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
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com
Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.
Parish Office Closed until Tuesday 22nd January, 2019
OLOL Piety Shop will be closed until 3rd February, 2019
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
Devonport Friday Adoration: Recommences 1st February, 2019.
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)
Devonport Friday Adoration: Recommences 1st February, 2019.
Devonport: Benediction (1st Friday of the Month) - Recommences Friday 1st February, 2019
Prayer Groups: Charismatic Renewal – In Recess until Monday 4th February, 2019
Weekday Masses 29th January - 1st February, 2019
Tuesday: NO MASS
Wednesday: NO MASS
Thursday: NO MASS
Friday: NO MASS
Weekend Masses 2nd & 3rd February
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
6:00pm Devonport
Sunday: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Readings this Week:
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
Readings Next Week:
Fourth Sunday in
Ordinary Time – Year C
Your Prayers are asked for the Sick:
John
Otenasek, Christina Okpon, Rose Stanley, Hilario Visorro, Joy Kiely
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Norris Binns, Bettye Cox, Mike Yard (brother of Fr Terry), Ray Grant, George Freeman, Kevin Lawler, Rex Radcliffe, Ernesto Magallanes Jr, Zoe Dickinson, Danny Busch, Stephen McSherry, Odik Rabino, Carmel Cook, Gladys Ballini, Nestor Manundo, Fortunata Paule, Pat Faulkner, Denise Payne, Zeta Mahoney, Monica Piggot, Isabel Archery
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 23rd - 29th January
Joan Garnsey, Len Gaffney, John Bilyk, Danielle Natoli, Bruce Peters, Gusta Schneiders, Lorraine Horsman, Robert Hatton, Carole Walker, Thomas Naylor, Noreen Sheehan, John Ryan, Thomas Kelly, Elizabeth Mazey, Sheila Poole, Trevor Delaney, Sheila Bourke, John Dunn, David Wyett. Also Alan Newland and Phil Cole.
May they Rest in Peace
Our very best wishes to David Smith (Sacred Heart Church)
Weekly Ramblings
Several years ago a Parish Priest of the Archdiocese (who
shall remain nameless) used to start his weekly Parish offering by telling
people how poorly he felt this past week. Ultimately it became a great joke
which everyone looked forward to reading each week.
Hopefully I’m not heading into the same territory but I
have had another ordinary week – thankfully there have not been too many
demands made on me because I doubt whether I’d be able to do anything about
them. On advice I will continue to rest next week which sadly means there will
be no masses during the week – I know this impacts both the 1st
Friday and 1st Saturday but I’d much rather recover than continue as
I am feeling now.
During the week we got the news that Fr Terry Yard’s
brother Mike had died in Deloraine after a long battle with cancer – our
prayers and condolences to Fr Terry and to Mike’s family – May he rest in
peace.
Anyone who wants to check out what Fr Paschal is up to in
Panama for WYD can check out his Facebook page – just search for ‘paschal
unyime okpon’ – and you can see videos of what is happening.
As mentioned a few weeks ago we will be looking to have Lenten
Discussion groups in various parts of the Parish. This year we are returning to
use the Brisbane Archdiocese material for the discussion groups as people have
found them more helpful. However, we will also have some copies of the
Wollongong daily reflection books available for anyone who wants to have a
daily reflection process for their Lenten journey. More info next weekend.
Please take care and please do better than I am.
SACRAMENTAL PREPARATION FOR 2019:
BBQ & BOOK CLUB:
HEALING MASS:
PLENARY COUNCIL 2020:
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall,
Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers Thursday 31st
January - Rod Clark & Graeme Rigney.
NEWS FROM
ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
Marriage Mass for the Renewal of Vows - will be celebrated
by Archbishop Julian Porteous on Sunday 17th February, 2019 at
Church of the Apostles, Launceston at 10.30am. Couples celebrating
Catholic Marriage milestones including couples in the early years of marriage
(1st, 5th and 10th anniversaries) are invited
to RSVP to the Office of Life, Marriage and Family by emailing ben.smith@aohtas.org.au or on 6208
6036. Catholic married couples will receive a special acknowledgement from
Archbishop Julian on the day.
Our Lady of Mercy Deloraine past pupils will have a
re-union lunch at the “Deloraine Hotel”, (near train/bridge) Friday
22nd February, 12noon for 12.30pm. For more information
please phone Mary Owen 6435: 4406
Everything Changes
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
We’re calling this year’s theme “Old and New: An Evolving
Faith.” The term “evolution” may be challenging for some Christians who believe
that science and the Bible contradict each other. We’ll look more closely at
the Bible (and how Jesus interpreted it) next week, and later this year we’ll
focus on Creation and science. For now, let’s simply consider how the inner
process of change and growth is fundamental to everything, even our bodies.
