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 21st - 24th May, 2019
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Friday: 11:00am Mt St Vincent Nursing Home
Next Weekend 25th & 26th May, 2019
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 25th & 26th May, 2019
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: A McIntyre, M Williams, C Kiely-Hoye
10:30am E Petts, K Pearce
Ministers of Communion: Vigil M Heazlewood, G Lee-Archer, M Kelly, P Shelverton
10.30am: M Sherriff, T & S Ryan, D Barrientos, M Barrientos
Cleaners 24th May: F Sly, M Hansen, I Hunter 31st May: P Shelverton, E Petts
Piety Shop 25th May: H Thompson 26th May: T Omogbai-Musa
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: M & K McKenzie
Ministers of Communion: M Mott, W Bajzelj, J Jones, T Leary
Cleaners: M Swain, M Bryan Flowers: M Byrne
Hospitality: M Byrne, G Doyle
Penguin:
Greeters J Garnsey, S Ewing
Commentator: Y Downes
Readers: E Nickols, T Clayton
Ministers of Communion: S Coleman, S Ewing
Liturgy: Sulphur Creek C
Setting Up: T Clayton
Care of Church: Y & R Downes
Latrobe:
Reader: M Chan
Minister of Communion: M Mackey
Procession of Gifts: J Hyde
Port Sorell:
Readers: G & V Duff
Ministers of Communion: B Lee
Cleaners: A Hynes
Readings This Week: Fifth Sunday of Easter – Year C
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
I take time to come to stillness in the way that suits me
best, conscious of stepping into this holy space before the Lord.
I ask God to
help me respond to him today with openness and generosity.
I read these words
from St John slowly, taking time to savour them.
Maybe it helps to imagine
myself sitting with Jesus and his friends at supper, as he speaks of his
imminent departure.
Perhaps I hear him addressing me, too, as one of his
beloved ‘little children’ … or perhaps I simply rest quietly in these words of
glory and love.
How do I want to respond to Jesus, my Lord, who is fully human,
yet fully divine?
Jesus calls his friends to love in a radical new way, with
the self-giving love that he himself embodies.
How do I feel to be entrusted with
this?
Inspired? … challenged? … privileged ... or …?
Maybe I think of people I
admire who seem able to radiate this radical love of Jesus.
What does it mean
to live my life so others can see me as a disciple of Jesus?
I share my deepest
thoughts with the Lord as I would with a trusted friend, asking for whatever
grace I need.
In time, I gently end my time of prayer, perhaps with the words
‘Glory be to the Father ...’, as I ask the Lord to deepen his life within me.
Readings Next Week: Sixth Sunday of
Easter – 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:
Chris Allen, Sr Doreen Williams PBVM, Margaret Nolan, Jean Vanier, Heather Mahoney, Cheryl Hicks, Myra Goss, Bernard Wendt, Ian Wright.
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 16th – 22nd May
Sylvia Street, Julia Windridge, Mary Stevenson, Kathleen Laycock, Kit Hayes, Martin Healy, Lance Cole, Richard Delaney, Patricia Down, Paul Sulzberger, Betty Broadbent, Phyllis Fraser, Kathleen Hall, Alfred Nichols, Mariea McCormick, Margaret Bresnehan, Bernard Marshall, Peter Hutchinson, Margaret Murphy, Harry Maker
May
they Rest in Peace
Weekly
Ramblings
Hopefully
Fr Paschal will arrive back in the Parish this weekend – we will keep you
updated with the health of his mother – please continue to keep her in your
prayers.
I will be
on holidays from 3rd – 29th June and there will need to be some Lay Led
Liturgies during that time. Because Fr Paschal has commitments at St
Brendan-Shaw College each week there may be times when an immediate response
might not be possible but every effort will be made to meet any needs in a
reasonable time frame – Fr Phil will be the backstop, front stop and everything
else he needs to be!!!
With the
newsletter this weekend there is a copy of our 2018-19 Financial Statement.
Thanks to the finance team past and present for their assistance during the
past year for their efforts in keeping us moving forward especially with the
challenges faced in completing the Units at 88 Stewart Street. They are now
occupied and under the ownership of Housing Tasmania.
Also
available this weekend are copies of the Brochure produced by the Archdiocese
regarding Safe Communities. Following on from the Royal Commission every
Diocese has taken significant steps to ensure the safety of children and
vulnerable people and this brochure is one step in our Diocesan Framework. We
have also placed a Statement in each Mass Centre affirming our commitment to
the Safe Communities Policy.
Fr Phil’s house is gradually taking shape – the framing and
windows are completed – watch this space for further news and stories on that
journey!
Please take care on the roads and we look forward to seeing
you next weekend.
LEGION OF MARY: All Parishioners are invited to the Legion of Mary annual Acies (Consecration to Our Lady) at Sacred Heart Church, Alexandra Road Ulverstone Sunday 19th May at 2pm with benediction, followed by afternoon tea in the Community Room.
MACKILLOP HILL - Spirituality in the Coffee Shoppe.
Monday 27th May 2019 10.30 – 12 noon
Come along and enjoy a lively discussion over morning tea! All welcome! We look forward to your company at 123 William Street, FORTH. Phone: 6428 3095 No bookings necessary. Donation appreciated.
MT ST VINCENT AUXILIARY would like to thank all who purchased tickets in our Mother’s Day Raffle. Total raised $1,338. All winners notified.
PIETY SHOP: New Sunday Missals in stock $45 each
FOOTY MARGIN RESULTS:
Round 8 (Friday 10th May) Sydney Swans won by 5 points. Congratulations to the following winners; MLCP, Arvy Pisarskis & ………
BINGO THURSDAY
23rd May – Eyes down 7:30pm.
Callers Tony Ryan & Alan Luxton
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 26 May 2019
Next week on the Journey, our Gospel (John 14:23-29) encourages our belief in the Lord. Mother Hilda shares her Wisdom from the Abbey with reminder of the great companionship that was Guido and Pope St John XXIII, Marilyn Rodrigues, The Peaceful Parent, talks openly about Testing Our Faith and Trish McCarthy urges us to Look Deeper in her Milk and Honey God spot. We are truly lucky to have some wonderfully talented Christian Music artists on our show.
Go to 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
Oneness
Guest writer and CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault continues exploring Jesus as a wisdom teacher.
When Jesus talks about Oneness, he is not speaking in an Eastern sense about an equivalency of being, such that I am in and of myself divine. Rather, what he has in mind is a complete, mutual indwelling: I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each other.
His most beautiful symbol for this is in John 15 where he says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Abide in me as I in you” (15:4-5). A few verses later he says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love” (15:9). While he does indeed claim that “the Father and I are one” (John 10:30)—a statement so blasphemous to Jewish ears that it nearly gets Jesus stoned—he does not see this as an exclusive privilege but as something shared by all human beings. There is no separation between humans and God because of this mutual inter-abiding which expresses the indivisible reality of divine love.
We flow into God—and God into us—because it is the nature of love to flow. And as we give ourselves into one another in this fashion, the vine gives life and coherence to the branch while the branch makes visible what the vine is. (After all, a vine is merely an abstraction until there are actual branches to articulate its reality.) The whole and the part live together in mutual, loving reciprocity, each belonging to the other and dependent on the other to show forth the fullness of love. That’s Jesus’ vision of no separation between human and Divine.
