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 4th - 7th June, 2019
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Friday: 9.30am Ulverstone
12noon Devonport
Next Weekend 8th & 9th June, 2019
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
6:00pm Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell (LWwC)
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport (LWwC)
11:00am Sheffield
5.00pm Latrobe
Ministry Rosters 8th & 9th June, 2019
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: V Riley, A Stegmann, G Hendrey
10:30am F Sly, J Tuxworth, T Omogbai-musa
Ministers of Communion: Vigil B&B Windebank, T Bird, R Baker, Beau Windebank
10.30am: S Riley, M Sherriff, R Beaton, D Barrientos, M Barrientos
Cleaners 7th June: M.W.C. 14th June: B Paul, D Atkins, V Riley
Piety Shop 8th June: L Murfet 9th June: O McGinley
Mowing at Presbytery - June: Tony Davies
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: A & F Pisano
Ministers of Communion: M Byrne, D Griffin, K Foster, R Locket
Cleaners: M Mott
Flowers: M Bryan
Hospitality: T Good Team
Penguin:
Greeters Fifita Family Commentator: J Barker
Readers: Fifita Family
Ministers of Communion: E Nickols, J Garnsey
Liturgy: Penguin
Setting Up: E Nickols
Care of Church: S Coleman, M Owen
Latrobe:
Reader: M Eden
Minister of Communion: I Campbell
Procession of Gifts: M Clarke
Port Sorell:
Readers: G Bellchambers, P Anderson
Ministers of Communion: T Jeffries
Cleaners: V Youd
Readings This Week: Feast of the Ascension – Year C
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
After coming to some stillness in whatever way is best for me, I read this Gospel passage slowly.
Jesus prays not only for the disciples present at the Last Supper, but ‘for those also who through their words will believe in me’ – he prays for me and for my fellow believers. What do I feel and think as I read Jesus’s prayer?
I can trust that Jesus knows all about me, so I can be honest in my reactions to his words. In listening to Jesus, perhaps I find joy, wonder, gratitude … or….?
I may choose to thank him for whatever I perceive of his love and closeness.
Or maybe I feel sorrow or dismay, noticing times and places of disunity and strife?
This too, I share with the Lord, returning in faith to his prayer.
I may want to choose one person or situation that I will meet this week where I can try to share the love that the Father has given me in Jesus.
I speak with our Lord about this, asking for whatever help I need, knowing I can always trust his presence with me.
I end my prayer in stillness, in oneness with God.
I may pray Our Father...
Readings Next Week: Feast of Pentecost – Year C
Your prayers are asked for the sick:
Marie Knight, Allan Stott, Christina Okpon, 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:
Terry Webb, Selwyn Berechree, Joan O’Brien, Marianne Morgan, Chris Allen, Sr Doreen Williams PBVM, Garry Douglas, Margaret Nolan, Jean Vanier.
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 30th May – 5th June
Johanna Smink, Lois Dudfield, Noreen Burton, Dorothy Hamilton, June Morris, Beverley Russell, Cheryl Robinson, Helen Armsby, Sr Josie Berry, Paul Streat, Anthony Venn, Viv Down, Karen Blackaby, Irene Renkowski.
May they Rest in Peace
Weekly Ramblings
This weekend the young parishioners who are part of our
Sacramental Preparation are receiving the Creed – our statement of faith – as
part of the Welcoming Rites. One of the aspects of this program is that
children and parents prepare together – please keep the children and their
families in your prayers. The Sacrament of Confirmation will be conferred on
the candidates at Devonport on 17th August and Ulverstone 18th
August with the Celebration of First Communion on the weekend 31st
August/1st September.
The Parish Pastoral Team met on Wednesday night (with a few
people as apologies due to holidays and work commitments) to reflect on our
directions and progress over recent time. Felicity Sly, Chair, will be
providing some further information about the meeting elsewhere in the
Newsletter – suffice to say we are still working towards our Vision and looking
forward to challenges still to come.
I will be heading off on holidays this Sunday afternoon to
Norfolk Island, returning on Saturday 29th June leaving you in the
capable hands of Fr Paschal and Fr Phil with Anne Fisher holding down the
Parish Office.
I know it is part of my weekly sign off but I really do
mean it as I ask you to take care and I look forward to experiencing a whole
new place and atmosphere on a much smaller island and seeing you all when I
return.
From the PPT
Fr Mike acknowledged in his weekly address in the bulletin last week that communications from the Parish Pastoral Team had been quiet for some time.
About three years ago a new vision for the Mersey Leven Catholic Parish was developed, articulated and shared with the Parish, with the support of the Parish Pastoral Team.
A Parish plan was developed with three focus areas: prayer and sacraments, a healthy community, and growing disciples. The Parish and the Pastoral Team have struggled with implementing this vision, and have spent recent months in prayerful reflection; praying for guidance as to what the Holy Spirit wants for this Parish.
One question that we need to continuously ask is: Are the things we are doing bearing fruit? There have been valuable discussions around submissions to the plenary. There have been small reflection groups. There has been the continuation of the many groups and individuals showing Jesus' love in our community.
However, are there indications that our community is more prayerful, more sacramental, healthier, and are we growing disciples? And if not, what do we need to do to have our vision bear fruit?
We need you to know that we haven't dropped the ball, but that we need to take time to be guided by the Holy Spirit.
MT ST VINCENT AUXILIARY: Will be holding a Cake & Craft stall at Sacred Heart Church this Sunday 2nd June. Please support this worthy cause.
ST MARY'S PENGUIN will be having a Soup, Sandwich and Sweets night after the 6:00pm Mass on Saturday 22nd June. Everyone is invited. People are asked if they can bring a plate of sandwiches to share, or a sweet. We would also like to ask for a couple of volunteers to make a pot of soup as well. Any help will be much appreciated. The white board will be in the church foyer and it would be great if people could let us know what they are likely to bring. That way we won't get all the same sort of sandwiches, or desserts. Please come along and join us to socialise and share a meal in the warmth of our church hall. Feel free to invite a friend. For info contact Yvonne on 64291353.
BINGO THURSDAY 6th June – Eyes down 7:30pm. Callers Merv Tippett, Alan Luxton
FOOTY MARGIN RESULTS:
Round 10 (Friday 24th May) Collingwood won by 7 points. Congratulations to the following winners: Arvy Pisarskis, Pat Anderson, Toni Muir.
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE
WALK WITH CHRIST – Hobart City, Sunday 23rd June 1:15pm to 3:00 pm.
Celebrate the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ by walking with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament through the city of Hobart.
Be at St Joseph's Church (Harrington St) by 1.15 pm, and walk with us to St Mary's Cathedral for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction concluding at 3:00pm. There will be a 'cuppa' afterwards.
If you can't do the walk come to the Cathedral at 2:00pm for prayer and Adoration. Experience our rich Catholic heritage in solidarity with Catholics all over the world and through the ages, by bearing public witness to our Lord and Saviour.
Can't join us in person? Prayer intentions written in the 'Book of Life' in your parish will be taken in the procession and presented at the Cathedral.
THE JOURNEY CATHOLIC RADIO PROGRAM – AIRS 9 June 2019
Next week on the Journey, the Gospel is John 20:19-31, and our Gospel reflected on by Fr Greg Barker from Newcastle. Mother Hilda inspires us with St Bede’s Angels, in her Wisdom from the Abbey, Sam Clear in his Walking the Walk God spot asks “How Far To The Shop?" and Bruce Downes, The Catholic Guy, shares the joy of Developing our Spiritual Lives. Our music this week is an inspirational match to some of these wonderful God Spots listed above.
www.jcr.org.au or www.itunes.jcr.org.au where you can listen anytime and subscribe to weekly shows by email.
Help Palms Achieve a World Free of Poverty.
Share your skills with a community organisation in Asia or the Pacific to contribute to sustainable solutions to poverty. Our community partners have requested teachers, nurses, tradies and more to work alongside a local counterpart in 2020. We welcome all those who envision volunteering their skills overseas in the next few years to join our next training course, starting in Sydney on July 6th. Visit palms.org.au or call Palms now on 02 9560 5333 for more details
The Path of Descent
Guest writer and CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault continues exploring Jesus as a wisdom teacher.