Having undergone several surgeries, cancer, and a heart attack, I’ve been
consoled by the way my body takes care of itself over time. The miracle of
healing comes from the inside—but with help from doctors and nurses!
In religion, however, many prefer magical, external,
one-time transactions instead of the universal pattern of growth and
healing—which is always through loss and renewal. This is the way that life
perpetuates itself in ever-new forms: through various changes that can feel
like death. The pattern disappoints and scares most of us, even many clergy who
think death and resurrection is just a doctrinal statement about the lone
Jesus.
There is not a single discipline today that does not
recognize change, development, growth, and some kind of evolving phenomenon:
psychology, cultural anthropology, history, physical sciences, philosophy,
social studies, drama, music, on and on. But in theology’s search for the Real
Absolute, it imagined a static “unmoved mover,” as Aristotelian philosophy
called it, a solid substance sitting above somewhere. Theology has struggled to
imagine that once God includes us in the narrative then God is for sure
changing! Is that not what the Bible—at its core—is saying? We matter to God
and God thus allows us to change the narrative of history . . . and the
narrative of God.
Religion tends to prefer and protect the status quo or the
supposedly wonderful past, yet what we now see is that religion often simply
preserves its own power and privilege. God does not need our protecting. We
often worship old things as substitutes for eternal things. Jesus strongly
rejects this love of the past and one’s private perfection, and he cleverly
quotes Isaiah (29:13) to do it: “In vain do they worship me, teaching merely
human precepts as if they were doctrines” (Matthew 15:9). Many of us seem to
think that God really is “back there,” in the good ol’ days of old-time
religion when God was really God, and everybody was happy and pure. This leaves
the present moment empty and hopeless—not to speak of the future.
Evolutionary thinking is actually contemplative thinking
because it leaves the full field of the future in God’s hands and agrees to
humbly hold the present with what it only tentatively knows for sure.
Evolutionary thinking must agree to both knowing and not knowing, at the same
time. This is hard for the egoically bound self. It wants to fully know—now—which
is never true anyway.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a
Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe
(Convergent Books: March 5, 2019), 93-95; and
Snake Bitten
This list is taken from the Archives of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article here
Everything is of one piece. Whenever we don’t take that seriously, we pay a price.
The renowned theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar gives an example of this. Beauty, he submits, is not some little “extra” that we can value or denigrate according to personal taste and temperament, like some luxury that we say we cannot afford. Like truth and goodness, it’s one of the properties of God and thus demands to be taken seriously as goodness and truth. If we neglect or denigrate beauty, he says, we will soon enough begin to neglect other areas of our lives. Here are his words:
“Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking then along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name, as if she were an ornament of a bourgeois past, whether he admits it or not, can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.”
Here’s a simpler expression of that. There’s a delightful little African tale that highlights the interconnectedness of everything and illustrates how, if we separate a thing from its sisters, we soon pay a price. The tale goes this way:
Once upon a time, when animals still talked, the mice on a farm called a summit of all the other animals. They were worried, they lamented, because they had seen the mistress of the house buy a mousetrap. They were now in danger. But the other animals scoffed at their anxiety. The cow said that she had nothing to worry about. A tiny little contraption couldn’t harm her. She could crush it with her foot. The pig reacted in a similar way. What did he have to worry about in the face of a tiny trap? The chicken also announced that it had no fear of this gadget. “It’s your concern. No worry for me!” it told the mice.
But all things are interconnected and that soon became evident. The mistress set the mousetrap and, on the very first night, heard it snap. Getting out of her bed to look what it had caught and she saw that it had trapped a snake by its tail. In trying to free the snake she was bitten and the poison soon had her feeling sick and running a fever. She went to the doctor who gave her medicines to combat the poison and advised her: “What you need now to get better is chicken broth.” (You can guess where the rest of this is going.) They slaughtered the chicken, but her fever lingered. Relatives and neighbors came to visit. More food was needed. They slaughtered the pig. Eventually the poison killed her. A huge funeral ensued. A lot of food was needed. The slaughtered the cow.
