18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)

Mersey Leven Catholic Parish

OUR VISION

To be a vibrant Catholic Community 

unified in its commitment 

to growing disciples for Christ 

Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney 
Mob: 0417 279 437 
mike.delaney@aohtas.org.au
Assistant Priest: Fr Paschal Okpon
Mob: 0438 562 731
paschalokpon@yahoo.com
Priest in Residence:  Fr Phil McCormack  
Mob: 0437 521 257
pmccormack43@bigpond.com
Postal Address: PO Box 362, Devonport 7310
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street, Devonport 7310 
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160 
Email: merseyleven@aohtas.org.au
Secretary: Annie Davies
Finance Officer: Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair:  Felicity Sly
Mob: 0418 301 573
fsly@internode.on.net

Mersey Leven Catholic Parish Weekly Newsletter: mlcathparish.blogspot.com.au

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.

Parish Prayer

Heavenly Father,

We thank you for gathering us together 
and calling us to serve as your disciples.

You have charged us through Your Son, Jesus, with the great mission

  of evangelising and witnessing your love to the world.

Send your Holy Spirit to guide us as we discern your will

 for the spiritual renewal of our parish.

Give us strength, courage, and clear vision 
as we use our gifts to serve you.

We entrust our parish family to the care of Mary, our mother,

and ask for her intercession and guidance 
as we strive to bear witness

 to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.

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

Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone

Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – Mondays 7pm Community Room Ulverstone 

Weekday Masses 6th – 9th August, 2019                                                   

Tuesday:          9:30am Penguin                                                                       

Wednesday:        9:30am Latrobe                                                                                            Thursday:        10:30am Eliza Purton                                                                     

                      12noon Devonport … Feast of Mary MacKillop                                                                  Friday:              9:30am Ulverstone        

Next Weekend 10th & 11th August, 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 10th & 11th August, 2019

Devonport:

Readers: Vigil: M Kelly, R Baker, B Paul 10:30am F Sly, J Tuxworth, T Omogbai-musa

Ministers of Communion: Vigil B, B & B Windebank, R Baker

10.30am: S Riley, M Sherriff, R Beaton, D & M Barrientos

Cleaners 9th Aug: P Shelverton, E Petts   16th Aug: K.S.C.

Piety Shop 10th August: A Berryman 11th August: P Piccolo

Mowing of lawns Presbytery Aug: M Tippett

Ulverstone:

Reader/s: E Cox

Ministers of Communion: B Deacon, K Reilly, E Stubbs

Cleaners:  K. S. C.   Flowers: C Stingel   Hospitality:  M & K McKenzie

Penguin:

Greeters   J Garnsey, S Ewing    Commentator:  J Barker    
Readers: E Nickols, A Landers   Ministers of Communion: J Garnsey, S Ewing   Liturgy: Sulphur Creek J  Setting Up: T Clayton Care of Church: M Bowles, J Reynolds

Latrobe:

Reader:  M Chan    Minister of Communion: M Mackey   Procession of Gifts:  M Clarke

Port Sorell:

Readers: G Bellchambers, P Anderson Ministers of Communion: T Jeffries 
Cleaners:  C & J Howard

Readings this Week: 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C

  First Reading: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 2:21-23

Second Reading: Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11

     Gospel: Luke 12:13-21

PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:

I settle myself … perhaps in front of a candle or a cross. 
I may repeat a favourite phrase, or close my eyes. 
‘What will you show me today, Lord?’ 
I read the passage from Luke’s Gospel. 
It may be familiar, yet I try to approach it as if for the first time. 
What strikes me? 
Maybe there is a phrase I have not ‘heard’ before. 
A man is asking Jesus to settle a dispute within his family. 
I pause. 
Can I see parallels between this situation and my own? 
Have I ever asked the Lord to take sides in a conflict around me? 
I speak to the Lord, honestly, telling him what is in my heart. 
I listen. Perhaps I am drawn to reflect on the parable that follows. 
How much does wealth matter to me? 
What are my own riches, material and spiritual? 
How much do I share them with others? 
I consider that everything – wealth or poverty, success or failure – has the potential of leading me to respond more fully to God’s love for me. 
If it feels right, I ask for the grace to be able to lead a life which will make me rich in the sight of God. 
When I am ready, I take my leave and go ‘In the name of the Father …’