Jesus teaches the art of metanoia or “going into the larger
mind.” Underlying all his teaching is a clarion call to a radical shift in
consciousness: away from the alienation and polarization of the egoic operating
system and into the unified field of divine abundance that can be perceived
only through the heart.
But how does one make this shift in consciousness? It’s one
thing to admire it from a distance, but quite another to create it within
oneself. This is where spiritual praxis comes into play. “Praxis” means the
path, the actual practice you follow to bring about the result that you’re
yearning for. I think it’s fair to say that all of the great spiritual paths
lead toward the same center—the larger, nondual mind as the seat of personal
consciousness—but they get there by different routes.
While Jesus is typical of the wisdom tradition in his vision
of what a whole and unified human being looks like, the route he lays out for
getting there is very different from anything that had ever been seen on the
planet up to that point. It is still radical in our own time and definitely the
“road less traveled” among the various schools of human transformation. Many of
the difficulties we run into trying to make our Christianity work stem from the
fact that we haven’t realized how different Jesus’ approach really is. By
trying to contain this new wine in old wineskins, we inadvertently missed its
own distinct flavor. In Jesus, everything hangs together around a single center
of gravity, and we need to know what this center is before we can sense the
subtle and cohesive power of his path.
What name might we give to this center? The apostle Paul
suggests the word kenosis. In Greek, the verb kenosein means “to let go,” or
“to empty oneself,” and this is the word Paul chooses to describe “the mind of
Christ.”
In this beautiful hymn, Paul recognizes that Jesus had only
one “operational mode.” Everything he did, he did by self-emptying. He emptied
himself and descended into human form. And he emptied himself still further,
“even unto death on the cross.” In every life circumstance, Jesus always
responded with the same motion of self-emptying—or to put it another way,
descent: taking the lower place, not the higher.
Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus:
Transforming Heart and Mind—A New Perspective on Christ and His Message
(Shambhala: 2008), 62-66.
Jean Vanier (1928-2019)
This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here
Our differences are not a threat but a treasure.
Jean Vanier, the Founder of L’Arche, who died in Paris on May 7th wrote those words, but their truth is far from self-evident. One might question whether those words are simply a nice-sounding poetics or whether they contain an actual truth. Our differences, in fact, are often a threat.
Moreover, it’s one thing to mouth those words; it’s quite another thing to have the moral authority to speak them. Few have that authority. Jean Vanier did. His whole life and work testify to the fact that our differences can indeed be a treasure and can, in the end, be that precise element of community that serves up for us the particular grace we need.
Vanier saw differences, whether of faith, religion, culture, language, gender, ideology, or genetic endowment, as graces to enrich a community rather than as threats to its unity. And while Vanier gave witness to this in all aspects of his life, he was of course best known for how he appropriated that apposite among the differences that have, seemingly since forever, separated people with intellectual disabilities from the rest of the community, isolating them, assigning them second-class status, and depriving the rest of us of the unique grace they bring. Someone once described Vanier as initiating a new Copernican revolution in that, prior to him, we used to think of our service to the poor one-sidedly, we give to them. Now that we recognize our former arrogance and naiveté, the poor bring a great service to us.
One of the persons who gave a powerful personal testimony to that was Henri Nouwen, the renowned spiritual writer. Tenured at both Yale and Harvard, an immensely respected speaker, and a man loved and adulated by a large public, Nouwen, nursing his own disabilities, was for most of his life unable to healthily absorb very much from that immense amount of love that was being bestowed on him and remained deeply insecure within himself, unsure he was loved, until he went to live in one of Vanier’s communities. There, living with men and women who were completely unaware of his achievements and his fame and who offered him no adulation, he began for the first time in his life to finally sense his own worth and to feel himself as loved. That great grace came from living with those who were different. We have Jean Vanier to thank for teaching that to the rest of us as well.
I first heard Vanier speak when I was a twenty-two year-old seminarian. For many of my colleagues, he was a spiritual rock-star, but that idolization was a negative for me. I went to hear him with a certain bias: Nobody can be that good! But he was!
Admittedly that’s ambiguous. Talent and charisma can seduce us towards selfishness just as easily as invite us towards nobility of soul. Someone can be a powerful speaker without that charisma witnessing at all to that person’s human and moral integrity and without that seductiveness inviting anyone to what’s more-noble inside him or her. But Vanier’s person, message, and charisma, through all his years, suffered from no such ambiguity. The transparency, simplicity, depth, wisdom, and faith that were contained in his person and his word beckoned us only in one direction, that is, towards to all that’s one, good, true, and beautiful, which are the properties of God. Meeting him made you want, like the disciples in the Gospels, to leave your boats and nets behind and set off on a new, more-radical road. Few persons have that power.
Perhaps the best criterion by which to judge Christian discipleship is look at who’s moving downwards, who fits this description of Jesus: “Though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God as something to be grasped at. Rather he emptied himself and took the form of a slave.” Jean Vanier was born into a world of privilege, blessed with exceptional parents, a gifted intelligence, a handsome body, enviable educational opportunities, financial security, and a famous name. Those are a lot of gifts for a person to carry and that kind of privilege has more often ruined a life than blessed it. For Jean Vanier, however, these gifts were never something to be grasped at. He emptied himself by immersing himself into the lives of the poor, letting his gifts bless them, even as he received a rich blessing in return. He modeled a true discipleship of Jesus, namely, stepping downward into a second-baptism, immersion into the poor, where community and joy are found. And to this he invited us.
In her poem, The Leaf and the Cloud, Mary Oliver wrote: “I will sing for the broken doors of the poor, and for the sorrow of the rich, who are mistaken and lonely.” Jean Vanier, through all the years of his life, stepped through the broken doors of the poor and found community and joy there. For him, our differences were not a threat but a treasure.
Spring Break
This article is taken from the Blog posted by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Timoneum, Baltimore. You can find the original blog by clicking here
The events and activities on our calendar this spring have curtailed blogging. So I’ll take the opportunity with this post to update everyone on what has been going on here on our Ridgely Road campus and farther afield with REBUILT.
We had an effective and engaging Lenten message and small group series called “What on Earth am I Here For” based on Pastor Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life, powerfully underscoring what our lives and the Church are all about. That was followed up by one final series to round out the season, “Brand New,” an Easter reflection on Christ making all things new, including us.
Holy Week and Easter itself were busy days, with thousands of people turning out to remember the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of the Lord. It was a beautiful week reaching its highlight in the Easter Vigil, led by Bishop Adam Parker, welcoming new members through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. And speaking of sacraments, we celebrated two separate First Communion Masses for our Second Grade students, and two separate Confirmation Masses, again celebrated by Bishop Parker, for our High School students; hundreds of students and their parents and guests participated.
Of course, the big news on campus was the grand opening of our new balcony, providing an additional 500 seats, all of which were full on Easter Sunday, as were our video venues in the Theatre, Pavilion, and Vision Café.
Our staff continued to grow as we welcomed Brigit Macksey, Director of Hospitality Ministries, Tracy Giordano, Director of Operational Ministries, and Sean Mihaly as my assistant. All our staff participated in staff development through a number of conferences we offered them as part of their ongoing education and formation in ministry.
Regarding REBUILT, it was a busy spring as well. We launched our first ever, hopefully to be repeated, REBUILT Road Shows. Last year, you will remember, we hosted the REBUILT Conference, a three day gathering to inspire and equip over 1,000 churches from across the country and elsewhere. Held here on our campus, it was a great event, but one we decided to hold every other year, given the breadth and depth of the effort. However, to continue to engage with parishes that are rebuilding we came up with the Road Show concept. Basically it is a one day conference, held regionally, bringing together a smaller group of leaders, about 100 each, for renewal and refreshment, encouraging them in parish planning. This spring we hosted four such gatherings in Boca Raton, Boston, Westfield New Jersey and one here on our campus. They were very successful and well received, and we hope to replicate them in the future.
