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.
PLENARY COUNCIL PRAYER
Come, Holy Spirit of Pentecost.
Come, Holy Spirit of the great South Land.
O God, bless and unite all your people in Australia
and guide us on the pilgrim way of the Plenary Council.
Give us the grace to see your face in one another
and to recognise Jesus, our companion on the road.
Give us the courage to tell our stories and to speak boldly of your truth.
Give us ears to listen humbly to each other
and a discerning heart to hear what you are saying.
Lead your Church into a hope-filled future,
that we may live the joy of the Gospel.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, bread for the journey from age to age.
Amen.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us.
St Mary MacKillop, pray for us.
Come, Holy Spirit of the great South Land.
O God, bless and unite all your people in Australia
and guide us on the pilgrim way of the Plenary Council.
Give us the grace to see your face in one another
and to recognise Jesus, our companion on the road.
Give us the courage to tell our stories and to speak boldly of your truth.
Give us ears to listen humbly to each other
and a discerning heart to hear what you are saying.
Lead your Church into a hope-filled future,
that we may live the joy of the Gospel.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, bread for the journey from age to age.
Amen.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us.
St Mary MacKillop, pray for us.
Parish Prayer
Heavenly Father,
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.
Amen.
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Eucharistic Adoration - Devonport:
Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: First Friday each month - commences at 10am and concludes with Mass - in recess until 7th February
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – 6:30pm Mondays, Community Room, Ulverstone
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
Amen.
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Arrangements are made by contacting Parish Office. Parents attend a Baptismal Preparation Session organised with a Priest.
Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist: Are received following a Family–centred, Parish-based, School-supported Preparation Program.
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults: prepares adults for reception into the Catholic community.
Marriage: arrangements are made by contacting one of our priests - couples attend a Pre-marriage Program
Anointing of the Sick: please contact one of our priests
Reconciliation: Ulverstone - Fridays (10am - 10:30am), Devonport - Saturday (5:15pm– 5.45pm)
Eucharistic Adoration - Devonport:
Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: First Friday each month - commences at 10am and concludes with Mass - 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 – 6:30pm Mondays, Community Room, Ulverstone
Weekday Masses 3rd – 6th March, 2020
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am
Ulverstone
12noon
Devonport
7:00pm Devonport … Stations of the Cross 7:00pm Ulverstone … Stations of the Cross
7:00pm Devonport … Stations of the Cross 7:00pm Ulverstone … Stations of the Cross
Next Weekend 7th & 8th March, 2020
Saturday Mass: 9:30am Ulverstone
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin LWC
6:00pm Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell LWC
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell LWC
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport LWC 11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
MINISTRY ROSTERS 7th & 8th March, 2020
Devonport:
Readers:
Vigil: V Riley, A
Stegmann, G Hendrey 10:30am: J Henderson, J Phillips, P Piccolo
Ministers of
Communion: Vigil
B, B & B Windebank, T Bird
Cleaners: 6th March: M.W.C. 13th March: D
Atkins, V Riley
Piety Shop: 7th March: H Thompson
8th March: O McGinley
Ulverstone:
Reader/s: M & K McKenzie Flowers: M Swain Hospitality:
K Foster
Ministers of
Communion:
P
Steyn, E Cox, C Singline, M Barry
Penguin:
Greeters Fifita Family Commentator:
E Nickols Readers: Fifita Family
Ministers of
Communion: J
Garnsey, S Coleman Liturgy: Pine Road
Setting Up: A Landers Care of
Church: Y & R
Downes
Latrobe:
Reader: M Chan Minister of
Communion: H Lim Procession of Gifts: M Clarke
Port Sorell:
Readers: M Badcock, G Gigliotti Ministers of Communion: J & D Peterson Cleaners: C & J Howard
Readings this Week: 1st Sunday of Lent – Year A
First Reading: Genesis 2: 7-9; 3: 1-7
Second Reading: Romans 5: 12-19
Gospel: Matthew 4: 1-11
PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAYS GOSPEL
I take time to open my whole being to God’s steadfast presence.
I may consider exploring physical movement as a form of prayerful stilling: meditative walking ... stretching ... noting different sensations in my body.