Readings Next Week: 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C

  First Reading: Wisdom 18:6-9

Second Reading: Hebrews 11: 1-2, 8-19

     Gospel: Luke 12:32-48

                         

Your prayers are asked for the sick:

Norie Capulong, David Cole, Shelley Sing, Joy Carter, Marie Knight, Allan Stott, Christiana Okpon, Robert Luxton, Adrian Drane, Fred Heazlewood, Jason Carr, John Kelly, Thomas & Frances McGeown, Charlotte Milic, Peter Sylvester, Des Dalton & …

Let us pray for those who have died recently:

Jack McMahon, Shirley Bourke, John Doherty, Peggy O’Leary, Tagling Saili, Cres Novel, Naning Camocamo, Restituto Carcuevas, Lita Santos, Carlene Vickers, George Armstrong, Rita Huber

Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 1st – 7th August, 2019

Dorothy Smeaton, Jean Fox, Jack O’Rourke, Nancy Padman, Tadeusz Poludniak, Shirley Fraser,  Lorna Jones, Helena Rimmelzwaan, Nancy Bynon, Thomas Hays, Mary Sherriff, Sydney Dooley, John Fennell, Pauline Taylor, Ellen & Stan Woodhouse, Terry O’Rourke and Janice Nielsen.

May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen

Mersey Leven Parish Community welcome and congratulate Isla Mae Bessell,

daughter of Nathan & Megan on her Baptism this weekend

at Our Lady of Lourdes Church.

  Congratulations to Lou and Carolyn Bolzon (former parishioners) on the occasion of your 50^th Wedding Anniversary on Saturday 9^th August.

Should anyone like to contact them their mobile number is 0405 031 335.

                                                       

Weekly Ramblings

I’ve been in Melbourne during this past week for some celebrations with people who have been part of the Corpus Christi Seminary story over the past 50 past years.

Firstly I joined with the men who were celebrating 50 (& 25) years of priesthood at their Jubilee Celebrations for Mass and Dinner on Monday. It was also good to catch up with men from other years and generations who gathered with them for the day.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I gathered with 20 of the men who went to Werribee in 1969 (and some wives and partners of those who had left!). There were lots of stories and laughter and it seemed as if the years had slipped away as I caught up with some people I hadn’t seen nor heard of for 47 years. There have been a couple of deaths amongst the original group and several have slipped off the radar but we have set a date for 6 years’ time when those of us still serving as priests will celebrate 50 years of priesthood.

Back in the Parish we gathered yesterday (Saturday) to walk with the young members of our parish preparing to be confirmed on 17/18th August. There is a real spirit of life amongst these children and their families and so I pray that we will continue support them as they move to this next stage of their faith journey.

We have the Feast Day of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop, our 1st Australian Saint this Thursday. I pray that the same spirit which enabled her to look at new ways of living the Gospel and spreading the Good News in the 19th Century will continue to inspire us in our efforts in this Century and into the future

Take care on the roads and in your homes,

                                         

ST MARY OF THE CROSS MACKILLOP:

The Mersey-Leven Branch of the Knights of the Southern Cross invite all to celebrate the Feast Day of Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop, co-founder of the Sisters of St Joseph, Patroness of Australia and of the Knights of the Southern Cross.  Many of us will have received our early days of education from the “Brown Joeys.”

The Mass will held at Our Lady of Lourdes Thursday 8^th August at 12noon.

Contact Giuseppe Gigliotti 0419 684 134 if you have any questions.

THE SACRAMENT OF THE PRESENT MOMENT is the theme for this year's gathering for Catholic Charismatic Renewal at the Emmanuel Centre, Launceston on the weekend of September 13^th – 15^th   A warm invitation to all to come and be refreshed.  Live-in or day registrations available.  Closing date 30^th August. Enquiries Christine Smith 0422 832 712, Lyn Dresden 0408 385 360

BINGO THURSDAY 8th August – Eyes down 7:30pm.

