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.
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
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: First Friday each month - commences at 10am and concludes with Mass
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – Mondays 7pm Community Room Ulverstone
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 - commences at 10am and concludes with Mass
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: First Friday each month - commences at 10am and concludes with Mass
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – Mondays 7pm Community Room Ulverstone
Weekday Masses 30th April – 3rd May, 2019
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Next Weekend 4th & 5th May, 2019
Saturday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
6:00pm Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Ministry Rosters 4th & 5th May, 2019
Piety Shop 4th May: R Baker 5th May: O McGinley
Ulverstone:
Penguin:
Latrobe:
Port Sorell:
Readings This Week: Second Sunday of Easter – Year C
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
Readings Next Week: Third Sunday of
Easter – Year C
Your prayers are asked for the sick:
Christina Okpon, Terry Carroll, Heather Mahoney, Pauline Coopper, Robert Luxton, Adrian Drane, Fred Heazlewood, Jason Carr, Thomas & Frances McGeown, Charlotte Milic, John Kelly, David Cole, Rose Stanley & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Myra Goss, Bernard Wendt, Ian Wright
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 25th April – 1st May
Courtney Bryan, Rita McQueen, Ellen Lynch, Ron Allison, Delia Soden, Ron Batten, Cedric Davey, Maureen Beechey, Frances Hunt, Beverley O’Connor, Mark McCormack, Brian Leary, David O’Rourke, Mary Scolyer, Brian McCormick, Michael Harvey, Michael Pankiv, Matthew Keen, Margaret Cameron, William Cloney, Thelma Johnson, Julie Horniblow, Aileen Harris, Nell Kelleher, Doris Coad, Peter Rae, Clare Kuhnle.
May
they Rest in Peace
Mersey Leven Parish Community welcome
and congratulate
Weekly
Ramblings
HEALING MASS:
MACKILLOP HILL
Spirituality in the Coffee Shoppe.
Monday 29th April 2019 10.30 – 12 noon
Come along and enjoy a lively discussion over morning tea!
123 William Street, FORTH. Phone: 6428 3095
No bookings necessary. Donation appreciated.
FOOTY
MARGIN RESULTS:
BINGO THURSDAY 2nd May – Eyes down 7:30pm.
Callers Merv Tippett & Alan Luxton
Teacher of Wisdom
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
Over the next few weeks Cynthia
Bourgeault, Episcopal priest and one of CAC’s core faculty members, reflects on
Jesus as a wisdom teacher, drawing from her rich understanding of the ancient
wisdom tradition.
When I talk about Jesus as a wisdom master, I need to
mention that in the Near East “wisdom teacher” is a recognized spiritual
occupation. In seminary, I was taught that there were only two categories of
religious authority: one could be a priest or a prophet. That may be how the
tradition filtered down to us in the West. But within the wider Near East
(including Judaism itself), there was also a third, albeit unofficial,
category: a moshel moshelim, or teacher of wisdom, one who taught the ancient
traditions of the transformation of the human being.
These teachers of transformation—among whom I would place
the authors of the Hebrew wisdom literature such as Ecclesiastes, Job, and
Proverbs—may be the early precursors to the rabbi whose task it was to interpret
the law and lore of Judaism (often creating their own innovations of each). The
hallmark of these wisdom teachers was their use of pithy sayings, puzzles, and
parables rather than prophetic pronouncements or divine decree. They spoke to
people in the language that people spoke, the language of story rather than
law.
Parables, such as the stories Jesus told, are a wisdom genre
belonging to mashal, the Jewish branch of universal wisdom tradition. Jesus not
only taught within this tradition, he turned it end for end. Before we can
appreciate the extraordinary nuances he brought to understanding human
transformation, we need first to know something about the context in which he
was working.
There has been a strong tendency among Christians to turn
Jesus into a priest—“our great high priest” (see the Letter to the Hebrews).
The image of Christos Pantokrator (“Lord of All Creation”) dressed in splendid
sacramental robes has dominated the iconography of both Eastern and Western
Christendom. But Jesus was not a priest. He had nothing to do with the temple
hierarchy in Jerusalem, and he kept a respectful distance from most ritual
observances. Nor was he a prophet in the usual sense of the term: a messenger
sent to the people of Israel to warn them of impending political catastrophe in
an attempt to redirect their hearts to God. Jesus was not that interested in
the political fate of Israel, nor would he accept the role of Messiah
continuously being thrust upon him.