When ready, I read the words of the Gospel. Perhaps I choose to be led by the Holy Spirit to walk out into the wilderness with Jesus.
What is it like to be alone with Jesus in his time of real temptation? Am I drawn to minister to him in his hour of need without flinching?
How do I feel, hearing, seeing, and being with Jesus in this harsh setting? If I can bear it, I rest in compassionate, silent companionship with my Lord.
I read the passage again. Perhaps I am drawn to wonder about the seductive voices of Satan in my own life and in the world.
I ask the Holy Spirit to accompany me in an examination of my everyday living, and to draw my attention to how the devil particularly entices me: maybe through the lure of hedonism, egoism, materialism....
What does the Lord want me to understand today? Perhaps I ask him. In time, I slowly bring my prayer to a close, thanking God for his presence.
Readings Next Week: 2nd Sunday
of Lent – Year A
First Reading: Genesis
12: 1-4
Second
Reading: 2
Timothy 1: 8-10
Gospel: Matthew
17: 1-9
Your prayers are asked for the sick:
Judith Xavier, Pat Barker, Paul Richardson, & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Annette McCulloch, Arnold Chave, Kellie Hofmeyer, Barry
McCall, Christiana Okpon, Jeremy Martin, Walter
Jerrico, & …
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 26th February –
3rd March, 2020
Richard O’Neill, Mary Mann, Joan
Mansour, Antonio Sciamanna, Thomas Beard, Michael Sturgess, Eileen Costello, Darryle Webb,
Aileen Hill, Sr Jodie Hynes, Glen Halley Snr.
May the
souls of the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen
Weekly Ramblings
As mentioned in the Newsletter last weekend I will be
celebrating the 9.30am Mass at Ulverstone next Saturday, 7th, for
the repose of the soul of the late Christiana Okpon, Fr Paschal’s mother. Her
funeral will be celebrated at 10am Nigerian time on the 7th. All
parishioners are welcome to attend.
Each Friday during Lent at 7pm there will Stations of the
Cross at OLOL and Sacred Heart. I will be at each of the centres alternately
and a parishioner will lead on the other weeks. This is an ancient devotion
that allow us to meditate on the journey of Christ to the Cross and his
suffering on our behalf so that we might enjoy the glory of the Resurrection.
A big thank-you to the Lay Liturgical Leaders who are again
supporting us as a Parish during Fr Paschal’s absence – without their generous
support we would struggle to be able to provide our weekly liturgies. Again, a
big thank you.
If you haven’t already done so please make sure you have a
Project Compassion Box or set of envelopes so that you can share in the work of
Caritas as they provide for the needs of people in various parts of our Region
in seeking a better way of living.
Also, there are still copies of the Grace Daily Reflection
Book for Lenten Devotions – it is not too late to start a Lenten practice that
will assist you in your journey to Easter.
Quick update on recent collections. The Parish has donated
$3,540.00 for the Bushfire Appeal and this has been forward to St Vincent de
Paul national. The amount raised by the Parish to support Mrs Okpon’s treatment
prior to her death was $6,335.00. Thank you all for your generosity.
Take care on the roads and in
your homes,
PROJECT COMPASSION – 1st Sunday of Lent:
Indigenous minorities in the Philippines face regular
discrimination and disadvantage. Manide woman, Shirley faced challenges
supporting her children and sending them to school. With Caritas Australia’s
support, Shirley’s life has been transformed.
Please help by donating through Parish boxes and envelopes,
or by phoning 1800 024 413 or www.caritas.org.au/projectcompassion.
PRAYERS FOR
RELIEF:
We continue our Prayer for Relief at OLOL Church, Devonport
on Tuesday, 3rd March at 6pm. This is opportunity for the Churches
in Devonport to show their unity as we pray together for relief for all those
suffering in all aspects of life.
WORLD DAY OF PRAYER:
Friday 6th March at St
Mary’s Church, Penguin at 10am. Please bring a plate of food to share. All
welcome!