Callers Merv Tippett & Brendan O’Connor

FOOTY MARGIN RESULTS: Round 19 (Friday 26th July) Richmond won by 32 points. Congratulations to the following winners; Bernard Windebank, George & Therese Bugeja, Zillah Jones

NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE:

Discovering Global Mission: 

How can our skills create better opportunities for disadvantaged people? Communities in Timor Leste, PNG, Samoa, Kiribati and Kenya seek volunteers to build local capacity. These assignments are not quick fixes.  Find out how teacher Helena Charlesworth assisted communities in four countries over 25 years, and how sharing your skills can immerse you in a world of deep cultural discovery. Qualified medics, teachers, tradies, business and admins are always required. 
Palms Meet & Greet: Sunday August 18th at 2pm Anvers Chocolate Café LATROBE.

Past scholars of Our Lady of Mercy College Deloraine are invited to a reunion lunch at Pedro’s Restaurant, Ulverstone on Friday 30th August, 12 noon for 12.30 p.m. (Please note change of month!) Phone: Vivienne Williams:  64 370878.  

                                      

Practical Christianity

This article is taken from the Daily Email sent by Fr Richard Rohr OFM from the Center for Action and Contemplation. You can subscribe to receive the email by clicking here  

When the Christian tradition chose an imperial Christ, living inside the world of static and mythic proclamations, it framed belief and understanding in a very small box. The Christ of the creeds is not tethered to earth—to the real, historical, flesh-and-blood Jesus of Nazareth. Instead, this image is mostly mental abstraction with little heart, all spirit, and almost no flesh or soul. Sometimes it seems like Christianity’s only mission is to keep announcing its vision and philosophy. This is what happens when power and empire take over the message.

Did you know that the first seven Councils of the Church, agreed upon by both East and West, were all either convened or formally presided over by emperors? This is no small point. Emperors and governments do not tend to be interested in an ethic of love, service, or nonviolence (God forbid!), and surely not forgiveness unless it somehow helps them stay in power.

Mere information is rarely helpful unless it also enlightens and transforms your life. In Franciscan theology, truth is always for the sake of love—not an absolute end in itself, which too often becomes the worship of an ideology. In other words, any good idea that does not engage the body, the heart, the physical world, and the people around us will tend to be more theological problem solving and theory than any real healing of people and institutions. Ironically, healing is what Jesus was all about!

The word “healing” did not return to mainline Christian vocabulary until the 1970’s, and even then it was widely resisted, which I know from my own experience. [1] In the Catholic tradition, we had pushed healing off to the very last hour of life and called the sacrament “Extreme Unction,” apparently unaware that Jesus provided free health care in the middle of life for people who were suffering, and it was not just an “extreme” measure to get them into the next world.

You wouldn’t guess this from the official creeds but, after all is said and done, doing is more important than believing. Jesus was clearly more concerned with what Buddhists call “right action” (“orthopraxy” in Christianity) than with right saying or right thinking. You can hear this message very clearly in his parable of the two sons in Matthew 21:28-31: One son says he won’t work in the vineyard, but then does, while the other says he will go, but in fact doesn’t. Jesus told his listeners that he preferred the one who actually goes, although saying the wrong words, over the one who says the right words but does not act. How did we miss that?

Humanity now needs a Jesus who is historical, relevant for real life, physical and concrete, like we are. A Jesus whose life can save us even more than his death does. A Jesus we can imitate in practical ways and who sets the bar for what it means to be fully human.

[1] See Francis MacNutt, Healing (Ave Maria Press: 1974). I worked with Francis in the 1970s and witnessed many levels of healing with my own eyes. Just as in the Gospels, healings triggered a great deal of fear, pushback, and denial from the “faithful.”

Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe (Convergent Books: 2019), 105-107.

                                   

Our Grandiosity and Our Wounds

This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here  

We wake up into life with the incurable sense that we’re special, that we’re the center of the universe. And, subjectively, we are! In our awareness we’re the center of the universe and life does revolve around us. Our own being is what’s most massively real to us. As Descartes famously said, the only thing that we know for sure is real is our own selves; I think, therefore, I am. We may be dreaming everything else.

Spirituality has perennially judged this negatively. Egocentricity, feelings of grandiosity, self-centeredness, and pride were seen as the result of the corruption of human nature through original sin. We called it, The Fall. Our first parents attempted to overreach, to be more than God intended them to be, and this irrevocably corrupted their nature and we, their children, inherit this.  So we, adult children of Adam and Eve, too instinctually tend to overreach, to puff up in self-importance, to fill with pride, and think first about ourselves.

