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 6th - 9th November
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 10:30am Eliza Purton
12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Weekend Masses 10th & 11th November
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
6:00pm Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Ministry Rosters 10th & 11th November,
2018
Devonport:
Readers Vigil: V Riley, A Stegmann, B Suckling 10:30am: F Sly, J Tuxworth, T Omogbai-musa
Ulverstone:
Penguin:
Latrobe:
Port Sorell:
Reader: G Gigliotti, D Leaman Ministers of
Communion: Jan
& Don Peters Cleaners: C & J Howard
PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
I breathe in God’s life and love and let all negativity and
anything that blocks my relationship with him be breathed out.
When I am ready
I read the text slowly and carefully.
I come before Jesus, my teacher, my
intercessor with the Father.
In what way can I identify with the scribe?
Is his
question also mine or do I have others?
I allow them to rise without effort.
Does Jesus's reply answer all my questions?
Perhaps I can open my heart, my
soul and my mind to his all-enveloping love, so that I can love myself and
others with his love.
The scribe comments that love of God and neighbour is far
more important than any ritual.
In what ways does this help me to express my
love for God in my daily life?
Which rituals, in turn, unite my life and
prayer?
I spend time resting in God’s unconditional love and end my time of
prayer in thanksgiving.
Your prayers
are asked for the sick:
Marg Stewart & ….
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Let us pray for those whose anniversary
occurs about this time: 1st – 7th November
Weekly
Ramblings
Next
weekend will be the Centenary of Armistice Day. As a Chaplain in the Defence
Force (Reserve) it is one of those days when participating in a Memorial
service at the local Cenotaph would be a normal activity but because it is a
Sunday gathering with the Parish Community takes precedence. Our Masses next
weekend will include prayers for those who have given their lives in service of
our Country. I would encourage all those who are able to take part in a service
in your local area – praying for an end to all wars.
At
our Parish Pastoral Team Meeting last weekend it was decided that Masses will
be celebrated at our normal times on the Feast of Christ the King. In recent
years we have had only the one Mass at Ulverstone on that day – this year we
are inviting each Mass Centre to have something following Mass. The decision is
only for this celebration – Holy Thursday, the Easter Vigil and Pentecost will
be whole of Parish Masses – but because of distances and the time of the Mass
we felt that having a celebration in each centre for the feast and marking the
end of the Liturgical year would be a better way forward. I will be interested
to hear any and all feedback about this decision.
The
Annual Collection for the Education of Priests will be taken up next weekend.
Currently we have one Deacon (Ben Brooks in Rome) and 5 men at Corpus Christi
College in Carlton + Fr Fidelis who is still there until the end of the year. As
we support their education we pray for an increase in the number of vocations
so that we are able to continue to provide priests for our Parishes into the
future.
Please
take care on the roads and I look forward to seeing you next weekend.
FROM THE
PARISH PASTORAL TEAM (FELICITY SLY – CHAIR):
MT ST VINCENT AUXILIARY:
This Sunday 4th November the Mt St Vincent Auxiliary will be holding a craft and cake stall after 9am Mass, Sacred Heart Church Community Room.
Bring a friend or two and your spare change and buy some goodies to help support this great fundraiser!
CARE & CONCERN:
The next gathering of the social group will be held Tuesday
13th November. This will be held at the café at the
Riverview Nursery, Forth Road Don, and will be the final gathering for the
year. As always, we would be very pleased to welcome parishioners who do
not have the opportunity for social activity, including those whose
spouses/partners are in residential care etc. Transport can be
provided. It is necessary that we have the numbers of those who will be attending
by Tuesday 6th November. To advise of your attendance,
or to find out more, please contact Mary Davies 64241183 / 0447 241 182,
Margaret McKenzie 64251414 / 0419 392 937 or Toni Muir 64245296 / 0438 245
296.
