Cardinal Gregorio Rosa
Chávez says, "I once asked him the following question: 'Monseñor, they say
you've been converted. Is it true?' I remember his answer well: 'I wouldn't say
it's been a conversion, but an evolution.' "
It was, as Romero wrote on another
occasion, "an evolution of the same desire that I have always had to be faithful
to what God asks of me; and if earlier I gave the impression of being more
'prudent' and more 'spiritual,' it was because I sincerely believed that in
that way I responded to the Gospel, because the circumstances of my ministry
were not as demanding as those when I became archbishop."
Msgr. Ricardo Urioste was Romero's
vicar general and perhaps the person closest to him. He, too, disputes the
claim that there was a "Rutilio miracle":
It is said of Archbishop Romero that
he changed drastically with the murder of Fr. Rutilio Grande, and that his
conversion happened less than a month after he became archbishop. I don't
believe this is so. … [He] began to see gradually, as he discovered more about
the Gospel, the church's magisterium, and the painful situation of the people.
All of these changed him. He never spoke of himself in terms of conversion; he
spoke of evolution. For this reason, he wrote about "readiness to change.
He who fails to change will not gain the kingdom."
The fullness of church teaching
I found that he was tremendously
faithful to the institutional church and the grassroots church — to both. … He
was born, grew up, matured and died with an immense fidelity to the
institutional church, so I would see him as "within it" and not
"in spite of it."
Thus, the stands Romero took — stands
that got him into trouble and eventually got him killed — were not instances of
him ignoring church doctrine or rebelling against it, but rather of him
faithfully taking it to its fullest consequences — as he did, for example, with
Catholic social teaching.
The most famous example came in the
closing words of his homily on the eve of his murder. On that occasion, as
Julian Filochowski, chair of the Romero Trust, writes, "[Romero] tackled
the thorny question of what ordinary soldiers should do when ordered to kill
and massacre." Said Romero:
Before an order to kill that a man
may give, God's law must prevail: Thou shalt not kill! No soldier is obliged to
obey an order contrary to the law of God. … It is time to obey your consciences
rather than the orders of sin. In the name of God, therefore, and in the name
of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I beg
you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!
When Romero made that plea, Thomas
Quigley, an adviser to the U.S. bishops' justice and peace office, was sitting
in the sanctuary a few feet away. Quigley later wrote, "He told soldiers,
simple peasants themselves for the most part, that they are not bound by unjust
orders to kill; standard textbook theology, but if applied in the concrete,
usually considered treasonous. It was so described in the Monday morning paper
by an Army spokesman."
Romero was murdered Monday evening
while celebrating Mass. "Standard textbook theology" had been deemed
punishable by death.
Urioste recalled another occasion
when Romero gave a particularly forceful homily. Afterward, Urioste told him he
feared it would provoke a violent response. Romero replied, "I had to say
it. If I'd said anything less, I would have fallen short; I wouldn't have been
expressing the fullness of church teaching." For that reason Urioste, when
asked what kind of martyr Romero was, replied, "He was a martyr for the
magisterium." It is fitting, then, that Curran includes in his tribute to
Romero a famous example of magisterial teaching taken from "Justice in the
World," the declaration of the 1971 international synod of Catholic
bishops:
Action on behalf of justice and
participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a
constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of
the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation
from every oppressive situation.
All too often those words have been
ignored, but not by Romero. He lived them out in his ministry. For doing so, he
was accused of being anti-government. No, he said, "the conflict here
isn't between the church and the government; it's between the government and
the people, and the church is with the people." This ended up leading to
clashes with the authorities, but as Curran noted:
Romero's struggle against the
government and its injustices did not [amount to] unacceptable involvement of
the church or church leaders in the world of politics. Whatever affects human
persons, human communities, and the environment is by that very nature not just
a political or a legal issue. It is a human, moral and, for the believer,
Christian issue. The Christian tradition has consistently recognized that the
political order is subject to the moral order.
That vision of the church's role —
shared by Romero but rejected by those who blocked his canonization process for
years — was ratified by Pope Francis when he unblocked the process and moved it
forward.
Nor did Francis stop there; he did
something else that had long cried out to be done. Many people aren't aware —
but Francis was − of how shabbily Romero was treated by all but one of his
brother bishops. Seldom has there been a condemnation of bishops as strong as
the one Francis expressed to a group of Salvadoran pilgrims who were visiting
the Vatican in 2015:
I would … like to add something that
perhaps has escaped us. Archbishop Romero's martyrdom did not occur precisely
at the moment of his death; it was a martyrdom of witness, of previous
suffering, of previous persecution, until his death. But also afterwards
because, after he died — I was a young priest and I witnessed this — he was
defamed, slandered, soiled — that is, his martyrdom continued even by his
brothers in the priesthood and in the episcopate. I am not speaking from
hearsay; I heard those things.
It was good to see — at long last —
Romero vindicated in that way.
'We all have our roots, you know'
On a visit to the Vatican in the late
1970s, Romero was accompanied by Fr. César Jerez¸ then the Jesuit provincial
for Central America. Earlier in the '70s, Romero had attacked the Jesuits for
the consciousness-raising work they were doing in their elite San Salvador high
school. He was also a leader of the effort that got the Jesuits expelled from
the interdiocesan seminary, where they had served as faculty for decades; and
he alluded unfavorably to the writings of Jesuit Fr. Jon Sobrino, a prominent
liberation theologian who was teaching at the Jesuit university in San
Salvador.
But when Romero returned to the
capital as archbishop in 1977, he invited the Jesuits to produce a daily
hourlong news and commentary program for the archdiocesan radio station, and he
consulted Sobrino, among others, when he was preparing his pastoral letters.
Jerez tells of a night when they took
a walk along the Via della Conciliazione:
I got up my courage and tried to get
him to speak. "Monseñor, you've changed … What's happened?"
"You know, Father Jerez, I ask
myself that same question when I'm in prayer …"
"And do you find an answer,
Monseñor?"
"Some answers, yes … It's just
that we all have our roots, you know … I was born into a poor family. I've
suffered hunger. I know what it's like to work from the time you're a little
kid … When I went to seminary and started my studies, and they sent me to
finish studying here in Rome, I spent years and years absorbed in my books, and
I started to forget where I came from. I started creating another world. When I
went back to El Salvador, they made me the bishop's secretary in San Miguel. I
was a parish priest there for 23 years, but I was still buried in paperwork …
Then they sent me to Santiago de María, and I ran into extreme poverty again.
