Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
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
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
Parish Mass times for the Month: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com
Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.
Parish Office re-opens Tuesday 28th January, 2020
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 - in recess until 7th February
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: First Friday each month - commences at 10am and concludes with Mass - in recess until 7th February
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – Recommences this Mon 13th January. For information: Michael Gaffney 0447 018 068
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 - in recess until 7th February
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: First Friday each month - commences at 10am and concludes with Mass - in recess until 7th February
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: First Friday each month - commences at 10am and concludes with Mass - in recess until 7th February
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – Recommences this Mon 13th January. For information: Michael Gaffney 0447 018 068
Weekday Masses 14th - 17th January 2020
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday 12noon Devonport
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday 12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Next Weekend 19th - 20th January 2020
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Devonport
6:00pm Penguin
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
6:00pm Penguin
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Devonport Friday Adoration: Recommences 7th February, 2020
Devonport: Benediction (1st Friday of the Month) - Recommences 7th February, 2020
Parish Office Closed until Tuesday 28th January, 2020
OLOL Piety Shop will be closed for month of January
Readings This Week: The Baptism of the Lord
First Reading: Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7
Second Reading: Acts 10:34-38
Gospel: Matthew 3:13-17
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
As I come to pray, I take the time to relax into God’s presence and offer him this period of contemplation.
As I come to pray, I take the time to relax into God’s presence and offer him this period of contemplation.
I may imagine the scene: Jesus leaving the quiet of Nazareth to seek out John, who is surrounded by the crowds.
I see him, in his humanity, choosing to be with his brothers and sisters.
Perhaps I can turn to the Lord in praise and thanksgiving for taking on human flesh ... taking on our sins and choosing to be among us.
Or I may contemplate the humility of both Jesus and John.
How does their exchange reveal this to me?
How is this humility reflected in my own ministry?
I may prefer to pray with the second part of the Gospel – Jesus being baptised.
I can apply my senses to see Jesus in the Jordan: to watch the Spirit descending as a dove ... to hear the running water ... to experience its refreshing coolness ... and especially to hear the Father’s voice.
How do I feel? How do I imagine Jesus feels at this confirmation by the Father – of great love for him, of the approval of his actions?
Am I convinced of the Father’s unconditional love for me?
Do I believe that I am a favoured child of God, loved, chosen, sent?
I speak to the Lord of this, or rest quietly in his love and the gentle presence of his Spirit.
I end my prayer with a slow ‘Glory be ...’
Readings Next Week: 2nd Sunday of the Year (Year A)
First Reading: Isaiah 49: 3, 5-6
Second Reading: 1 Cor 1:1-3
Gospel: John 1:29-34
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Chris Fielding, Margaret
Becker, Erin Kyriazis, Philip Smith & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently: Michael Nasiukiewicz, Ray Emmerton, Pat Wells, Susan Scharvi, Pat Sainsbury, Dennis Kelly, Lope Zenarosa, Marjorie Frampton, Ray Khan, Carmel
Leonard, Marjorie Frampton, David Handyside, Austin Fagan
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 9th – 15th January
Janelle
Payne, Geoffrey Whitchurch, Gerald Kramer, Bridget Richards, Bernice Vidler,
Gerard Reynolds, Brett
Hunniford, Hilda Kennedy, Kelvin French, Richard Coad, Gerry Doyle, Berna
Adkins, Joanne Johnson, Alan
Newland.
May they Rest in Peace
Sinulog Festival - 2020
The Sinulog Festival in honour of the Holy Child Jesus, Senor Santo Niño, will be celebrated on Sunday 19th January at the 10:30am Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Church.
As a Parish everyone is invited to join with our Filipino sisters and brothers for the Mass and Luncheon which follows in the parish hall. Please bring a plate to share. Everyone is most welcome!
Weekly Ramblings
Last Tuesday evening, together
with a number of parishioners, I joined with members of the different
denominations in Devonport to pray for rain and relief for the victims of the
bushfires and the drought being experienced by so many throughout our great land. One of the aspects of prayer is that we
should pray constantly so there will be another opportunity for combined prayer
next Tuesday, 14th, at OLOL Church from 7pm.
Next Sunday, 19th Jan., the annual Sinulog Festival will be celebrated at OLOL during the 10.30am
Mass. This special feast celebrated by the Filipino Community is an opportunity
for the whole Parish Community to come together to commemorate over 400 years
of Christianity in the Philippines and to give thanks for their contribution to
our local community. Following the Mass there will be a celebration in the
Parish Hall and all parishioners are invited to attend.
In recent times I have mentioned
that we will need to review current Vulnerable Persons registration and
National Police Check information for those involved in Public Ministry,
especially where parishioners are associated with children or children’s
activities. This is not meant to be a restriction on anyone or their activities
but having details of an individual’s current status it is a legal requirement
that we need to comply with and so we will be aiming to have all relevant
information recorded before the end of March. In the next week or so there will
be a list of all those activities for which the information is required – we are
seeking clarification for some of the groups listed as their interaction with
children is remote or never happens.
Please, take care on the roads and in your homes,
Letter From Rome
Pope Encourages A Deeply Troubled World Not To Lose Hope
But Francis also offers a sober analysis of a number of global problems and challenges in annual address to ambassadors by Robert Mickens, Rome. January 9, 2020
This article is from the La-Croix International website - you can access the site here but complete access is via paid subscription
Early in his pontificate Pope Francis acknowledged that an essential part of his mission as Bishop of Rome is to confirm his brothers and sisters not only in the faith, but also in love and unity.
And one of the more visible and high profile ways he does this is by making pastoral visits to countries around the world, following in the footsteps of his post-Vatican II predecessors.
But Francis' 32 trips abroad can be distinguished from those of Paul VI (9), John Paul II (104) and Benedict XVI (24) by two words or concepts: dialogue and encounter.
Over the nearly seven years he's been pope, he has continued to meet people where they are – not just geographically, but culturally, spiritually, socially and, in a word, existentially. He spends a lot of time listening to others of all walks of life.
At home and abroad, Francis does this most often in private settings without the prying eyes – or foreknowledge – of the media.
Some of these personal encounters and the topic of their discussions are occasionally made known, usually by the people who meet the pope. But others remain hidden or are merely the subject of speculation.
Francis made seven pastoral journeys in 2019 and he recalled each of them as a sort of springboard to highlight his concerns for the current state of the world, which he spells out at the beginning of each calendar year in a major address to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See.
A hope that is realistic and calls trouble by its name
"A new year is opening before us; like the cry of a newborn baby, it fills us with joy and hope. I would like that word, 'hope', which is an essential virtue for Christians, to inspire our way of approaching the times that lie ahead," Francis said in this year's address, which he gave on Thursday at the Vatican.
But the 83-year-old Argentine pope is no Pollyanna.
He's clear-eyed about the "many troubling issues confronting our world and the challenges lurking on the horizon." And so he told ambassadors from more than 180 countries "hope has to be realistic," which "requires that problems be called by their name and the courage be found to resolve them."
He admitted that there seem to be few "encouraging signs" at the start of a year that's already scarred by "heightened tensions and acts of violence." But he said it was "precisely in light of these situations" that the world could not give up hope.He said this "requires courage… acknowledging that evil, suffering and death will not have the last word, and that even the most complex questions can and must be faced and resolved."
A message to world leaders and all who will listen
Francis could not have had a more important or influential audience. The men and women who gathered to hear him speak in the ornate Sala Regia are the personal representative of all but a very few of the world's leaders.
The Holy See currently has full diplomatic relations (at the level of ambassador or apostolic nuncio) with 183 countries and other sovereign entities. It has lower level ties with four others (Brunei, Laos, Somalia e Comoros) where it stations papal delegates.
That means there are only about nine countries in the entire world that have no diplomatic links at all with the Holy See. Unfortunately, they include some heavy hitters on the global stage, such as China and Saudi Arabia. The others are Vietnam, North Korea, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Oman, the Maldives and Tuvalu.