LITURGY
PLANNING FOR ADVENT:
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall, Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers Thursday
8th November, Tony Ryan & Terry Bird
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
The
Missionary Sisters of Service are celebrating! Now in their 75th year, the first of their official 75 th anniversary events will be held on Bruny Island on Sunday 25 November when
a permanent memorial to their “beginnings” will be blessed and dedicated at St
Brendan’s Church, Alonnah. All interested people are invited to attend any or
all events on that day: light lunch (12:30pm ),
the blessing and dedication (2:30pm ),
Mass (3pm )
and afternoon tea (4pm ).
A bus ($20pp payable in cash on the day) will leave St Aloysius Catholic
College car park, Huntingfield, at 9:30am
sharp and return about 6-6:15pm .
Further information and rsvp for catering 9 November, Sr Lorraine Groves MSS lorrainegrovesmss@gmail.com, 6245 3737 or 0409 172
741
CULTIVATING JUSTICE
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
Jack Jezreel describes three additional essential aspects of
following Jesus and creating a world of justice and peace. [1]
[1] See the first three ingredients in Peace and Justice
work, https://cac.org/justice-with-peace-2018-06-13/.
A RIGHT WAY OF DYING
This is an article from the archives of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article here
I do not want to die from some medical condition; I want to die from death!
Ivan Illich wrote that. What’s meant here? Don’t we all die from death? Of course, in reality that’s what we all die from, but in our idea of things, most often, we die from a medical condition or from bad luck through cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, or as the victim of an accident. Sometimes, because of how we think of death, we do die from a medical condition.
That’s what Ivan Illich is trying to highlight here. Death is meant to be met and respected as a normal human experience, not as a medical failure. Death and its inevitability in our lives are to be understood as a growth point, a necessary maturation, something to which we are organically and spiritually destined and not as an aberration or unnatural intrusion into the life cycle (an intrusion that could have been avoided except for an accident or failure of medicine.) We need to understand death the way a woman carrying a child contemplates its delivery, not as some aberration or risky medical procedure but as the full flowering of a life process.
We pay a price for our false idea on dying, more than we imagine. When death is seen as a medical failure or as tragic bad luck, its threat then becomes a menacing specter and a threatening darkness inside that cauldron of all those other energies and fears we do not consciously deal with and into which we dare not venture.
Ernest Becker speaks of something he calls “the denial of death” and suggests that our refusal to meet and respect death as a natural process rather than as an aberration impoverishes us in untold ways. When we falsely fear death then the inchoate sense of our own mortality becomes a dark corner from which we stay away. We pay a price for this in that, paradoxically, by falsely fearing death we are unable to properly enter into life.
Martin Heidegger affirms much the same thing in his understanding of life. He suggests that each of us is (in his words) a “being-towards-death”, that is, from the second we are born we already have a terminal condition (called life) and we can only be free of false fear if we consciously live out our lives in the face of that non-negotiable truth. We are dying. His language around this can leave us depressed but, like Illich, he makes a positive point. For Heidegger, in the end, we don’t die because of bad medicine or bad luck. We die because nature has its course and nature runs that course and we will, in fact, enjoy our lives more if we respect that natural course because that acceptance will help us to value more how precious our moments of life and love are.
Ironically, euthanasia, for all its sophisticated claims to be something that lets us control death, would have us die precisely from a medical condition and not from death (which is a natural process).
Of course, wanting to die from death and not from a medical condition does not mean we do not value medicine and what it offers for our health and the preservation of our lives. We are obliged by our nature, by our loved ones, by common sense, and by an inalienable principle right within the moral order itself to take all ordinary medical measures available to preserve our health. Modern medicine is wonderful and many of us, including myself, are alive today thanks only to modern medicine. But we must be clear too that when we come to die it won’t be because of a medical failure but rather because death is our natural end. Just as we were once born from our mother’s womb, there comes a time when we need to be born again from the earth’s womb.