No separation between human and human is an equally powerful notion—and equally challenging. One of the most familiar of Jesus’ teachings is “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31, Matthew 22:39). But we almost always hear that wrong: “Love your neighbor as much as yourself.” (And of course, the next logical question then becomes, “But I have to love me first, don’t I, before I can love my neighbor?”) If you listen closely to Jesus however, there is no “as much as” in his admonition. It’s just “Love your neighbor as yourself”—as a continuation of your very own being. It’s a complete seeing that your neighbor is you. There are not two individuals out there, one seeking to better herself at the price of the other, or to extend charity to the other; there are simply two cells of the one great Life. Each of them is equally precious and necessary. And as these two cells flow into one another, experiencing that one Life from the inside, they discover that “laying down one’s life for another” is not a loss of one’s self but a vast expansion of it—because the indivisible reality of love is the only True Self.
Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—A New Perspective on Christ and His Message (Shambhala: 2008), 31-32.
Language, Symbols, and Self-Understanding
This article is taken from the Archives of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article and many other by clicking here
A reporter once asked two men at the construction site where a church was being built what each did for a living. The first man replied: “I’m a bricklayer.” The second said: “I’m building a cathedral!” How we name an experience largely determines its meaning.
There are various languages within a language, and some speak more deeply than others.
Thirty years ago, the American Educator, Allan Bloom, wrote a book entitled, The Closing of the American Mind. This was his thesis: Our language today is becoming ever more empirical, one-dimensional, and devoid of depth. This, he submits, is closing our minds by trivializing our experiences.
Twenty years earlier, in rather provocative essay, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Philip Rieff had already suggested the same thing. For Rieff, we live our lives under a certain “symbolic hedge”, that is, within a language and set of concepts by which we interpret our experience. And that hedge can be high or low. We can understand our experience within a language and set of concepts that has us believe that things are very meaningful or that they are quite shallow and not very meaningful at all. Experience is rich or shallow, depending upon the language within which we interpret it.
For example: Imagine a man with a backache who sees his doctor. The doctor tells him that he’s suffering from arthritis. This brings some calm. He now knows what ails him. But he isn’t satisfied and sees a psychologist. The psychologist tells him that his symptoms are not just physical but that he’s also suffering from mid-life crisis. This affords him a richer understanding of his pain. But he’s still dissatisfied and sees a spiritual director. The spiritual director, while not denying him arthritis and mid-life crisis, tells him that this pain is really his Gethsemane, his cross to bear. Notice all three diagnoses speak of the same pain but that each places it under a different symbolic hedge.
The work of persons such as Carl Jung, James Hillman, and Thomas Moore have helped us understand more explicitly how there is a language which more deeply touches the soul.
For instance: We see the language of soul, among other places, in some of our great myths and fairy tales, many of them centuries old. Their seeming simplicity masks a disarming depth. To offer just one example, take the story of Cinderella: The first thing to notice is that the name, Cinderella, is not an actual name but a composite of two words: Cinder, meaning ashes; and Puella, meaning young girl. This is not a simple fairy tale about a lonely, beaten-down, young girl. It’s a myth that highlights a universal, paradoxical, paschal dynamic which we experience in our lives, where, before you are ready to wear the glass slipper, be the belle of the ball, marry the prince, and live happily ever after, you must first spend some prerequisite time sitting in the ashes, suffering humiliation, and being purified by that time in the dust.
Notice how this story speaks in its own way of what in Christian spirituality we call “lent”, a season of penance, wherein we mark ourselves with ashes in order to enter an ascetical space in order to prepare ourselves for the kind of joy which (for reasons we only know intuitively) can only be had after a time of renunciation and sublimation. Cinderella is a story that shines a certain light into the depth of our souls. Many of our famous myths do that.
However no myth shines a light into the soul more deeply than does scripture. Its language and symbols name our experience in a way that helps us grasp the genuine depth inside our own experiences.
Thus, there are two ways of understanding ourselves: We can be confused or we can be inside the belly of the whale. We can be helpless before an addiction or we can be possessed by a demon. We can vacillate between joy and depression or we can alternate between being with Jesus ‘in Galilee’ or with him ‘in Jerusalem’. We can be paralyzed as we stand before globalization or we can be standing with Jesus on the borders of Samaria in a new conversation with a pagan woman. We can be struggling with fidelity in keeping our commitments or we can be standing with Joshua before God, receiving instructions to kill off the Canaanites so as to sustain ourselves in the Promised Land. We can be suffering from arthritis or we can be sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane. The language we use to understand an experience defines what the experience means to us.
In the end, we can have a job or we can have a vocation; we can be lost or we can be spending our 40 days in the desert; we can be bitterly frustrated or we can be pondering with Mary; or we can be slaving away for a pay check or we can be building a cathedral. Meaning depends a lot on language.
Why a 'New Commandment'
After examining how Jesus understood and talked about the Ten Commandments, (see here) Jack Mahoney turns his attention to the ‘new’ commandment that Jesus gave to his disciples, which we find in John’s Gospel. What was new about what Jesus was asking with his instruction to ‘love one another ... as I have loved you’? Jack Mahoney SJ is Emeritus Professor of Moral and Social Theology in the University of London, and a regular writer for Thinking Faith. You can read this article and many others on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
The discourse of Jesus at the Last Supper as presented in John’s Gospel has enthralled readers, and yet also mystified them. Like other discourses of Jesus in the fourth gospel, the text contains puzzling breaks, interruptions and repetitions. Of several explanations proposed for the strange structure, Raymond Brown adopts the comparatively simple one of postulating that it was edited twice by the evangelist and then reworked by another person in the Johannine community.[1] One result is that sometimes two versions of the same unit are printed side by side in slightly different settings aimed at meeting different situations, a practice of doubling passages rather than preferring one with which we are familiar in the Pentateuch. Brown notes that ‘what is said in the Last Discourse in xiv 1-31 is largely said all over again in xvi 4-33’.[2] And Perkins suggests that the discourse material ‘appears to have been expanded during the editing of the Gospel, and may well represent different situations in the later history of the Johannine community’.[3]
As an example of all this, it is interesting to note that in the course of his Last Supper discourse, Jesus instructs his apostles in two separate places to love another as he has loved them, and that the context differs in each case. The first passage is found in Jn 13:33-36:
‘Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, “Where I am going, you cannot come.” I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’
Perkins observes that ‘the commandment fits awkwardly into this position, since what follows deals with the theme of Jesus’ departure’.[4] But the location of the commandment appears deliberate here. The context of Jesus’s forthcoming departure seems to be the reason why he is here giving his apostles the command. The implication is not that their love for each other should be as great as that of Jesus for them all (i.e., to the measure with which I have loved you), but that, for this new situation when their Lord will have left them, it is appropriate that he gives them a new commandment: just as he has loved them while with them, likewise they are henceforth to stand in for Jesus in their love and care for one another. One of the purposes for which the Gospel of John seems to have been was written was to attempt to resolve painful divisions which existed within the Johannine community (as we see in the First Letter of John). The evangelist therefore may have Jesus here exhorting all his future disciples to mediate his continuing love to one another after he has gone, and so maintain the unity he will pray for earnestly.