His message was not one of repentance (at least in the usual
way we understand it; more on that later this week) and return to the covenant.
Rather, he stayed close to the ground of wisdom: the transformation of human
consciousness. He asked timeless and deeply personal questions: What does it
mean to die before you die? How do you go about losing your little life to find
the bigger one? Is it possible to live on this planet with a generosity,
abundance, fearlessness, and beauty that mirror Divine Being itself?
These are the wisdom questions, and they are the entire
field of Jesus’ concern.
ASCENDING, DESCENDING, AND JUST KEEPING STEADY
This article is taken from the Archives of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article and many other by clicking here
Where should we be casting our eyes? Upward, downward, or just on the road that we’re walking?
Well there are different kinds of spiritualities: Spiritualities of the Ascent, Spiritualities of the Descent, and Spiritualities of Maintenance, and each is important.
Spiritualities of the Ascent are spiritualities that invite us to strive always for what’s higher, for what’s more noble, for what stretches us and takes us (figuratively) upward beyond the humdrum moral and spiritual ruts within which we habitually find ourselves. They tell us that we can be more, that we can transcend the ordinary and break through the old ceilings that have up now constituted our horizon. They tell us that if we stretch ourselves enough we will be able to walk on water, be great saints, be enflamed with the Spirit, and experience already now the deep joys of God’s Kingdom. These spiritualities tell us that sanctity lies in the ascent and that we should be habitually stretching ourselves towards higher goals.
These spiritualities have a secular counterpart and that counterpart is what we often hear from academic commencement speakers who are forever challenging those graduating to dream big dreams, to reach for the stars.
There’s a lot to be said for this kind of an invitation. Much of Gospels are exactly that kind of a challenge: Keep your eyes trained upward: Think with your big mind; feel with your big heart; imagine yourself as God’s child and mirror that greatness; let Jesus’ teachings stretch you; let Jesus’ spirit fill you; let high ideals enlarge you.
But the Gospels also invite us to a Spirituality of the Descent. They tell us to make friends with the desert, the cross, with ashes, with self-renunciation, with humiliation, with our shadow, and with death itself. They tell us that we grow not just be moving upward but also by descending downward. We grow too by letting the desert work us over, by renouncing cherished dreams to accept the cross, by letting the humiliations that befall us deepen our character, by having the courage to face our own deep chaos, and by making peace with our own mortality. These spiritualities tell us that sometimes our task, spiritual and psychological, is not to raise our eyes to the heavens, but to look down upon the earth, to sit in the ashes of loneliness and humiliation, to stare down the restless desert inside us, and to make peace with our human limits and our mortality.
There aren’t a lot of secular counterparts to this spirituality (though you do see this in what’s best in psychology and anthropology). The challenge of the descent is not one you will often hear from a commencement speaker.
But there is still another genre of spiritualities, a very important kind, namely, Spiritualities of Maintenance. These spiritualities invite us to proper self-care, to factor in that the journey of discipleship is a marathon, not a sprint, and so to take heed of our limits. We aren’t all spiritual athletes and tiredness, depression, loneliness, and fragile health, mental or physical, can, if we are not careful with ourselves, break us. These spiritualities invite us to be cautious about both an over-enthusiastic ascent and a naive descent. They tell us that dullness, boredom, and ennui will meet us along the road and so we should have a glass of wine when needed and let our weariness dictate that on a given night it might be healthier for us spiritually to watch a mindless sitcom or a sports event than to spend that time watching a religious program. They also tell us to respect the fact that, given our mental fragility at times, there descents that we should stay away from. They don’t deny that we need to push ourselves to new heights and that we need to have the courage, at times, to face the chaos and desert inside us; but they caution that we must also always take into account what we can handle at a given time in our lives and what we can’t handle just then. Good spiritualities don’t put you on a universal conveyor-belt, the same road for everyone, but take into account what you need to do to maintain your energy and sanity on a marathon journey.
Spiritualities of Maintenance have a secular counterpart and we can learn things here from our culture’s stress on maintaining one’s physical health through proper exercise, proper diet, and proper health habits. Sometimes in our culture this becomes one-sided and obsessive, but it is still something for spiritualities to learn from, namely, that the task in life isn’t just to grow and to courageously face your shadow and mortality. Sometimes, many times, the more urgent task is simply to stay healthy, sane, and buoyant.