On the book front, we delivered to our editor the final edits to the manuscript for our new book, to be released in September. Churchmoney is all about growing healthy parishes by funding them the way the Lord told us to. Not everyone will like what we have to say, but we think it makes for an interesting read and will make a difference for many parishes and people. Also this spring we completed delivery to our editor of two smaller projects to be released later this year and next, in the form of daily devotionals parishes can use in Advent and Lent. You’ll be seeing them here at Nativity.
Finally, we are just this week embarking on a book tour in several cities in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. Daniel Miller, our Youth Minister, and Brain Crook, our Weekend Director, will be accompanying me and also speaking at conferences sponsored by dioceses there. Please pray for the success of these efforts to help parishes (very different from ours) rebuild.
Reflections on the Feast of the Ascension
The Feast of the Ascension strikes many Christians as the poor relative of the two rather bigger celebrations which top and tail the long and joyful season of Eastertide: Easter itself, and Pentecost. But Damian Howard SJ ascribes to this feast the utmost significance. What are we to make of the story of Jesus being taken up into a cloud, an episode that not only sounds like mythology but also violates our modern sense of space? Damian Howard SJ lectures in theology at Heythrop College, University of London and sits on the Editorial Board of Thinking Faith. You can find this article and many others at the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
In between our celebrations of the Lord’s Resurrection at Easter and of the gift of the Spirit to His disciples, the ‘birthday of the Church’ at Pentecost, we observe another feast: the Feast of the Ascension. For all the memorable imagery that the story of Jesus’s ascension into heaven evokes, it still strikes many Christians as a rather curious episode. To put it crudely, had Jesus simply ascended vertically into space we would by now expect him to be somewhere in the outer reaches of the solar system, a thought that is hardly an aid to Christian devotion. Yet the event of the Ascension, which appears in both the New Testament books authored by Luke (his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles), serves as the narrative lynchpin of the grand story told by scripture. It is, as one scholar argues, the culmination of every biblical event leading up to it and the condition of the drama that follows it.[1] To understand why this is so will take a little explaining.
A good way to begin would be to ask yourself a question: what, in a nutshell, is the core of the New Testament message? There are doubtless as many answers to that question as there are Christians, but most of them would probably involve one or more of a bundle of ideas: resurrection–reconciliation–new life–triumph over sin and death, all very good, very Eastery answers – and all, incidentally, very much about us human creatures. The centrality of these notions to most Christians explains both why Easter and Pentecost are so important to us and why the Ascension is not. Easter and Pentecost can be quickly established to be all about us: the promise of forgiveness and new life for us, the gift of the Spirit to us. It is not quite so clear what the Ascension has to offer us? The best answer I have been able to come up with is that Christ’s withdrawal brings about a new mode by which Christ can be present to us, intimate, yet universal and ‘interceding for us at the right hand of the Father’.
If you were to ask the same question to the New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright, you would be given a subtly different response, one that puts centre stage someone other than us. For Tom Wright, the core truth of Christianity is that Jesus, and hence God, has become King. The crucified Nazarene has been raised by God to be the universal Lord. Christ’s rising from the dead is not in itself the end of the story but a vitally important part of the trajectory that takes him to his heavenly throne. Wright’s interpretation hardly denies the importance of resurrection; it just sees it as part of a bigger picture. Jesus is raised to be King.
All of which has serious implications for Christian belief and practice. If we were to think very schematically, we might say we have two styles of Christian living here: let’s call them Resurrection-Christianity and Kingdom-Christianity. (I am sketching here ‘ideal types’ for the sake of reflection and these should not be taken as applying to any individual or group in particular, still less as criteria for some kind of orthodoxy.) Resurrection-Christianity would focus, obviously, on the Resurrection, on the fact that Christ has overcome death and won eternal life for those who believe in Him. Kingdom-Christianity is more attentive to the arrival of the Kingdom of God, in other words a state of affairs abroad in the world, such that a new source of power and of ultimate authority is enabling and challenging human beings to allow themselves to be transformed, to receive ‘eternal life’ in the here and now. The two styles are hardly opposed to each other but their focus is appreciably different.
What makes Kingdom-Christianity so convincing an interpretation is the way it makes sense of the whole narrative of the Bible by offering a ‘crowning moment’ in the shape of the final resolution of an expectation spelt out in a spectacular apocalyptic scene by the prophet Daniel (7:13-14):
I saw one like a human being
coming with the clouds of heaven.
And he came to the Ancient One
and was presented before him.
To him was given dominion
and glory and kingship,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
that shall not pass away,
and his kingship is one
that shall never be destroyed.[2]
Here, the coronation of the ‘one like a human being’ (the original expression is translated literally as ‘one like a Son of Man’, from which you can deduce whence Jesus derives His favourite way of referring to Himself) is presented exactly as an onlooker in heaven would enjoy the scene. It is a dream-vision, an imaginative rendition of the deep, hope-filled aspiration of faithful Jews, suffering persecution at the hands of an enemy so powerful they could scarcely envisage ever overcoming it. The Ascension, Douglas Farrow points out, is quite simply the very same event as viewed from the earth, the Son of Man setting out on His journey to take up His throne alongside the ‘Ancient One’.[3]
Hence, in the Ascension we see the mystery alluded to in the Hebrew Bible acted out in full view of the disciples. You can see now that the Ascension is no quirky interlude between Resurrection and Pentecost but a dramatic consummation that makes sense of them: the Resurrection is the beginning of Christ’s heavenly journey, Pentecost the echo on earth of heaven’s jubilation at his coronation. The Ascension is crucial, not decorative.
Farrow defends this view of the centrality of the Ascension from the understandable and legitimate anxiety that it downplays resurrection hope as an end in itself:
In the Bible, the doctrine of the resurrection slowly emerges as a central feature of the Judeo-Christian hope. But if, synechdochically, it can stand for that hope, the hope itself is obviously something more. Resurrection may be a necessary ingredient, since death cuts short our individual journeys, but it is not too bold to say that the greater corporate journey documented by the scriptures continually presses, from its very outset and at every turn, towards the impossible feat of the ascension.[4]
So Kingdom-Christianity in no way cancels out or negates Resurrection-Christianity: it includes it but situates it in a bigger picture and it is a picture that does not have us at the centre, with our desires and hopes, but the person of, if you like to think of it like this, King Jesus.
In his book Surprised by Hope,[5] Tom Wright works out some of the consequences of what is for many a surprising angle on the Biblical story. The problem is not that Resurrection-Christianity (he does not use the term) is false. Rather, it is that if it becomes detached from its original moorings in the proclamation of Jesus as King, then it can drift into something lesser. An example is the way many modern Christians have come to think that the point of Christianity is about ‘getting to heaven when you die’. A Christianity rooted in its original proclamation of the Kingdom of God is not in the first place about life after death, but very much about life in the here and now under the new conditions of God’s reign (which is also not in any way to deny life after death!). If it totally loses its anchor in the Kingdom proclamation, an exclusive concern with resurrection has been known to see this world as a decadent and evil place without hope; salvation begins to look like escape. This is a Gnostic tendency to which Christianity has long been vulnerable. For Wright, the time has come to get back to the original Kingdom-Christianity of the Bible with its confidence in the resurrection of the body, its utter Christ-centredness and its concern for the mission of Christians to help transform the world in accordance with the in-breaking Kingdom.
I must confess both to excitement about Wright’s work and also to a certain perplexity. The excitement springs from the plausibility of his biblical interpretation, from the stress he puts on the Gospel as a God-event rather than the transmission of some new information, and on the implications of all this for the way we think about Christian action and witness in the world. But my perplexity is twofold. First, Wright is suspicious about a great deal of the Christian tradition as it has come down to us over the years. He regrets the medieval corruptions that set in, entailing the loss of the ‘real narrative’ of the Kingdom, until, that is, modern exegesis came into existence. An evangelical Protestant like Wright is entitled to think like that, of course, even if it puts a Catholic on the back foot. But is Christian tradition so badly in need of correction or has it, perhaps, managed to hang on to the Kingdom-story rather more than Wright allows? After all, leaf through any hymn book, Protestant or Catholic, and dozens of images of kingship will jump out at you. But still, Wright might say, these may not correspond to the way people actually think and act in their religious lives. Maybe there is a case to answer here.