The moral of the story is clear. Everything is interconnected and our failure to see that leaves us in peril. Blindness to our interdependence, willful or not, is dangerous. We are inextricably tied to each other and to everything in the world. We can protest to the contrary but reality will hold its ground. And so, we cannot truly value one thing while we disdain something else. We cannot really love one person while we hate someone else. And we cannot give ourselves an exemption in one moral area and hope to be morally healthy as a whole. Everything is of one piece. There are no exceptions. When we ignore that truth we are eventually be snake-bitten by it.
I emphasize this because today, virtually everywhere, a dangerous tribalism is setting in. Everywhere, not unlike the animals in that African tale, we see families, communities, churches, and whole countries focusing more or less exclusively on their own needs without concern for other families, communities, churches, and countries. Other people’s problems, we believe, are not our concern. From the narrowness in our churches, to identity politics, to whole nations setting their own needs first, we hear echoes of the cow, pig, and chicken saying: “Not my concern! I’ll take care of myself. You take care of yourself!” This will come back to snake-bite us.
We will eventually pay the price for our blindness and non-concern and we will pay that price politically, socially, and economically. But we will even pay a higher price personally. What that snake-bite will do is captured in Von Balthasar’s warning: Whoever ignores or denigrates beauty will, he asserts, eventually be unable to pray or to love. That’s true too in all cases when we ignore our interconnectedness with others. By ignoring the needs of others we eventually corrupt our own wholeness so that we are no longer be able to treat ourselves with respect and empathy and, when that happens, we lose respect and empathy for life itself – and for God – because whenever reality isn’t respected it bites back with a mysterious vengeance.
The Long Road to Damascus
Weekday Masses 29th January - 1st February, 2019
Tuesday: NO MASS
Wednesday: NO MASS
Thursday: NO MASS
Friday: NO MASS
Weekend Masses 2nd & 3rd February
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
6:00pm Devonport
Sunday: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Readings this Week:
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C
First Reading: Nehemiah 8:2-6. 8-10
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:12-30
Gospel: Luke 1: 1-4. 4:14-21
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
As I begin my prayer, I try to relax and focus my attention
on my regular breath. I may close my eyes or gaze at a candle. Gently I slow
down and become aware of being in God’s presence. When I am ready, I read the
text carefully a couple of times. Perhaps I can imagine Jesus in the synagogue
setting. The people know him, he comes here every Sabbath. But now he returns,
having gained attention elsewhere in Galilee for his teaching and preaching. As
one of the crowd, what am I expecting from this familiar, but now renowned,
Jesus? As I listen to the words of Isaiah spoken in Jesus’s own voice, do they
strike me anew? Does Jesus read gently or forcefully? What, in particular,
causes me to pause? This is not an abstract message – what is it saying to me
today? How can I live out something of this message as his disciple? I spend
some time pondering this with the Lord and talking to him. I give thanks for
the many ways I see others putting Jesus’s words into practice around me. I end
my prayer with ‘Glory be to the Father…’
Readings Next Week:
Fourth Sunday in
Ordinary Time – Year C
First Reading: Jeremiah 1:4-5. 17-19
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:31 – 13:13
Gospel: Luke
4: 21-40
Your Prayers are asked for the Sick:
John
Otenasek, Christina Okpon, Rose Stanley, Hilario Visorro, Joy Kiely
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Norris Binns, Bettye Cox, Mike Yard (brother of Fr Terry), Ray Grant, George Freeman, Kevin Lawler, Rex Radcliffe, Ernesto Magallanes Jr, Zoe Dickinson, Danny Busch, Stephen McSherry, Odik Rabino, Carmel Cook, Gladys Ballini, Nestor Manundo, Fortunata Paule, Pat Faulkner, Denise Payne, Zeta Mahoney, Monica Piggot, Isabel Archery
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 23rd - 29th January
Joan Garnsey, Len Gaffney, John Bilyk, Danielle Natoli, Bruce Peters, Gusta Schneiders, Lorraine Horsman, Robert Hatton, Carole Walker, Thomas Naylor, Noreen Sheehan, John Ryan, Thomas Kelly, Elizabeth Mazey, Sheila Poole, Trevor Delaney, Sheila Bourke, John Dunn, David Wyett. Also Alan Newland and Phil Cole.
May they Rest in Peace
Our very best wishes to David Smith (Sacred Heart Church)
on the occasion of your 80th
Birthday.
May God bless you on
your special day and may it be filled
with family, friends, laughter and wonderful
memories.
Several years ago a Parish Priest of the Archdiocese (who
shall remain nameless) used to start his weekly Parish offering by telling
people how poorly he felt this past week. Ultimately it became a great joke
which everyone looked forward to reading each week.