Different spiritualities stress one or the other of these: the ascent, the descent, or (less commonly) maintenance, but a good spirituality will stress all three: Train your eyes upward, don’t forget to look downward, and keep your feet planted firmly on the ground.
Doubting Thomas and Faith in the Resurrection
This article comes from the Thinkingfaith.org website. You can find this and similar reflections by clicking here
The immigration detention centre residents for whom Harry Elias SJ leads bible study draw much faith and encouragement from biblical texts, which are often their sole reading material. Fr Elias shares his reflections on their discussions about what it really means to have faith in the risen Christ: it is not about an encounter with a resurrected body, but about an understanding of God’s faithfulness to his people. Harry Elias SJ assists in the Hurtado Jesuit Centre in Wapping, East London.
Faith in the resurrection is commonly thought of as believing that life continues after death in some kind of body. St Paul talks of a heavenly body as opposed to an earthly body (1 Corinthians 15:40), but that does not leave me much the wiser about what form that body takes, nor would St Paul intend it to. All I know is what I am told about the appearances and movements of the risen Jesus in the gospels.
One such appearance is to the disciples (John 20:26-31), among them Thomas, who is most often singled out as ‘doubting’. I am not convinced that this is a fair descriptor. We know that he was called ‘the Twin’ (John 20:24); and a twin, especially if he were an identical twin, would have been accustomed from very early on in life to being mistaken for his lookalike sibling. So perhaps Thomas was making sure, in case the other disciples were deceived by a lookalike who would later embarrass them, that indeed it was Jesus, with the mark of his nails to show that he had really died and risen.
Whatever were Thomas’s motives, when Jesus asked him to feel the wounds of the nails in his body, Thomas answered, ‘My Lord and my God!’; and Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’ John continues by saying that the signs he records were done in the presence of the disciples and are written that the reader ‘may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name’. Faith needs to be mediated through the senses, it can be aroused and encouraged by what is seen, touched and heard; but it cannot be reduced to sensory experience. Thomas (and the reader of the gospel) is chided for doubting the testimony given to him by eyewitnesses, but his faith in Jesus, as his Lord and God, went beyond what he saw and heard and touched (or not).
Central to Thomas’s and our faith in the resurrection is not so much that there is life after death in a risen body, but that Jesus is vindicated as Lord and God. ‘God raised him on the third day,’ said Peter in the house of Cornelius, ‘and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.’ (Acts 10:40-42)
The Lordship of Jesus in his resurrection is the prime testimony to the faithfulness of the God of Israel to his covenant people, who were the first to be given the gospel. It was, ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors [who] has glorified his servant Jesus’ (Acts 3:13). God is faithful to Israel, to whom belongs, ‘the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises’ (Romans 9:4); and especially to his promise to Abraham that, ‘in your descendants all the families of the earth shall be blessed’ (Galatians 3:8, Genesis 12:3).
The faithfulness of God in making a new covenant, in establishing his Kingdom ‘on earth as it is in heaven’, is in fact the gospel, the good news:
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: 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 my people ; ….for I shall forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more’. (Jeremiah 31:33-4)
Prophecies of the new covenant had envisaged the Kingdom of God coming on earth as a new creation: in Ezekiel 36:26, ‘A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you’; and Isaiah 65:17, ‘For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth’. The Kingdom begins to be established through the life and teaching of Jesus, supported by his miracles. His resurrection is the first fruits of the new creation, followed at his coming – the parousia – by those who belong to Christ (1 Corinthians 15:23). And, in fact, all creation ‘waits with eager longing’ to be ‘set free from its bondage to decay to obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.’(Romans 8:19,21) God’s rule is now mediated by the risen Lamb that was slain (Revelation 5:13), sitting at the right hand of God (Mark 14:62 and Daniel 7:13-4).
At the Last Supper, Jesus spoke of the offering of his suffering and death for the forgiveness of sins as establishing the new covenant (see also 1 Corinthians 11:25: ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood’). He refers elsewhere to prophecies of his Lordship: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ (Mark 12:36). In Luke’s Gospel, when the risen Jesus meets the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, he tells them, ‘“Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.’ (Luke 24:26-7). Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12, one of the Suffering Servant hymns, was also believed to prophesy the atoning suffering of the Messiah: ‘But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed’ (53:5).