The second difficulty is that my modern imagination rather baulks at the thought of Jesus sitting on a throne as King in heaven. It’s a fine metaphor but in what sense does it represent a state of affairs? My mind is uneasy with what sounds like mythology and I find myself restlessly wanting to ‘demythologise’ it, to translate it into categories more related to my way of seeing the world. The problem is that the Ascension is essentially an ‘is’ statement whereas demythologising usually ends up with ‘ought’ statements like saying that ‘living in the Kingdom of God’ really just boils down to living by ‘Kingdom values’ or, ‘building the Kingdom’ by being good citizens, speaking up for the victims of injustice and behaving in an ecologically responsible manner. If that is the ‘cash-value’ of the doctrine of the Ascension, then it seems to have made no real difference. Yet the only alternative would seem to mean fixating on a rather literalist interpretation of the doctrine itself; if my (or your) imagination cannot cope, that’s just too bad, because that’s how it is…
An answer to both perplexities comes in the shape of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola. What I see in his famous itinerary for a 30 day transformative retreat experience is a playing out of precisely the kind of spirituality that flows naturally from the Kingdom narrative: not one of resurrection as an end in itself (though resurrection is very present) but a vivid engagement with Christ, the Eternal King, and a focused and prolonged imaginative effort to contemplate the world under the aspect of the Kingdom of Christ and to discern in depth the difference that this truth makes: i.e. that it calls me to become a servant of Christ’s mission.
There is some irony in making this point. Everyone who has ever made the Exercises knows full well Ignatius’s fondness for regal and military metaphors. People often assume that behind it is Ignatius the (minor) nobleman harking back nostalgically to his time in the Spanish court or soldiering against the French. Yet Ignatius was no sentimentalist. If he used kingly language to speak of Jesus it was quite simply because he knew Jesus as a King.
In this he was helped by the standard, even ubiquitous iconography of the Middle Ages. One of the most common depictions of Jesus throughout the period was the eschatological Christ seated on a throne, surrounded by an oval aura called a mandorla and the four apocalyptic beasts. This figure, known as the maiestas domini, adorns many a Cathedral tympanum, reminding those entering below that Christ is indeed their King here and now. This Christ was majestic and powerful, not entirely dissimilar to the eastern Christian icon of Christ pantokrator, Lord of all. The mandorla was significant too, an unmistakeable reference to the birth canal. The figure of the King in the mandorla, the Kingdom in the very process of being born, echoes the Lord’s prayer: ‘thy Kingdom come!’ It is a dynamic image of God’s Kingdom coming to us as we look on, a reminder that if the Kingdom is indeed already a reality, nevertheless it has not yet fully arrived. It still has something of the subjunctive about it.
Ignatius, judging by the language he uses to speak of Christ in the Exercises, took this icon as his preferred depiction of the Lord. Whenever he imagines himself standing before God, offering himself for service in whatever way God will decide, he speaks of God/Christ as ‘the Divine Majesty’:
Then I shall reflect within myself and consider what, in all reason and justice, I ought for my part to offer and give his Divine Majesty, that is to say, all I possess and myself as well… (Sp Exx 234)[6]
The most important and transformative exercises are preceded by an invitation to imagine Christ as King and to allow oneself to enter into the scene of that image, adopting the behaviour appropriate to it:
how much more is it worthy of consideration to see Christ our Lord, the eternal king, as to all and to each one in particular his call goes out: ‘It is my will to conquer the whole world and every enemy and so enter into the glory of my Father… (Sp Exx 95)
And:
Here will be to see myself in the presence of God our Lord and of all his saints that I might desire and know what is more pleasing to His Divine Goodness. … here it will be to ask for the grace to choose what is more for the glory of his Divine Majesty and the salvation of my soul. (Sp Exx151-2)
Two vital clues suggest that the link with the Ascension was one Ignatius would have made himself. In the ‘Fourth Week’ of the Exercises, which deals with the Resurrection of Christ, Ignatius offers for meditation no less than 13 appearances of the Lord, including one to Paul which would have taken place after the Ascension. But he insists that it is the Ascension that should be the final mystery of the whole retreat to be contemplated. For Ignatius this is no mere detail, no pious addition to the list of biblical incidents but the highpoint, the climax of the whole movement of Christ that brings him to the divine throne before which he stood repeatedly seeking God’s will for his life. The other detail comes from an autobiographical incident that took place when Ignatius was on pilgrimage in Jerusalem. He was about to be expelled from the Holy Land by the Franciscan authorities but before heading for the coast he was desperate to do one last thing: to revisit a particular site from the pilgrim’s itinerary, the place where, tradition has it, Jesus ascended into heaven. Bribing the guards with a pair of scissors, of all things, Ignatius managed to get up to the Mount of Olives where he could check the exact position of Christ’s footprints before He was taken off into the cloud.
So, with regard to my first perplexity, it is clear that Ignatius at least, one of the Catholic tradition’s most brilliant and influential spiritual masters, is an unabashed exponent of Kingdom-Christianity. If you know anything about his life that observation will ring true; he was above all a man who desired to let God’s glory shine out here in the world by living his life as a divine mission. Knowing this, one could never say blandly that the tradition of the Church simply lost sight of the central significance of Jesus Christ as universal King. Indeed, it seems to have maintained it with clarity and vigour.
Ignatius has also relieved my second perplexity considerably, the anxiety that simply proclaiming the kingship of Christ as a literal state of affairs does not seem to get us very far. Appropriating this deep truth, as Ignatius’s life shows, requires a very special human faculty, one that Ignatius was forced to deploy by the very forces which were undermining the ‘Kingdom’ in his day. For at the time he is writing, the image of the Divine Majesty was facing a major crisis. This was thanks to the impending demise of that ancient, traditional cosmology in which the image of Christ as King in heaven made some sense. By the end of the 15th Century the new sciences and the successful circumnavigation of the globe had put that picture under severe pressure. Politically things were changing too. A united Christendom had been evidential warrant to the notion of a civilisation united under the rule of Christ. But now, under the impact of the Reformation, Christendom was breaking up, making it all but impossible to conceive of Christ as King of the universe. This is the decidedly inauspicious climate in which our young Basque finds himself not only drawn to the maiestas domini but also sensing its urgent appeal. I imagine him gazing longingly at some cathedral portal after Mass, on fire with the love of God and aware that, despite all the contradictory desires that filled his heart, it was only in the service of Christ’s mission that inner unity and purpose in life could be achieved. He must have seen depicted in this image a process, a dynamic by which human beings could allow order to be drawn out of the chaos of their lives. He understood that the only way to unleash the transformative power of the Kingdom was not merely by assent to a purported state of affairs but by the deepest possible imaginative exploration of what it means to live in the world where Jesus is King. For the key to engaging with the mystery of the Kingdom is, for Ignatius, as for the Spinner of parables Himself, the human imagination.
[1] Douglas Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), p. 26.
[2] New Revised Standard Version.
[3] Ascension and Ecclesia pp. 23f.
[4] Ascension and Ecclesia pp. 26-7.
[5] London: SPCK, 2007.
[6] This and all passages from the Exercises are taken from the translation of Michael Ivens, Understanding the Spiritual Exercises (Leominster: Gracewing, 1998) p. 174.