Those children that were dying just because of the water they were drinking,
those campesinos killing themselves in the harvests … You know, Father, when a
piece of charcoal has already been lit once, you don't have to blow on it much
to get it to flame up again … So yes, I changed. But I also came back home
again."
These words underscore that it was
his experience in Santiago de María, and not a "Rutilio miracle,"
that brought about Romero's commitment. Nevertheless, the killing of Grande did
help to crystallize that commitment, leading Romero to take drastic measures.
When he'd written to the president two years earlier about the Tres Calles
massacre, he kept the letter private, but after Grande's murder he went public,
denouncing the crime and declaring that if the government failed to do a
serious investigation, he would boycott — as, in fact, he later did — all
government events, including the upcoming inauguration of the country's new
president.
In addition, feeling that a sign of
church unity was needed after the attacks on Grande and other pastoral workers,
Romero decreed that on the Sunday following Grande's death, all Masses in the
archdiocese would be suspended, and a single Mass would be celebrated at the
cathedral, with the entire archdiocese invited to attend. He also canceled
classes in the Catholic schools for three days, ordering the schools to devote
those days to a study of the country's problems.
These gestures upset the army and the
government, and enraged both the papal nuncio and the group of Salvadoran
bishops whom Pope Francis would later denounce. The nuncio had recommended
Romero's appointment as archbishop, thinking he would be a docile, manageable
figure. Now it was the nuncio's turn to be surprised, just as Paul Schindler
had been.
How to explain Romero's actions? He
put it this way: "When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead, I thought,
'If they killed him for doing what he did, then I have to walk that same path.'
" And he did walk it, knowing full well what the consequences of that
commitment could be. In a homily on Nov. 11, 1979, he made it clear that there
would be no turning back: "I ask for your prayers to help me be faithful
to this promise: that I will not abandon my people, but will, with them, run
all the risks that my ministry requires of me."
'The pastor is supposed to be there for the flock'
The Guardsmen shot Ortiz — along with
four others at the weekend youth retreat he was giving — and then rolled a tank
over his head. Romero denounced the government's version of the incident as
"a lie from beginning to end." In those days, with a military
dictatorship ruling El Salvador, statements like that could easily become a
person's last words; even before that, Romero had been getting serious death
threats.
One day at Puebla, a few journalists
were talking with him. One of us, without mentioning the threats explicitly,
asked, "Are you really going back to El Salvador?" — as in (but not
actually saying), "If you do, they're going to kill you."
"I know what you're getting
at," said Romero, "but, you know, they say I'm the pastor, and the
pastor is supposed to be there for the flock. And the flock is back in El
Salvador. So, yes, I'm going to return."
One doesn't forget remarks like that.
I went home to New York after Puebla and began saving money for a plane ticket
to El Salvador. I was preparing to depart when, on a Monday night, I went to a
parish to hear a talk on liberation theology. At the end of the evening, as we
emerged from the meeting room, the sacristan was there, waiting to lock up the
church. Transistor radio in hand, he asked, "Weren't you people talking
about Latin America?"
"Yes."
"Well, they just said on the
radio that somewhere down there tonight, a bishop was shot and killed."
I would go to El Salvador, but I
would never see him again.
[Gene Palumbo is a freelance
journalist based in El Salvador. He went there in 1980 immediately after Romero
was murdered and ended up staying on, covering the country's civil war
(1980-92) and its aftermath. He is The New York Times' local correspondent in
El Salvador, and has also reported for National Public Radio, the BBC, the
Canadian Broadcasting Company, Commonweal Magazine and Time Magazine.]
Protecting and Also Bridging Differences
As we saw earlier this year, humans need concrete and
particular experiences to learn the ways of love. [1] We don’t learn to love
through abstract philosophy or theology. That’s why Jesus came to show God in
human form, revealing a face we could recognize and relate to. Let’s first call
justice giving everything its full due. Thus, it must begin with somehow seeing
the divine (ultimate value) in the other. If we really see someone in their
fullness, we cannot help but treat them with kindness and compassion.
Even as we know that every human’s being is inherently and
equally good, dignified, and worthy of respect, we cannot ignore our very real
differences. The problem is that the ego likes to assign lesser and greater
value based on differences. Until all people everywhere are treated with
dignity and respect, we must continue calling attention to imbalances of
privilege and power. Arbitrary, artificial hierarchies and discrimination are
based on a variety of differences: for example, gender, sexuality, class, skin colour,
education, physical or mental ability, attractiveness, accent, language,
religion, and so on.
“Intersectionality” is a rather new concept for most of us
to help explain how these attributes overlap. You can be privileged in some
areas and not in others. A poor white man has more opportunities for
advancement than a poor black man. [2] A transgender woman of color has an even
higher risk of being assaulted than a white heterosexual woman. [3] Someone
without a disability has an easier time finding a job than an equally qualified
candidate who has a disability.
Pause for a moment and think about the areas in which you
benefit, not because of anything you’ve done or deserve but simply because of
what body you were born with, what class privilege you enjoy, what country or
ethnicity you find yourself in.
In the book Intersectionality in Action, experienced
educators recognize that “admitting one’s privilege can be very difficult,”
especially for those who consider themselves tolerant and prefer to not use
labels, “calling themselves colour-blind, for instance.” [4] When we finally
recognize our unearned benefits—at the expense of others—we may feel ashamed
and that may lead us to make excuses for ourselves or overly identify with a
less privileged aspect of our identity (for example as Jewish or female). Yet
as we move beyond these attachments and emotions, “[We] learn that [our]
privileges and disadvantages can coexist, intersect, and impact the way [we]
move through different environments.” [5]
We must work to dismantle systems of oppression while at the
same time honouring our differences and celebrating our oneness! This takes a
great deal of spiritual maturity. Unity, in fact, is the reconciliation of
differences, not the denial of them. Our differences must first be
maintained—and then overcome by the power of love (exactly as in the three
persons of the Trinity). We must distinguish and separate things before we can
spiritually unite them, usually at cost to ourselves, especially if we are
privileged (see Ephesians 2:14-16).
God is a mystery of relationship, and the truest
relationship is love. Infinite Love preserves unique truths, protecting
boundaries while simultaneously bridging them.
[1] See Richard Rohr, “Thisness,”
https://cac.org/thisness-weekly-summary-2018-03-24/.