This is the only passage in John’s Gospel (Jn 13:33-36) in which Jesus actually calls this the ‘new’ commandment that he is giving the apostles. In the second passage where Jesus commands his disciples to love one another ‘as I have loved you’ (Jn 15:12-17), he does not refer to this as a ‘new’ commandment. The later context is not the forthcoming departure of Jesus, but his giving his life for his disciples, and offering them this as an example of how completely they are to devote themselves to one another in the future (Jn 15:12-17): ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.’
Why call it ‘new’?
Various reasons are proposed to explain why Jesus issued a ‘new’ commandment to his followers. The simplest but least plausible reason is that he was just adding to the number of the Ten Commandments given to Israel by God through Moses. A more attractive, but still unlikely, reason was that in exhorting them to love one another he was doing little more than repeating the ‘Great Commandment’ that they love others as themselves, which we saw him propose in reply to the question about a priority among the Ten Commandments. However, the new commandment is not just that Jesus’s disciples are to love one another, but that they are to do so ‘as I have loved you’. This seems to be a major new qualification to Jesus’s moral teaching. It appears that the norm and the supreme example of Christian loving is to be the love which Jesus himself showed to, and for, his followers; and historically this will be expanded into the powerful spiritualities of the imitation of Christ and of the following of Christ. Perkins, therefore, explains that ‘this commandment is “new” because it is grounded not in the love commands of the Jewish tradition (e.g. Lev 19:19; 1QS 1:9-11) but in the self-offering of Jesus’.[5]
This ‘new’ commandment, however, is sometimes considered to be surprisingly exclusive, and seems to differ from the Great Commandment in enjoining the disciples just to love each other, rather than to love all their neighbours. However, it is worth bearing in mind that Jesus’s Last Supper discourse in John’s Gospel sometimes looks forward to the coming passion and death of Jesus, and at other times it seems to look back from after the Resurrection to Jesus’s having completed his task, so that, as C. H. Dodd once explained, ‘in a real sense it is the risen and glorified Christ who speaks’.[6] This perhaps enables us to understand why the commandment to ‘love one another’ seems almost exclusive, as one to be observed only among the disciples, in contrast to the Great Commandment which enjoins that one should love of all one’s neighbours without exception. In this discourse, it is as if the risen Christ is addressing the community for which John was writing his gospel, and is instructing it on how to handle its problems and issues. Just as in any society, repeated legislation forbidding a particular piece of behaviour indicates the prevalence of such behaviour in that society. John in his gospel and his letters (as their author or their source) writes so repeatedly of the need for mutual love and unity among the disciples of Jesus, that it seems likely that these virtues were notably lacking in John’s Church, and that the Last Supper discourse is a plea from their risen Lord to remedy this sad situation.
The law of the new covenant
Finally, a very attractive interpretation links the ‘new’ commandment with the new covenant. As Raymond Brown observes, the evangelist shows that in speaking of love as the new commandment, ‘he is thinking of this Last Supper scene in covenant terms’.[7] As we saw previously in examining the Ten Commandments, covenant and commandments are closely connected: ‘The Lord said to Moses: Write these words; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. . . And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments’ (Ex 34: 27-28; cf Dt 4:13). Israel’s side of its covenant with the Lord was to obey the Lord’s commandments faithfully, in return for which the Lord would continue to protect and favour his people up to and into the Promised Land. However, as a result of Israel’s regular infidelity to the covenant even in the desert and subsequently in the Promised Land, God eventually allowed Israel to be conquered and transported into exile, after which the prophets began to speak of another covenant which God would make with his faithful chosen people:
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt — a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 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. (Jer 31:31-34)
This new covenant between God and his chosen people, foretold by Jeremiah, is none other than the one which Jesus claimed to be inaugurating at the Last Supper, when according to Mark, he took the cup of wine and proclaimed, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many’ (Mk 14:24), repeated in Luke, with the words, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’ (Lk 22:20; cf. 1 Cor 11:25).
The Second Vatican Council connected the new covenant with its new commandment as follows, in its Decree on the Church, after quoting Jer 31:31-34,
Christ instituted this new covenant, the new testament, that is to say, in his blood (cf. 1 Cor 11:25), calling together a people made up of Jew and Gentile, making them one, not according to the flesh but in the Spirit. This was to be the new People of God…Its law is the new commandment to love as Christ loved us (cf. Jn 13:34). Its end is the kingdom of God, which has been begun by God Himself on earth, and which is to be further extended until it is brought to perfection by Him at the end of time.[8]
Jesus is thus the divinely appointed mediator, and indeed author, of the new covenant (Heb 12:24), and just as the Sinai covenant mediated through Moses contained the Ten Commandments as an integral part of God’s will, so here also the new covenant requires a new commandment as its basic law. The other contracting party, the new people of God, are now to love one another as Jesus has loved them. ‘The model of the disciples’ love is Jesus’ supreme act of love, his laying down his life’.[9] This will be definitively enacted when the departed Jesus sends his Spirit to form the new covenant community, Christ’s Church. Then from the love that they show each other they will be recognisably distinct, and ‘everyone will know that you are my disciples’, as Jesus foretold (Jn 13:35).
[1] R. E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, Anchor Bible, 2 vols (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1971) I, p. xxxix.
[2] Brown, I, p. xxv.
[3] P. Perkins, The Gospel According to John, New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 61:169.
[4] Perkins, 61:179.
[5] Perkins, 61:179.
[6] Brown, vol II, 585; Charles H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: CUP, 1960), p. 423.
[7] Brown, II, p. 612.
[8] Lumen Gentium, §9
[9] Brown, II, p. 682.
Weekday Masses 21st - 24th May, 2019
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 10.30am Karingal Nursing Home
Friday: 11:00am Mt St Vincent Nursing Home
Friday: 11:00am Mt St Vincent Nursing Home
Next Weekend 25th & 26th May, 2019
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 25th & 26th May, 2019
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: A McIntyre, M Williams, C Kiely-Hoye
10:30am E Petts, K Pearce
Ministers of Communion: Vigil M Heazlewood, G Lee-Archer, M Kelly, P Shelverton
10.30am: M Sherriff, T & S Ryan, D Barrientos, M Barrientos
Cleaners 24th May: F Sly, M Hansen, I Hunter 31st May: P Shelverton, E Petts
Piety Shop 25th May: H Thompson 26th May: T Omogbai-Musa
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: M & K McKenzie
Ministers of Communion: M Mott, W Bajzelj, J Jones, T Leary
Cleaners: M Swain, M Bryan Flowers: M Byrne
Hospitality: M Byrne, G Doyle
Penguin:
Greeters J Garnsey, S Ewing
Commentator: Y Downes
Readers: E Nickols, T Clayton
Ministers of Communion: S Coleman, S Ewing
Liturgy: Sulphur Creek C
Setting Up: T Clayton
Care of Church: Y & R Downes
Latrobe:
Reader: M Chan
Minister of Communion: M Mackey
Procession of Gifts: J Hyde
Port Sorell:
Readers: G & V Duff
Ministers of Communion: B Lee
Cleaners: A Hynes
Fr Phil’s house is gradually taking shape – the framing and
windows are completed – watch this space for further news and stories on that
journey!