The faithfulness of God in fulfilling these prophecies is seen both as judgment on evil and as merciful love, bringing forgiveness. For Jesus, salvation and God’s mercy were the focus; his warnings of judgment were to enable people to repent and receive God’s mercy in the grace of forgiveness. Jesus suffered obediently the judgment of death for sin, which is common to all, but in his rising from the dead, God’s mercy comes in the Holy Spirit, with forgiveness for all who repent and believe in him and are baptised (see Acts 2:38).
Paul says the Spirit given to us is the Spirit of adoption who enables us to cry ‘Abba! Father’; ‘we are joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may be glorified with him’ (Romans 8:16,17). And, ‘If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you’ (Romans 11:5). The newness of life in the Spirit is experienced in faith, which is the assurance of things hoped for (Hebrews 11:1). The Spirit comforts us and enables us to endure even to the point of death. The Spirit arouses in us a personal love of the God who enters our life as Saviour, and unites us in love with the brethren of Christ, especially the ones in need, enabling even the forgiveness of our enemy. The expected conduct to be aimed at by a Christian is found concentrated in the Sermon the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and in Paul – especially in Romans 12, where he describes this newness of life in practical terms; and, of course, in his famous analysis of the sacrificial love that imitates the love of Christ (1 Corinthians 13).
Faith in God’s faithfulness to each one of us, so that ‘all things work together for good for those who love God’ (Romans 8:28), can make us read the events of our own life also in terms of personal faithfulness, God’s and ours. Yet, it is He who takes the initiative and He who finishes the work in us and of His new creation – He is the Alpha and Omega (Revelation 1:8). Paul says that the word of faith he proclaims is on the Christian’s lips and in his heart, ‘because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved’. (Romans 10:9). We have to keep asking ourselves whether we truly believe in, and so experience, the power of God’s mercy coming to us through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour risen from the dead. Can we, for whom Jesus is not made visible, not doubt, but be blessed in believing?
Weekday Masses 30th April – 3rd May, 2019
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Next Weekend 4th & 5th May, 2019
Saturday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
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 4th & 5th May, 2019
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: M Stewart, M Gaffney, H Lim
10:30am J Henderson, J Phillips, P Piccolo
Ministers of Communion:
Vigil D Peters, M Heazlewood, T Muir, M Gerrand, P Shelverton
10.30am: F Sly, E Petts, K Hull, S Arrowsmith
Cleaners 3rd May: M.W.C. 10th May: K.S.C.
Piety Shop 4th May: R Baker 5th May: O McGinley
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: R Locket Ministers of Communion: M Murray, J Pisarskis, C Harvey, P
Grech
Cleaners: K.S.C. Flowers: M Bryan Hospitality: T Good Team
Penguin:
Greeters Fifita Family Commentator:
Y Downes Readers:
Fifita Family
Ministers of
Communion: J
Barker, E Nickols Liturgy: Pine Road
Setting Up: A Landers Care of Church: S Coleman, M Owen
Latrobe:
Reader: Minister of Communion: Procession of
Gifts:
Port Sorell:
Readers: M Badcock, G Gigliotti Ministers of Communion: Jan & Don
Peterson
Cleaners: A Hynes
Readings This Week: Second Sunday of Easter – Year C
First Reading: Acts 5: 12-16
Second Reading: Apocalypse 1:9 - 13, 17 -19
Gospel: John 20:19 - 31
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
As I prepare to read this Gospel, I ask for the grace to be
aware of the presence of Jesus in my life. I ask Jesus to breathe his spirit of
peace upon me. I read the Gospel slowly. Using my imagination, I enter into the
scene, standing with the disciples in the upper room. What is the mood of the
gathering? I wonder what they are afraid of? What are my own fears? I imagine
Jesus suddenly being present, standing alongside me, looking deeply into my
being; knowing, loving and accepting me just as I am. Even in my doubt, Jesus
is sending me to spread his love. What words of encouragement do I need to hear
Jesus speak to me? What do I want to say to Jesus? I close my prayer – like
Thomas, with my own declaration of belief.