Hopefully I’m not heading into the same territory but I
have had another ordinary week – thankfully there have not been too many
demands made on me because I doubt whether I’d be able to do anything about
them. On advice I will continue to rest next week which sadly means there will
be no masses during the week – I know this impacts both the 1st
Friday and 1st Saturday but I’d much rather recover than continue as
I am feeling now.
During the week we got the news that Fr Terry Yard’s
brother Mike had died in Deloraine after a long battle with cancer – our
prayers and condolences to Fr Terry and to Mike’s family – May he rest in
peace.
Anyone who wants to check out what Fr Paschal is up to in
Panama for WYD can check out his Facebook page – just search for ‘paschal
unyime okpon’ – and you can see videos of what is happening.
As mentioned a few weeks ago we will be looking to have Lenten
Discussion groups in various parts of the Parish. This year we are returning to
use the Brisbane Archdiocese material for the discussion groups as people have
found them more helpful. However, we will also have some copies of the
Wollongong daily reflection books available for anyone who wants to have a
daily reflection process for their Lenten journey. More info next weekend.
Please take care and please do better than I am.
SACRAMENTAL PREPARATION FOR 2019:
Information will be available shortly for children and
their families in Grade 3 and above who wish to be part of our Parish Sacramental
Preparation for 2019. If you know of any child/ren who are eligible to be
prepared for the Sacraments of Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist
please contact the Parish Office 6424:2783
BBQ & BOOK CLUB:
Michael and Grainne Hendrey invite you to join them in
their home each first Friday of the month for an evening of conversation and
spirituality-ness. BBQ starts at 6:30pm, BYO meat and drinks and something to
share. Book club from 7:30pm to 9pm. RSVP Michael 0417 540 566 or Grainne 0414
968 731
HEALING MASS:
Catholic Charismatic Renewal are sponsoring a HEALING MASS
at St Mary’s Catholic Church Penguin on Thursday 14th February commencing
at 7pm. All denominations are welcome to come and celebrate the liturgy
in a vibrant and dynamic way using charismatic praise and worship with the gifts
of tongues, prophecy, healing and anointing with blessed oil. After Mass, teams
will be available for individual prayer. Please bring a friend and a plate for
supper and fellowship in the hall. If you wish to know more or require
transport please contact Celestine Whiteley 6424:2043, Michael Gaffney 0447 018
068 or Tom Knaap 6425:2442.
PLENARY COUNCIL 2020:
You are invited to a follow-up gathering to develop our
responses to the question: What is God asking of us in Australia at this time? Thursday
28th February, 2019 10am – 11:30am at Parish House, Stewart Street, Devonport.
Contact Clare Kiely-Hoye 6428:2760
Thursday Nights - OLOL Hall,
Devonport. Eyes down 7.30pm!
Callers Thursday 31st
January - Rod Clark & Graeme Rigney.
NEWS FROM
ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:
125th Anniversary of St Canice Church, Glengarry Sunday
10th February. This
occasion will be marked with a concelebrated Mass at St Canice Catholic Church
at 10am followed by light refreshments 33 Glengarry Road, Glengarry. Archbishop
Julian Porteous will be the Celebrant on the day.
Marriage Mass for the Renewal of Vows - will be celebrated
by Archbishop Julian Porteous on Sunday 17th February, 2019 at
Church of the Apostles, Launceston at 10.30am. Couples celebrating
Catholic Marriage milestones including couples in the early years of marriage
(1st, 5th and 10th anniversaries) are invited
to RSVP to the Office of Life, Marriage and Family by emailing ben.smith@aohtas.org.au or on 6208
6036. Catholic married couples will receive a special acknowledgement from
Archbishop Julian on the day.
Our Lady of Mercy Deloraine past pupils will have a
re-union lunch at the “Deloraine Hotel”, (near train/bridge) Friday
22nd February, 12noon for 12.30pm. For more information
please phone Mary Owen 6435: 4406
Everything Changes
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
We’re calling this year’s theme “Old and New: An Evolving
Faith.” The term “evolution” may be challenging for some Christians who believe
that science and the Bible contradict each other. We’ll look more closely at
the Bible (and how Jesus interpreted it) next week, and later this year we’ll
focus on Creation and science. For now, let’s simply consider how the inner
process of change and growth is fundamental to everything, even our bodies.
Having undergone several surgeries, cancer, and a heart attack, I’ve been
consoled by the way my body takes care of itself over time. The miracle of
healing comes from the inside—but with help from doctors and nurses!