5.00pm Latrobe
Ministry Rosters 25th & 26th May, 2019
Devonport:
Readers: Vigil: A McIntyre, M Williams, C Kiely-Hoye
10:30am E Petts, K Pearce
Ministers of Communion: Vigil M Heazlewood, G Lee-Archer, M Kelly, P Shelverton
10.30am: M Sherriff, T & S Ryan, D Barrientos, M Barrientos
Cleaners 24th May: F Sly, M Hansen, I Hunter 31st May: P Shelverton, E Petts
Piety Shop 25th May: H Thompson 26th May: T Omogbai-Musa
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: M & K McKenzie
Ministers of Communion: M Mott, W Bajzelj, J Jones, T Leary
Cleaners: M Swain, M Bryan Flowers: M Byrne
Hospitality: M Byrne, G Doyle
Penguin:
Greeters J Garnsey, S Ewing
Commentator: Y Downes
Readers: E Nickols, T Clayton
Ministers of Communion: S Coleman, S Ewing
Liturgy: Sulphur Creek C
Setting Up: T Clayton
Care of Church: Y & R Downes
Latrobe:
Reader: M Chan
Minister of Communion: M Mackey
Procession of Gifts: J Hyde
Port Sorell:
Readers: G & V Duff
Ministers of Communion: B Lee
Cleaners: A Hynes
Readings This Week: Fifth Sunday of Easter – Year C
First Reading: Acts 14:21-27
Second Reading: Apocalypse 21: 1-5
Gospel: John 13:31-35
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
I take time to come to stillness in the way that suits me
best, conscious of stepping into this holy space before the Lord.
I ask God to
help me respond to him today with openness and generosity.
I read these words
from St John slowly, taking time to savour them.
Maybe it helps to imagine
myself sitting with Jesus and his friends at supper, as he speaks of his
imminent departure.
Perhaps I hear him addressing me, too, as one of his
beloved ‘little children’ … or perhaps I simply rest quietly in these words of
glory and love.
How do I want to respond to Jesus, my Lord, who is fully human,
yet fully divine?
Jesus calls his friends to love in a radical new way, with
the self-giving love that he himself embodies.
How do I feel to be entrusted with
this?
Inspired? … challenged? … privileged ... or …?
Maybe I think of people I
admire who seem able to radiate this radical love of Jesus.
What does it mean
to live my life so others can see me as a disciple of Jesus?
I share my deepest
thoughts with the Lord as I would with a trusted friend, asking for whatever
grace I need.
In time, I gently end my time of prayer, perhaps with the words
‘Glory be to the Father ...’, as I ask the Lord to deepen his life within me.
Readings Next Week: Sixth Sunday of
Easter – Year C
First
Reading: Acts 15:1-2, 22-29
Second
Reading: Apocalypse 21:10-14, 22-23
Gospel: John 14:23-29
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:
Chris Allen, Sr Doreen Williams PBVM, Margaret Nolan, Jean Vanier, Heather Mahoney, Cheryl Hicks, Myra Goss, Bernard Wendt, Ian Wright.
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 16th – 22nd May
Sylvia Street, Julia Windridge, Mary Stevenson, Kathleen Laycock, Kit Hayes, Martin Healy, Lance Cole, Richard Delaney, Patricia Down, Paul Sulzberger, Betty Broadbent, Phyllis Fraser, Kathleen Hall, Alfred Nichols, Mariea McCormick, Margaret Bresnehan, Bernard Marshall, Peter Hutchinson, Margaret Murphy, Harry Maker
May
they Rest in Peace
Weekly
Ramblings
Last
weekend I managed to muck up again – this time with where there would be Lay
Led Liturgies this weekend. You will be pleased to know that there are no Lay
Led Liturgies next weekend so I can’t make any mistakes – about that anyway.
Hopefully
Fr Paschal will arrive back in the Parish this weekend – we will keep you
updated with the health of his mother – please continue to keep her in your
prayers.
I will be
on holidays from 3rd – 29th June and there will need to be some Lay Led
Liturgies during that time. Because Fr Paschal has commitments at St
Brendan-Shaw College each week there may be times when an immediate response
might not be possible but every effort will be made to meet any needs in a
reasonable time frame – Fr Phil will be the backstop, front stop and everything
else he needs to be!!!
With the
newsletter this weekend there is a copy of our 2018-19 Financial Statement.
Thanks to the finance team past and present for their assistance during the
past year for their efforts in keeping us moving forward especially with the
challenges faced in completing the Units at 88 Stewart Street. They are now
occupied and under the ownership of Housing Tasmania.
Also
available this weekend are copies of the Brochure produced by the Archdiocese
regarding Safe Communities. Following on from the Royal Commission every
Diocese has taken significant steps to ensure the safety of children and
vulnerable people and this brochure is one step in our Diocesan Framework. We
have also placed a Statement in each Mass Centre affirming our commitment to
the Safe Communities Policy.
Fr Phil’s house is gradually taking shape – the framing and
windows are completed – watch this space for further news and stories on that
journey!
Please take care on the roads and we look forward to seeing
you next weekend.
LEGION OF MARY: All Parishioners are invited to the Legion of Mary annual Acies (Consecration to Our Lady) at Sacred Heart Church, Alexandra Road Ulverstone Sunday 19th May at 2pm with benediction, followed by afternoon tea in the Community Room.
Come along and enjoy a lively discussion over morning tea! All welcome! We look forward to your company at 123 William Street, FORTH. Phone: 6428 3095 No bookings necessary. Donation appreciated.
MT ST VINCENT AUXILIARY would like to thank all who purchased tickets in our Mother’s Day Raffle. Total raised $1,338. All winners notified.
PIETY SHOP: New Sunday Missals in stock $45 each
FOOTY MARGIN RESULTS:
Round 8 (Friday 10th May) Sydney Swans won by 5 points. Congratulations to the following winners; MLCP, Arvy Pisarskis & ………
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 26 May 2019
Next week on the Journey, our Gospel (John 14:23-29) encourages our belief in the Lord. Mother Hilda shares her Wisdom from the Abbey with reminder of the great companionship that was Guido and Pope St John XXIII, Marilyn Rodrigues, The Peaceful Parent, talks openly about Testing Our Faith and Trish McCarthy urges us to Look Deeper in her Milk and Honey God spot. We are truly lucky to have some wonderfully talented Christian Music artists on our show.
Go to 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
Guest writer and CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault continues exploring Jesus as a wisdom teacher.
When Jesus talks about Oneness, he is not speaking in an Eastern sense about an equivalency of being, such that I am in and of myself divine. Rather, what he has in mind is a complete, mutual indwelling: I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each other.