SUICIDE AND THE SOUL
More than fifty years ago, James Hillman wrote a book
entitled, Suicide and the Soul. The book was intended for therapists and he
knew it wouldn’t receive an easy reception there or elsewhere. There were
reasons. He frankly admitted that some
of the things he proposed in the book would “go against all common sense, all
medical practice, and rationality itself.” But, as the title makes clear, he
was speaking about suicide and in trying to understand suicide, isn’t that
exactly the case? Doesn’t it go against all common sense, all medical practice,
and rationality itself? And that’s his point.
In some cases, suicide can be the result of a biochemical
imbalance or some genetic predisposition that militates against life. That’s
unfortunate and tragic, but it’s understandable enough. That kind of sickness
goes against common sense, medical practice, and rationality. Suicide can also result from a catastrophic
emotional breakdown or from a trauma so powerful that it cannot be integrated
and simply breaks apart a person’s psyche so that death, as sleep, as an
escape, becomes an overwhelming temptation. Here too, even though common sense,
medical practice, and rationality are befuddled, we have some grasp of why this
suicide happened.
But there are suicides that are not the result of a
biochemical imbalance, a genetic predisposition, a catastrophic emotional
distress, or an overpowering trauma. How are these to be explained?
Hillman, whose writing through more than fifty years have
been a public plea for the human soul, makes this claim: The soul can make
claims that go against the body and against our physical wellbeing, and suicide
is often that, the soul making its own claims. What a stunning insight! Our
souls and our bodies do not always want the same things and are sometimes so
much at odds with each other that death can be the result.
In the tension between soul and body, the body’s needs and
impulses are more easily seen, understood, and attended to. The body normally
gets what it wants or at least clearly knows what it wants and why it is
frustrated. The soul? Well, its needs
are so complex that they are hard to see and understand, not alone attended
to. As Pascal so famously put it: “The
heart has it reasons of which reason knows nothing.” That is virtually
synonymous with what Hillman is saying. Our rational understanding often stands
bewildered before some inchoate need inside us.
That inchoate need is our soul speaking, but it is not easy
to pick up exactly what it is asking of us. Mostly we feel our soul’s voice as
a dis-ease, a restlessness, a distress we cannot exactly sort out, and as an
internal pressure that sometimes asks of us something directly in conflict with
what the rest of us wants. We are, in huge part, a mystery to ourselves.
Sometimes the claims of the soul that go against our
physical wellbeing are not so dramatic as to demand suicide but in them, we can
still clearly see what Hillman is asserting. We see this, for example, in the
phenomenon where a person in severe emotional distress begins to cut herself on
her arms or on other parts of her body.
The cuts are not intended to end life; they are intended only to cause
pain and blood. Why? The person cutting
herself mostly cannot explain rationally why she is doing this (or, at least,
she cannot explain how this pain and this blood-letting will in any way lessen
or fix her emotional distress). All she knows is that she is hurting at a place
she cannot get at and by hurting herself at a place she can get at, she can
deal with a pain that she cannot get to. Hillman’s principle is on display
here: The soul can, and does, make
claims that can go against our physical well-being. It has its reasons.
For Hillman, this is the “root metaphor” for how a therapist
should approach the understanding of suicide. It can also be a valuable
metaphor for all us who are not therapists but who have to struggle to digest
the death of a loved one who dies by suicide.
Moreover this is also a metaphor that can be helpful in
understanding each other and understanding ourselves. The soul sometimes makes
claims that go directly against our health and well-being. In my pastoral work
and sometimes simply being with a friend who is hurting, I sometimes find
myself standing helplessly before someone who is hell-bent on some behavior
that goes against his or her own well-being and which makes no rational sense
whatsoever. Rational argument and common sense are useless. He’s simply going
to do this to his own destruction. Why?
The soul has its reasons. All of us, perhaps in less dramatic ways, experience
this in our own lives. Sometimes we do things that hurt our physical health and
well-being and go against all common sense and rationality. Our souls too have their reasons.
And suicide too has its reasons.
Seeing firsthand the poverty and
repression of rural farmworkers led him to change
This article is taken from the NCR website - you can find the original article here
SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR — The
conventional wisdom about Óscar Romero goes like this: When a right-wing death
squad killed a priest friend of his soon after he became archbishop, Romero —
until then a staunch conservative — experienced a dramatic, indeed
life-changing, conversion.
The conventional wisdom is gravely mistaken.
Romero himself rejected it, as did
those who knew him best. Abundant evidence exists, but for me the clincher is a
story told by Paul Schindler, a Cleveland priest who worked in El Salvador
before and during Romero's years as archbishop of San Salvador. Schindler was
pastor of the parish where Ursuline Sr. Dorothy Kazel and Jean Donovan — two of
the four U.S. churchwomen raped and murdered in 1980 by government troops —
lived and worked.
I told his story in ReVista: Harvard
Review of Latin America (Spring 2016): Fr.
Paul Schindler remembers the day when Óscar Romero sat beside him, trembling.
Romero knew he wasn't among friends. The scene was a clergy meeting in early
1977, and many of the priests were furious: a man they'd clashed with — Romero —
had just been named as the new archbishop.
As the meeting was ending, Romero — who hadn't yet been installed — was
asked if he'd like to say a few words. For all Schindler knew, they would be
the last words he'd ever hear from him. Discouraged at the prospect of working
under [Romero] ... Schindler had told his bishop back in Cleveland that he'd
decided to return home after eight years of parish work in El Salvador.
"He walked to the front of the room and began to speak," said
Schindler, "and after a half hour, I said to myself, 'I'm not going
anywhere.' "
Having packed his bags, Schindler decided to unpack them and continue
working in El Salvador after hearing Romero. This was before Romero took office
as archbishop, and before the slaying of Romero's priest friend, Jesuit Fr.
Rutilio Grande.
What had happened? Unbeknownst to
Schindler — and to many others — Romero had changed during an extended stay, in
the mid-'70s, far from the capital city. In the early '70s, as an auxiliary
bishop in San Salvador, he was seen as highly conservative; that was the period
when he drew the ire of the priests who were so upset by the news of his
appointment as archbishop. But in 1974, he was named bishop of the rural
diocese of Santiago de María. There, he drew close to farmworkers and
catechists who were targeted by the military. What he saw led him to a major
shift in outlook.