HOUSE CLEANER REQUIRED:
4 hours per week Monday and Friday (am) including some
ironing. Please phone 6424:2934
GRANS VAN:
The
month of April has been allocated to our Parish to assist with Gran’s Van on
the four Sundays
within that month. Help is required as follows a) cooking a stew (meat will be supplied), b)
assisting with food distribution from the van, c) driving the van. Helping with b) and c) would
take about two hours of your time 6:30pm to 8:30pm. If you are able to assist on any of the Sundays please contact
Shirley or Tony Ryan 6424:1508
THURSDAY 5th March – Eyes down 7:30pm.
Callers Merv Tippett & Graeme Rigney
Callers Merv Tippett & Graeme Rigney
FOOTY TICKETS:
The 2020 AFL Footy Season starts Friday 20th March.
There will be two weekly winners of $100.00 instead of three. A reminder that the footy margin is for the Friday night game played at the MCG each week. For anyone who would like to join, the footy tickets can be purchased for the full season $54.00 ($64.00 with $10.00 grand final ticket). If you wish to do so payment and collection of tickets will commence first week in March. Tickets will also be sold at Port Sorell, Devonport and Ulverstone each weekend for $2.00. You need to be in it to win it!
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE ARCHDIOCESE;
SEEK THE TRUTH
Acknowledgement and Sorrow for Survivors of Past Sexual Abuse
A ritual will be held to acknowledge the sexual abuse that took place at Marist College (now Marist Regional College) and in the Burnie Parish (now Burnie-Wynyard Parish), particularly while the Marist Fathers were custodians of both.
Survivors of sexual abuse, together with their partners, family members, friends, and others associated with the College and Parish, are warmly invited to attend. A light lunch will follow at the Gardens.
The ritual will take place in Burnie on Saturday 21st March 2020, at 11.00am at the Emu Valley Rhodendron Gardens, 55 Breffny Rd, Romaine. People wishing to attend please contact comms@mrc.tas.edu.au
Letter From Rome
Catholics Still Don't Get It: Sexual Abuse Is Not About Sex
Jean Vanier violated the Second Commandment, not the Sixth
by Robert Mickens, Rome. February 27, 2020.
This article is from the La-Croix International website - you can access the site here
but complete full access is via paid subscription
We continue to hear of incidents that more than suggest that Catholics – and, in particular, their bishops – have learned very little from the clergy sex abuse crisis.
This is quite alarming and depressing, because the Church in North America has been dealing with issues regarding priests who abuse children and teenagers for at least thirty, if not forty years.
Catholics in Great Britain, Ireland and Australia have been facing this "plague" for almost as long. And those in the countries of northern Europe began reckoning more openly with abuse among the clerical ranks shortly after the turn of the millennium.
In the last several years, Catholics in the rest of the world have also been forced to admit that there are recurrences of priest sex abuse in their countries, too.
This includes places in the former Catholic bastions of Latin America and southern Europe, the largely homophobic continent of Africa and the mostly non-Christian expanse of Asia.
It seems like wherever 2 or 3 (hundred thousand) people are gathered in the name of Catholicism, there is clergy sexual abuse in their midst.
Sex makes Catholics go blind
As Catholics, we don't like to hear that. And we don't want to admit it, either. But what is worse is that many of us do not want to see – or maybe we're too blinded by culture and history to see – what sexual abuse is really all about.
It is not about sex.
I repeat, and ask you to pause and think about it for a moment. It is not about sex.
For most Catholics, this is probably even harder to hear, because we don't deal with sexual things very well. Our confused Church teachings on the subject tend to either make human sexuality an idol or (and, thankfully, this is less common today) something that's dirty.
Reactions to recent revelations that Jean Vanier sexually abused several women prove the point.
The French-Canadian layman, who was seen as something of a living saint for his extraordinary work with mentally disabled people, was not guilty of committing sins against the Sixth Commandment.
At least not principally, so it seems clear to me.
'Encroaching intimacy' and the false spiritualization of sex
The women say Vanier abused them sexually. But they also say he did this under the pretext of some sort of mystical spirituality.
As much as this was sexual abuse in the physical sense, it was even more a spiritual abuse of these women, in the way he used the things of God to manipulate or control them.
Jean Vanier used spirituality – what I have learned to call from my own painful experience "encroaching intimacy" – as a way to obtain what the other person would not or could not offer freely.