His most beautiful symbol for this is in John 15 where he says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Abide in me as I in you” (15:4-5). A few verses later he says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love” (15:9). While he does indeed claim that “the Father and I are one” (John 10:30)—a statement so blasphemous to Jewish ears that it nearly gets Jesus stoned—he does not see this as an exclusive privilege but as something shared by all human beings. There is no separation between humans and God because of this mutual inter-abiding which expresses the indivisible reality of divine love.
We flow into God—and God into us—because it is the nature of love to flow. And as we give ourselves into one another in this fashion, the vine gives life and coherence to the branch while the branch makes visible what the vine is. (After all, a vine is merely an abstraction until there are actual branches to articulate its reality.) The whole and the part live together in mutual, loving reciprocity, each belonging to the other and dependent on the other to show forth the fullness of love. That’s Jesus’ vision of no separation between human and Divine.
No separation between human and human is an equally powerful notion—and equally challenging. One of the most familiar of Jesus’ teachings is “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31, Matthew 22:39). But we almost always hear that wrong: “Love your neighbor as much as yourself.” (And of course, the next logical question then becomes, “But I have to love me first, don’t I, before I can love my neighbor?”) If you listen closely to Jesus however, there is no “as much as” in his admonition. It’s just “Love your neighbor as yourself”—as a continuation of your very own being. It’s a complete seeing that your neighbor is you. There are not two individuals out there, one seeking to better herself at the price of the other, or to extend charity to the other; there are simply two cells of the one great Life. Each of them is equally precious and necessary. And as these two cells flow into one another, experiencing that one Life from the inside, they discover that “laying down one’s life for another” is not a loss of one’s self but a vast expansion of it—because the indivisible reality of love is the only True Self.
Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—A New Perspective on Christ and His Message (Shambhala: 2008), 31-32.
A reporter once asked two men at the construction site where a church was being built what each did for a living. The first man replied: “I’m a bricklayer.” The second said: “I’m building a cathedral!” How we name an experience largely determines its meaning.
There are various languages within a language, and some speak more deeply than others.
Thirty years ago, the American Educator, Allan Bloom, wrote a book entitled, The Closing of the American Mind. This was his thesis: Our language today is becoming ever more empirical, one-dimensional, and devoid of depth. This, he submits, is closing our minds by trivializing our experiences.
Twenty years earlier, in rather provocative essay, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Philip Rieff had already suggested the same thing. For Rieff, we live our lives under a certain “symbolic hedge”, that is, within a language and set of concepts by which we interpret our experience. And that hedge can be high or low. We can understand our experience within a language and set of concepts that has us believe that things are very meaningful or that they are quite shallow and not very meaningful at all. Experience is rich or shallow, depending upon the language within which we interpret it.
For example: Imagine a man with a backache who sees his doctor. The doctor tells him that he’s suffering from arthritis. This brings some calm. He now knows what ails him. But he isn’t satisfied and sees a psychologist. The psychologist tells him that his symptoms are not just physical but that he’s also suffering from mid-life crisis. This affords him a richer understanding of his pain. But he’s still dissatisfied and sees a spiritual director. The spiritual director, while not denying him arthritis and mid-life crisis, tells him that this pain is really his Gethsemane, his cross to bear. Notice all three diagnoses speak of the same pain but that each places it under a different symbolic hedge.
The work of persons such as Carl Jung, James Hillman, and Thomas Moore have helped us understand more explicitly how there is a language which more deeply touches the soul.
For instance: We see the language of soul, among other places, in some of our great myths and fairy tales, many of them centuries old. Their seeming simplicity masks a disarming depth. To offer just one example, take the story of Cinderella: The first thing to notice is that the name, Cinderella, is not an actual name but a composite of two words: Cinder, meaning ashes; and Puella, meaning young girl. This is not a simple fairy tale about a lonely, beaten-down, young girl. It’s a myth that highlights a universal, paradoxical, paschal dynamic which we experience in our lives, where, before you are ready to wear the glass slipper, be the belle of the ball, marry the prince, and live happily ever after, you must first spend some prerequisite time sitting in the ashes, suffering humiliation, and being purified by that time in the dust.
Notice how this story speaks in its own way of what in Christian spirituality we call “lent”, a season of penance, wherein we mark ourselves with ashes in order to enter an ascetical space in order to prepare ourselves for the kind of joy which (for reasons we only know intuitively) can only be had after a time of renunciation and sublimation. Cinderella is a story that shines a certain light into the depth of our souls. Many of our famous myths do that.
However no myth shines a light into the soul more deeply than does scripture. Its language and symbols name our experience in a way that helps us grasp the genuine depth inside our own experiences.
Thus, there are two ways of understanding ourselves: We can be confused or we can be inside the belly of the whale. We can be helpless before an addiction or we can be possessed by a demon. We can vacillate between joy and depression or we can alternate between being with Jesus ‘in Galilee’ or with him ‘in Jerusalem’. We can be paralyzed as we stand before globalization or we can be standing with Jesus on the borders of Samaria in a new conversation with a pagan woman. We can be struggling with fidelity in keeping our commitments or we can be standing with Joshua before God, receiving instructions to kill off the Canaanites so as to sustain ourselves in the Promised Land. We can be suffering from arthritis or we can be sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane. The language we use to understand an experience defines what the experience means to us.
In the end, we can have a job or we can have a vocation; we can be lost or we can be spending our 40 days in the desert; we can be bitterly frustrated or we can be pondering with Mary; or we can be slaving away for a pay check or we can be building a cathedral. Meaning depends a lot on language.
After examining how Jesus understood and talked about the Ten Commandments, (see here) Jack Mahoney turns his attention to the ‘new’ commandment that Jesus gave to his disciples, which we find in John’s Gospel. What was new about what Jesus was asking with his instruction to ‘love one another ... as I have loved you’? Jack Mahoney SJ is Emeritus Professor of Moral and Social Theology in the University of London, and a regular writer for Thinking Faith. You can read this article and many others on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
The discourse of Jesus at the Last Supper as presented in John’s Gospel has enthralled readers, and yet also mystified them. Like other discourses of Jesus in the fourth gospel, the text contains puzzling breaks, interruptions and repetitions. Of several explanations proposed for the strange structure, Raymond Brown adopts the comparatively simple one of postulating that it was edited twice by the evangelist and then reworked by another person in the Johannine community.[1] One result is that sometimes two versions of the same unit are printed side by side in slightly different settings aimed at meeting different situations, a practice of doubling passages rather than preferring one with which we are familiar in the Pentateuch. Brown notes that ‘what is said in the Last Discourse in xiv 1-31 is largely said all over again in xvi 4-33’.[2] And Perkins suggests that the discourse material ‘appears to have been expanded during the editing of the Gospel, and may well represent different situations in the later history of the Johannine community’.[3]
As an example of all this, it is interesting to note that in the course of his Last Supper discourse, Jesus instructs his apostles in two separate places to love another as he has loved them, and that the context differs in each case. The first passage is found in Jn 13:33-36:
‘Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, “Where I am going, you cannot come.” I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’
Perkins observes that ‘the commandment fits awkwardly into this position, since what follows deals with the theme of Jesus’ departure’.[4] But the location of the commandment appears deliberate here. The context of Jesus’s forthcoming departure seems to be the reason why he is here giving his apostles the command. The implication is not that their love for each other should be as great as that of Jesus for them all (i.e., to the measure with which I have loved you), but that, for this new situation when their Lord will have left them, it is appropriate that he gives them a new commandment: just as he has loved them while with them, likewise they are henceforth to stand in for Jesus in their love and care for one another. One of the purposes for which the Gospel of John seems to have been was written was to attempt to resolve painful divisions which existed within the Johannine community (as we see in the First Letter of John). The evangelist therefore may have Jesus here exhorting all his future disciples to mediate his continuing love to one another after he has gone, and so maintain the unity he will pray for earnestly.