Moreover accepting death in this way is not a negative stoicism which robs life of delight and joy. To the contrary, as anyone who has ever had a health crisis the brought him or her close to death will tell you, facing death makes everything in life all the more precious since it is no longer taken for granted.
One cautionary flag: This kind of talk is not necessarily for the young in whom the denial of death is, for a good reason, very powerful. While young people should not be willfully blind to their own mortality or live their lives as if life here were to go on forever, they shouldn’t yet be focused on death. Their task is to build a future for themselves and the world. Death can be dealt with later. Metaphorically speaking, they need to be focused more on nurturing the embryo than worrying about its delivery.
At the center of Jesus’ teaching lies a great paradox: Whoever clings to life will lose it and whoever lets go of life will find it. Ivan Illich, it would seem, agrees.
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 6th - 9th November
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 10:30am Eliza Purton
12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Weekend Masses 10th & 11th November
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
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 10:30am Eliza Purton
12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Weekend Masses 10th & 11th November
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
6:00pm Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Ministry Rosters 10th & 11th November, 2018
Devonport:
Readers Vigil: V Riley, A Stegmann, B Suckling 10:30am: F Sly, J Tuxworth, T Omogbai-musa
Ministers of Communion:
Vigil: B, B & B Windebank, T Bird, R
Baker
10:30am: S Riley, M Sherriff, R Beaton, D
& M Barrientos
Cleaners: 9th Nov: F Sly, M Hansen, R McBain 16th Nov: P Shelverton, E Petts
Piety Shop: 10th Nov:
R Baker 11th Nov: P Piccolo
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: D Prior Ministers of
Communion: M Byrne,
D Griffin, K Foster, R Locket
Cleaners: M Swain, M Bryan Flowers: M Bryan Hospitality:
M Byrne, G Doyle
Penguin:
Greeters: P Ravallion, P Lade Commentator: Y Downes Readers: J Garnsey, A Guest
Ministers of
Communion: P Lade,
M Hiscutt Liturgy: Pine Rd Setting Up: A Landers Care of Church: J & T Kiely
Latrobe:
Reader: M Chan Minister of Communion: M Eden Procession of Gifts: J Hyde
Port Sorell:
Reader: G Gigliotti, D Leaman Ministers of
Communion: Jan
& Don Peters Cleaners: C & J Howard
Readings this week –Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
First Reading: Deuteronomy 6:2-6
Second Reading: Hebrews 7:23-28
Gospel: Mark 12:28-34
PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
As I prepare to spend time with the Lord I try to relax my
body and my mind.
I breathe in God’s life and love and let all negativity and anything that blocks my relationship with him be breathed out.
I breathe in God’s life and love and let all negativity and anything that blocks my relationship with him be breathed out.
When I am ready
I read the text slowly and carefully.
I come before Jesus, my teacher, my intercessor with the Father.
In what way can I identify with the scribe?
Is his question also mine or do I have others?
I allow them to rise without effort. Does Jesus's reply answer all my questions?
Perhaps I can open my heart, my soul and my mind to his all-enveloping love, so that I can love myself and others with his love.
The scribe comments that love of God and neighbour is far more important than any ritual.
In what ways does this help me to express my love for God in my daily life?
Which rituals, in turn, unite my life and prayer?
I spend time resting in God’s unconditional love and end my time of prayer in thanksgiving.
I come before Jesus, my teacher, my intercessor with the Father.
In what way can I identify with the scribe?
Is his question also mine or do I have others?
I allow them to rise without effort. Does Jesus's reply answer all my questions?
Perhaps I can open my heart, my soul and my mind to his all-enveloping love, so that I can love myself and others with his love.
The scribe comments that love of God and neighbour is far more important than any ritual.
In what ways does this help me to express my love for God in my daily life?
Which rituals, in turn, unite my life and prayer?
I spend time resting in God’s unconditional love and end my time of prayer in thanksgiving.
Readings next week –Thirty-Second
Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
First Reading: 1 Kings 17:10-16
Second Reading: Hebrews 9:24-28
Gospel: Mark
12:38-44
Your prayers
are asked for the sick:
Marg Stewart & ….