Nonetheless, Francis' address this year was intended for these nations, too, and for all who have ears to hear.
His reflections on "some of the critical issues of the present time" were structured around the international travels he made in the previous 12 months, beginning with his visit to Panama in January 2019 for the XXXIV World Youth Day.
Young people, education and the climate crisis
Calling young people "the future and the hope of our societies," the pope again lamented the clergy sex abuse crisis.
He vowed to pursue measures aimed at promoting transparency and prevention.
"Following my meeting in the Vatican last February with representatives of the world's episcopates, the Holy See has renewed its commitment to bring to light abuses already committed and to ensure the protection of minors through a wide range of norms for dealing with such cases in accordance with canon law and in cooperation with civil authorities on the local and international level," he said.
Francis, a former high school and university professor, has long been a promoter of initiatives in the field of education. And since becoming pope, at a time when the world has witnessed heightened polarization throughout society, he has been outspoken about the need to educate young people in ways that foster encounter and dialogue.
He said this is why he's called a "worldwide event" next May at the Vatican to promote a "more open and inclusive education, including patient listening, constructive dialogue and better mutual understanding… to form mature individuals capable of overcoming division and antagonism, and to restore the fabric of relationships for the sake of a more fraternal humanity."
But Francis told the diplomats that young people also have a lot to teach their elders – especially politicians and governmental officials – when it comes to urgent issues like the need to take better care for the natural environment.
"Sadly, the urgency of this ecological conversion seems not to have been grasped by international politics, where the response to the problems raised by global issues such as climate change remains very weak and a source of grave concern," he said.
The pope went as far as to question the "will of the international community to confront with wisdom and effectiveness the phenomenon of global warming", saying "care for our common home ought to be a concern of everyone and not the object of ideological conflict between different views of reality or, much less, between generations."
Divisive politics, poverty and populism in the Americas
"Another cause for concern is the proliferation of political crises in a growing number of countries of the American continent," Francis said, particularly lamenting the ongoing crisis in Venezuela.
"Generally speaking, the conflicts of the American region, despite their different roots, are linked by profound forms of inequality, injustice and endemic corruption, as well as by various kinds of poverty," he said.
The pope called for a new class of politicians to build "a culture of dialogue" that could "reinforce democratic institutions and promote respect for the rule of law, as a means of countering anti-democratic, populist and extremist tendencies."
The first visit of a Successor of Peter to the Arabian Peninsula
Pope Francis then touched on his landmark visit last February to United Arab Emirates when he and one of the world's leading Muslim authorities issued the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together.
Though some Church traditionalists found it controversial, the pope said it was "an important text, aimed at fostering mutual understanding between Christians and Muslims, and peaceful coexistence in increasingly multi-ethnic and multicultural societies."
A good example is Jerusalem, a place of spiritual importance to – and often contention between – Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Francis noted that during a visit to Morocco last March, he and the country's Muslim king made a joint appeal that Jerusalem be protected as an international city of peace and interreligious coexistence.
Middle East
"A more steadfast and effective engagement on the part of the international community is most urgent in other parts of the Mediterranean area and in the Middle East," Pope Francis told the ambassadors.
He expressed concern about "the pall of silence that risks falling over the war" in Syria and "factors of economic and political uncertainty in Lebanon and in other states" that are "further endangering the fragile stability of the Middle East."
Francis said that the "heightening of tensions between Iran and the United States" were "particularly troubling."
He warned that they could torpedo the "gradual process of rebuilding in Iraq" and set the "groundwork for a vaster conflict that all of us would want to avert." The pope called on all sides to "avoid an escalation of the conflict" by choosing the path of "dialogue and self-restraint" and adhering fully to international law.
Migrants
Pope Francis has been the world's most consistent and vocal champion for the rights of migrants, immigrants and refugees.
He gave new voice to those concerns to the diplomats, reminding them and their governments that "many thousands of persons in our world present legitimate requests for asylum, and have verifiable humanitarian needs and a need for protection that are not adequately identified."
The pope told the envoys that it is "increasingly urgent that all states accept responsibility for finding lasting solutions" to these issues, a message that must have sounded like a scolding to some of them.
Notre-Dame, the Wall and European values
Francis also repeated the Holy See's support of the "European project" based on "the ideal of an inclusive process of growth inspired by a spirit of participation and solidarity."
He called on Europe not to lose its historic "sense of solidarity" rooted in "the Roman pietas and the Christian caritas that have shaped the spirit of the European peoples."
He pointed to the fire that nearly destroyed Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and the 30thanniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – both which occurred last year – as symbolic moments for the future of Europe.
The fire, he said, prompted serious reflection on "Europe's historical and cultural values, and its deeper roots." He said the legacy of the Berlin Wall, on the other hand, stands as a warning against division, extremism and violence.
"We see this more and more in the hate speech widespread on the internet and in the social communications media. Rather than walls of hatred, we prefer bridges of reconciliation and solidarity; rather than what alienates, we prefer what draws people closer together," Francis said.
War, poverty and displaced persons in Africa
The pope used his visit last year to Mozambique and Madagascar as a prompt to offer his grave concerns about other countries on the vast African continent.
"It is painful to witness, particularly in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, continuing episodes of violence against innocent people, including many Christians," he said.
"I urge the international community to support the efforts made by these countries to eliminate the scourge of terrorism that is causing more and more bloodshed in whole parts of Africa, as in other parts of the world," he pleaded.
Francis noted that armed conflicts, climate change, extreme poverty and humanitarian crises have created a wave of internally displaced persons in many countries in Africa.
"Sadly, there does not yet exist a consistent international response to help address the phenomenon of internal displacement," he said. He called for "concrete plans and projects" to correct this, lamenting that "displaced persons do not always receive the protection they deserve."
"My thoughts turn also to South Sudan, which I hope to be able to visit in the course of this year," Francis said, referring to a trip he has been hoping to make with Dr. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Reverend John Chalmers, former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
"I am confident that, with the help of the international community, all those charged with political responsibilities will pursue dialogue in order to implement the agreements reached," the pope said.
Asia and the lessons of the Bomb
Pope Francis' final journey of 2019 was to Thailand and Japan in East Asia.
"In Japan, I tangibly experienced the pain and horror that we human beings are capable of inflicting on one another," he recalled, referring to his meeting with survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
"It became clear to me that true peace cannot be built on the threat of a possible total annihilation of humanity by nuclear weapons," the pope declared.
"These weapons do not only foster a climate of fear, suspicion and hostility; they also destroy hope," he said, adding emphatically: "Their use is immoral."
The essence of Francis' message on the issue of nuclear weapons was clear: Ban the Bomb.
A reformed United Nations
In his address to the ambassadors the pope again voiced his support for the work of the United Nations Organization, saying its efforts "in these past 75 years have been largely successful, particularly by preventing another world war."
And, yet, Francis has said many times that that, in fact, we are already in "a piecemeal World War III."
He did not repeat that view on Thursday. But it surely was one of the reasons why he is deeply concerned that the foundational principals of the United Nations –"the desire for peace, the pursuit of justice, respect for the dignity of the human person, humanitarian cooperation and assistance" – should continue to be promoted and be "the basis of international relations."
However, he said this requires a couple of major changes. First, it is necessary to halt "the indirect approach employed in the language and acts of international bodies, which seeks to link fundamental rights to contingent situations."
And second, "there is a clear need to move once again towards an overall reform of the multilateral system, beginning with the UN system, which would make it more effective, taking into due account the present geopolitical context."
And last, but not least... Women
Pope Francis recalled that 2020 marks 25 years since the UN-sponsored Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. And he offered this thought for the anniversary:
"It is my hope that the invaluable role of women in society may be increasingly acknowledged worldwide and that all forms of injustice, discrimination and violence against women come to an end."
This, again, is a sentiment that the Argentine pope has expressed many times, dating back to the beginning of his pontificate. But, unfortunately, his track record as a champion of the advancement of women and as a crusader against the unjust treatment of them is sketchy at best.