This is the only passage in John’s Gospel (Jn 13:33-36) in which Jesus actually calls this the ‘new’ commandment that he is giving the apostles. In the second passage where Jesus commands his disciples to love one another ‘as I have loved you’ (Jn 15:12-17), he does not refer to this as a ‘new’ commandment. The later context is not the forthcoming departure of Jesus, but his giving his life for his disciples, and offering them this as an example of how completely they are to devote themselves to one another in the future (Jn 15:12-17): ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.’
Why call it ‘new’?
Various reasons are proposed to explain why Jesus issued a ‘new’ commandment to his followers. The simplest but least plausible reason is that he was just adding to the number of the Ten Commandments given to Israel by God through Moses. A more attractive, but still unlikely, reason was that in exhorting them to love one another he was doing little more than repeating the ‘Great Commandment’ that they love others as themselves, which we saw him propose in reply to the question about a priority among the Ten Commandments. However, the new commandment is not just that Jesus’s disciples are to love one another, but that they are to do so ‘as I have loved you’. This seems to be a major new qualification to Jesus’s moral teaching. It appears that the norm and the supreme example of Christian loving is to be the love which Jesus himself showed to, and for, his followers; and historically this will be expanded into the powerful spiritualities of the imitation of Christ and of the following of Christ. Perkins, therefore, explains that ‘this commandment is “new” because it is grounded not in the love commands of the Jewish tradition (e.g. Lev 19:19; 1QS 1:9-11) but in the self-offering of Jesus’.[5]
This ‘new’ commandment, however, is sometimes considered to be surprisingly exclusive, and seems to differ from the Great Commandment in enjoining the disciples just to love each other, rather than to love all their neighbours. However, it is worth bearing in mind that Jesus’s Last Supper discourse in John’s Gospel sometimes looks forward to the coming passion and death of Jesus, and at other times it seems to look back from after the Resurrection to Jesus’s having completed his task, so that, as C. H. Dodd once explained, ‘in a real sense it is the risen and glorified Christ who speaks’.[6] This perhaps enables us to understand why the commandment to ‘love one another’ seems almost exclusive, as one to be observed only among the disciples, in contrast to the Great Commandment which enjoins that one should love of all one’s neighbours without exception. In this discourse, it is as if the risen Christ is addressing the community for which John was writing his gospel, and is instructing it on how to handle its problems and issues. Just as in any society, repeated legislation forbidding a particular piece of behaviour indicates the prevalence of such behaviour in that society. John in his gospel and his letters (as their author or their source) writes so repeatedly of the need for mutual love and unity among the disciples of Jesus, that it seems likely that these virtues were notably lacking in John’s Church, and that the Last Supper discourse is a plea from their risen Lord to remedy this sad situation.
The law of the new covenant
Finally, a very attractive interpretation links the ‘new’ commandment with the new covenant. As Raymond Brown observes, the evangelist shows that in speaking of love as the new commandment, ‘he is thinking of this Last Supper scene in covenant terms’.[7] As we saw previously in examining the Ten Commandments, covenant and commandments are closely connected: ‘The Lord said to Moses: Write these words; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. . . And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments’ (Ex 34: 27-28; cf Dt 4:13). Israel’s side of its covenant with the Lord was to obey the Lord’s commandments faithfully, in return for which the Lord would continue to protect and favour his people up to and into the Promised Land. However, as a result of Israel’s regular infidelity to the covenant even in the desert and subsequently in the Promised Land, God eventually allowed Israel to be conquered and transported into exile, after which the prophets began to speak of another covenant which God would make with his faithful chosen people:
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt — a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 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. (Jer 31:31-34)
This new covenant between God and his chosen people, foretold by Jeremiah, is none other than the one which Jesus claimed to be inaugurating at the Last Supper, when according to Mark, he took the cup of wine and proclaimed, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many’ (Mk 14:24), repeated in Luke, with the words, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’ (Lk 22:20; cf. 1 Cor 11:25).
The Second Vatican Council connected the new covenant with its new commandment as follows, in its Decree on the Church, after quoting Jer 31:31-34,
Christ instituted this new covenant, the new testament, that is to say, in his blood (cf. 1 Cor 11:25), calling together a people made up of Jew and Gentile, making them one, not according to the flesh but in the Spirit. This was to be the new People of God…Its law is the new commandment to love as Christ loved us (cf. Jn 13:34). Its end is the kingdom of God, which has been begun by God Himself on earth, and which is to be further extended until it is brought to perfection by Him at the end of time.[8]
Jesus is thus the divinely appointed mediator, and indeed author, of the new covenant (Heb 12:24), and just as the Sinai covenant mediated through Moses contained the Ten Commandments as an integral part of God’s will, so here also the new covenant requires a new commandment as its basic law. The other contracting party, the new people of God, are now to love one another as Jesus has loved them. ‘The model of the disciples’ love is Jesus’ supreme act of love, his laying down his life’.[9] This will be definitively enacted when the departed Jesus sends his Spirit to form the new covenant community, Christ’s Church. Then from the love that they show each other they will be recognisably distinct, and ‘everyone will know that you are my disciples’, as Jesus foretold (Jn 13:35).
[1] R. E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, Anchor Bible, 2 vols (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1971) I, p. xxxix.
[2] Brown, I, p. xxv.
[3] P. Perkins, The Gospel According to John, New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 61:169.
[4] Perkins, 61:179.
[5] Perkins, 61:179.
[6] Brown, vol II, 585; Charles H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: CUP, 1960), p. 423.
[7] Brown, II, p. 612.
[8] Lumen Gentium, §9
[9] Brown, II, p. 682.
MACKILLOP HILL - Spirituality in the Coffee Shoppe.
Monday 27th May 2019 10.30 – 12 noon Come along and enjoy a lively discussion over morning tea! All welcome! We look forward to your company at 123 William Street, FORTH. Phone: 6428 3095 No bookings necessary. Donation appreciated.
MT ST VINCENT AUXILIARY would like to thank all who purchased tickets in our Mother’s Day Raffle. Total raised $1,338. All winners notified.
PIETY SHOP: New Sunday Missals in stock $45 each
FOOTY MARGIN RESULTS:
Round 8 (Friday 10th May) Sydney Swans won by 5 points. Congratulations to the following winners; MLCP, Arvy Pisarskis & ………
BINGO THURSDAY
23rd May – Eyes down 7:30pm.