That doctrine of original sin has something important to say, but it isn’t first of all to shame us in our natural pride and sense of specialness. The real reason why pride and grandiosity are incurably ingrained inside us is because God built us that way, and that, of itself, is not a fault or a corruption but instead constitutes what’s highest and most precious inside us. Both Christianity and Judaism take as dogma that we’re born, every one of us, in the image and likeness of God. That’s not to be imagined piously as some beautiful icon stamped inside our souls but rather as fire, divine fire, which because it is godly brings with it a sense of the preciousness, dignity, and uniqueness, of our lives.  But with that too comes (as part of the same package) pride and grandiosity.  Simply put, we can’t have Godliness inside us and not feel ourselves as special.

And that makes for a less-than-serene situation for the planet. We’re now seven and half billion people on this earth, each one with the same innate sense that he or she is the center of the universe and that his or her own reality is what’s most real. That’s the real cause behind what you see happening on the world news each night, for worse and for better. Grandiosity is the source of human strife, but equally the source of human greatness.

Important in our understanding of this is that our innate sense of godliness is also the place where we suffer our deepest wounds. What most wounds the image and likeness of God inside us? These things: humiliation, lack of adequate self-expression, the perennial frustration of bumping up against the limits of life, and the martyrdom of obscurity.

Each of us, by our nature, possesses a divinely-given uniqueness and dignity and thus nothing wounds us more than being humiliated and shamed in our struggle to live this out. A shameful humiliation, even as a very young child, can scar us for the rest of our lives. It’s one of the reasons why we have mass killings. Likewise, as Iris Murdoch once said, the greatest human pain is the pain of inadequate self-expression. There’s a great artist, composer, teacher, athlete, and performer inside each of us, but few people can ever give that satisfying expression. The rest of us have to live with perennial frustration because what’s deepest in us lies unexpressed. As well, we’re forever bumping up against the real limits of our own lives and limits of life itself. In Karl Rahner words: In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable, we ultimately learn that here in this life there is no finished symphony.  In the end, all of us die with a life that was never fully consummated. And that isn’t easily accepted! Everything inside us militates against this. Finally, almost all of us live a certain martyrdom of obscurity, recognized and famous only inside our own daydreams, our greatness hidden from the world. That too isn’t easily accepted.

What’s to be taken away from this? Since we secretly nurse thoughts of specialness should we also nurse a secret shame? Is our innate pride something that sets us against holiness? Is our grandiosity a bad thing? Is our frustration with the limits and inadequacy of our lives something that displeases God? Are our daydreams of uniqueness and greatness something which taints our contemplation and prayer? Is our nature, of itself, somehow corrupt? Must we somehow step outside of our own skin to be saints?

Each of these questions can be answered in two ways. Grandiosity, pride, shame, frustration, and daydreams of greatness, can indeed be our downfall and turn us into awful persons, selfish, jealous, spiteful, and murderous. But they can also be the source of greatness, of nobility of soul, of generosity, of selflessness, of generativity, of true prayer, and can turn us into selfless martyrs of faith, hope, and charity. Our godliness is very mixed blessing; but it is, no doubt, our greatest blessing.

                                        

Our Values: Adaptable

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 

Change is inevitable, even in the Church.  Technology moves at cyber speed, families are on the move more than ever before, and the culture around us seems to be more unrecognizable every day.  In the face of all this challenging change, it is especially important to be grounded in deliberate values.  That’s why we are using this space, over the next few weeks, to review our core values as a parish staff here at Nativity.

Our core values shape our culture, determine our decisions, and guide our steps (at least that’s the plan).  Last week, we introduced the first value: simple.  We don’t know what to do in every situation and we definitely don’t have all the answers, so we stick to our basics and keep it simple.  Read that post here. 

This week, we’ll be discussing a second value: adaptable. 

Adaptable Approach

Adaptability is about how we handle change without compromising our core identity or our unchanging faith.  Humans are the most adaptable species on the earth.  We can live in virtually any climate by changing just a few practices like diet and clothing.  And yet, even with these changes, we retain our social nature and creativity.  Our core identity and design remain steadfast.    