" 'Monseñor, they say you've
been converted. Is it true?' I remember his answer well: 'I wouldn't say it's
been a conversion, but an evolution.' "
—Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez
During Romero's first year in
Santiago de María, the National Guard massacred farmworkers in the village of
Tres Calles. After visiting the scene, Romero wrote a letter to the
then-president, Col. Arturo Molina, expressing his "firm protest" for
… the way in which a "security force" had wrongfully acted, as if it
had the right to mistreat and kill. … [I went there] to console the families
that had been attacked … by a squad of National Guardsmen. On the way to their
homes, I stopped to pray by the body of a still-unburied victim who had been
shot in the head. His wife and mother were beside him, weeping. When I arrived
at the houses that had been invaded by the armed forces, it broke my heart to
hear the bitter laments of the widows and orphans who, sobbing inconsolably,
told me about the attack.
As Kevin Clarke recounted in Oscar
Romero: Love Must Win Out: "Romero later visited the local [National
Guard] commander to protest the massacre. The officer shrugged the killings off
as a trivial accounting with local malefactors, and [said], pointing a finger
at Romero, 'Cassocks are not bulletproof.' "
Romero was beginning to get the
picture.
When he arrived in the diocese,
landowners insisted he shut down a local pastoral center that offered training
aligned with the church's post-Vatican II thinking. The landowners were
especially upset by a priest who taught there. They claimed he was a communist.
One night, Romero went to the center
and, without the priest knowing it, stood outside his classroom, listening to
his presentation. Romero found nothing unorthodox in it and, when asked later
about the priest, commented, "If he's a communist, I'm a Martian."
Still, he did close the center —
temporarily. When his decision was challenged, he agreed to reconsider it, and
eventually, to the consternation of the landowners, he reopened the center.
Romero was appalled by the suffering
of itinerant farmworkers — often entire families, including spouses and
children — who came to the area to work in the coffee harvest. Obliged to spend
the chilly nights sleeping outdoors on the ground, they often ended up sick.
Earlier, Romero had quoted approvingly the passage in Pope Leo XIII's
encyclical on labor and capital (Rerum Novarum, 1891) that condemned the
practice of workers being "handed over, alone and defenseless, to the
inhumanity of owners." Now, he opened church buildings at night to offer
them food and shelter, and often spent his evenings with them, hearing about
their travails.
It was clear that for them to have a
decent life, the country would have to undertake a major agrarian reform,
returning the lands that had been taken from them earlier. That prospect was
unthinkable to the landowners, so much so that when the country's military
dictator announced a small land reform as a tactic to weaken the surging
farmworker protest movement, the landowners forced him to scuttle it.
Undaunted by the owners' hostility,
Romero regarded the land reform issue as so important that he scheduled a
three-day conference on the subject for the priests and laity of the diocese,
inviting experts from San Salvador to come and give the talks. Years later, one
of the experts, Rubén Zamora, said, "I still have this image of him at
those talks: sitting at a schoolchild's desk in the front row, taking notes,
listening very attentively. You could see he really wanted to learn. His
concern was, how could the church help?"
These experiences and others are
detailed in a book whose title is a quote from Romero: In Santiago de María, I
Came Face to Face With Misery (edited by Zacarías Díez and Juan Macho Merino,
1995). He was so affected by what he saw there that when he returned to San
Salvador in 1977 and gave the talk that turned Paul Schindler around, it was clear
that he himself had been turned around.
I asked María López Vigil, a
journalist, editor and author of Monseñor Romero: Memories in Mosaic, how she
saw Romero's evolution:
People have almost mechanically
related Romero's conversion to the killing of Rutilio and the surrounding
events. I think that's excessive. … It wasn't ideas that changed [Romero]. It
was reality. That's basic. When he was an auxiliary bishop in San Salvador, his
contact with reality was limited by his job [secretary of the bishops' conference]
and by the office he worked in. When he was in Santiago de María, at a time of
repression, he drew near to the farmworkers in their suffering, their work, and
their commitments as catechists, and all of that changed him. I think it's
important to highlight that so as not to oversimplify his process of
conversion. What happened to Rutilio was the culmination of a journey he had
been on.
Disputing the 'Rutilio miracle'
In a recent tribute to Romero, the
eminent moral theologian Fr. Charles Curran wrote, "What many called the
'Rutilio miracle' was the reality that brought about [Romero's]
commitment."
Surely the killing of Grande was
painful for Romero, given how close they were, but it was not the
"miracle" that some — peace activist John Dear, for example — insist
it was. "Suddenly," wrote Dear in NCR, "the nation had a
towering figure in its midst. … Standing over Grande's dead body that night,
Romero was transformed into one of the world's great champions for the poor and
oppressed."
But Romero wasn't "suddenly …
transformed" or "converted"; his change was a process that had
been going on for several years before Grande's murder.
It's also important to rebut Dear's
claim about who Romero had been earlier: "He sided with the greedy
landlords, important power brokers, and violent death squads." That
egregious falsehood has absolutely no basis in fact. On the contrary: Even
before his time in Santiago de María, Romero had denounced as
"unjust" those laws that favored "the interests of legislators and
the ruling minority."
The feature film "Romero"
is another of the culprits fostering the belief that Romero's change was all
about the killing of Grande. In addition to its other falsehoods (e.g., the
film has Romero being arrested and jailed and, on another occasion, detained
and stripped, and it has one of the Jesuit priests who worked with Grande
taking up arms — none of which happened), "Romero" invents a rupture
between Grande and Romero just before Grande was killed, with Grande angrily
saying to Romero:
Don't you see what's going on around here? Anyone who says what he thinks
about land reform or wages or God or human rights … automatically he's labeled
a communist … He lives in fear … They take him away … They torture him, they
kill him … You don't believe me, do you?
Goodbye, Óscar.
This is a total fabrication. Romero
did know what was going on, and Grande, far from breaking with him, was
constantly standing up for him, trying to convince reluctant priests to give
him a chance. A rupture between the two? No way. Of course, if you've decided
that your film will present Grande's murder as a "road to Damascus"
moment in which Romero, like Paul, was suddenly "converted," the
rupture narrative sets things up nicely. There's only one problem: It's not
true.
In fact, Romero objected to people
speaking of his "conversion." Salvadoran Cardinal Gregorio Rosa
Chávez says, "I once asked him the following question: 'Monseñor, they say
you've been converted. Is it true?' I remember his answer well: 'I wouldn't say
it's been a conversion, but an evolution.' "
It was, as Romero wrote on another
occasion, "an evolution of the same desire that I have always had to be faithful
to what God asks of me; and if earlier I gave the impression of being more
'prudent' and more 'spiritual,' it was because I sincerely believed that in
that way I responded to the Gospel, because the circumstances of my ministry
were not as demanding as those when I became archbishop."