Callers Tony Ryan & Alan Luxton
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 26 May 2019
Next week on the Journey, our Gospel (John 14:23-29) encourages our belief in the Lord. Mother Hilda shares her Wisdom from the Abbey with reminder of the great companionship that was Guido and Pope St John XXIII, Marilyn Rodrigues, The Peaceful Parent, talks openly about Testing Our Faith and Trish McCarthy urges us to Look Deeper in her Milk and Honey God spot. We are truly lucky to have some wonderfully talented Christian Music artists on our show.
Go to 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
Oneness
Guest writer and CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault continues exploring Jesus as a wisdom teacher.When Jesus talks about Oneness, he is not speaking in an Eastern sense about an equivalency of being, such that I am in and of myself divine. Rather, what he has in mind is a complete, mutual indwelling: I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each other.
His most beautiful symbol for this is in John 15 where he says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Abide in me as I in you” (15:4-5). A few verses later he says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love” (15:9). While he does indeed claim that “the Father and I are one” (John 10:30)—a statement so blasphemous to Jewish ears that it nearly gets Jesus stoned—he does not see this as an exclusive privilege but as something shared by all human beings. There is no separation between humans and God because of this mutual inter-abiding which expresses the indivisible reality of divine love.
We flow into God—and God into us—because it is the nature of love to flow. And as we give ourselves into one another in this fashion, the vine gives life and coherence to the branch while the branch makes visible what the vine is. (After all, a vine is merely an abstraction until there are actual branches to articulate its reality.) The whole and the part live together in mutual, loving reciprocity, each belonging to the other and dependent on the other to show forth the fullness of love. That’s Jesus’ vision of no separation between human and Divine.
No separation between human and human is an equally powerful notion—and equally challenging. One of the most familiar of Jesus’ teachings is “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31, Matthew 22:39). But we almost always hear that wrong: “Love your neighbor as much as yourself.” (And of course, the next logical question then becomes, “But I have to love me first, don’t I, before I can love my neighbor?”) If you listen closely to Jesus however, there is no “as much as” in his admonition. It’s just “Love your neighbor as yourself”—as a continuation of your very own being. It’s a complete seeing that your neighbor is you. There are not two individuals out there, one seeking to better herself at the price of the other, or to extend charity to the other; there are simply two cells of the one great Life. Each of them is equally precious and necessary. And as these two cells flow into one another, experiencing that one Life from the inside, they discover that “laying down one’s life for another” is not a loss of one’s self but a vast expansion of it—because the indivisible reality of love is the only True Self.
Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—A New Perspective on Christ and His Message (Shambhala: 2008), 31-32.
Language, Symbols, and Self-Understanding
This article is taken from the Archives of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article and many other by clicking here A reporter once asked two men at the construction site where a church was being built what each did for a living. The first man replied: “I’m a bricklayer.” The second said: “I’m building a cathedral!” How we name an experience largely determines its meaning.
There are various languages within a language, and some speak more deeply than others.
Thirty years ago, the American Educator, Allan Bloom, wrote a book entitled, The Closing of the American Mind. This was his thesis: Our language today is becoming ever more empirical, one-dimensional, and devoid of depth. This, he submits, is closing our minds by trivializing our experiences.
Twenty years earlier, in rather provocative essay, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Philip Rieff had already suggested the same thing. For Rieff, we live our lives under a certain “symbolic hedge”, that is, within a language and set of concepts by which we interpret our experience. And that hedge can be high or low. We can understand our experience within a language and set of concepts that has us believe that things are very meaningful or that they are quite shallow and not very meaningful at all. Experience is rich or shallow, depending upon the language within which we interpret it.
For example: Imagine a man with a backache who sees his doctor. The doctor tells him that he’s suffering from arthritis. This brings some calm. He now knows what ails him. But he isn’t satisfied and sees a psychologist. The psychologist tells him that his symptoms are not just physical but that he’s also suffering from mid-life crisis. This affords him a richer understanding of his pain. But he’s still dissatisfied and sees a spiritual director. The spiritual director, while not denying him arthritis and mid-life crisis, tells him that this pain is really his Gethsemane, his cross to bear. Notice all three diagnoses speak of the same pain but that each places it under a different symbolic hedge.
The work of persons such as Carl Jung, James Hillman, and Thomas Moore have helped us understand more explicitly how there is a language which more deeply touches the soul.
For instance: We see the language of soul, among other places, in some of our great myths and fairy tales, many of them centuries old. Their seeming simplicity masks a disarming depth. To offer just one example, take the story of Cinderella: The first thing to notice is that the name, Cinderella, is not an actual name but a composite of two words: Cinder, meaning ashes; and Puella, meaning young girl. This is not a simple fairy tale about a lonely, beaten-down, young girl. It’s a myth that highlights a universal, paradoxical, paschal dynamic which we experience in our lives, where, before you are ready to wear the glass slipper, be the belle of the ball, marry the prince, and live happily ever after, you must first spend some prerequisite time sitting in the ashes, suffering humiliation, and being purified by that time in the dust.
Notice how this story speaks in its own way of what in Christian spirituality we call “lent”, a season of penance, wherein we mark ourselves with ashes in order to enter an ascetical space in order to prepare ourselves for the kind of joy which (for reasons we only know intuitively) can only be had after a time of renunciation and sublimation. Cinderella is a story that shines a certain light into the depth of our souls. Many of our famous myths do that.
However no myth shines a light into the soul more deeply than does scripture. Its language and symbols name our experience in a way that helps us grasp the genuine depth inside our own experiences.
Thus, there are two ways of understanding ourselves: We can be confused or we can be inside the belly of the whale. We can be helpless before an addiction or we can be possessed by a demon. We can vacillate between joy and depression or we can alternate between being with Jesus ‘in Galilee’ or with him ‘in Jerusalem’. We can be paralyzed as we stand before globalization or we can be standing with Jesus on the borders of Samaria in a new conversation with a pagan woman. We can be struggling with fidelity in keeping our commitments or we can be standing with Joshua before God, receiving instructions to kill off the Canaanites so as to sustain ourselves in the Promised Land. We can be suffering from arthritis or we can be sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane. The language we use to understand an experience defines what the experience means to us.
In the end, we can have a job or we can have a vocation; we can be lost or we can be spending our 40 days in the desert; we can be bitterly frustrated or we can be pondering with Mary; or we can be slaving away for a pay check or we can be building a cathedral. Meaning depends a lot on language.