At Nativity, we are unapologetically Roman Catholic. The Eucharist is the source and summit of our community life. We are unfailingly faithful to the Lectionary and Sacramentary, Canon Law, and liturgical rubrics, obedient to the Magisterium. Notwithstanding, we don’t always “look” very Catholic, if Catholic is defined as the cultural Catholicism of late 20th Century American suburban parishes. This fuels criticism from certain quarters (boy, does it ever), but is actually one of our core values. We have adapted our music and methods and even some of our ministries. We have adapted our strategies, we have rebuilt our facilities to meet and match our local culture and engage the unchurched, because what worked in 1968 doesn’t work anymore.

Adaptable Planning

Being adaptable means (ironically) spending more time in planning meetings.  Each Monday, our staff reviews every aspect of the past weekend from hospitality to parking to the facility itself.  We have a separate meeting to review the weekend message (the homily).  While it can be tempting to immediately begin working on the next weekend, setting aside time to review creates a system where honest feedback can be heard and changes made for the next weekend.

This can also happen in real-time during the weekend.  We have four brief “check-in” meetings, one before the Saturday evening Mass, and one after (often the most important meeting of the four, because if there is an issue it will come up on Saturday), one before the Sunday morning Masses and one before the Sunday afternoon Mass. Regardless of what our plan was going into the weekend, we remain adaptable.

It also means being willing to experiment.  Every so often, we’ll introduce a temporary change to our programs, operations, or weekend experience.  Frequently, these experiments become permanent fixtures.  Other times, they fail.  What makes the failures worthwhile is what we learn from them.

Adaptable Methods

Change in our culture is perhaps most apparent in technology.  It’s not about competing with or imitating the culture.  It is about using technology in ways that make it easier for people to hear our message. 

For us, this means using social media and email to communicate with our members, online registration, check-in and giving, and the use of projector screens to display lyrics and Mass responses to enable those unfamiliar with the Mass to join in. Most significantly is our online broadcasting, reaching those in our community (and beyond) who otherwise would not experience church or hear God’s Word.

These are just a few examples of how we try to remain adaptable, keeping calm and carrying on in the head winds of relentless change.

Next week, we’ll be looking at a third value:  growth-oriented. 

                                     

James Brodrick: Jesuit storyteller

If the Society of Jesus was founded to help souls, the souls of those outside the Society, why have Jesuits always been so determined to tell their own story? As Thomas Flowers SJ celebrates the work of Jesuit historian James Brodrick, he discovers that ‘Jesuit history is not about glorying in the past triumphs of the Society. Rather, Jesuit history is about teaching Jesuits to be better Jesuits, and all Christians to be better followers of Christ.’ Thomas Flowers SJ is a member of the USA West Jesuit Province and is studying for a PhD in Jesuit History at the University of York.

In 1960, looking back over fifty years of Jesuit life, James Brodrick composed a rather melancholic poem reflecting on how little fruit he had produced in all those years. He wondered,

And my kind saints, Ignatius, Francis, Peter,

On whom I spent in floods my sweat and ink

And found down even in the depths the sweeter,

What must you now and dear Roberto think?[i]

To the several generations of Jesuits all over the world who learned the early history of the Society in the wry, but somehow still reverent, tones of Brodrick’s prose, such self-recrimination seems sadly misplaced. What so many of us remember of the lives of Robert Bellarmine and Peter Canisius (the ‘Roberto’ and ‘Peter’ of the poem) came to us through Brodrick’s monumental biographies of them written in 1928 and 1935, respectively, biographies that remain unmatched, despite so many intervening decades of historical scholarship. Brodrick’s 1940 The Origin of the Jesuits and 1946 The Progress of the Jesuits can seem, in the light of the more recent scholarship of books like John O’Malley’s The First Jesuits, overly hagiographic, but they tell a compelling story, and one that nurtured the vocation of many a novice for many a year. Yet as we approach the fifty-year mark since Brodrick’s death in 1973, the progress of historical scholarship and changing sensibilities mean that fewer Jesuits and lay people read Brodrick’s books, and so fewer and fewer know his name. This is only natural, but his name is one worth remembering, not just because he was a good and faithful servant of the Lord and the Society, but because of what his work still represents for us today: a loving look into what the early Jesuits can teach us about how to be faithful to Christ’s mission.