Weekday Masses 4th - 7th June, 2019
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 12 noon Devonport
Friday: 9.30am Ulverstone
12noon Devonport
Friday: 9.30am Ulverstone
12noon Devonport
Next Weekend 8th & 9th June, 2019
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
6:00pm Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell (LWwC)
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport (LWwC)
11:00am Sheffield
5.00pm Latrobe
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: V Riley, A Stegmann, G Hendrey
10:30am F Sly, J Tuxworth, T Omogbai-musa
Ministers of Communion: Vigil B&B Windebank, T Bird, R Baker, Beau Windebank
10.30am: S Riley, M Sherriff, R Beaton, D Barrientos, M Barrientos
Cleaners 7th June: M.W.C. 14th June: B Paul, D Atkins, V Riley
Piety Shop 8th June: L Murfet 9th June: O McGinley
Mowing at Presbytery - June: Tony Davies
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: A & F Pisano
Ministers of Communion: M Byrne, D Griffin, K Foster, R Locket
Cleaners: M Mott
Flowers: M Bryan
Hospitality: T Good Team
Penguin:
Greeters Fifita Family Commentator: J Barker
Readers: Fifita Family
Ministers of Communion: E Nickols, J Garnsey
Liturgy: Penguin
Setting Up: E Nickols
Care of Church: S Coleman, M Owen
Latrobe:
Reader: M Eden
Minister of Communion: I Campbell
Procession of Gifts: M Clarke
Port Sorell:
Readers: G Bellchambers, P Anderson
Ministers of Communion: T Jeffries
Cleaners: V Youd
Your prayers are asked for the sick:
5.00pm Latrobe
Ministry Rosters 8th & 9th June, 2019
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: V Riley, A Stegmann, G Hendrey
10:30am F Sly, J Tuxworth, T Omogbai-musa
Ministers of Communion: Vigil B&B Windebank, T Bird, R Baker, Beau Windebank
10.30am: S Riley, M Sherriff, R Beaton, D Barrientos, M Barrientos
Cleaners 7th June: M.W.C. 14th June: B Paul, D Atkins, V Riley
Piety Shop 8th June: L Murfet 9th June: O McGinley
Mowing at Presbytery - June: Tony Davies
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: A & F Pisano
Ministers of Communion: M Byrne, D Griffin, K Foster, R Locket
Cleaners: M Mott
Flowers: M Bryan
Hospitality: T Good Team
Penguin:
Greeters Fifita Family Commentator: J Barker
Readers: Fifita Family
Ministers of Communion: E Nickols, J Garnsey
Liturgy: Penguin
Setting Up: E Nickols
Care of Church: S Coleman, M Owen
Latrobe:
Reader: M Eden
Minister of Communion: I Campbell
Procession of Gifts: M Clarke
Port Sorell:
Readers: G Bellchambers, P Anderson
Ministers of Communion: T Jeffries
Cleaners: V Youd
Readings This Week: Feast of the Ascension – Year C
First Reading: Acts 1:1-11
Second Reading: Hebrews 9:24-28, 10:19-23
Gospel: Luke 24:46-53
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
After coming to some stillness in whatever way is best for me, I read this Gospel passage slowly.
Jesus prays not only for the disciples present at the Last Supper, but ‘for those also who through their words will believe in me’ – he prays for me and for my fellow believers. What do I feel and think as I read Jesus’s prayer?
I can trust that Jesus knows all about me, so I can be honest in my reactions to his words. In listening to Jesus, perhaps I find joy, wonder, gratitude … or….?
I may choose to thank him for whatever I perceive of his love and closeness.
Or maybe I feel sorrow or dismay, noticing times and places of disunity and strife?
This too, I share with the Lord, returning in faith to his prayer.
I may want to choose one person or situation that I will meet this week where I can try to share the love that the Father has given me in Jesus.
I speak with our Lord about this, asking for whatever help I need, knowing I can always trust his presence with me.
I end my prayer in stillness, in oneness with God.
I may pray Our Father...
Readings Next Week: Feast of Pentecost – Year C
First Reading: Acts 2:1-11
Second Reading: Romans 8:8-17
Gospel: John 14:15-16, 23-26
Your prayers are asked for the sick:
Marie Knight, Allan Stott, Christina Okpon, 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:
Terry Webb, Selwyn Berechree, Joan O’Brien, Marianne Morgan, Chris Allen, Sr Doreen Williams PBVM, Garry Douglas, Margaret Nolan, Jean Vanier.
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 30th May – 5th June
Johanna Smink, Lois Dudfield, Noreen Burton, Dorothy Hamilton, June Morris, Beverley Russell, Cheryl Robinson, Helen Armsby, Sr Josie Berry, Paul Streat, Anthony Venn, Viv Down, Karen Blackaby, Irene Renkowski.
May they Rest in Peace
Weekly Ramblings
This weekend the young parishioners who are part of our
Sacramental Preparation are receiving the Creed – our statement of faith – as
part of the Welcoming Rites. One of the aspects of this program is that
children and parents prepare together – please keep the children and their
families in your prayers. The Sacrament of Confirmation will be conferred on
the candidates at Devonport on 17th August and Ulverstone 18th
August with the Celebration of First Communion on the weekend 31st
August/1st September.
The Parish Pastoral Team met on Wednesday night (with a few
people as apologies due to holidays and work commitments) to reflect on our
directions and progress over recent time. Felicity Sly, Chair, will be
providing some further information about the meeting elsewhere in the
Newsletter – suffice to say we are still working towards our Vision and looking
forward to challenges still to come.
I will be heading off on holidays this Sunday afternoon to
Norfolk Island, returning on Saturday 29th June leaving you in the
capable hands of Fr Paschal and Fr Phil with Anne Fisher holding down the
Parish Office.
I know it is part of my weekly sign off but I really do
mean it as I ask you to take care and I look forward to experiencing a whole
new place and atmosphere on a much smaller island and seeing you all when I
return.
From the PPT
Fr Mike acknowledged in his weekly address in the bulletin last week that communications from the Parish Pastoral Team had been quiet for some time.
About three years ago a new vision for the Mersey Leven Catholic Parish was developed, articulated and shared with the Parish, with the support of the Parish Pastoral Team.
A Parish plan was developed with three focus areas: prayer and sacraments, a healthy community, and growing disciples. The Parish and the Pastoral Team have struggled with implementing this vision, and have spent recent months in prayerful reflection; praying for guidance as to what the Holy Spirit wants for this Parish.
One question that we need to continuously ask is: Are the things we are doing bearing fruit? There have been valuable discussions around submissions to the plenary. There have been small reflection groups. There has been the continuation of the many groups and individuals showing Jesus' love in our community.
However, are there indications that our community is more prayerful, more sacramental, healthier, and are we growing disciples? And if not, what do we need to do to have our vision bear fruit?
We need you to know that we haven't dropped the ball, but that we need to take time to be guided by the Holy Spirit.
MT ST VINCENT AUXILIARY: Will be holding a Cake & Craft stall at Sacred Heart Church this Sunday 2nd June. Please support this worthy cause.
ST MARY'S PENGUIN will be having a Soup, Sandwich and Sweets night after the 6:00pm Mass on Saturday 22nd June. Everyone is invited. People are asked if they can bring a plate of sandwiches to share, or a sweet. We would also like to ask for a couple of volunteers to make a pot of soup as well. Any help will be much appreciated. The white board will be in the church foyer and it would be great if people could let us know what they are likely to bring. That way we won't get all the same sort of sandwiches, or desserts. Please come along and join us to socialise and share a meal in the warmth of our church hall. Feel free to invite a friend. For info contact Yvonne on 64291353.
BINGO THURSDAY 6th June – Eyes down 7:30pm. Callers Merv Tippett, Alan Luxton
FOOTY MARGIN RESULTS:
Round 10 (Friday 24th May) Collingwood won by 7 points. Congratulations to the following winners: Arvy Pisarskis, Pat Anderson, Toni Muir.
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE
WALK WITH CHRIST – Hobart City, Sunday 23rd June 1:15pm to 3:00 pm.
Celebrate the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ by walking with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament through the city of Hobart.
Be at St Joseph's Church (Harrington St) by 1.15 pm, and walk with us to St Mary's Cathedral for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction concluding at 3:00pm. There will be a 'cuppa' afterwards.
If you can't do the walk come to the Cathedral at 2:00pm for prayer and Adoration. Experience our rich Catholic heritage in solidarity with Catholics all over the world and through the ages, by bearing public witness to our Lord and Saviour.
Can't join us in person? Prayer intentions written in the 'Book of Life' in your parish will be taken in the procession and presented at the Cathedral.
THE JOURNEY CATHOLIC RADIO PROGRAM – AIRS 9 June 2019
Next week on the Journey, the Gospel is John 20:19-31, and our Gospel reflected on by Fr Greg Barker from Newcastle. Mother Hilda inspires us with St Bede’s Angels, in her Wisdom from the Abbey, Sam Clear in his Walking the Walk God spot asks “How Far To The Shop?" and Bruce Downes, The Catholic Guy, shares the joy of Developing our Spiritual Lives. Our music this week is an inspirational match to some of these wonderful God Spots listed above.
www.jcr.org.au or www.itunes.jcr.org.au where you can listen anytime and subscribe to weekly shows by email.