Why a 'New Commandment'
After examining how Jesus understood and talked about the Ten Commandments, (see here) Jack Mahoney turns his attention to the ‘new’ commandment that Jesus gave to his disciples, which we find in John’s Gospel. What was new about what Jesus was asking with his instruction to ‘love one another ... as I have loved you’? Jack Mahoney SJ is Emeritus Professor of Moral and Social Theology in the University of London, and a regular writer for Thinking Faith. You can read this article and many others on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
The discourse of Jesus at the Last Supper as presented in John’s Gospel has enthralled readers, and yet also mystified them. Like other discourses of Jesus in the fourth gospel, the text contains puzzling breaks, interruptions and repetitions. Of several explanations proposed for the strange structure, Raymond Brown adopts the comparatively simple one of postulating that it was edited twice by the evangelist and then reworked by another person in the Johannine community.[1] One result is that sometimes two versions of the same unit are printed side by side in slightly different settings aimed at meeting different situations, a practice of doubling passages rather than preferring one with which we are familiar in the Pentateuch. Brown notes that ‘what is said in the Last Discourse in xiv 1-31 is largely said all over again in xvi 4-33’.[2] And Perkins suggests that the discourse material ‘appears to have been expanded during the editing of the Gospel, and may well represent different situations in the later history of the Johannine community’.[3]
As an example of all this, it is interesting to note that in the course of his Last Supper discourse, Jesus instructs his apostles in two separate places to love another as he has loved them, and that the context differs in each case. The first passage is found in Jn 13:33-36:
‘Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, “Where I am going, you cannot come.” I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’
Perkins observes that ‘the commandment fits awkwardly into this position, since what follows deals with the theme of Jesus’ departure’.[4] But the location of the commandment appears deliberate here. The context of Jesus’s forthcoming departure seems to be the reason why he is here giving his apostles the command. The implication is not that their love for each other should be as great as that of Jesus for them all (i.e., to the measure with which I have loved you), but that, for this new situation when their Lord will have left them, it is appropriate that he gives them a new commandment: just as he has loved them while with them, likewise they are henceforth to stand in for Jesus in their love and care for one another. One of the purposes for which the Gospel of John seems to have been was written was to attempt to resolve painful divisions which existed within the Johannine community (as we see in the First Letter of John). The evangelist therefore may have Jesus here exhorting all his future disciples to mediate his continuing love to one another after he has gone, and so maintain the unity he will pray for earnestly.
This is the only passage in John’s Gospel (Jn 13:33-36) in which Jesus actually calls this the ‘new’ commandment that he is giving the apostles. In the second passage where Jesus commands his disciples to love one another ‘as I have loved you’ (Jn 15:12-17), he does not refer to this as a ‘new’ commandment. The later context is not the forthcoming departure of Jesus, but his giving his life for his disciples, and offering them this as an example of how completely they are to devote themselves to one another in the future (Jn 15:12-17): ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.’
Why call it ‘new’?
Various reasons are proposed to explain why Jesus issued a ‘new’ commandment to his followers. The simplest but least plausible reason is that he was just adding to the number of the Ten Commandments given to Israel by God through Moses. A more attractive, but still unlikely, reason was that in exhorting them to love one another he was doing little more than repeating the ‘Great Commandment’ that they love others as themselves, which we saw him propose in reply to the question about a priority among the Ten Commandments. However, the new commandment is not just that Jesus’s disciples are to love one another, but that they are to do so ‘as I have loved you’. This seems to be a major new qualification to Jesus’s moral teaching. It appears that the norm and the supreme example of Christian loving is to be the love which Jesus himself showed to, and for, his followers; and historically this will be expanded into the powerful spiritualities of the imitation of Christ and of the following of Christ. Perkins, therefore, explains that ‘this commandment is “new” because it is grounded not in the love commands of the Jewish tradition (e.g. Lev 19:19; 1QS 1:9-11) but in the self-offering of Jesus’.[5]
This ‘new’ commandment, however, is sometimes considered to be surprisingly exclusive, and seems to differ from the Great Commandment in enjoining the disciples just to love each other, rather than to love all their neighbours. However, it is worth bearing in mind that Jesus’s Last Supper discourse in John’s Gospel sometimes looks forward to the coming passion and death of Jesus, and at other times it seems to look back from after the Resurrection to Jesus’s having completed his task, so that, as C. H. Dodd once explained, ‘in a real sense it is the risen and glorified Christ who speaks’.[6] This perhaps enables us to understand why the commandment to ‘love one another’ seems almost exclusive, as one to be observed only among the disciples, in contrast to the Great Commandment which enjoins that one should love of all one’s neighbours without exception. In this discourse, it is as if the risen Christ is addressing the community for which John was writing his gospel, and is instructing it on how to handle its problems and issues. Just as in any society, repeated legislation forbidding a particular piece of behaviour indicates the prevalence of such behaviour in that society. John in his gospel and his letters (as their author or their source) writes so repeatedly of the need for mutual love and unity among the disciples of Jesus, that it seems likely that these virtues were notably lacking in John’s Church, and that the Last Supper discourse is a plea from their risen Lord to remedy this sad situation.
The law of the new covenant
Finally, a very attractive interpretation links the ‘new’ commandment with the new covenant. As Raymond Brown observes, the evangelist shows that in speaking of love as the new commandment, ‘he is thinking of this Last Supper scene in covenant terms’.[7] As we saw previously in examining the Ten Commandments, covenant and commandments are closely connected: ‘The Lord said to Moses: Write these words; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. . . And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments’ (Ex 34: 27-28; cf Dt 4:13). Israel’s side of its covenant with the Lord was to obey the Lord’s commandments faithfully, in return for which the Lord would continue to protect and favour his people up to and into the Promised Land. However, as a result of Israel’s regular infidelity to the covenant even in the desert and subsequently in the Promised Land, God eventually allowed Israel to be conquered and transported into exile, after which the prophets began to speak of another covenant which God would make with his faithful chosen people:
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt — a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 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. (Jer 31:31-34)
This new covenant between God and his chosen people, foretold by Jeremiah, is none other than the one which Jesus claimed to be inaugurating at the Last Supper, when according to Mark, he took the cup of wine and proclaimed, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many’ (Mk 14:24), repeated in Luke, with the words, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’ (Lk 22:20; cf. 1 Cor 11:25).
The Second Vatican Council connected the new covenant with its new commandment as follows, in its Decree on the Church, after quoting Jer 31:31-34,
Christ instituted this new covenant, the new testament, that is to say, in his blood (cf. 1 Cor 11:25), calling together a people made up of Jew and Gentile, making them one, not according to the flesh but in the Spirit. This was to be the new People of God…Its law is the new commandment to love as Christ loved us (cf. Jn 13:34). Its end is the kingdom of God, which has been begun by God Himself on earth, and which is to be further extended until it is brought to perfection by Him at the end of time.[8]
Jesus is thus the divinely appointed mediator, and indeed author, of the new covenant (Heb 12:24), and just as the Sinai covenant mediated through Moses contained the Ten Commandments as an integral part of God’s will, so here also the new covenant requires a new commandment as its basic law. The other contracting party, the new people of God, are now to love one another as Jesus has loved them. ‘The model of the disciples’ love is Jesus’ supreme act of love, his laying down his life’.[9] This will be definitively enacted when the departed Jesus sends his Spirit to form the new covenant community, Christ’s Church. Then from the love that they show each other they will be recognisably distinct, and ‘everyone will know that you are my disciples’, as Jesus foretold (Jn 13:35).
[1] R. E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, Anchor Bible, 2 vols (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1971) I, p. xxxix.
[2] Brown, I, p. xxv.
[3] P. Perkins, The Gospel According to John, New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 61:169.
[4] Perkins, 61:179.
[5] Perkins, 61:179.
[6] Brown, vol II, 585; Charles H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: CUP, 1960), p. 423.
[7] Brown, II, p. 612.
[8] Lumen Gentium, §9
[9] Brown, II, p. 682.
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