Readings Next Week: Third Sunday of
Easter – Year C
First
Reading: Acts 5:27 – 32, 40 -41
Second
Reading: Apocalypse 5:11 - 14
Gospel: John 21: 1 - 19
Your prayers are asked for the sick:
Christina Okpon, Terry Carroll, Heather Mahoney, Pauline Coopper, Robert Luxton, Adrian Drane, Fred Heazlewood, Jason Carr, Thomas & Frances McGeown, Charlotte Milic, John Kelly, David Cole, Rose Stanley & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Myra Goss, Bernard Wendt, Ian Wright
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 25th April – 1st May
Courtney Bryan, Rita McQueen, Ellen Lynch, Ron Allison, Delia Soden, Ron Batten, Cedric Davey, Maureen Beechey, Frances Hunt, Beverley O’Connor, Mark McCormack, Brian Leary, David O’Rourke, Mary Scolyer, Brian McCormick, Michael Harvey, Michael Pankiv, Matthew Keen, Margaret Cameron, William Cloney, Thelma Johnson, Julie Horniblow, Aileen Harris, Nell Kelleher, Doris Coad, Peter Rae, Clare Kuhnle.
May
they Rest in Peace
Mersey Leven Parish Community welcome
and congratulate
Dawson Youd
on his Baptism this weekend at St
Patrick’s Church, Latrobe.
Weekly
Ramblings
I’ve just
returned from the Anzac Day Service at Devonport where, once again, there was a
great crowd of families as well as veterans commemorating the sacrifice of
those who gave their lives for the freedoms we enjoy today. From the
conversations of those who were at the Dawn Service both at Devonport,
Ulverstone and Latrobe who I met today these services were also well attended.
Thanks to all those who come out in support of a now increasingly smaller
number of Veterans of the conflicts of the 50’s, 60’s & 70’s as well as the
younger veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.
I
received a message from Fr Paschal early Thursday morning to say that he had
arrived safely in Nigeria and that his mother was excited to see him. Please
keep her in your prayers, especially during this time that he is able to be
with her. He will be returning home on 18th May.
Over the
next two months, until the last weekend of June, I will be asking the Lay
Liturgical Leaders for some assistance at different centres over some weekends.
This is because of Fr Paschal’s absence and then because I will be on holidays
for the middle three weekends of June and to ensure that Fr Phil does not have
too heavy a work load, besides he’s (re)tired! Details of where these liturgies
will be celebrated will be in the Newsletter each weekend as appropriate.
Several
weeks before Fr Paschal asked to be able to visit his mother I had been asked
to be the main celebrant at the Edmund Rice Mass at St Virgil’s College on
Friday, 3rd May – and I had said yes because both Fr Paschal and Fr
Phil were here to celebrate the 1st Friday Masses. Unfortunately,
because of my absence in Hobart there will not be Exposition, Benediction or
Mass at Devonport this coming Friday – however there will be the opportunity
for the usual time of Adoration from 10am. The 1st Saturday of the
Month Mass at Ulverstone will be celebrated as usual.
Life
around the Parish will return to a little bit of normality this week with the 2nd
School Term commencing and hopefully there might also be a little bit more
action with Fr Phil’s unit this week. It also looks as if there will finally be
some tenants moving into the Affordable Housing Units at 88 Stewart Street –
I’ll believe when I see it!
Please take care on the roads and we look forward to
seeing you next weekend.
HEALING MASS:
Catholic Charismatic Renewal, are sponsoring a HEALING MASS with Fr Alexander Obiorah at
St Mary’s Catholic Church Penguin on Thursday
2nd May 2019,
commencing at 7.00 pm. All denominations are welcome to come and celebrate the liturgy.
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 or Michael Gaffney 0447 018 068
MACKILLOP HILL
Spirituality in the Coffee Shoppe.
Monday 29th April 2019 10.30 – 12 noon
Come along and enjoy a lively discussion over morning tea!
123 William Street, FORTH. Phone: 6428 3095
No bookings necessary. Donation appreciated.
FOOTY
MARGIN RESULTS:
Round 5 (Friday 19th April) Essendon won by 58 points.
Congratulations to the following winners; Zillah Jones, Bernice Mitchell & Kerry
Good.
BINGO THURSDAY 2nd May – Eyes down 7:30pm.
Callers Merv Tippett & Alan Luxton
USEFUL APP
– from Fr Mike
Earlier this year I came across an App for Smartphones
which gives you a reading guide so that you are able to read the Bible in a
Year. The App – called BIOY – is available for both Apple and Android phones
and has a daily theme as well as 3 passages of Scripture to read and reflect on
each day. I have found it useful and helpful and highly recommend it. Since
starting at the beginning of the year I’ve read bits of the Scriptures that
I’ve previously skipped over because it didn’t suit or was ‘dull and boring’ -
now being put into a new context is still challenging but readable.