Like most great leaders, the foundation of Francis' credibility is his rock solid consistency – his actions almost always match his words. And when they have not, as was the case early on in his dealing with clergy sex abuse, he has worked to better align them.
Perhaps this is the year that the pope will truly find concrete ways to acknowledge the invaluable role of women in the society of the Church and bring an end to injustice, discrimination and every sort of violence against them.
But his thoughts on this day and in this forum were on world peace. He ended his "states of the world" address with these words:
"May we feel encouraged, then, to work diligently, through the diplomacy that is our own imperfect yet always valuable human contribution, to hasten the fulfillment of this longing for peace, in the knowledge that the goal can be attained."
That is Francis' hope for 2020 – a hope surely tempered with a healthy dose of realism.
And one of the more visible and high profile ways he does this is by making pastoral visits to countries around the world, following in the footsteps of his post-Vatican II predecessors.
But Francis' 32 trips abroad can be distinguished from those of Paul VI (9), John Paul II (104) and Benedict XVI (24) by two words or concepts: dialogue and encounter.
Over the nearly seven years he's been pope, he has continued to meet people where they are – not just geographically, but culturally, spiritually, socially and, in a word, existentially. He spends a lot of time listening to others of all walks of life.
At home and abroad, Francis does this most often in private settings without the prying eyes – or foreknowledge – of the media.
Some of these personal encounters and the topic of their discussions are occasionally made known, usually by the people who meet the pope. But others remain hidden or are merely the subject of speculation.
Francis made seven pastoral journeys in 2019 and he recalled each of them as a sort of springboard to highlight his concerns for the current state of the world, which he spells out at the beginning of each calendar year in a major address to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See.
A hope that is realistic and calls trouble by its name
"A new year is opening before us; like the cry of a newborn baby, it fills us with joy and hope. I would like that word, 'hope', which is an essential virtue for Christians, to inspire our way of approaching the times that lie ahead," Francis said in this year's address, which he gave on Thursday at the Vatican.
But the 83-year-old Argentine pope is no Pollyanna.
He's clear-eyed about the "many troubling issues confronting our world and the challenges lurking on the horizon." And so he told ambassadors from more than 180 countries "hope has to be realistic," which "requires that problems be called by their name and the courage be found to resolve them."
He admitted that there seem to be few "encouraging signs" at the start of a year that's already scarred by "heightened tensions and acts of violence." But he said it was "precisely in light of these situations" that the world could not give up hope.He said this "requires courage… acknowledging that evil, suffering and death will not have the last word, and that even the most complex questions can and must be faced and resolved."
A message to world leaders and all who will listen
Francis could not have had a more important or influential audience. The men and women who gathered to hear him speak in the ornate Sala Regia are the personal representative of all but a very few of the world's leaders.
The Holy See currently has full diplomatic relations (at the level of ambassador or apostolic nuncio) with 183 countries and other sovereign entities. It has lower level ties with four others (Brunei, Laos, Somalia e Comoros) where it stations papal delegates.
That means there are only about nine countries in the entire world that have no diplomatic links at all with the Holy See. Unfortunately, they include some heavy hitters on the global stage, such as China and Saudi Arabia. The others are Vietnam, North Korea, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Oman, the Maldives and Tuvalu.
Nonetheless, Francis' address this year was intended for these nations, too, and for all who have ears to hear.
His reflections on "some of the critical issues of the present time" were structured around the international travels he made in the previous 12 months, beginning with his visit to Panama in January 2019 for the XXXIV World Youth Day.
Young people, education and the climate crisis
Calling young people "the future and the hope of our societies," the pope again lamented the clergy sex abuse crisis.
He vowed to pursue measures aimed at promoting transparency and prevention.
"Following my meeting in the Vatican last February with representatives of the world's episcopates, the Holy See has renewed its commitment to bring to light abuses already committed and to ensure the protection of minors through a wide range of norms for dealing with such cases in accordance with canon law and in cooperation with civil authorities on the local and international level," he said.
Francis, a former high school and university professor, has long been a promoter of initiatives in the field of education. And since becoming pope, at a time when the world has witnessed heightened polarization throughout society, he has been outspoken about the need to educate young people in ways that foster encounter and dialogue.
He said this is why he's called a "worldwide event" next May at the Vatican to promote a "more open and inclusive education, including patient listening, constructive dialogue and better mutual understanding… to form mature individuals capable of overcoming division and antagonism, and to restore the fabric of relationships for the sake of a more fraternal humanity."
But Francis told the diplomats that young people also have a lot to teach their elders – especially politicians and governmental officials – when it comes to urgent issues like the need to take better care for the natural environment.
"Sadly, the urgency of this ecological conversion seems not to have been grasped by international politics, where the response to the problems raised by global issues such as climate change remains very weak and a source of grave concern," he said.
The pope went as far as to question the "will of the international community to confront with wisdom and effectiveness the phenomenon of global warming", saying "care for our common home ought to be a concern of everyone and not the object of ideological conflict between different views of reality or, much less, between generations."
Divisive politics, poverty and populism in the Americas
"Another cause for concern is the proliferation of political crises in a growing number of countries of the American continent," Francis said, particularly lamenting the ongoing crisis in Venezuela.
"Generally speaking, the conflicts of the American region, despite their different roots, are linked by profound forms of inequality, injustice and endemic corruption, as well as by various kinds of poverty," he said.
The pope called for a new class of politicians to build "a culture of dialogue" that could "reinforce democratic institutions and promote respect for the rule of law, as a means of countering anti-democratic, populist and extremist tendencies."
The first visit of a Successor of Peter to the Arabian Peninsula
Pope Francis then touched on his landmark visit last February to United Arab Emirates when he and one of the world's leading Muslim authorities issued the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together.
Though some Church traditionalists found it controversial, the pope said it was "an important text, aimed at fostering mutual understanding between Christians and Muslims, and peaceful coexistence in increasingly multi-ethnic and multicultural societies."
A good example is Jerusalem, a place of spiritual importance to – and often contention between – Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Francis noted that during a visit to Morocco last March, he and the country's Muslim king made a joint appeal that Jerusalem be protected as an international city of peace and interreligious coexistence.
Middle East
"A more steadfast and effective engagement on the part of the international community is most urgent in other parts of the Mediterranean area and in the Middle East," Pope Francis told the ambassadors.
He expressed concern about "the pall of silence that risks falling over the war" in Syria and "factors of economic and political uncertainty in Lebanon and in other states" that are "further endangering the fragile stability of the Middle East."
Francis said that the "heightening of tensions between Iran and the United States" were "particularly troubling."
He warned that they could torpedo the "gradual process of rebuilding in Iraq" and set the "groundwork for a vaster conflict that all of us would want to avert." The pope called on all sides to "avoid an escalation of the conflict" by choosing the path of "dialogue and self-restraint" and adhering fully to international law.
Migrants
Pope Francis has been the world's most consistent and vocal champion for the rights of migrants, immigrants and refugees.
He gave new voice to those concerns to the diplomats, reminding them and their governments that "many thousands of persons in our world present legitimate requests for asylum, and have verifiable humanitarian needs and a need for protection that are not adequately identified."
The pope told the envoys that it is "increasingly urgent that all states accept responsibility for finding lasting solutions" to these issues, a message that must have sounded like a scolding to some of them.
Notre-Dame, the Wall and European values
Francis also repeated the Holy See's support of the "European project" based on "the ideal of an inclusive process of growth inspired by a spirit of participation and solidarity."
He called on Europe not to lose its historic "sense of solidarity" rooted in "the Roman pietas and the Christian caritas that have shaped the spirit of the European peoples."
He pointed to the fire that nearly destroyed Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and the 30thanniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – both which occurred last year – as symbolic moments for the future of Europe.
The fire, he said, prompted serious reflection on "Europe's historical and cultural values, and its deeper roots." He said the legacy of the Berlin Wall, on the other hand, stands as a warning against division, extremism and violence.