Help Palms Achieve a World Free of Poverty.
Share your skills with a community organisation in Asia or the Pacific to contribute to sustainable solutions to poverty. Our community partners have requested teachers, nurses, tradies and more to work alongside a local counterpart in 2020. We welcome all those who envision volunteering their skills overseas in the next few years to join our next training course, starting in Sydney on July 6th. Visit palms.org.au or call Palms now on 02 9560 5333 for more details
The Path of Descent
Guest writer and CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault continues exploring Jesus as a wisdom teacher.
Jesus teaches the art of metanoia or “going into the larger
mind.” Underlying all his teaching is a clarion call to a radical shift in
consciousness: away from the alienation and polarization of the egoic operating
system and into the unified field of divine abundance that can be perceived
only through the heart.
But how does one make this shift in consciousness? It’s one
thing to admire it from a distance, but quite another to create it within
oneself. This is where spiritual praxis comes into play. “Praxis” means the
path, the actual practice you follow to bring about the result that you’re
yearning for. I think it’s fair to say that all of the great spiritual paths
lead toward the same center—the larger, nondual mind as the seat of personal
consciousness—but they get there by different routes.
While Jesus is typical of the wisdom tradition in his vision
of what a whole and unified human being looks like, the route he lays out for
getting there is very different from anything that had ever been seen on the
planet up to that point. It is still radical in our own time and definitely the
“road less traveled” among the various schools of human transformation. Many of
the difficulties we run into trying to make our Christianity work stem from the
fact that we haven’t realized how different Jesus’ approach really is. By
trying to contain this new wine in old wineskins, we inadvertently missed its
own distinct flavor. In Jesus, everything hangs together around a single center
of gravity, and we need to know what this center is before we can sense the
subtle and cohesive power of his path.
What name might we give to this center? The apostle Paul
suggests the word kenosis. In Greek, the verb kenosein means “to let go,” or
“to empty oneself,” and this is the word Paul chooses to describe “the mind of
Christ.”
Here is what Paul has to say (Philippians 2:6-8):
Though his state was that of God,
yet he did not deem equality with God
something he should cling to.
Rather, he emptied himself,
and assuming the state of a slave,
he was born in human likeness.
He, being known as one of us,
humbled himself, obedient unto death,
even death on the cross.
In this beautiful hymn, Paul recognizes that Jesus had only
one “operational mode.” Everything he did, he did by self-emptying. He emptied
himself and descended into human form. And he emptied himself still further,
“even unto death on the cross.” In every life circumstance, Jesus always
responded with the same motion of self-emptying—or to put it another way,
descent: taking the lower place, not the higher.
Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus:
Transforming Heart and Mind—A New Perspective on Christ and His Message
(Shambhala: 2008), 62-66.
Jean Vanier (1928-2019)
This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here
Our differences are not a threat but a treasure.
Jean Vanier, the Founder of L’Arche, who died in Paris on May 7th wrote those words, but their truth is far from self-evident. One might question whether those words are simply a nice-sounding poetics or whether they contain an actual truth. Our differences, in fact, are often a threat.
Moreover, it’s one thing to mouth those words; it’s quite another thing to have the moral authority to speak them. Few have that authority. Jean Vanier did. His whole life and work testify to the fact that our differences can indeed be a treasure and can, in the end, be that precise element of community that serves up for us the particular grace we need.
Vanier saw differences, whether of faith, religion, culture, language, gender, ideology, or genetic endowment, as graces to enrich a community rather than as threats to its unity. And while Vanier gave witness to this in all aspects of his life, he was of course best known for how he appropriated that apposite among the differences that have, seemingly since forever, separated people with intellectual disabilities from the rest of the community, isolating them, assigning them second-class status, and depriving the rest of us of the unique grace they bring. Someone once described Vanier as initiating a new Copernican revolution in that, prior to him, we used to think of our service to the poor one-sidedly, we give to them. Now that we recognize our former arrogance and naiveté, the poor bring a great service to us.
One of the persons who gave a powerful personal testimony to that was Henri Nouwen, the renowned spiritual writer. Tenured at both Yale and Harvard, an immensely respected speaker, and a man loved and adulated by a large public, Nouwen, nursing his own disabilities, was for most of his life unable to healthily absorb very much from that immense amount of love that was being bestowed on him and remained deeply insecure within himself, unsure he was loved, until he went to live in one of Vanier’s communities. There, living with men and women who were completely unaware of his achievements and his fame and who offered him no adulation, he began for the first time in his life to finally sense his own worth and to feel himself as loved. That great grace came from living with those who were different. We have Jean Vanier to thank for teaching that to the rest of us as well.
I first heard Vanier speak when I was a twenty-two year-old seminarian. For many of my colleagues, he was a spiritual rock-star, but that idolization was a negative for me. I went to hear him with a certain bias: Nobody can be that good! But he was!
Admittedly that’s ambiguous. Talent and charisma can seduce us towards selfishness just as easily as invite us towards nobility of soul. Someone can be a powerful speaker without that charisma witnessing at all to that person’s human and moral integrity and without that seductiveness inviting anyone to what’s more-noble inside him or her. But Vanier’s person, message, and charisma, through all his years, suffered from no such ambiguity. The transparency, simplicity, depth, wisdom, and faith that were contained in his person and his word beckoned us only in one direction, that is, towards to all that’s one, good, true, and beautiful, which are the properties of God. Meeting him made you want, like the disciples in the Gospels, to leave your boats and nets behind and set off on a new, more-radical road. Few persons have that power.
Perhaps the best criterion by which to judge Christian discipleship is look at who’s moving downwards, who fits this description of Jesus: “Though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God as something to be grasped at. Rather he emptied himself and took the form of a slave.” Jean Vanier was born into a world of privilege, blessed with exceptional parents, a gifted intelligence, a handsome body, enviable educational opportunities, financial security, and a famous name. Those are a lot of gifts for a person to carry and that kind of privilege has more often ruined a life than blessed it. For Jean Vanier, however, these gifts were never something to be grasped at. He emptied himself by immersing himself into the lives of the poor, letting his gifts bless them, even as he received a rich blessing in return. He modeled a true discipleship of Jesus, namely, stepping downward into a second-baptism, immersion into the poor, where community and joy are found. And to this he invited us.
In her poem, The Leaf and the Cloud, Mary Oliver wrote: “I will sing for the broken doors of the poor, and for the sorrow of the rich, who are mistaken and lonely.” Jean Vanier, through all the years of his life, stepped through the broken doors of the poor and found community and joy there. For him, our differences were not a threat but a treasure.
Spring Break
This article is taken from the Blog posted by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Timoneum, Baltimore. You can find the original blog by clicking here
The events and activities on our calendar this spring have curtailed blogging. So I’ll take the opportunity with this post to update everyone on what has been going on here on our Ridgely Road campus and farther afield with REBUILT.
We had an effective and engaging Lenten message and small group series called “What on Earth am I Here For” based on Pastor Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life, powerfully underscoring what our lives and the Church are all about. That was followed up by one final series to round out the season, “Brand New,” an Easter reflection on Christ making all things new, including us.
Holy Week and Easter itself were busy days, with thousands of people turning out to remember the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of the Lord. It was a beautiful week reaching its highlight in the Easter Vigil, led by Bishop Adam Parker, welcoming new members through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. And speaking of sacraments, we celebrated two separate First Communion Masses for our Second Grade students, and two separate Confirmation Masses, again celebrated by Bishop Parker, for our High School students; hundreds of students and their parents and guests participated.
Of course, the big news on campus was the grand opening of our new balcony, providing an additional 500 seats, all of which were full on Easter Sunday, as were our video venues in the Theatre, Pavilion, and Vision Café.
Our staff continued to grow as we welcomed Brigit Macksey, Director of Hospitality Ministries, Tracy Giordano, Director of Operational Ministries, and Sean Mihaly as my assistant. All our staff participated in staff development through a number of conferences we offered them as part of their ongoing education and formation in ministry.