In religion, however, many prefer magical, external,
one-time transactions instead of the universal pattern of growth and
healing—which is always through loss and renewal. This is the way that life
perpetuates itself in ever-new forms: through various changes that can feel
like death. The pattern disappoints and scares most of us, even many clergy who
think death and resurrection is just a doctrinal statement about the lone
Jesus.
There is not a single discipline today that does not
recognize change, development, growth, and some kind of evolving phenomenon:
psychology, cultural anthropology, history, physical sciences, philosophy,
social studies, drama, music, on and on. But in theology’s search for the Real
Absolute, it imagined a static “unmoved mover,” as Aristotelian philosophy
called it, a solid substance sitting above somewhere. Theology has struggled to
imagine that once God includes us in the narrative then God is for sure
changing! Is that not what the Bible—at its core—is saying? We matter to God
and God thus allows us to change the narrative of history . . . and the
narrative of God.
Religion tends to prefer and protect the status quo or the
supposedly wonderful past, yet what we now see is that religion often simply
preserves its own power and privilege. God does not need our protecting. We
often worship old things as substitutes for eternal things. Jesus strongly
rejects this love of the past and one’s private perfection, and he cleverly
quotes Isaiah (29:13) to do it: “In vain do they worship me, teaching merely
human precepts as if they were doctrines” (Matthew 15:9). Many of us seem to
think that God really is “back there,” in the good ol’ days of old-time
religion when God was really God, and everybody was happy and pure. This leaves
the present moment empty and hopeless—not to speak of the future.
God keeps creating things from the inside out, so they are
forever yearning, developing, growing, and changing for the good. This is the
generative force implanted in all living things, which grow both from
within—because they are programmed for it—and from without—by taking in sun,
food, and water. Picture YHWH breathing into the soil that became Adam (Genesis
2:7). That is the eternal pattern. God is still breathing into soil every
moment!
Evolutionary thinking is actually contemplative thinking
because it leaves the full field of the future in God’s hands and agrees to
humbly hold the present with what it only tentatively knows for sure.
Evolutionary thinking must agree to both knowing and not knowing, at the same
time. This is hard for the egoically bound self. It wants to fully know—now—which
is never true anyway.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a
Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe
(Convergent Books: March 5, 2019), 93-95; and
“Introduction,” “Evolutionary Thinking,” Oneing, vol. 4, no.
2 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2016), 111-112, 115.
Snake Bitten
This list is taken from the Archives of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article here
Everything is of one piece. Whenever we don’t take that seriously, we pay a price.
The renowned theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar gives an example of this. Beauty, he submits, is not some little “extra” that we can value or denigrate according to personal taste and temperament, like some luxury that we say we cannot afford. Like truth and goodness, it’s one of the properties of God and thus demands to be taken seriously as goodness and truth. If we neglect or denigrate beauty, he says, we will soon enough begin to neglect other areas of our lives. Here are his words:
“Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking then along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name, as if she were an ornament of a bourgeois past, whether he admits it or not, can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.”
Here’s a simpler expression of that. There’s a delightful little African tale that highlights the interconnectedness of everything and illustrates how, if we separate a thing from its sisters, we soon pay a price. The tale goes this way:
Once upon a time, when animals still talked, the mice on a farm called a summit of all the other animals. They were worried, they lamented, because they had seen the mistress of the house buy a mousetrap. They were now in danger. But the other animals scoffed at their anxiety. The cow said that she had nothing to worry about. A tiny little contraption couldn’t harm her. She could crush it with her foot. The pig reacted in a similar way. What did he have to worry about in the face of a tiny trap? The chicken also announced that it had no fear of this gadget. “It’s your concern. No worry for me!” it told the mice.
But all things are interconnected and that soon became evident. The mistress set the mousetrap and, on the very first night, heard it snap. Getting out of her bed to look what it had caught and she saw that it had trapped a snake by its tail. In trying to free the snake she was bitten and the poison soon had her feeling sick and running a fever. She went to the doctor who gave her medicines to combat the poison and advised her: “What you need now to get better is chicken broth.” (You can guess where the rest of this is going.) They slaughtered the chicken, but her fever lingered. Relatives and neighbors came to visit. More food was needed. They slaughtered the pig. Eventually the poison killed her. A huge funeral ensued. A lot of food was needed. The slaughtered the cow.