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Fr Peter Nicholls, Ken Sutton, Peter Smith Jnr, James Ryan, Greg Spinks, Cheryl Anne Kingston
Let us pray for those whose anniversary
occurs about this time: 1st – 7th November
Allan Fay, Tom Knight, Edith McCormack, Maurice Evans, John
Imlach, Win Casey, Aurora Barker, Kevin Tolson, Annie Hood, Mary Rigney, Dean
Turnbull, Dorothy Newland
Weekly
Ramblings
Next
weekend will be the Centenary of Armistice Day. As a Chaplain in the Defence
Force (Reserve) it is one of those days when participating in a Memorial
service at the local Cenotaph would be a normal activity but because it is a
Sunday gathering with the Parish Community takes precedence. Our Masses next
weekend will include prayers for those who have given their lives in service of
our Country. I would encourage all those who are able to take part in a service
in your local area – praying for an end to all wars.
At
our Parish Pastoral Team Meeting last weekend it was decided that Masses will
be celebrated at our normal times on the Feast of Christ the King. In recent
years we have had only the one Mass at Ulverstone on that day – this year we
are inviting each Mass Centre to have something following Mass. The decision is
only for this celebration – Holy Thursday, the Easter Vigil and Pentecost will
be whole of Parish Masses – but because of distances and the time of the Mass
we felt that having a celebration in each centre for the feast and marking the
end of the Liturgical year would be a better way forward. I will be interested
to hear any and all feedback about this decision.
The
Annual Collection for the Education of Priests will be taken up next weekend.
Currently we have one Deacon (Ben Brooks in Rome) and 5 men at Corpus Christi
College in Carlton + Fr Fidelis who is still there until the end of the year. As
we support their education we pray for an increase in the number of vocations
so that we are able to continue to provide priests for our Parishes into the
future.
Please
take care on the roads and I look forward to seeing you next weekend.
FROM THE
PARISH PASTORAL TEAM (FELICITY SLY – CHAIR):
This weekend we conclude our 30 Days of Prayer. We hope
that you have enjoyed exploring new ways of praying and sharing with others the
prayer journey. Thank you to those who have taken the opportunity to respond to
the question: What is God asking of us in our parish, our families and in the
Catholic Church in Australia? All contributions will be sent to the Plenary
2020 discernment committee. You can also continue to make submissions through
the Plenary 2020 website.
The last weekend in November is the feast of Christ the
King. In past years we have celebrated this with a single mass in the Parish,
followed by a shared lunch. This year mass times will remain as usual, and we invite
each mass centre to host a celebration to suit their centre. Please discuss
with others in your mass centre, as to what form your celebration could take: a
cuppa after mass, morning tea, a shared lunch or a barbecue. God bless you in
your journey, and in this month when we especially remember all those who have
died.
MT ST VINCENT AUXILIARY:
This Sunday 4th November the Mt St Vincent Auxiliary will be holding a craft and cake stall after 9am Mass, Sacred Heart Church Community Room.
Bring a friend or two and your spare change and buy some goodies to help support this great fundraiser!
CARE & CONCERN:
The next gathering of the social group will be held Tuesday
13th November. This will be held at the café at the
Riverview Nursery, Forth Road Don, and will be the final gathering for the
year. As always, we would be very pleased to welcome parishioners who do
not have the opportunity for social activity, including those whose
spouses/partners are in residential care etc. Transport can be
provided. It is necessary that we have the numbers of those who will be attending
by Tuesday 6th November. To advise of your attendance,
or to find out more, please contact Mary Davies 64241183 / 0447 241 182,
Margaret McKenzie 64251414 / 0419 392 937 or Toni Muir 64245296 / 0438 245
296.