I've never heard any theologian or preacher speak of it this way, but I am convinced that this is what it means to violate the Second Commandment, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain."
There are people in the Church, especially among the ordained ministers (deacons, priests and bishops) or even lay leaders with a certain charism (like Vanier), who do this in a variety of ways.
Using one's religious status
They use their position in the Church or their spiritual authority to satisfy their own self-centered needs or desires.
They do so – and often with little self awareness, it seems to me – by convincing people in the name of God to give them money, sex, honors, private information about others and all sorts of things.
Tele-evangelists who get rich peddling the so-called "prosperity Gospel" are the most obnoxious and blatant example of this. Certain scandal-stained Catholic religious orders that bilk widows and other wealthy people are no better.
We tend to look disapprovingly on them and rightly so.
Yet we fail to see how our own good priests and bishops – and other charismatic spiritual leaders – can fall prey to the same temptation to use their religious status (and, often unconsciously!) to feed their own personal needs.
And when I say "we", I mean all of us Catholics. We tend to be blinded to this reality. We don't want to see it.
In the name of the father
It is probably no coincidence that in a Church (and a society) that is male-dominated, the vast majority of those who sexually or spiritually take advantage of others are men.
The desire of men to manipulate or even abuse those who are weaker or under their authority – women, other men, teens or children – is probably also reinforced, even unwittingly, by the simple fact that men have always been able to do so in a patriarchal system like that of the Church.
Patriarchy and its first-born son, clericalism, have allowed men of God to violate the true meaning of the Second Commandment, probably from the days when the giants of our faith walked the earth.
They will continue to do so until women truly become equal members of the Church, equal to men at every level of decision-making authority and at every level of ministerial service.
We will not get to the root of the Church's crisis of abuse until that happens.
Naturally Indwelling
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
Those who have gone to their own depths through
contemplation uncover an indwelling Presence. Austrian philosopher Martin Buber
(1878–1965) called this intimacy an “I-thou” relationship. It is a deep and
loving “yes” to God and to life that is inherent within each of us. In
Christian theology, this Presence would be described as the Indwelling Holy
Spirit, which is precisely God as immanent, within us, and our deepest and
truest self. God is the very ground of our being!
Some saints and mystics have described this Presence as
“closer to me than I am to myself” or “more me than I am myself.” Thomas Merton
and others call it the True Self. The paradox is that this True Self is
immortal and indestructible, and yet it must also be awakened and chosen. The
Holy Spirit is totally given and given equally to all, but it must be
consciously received. The Presence needs to be recognized, honored, and drawn
upon to become a Living Presence.
We all bear the divine image, but we surrender to God’s
likeness in varying degrees and stages. None of us is morally or
psychologically perfect or whole (at least I have not met anyone who is), but
saints and mystics nevertheless dare to believe that they are ontologically
(“in their very being”) whole, and that it is totally a gift from God. It has
nothing to do with our own private “me”—with anything we could do to earn or
deserve it!
The Holy Spirit is never created by our actions or behavior.
It is naturally indwelling, our inner being with God. (In Catholic theology, we
called the Holy Spirit “Uncreated Grace.”) Culture and usually even religion
teach us to live out of the false or separate self of reputation, self-image,
role, possessions, money, appearance, and so on. It is only as these things
fail us, and they always do, that the True Self stands revealed and ready to
guide us. Some enlightened souls surrender to this truth and presence early,
usually by reason of suffering.
The True Self does not teach us compassion as much as it is
compassion already. And from this more spacious and grounded place, one
naturally connects, empathizes, forgives, and loves just about everything. We
are made in love, for love, and unto love, and it is out of this love that we
act.
Action doesn’t mean busyness or “do-goodism.” It may not
even mean activism, but it does mean serious engagement with the suffering of
the world, beyond our own in-groups and identity groups. Rightly sought, action
and contemplation will always regulate, balance, and convert one another. Separately,
they are dead-ended and trapped in personality. For all of us, finding tangible
ways of expressing our faith is an endless rhythmic dance. The steps change now
and then, but Someone Else is always leading and it’s just up to us to “follow”
along.