"We see this more and more in the hate speech widespread on the internet and in the social communications media. Rather than walls of hatred, we prefer bridges of reconciliation and solidarity; rather than what alienates, we prefer what draws people closer together," Francis said.
War, poverty and displaced persons in Africa
The pope used his visit last year to Mozambique and Madagascar as a prompt to offer his grave concerns about other countries on the vast African continent.
"It is painful to witness, particularly in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, continuing episodes of violence against innocent people, including many Christians," he said.
"I urge the international community to support the efforts made by these countries to eliminate the scourge of terrorism that is causing more and more bloodshed in whole parts of Africa, as in other parts of the world," he pleaded.
Francis noted that armed conflicts, climate change, extreme poverty and humanitarian crises have created a wave of internally displaced persons in many countries in Africa.
"Sadly, there does not yet exist a consistent international response to help address the phenomenon of internal displacement," he said. He called for "concrete plans and projects" to correct this, lamenting that "displaced persons do not always receive the protection they deserve."
"My thoughts turn also to South Sudan, which I hope to be able to visit in the course of this year," Francis said, referring to a trip he has been hoping to make with Dr. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Reverend John Chalmers, former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
"I am confident that, with the help of the international community, all those charged with political responsibilities will pursue dialogue in order to implement the agreements reached," the pope said.
Asia and the lessons of the Bomb
Pope Francis' final journey of 2019 was to Thailand and Japan in East Asia.
"In Japan, I tangibly experienced the pain and horror that we human beings are capable of inflicting on one another," he recalled, referring to his meeting with survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
"It became clear to me that true peace cannot be built on the threat of a possible total annihilation of humanity by nuclear weapons," the pope declared.
"These weapons do not only foster a climate of fear, suspicion and hostility; they also destroy hope," he said, adding emphatically: "Their use is immoral."
The essence of Francis' message on the issue of nuclear weapons was clear: Ban the Bomb.
A reformed United Nations
In his address to the ambassadors the pope again voiced his support for the work of the United Nations Organization, saying its efforts "in these past 75 years have been largely successful, particularly by preventing another world war."
And, yet, Francis has said many times that that, in fact, we are already in "a piecemeal World War III."
He did not repeat that view on Thursday. But it surely was one of the reasons why he is deeply concerned that the foundational principals of the United Nations –"the desire for peace, the pursuit of justice, respect for the dignity of the human person, humanitarian cooperation and assistance" – should continue to be promoted and be "the basis of international relations."
However, he said this requires a couple of major changes. First, it is necessary to halt "the indirect approach employed in the language and acts of international bodies, which seeks to link fundamental rights to contingent situations."
And second, "there is a clear need to move once again towards an overall reform of the multilateral system, beginning with the UN system, which would make it more effective, taking into due account the present geopolitical context."
And last, but not least... Women
Pope Francis recalled that 2020 marks 25 years since the UN-sponsored Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. And he offered this thought for the anniversary:
"It is my hope that the invaluable role of women in society may be increasingly acknowledged worldwide and that all forms of injustice, discrimination and violence against women come to an end."
This, again, is a sentiment that the Argentine pope has expressed many times, dating back to the beginning of his pontificate. But, unfortunately, his track record as a champion of the advancement of women and as a crusader against the unjust treatment of them is sketchy at best.
Like most great leaders, the foundation of Francis' credibility is his rock solid consistency – his actions almost always match his words. And when they have not, as was the case early on in his dealing with clergy sex abuse, he has worked to better align them.
Perhaps this is the year that the pope will truly find concrete ways to acknowledge the invaluable role of women in the society of the Church and bring an end to injustice, discrimination and every sort of violence against them.
But his thoughts on this day and in this forum were on world peace. He ended his "states of the world" address with these words:
"May we feel encouraged, then, to work diligently, through the diplomacy that is our own imperfect yet always valuable human contribution, to hasten the fulfillment of this longing for peace, in the knowledge that the goal can be attained."
That is Francis' hope for 2020 – a hope surely tempered with a healthy dose of realism.
Personal And Universal
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
A truly transformative God—for both the individual and all
of history—needs to be experienced as personal and universal. Nothing less will
fully work. If the overly personal (even sentimental) image of Jesus has shown
itself to have severe limitations and problems, it is because this Jesus was
not also universal. He became cozy and we lost the cosmic. History has clearly
shown that worship of Jesus without worship of Christ invariably becomes a
time- and culture-bound religion, often oppressive, misogynist, and racist,
excluding much of humanity from God’s embrace.
I believe, however, that there has never been a single soul
who was not possessed by the Christ, even in the ages before Jesus existed. Why
would we want our religion or our God to be any smaller than that?
If you have felt wounded or excluded by the message of Jesus
or Christ as you have heard it, I hope you sense an opening here—an
affirmation, a welcome that you may have despaired of ever hearing.
If you have hoped to believe in God or a divinized world,
but have never been able to mentally assent to the church’s doctrines, does
this vision of Jesus the Christ help? If it helps you to love and to hope, then
it is the true religion of Christ. No circumscribed group can ever exclusively
claim that title!
If you have loved Jesus—perhaps with great passion and
protectiveness—do you recognize that any God worthy of the name must transcend
creeds and denominations, time and place, nations and ethnicities, and all the
vagaries of gender and sexuality, extending to the limits of all we can see,
suffer, and enjoy? All of our human differences are “hidden with Christ in God”
(Colossians 3:3).
You are a child of God, and always will be, even when you
don’t believe it.
This is why I can see Christ in my dog, the sky, and all
creatures, and it’s why you, whoever you are, can experience God’s
unadulterated care for you in your garden or kitchen. You can find Christ’s
presence in your beloved partner or friend, an ordinary beetle, a fish in the
deepest sea that no human will ever observe, and even in those who do not like
you and those who are not like you.
This is the illuminating light that enlightens all things,
making it possible for us to see things in their fullness. Light is less
something we see directly and more something by which we see all other things.
When Jesus Christ calls himself the “Light of the World” (John 8:12), he is not
telling us to look just at him, but to look out at life with his all-merciful
and non-dualistic eyes. We see him so we can see like him—with the same
infinite compassion.
When your isolated “I” turns into a connected “we,” you have
moved from Jesus to Christ. We no longer have to carry the burden of being a
perfect “I” because we are saved “in Christ” and as Christ. Or, as Christians
say correctly, but too quickly, at the end of our official prayers: “Through
Christ, Our Lord, Amen.”
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a
Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe
(Convergent Books: 2019), 36-37.
Monks have secrets worth knowing. Here’s some advice from the Desert Fathers: Go to your cell and your cell will teach you everything you need to know. Here’s another counsel from Thomas a Kempis’ famous book, The Imitation of Christ: Every time you leave your cell you come back less a person.
On the surface these counsels are directed at monks and cell refers to the private room of a monk, with its small single cot, its single chair, its writing desk, its small basin or sink, and its kneeler. The counsels suggest that there is a lot to be learned by staying inside that space and there are real dangers in stepping outside of it. What can this possibly say to someone who is not a monk or contemplative nun?
These counsels were written for monks but the deep principles underlying them can be extrapolated to shed wisdom on everyone’s life.
What’s the deep wisdom contained in these counsels?
These counsels are not saying, as has sometimes been taught, that a monastic vocation is superior to a lay vocation. Nor are they saying that, if someone is a monk or a professional contemplative, social interaction outside of one’s cell is unhealthy.
Cell, as referred to here, is a metaphor, an image, a place inside of life, rather than someone’s private bedroom. Cell refers to duty, vocation, and commitment.
In essence, this is what’s being said:
Go to your cell and your cell will teach you everything you need to know: Stay inside of your vocation, inside of your commitments, inside your legitimate conscriptive duties, inside of your church, inside of your family, and they will teach you where life is found and what love means. Be faithful to your commitments and what you are ultimately looking for will be found there.