LITURGY
PLANNING FOR ADVENT:
There will be a meeting on Sunday 18th November
at 2pm at the Parish House to plan/confirm plans for the Advent Season. Liturgy
planners from each Mass Centre are encouraged to be at this meeting so that details
can be made available during the following week. Please contact either Fr Mike
or Peter Douglas if there are any inquiries.
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall, Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers Thursday
8th November, Tony Ryan & Terry Bird
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
The
Missionary Sisters of Service are celebrating! Now in their 75th year, the first of their official 75 th anniversary events will be held on Bruny Island on Sunday 25 November when
a permanent memorial to their “beginnings” will be blessed and dedicated at St
Brendan’s Church, Alonnah. All interested people are invited to attend any or
all events on that day: light lunch (12:30pm ),
the blessing and dedication (2:30pm ),
Mass (3pm )
and afternoon tea (4pm ).
A bus ($20pp payable in cash on the day) will leave St Aloysius Catholic
College car park, Huntingfield, at 9:30am
sharp and return about 6-6:15pm .
Further information and rsvp for catering 9 November, Sr Lorraine Groves MSS lorrainegrovesmss@gmail.com, 6245 3737 or 0409 172
741
CULTIVATING JUSTICE
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
Jack Jezreel describes three additional essential aspects of
following Jesus and creating a world of justice and peace. [1]
Take Time to Pray
. . . Prayer is a way of connecting with our source. It is
about being centered, grounded, mindful of the holy, the presence of the sacred
and the precious. . . . Prayer can help us to connect with the poor with open
eyes and hearts. It is prayer that can allow us to educate with patience, love
and understanding. It is prayer that can enable us to move to a simpler
lifestyle. And it is prayer that will allow us to do this with conviction and
joy.
And whether or not we pray is as obvious as whether or not
we have put our clothes on. For example, the compulsive, frantic, angry,
cynical, unintegrated rambling from project to project—even from peace project
to peace project—may speak of good intentions, but also of an uneasy and
untended inner life. It is possible . . . to do much harm because we have not
taken the time to pray. . . .
Commitment to Nonviolence
. . . Violence is awful. Violence is ugly. Violence is the
saddest of human acts. As [Pope] John Paul stated, “War is a defeat for
humanity.” [2] . . . It is so very difficult to lead people into a willing
critique of their politics, their country, their allegiances, without some
awareness of how violence is so often the handmaid of greed and power. . . .
We are nonviolent, not because we simply eschew violence;
rather, we are nonviolent because we are people who love like Jesus. When our
lives are active and occupied in the name of doing good, there is little space
for violence and doing harm.
Community
. . . Community is the most neglected and probably the most
difficult ingredient for us to hold to in the U.S. context. And for the most
obvious of reasons—we have come to worship at the altar of independence,
individualism and autonomy. As much as there is a deep hunger for connection,
common purpose, and kindred hearts, there is a merciless, deep-rooted
entrenchment in the forces of competition, freedom and self-rule. . . .
As you might guess, when I say community I do not mean the
bowling community, or even the church bowling community. Rather, I mean a
community that makes very intentional commitments, including those I have
mentioned so far: engagement with those of the margins, justice education or
formation, simplicity, prayer, and peacemaking. [3]
[In closing,] we must imagine what God’s peace and justice
look like on this earth, and we must begin the work of crafting structures,
institutions, human realities that are the antithesis to division, hate, greed
and scarcity, that anticipate and cultivate justice and goodness and peace.
[1] See the first three ingredients in Peace and Justice
work, https://cac.org/justice-with-peace-2018-06-13/.
[2] Pope John Paul II, Speech to the Diplomatic Corps
accredited to the Holy See (January 13, 2003),
http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/2003/january/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20030113_diplomatic-corps.html.
[3] For more on Community, see Richard Rohr,
https://cac.org/community-weekly-summary-2018-05-12/.
Jack Jezreel, “Culturing Peace in a Culture of Violence,”
Phase 4, Session 19 of the JustFaith 2017-18 Program, https://justfaith.org/.