Our Congenital Complexity
This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here
The renowned spiritual writer, Ruth Burrows, begins her autobiography with these words: “I was born into this world with a tortured sensitivity. For long I have puzzled over the causes of my psychological anguish.”
Unfortunately, to our loss, too many spiritual biographies don’t begin like this, that is, by recognizing right at the start the bewildering, pathological complexity inside our own nature. We’re not simple in heart, mind, and soul, nor indeed even in body. Each of us has enough complexity within us to write our own treatise on abnormal psychology.
And that complexity must not only be recognized, it needs to be respected and hallowed because it stems not for what’s worst in us but from what’s best in us. We’re complex because what beguiles us inside and tempts us in every direction is not, first of all, the wiliness of the devil but rather the image and likeness of God. Inside us there’s a divine fire, a greatness, which gives us infinite depth, insatiable desires, and enough luminosity to bewilder every psychologist. The image and likeness of God inside us, as John of the Cross writes, renders our hearts, minds, and souls “caverns” too deep to ever be filled in or fully understood.
It’s my belief that Christian spirituality, at least in its popular preaching and catechesis, has too often not taken this seriously enough. In short, the impression has too much been given that Christian discipleship shouldn’t be complicated: Why all this resistance within you! What’s wrong with you! But, as we know from our own experience, our innate complexity is forever throwing up complications and resistances to becoming a saint, to “willing the one thing”. Moreover, because our complexity hasn’t been recognized and honored spiritually we often feel guilty about it: Why am I so complicated? Why do I have all these questions? Why am I so often confused? Why is sex such a powerful impulse? Why do I have some many temptations?
The simple answer: Because we are born with a godly fire within. Thus the source of so many of our confusions, temptations, and resistances comes as much what best in as from the wiles of the Satan and the world.
What should we do in in the face of our own bewildering complexity?
Some Counsels for the Long Haul:
- Honor and hallow your complexity: Accept that this is a God-given gift inside you and, at the end of the day, it’s what is best inside you. It’s what separates you from plants and animals. Their nature is simple, but having an immortal, infinite soul makes for lots of complications as you struggle to live out your life within the finitude that besets you.
- Never underestimate your complexity – even as you resist massaging it: Recognize and respect the “demons and angels” that roam freely inside your heart and mind. But don’t massage your complexity either, by fancying yourself as the tormented artist or as the existentialist who’s heroically out of step with life.
- Befriend your shadow: It’s the luminosity you’ve split off. Slowly, with proper caution and support, begin to face the inner things that frighten you.
- Hallow the power and place of sexuality within you: You’re incurably sexual, and for a godly reason. Never deny or denigrate the power of sexuality – even as you carry it with a proper chastity.
- Name your wounds, grieve them, mourn your inconsummation. Whatever wounds that you don’t grieve will eventually snakebite you. Accept and mourn the fact that here, in this life, there is no finished symphony.
- Never let the “transcendental impulse” inside you become drugged or imprisoned. Your complexity continually lets you know that you’re built for more than this life. Never deaden this impulse inside you. Learn to recognize, through your frustrations and fantasies, the ways you often imprison it.
- Try to find a “higher love” by which to transcend the more immediate power of your natural instincts. All miracles begin with falling in love. Hallow your spontaneous impulses and temptations by searching for that higher love and higher value towards which they’re pointing. Offering others your altruism and the gaze of admiration will feel so good and right that it will bring to fulfillment what you’re really yearning for.
- Let your own complexity teach you understanding and empathy. By being in touch with your own complexity you will eventually learn that nothing is foreign to you and that what you see on the newscasts each day mirrors what’s inside you.
- Forgive yourself often. Your complexity will trip you up many times and so you will need to forgive yourself many times. Live, knowing that God’s mercy is a well that’s never exhausted.
- Live under God’s patience and understanding. God is your builder, the architect who constructed you and who is responsible for your complexity. Trust that God understands. Trust that God is more anxious about you than you’re anxious about yourself. The God who knows all things also knows and appreciates why you struggle.
Ashes To-Go
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
A church here in our community advertises “Ashes To-Go,” a drive-thru exercise in minimalism when it comes to approaching Lent. I am not criticizing our neighbors in the least, they are observing the season according to their own custom. I just won’t be emulating them.