Every time you leave your cell you come back less a person: This is telling us that every time we step outside of our commitments, every time we are unfaithful, every time we walk away from what we should legitimately be doing, we come back less a person for that betrayal.
There’s a rich spirituality in these principles: Stay inside your commitments, be faithful, your place of work is a seminary, your work is a sacrament, your family is a monastery, your home is a sanctuary, stay inside of them, don’t betray them, learn what they are teaching you without constantly looking for life is elsewhere and without constantly believing that God is elsewhere.
Carlo Carretto, the renowned Italian spiritual writer, shares a story to illustrate this: After he had been a monk for more than a quarter of a century and had spent thousands of hours alone in the desert praying, he went to visit his elderly mother. She was a woman who had been so consumed with the duties of raising a large family that for long periods of time, paralleling his years of solitude in the desert, she had been too busy to have any quiet time in her life. He had spent long years in quiet. She has spent long years in activity. Yet, by his admission, she was perhaps more contemplative than he was. Moreover, he suspected that she was more selfless than he and that she possessed a depth of soul that he could, at that stage of his life, only envy.
But the conclusion he drew from that realization was not that there was something wrong with what he had done during those long, monastic years in the desert. Rather there was something very right about what his mother had done in giving herself over so selflessly to her duties as a wife and mother. He had gone to his cell and it has taught him what he needed to know. She had gone to her cell and it had taught her what she needed to know. His was a monk’s cell in the technical sense. Hers was a monastic cell in the wider sense. Both lived monastic lives and both monasteries taught them what they needed to learn.
As well, every small betrayal of his monastic vocation had left him less himself, just as, for his mother, every small betrayal of her duties as wife and mother had left her less herself.
What we have committed ourselves to constitutes a monastic cell. When we are faithful to that, namely, to the duties that come to us from our personal relationships and our place of work, we learn life’s lessons by osmosis. Conversely, whenever we betray our commitments as they pertain to our relationships or to our work we become less than what we are.
We are all monks and it matters not whether we are in a monastery or are in the world as spouses, parents, friends, ministers in the church, teachers, doctors, nurses, laborers, artisans, social workers, bankers, economic advisors, salespersons, politicians, lawyers, mental health workers, contractors, or retirees. Each of us has our cell and that cell can teach us what we need to know.
What became of all that wine at Cana? Where did the Holy Family get to in Egypt? Who was the mysterious young man who ran away from Gethsemane? Fr Jack Mahoney offers a light-hearted look at attempts to increase our knowledge of Jesus and the Gospel. Jack Mahoney SJ is Emeritus Professor of Moral and Social Theology in the University of London and author of The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford, 1987).
This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
Fr Paul Edwards, an English Jesuit who headed the St Beuno’s Spirituality Centre in Wales, once wrote a delightful series of essays on characters in the Bible for the inside front cover of The Month which he later published as People of the Book (Templegate, 1987). In this he filled out imaginatively and reflectively the often meagre details which the Bible had provided about these individuals and, in so doing, he was satisfying what seems to be a feature of devotion which it shares with nature, that it cannot abide a vacuum. In aiming to fill out the contents of the Bible, he was following a tendency to be found in the Church since its earliest years, that of what I call filling gaps in the Gospel.
Apocryphal fillings
There is a body of early Christian literature that we today term the ‘apocryphal’ books; that is, literally, books which are unlikely to be true (the best account is The Apocryphal New Testament, ed. J. K. Elliott, Oxford: 1993). Of course, at the time when they first appeared, these books were not yet identified as ‘apocryphal’; rather, until they were judged unacceptable they jostled for recognition alongside the works that were in time recognised by the Church as a whole as the authoritative ‘canon’ of the Bible.
Much of the content of the apocryphal gospels was aimed at promoting the theological movement known as Gnosticism, which was condemned as heretical in the second century. It held that secret knowledge (gnosis) about God was available to an elite and ascetical group of believers, who could have direct mystical access to the deity. For example, the rediscovery in the 1970s and the publication in 2006 of the apocryphal Gospel of Judas, which we know to have been attacked in its day by orthodox theologians, excited a number of people into reassessing orthodox Christianity, and envisaging Judas’s role as that of betraying Jesus with the latter’s secret agreement, contrary to the awareness of the other apostles. Again, the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas is best known as purporting to provide a collection of ‘secret words’ of Jesus addressed to the apostle Thomas, which do not occur in the four canonical gospels, though there are many similarities and echoes. Some of these sayings may possibly be authentic – after all, it is only from one verse, Acts 20:35, that we know of Jesus’s saying that ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive.’
By contrast, other apocryphal writings were more innocently concerned to provide information to feed the hunger of pious believers who were eager for details concerning the life of Jesus, especially relating to his childhood about which regrettably little information had been provided by the Gospels. There is some similarity between this approach and the method of prayer known as ‘contemplation’ taught by Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises, in which one puts oneself imaginatively into a Gospel scene, watching and listening to what is going on and taking a prayerful imaginative part oneself in the action. Among Jesuit retreat directors there is a story (apocryphal, I hope) about a woman once involved in this method of mental prayer who was persevering in contemplating the Last Supper but who was dreadfully distracted because she was afraid she had put Jesus in a draught! One of my distractions in prayer occurs whenever I think about the Gospel feeding of the five thousand, where we are told that once everyone’s hunger was satisfied, twelve baskets of fragments were collected (Mk 6:43). ‘Twelve’ I can understand, with the apostles all being involved in gathering up the leftovers; but where on earth did they get all those baskets?!
However, my major distraction comes from the scene in which Jesus is preaching and is informed that his mother and brothers and sisters have turned up and want to speak with him (Mk 3:32). Jesus is reported as typically turning the news into a statement that all those who obey God’s will are his mother and brothers and sisters (Mk 3:34), but that leaves unanswered my persistent question: what did his mother and brothers and sisters want with him? We are told elsewhere that on one occasion his family tried to restrain Jesus when they thought he was neglecting himself in his enthusiasm (Mk 3:21), but quite possibly they had another reason here for coming to have a word with him. So what was it? Perhaps it was to give him family news? To let him know that Joseph his father was ill, or even had died? Or did they want to ask Jesus if he was planning to attend this wedding coming up in Cana (Jn 2:2)? As for the wedding in Cana, that creates another gap: whatever became of all that excellent wine which Jesus produced towards the end of the reception (Jn 2:6-10) – six jars holding twenty or thirty gallons each?
The apocryphal writings relating to Jesus’ childhood fill in his ‘hidden life’ with various tales of his miraculous deeds. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas describes how the youngster modelled some sparrows out of clay and, when he clapped his hands, they flew away. As a three-year-old in Egypt he gave life to a dry fish. He restored children to life who were killed in accidents and perplexed his teachers with his superior (divine) intelligence. Out of one grain of corn he grew a harvest large enough to feed all the poor in the village, and he once miraculously extended a beam of wood to save Joseph the carpenter embarrassment.
The legendary Protevangelium of James concentrates by contrast in pious detail on the birth and youth of Mary who would become the virgin mother of Jesus, and on his conception and birth in Bethlehem. It informs us, as one may expect, that Mary herself was born miraculously as a result of prayer, to a childless elderly couple whose names are given as Anne and Joachim, and that she was consecrated to the Temple from an early age to be prepared for her divine motherhood. The spirit of the apocrypha was captured exquisitely by Titian in the sixteenth century, with his painting of The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, showing the self-composed four-year-old dressed in her best blue dress entering the Temple in Jerusalem, carefully holding up the hem of her gown in one hand while confidently manoeuvring the steep flight of steps into the Temple, and extending her other hand in greeting to the High Priest. He is waiting up at the entrance with his attendants in all his elderly magnificence, prepared to receive her into his care – and possibly looking a little apprehensive as he wonders what he may have let himself in for! It was he who decided later that Mary should marry the respected widower Joseph who already had a family. This neatly answered, for those who were concerned to respect Mary’s permanent virginity, the difficulty of Jesus being reported several times in the Gospels as having brothers and sisters, Joseph’s previous family providing Jesus with step-brothers and sisters.