Regarding REBUILT, it was a busy spring as well. We launched our first ever, hopefully to be repeated, REBUILT Road Shows. Last year, you will remember, we hosted the REBUILT Conference, a three day gathering to inspire and equip over 1,000 churches from across the country and elsewhere. Held here on our campus, it was a great event, but one we decided to hold every other year, given the breadth and depth of the effort. However, to continue to engage with parishes that are rebuilding we came up with the Road Show concept. Basically it is a one day conference, held regionally, bringing together a smaller group of leaders, about 100 each, for renewal and refreshment, encouraging them in parish planning. This spring we hosted four such gatherings in Boca Raton, Boston, Westfield New Jersey and one here on our campus. They were very successful and well received, and we hope to replicate them in the future.
On the book front, we delivered to our editor the final edits to the manuscript for our new book, to be released in September. Churchmoney is all about growing healthy parishes by funding them the way the Lord told us to. Not everyone will like what we have to say, but we think it makes for an interesting read and will make a difference for many parishes and people. Also this spring we completed delivery to our editor of two smaller projects to be released later this year and next, in the form of daily devotionals parishes can use in Advent and Lent. You’ll be seeing them here at Nativity.
Finally, we are just this week embarking on a book tour in several cities in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. Daniel Miller, our Youth Minister, and Brain Crook, our Weekend Director, will be accompanying me and also speaking at conferences sponsored by dioceses there. Please pray for the success of these efforts to help parishes (very different from ours) rebuild.
Reflections on the Feast of the Ascension
The Feast of the Ascension strikes many Christians as the poor relative of the two rather bigger celebrations which top and tail the long and joyful season of Eastertide: Easter itself, and Pentecost. But Damian Howard SJ ascribes to this feast the utmost significance. What are we to make of the story of Jesus being taken up into a cloud, an episode that not only sounds like mythology but also violates our modern sense of space? Damian Howard SJ lectures in theology at Heythrop College, University of London and sits on the Editorial Board of Thinking Faith. You can find this article and many others at the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
In between our celebrations of the Lord’s Resurrection at Easter and of the gift of the Spirit to His disciples, the ‘birthday of the Church’ at Pentecost, we observe another feast: the Feast of the Ascension. For all the memorable imagery that the story of Jesus’s ascension into heaven evokes, it still strikes many Christians as a rather curious episode. To put it crudely, had Jesus simply ascended vertically into space we would by now expect him to be somewhere in the outer reaches of the solar system, a thought that is hardly an aid to Christian devotion. Yet the event of the Ascension, which appears in both the New Testament books authored by Luke (his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles), serves as the narrative lynchpin of the grand story told by scripture. It is, as one scholar argues, the culmination of every biblical event leading up to it and the condition of the drama that follows it.[1] To understand why this is so will take a little explaining.
A good way to begin would be to ask yourself a question: what, in a nutshell, is the core of the New Testament message? There are doubtless as many answers to that question as there are Christians, but most of them would probably involve one or more of a bundle of ideas: resurrection–reconciliation–new life–triumph over sin and death, all very good, very Eastery answers – and all, incidentally, very much about us human creatures. The centrality of these notions to most Christians explains both why Easter and Pentecost are so important to us and why the Ascension is not. Easter and Pentecost can be quickly established to be all about us: the promise of forgiveness and new life for us, the gift of the Spirit to us. It is not quite so clear what the Ascension has to offer us? The best answer I have been able to come up with is that Christ’s withdrawal brings about a new mode by which Christ can be present to us, intimate, yet universal and ‘interceding for us at the right hand of the Father’.
If you were to ask the same question to the New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright, you would be given a subtly different response, one that puts centre stage someone other than us. For Tom Wright, the core truth of Christianity is that Jesus, and hence God, has become King. The crucified Nazarene has been raised by God to be the universal Lord. Christ’s rising from the dead is not in itself the end of the story but a vitally important part of the trajectory that takes him to his heavenly throne. Wright’s interpretation hardly denies the importance of resurrection; it just sees it as part of a bigger picture. Jesus is raised to be King.
All of which has serious implications for Christian belief and practice. If we were to think very schematically, we might say we have two styles of Christian living here: let’s call them Resurrection-Christianity and Kingdom-Christianity. (I am sketching here ‘ideal types’ for the sake of reflection and these should not be taken as applying to any individual or group in particular, still less as criteria for some kind of orthodoxy.) Resurrection-Christianity would focus, obviously, on the Resurrection, on the fact that Christ has overcome death and won eternal life for those who believe in Him. Kingdom-Christianity is more attentive to the arrival of the Kingdom of God, in other words a state of affairs abroad in the world, such that a new source of power and of ultimate authority is enabling and challenging human beings to allow themselves to be transformed, to receive ‘eternal life’ in the here and now. The two styles are hardly opposed to each other but their focus is appreciably different.
What makes Kingdom-Christianity so convincing an interpretation is the way it makes sense of the whole narrative of the Bible by offering a ‘crowning moment’ in the shape of the final resolution of an expectation spelt out in a spectacular apocalyptic scene by the prophet Daniel (7:13-14):
I saw one like a human being
coming with the clouds of heaven.
And he came to the Ancient One
and was presented before him.
To him was given dominion
and glory and kingship,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
that shall not pass away,
and his kingship is one
that shall never be destroyed.[2]
Here, the coronation of the ‘one like a human being’ (the original expression is translated literally as ‘one like a Son of Man’, from which you can deduce whence Jesus derives His favourite way of referring to Himself) is presented exactly as an onlooker in heaven would enjoy the scene. It is a dream-vision, an imaginative rendition of the deep, hope-filled aspiration of faithful Jews, suffering persecution at the hands of an enemy so powerful they could scarcely envisage ever overcoming it. The Ascension, Douglas Farrow points out, is quite simply the very same event as viewed from the earth, the Son of Man setting out on His journey to take up His throne alongside the ‘Ancient One’.[3]
Hence, in the Ascension we see the mystery alluded to in the Hebrew Bible acted out in full view of the disciples. You can see now that the Ascension is no quirky interlude between Resurrection and Pentecost but a dramatic consummation that makes sense of them: the Resurrection is the beginning of Christ’s heavenly journey, Pentecost the echo on earth of heaven’s jubilation at his coronation. The Ascension is crucial, not decorative.
Farrow defends this view of the centrality of the Ascension from the understandable and legitimate anxiety that it downplays resurrection hope as an end in itself:
In the Bible, the doctrine of the resurrection slowly emerges as a central feature of the Judeo-Christian hope. But if, synechdochically, it can stand for that hope, the hope itself is obviously something more. Resurrection may be a necessary ingredient, since death cuts short our individual journeys, but it is not too bold to say that the greater corporate journey documented by the scriptures continually presses, from its very outset and at every turn, towards the impossible feat of the ascension.[4]
So Kingdom-Christianity in no way cancels out or negates Resurrection-Christianity: it includes it but situates it in a bigger picture and it is a picture that does not have us at the centre, with our desires and hopes, but the person of, if you like to think of it like this, King Jesus.
In his book Surprised by Hope,[5] Tom Wright works out some of the consequences of what is for many a surprising angle on the Biblical story. The problem is not that Resurrection-Christianity (he does not use the term) is false. Rather, it is that if it becomes detached from its original moorings in the proclamation of Jesus as King, then it can drift into something lesser. An example is the way many modern Christians have come to think that the point of Christianity is about ‘getting to heaven when you die’. A Christianity rooted in its original proclamation of the Kingdom of God is not in the first place about life after death, but very much about life in the here and now under the new conditions of God’s reign (which is also not in any way to deny life after death!). If it totally loses its anchor in the Kingdom proclamation, an exclusive concern with resurrection has been known to see this world as a decadent and evil place without hope; salvation begins to look like escape. This is a Gnostic tendency to which Christianity has long been vulnerable. For Wright, the time has come to get back to the original Kingdom-Christianity of the Bible with its confidence in the resurrection of the body, its utter Christ-centredness and its concern for the mission of Christians to help transform the world in accordance with the in-breaking Kingdom.