Msgr. Ricardo Urioste was Romero's
vicar general and perhaps the person closest to him. He, too, disputes the
claim that there was a "Rutilio miracle":
It is said of Archbishop Romero that
he changed drastically with the murder of Fr. Rutilio Grande, and that his
conversion happened less than a month after he became archbishop. I don't
believe this is so. … [He] began to see gradually, as he discovered more about
the Gospel, the church's magisterium, and the painful situation of the people.
All of these changed him. He never spoke of himself in terms of conversion; he
spoke of evolution. For this reason, he wrote about "readiness to change.
He who fails to change will not gain the kingdom."
The fullness of church teaching
Another common misconception about
Romero is that he was an ecclesiastical rebel who acted with little regard for
the institutional church. Not true, says López Vigil:
I found that he was tremendously
faithful to the institutional church and the grassroots church — to both. … He
was born, grew up, matured and died with an immense fidelity to the
institutional church, so I would see him as "within it" and not
"in spite of it."
Thus, the stands Romero took — stands
that got him into trouble and eventually got him killed — were not instances of
him ignoring church doctrine or rebelling against it, but rather of him
faithfully taking it to its fullest consequences — as he did, for example, with
Catholic social teaching.
The most famous example came in the
closing words of his homily on the eve of his murder. On that occasion, as
Julian Filochowski, chair of the Romero Trust, writes, "[Romero] tackled
the thorny question of what ordinary soldiers should do when ordered to kill
and massacre." Said Romero:
Before an order to kill that a man
may give, God's law must prevail: Thou shalt not kill! No soldier is obliged to
obey an order contrary to the law of God. … It is time to obey your consciences
rather than the orders of sin. In the name of God, therefore, and in the name
of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I beg
you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!
When Romero made that plea, Thomas
Quigley, an adviser to the U.S. bishops' justice and peace office, was sitting
in the sanctuary a few feet away. Quigley later wrote, "He told soldiers,
simple peasants themselves for the most part, that they are not bound by unjust
orders to kill; standard textbook theology, but if applied in the concrete,
usually considered treasonous. It was so described in the Monday morning paper
by an Army spokesman."
Romero was murdered Monday evening
while celebrating Mass. "Standard textbook theology" had been deemed
punishable by death.
Urioste recalled another occasion
when Romero gave a particularly forceful homily. Afterward, Urioste told him he
feared it would provoke a violent response. Romero replied, "I had to say
it. If I'd said anything less, I would have fallen short; I wouldn't have been
expressing the fullness of church teaching." For that reason Urioste, when
asked what kind of martyr Romero was, replied, "He was a martyr for the
magisterium." It is fitting, then, that Curran includes in his tribute to
Romero a famous example of magisterial teaching taken from "Justice in the
World," the declaration of the 1971 international synod of Catholic
bishops:
Action on behalf of justice and
participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a
constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of
the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation
from every oppressive situation.
All too often those words have been
ignored, but not by Romero. He lived them out in his ministry. For doing so, he
was accused of being anti-government. No, he said, "the conflict here
isn't between the church and the government; it's between the government and
the people, and the church is with the people." This ended up leading to
clashes with the authorities, but as Curran noted:
Romero's struggle against the
government and its injustices did not [amount to] unacceptable involvement of
the church or church leaders in the world of politics. Whatever affects human
persons, human communities, and the environment is by that very nature not just
a political or a legal issue. It is a human, moral and, for the believer,
Christian issue. The Christian tradition has consistently recognized that the
political order is subject to the moral order.
That vision of the church's role —
shared by Romero but rejected by those who blocked his canonization process for
years — was ratified by Pope Francis when he unblocked the process and moved it
forward.
Nor did Francis stop there; he did
something else that had long cried out to be done. Many people aren't aware —
but Francis was − of how shabbily Romero was treated by all but one of his
brother bishops. Seldom has there been a condemnation of bishops as strong as
the one Francis expressed to a group of Salvadoran pilgrims who were visiting
the Vatican in 2015:
I would … like to add something that
perhaps has escaped us. Archbishop Romero's martyrdom did not occur precisely
at the moment of his death; it was a martyrdom of witness, of previous
suffering, of previous persecution, until his death. But also afterwards
because, after he died — I was a young priest and I witnessed this — he was
defamed, slandered, soiled — that is, his martyrdom continued even by his
brothers in the priesthood and in the episcopate. I am not speaking from
hearsay; I heard those things.
It was good to see — at long last —
Romero vindicated in that way.
'We all have our roots, you know'
On a visit to the Vatican in the late
1970s, Romero was accompanied by Fr. César Jerez¸ then the Jesuit provincial
for Central America. Earlier in the '70s, Romero had attacked the Jesuits for
the consciousness-raising work they were doing in their elite San Salvador high
school. He was also a leader of the effort that got the Jesuits expelled from
the interdiocesan seminary, where they had served as faculty for decades; and
he alluded unfavorably to the writings of Jesuit Fr. Jon Sobrino, a prominent
liberation theologian who was teaching at the Jesuit university in San
Salvador.
But when Romero returned to the
capital as archbishop in 1977, he invited the Jesuits to produce a daily
hourlong news and commentary program for the archdiocesan radio station, and he
consulted Sobrino, among others, when he was preparing his pastoral letters.
Jerez tells of a night when they took
a walk along the Via della Conciliazione:
I got up my courage and tried to get
him to speak. "Monseñor, you've changed … What's happened?"
"You know, Father Jerez, I ask
myself that same question when I'm in prayer …"
"And do you find an answer,
Monseñor?"
"Some answers, yes … It's just
that we all have our roots, you know … I was born into a poor family. I've
suffered hunger. I know what it's like to work from the time you're a little
kid … When I went to seminary and started my studies, and they sent me to
finish studying here in Rome, I spent years and years absorbed in my books, and
I started to forget where I came from. I started creating another world. When I
went back to El Salvador, they made me the bishop's secretary in San Miguel. I
was a parish priest there for 23 years, but I was still buried in paperwork …
Then they sent me to Santiago de María, and I ran into extreme poverty again.