The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew aimed also at promoting the veneration of Mary. It introduces the traditional ox and ass adoring the infant Jesus in the manger. Then as the Holy Family journeyed to Egypt to avoid the malevolence of Herod, wild animals adored Jesus and led the way through the desert (an echo of paradise), and as the family rested once in the shade of a high palm tree, Jesus had it lower its branches to provide dates for his mother and produce a spring of water from its roots to refresh them all. As they eventually arrived at a city in Egypt and entered its temple, all the 365 idols there prostrated themselves and shattered into pieces before the divine child.
The flight of the Holy Family and its time in Egypt, totally lacking in details as they are in the canonical gospels (Mt 2:13-15), have always had a mild interest for me, and I cherished a holy picture I once had from China which showed Joseph, Mary and Jesus with oriental features and dress travelling through the rice paddies in a sampan being poled along by Joseph. In Manila, in the Family Institute there, I admired an impressive Filipino statue of all three riding through the mud, mounted somewhat precariously on the back of a large water buffalo. And somewhere in a village church in England I have come across a sculpted grouping of Joseph and Mary seated exhausted by the roadside while a young bright-eyed Jesus is looking excitedly down the road at what lay ahead. On holiday once in Alexandria I had evidence in a Coptic Church of the understandable Egyptian devotion to the Holy Family when I came across a charming wall map showing their itinerary through Egypt and marking as shrines up and down the Nile all those places where they had stayed in the course of their journey! Details of the Holy Family’s itinerary in Egypt over some four years were later revealed by Mary, in a dream naturally, to a Coptic Pope in the fifth century. I have always regretted not buying a copy of the map.
The Dormition of Mary
One especially popular apocryphal work of devotion dating from about the fourth century described the ‘dormition’, or falling asleep, of Mary, and became a medieval best-seller, doing much to popularise the belief in Mary’s assumption into heaven. (‘Falling asleep’ in the Lord was an early Christian synonym for dying, in anticipation of being awakened at the resurrection.) According to this affectionate account of Mary’s last days on earth, about which there is a complete gap in the canonical Gospels, she was informed of her impending death by an angel – none other, of course, than Gabriel – and she journeyed again to Bethlehem, summoning John and the other surviving apostles to join her there from wherever they were engaged in preaching the Gospel. They were conveyed from different lands by the Holy Spirit, including (interestingly) Peter from Rome, John from Ephesus, Paul (!) from Tiberias, Thomas from India and James from Jerusalem. Other disciples who had died were brought back to life by the Spirit, who warned them not to think the resurrection was occurring but to realise that they were being prepared to be with Mary on the day of her departure for heaven. Angels and heavenly phenomena surrounded the house, many sick people were cured in the region, and the whole of Bethlehem and its inhabitants marvelled as they had done at the birth of Jesus there. Mary and the apostles were then transported by the Spirit to Jerusalem, where she died. The apostles copied the burial of Jesus, laying her body in a new tomb in Gethsemane, where it stayed for three days before being summoned from the tomb by Jesus in glory and being transported by the angels to paradise, after which the apostles were returned by the Spirit rejoicing to their respective evangelising locations.
In some versions of the Dormition of Mary, as in a version alleged to come from Joseph of Arimathaea, a diverting episode describes how Thomas arrived too late to be present at Mary’s deathbed and was chided by Peter for being absent again, as he had been when Jesus had first appeared to the others after his resurrection. Thomas apologised and asked where her body was, but when the apostles indicated Mary’s tomb Thomas declined to believe them (again!) and indeed, when the apostles opened the tomb they found, to their confusion, that the tomb was empty and Mary’s body was not there. Then Thomas explained how he had been saying Mass in India (and was still wearing his priestly vestments) when he was transported to the Mount of Olives. While rushing over the hill heading for Jerusalem he looked up into the sky and actually witnessed Mary being assumed into to heaven, in proof of which he produced her girdle which she had thrown down to him. Game, set and match to Thomas!
The mysterious young man
Finally we can consider the gap surrounding the mysterious young man, mentioned only in St Mark’s Gospel, who fled from Gethsemane when Jesus was being arrested. Who was he? What was he doing in the garden? And why did he run away? All that we are told is that ‘A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked’ (Mk 14:51-2). For lack of any other explanation, some commentators, according to a second century tradition stemming from Papias, suggest that this young man was Mark himself who, they suggest, provided here a personal reminiscence which only he would know about. However, others also could have witnessed and remembered the event, and Papias comments that Mark had never heard or followed Jesus (Migne, Patrologia Graeca 20, 300), which scarcely agrees with the proposal that he was the young man in Gethsemane. In any case, the identification with Mark explains nothing about the incident, leaving the mystery still to be solved.
I like to think that the young man who ran away naked from Gethsemane was in fact the ‘rich young man’ whom we met earlier in Mark’s Gospel, asking Jesus how he could enter into eternal life (Mk 10:17-22). Jesus had advised him disconcertingly to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor and then to follow Jesus, but ‘when he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions’ (10:22). I suggest that the rich young man’s desire for eternal life kept nagging at him, like many a vocation, and eventually he decided to accept Jesus’ challenging invitation to become one of his followers. He sold up everything he possessed and handed over the proceeds to the poor, leaving himself with only a rather expensive linen shift to wear; and he then set out to find Jesus, knowing that he and his disciples tended to spend the night in the garden of Gethsemane when they were in Jerusalem. However, it so happened that on that evening Jesus and his disciples were having supper in the city and were delayed, so the young man found himself alone in Gethsemane, and he fell asleep while waiting for the others to turn up. When they did arrive, Jesus went further into the garden to pray and the apostles likewise fell asleep (Mk 14:32, 37). When Jesus had finished praying Judas arrived with his cronies and they arrested Jesus (Mk 14:41-6). The young man was awakened by the tumult of the crowd, and when he saw Jesus being arrested he lost his nerve and tried to make a bolt for it. However, he was grabbed by the guards and ‘he left the linen cloth and ran off naked’ (Mk 14:51-2).
So he had not after all had the chance to follow Jesus. Was that the end of his seeking? Or did he manage later to become a disciple of the risen Lord? We do not know, of course; or perhaps, rather, we cannot know about this or other gaps in the Gospel, at least for the present. The New Testament writings which we possess and acknowledge as canonical, that is, the four gospels and a collection of occasional letters, have survived by comparison with others which may have perished, but we are in no position to know what writings may still await our discovery.
In considering the apocryphal New Testament writings which we possess we can usefully distinguish between those which were produced for apologetic and polemical purposes to promote a Gnostic version of Christianity, and the others born more to satisfy the devout curiosity of the faithful by filling in what were considered gaps in the story of Jesus’s life as told in the Gospel. In the latter case it is possible to dismiss their naiveté and credulity, of course, but one can also sense more positively almost a feeling of the faithful sharing in a sort of intimate family gossip. They are perfectly comfortable with their religion and with their belief and unguarded trust in God. I am reminded of a term used by Ignatius of Loyola, that of familiaritas with God, which does not so much mean ‘familiarity’ with God, but more having a family feeling, or feeling completely ‘at home’ with God and the things of God. It is an enviable religious sentiment, however it may find expression.
Lessons From the Monastic Cell
This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here
On the surface these counsels are directed at monks and cell refers to the private room of a monk, with its small single cot, its single chair, its writing desk, its small basin or sink, and its kneeler. The counsels suggest that there is a lot to be learned by staying inside that space and there are real dangers in stepping outside of it. What can this possibly say to someone who is not a monk or contemplative nun?
These counsels were written for monks but the deep principles underlying them can be extrapolated to shed wisdom on everyone’s life.
What’s the deep wisdom contained in these counsels?