Born on 26 July 1891 in Galway in Ireland, Brodrick entered the English Province of the Society in 1910. Ordained a priest in 1923, he was missioned to London in 1924 to work as a writer for the then-thriving periodical of the Jesuits in Britain, The Month. It must have been about this time that he made his first forays into writing the history of the Society, since his two-volume, prodigiously researched and footnoted biography of Robert Bellarmine appeared a mere four years later. In addition to the books mentioned above, Brodrick also wrote The Economic Morals of the Jesuits (1934), Saint Francis Xavier (1952), Saint Ignatius Loyola: The Pilgrim Years (1956) and Galileo: the Man, His Work, His Misfortunes (1964). A debilitating heart attack in 1967 ended his literary career some six years before his death.

His obituarist noted in The Times that he ‘made his great contribution to Roman Catholic tradition in Britain by rescuing the early Jesuit saints from the apologists and hagiographers and subjecting them to historical criticism. In the process he also brought them to life’.[ii] To one who opens the pages, for example, of Saint Peter Canisius today, such laud for Brodrick’s scholarly approach may seem overly generous. Not only does Brodrick refer to Canisius throughout, in what seems today quite unscholarly fashion, as ‘the Saint’, but he frankly recounts such pious stories as that of the holy woman who prophesied to the boy Peter that he would one day join a ‘new order of priests about to come into existence’ with nary a critical remark.[iii] Yet Brodrick’s own very real piety and devotion to the saints about whom he wrote should not diminish the significance of his contribution to scholarship and to the Society with these books. Indeed, if anything, they might remind us of the endeavour in which he was truly engaged.

In 1598, Superior General Claude Acquaviva sent a letter to all the Jesuit provinces in the world giving instructions for the preparation of historical materials that he hoped would enable the production of a general history of the Society of Jesus. Acquaviva requested that each province appoint an official historian who could begin gathering the necessary materials for a formal history of the province. The result of this effort was not only such works as the 1640 monumental Imago Primi Saeculi Societatis Iesu, celebrating the first hundred years of the Society, but the gathering and organising of historical materials that continue to make the history of the Society an attractively well-documented field for historians today. Even before this, the Society had long been interested in preserving the story of its origins and progress: several of the early Jesuits – among them the first companion Simão Rodrigues and Ignatius’s long-time secretary, Juan Polanco – wrote histories, of one sort or another, of the founding and early years of the Society. We might ask ourselves, looking back both on the multiplicity of first-hand accounts of the Society’s origins and on Acquaviva’s directives for writing an ‘official’ history of the Society, why Jesuits seem to have always been so interested in telling their own story. After all, the Formula of the Institute assures us that the Society was ‘founded chiefly for this purpose: to strive especially for the progress of souls in Christian life.’[iv] In other words, the purpose of the Society is to help other people – to help non-Jesuits – and so the persistent interest of Jesuits in themselves can almost seem a contradiction of the very purpose of the Society; surely the men tasked with writing Jesuit history could have spent their lives more fruitfully helping souls through preaching, teaching, spiritual conversation, or caring for the poor and sick? th

Perhaps this is exactly what occurred to James Brodrick fifty years into his Jesuit life when he spoke in verse to his guardian angel and beloved saints, declaring that ‘the harvest that you hoped to reap / by all your tears upon this barren field’ had amounted to no more than a ‘mocking yield’. He had spent the better part of his life and ministerial energy relating what one might easily compare to family history – a story that might serve as a curiosity for those outside of the family, but that could be easily dismissed as lacking any practical, ministerial usefulness.

Yet Brodrick’s ministry, and Jesuit history in general, are, at their best, profoundly apostolic.

The key to understanding why the early Jesuits worked so hard to preserve the memory of the founding of the Society, why Fr Acquaviva desired the construction of a general history of the order, and why Brodrick’s work has mattered to so many over the years – and still matters to those of us who know it – lies in recognising what the history of the Society still has to offer us today. Jesuit history is not about glorying in the past triumphs of the Society or praising our forebearers for their magnificence, and Brodrick understood that well. Rather, Jesuit history is about teaching Jesuits to be better Jesuits, and all Christians to be better followers of Christ, not through painting the past in rosy colours, but through telling the truth about the love and the labours, the faith and the doubts, the hope and the failures of the members of the Society of Jesus as they struggled to follow where the Spirit of the Lord led them. In the end, by painting a picture of the reality of our past, Jesuit history serves as a source of consolation and formation for our future.