Those children that were dying just because of the water they were drinking,
those campesinos killing themselves in the harvests … You know, Father, when a
piece of charcoal has already been lit once, you don't have to blow on it much
to get it to flame up again … So yes, I changed. But I also came back home
again."
These words underscore that it was
his experience in Santiago de María, and not a "Rutilio miracle,"
that brought about Romero's commitment. Nevertheless, the killing of Grande did
help to crystallize that commitment, leading Romero to take drastic measures.
When he'd written to the president two years earlier about the Tres Calles
massacre, he kept the letter private, but after Grande's murder he went public,
denouncing the crime and declaring that if the government failed to do a
serious investigation, he would boycott — as, in fact, he later did — all
government events, including the upcoming inauguration of the country's new
president.
In addition, feeling that a sign of
church unity was needed after the attacks on Grande and other pastoral workers,
Romero decreed that on the Sunday following Grande's death, all Masses in the
archdiocese would be suspended, and a single Mass would be celebrated at the
cathedral, with the entire archdiocese invited to attend. He also canceled
classes in the Catholic schools for three days, ordering the schools to devote
those days to a study of the country's problems.
These gestures upset the army and the
government, and enraged both the papal nuncio and the group of Salvadoran
bishops whom Pope Francis would later denounce. The nuncio had recommended
Romero's appointment as archbishop, thinking he would be a docile, manageable
figure. Now it was the nuncio's turn to be surprised, just as Paul Schindler
had been.
How to explain Romero's actions? He
put it this way: "When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead, I thought,
'If they killed him for doing what he did, then I have to walk that same path.'
" And he did walk it, knowing full well what the consequences of that
commitment could be. In a homily on Nov. 11, 1979, he made it clear that there
would be no turning back: "I ask for your prayers to help me be faithful
to this promise: that I will not abandon my people, but will, with them, run
all the risks that my ministry requires of me."
'The pastor is supposed to be there for the flock'
I once had the chance — it was a
gift, really — to hear him express that commitment in person. It was at the
meeting of Latin American bishops in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979. Just before
Romero left El Salvador for Puebla, the National Guard had murdered Octavio
Ortiz, a priest to whom Romero had been like a second father. Both grew up in
poor families in rural areas of eastern El Salvador; both entered the seminary
at a very young age. Ortiz was the first priest Romero ordained after being
consecrated a bishop.
The Guardsmen shot Ortiz — along with
four others at the weekend youth retreat he was giving — and then rolled a tank
over his head. Romero denounced the government's version of the incident as
"a lie from beginning to end." In those days, with a military
dictatorship ruling El Salvador, statements like that could easily become a
person's last words; even before that, Romero had been getting serious death
threats.
One day at Puebla, a few journalists
were talking with him. One of us, without mentioning the threats explicitly,
asked, "Are you really going back to El Salvador?" — as in (but not
actually saying), "If you do, they're going to kill you."
"I know what you're getting
at," said Romero, "but, you know, they say I'm the pastor, and the
pastor is supposed to be there for the flock. And the flock is back in El
Salvador. So, yes, I'm going to return."
One doesn't forget remarks like that.
I went home to New York after Puebla and began saving money for a plane ticket
to El Salvador. I was preparing to depart when, on a Monday night, I went to a
parish to hear a talk on liberation theology. At the end of the evening, as we
emerged from the meeting room, the sacristan was there, waiting to lock up the
church. Transistor radio in hand, he asked, "Weren't you people talking
about Latin America?"
"Yes."
"Well, they just said on the
radio that somewhere down there tonight, a bishop was shot and killed."
I would go to El Salvador, but I
would never see him again.
[Gene Palumbo is a freelance
journalist based in El Salvador. He went there in 1980 immediately after Romero
was murdered and ended up staying on, covering the country's civil war
(1980-92) and its aftermath. He is The New York Times' local correspondent in
El Salvador, and has also reported for National Public Radio, the BBC, the
Canadian Broadcasting Company, Commonweal Magazine and Time Magazine.]
Protecting and Also Bridging Differences
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
As we saw earlier this year, humans need concrete and
particular experiences to learn the ways of love. [1] We don’t learn to love
through abstract philosophy or theology. That’s why Jesus came to show God in
human form, revealing a face we could recognize and relate to. Let’s first call
justice giving everything its full due. Thus, it must begin with somehow seeing
the divine (ultimate value) in the other. If we really see someone in their
fullness, we cannot help but treat them with kindness and compassion.
Even as we know that every human’s being is inherently and
equally good, dignified, and worthy of respect, we cannot ignore our very real
differences. The problem is that the ego likes to assign lesser and greater
value based on differences. Until all people everywhere are treated with
dignity and respect, we must continue calling attention to imbalances of
privilege and power. Arbitrary, artificial hierarchies and discrimination are
based on a variety of differences: for example, gender, sexuality, class, skin colour,
education, physical or mental ability, attractiveness, accent, language,
religion, and so on.
“Intersectionality” is a rather new concept for most of us
to help explain how these attributes overlap. You can be privileged in some
areas and not in others. A poor white man has more opportunities for
advancement than a poor black man. [2] A transgender woman of color has an even
higher risk of being assaulted than a white heterosexual woman. [3] Someone
without a disability has an easier time finding a job than an equally qualified
candidate who has a disability.
Pause for a moment and think about the areas in which you
benefit, not because of anything you’ve done or deserve but simply because of
what body you were born with, what class privilege you enjoy, what country or
ethnicity you find yourself in.
In the book Intersectionality in Action, experienced
educators recognize that “admitting one’s privilege can be very difficult,”
especially for those who consider themselves tolerant and prefer to not use
labels, “calling themselves colour-blind, for instance.” [4] When we finally
recognize our unearned benefits—at the expense of others—we may feel ashamed
and that may lead us to make excuses for ourselves or overly identify with a
less privileged aspect of our identity (for example as Jewish or female). Yet
as we move beyond these attachments and emotions, “[We] learn that [our]
privileges and disadvantages can coexist, intersect, and impact the way [we]
move through different environments.” [5]
We must work to dismantle systems of oppression while at the
same time honouring our differences and celebrating our oneness! This takes a
great deal of spiritual maturity. Unity, in fact, is the reconciliation of
differences, not the denial of them. Our differences must first be
maintained—and then overcome by the power of love (exactly as in the three
persons of the Trinity). We must distinguish and separate things before we can
spiritually unite them, usually at cost to ourselves, especially if we are
privileged (see Ephesians 2:14-16).