It is okay to start now because the readings will come
round again at this time next year.
CARTOON
Some time back this series of cartoons about Pope Francis
came on the scene. There are two cartoons a week and they can be accessed by
going to Google and typing ‘Francis Chronicles’ and following the link.
Below is a recent cartoon – one of many with some deep
reflection.
Teacher of Wisdom
Over the next few weeks Cynthia
Bourgeault, Episcopal priest and one of CAC’s core faculty members, reflects on
Jesus as a wisdom teacher, drawing from her rich understanding of the ancient
wisdom tradition.
When I talk about Jesus as a wisdom master, I need to
mention that in the Near East “wisdom teacher” is a recognized spiritual
occupation. In seminary, I was taught that there were only two categories of
religious authority: one could be a priest or a prophet. That may be how the
tradition filtered down to us in the West. But within the wider Near East
(including Judaism itself), there was also a third, albeit unofficial,
category: a moshel moshelim, or teacher of wisdom, one who taught the ancient
traditions of the transformation of the human being.
These teachers of transformation—among whom I would place
the authors of the Hebrew wisdom literature such as Ecclesiastes, Job, and
Proverbs—may be the early precursors to the rabbi whose task it was to interpret
the law and lore of Judaism (often creating their own innovations of each). The
hallmark of these wisdom teachers was their use of pithy sayings, puzzles, and
parables rather than prophetic pronouncements or divine decree. They spoke to
people in the language that people spoke, the language of story rather than
law.
Parables, such as the stories Jesus told, are a wisdom genre
belonging to mashal, the Jewish branch of universal wisdom tradition. Jesus not
only taught within this tradition, he turned it end for end. Before we can
appreciate the extraordinary nuances he brought to understanding human
transformation, we need first to know something about the context in which he
was working.
There has been a strong tendency among Christians to turn
Jesus into a priest—“our great high priest” (see the Letter to the Hebrews).
The image of Christos Pantokrator (“Lord of All Creation”) dressed in splendid
sacramental robes has dominated the iconography of both Eastern and Western
Christendom. But Jesus was not a priest. He had nothing to do with the temple
hierarchy in Jerusalem, and he kept a respectful distance from most ritual
observances. Nor was he a prophet in the usual sense of the term: a messenger
sent to the people of Israel to warn them of impending political catastrophe in
an attempt to redirect their hearts to God. Jesus was not that interested in
the political fate of Israel, nor would he accept the role of Messiah
continuously being thrust upon him.
His message was not one of repentance (at least in the usual
way we understand it; more on that later this week) and return to the covenant.
Rather, he stayed close to the ground of wisdom: the transformation of human
consciousness. He asked timeless and deeply personal questions: What does it
mean to die before you die? How do you go about losing your little life to find
the bigger one? Is it possible to live on this planet with a generosity,
abundance, fearlessness, and beauty that mirror Divine Being itself?
These are the wisdom questions, and they are the entire
field of Jesus’ concern.
Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus:
Transforming Heart and Mind—A New Perspective on Christ and His Message
(Shambhala: 2008), 23-24.
ASCENDING, DESCENDING, AND JUST KEEPING STEADY
This article is taken from the Archives of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article and many other by clicking here
Where should we be casting our eyes? Upward, downward, or just on the road that we’re walking?
Well there are different kinds of spiritualities: Spiritualities of the Ascent, Spiritualities of the Descent, and Spiritualities of Maintenance, and each is important.
Spiritualities of the Ascent are spiritualities that invite us to strive always for what’s higher, for what’s more noble, for what stretches us and takes us (figuratively) upward beyond the humdrum moral and spiritual ruts within which we habitually find ourselves. They tell us that we can be more, that we can transcend the ordinary and break through the old ceilings that have up now constituted our horizon. They tell us that if we stretch ourselves enough we will be able to walk on water, be great saints, be enflamed with the Spirit, and experience already now the deep joys of God’s Kingdom. These spiritualities tell us that sanctity lies in the ascent and that we should be habitually stretching ourselves towards higher goals.
These spiritualities have a secular counterpart and that counterpart is what we often hear from academic commencement speakers who are forever challenging those graduating to dream big dreams, to reach for the stars.
There’s a lot to be said for this kind of an invitation. Much of Gospels are exactly that kind of a challenge: Keep your eyes trained upward: Think with your big mind; feel with your big heart; imagine yourself as God’s child and mirror that greatness; let Jesus’ teachings stretch you; let Jesus’ spirit fill you; let high ideals enlarge you.