When Brodrick wrote Saint Ignatius Loyola: The Pilgrim Years, he intended it to be the first in a series on the life of Ignatius. That book concluded with Ignatius’s journey to Rome in 1537 and a brief mention of him celebrating his first Mass in Rome in 1538 – and thus, before the actual founding of the Society in 1540. And although Brodrick never did manage to publish a follow-up to that work, in the archives of the Jesuits in Britain, in a worn notebook, the opening chapters of a second volume on Ignatius exist, written out in Brodrick’s clear hand. The first chapter was to be called ‘A Cottage in a Vineyard’, and began with the following words: ‘At the turn of Nov[ember] in the year 1537, three tired and timid men, priests in poor black robes carrying on their backs their entire worldly possessions, passed unnoticed through the half-ruined Porto del Popolo into the City of Rome.’[v] By the close of that first paragraph, the identities of these three have been revealed: Ignatius, Diego Lainez and Pierre Favre. In that one line, Brodrick reveals much about what fruit his labours bore. With an easy, welcoming style, Brodrick intended to invite the readers of that book to accompany three entirely human, ‘tired and timid men’ as they doggedly sought to pursue the greater glory of God. Figures like Ignatius and Favre seem larger than life to most Jesuits, and the witness of their lives easily intimidates us: how could we possibly measure up? And so Brodrick, with the deft knack of a consummate storyteller, invited us to share their journeys and tables and prayers, so that we could come to see that these ones through whom God had done great things were, in fact, quite as human as we are.

This humanising effort of Brodrick’s perhaps appears in his writing no more starkly than in his final evaluation of Peter Canisius, in which he declares that, ‘in spite of’ Canisius’s manifold limitations as a writer and a scholar, in spite of the fact that whatever cross-section of him we take we come upon nothing but what might be called sublime mediocrity, he was unquestionably a very great man. It was the integrity of his character that made him such, marshalling his average powers and giving them a glow and forcefulness utterly beyond their inherent worth.’[vi] I, myself, think that Canisius was much more than a mediocre scholar and writer, but I nonetheless appreciate what Brodrick accomplishes by these conclusions: he summons the stern provincial, catechist and preacher down from the pedestal to which our admiration had elevated him so that he might sit beside us and share his faith and his wisdom not as our hero, but as our brother. Having been consoled by Peter’s limitations that remind us of our own, it is easier to allow his witness to come alive for us, to inspire us in an entirely companionable way.

I remember well when I first read Saint Peter Canisius as a novice, and the impact it had on me. During my first year as a Jesuit, I felt continually out of place, as if I had perhaps misunderstood the Society I thought I was joining. But Peter Canisius helped convince me to stay. Brodrick introduced us, and then I heard, a few months later, a moving talk on Jesuit mission by Tom Lucas SJ that used Peter Canisius as one of the models. And so slowly, Peter showed me a way to be a Jesuit that made sense to me: from his prayer to his teaching, from his preaching to the tender care he showed to his brother Jesuits, I saw in Peter the life for which I was looking. And, with the help of James Brodrick and Tom Lucas to tell me the story and bring it to life, I saw that Peter’s Society of Jesus was alive and well around me. So I stayed, and still look to Brodrick’s ‘kind saints’ when I need help to go forward. The fields he sowed by his storytelling continue to bear fruit.

[i] The original hand-written text of this poem can be found in the Archives of the British Province of the Society of Jesus in the collection of the papers of James Brodrick, carton 30/5/2.

[ii] The Times (28 August 1973).

[iii] See Brodrick, Saint Peter Canisius (London, 1935), p. 10.

[iv] This translation of the 1540 Formula can be found in The Constitutions of the Society and their Complementary Norms: A Complete English Translation of the Official Latin Texts, ed. John Padberg SJ (Saint Louis, 1996), p.3.

[v] Archives of the British Province of the Society of Jesus, the papers of James Brodrick, carton 30/5/2.

[vi] See Brodrick, Saint Peter Canisius, p.819.