God is a mystery of relationship, and the truest
relationship is love. Infinite Love preserves unique truths, protecting
boundaries while simultaneously bridging them.
[1] See Richard Rohr, “Thisness,”
https://cac.org/thisness-weekly-summary-2018-03-24/.
[2] See Emily Badger, Claire Cain Miller, Adam Pearce, and
Kevin Quealy, “Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys,”
The New York Times, March 19, 2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html.
[3] See https://www.ovc.gov/pubs/forge/sexual_numbers.html.
[4] Amy Howard, Juliette Landphair, and Amanda Lineberry,
“Bringing Life to Learning,” Intersectionality in Action: A Guide for Faculty
and Campus Leaders for Creating Inclusive Classrooms and Institutions, Brooke
Barnett and Peter Felten, eds. (Stylus Publishing: 2016), 92.
[5] Ibid., 93.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Introduction,” “The Perennial
Tradition,” Oneing, vol. 1, no. 1 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2013,
out of print), 12-13.
SUICIDE AND THE SOUL
This article is taken from the archives of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article and many others here
More than fifty years ago, James Hillman wrote a book
entitled, Suicide and the Soul. The book was intended for therapists and he
knew it wouldn’t receive an easy reception there or elsewhere. There were
reasons. He frankly admitted that some
of the things he proposed in the book would “go against all common sense, all
medical practice, and rationality itself.” But, as the title makes clear, he
was speaking about suicide and in trying to understand suicide, isn’t that
exactly the case? Doesn’t it go against all common sense, all medical practice,
and rationality itself? And that’s his point.
In some cases, suicide can be the result of a biochemical
imbalance or some genetic predisposition that militates against life. That’s
unfortunate and tragic, but it’s understandable enough. That kind of sickness
goes against common sense, medical practice, and rationality. Suicide can also result from a catastrophic
emotional breakdown or from a trauma so powerful that it cannot be integrated
and simply breaks apart a person’s psyche so that death, as sleep, as an
escape, becomes an overwhelming temptation. Here too, even though common sense,
medical practice, and rationality are befuddled, we have some grasp of why this
suicide happened.
But there are suicides that are not the result of a
biochemical imbalance, a genetic predisposition, a catastrophic emotional
distress, or an overpowering trauma. How are these to be explained?
Hillman, whose writing through more than fifty years have
been a public plea for the human soul, makes this claim: The soul can make
claims that go against the body and against our physical wellbeing, and suicide
is often that, the soul making its own claims. What a stunning insight! Our
souls and our bodies do not always want the same things and are sometimes so
much at odds with each other that death can be the result.
In the tension between soul and body, the body’s needs and
impulses are more easily seen, understood, and attended to. The body normally
gets what it wants or at least clearly knows what it wants and why it is
frustrated. The soul? Well, its needs
are so complex that they are hard to see and understand, not alone attended
to. As Pascal so famously put it: “The
heart has it reasons of which reason knows nothing.” That is virtually
synonymous with what Hillman is saying. Our rational understanding often stands
bewildered before some inchoate need inside us.
That inchoate need is our soul speaking, but it is not easy
to pick up exactly what it is asking of us. Mostly we feel our soul’s voice as
a dis-ease, a restlessness, a distress we cannot exactly sort out, and as an
internal pressure that sometimes asks of us something directly in conflict with
what the rest of us wants. We are, in huge part, a mystery to ourselves.
Sometimes the claims of the soul that go against our
physical wellbeing are not so dramatic as to demand suicide but in them, we can
still clearly see what Hillman is asserting. We see this, for example, in the
phenomenon where a person in severe emotional distress begins to cut herself on
her arms or on other parts of her body.
The cuts are not intended to end life; they are intended only to cause
pain and blood. Why? The person cutting
herself mostly cannot explain rationally why she is doing this (or, at least,
she cannot explain how this pain and this blood-letting will in any way lessen
or fix her emotional distress). All she knows is that she is hurting at a place
she cannot get at and by hurting herself at a place she can get at, she can
deal with a pain that she cannot get to. Hillman’s principle is on display
here: The soul can, and does, make
claims that can go against our physical well-being. It has its reasons.
For Hillman, this is the “root metaphor” for how a therapist
should approach the understanding of suicide. It can also be a valuable
metaphor for all us who are not therapists but who have to struggle to digest
the death of a loved one who dies by suicide.
Moreover this is also a metaphor that can be helpful in
understanding each other and understanding ourselves. The soul sometimes makes
claims that go directly against our health and well-being. In my pastoral work
and sometimes simply being with a friend who is hurting, I sometimes find
myself standing helplessly before someone who is hell-bent on some behavior
that goes against his or her own well-being and which makes no rational sense
whatsoever. Rational argument and common sense are useless. He’s simply going
to do this to his own destruction. Why?
The soul has its reasons. All of us, perhaps in less dramatic ways, experience
this in our own lives. Sometimes we do things that hurt our physical health and
well-being and go against all common sense and rationality. Our souls too have their reasons.
And suicide too has its reasons.
The Eucharist and the new creation
As we come to the end of the Season of Creation, Fr Harry Elias reflects on how the new creation is anticipated in our respect for the earth and all of its creatures. The Eucharist, he says, ‘is a sign that the offering of the work of our hands with the fruits of the earth, even when it seems to end in failure, is also blessed, filling it with the transfiguring presence of Christ.’ Harry Elias SJ assists in the Hurtado Jesuit Centre in Wapping, East London. The original and complete article can be found on the ThinkingFaith.org Website by clicking here
In the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper, Matthew and Mark have Jesus say over the cup of wine, ‘This is my blood of the covenant’, and connect this to the forgiveness of sins, while Luke and Paul have the words, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood’, adding ‘do this in remembrance of me’. God’s covenant in scripture refers to the bonding of God with another party, although sometimes this bond is referred to without using the word ‘covenant’; an alternative, ‘I am your God, you are my people’, is also employed.