These counsels are not saying, as has sometimes been taught, that a monastic vocation is superior to a lay vocation. Nor are they saying that, if someone is a monk or a professional contemplative, social interaction outside of one’s cell is unhealthy.
Cell, as referred to here, is a metaphor, an image, a place inside of life, rather than someone’s private bedroom. Cell refers to duty, vocation, and commitment.
In essence, this is what’s being said:
Go to your cell and your cell will teach you everything you need to know: Stay inside of your vocation, inside of your commitments, inside your legitimate conscriptive duties, inside of your church, inside of your family, and they will teach you where life is found and what love means. Be faithful to your commitments and what you are ultimately looking for will be found there.
Every time you leave your cell you come back less a person: This is telling us that every time we step outside of our commitments, every time we are unfaithful, every time we walk away from what we should legitimately be doing, we come back less a person for that betrayal.
There’s a rich spirituality in these principles: Stay inside your commitments, be faithful, your place of work is a seminary, your work is a sacrament, your family is a monastery, your home is a sanctuary, stay inside of them, don’t betray them, learn what they are teaching you without constantly looking for life is elsewhere and without constantly believing that God is elsewhere.
Carlo Carretto, the renowned Italian spiritual writer, shares a story to illustrate this: After he had been a monk for more than a quarter of a century and had spent thousands of hours alone in the desert praying, he went to visit his elderly mother. She was a woman who had been so consumed with the duties of raising a large family that for long periods of time, paralleling his years of solitude in the desert, she had been too busy to have any quiet time in her life. He had spent long years in quiet. She has spent long years in activity. Yet, by his admission, she was perhaps more contemplative than he was. Moreover, he suspected that she was more selfless than he and that she possessed a depth of soul that he could, at that stage of his life, only envy.
But the conclusion he drew from that realization was not that there was something wrong with what he had done during those long, monastic years in the desert. Rather there was something very right about what his mother had done in giving herself over so selflessly to her duties as a wife and mother. He had gone to his cell and it has taught him what he needed to know. She had gone to her cell and it had taught her what she needed to know. His was a monk’s cell in the technical sense. Hers was a monastic cell in the wider sense. Both lived monastic lives and both monasteries taught them what they needed to learn.
As well, every small betrayal of his monastic vocation had left him less himself, just as, for his mother, every small betrayal of her duties as wife and mother had left her less herself.
What we have committed ourselves to constitutes a monastic cell. When we are faithful to that, namely, to the duties that come to us from our personal relationships and our place of work, we learn life’s lessons by osmosis. Conversely, whenever we betray our commitments as they pertain to our relationships or to our work we become less than what we are.
We are all monks and it matters not whether we are in a monastery or are in the world as spouses, parents, friends, ministers in the church, teachers, doctors, nurses, laborers, artisans, social workers, bankers, economic advisors, salespersons, politicians, lawyers, mental health workers, contractors, or retirees. Each of us has our cell and that cell can teach us what we need to know.
Filling Gaps In The Gospel
What became of all that wine at Cana? Where did the Holy Family get to in Egypt? Who was the mysterious young man who ran away from Gethsemane? Fr Jack Mahoney offers a light-hearted look at attempts to increase our knowledge of Jesus and the Gospel. Jack Mahoney SJ is Emeritus Professor of Moral and Social Theology in the University of London and author of The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford, 1987).
This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
Fr Paul Edwards, an English Jesuit who headed the St Beuno’s Spirituality Centre in Wales, once wrote a delightful series of essays on characters in the Bible for the inside front cover of The Month which he later published as People of the Book (Templegate, 1987). In this he filled out imaginatively and reflectively the often meagre details which the Bible had provided about these individuals and, in so doing, he was satisfying what seems to be a feature of devotion which it shares with nature, that it cannot abide a vacuum. In aiming to fill out the contents of the Bible, he was following a tendency to be found in the Church since its earliest years, that of what I call filling gaps in the Gospel.
Apocryphal fillings
There is a body of early Christian literature that we today term the ‘apocryphal’ books; that is, literally, books which are unlikely to be true (the best account is The Apocryphal New Testament, ed. J. K. Elliott, Oxford: 1993). Of course, at the time when they first appeared, these books were not yet identified as ‘apocryphal’; rather, until they were judged unacceptable they jostled for recognition alongside the works that were in time recognised by the Church as a whole as the authoritative ‘canon’ of the Bible.
Much of the content of the apocryphal gospels was aimed at promoting the theological movement known as Gnosticism, which was condemned as heretical in the second century. It held that secret knowledge (gnosis) about God was available to an elite and ascetical group of believers, who could have direct mystical access to the deity. For example, the rediscovery in the 1970s and the publication in 2006 of the apocryphal Gospel of Judas, which we know to have been attacked in its day by orthodox theologians, excited a number of people into reassessing orthodox Christianity, and envisaging Judas’s role as that of betraying Jesus with the latter’s secret agreement, contrary to the awareness of the other apostles. Again, the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas is best known as purporting to provide a collection of ‘secret words’ of Jesus addressed to the apostle Thomas, which do not occur in the four canonical gospels, though there are many similarities and echoes. Some of these sayings may possibly be authentic – after all, it is only from one verse, Acts 20:35, that we know of Jesus’s saying that ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive.’
By contrast, other apocryphal writings were more innocently concerned to provide information to feed the hunger of pious believers who were eager for details concerning the life of Jesus, especially relating to his childhood about which regrettably little information had been provided by the Gospels. There is some similarity between this approach and the method of prayer known as ‘contemplation’ taught by Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises, in which one puts oneself imaginatively into a Gospel scene, watching and listening to what is going on and taking a prayerful imaginative part oneself in the action. Among Jesuit retreat directors there is a story (apocryphal, I hope) about a woman once involved in this method of mental prayer who was persevering in contemplating the Last Supper but who was dreadfully distracted because she was afraid she had put Jesus in a draught! One of my distractions in prayer occurs whenever I think about the Gospel feeding of the five thousand, where we are told that once everyone’s hunger was satisfied, twelve baskets of fragments were collected (Mk 6:43). ‘Twelve’ I can understand, with the apostles all being involved in gathering up the leftovers; but where on earth did they get all those baskets?!
However, my major distraction comes from the scene in which Jesus is preaching and is informed that his mother and brothers and sisters have turned up and want to speak with him (Mk 3:32). Jesus is reported as typically turning the news into a statement that all those who obey God’s will are his mother and brothers and sisters (Mk 3:34), but that leaves unanswered my persistent question: what did his mother and brothers and sisters want with him? We are told elsewhere that on one occasion his family tried to restrain Jesus when they thought he was neglecting himself in his enthusiasm (Mk 3:21), but quite possibly they had another reason here for coming to have a word with him. So what was it? Perhaps it was to give him family news? To let him know that Joseph his father was ill, or even had died? Or did they want to ask Jesus if he was planning to attend this wedding coming up in Cana (Jn 2:2)? As for the wedding in Cana, that creates another gap: whatever became of all that excellent wine which Jesus produced towards the end of the reception (Jn 2:6-10) – six jars holding twenty or thirty gallons each?
The apocryphal writings relating to Jesus’ childhood fill in his ‘hidden life’ with various tales of his miraculous deeds. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas describes how the youngster modelled some sparrows out of clay and, when he clapped his hands, they flew away. As a three-year-old in Egypt he gave life to a dry fish. He restored children to life who were killed in accidents and perplexed his teachers with his superior (divine) intelligence. Out of one grain of corn he grew a harvest large enough to feed all the poor in the village, and he once miraculously extended a beam of wood to save Joseph the carpenter embarrassment.