A RIGHT WAY OF DYING
This is an article from the archives of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article here
I do not want to die from some medical condition; I want to die from death!
Ivan Illich wrote that. What’s meant here? Don’t we all die from death? Of course, in reality that’s what we all die from, but in our idea of things, most often, we die from a medical condition or from bad luck through cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, or as the victim of an accident. Sometimes, because of how we think of death, we do die from a medical condition.
That’s what Ivan Illich is trying to highlight here. Death is meant to be met and respected as a normal human experience, not as a medical failure. Death and its inevitability in our lives are to be understood as a growth point, a necessary maturation, something to which we are organically and spiritually destined and not as an aberration or unnatural intrusion into the life cycle (an intrusion that could have been avoided except for an accident or failure of medicine.) We need to understand death the way a woman carrying a child contemplates its delivery, not as some aberration or risky medical procedure but as the full flowering of a life process.
We pay a price for our false idea on dying, more than we imagine. When death is seen as a medical failure or as tragic bad luck, its threat then becomes a menacing specter and a threatening darkness inside that cauldron of all those other energies and fears we do not consciously deal with and into which we dare not venture.
Ernest Becker speaks of something he calls “the denial of death” and suggests that our refusal to meet and respect death as a natural process rather than as an aberration impoverishes us in untold ways. When we falsely fear death then the inchoate sense of our own mortality becomes a dark corner from which we stay away. We pay a price for this in that, paradoxically, by falsely fearing death we are unable to properly enter into life.
Martin Heidegger affirms much the same thing in his understanding of life. He suggests that each of us is (in his words) a “being-towards-death”, that is, from the second we are born we already have a terminal condition (called life) and we can only be free of false fear if we consciously live out our lives in the face of that non-negotiable truth. We are dying. His language around this can leave us depressed but, like Illich, he makes a positive point. For Heidegger, in the end, we don’t die because of bad medicine or bad luck. We die because nature has its course and nature runs that course and we will, in fact, enjoy our lives more if we respect that natural course because that acceptance will help us to value more how precious our moments of life and love are.
Ironically, euthanasia, for all its sophisticated claims to be something that lets us control death, would have us die precisely from a medical condition and not from death (which is a natural process).
Of course, wanting to die from death and not from a medical condition does not mean we do not value medicine and what it offers for our health and the preservation of our lives. We are obliged by our nature, by our loved ones, by common sense, and by an inalienable principle right within the moral order itself to take all ordinary medical measures available to preserve our health. Modern medicine is wonderful and many of us, including myself, are alive today thanks only to modern medicine. But we must be clear too that when we come to die it won’t be because of a medical failure but rather because death is our natural end. Just as we were once born from our mother’s womb, there comes a time when we need to be born again from the earth’s womb.
Moreover accepting death in this way is not a negative stoicism which robs life of delight and joy. To the contrary, as anyone who has ever had a health crisis the brought him or her close to death will tell you, facing death makes everything in life all the more precious since it is no longer taken for granted.
One cautionary flag: This kind of talk is not necessarily for the young in whom the denial of death is, for a good reason, very powerful. While young people should not be willfully blind to their own mortality or live their lives as if life here were to go on forever, they shouldn’t yet be focused on death. Their task is to build a future for themselves and the world. Death can be dealt with later. Metaphorically speaking, they need to be focused more on nurturing the embryo than worrying about its delivery.
At the center of Jesus’ teaching lies a great paradox: Whoever clings to life will lose it and whoever lets go of life will find it. Ivan Illich, it would seem, agrees.