But the Gospels also invite us to a Spirituality of the Descent. They tell us to make friends with the desert, the cross, with ashes, with self-renunciation, with humiliation, with our shadow, and with death itself. They tell us that we grow not just be moving upward but also by descending downward. We grow too by letting the desert work us over, by renouncing cherished dreams to accept the cross, by letting the humiliations that befall us deepen our character, by having the courage to face our own deep chaos, and by making peace with our own mortality. These spiritualities tell us that sometimes our task, spiritual and psychological, is not to raise our eyes to the heavens, but to look down upon the earth, to sit in the ashes of loneliness and humiliation, to stare down the restless desert inside us, and to make peace with our human limits and our mortality.
There aren’t a lot of secular counterparts to this spirituality (though you do see this in what’s best in psychology and anthropology). The challenge of the descent is not one you will often hear from a commencement speaker.
But there is still another genre of spiritualities, a very important kind, namely, Spiritualities of Maintenance. These spiritualities invite us to proper self-care, to factor in that the journey of discipleship is a marathon, not a sprint, and so to take heed of our limits. We aren’t all spiritual athletes and tiredness, depression, loneliness, and fragile health, mental or physical, can, if we are not careful with ourselves, break us. These spiritualities invite us to be cautious about both an over-enthusiastic ascent and a naive descent. They tell us that dullness, boredom, and ennui will meet us along the road and so we should have a glass of wine when needed and let our weariness dictate that on a given night it might be healthier for us spiritually to watch a mindless sitcom or a sports event than to spend that time watching a religious program. They also tell us to respect the fact that, given our mental fragility at times, there descents that we should stay away from. They don’t deny that we need to push ourselves to new heights and that we need to have the courage, at times, to face the chaos and desert inside us; but they caution that we must also always take into account what we can handle at a given time in our lives and what we can’t handle just then. Good spiritualities don’t put you on a universal conveyor-belt, the same road for everyone, but take into account what you need to do to maintain your energy and sanity on a marathon journey.
Spiritualities of Maintenance have a secular counterpart and we can learn things here from our culture’s stress on maintaining one’s physical health through proper exercise, proper diet, and proper health habits. Sometimes in our culture this becomes one-sided and obsessive, but it is still something for spiritualities to learn from, namely, that the task in life isn’t just to grow and to courageously face your shadow and mortality. Sometimes, many times, the more urgent task is simply to stay healthy, sane, and buoyant.
Different spiritualities stress one or the other of these: the ascent, the descent, or (less commonly) maintenance, but a good spirituality will stress all three: Train your eyes upward, don’t forget to look downward, and keep your feet planted firmly on the ground.
Doubting Thomas and Faith in the Resurrection
This article comes from the Thinkingfaith.org website. You can find this and similar reflections by clicking here
The immigration detention centre residents for whom Harry Elias SJ leads bible study draw much faith and encouragement from biblical texts, which are often their sole reading material. Fr Elias shares his reflections on their discussions about what it really means to have faith in the risen Christ: it is not about an encounter with a resurrected body, but about an understanding of God’s faithfulness to his people. Harry Elias SJ assists in the Hurtado Jesuit Centre in Wapping, East London.
Faith in the resurrection is commonly thought of as believing that life continues after death in some kind of body. St Paul talks of a heavenly body as opposed to an earthly body (1 Corinthians 15:40), but that does not leave me much the wiser about what form that body takes, nor would St Paul intend it to. All I know is what I am told about the appearances and movements of the risen Jesus in the gospels.
One such appearance is to the disciples (John 20:26-31), among them Thomas, who is most often singled out as ‘doubting’. I am not convinced that this is a fair descriptor. We know that he was called ‘the Twin’ (John 20:24); and a twin, especially if he were an identical twin, would have been accustomed from very early on in life to being mistaken for his lookalike sibling. So perhaps Thomas was making sure, in case the other disciples were deceived by a lookalike who would later embarrass them, that indeed it was Jesus, with the mark of his nails to show that he had really died and risen.