Many covenants were known to the Jews in the time of Jesus – with Noah, Abraham, Moses and David – so the words with which Jesus instituted the Eucharist, remind us of contexts other than the Passover with its sacrifice of the Paschal lamb. A notable reference to blood of the covenant is in the sacrifice that sealed the giving of the Law to Moses (Exodus 24:5-8). However, it was the annual Day of Atonement sacrifice (Leviticus 16) that was the one in which blood was shed for the forgiveness of sins – for the high priest and for the sins committed unintentionally[i] by the people according to the Letter to the Hebrews (9:7). The reference to the forgiveness of sins also appears in the promise of the new covenant in the prophecy of Jeremiah. After pronouncing that the Lord will make a new covenant, Jeremiah goes on to say: ‘I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be me my people........for I will forgive their iniquities, and remember their sins no more.’ (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
However, as well as a link with forgiveness of sin, we can see a connection between the new covenant and the new creation. In the Letter to the Hebrews (13:20), the blood of Jesus, the great shepherd, is the blood of the eternal covenant. The author of the letter takes for granted that the new covenant is the everlasting covenant. The first mention of a covenant in the Bible is in Genesis 9:16. Spoken to Noah after the flood, it is a covenant with all humankind, animals and indeed the earth. The everlasting covenant is also called the covenant of peace[ii] in Isaiah 54:10 and Ezekiel 37:26. Both Isaiah 54 and Hosea 2 show the Lord as husband to his people whose steadfast love would not allow the waters to go over the earth again. He would bring about lasting peace and harmony with the earth and its creatures and would be ever ready to fulfil their needs. The pollution of the earth seen as judgment in Isaiah 24:5 is reversed in Isaiah 25:6-8, which pictures a Mount Zion where there is spread out a banquet of rich food and well-matured wines, where death is swallowed up forever.
You can continue to read the complete article on the ThinkingFaith.org Website by clicking here
As we come to the end of the Season of Creation, Fr Harry Elias reflects on how the new creation is anticipated in our respect for the earth and all of its creatures. The Eucharist, he says, ‘is a sign that the offering of the work of our hands with the fruits of the earth, even when it seems to end in failure, is also blessed, filling it with the transfiguring presence of Christ.’ Harry Elias SJ assists in the Hurtado Jesuit Centre in Wapping, East London. The original and complete article can be found on the ThinkingFaith.org Website by clicking here
In the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper, Matthew and Mark have Jesus say over the cup of wine, ‘This is my blood of the covenant’, and connect this to the forgiveness of sins, while Luke and Paul have the words, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood’, adding ‘do this in remembrance of me’. God’s covenant in scripture refers to the bonding of God with another party, although sometimes this bond is referred to without using the word ‘covenant’; an alternative, ‘I am your God, you are my people’, is also employed.
Many covenants were known to the Jews in the time of Jesus – with Noah, Abraham, Moses and David – so the words with which Jesus instituted the Eucharist, remind us of contexts other than the Passover with its sacrifice of the Paschal lamb. A notable reference to blood of the covenant is in the sacrifice that sealed the giving of the Law to Moses (Exodus 24:5-8). However, it was the annual Day of Atonement sacrifice (Leviticus 16) that was the one in which blood was shed for the forgiveness of sins – for the high priest and for the sins committed unintentionally[i] by the people according to the Letter to the Hebrews (9:7). The reference to the forgiveness of sins also appears in the promise of the new covenant in the prophecy of Jeremiah. After pronouncing that the Lord will make a new covenant, Jeremiah goes on to say: ‘I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be me my people........for I will forgive their iniquities, and remember their sins no more.’ (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
However, as well as a link with forgiveness of sin, we can see a connection between the new covenant and the new creation. In the Letter to the Hebrews (13:20), the blood of Jesus, the great shepherd, is the blood of the eternal covenant. The author of the letter takes for granted that the new covenant is the everlasting covenant. The first mention of a covenant in the Bible is in Genesis 9:16. Spoken to Noah after the flood, it is a covenant with all humankind, animals and indeed the earth. The everlasting covenant is also called the covenant of peace[ii] in Isaiah 54:10 and Ezekiel 37:26. Both Isaiah 54 and Hosea 2 show the Lord as husband to his people whose steadfast love would not allow the waters to go over the earth again. He would bring about lasting peace and harmony with the earth and its creatures and would be ever ready to fulfil their needs. The pollution of the earth seen as judgment in Isaiah 24:5 is reversed in Isaiah 25:6-8, which pictures a Mount Zion where there is spread out a banquet of rich food and well-matured wines, where death is swallowed up forever.
You can continue to read the complete article on the ThinkingFaith.org Website by clicking here
In the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper, Matthew and Mark have Jesus say over the cup of wine, ‘This is my blood of the covenant’, and connect this to the forgiveness of sins, while Luke and Paul have the words, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood’, adding ‘do this in remembrance of me’. God’s covenant in scripture refers to the bonding of God with another party, although sometimes this bond is referred to without using the word ‘covenant’; an alternative, ‘I am your God, you are my people’, is also employed.
Many covenants were known to the Jews in the time of Jesus – with Noah, Abraham, Moses and David – so the words with which Jesus instituted the Eucharist, remind us of contexts other than the Passover with its sacrifice of the Paschal lamb. A notable reference to blood of the covenant is in the sacrifice that sealed the giving of the Law to Moses (Exodus 24:5-8). However, it was the annual Day of Atonement sacrifice (Leviticus 16) that was the one in which blood was shed for the forgiveness of sins – for the high priest and for the sins committed unintentionally[i] by the people according to the Letter to the Hebrews (9:7). The reference to the forgiveness of sins also appears in the promise of the new covenant in the prophecy of Jeremiah. After pronouncing that the Lord will make a new covenant, Jeremiah goes on to say: ‘I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be me my people........for I will forgive their iniquities, and remember their sins no more.’ (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
However, as well as a link with forgiveness of sin, we can see a connection between the new covenant and the new creation. In the Letter to the Hebrews (13:20), the blood of Jesus, the great shepherd, is the blood of the eternal covenant. The author of the letter takes for granted that the new covenant is the everlasting covenant. The first mention of a covenant in the Bible is in Genesis 9:16. Spoken to Noah after the flood, it is a covenant with all humankind, animals and indeed the earth. The everlasting covenant is also called the covenant of peace[ii] in Isaiah 54:10 and Ezekiel 37:26. Both Isaiah 54 and Hosea 2 show the Lord as husband to his people whose steadfast love would not allow the waters to go over the earth again. He would bring about lasting peace and harmony with the earth and its creatures and would be ever ready to fulfil their needs. The pollution of the earth seen as judgment in Isaiah 24:5 is reversed in Isaiah 25:6-8, which pictures a Mount Zion where there is spread out a banquet of rich food and well-matured wines, where death is swallowed up forever.
You can continue to read the complete article on the ThinkingFaith.org Website by clicking here
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