I must confess both to excitement about Wright’s work and also to a certain perplexity. The excitement springs from the plausibility of his biblical interpretation, from the stress he puts on the Gospel as a God-event rather than the transmission of some new information, and on the implications of all this for the way we think about Christian action and witness in the world. But my perplexity is twofold. First, Wright is suspicious about a great deal of the Christian tradition as it has come down to us over the years. He regrets the medieval corruptions that set in, entailing the loss of the ‘real narrative’ of the Kingdom, until, that is, modern exegesis came into existence. An evangelical Protestant like Wright is entitled to think like that, of course, even if it puts a Catholic on the back foot. But is Christian tradition so badly in need of correction or has it, perhaps, managed to hang on to the Kingdom-story rather more than Wright allows? After all, leaf through any hymn book, Protestant or Catholic, and dozens of images of kingship will jump out at you. But still, Wright might say, these may not correspond to the way people actually think and act in their religious lives. Maybe there is a case to answer here.
The second difficulty is that my modern imagination rather baulks at the thought of Jesus sitting on a throne as King in heaven. It’s a fine metaphor but in what sense does it represent a state of affairs? My mind is uneasy with what sounds like mythology and I find myself restlessly wanting to ‘demythologise’ it, to translate it into categories more related to my way of seeing the world. The problem is that the Ascension is essentially an ‘is’ statement whereas demythologising usually ends up with ‘ought’ statements like saying that ‘living in the Kingdom of God’ really just boils down to living by ‘Kingdom values’ or, ‘building the Kingdom’ by being good citizens, speaking up for the victims of injustice and behaving in an ecologically responsible manner. If that is the ‘cash-value’ of the doctrine of the Ascension, then it seems to have made no real difference. Yet the only alternative would seem to mean fixating on a rather literalist interpretation of the doctrine itself; if my (or your) imagination cannot cope, that’s just too bad, because that’s how it is…
An answer to both perplexities comes in the shape of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola. What I see in his famous itinerary for a 30 day transformative retreat experience is a playing out of precisely the kind of spirituality that flows naturally from the Kingdom narrative: not one of resurrection as an end in itself (though resurrection is very present) but a vivid engagement with Christ, the Eternal King, and a focused and prolonged imaginative effort to contemplate the world under the aspect of the Kingdom of Christ and to discern in depth the difference that this truth makes: i.e. that it calls me to become a servant of Christ’s mission.
There is some irony in making this point. Everyone who has ever made the Exercises knows full well Ignatius’s fondness for regal and military metaphors. People often assume that behind it is Ignatius the (minor) nobleman harking back nostalgically to his time in the Spanish court or soldiering against the French. Yet Ignatius was no sentimentalist. If he used kingly language to speak of Jesus it was quite simply because he knew Jesus as a King.
In this he was helped by the standard, even ubiquitous iconography of the Middle Ages. One of the most common depictions of Jesus throughout the period was the eschatological Christ seated on a throne, surrounded by an oval aura called a mandorla and the four apocalyptic beasts. This figure, known as the maiestas domini, adorns many a Cathedral tympanum, reminding those entering below that Christ is indeed their King here and now. This Christ was majestic and powerful, not entirely dissimilar to the eastern Christian icon of Christ pantokrator, Lord of all. The mandorla was significant too, an unmistakeable reference to the birth canal. The figure of the King in the mandorla, the Kingdom in the very process of being born, echoes the Lord’s prayer: ‘thy Kingdom come!’ It is a dynamic image of God’s Kingdom coming to us as we look on, a reminder that if the Kingdom is indeed already a reality, nevertheless it has not yet fully arrived. It still has something of the subjunctive about it.
Ignatius, judging by the language he uses to speak of Christ in the Exercises, took this icon as his preferred depiction of the Lord. Whenever he imagines himself standing before God, offering himself for service in whatever way God will decide, he speaks of God/Christ as ‘the Divine Majesty’:
Then I shall reflect within myself and consider what, in all reason and justice, I ought for my part to offer and give his Divine Majesty, that is to say, all I possess and myself as well… (Sp Exx 234)[6]
The most important and transformative exercises are preceded by an invitation to imagine Christ as King and to allow oneself to enter into the scene of that image, adopting the behaviour appropriate to it:
how much more is it worthy of consideration to see Christ our Lord, the eternal king, as to all and to each one in particular his call goes out: ‘It is my will to conquer the whole world and every enemy and so enter into the glory of my Father… (Sp Exx 95)
And:
Here will be to see myself in the presence of God our Lord and of all his saints that I might desire and know what is more pleasing to His Divine Goodness. … here it will be to ask for the grace to choose what is more for the glory of his Divine Majesty and the salvation of my soul. (Sp Exx151-2)
Two vital clues suggest that the link with the Ascension was one Ignatius would have made himself. In the ‘Fourth Week’ of the Exercises, which deals with the Resurrection of Christ, Ignatius offers for meditation no less than 13 appearances of the Lord, including one to Paul which would have taken place after the Ascension. But he insists that it is the Ascension that should be the final mystery of the whole retreat to be contemplated. For Ignatius this is no mere detail, no pious addition to the list of biblical incidents but the highpoint, the climax of the whole movement of Christ that brings him to the divine throne before which he stood repeatedly seeking God’s will for his life. The other detail comes from an autobiographical incident that took place when Ignatius was on pilgrimage in Jerusalem. He was about to be expelled from the Holy Land by the Franciscan authorities but before heading for the coast he was desperate to do one last thing: to revisit a particular site from the pilgrim’s itinerary, the place where, tradition has it, Jesus ascended into heaven. Bribing the guards with a pair of scissors, of all things, Ignatius managed to get up to the Mount of Olives where he could check the exact position of Christ’s footprints before He was taken off into the cloud.
So, with regard to my first perplexity, it is clear that Ignatius at least, one of the Catholic tradition’s most brilliant and influential spiritual masters, is an unabashed exponent of Kingdom-Christianity. If you know anything about his life that observation will ring true; he was above all a man who desired to let God’s glory shine out here in the world by living his life as a divine mission. Knowing this, one could never say blandly that the tradition of the Church simply lost sight of the central significance of Jesus Christ as universal King. Indeed, it seems to have maintained it with clarity and vigour.
Ignatius has also relieved my second perplexity considerably, the anxiety that simply proclaiming the kingship of Christ as a literal state of affairs does not seem to get us very far. Appropriating this deep truth, as Ignatius’s life shows, requires a very special human faculty, one that Ignatius was forced to deploy by the very forces which were undermining the ‘Kingdom’ in his day. For at the time he is writing, the image of the Divine Majesty was facing a major crisis. This was thanks to the impending demise of that ancient, traditional cosmology in which the image of Christ as King in heaven made some sense. By the end of the 15th Century the new sciences and the successful circumnavigation of the globe had put that picture under severe pressure. Politically things were changing too. A united Christendom had been evidential warrant to the notion of a civilisation united under the rule of Christ. But now, under the impact of the Reformation, Christendom was breaking up, making it all but impossible to conceive of Christ as King of the universe. This is the decidedly inauspicious climate in which our young Basque finds himself not only drawn to the maiestas domini but also sensing its urgent appeal. I imagine him gazing longingly at some cathedral portal after Mass, on fire with the love of God and aware that, despite all the contradictory desires that filled his heart, it was only in the service of Christ’s mission that inner unity and purpose in life could be achieved. He must have seen depicted in this image a process, a dynamic by which human beings could allow order to be drawn out of the chaos of their lives. He understood that the only way to unleash the transformative power of the Kingdom was not merely by assent to a purported state of affairs but by the deepest possible imaginative exploration of what it means to live in the world where Jesus is King. For the key to engaging with the mystery of the Kingdom is, for Ignatius, as for the Spinner of parables Himself, the human imagination.
[1] Douglas Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), p. 26.
[2] New Revised Standard Version.
[3] Ascension and Ecclesia pp. 23f.
[4] Ascension and Ecclesia pp. 26-7.
[5] London: SPCK, 2007.
[6] This and all passages from the Exercises are taken from the translation of Michael Ivens, Understanding the Spiritual Exercises (Leominster: Gracewing, 1998) p. 174.