The legendary Protevangelium of James concentrates by contrast in pious detail on the birth and youth of Mary who would become the virgin mother of Jesus, and on his conception and birth in Bethlehem. It informs us, as one may expect, that Mary herself was born miraculously as a result of prayer, to a childless elderly couple whose names are given as Anne and Joachim, and that she was consecrated to the Temple from an early age to be prepared for her divine motherhood. The spirit of the apocrypha was captured exquisitely by Titian in the sixteenth century, with his painting of The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, showing the self-composed four-year-old dressed in her best blue dress entering the Temple in Jerusalem, carefully holding up the hem of her gown in one hand while confidently manoeuvring the steep flight of steps into the Temple, and extending her other hand in greeting to the High Priest. He is waiting up at the entrance with his attendants in all his elderly magnificence, prepared to receive her into his care – and possibly looking a little apprehensive as he wonders what he may have let himself in for! It was he who decided later that Mary should marry the respected widower Joseph who already had a family. This neatly answered, for those who were concerned to respect Mary’s permanent virginity, the difficulty of Jesus being reported several times in the Gospels as having brothers and sisters, Joseph’s previous family providing Jesus with step-brothers and sisters.
The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew aimed also at promoting the veneration of Mary. It introduces the traditional ox and ass adoring the infant Jesus in the manger. Then as the Holy Family journeyed to Egypt to avoid the malevolence of Herod, wild animals adored Jesus and led the way through the desert (an echo of paradise), and as the family rested once in the shade of a high palm tree, Jesus had it lower its branches to provide dates for his mother and produce a spring of water from its roots to refresh them all. As they eventually arrived at a city in Egypt and entered its temple, all the 365 idols there prostrated themselves and shattered into pieces before the divine child.
The flight of the Holy Family and its time in Egypt, totally lacking in details as they are in the canonical gospels (Mt 2:13-15), have always had a mild interest for me, and I cherished a holy picture I once had from China which showed Joseph, Mary and Jesus with oriental features and dress travelling through the rice paddies in a sampan being poled along by Joseph. In Manila, in the Family Institute there, I admired an impressive Filipino statue of all three riding through the mud, mounted somewhat precariously on the back of a large water buffalo. And somewhere in a village church in England I have come across a sculpted grouping of Joseph and Mary seated exhausted by the roadside while a young bright-eyed Jesus is looking excitedly down the road at what lay ahead. On holiday once in Alexandria I had evidence in a Coptic Church of the understandable Egyptian devotion to the Holy Family when I came across a charming wall map showing their itinerary through Egypt and marking as shrines up and down the Nile all those places where they had stayed in the course of their journey! Details of the Holy Family’s itinerary in Egypt over some four years were later revealed by Mary, in a dream naturally, to a Coptic Pope in the fifth century. I have always regretted not buying a copy of the map.
The Dormition of Mary
One especially popular apocryphal work of devotion dating from about the fourth century described the ‘dormition’, or falling asleep, of Mary, and became a medieval best-seller, doing much to popularise the belief in Mary’s assumption into heaven. (‘Falling asleep’ in the Lord was an early Christian synonym for dying, in anticipation of being awakened at the resurrection.) According to this affectionate account of Mary’s last days on earth, about which there is a complete gap in the canonical Gospels, she was informed of her impending death by an angel – none other, of course, than Gabriel – and she journeyed again to Bethlehem, summoning John and the other surviving apostles to join her there from wherever they were engaged in preaching the Gospel. They were conveyed from different lands by the Holy Spirit, including (interestingly) Peter from Rome, John from Ephesus, Paul (!) from Tiberias, Thomas from India and James from Jerusalem. Other disciples who had died were brought back to life by the Spirit, who warned them not to think the resurrection was occurring but to realise that they were being prepared to be with Mary on the day of her departure for heaven. Angels and heavenly phenomena surrounded the house, many sick people were cured in the region, and the whole of Bethlehem and its inhabitants marvelled as they had done at the birth of Jesus there. Mary and the apostles were then transported by the Spirit to Jerusalem, where she died. The apostles copied the burial of Jesus, laying her body in a new tomb in Gethsemane, where it stayed for three days before being summoned from the tomb by Jesus in glory and being transported by the angels to paradise, after which the apostles were returned by the Spirit rejoicing to their respective evangelising locations.
In some versions of the Dormition of Mary, as in a version alleged to come from Joseph of Arimathaea, a diverting episode describes how Thomas arrived too late to be present at Mary’s deathbed and was chided by Peter for being absent again, as he had been when Jesus had first appeared to the others after his resurrection. Thomas apologised and asked where her body was, but when the apostles indicated Mary’s tomb Thomas declined to believe them (again!) and indeed, when the apostles opened the tomb they found, to their confusion, that the tomb was empty and Mary’s body was not there. Then Thomas explained how he had been saying Mass in India (and was still wearing his priestly vestments) when he was transported to the Mount of Olives. While rushing over the hill heading for Jerusalem he looked up into the sky and actually witnessed Mary being assumed into to heaven, in proof of which he produced her girdle which she had thrown down to him. Game, set and match to Thomas!
The mysterious young man
Finally we can consider the gap surrounding the mysterious young man, mentioned only in St Mark’s Gospel, who fled from Gethsemane when Jesus was being arrested. Who was he? What was he doing in the garden? And why did he run away? All that we are told is that ‘A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked’ (Mk 14:51-2). For lack of any other explanation, some commentators, according to a second century tradition stemming from Papias, suggest that this young man was Mark himself who, they suggest, provided here a personal reminiscence which only he would know about. However, others also could have witnessed and remembered the event, and Papias comments that Mark had never heard or followed Jesus (Migne, Patrologia Graeca 20, 300), which scarcely agrees with the proposal that he was the young man in Gethsemane. In any case, the identification with Mark explains nothing about the incident, leaving the mystery still to be solved.
I like to think that the young man who ran away naked from Gethsemane was in fact the ‘rich young man’ whom we met earlier in Mark’s Gospel, asking Jesus how he could enter into eternal life (Mk 10:17-22). Jesus had advised him disconcertingly to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor and then to follow Jesus, but ‘when he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions’ (10:22). I suggest that the rich young man’s desire for eternal life kept nagging at him, like many a vocation, and eventually he decided to accept Jesus’ challenging invitation to become one of his followers. He sold up everything he possessed and handed over the proceeds to the poor, leaving himself with only a rather expensive linen shift to wear; and he then set out to find Jesus, knowing that he and his disciples tended to spend the night in the garden of Gethsemane when they were in Jerusalem. However, it so happened that on that evening Jesus and his disciples were having supper in the city and were delayed, so the young man found himself alone in Gethsemane, and he fell asleep while waiting for the others to turn up. When they did arrive, Jesus went further into the garden to pray and the apostles likewise fell asleep (Mk 14:32, 37). When Jesus had finished praying Judas arrived with his cronies and they arrested Jesus (Mk 14:41-6). The young man was awakened by the tumult of the crowd, and when he saw Jesus being arrested he lost his nerve and tried to make a bolt for it. However, he was grabbed by the guards and ‘he left the linen cloth and ran off naked’ (Mk 14:51-2).
So he had not after all had the chance to follow Jesus. Was that the end of his seeking? Or did he manage later to become a disciple of the risen Lord? We do not know, of course; or perhaps, rather, we cannot know about this or other gaps in the Gospel, at least for the present. The New Testament writings which we possess and acknowledge as canonical, that is, the four gospels and a collection of occasional letters, have survived by comparison with others which may have perished, but we are in no position to know what writings may still await our discovery.
In considering the apocryphal New Testament writings which we possess we can usefully distinguish between those which were produced for apologetic and polemical purposes to promote a Gnostic version of Christianity, and the others born more to satisfy the devout curiosity of the faithful by filling in what were considered gaps in the story of Jesus’s life as told in the Gospel. In the latter case it is possible to dismiss their naiveté and credulity, of course, but one can also sense more positively almost a feeling of the faithful sharing in a sort of intimate family gossip. They are perfectly comfortable with their religion and with their belief and unguarded trust in God. I am reminded of a term used by Ignatius of Loyola, that of familiaritas with God, which does not so much mean ‘familiarity’ with God, but more having a family feeling, or feeling completely ‘at home’ with God and the things of God. It is an enviable religious sentiment, however it may find expression.
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