Oscar Romero: ‘Starting from the world of the poor’
On 14 October, Pope Francis declared Archbishop Oscar Romero a saint, along with Pope Paul VI and several other beati. Martin Maier SJ, who has a longstanding connection with El Salvador, traces Romero’s personal transformation up to the moment of his martyr’s death in the middle of a sermon. Martin Maier SJ is the Secretary for European Affairs at the Jesuit European Social Centre in Brussels. This article was translated from the original German by John Moffatt SJ, and is also published in German by Stimmen der Zeit, in French in Études and in Swedish in Signum. You can find this article on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
It has been a beatification and canonisation process dogged with obstacles and delays. In El Salvador, the vast majority of the population began venerating Archbishop Oscar Romero as a saint a long time ago. The impact of his murder during the celebration of Mass on 24 March 1980 was still fresh when the Brazilian Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga wrote his famous poem, ‘San Romero de América’.[1] It includes the line, ‘no one shall silence your final homily’. Yet members of the political elite in El Salvador set every possible wheel in motion to prevent any official recognition of Romero by the Church. They had allies among some influential cardinals in the Vatican curia. Romero, they argued, had not died for the faith, but because he had interfered in politics.
Pope Francis has made the beatification and canonisation of Oscar Romero a very personal priority. For the pope, Romero is a martyr and a bishop who exemplifies what it is to be a poor Church for the poor. It was only a few weeks after Francis’ election that he had a meeting with Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the man responsible for Romero’s cause, and challenged him to ‘unblock’ the process and to move it on quickly. On 18 August 2014, while speaking to journalists on a plane on the journey back from Korea to Rome, he described Romero as a martyr for the love of neighbour, who had died for justice. The beatification took place on 23 May 2015 in El Salvador. On 30 October 2015, in a memorable address to a delegation of 500 Salvadorans, the pope said that the martyrdom of Romero had continued even after his death. Romero was ‘defamed, slandered, dragged through the mud’ – even among his fellow priests and bishops. And Pope Francis himself had witnessed this. ‘How often does this happen? People who have already given up their lives, who are already dead, are pelted still more with the hardest stone in the world, the tongue.’
You can read all of this article on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
On 14 October, Pope Francis declared Archbishop Oscar Romero a saint, along with Pope Paul VI and several other beati. Martin Maier SJ, who has a longstanding connection with El Salvador, traces Romero’s personal transformation up to the moment of his martyr’s death in the middle of a sermon. Martin Maier SJ is the Secretary for European Affairs at the Jesuit European Social Centre in Brussels. This article was translated from the original German by John Moffatt SJ, and is also published in German by Stimmen der Zeit, in French in Études and in Swedish in Signum. You can find this article on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
It has been a beatification and canonisation process dogged with obstacles and delays. In El Salvador, the vast majority of the population began venerating Archbishop Oscar Romero as a saint a long time ago. The impact of his murder during the celebration of Mass on 24 March 1980 was still fresh when the Brazilian Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga wrote his famous poem, ‘San Romero de América’.[1] It includes the line, ‘no one shall silence your final homily’. Yet members of the political elite in El Salvador set every possible wheel in motion to prevent any official recognition of Romero by the Church. They had allies among some influential cardinals in the Vatican curia. Romero, they argued, had not died for the faith, but because he had interfered in politics.
Pope Francis has made the beatification and canonisation of Oscar Romero a very personal priority. For the pope, Romero is a martyr and a bishop who exemplifies what it is to be a poor Church for the poor. It was only a few weeks after Francis’ election that he had a meeting with Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the man responsible for Romero’s cause, and challenged him to ‘unblock’ the process and to move it on quickly. On 18 August 2014, while speaking to journalists on a plane on the journey back from Korea to Rome, he described Romero as a martyr for the love of neighbour, who had died for justice. The beatification took place on 23 May 2015 in El Salvador. On 30 October 2015, in a memorable address to a delegation of 500 Salvadorans, the pope said that the martyrdom of Romero had continued even after his death. Romero was ‘defamed, slandered, dragged through the mud’ – even among his fellow priests and bishops. And Pope Francis himself had witnessed this. ‘How often does this happen? People who have already given up their lives, who are already dead, are pelted still more with the hardest stone in the world, the tongue.’
You can read all of this article on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
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