Whatever were Thomas’s motives, when Jesus asked him to feel the wounds of the nails in his body, Thomas answered, ‘My Lord and my God!’; and Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’ John continues by saying that the signs he records were done in the presence of the disciples and are written that the reader ‘may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name’. Faith needs to be mediated through the senses, it can be aroused and encouraged by what is seen, touched and heard; but it cannot be reduced to sensory experience. Thomas (and the reader of the gospel) is chided for doubting the testimony given to him by eyewitnesses, but his faith in Jesus, as his Lord and God, went beyond what he saw and heard and touched (or not).
Central to Thomas’s and our faith in the resurrection is not so much that there is life after death in a risen body, but that Jesus is vindicated as Lord and God. ‘God raised him on the third day,’ said Peter in the house of Cornelius, ‘and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.’ (Acts 10:40-42)
The Lordship of Jesus in his resurrection is the prime testimony to the faithfulness of the God of Israel to his covenant people, who were the first to be given the gospel. It was, ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors [who] has glorified his servant Jesus’ (Acts 3:13). God is faithful to Israel, to whom belongs, ‘the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises’ (Romans 9:4); and especially to his promise to Abraham that, ‘in your descendants all the families of the earth shall be blessed’ (Galatians 3:8, Genesis 12:3).
The faithfulness of God in making a new covenant, in establishing his Kingdom ‘on earth as it is in heaven’, is in fact the gospel, the good news:
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: 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 my people ; ….for I shall forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more’. (Jeremiah 31:33-4)
Prophecies of the new covenant had envisaged the Kingdom of God coming on earth as a new creation: in Ezekiel 36:26, ‘A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you’; and Isaiah 65:17, ‘For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth’. The Kingdom begins to be established through the life and teaching of Jesus, supported by his miracles. His resurrection is the first fruits of the new creation, followed at his coming – the parousia – by those who belong to Christ (1 Corinthians 15:23). And, in fact, all creation ‘waits with eager longing’ to be ‘set free from its bondage to decay to obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.’(Romans 8:19,21) God’s rule is now mediated by the risen Lamb that was slain (Revelation 5:13), sitting at the right hand of God (Mark 14:62 and Daniel 7:13-4).
At the Last Supper, Jesus spoke of the offering of his suffering and death for the forgiveness of sins as establishing the new covenant (see also 1 Corinthians 11:25: ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood’). He refers elsewhere to prophecies of his Lordship: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ (Mark 12:36). In Luke’s Gospel, when the risen Jesus meets the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, he tells them, ‘“Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.’ (Luke 24:26-7). Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12, one of the Suffering Servant hymns, was also believed to prophesy the atoning suffering of the Messiah: ‘But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed’ (53:5).
The faithfulness of God in fulfilling these prophecies is seen both as judgment on evil and as merciful love, bringing forgiveness. For Jesus, salvation and God’s mercy were the focus; his warnings of judgment were to enable people to repent and receive God’s mercy in the grace of forgiveness. Jesus suffered obediently the judgment of death for sin, which is common to all, but in his rising from the dead, God’s mercy comes in the Holy Spirit, with forgiveness for all who repent and believe in him and are baptised (see Acts 2:38).
Paul says the Spirit given to us is the Spirit of adoption who enables us to cry ‘Abba! Father’; ‘we are joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may be glorified with him’ (Romans 8:16,17). And, ‘If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you’ (Romans 11:5). The newness of life in the Spirit is experienced in faith, which is the assurance of things hoped for (Hebrews 11:1). The Spirit comforts us and enables us to endure even to the point of death. The Spirit arouses in us a personal love of the God who enters our life as Saviour, and unites us in love with the brethren of Christ, especially the ones in need, enabling even the forgiveness of our enemy. The expected conduct to be aimed at by a Christian is found concentrated in the Sermon the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and in Paul – especially in Romans 12, where he describes this newness of life in practical terms; and, of course, in his famous analysis of the sacrificial love that imitates the love of Christ (1 Corinthians 13).
Faith in God’s faithfulness to each one of us, so that ‘all things work together for good for those who love God’ (Romans 8:28), can make us read the events of our own life also in terms of personal faithfulness, God’s and ours. Yet, it is He who takes the initiative and He who finishes the work in us and of His new creation – He is the Alpha and Omega (Revelation 1:8). Paul says that the word of faith he proclaims is on the Christian’s lips and in his heart, ‘because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved’. (Romans 10:9). We have to keep asking ourselves whether we truly believe in, and so experience, the power of God’s mercy coming to us through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour risen from the dead. Can we, for whom Jesus is not made visible, not doubt, but be blessed in believing?