The moral of the story is clear. Everything is interconnected and our failure to see that leaves us in peril. Blindness to our interdependence, willful or not, is dangerous. We are inextricably tied to each other and to everything in the world. We can protest to the contrary but reality will hold its ground. And so, we cannot truly value one thing while we disdain something else. We cannot really love one person while we hate someone else. And we cannot give ourselves an exemption in one moral area and hope to be morally healthy as a whole. Everything is of one piece. There are no exceptions. When we ignore that truth we are eventually be snake-bitten by it.
I emphasize this because today, virtually everywhere, a dangerous tribalism is setting in. Everywhere, not unlike the animals in that African tale, we see families, communities, churches, and whole countries focusing more or less exclusively on their own needs without concern for other families, communities, churches, and countries. Other people’s problems, we believe, are not our concern. From the narrowness in our churches, to identity politics, to whole nations setting their own needs first, we hear echoes of the cow, pig, and chicken saying: “Not my concern! I’ll take care of myself. You take care of yourself!” This will come back to snake-bite us.
We will eventually pay the price for our blindness and non-concern and we will pay that price politically, socially, and economically. But we will even pay a higher price personally. What that snake-bite will do is captured in Von Balthasar’s warning: Whoever ignores or denigrates beauty will, he asserts, eventually be unable to pray or to love. That’s true too in all cases when we ignore our interconnectedness with others. By ignoring the needs of others we eventually corrupt our own wholeness so that we are no longer be able to treat ourselves with respect and empathy and, when that happens, we lose respect and empathy for life itself – and for God – because whenever reality isn’t respected it bites back with a mysterious vengeance.
The Long Road to Damascus
This article written by Bishop John Arnold was written as part of a series during the Year of St Paul in 2008. This past week (25th Jan) we celebrated the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul so this article is provided as a look at his conversion. You can find the complete article on the ThinkingFaith.org website or by clicking here. The Right Rev John Arnold is Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster and Titular Bishop of Lindisfarne.
Pope Benedict XVI announced in 2007 that we should have a holy year dedicated to St Paul, beginning in June 2008 and lasting for one calendar year. St Paul’s letters are still the foundation of Christian spirituality today, yet there is as much to be learned by reflecting on his life as on his writings. How much do we know about him? To what extent does he influence the way I live my faith? How much more helpful might he and his writing be to me?
This article written by Bishop John Arnold was written as part of a series during the Year of St Paul in 2008. This past week (25th Jan) we celebrated the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul so this article is provided as a look at his conversion. You can find the complete article on the ThinkingFaith.org website or by clicking here. The Right Rev John Arnold is Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster and Titular Bishop of Lindisfarne.
Pope Benedict XVI announced in 2007 that we should have a holy year dedicated to St Paul, beginning in June 2008 and lasting for one calendar year. St Paul’s letters are still the foundation of Christian spirituality today, yet there is as much to be learned by reflecting on his life as on his writings. How much do we know about him? To what extent does he influence the way I live my faith? How much more helpful might he and his writing be to me?
The Damascus Road Experience
It is unjust to suggest that everything happened in a blinding flash of light on the road to Damascus. Something dramatic certainly happened. It was enough to stop St Paul carrying out his mission of persecution. It seems to have been enough to put St Paul into a state of confusion, which began the process of conversion. It certainly did not impose a conversion on St Paul and dictate a change in his life.
St Paul was a Pharisee. He was fully trained and a very aggressive advocate for his faith. It seems that he hated this new Christian “sect”. He was prepared to persecute those who had become Christians and, according to the Acts of the Apostles, was on his way to Damascus to arrest the Christian community there. Whatever happened on the Damascus Road was enough to cause him to change his mind about his immediate intentions. But this could only have been the beginning of his own conversion to Christ.
Continue reading this article by clicking here
It is unjust to suggest that everything happened in a blinding flash of light on the road to Damascus. Something dramatic certainly happened. It was enough to stop St Paul carrying out his mission of persecution. It seems to have been enough to put St Paul into a state of confusion, which began the process of conversion. It certainly did not impose a conversion on St Paul and dictate a change in his life.
St Paul was a Pharisee. He was fully trained and a very aggressive advocate for his faith. It seems that he hated this new Christian “sect”. He was prepared to persecute those who had become Christians and, according to the Acts of the Apostles, was on his way to Damascus to arrest the Christian community there. Whatever happened on the Damascus Road was enough to cause him to change his mind about his immediate intentions. But this could only have been the beginning of his own conversion to Christ.
Continue reading this article by clicking here