Lent is an ancient tradition observed throughout the western Christian community as an annual period of preparation for Easter. The faithful and those new to faith alike are encouraged to greater attention to the word of God as they grow deeper as disciples of Christ. Renewed efforts in prayer, penance, and giving nobly characterize this season, which finds its source and summit in the Sunday celebration of the Mass.
This year there is a wealth of opportunities to observe Lent at Nativity and we invite you and your family to join us. This is a great time to consider the practice of daily Mass. Ours is celebrated at the convenient time of 5:30 pm each weekday. This is preceded by the Rosary at 5 pm, also a worthy practice to undertake this time of year, whether here at church or as a private devotion. If you are unfamiliar with the practice, there are apps available to walk you through it step by step. Eucharistic Adoration, especially useful and powerful for our prayer, is available each Sunday morning (in our Chapel) and each first Friday of the month, throughout the day.
Lent also calls forth self-sacrifice in terms of fasting and abstinence, beginning with a full day of fasting on Ash Wednesday itself, and meatless Fridays throughout the season. A little daily sacrifice is most certainly in order as well and can take many different forms. “Giving up” snacks or sweets, or wine or liquor can serve as simple daily reminders of the period of penance we observe. And our fasting should be matched by giving, in terms of giving to the poor or giving in our place of worship as an act of worship. Some participation in one of the many service projects we host each week of the season is a perfect match for all these practices. Joining a small group is another way to stay on top of your resolve and commitment to your Lenten discipline.
However, the Lenten commitment doesn’t stop there.
The Church calls us to enter a season that is anything but minimal. Instead, it is immersive, calling forth our very best efforts in a sustained and substantial commitment to penance, prayer, and renewal. It is a renewal of the soul and spirit. Don’t make it a drive-thru experience.
Ashes On Not Giving Up Too Easily: Thoughts For Lent
If your thoughts as you prepare to begin Lent are of what you plan to give up and of how much you will suffer without chocolate or alcohol during the next six weeks, perhaps it is time to realign your approach to the season. Will your chosen Lenten observance help you to grow as you journey towards Easter? Philip Endean SJ wants to remind us that ‘this great season of grace’ is not a time for constriction: ‘Lent is only Christian if it is positive.’ Philip Endean SJ is Professor of Spirituality at Centre Sèvres, Paris. This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
Before I was ordained, I worked for a year in a primary school in Mexico City. On Ash Wednesday morning, I arrived on the site at 7.30 am, as usual. Three things became quickly clear. Firstly, the headmistress had forgotten to engage a priest for the day. Secondly, absolutely nothing could happen within the culture of that school on Ash Wednesday before ashes had been duly distributed to all and sundry. Thirdly, in default of a proper padrecito, the foreign seminarian was going to have to step in.
Thus, through a distorting microphone in the school yard, I found myself improvising a catechetical dialogue: imagine Joyce Grenfell in bad Mexican Spanish. ‘Now, children. I’m going to make the sign of the cross on all your foreheads. We use a cross because someone died on it. Does anyone know who died on the cross?’ It was a deliberately easy question, expecting the answer ‘Jesus’. In fact, eight hundred children answered back with impressive volume and unanimity ‘Dios’ – God. I was taken aback by the theological robustness here, but I pressed on with my lesson plan regardless. ‘And what did Dios do after he died?’ Silence. Pedagogical failure. All I could do was tell them the ‘right answer’ piously, and hurry on to the real ritual business.
‘God died’: end of story. Behind those children’s response lay an inheritance of long suffering and oppression, something to be reverenced, not patronised. Nevertheless, there is also cause for concern here. The Acts of the Apostles tells us of disciples who had never heard of the Holy Spirit (19:1-2); here we have Christians with no knowledge of Easter. If anything like this explains why Mass on Ash Wednesday, despite the lack of ‘obligation’, is generally one of the most crowded celebrations in any Catholic church’s year, then the situation is quite worrying.
Jesus’s claims to be God, of one being with the Father who made heaven and earth, cannot rest simply on the fact that he lived nobly, for a worthy cause, and died as a result. That much is true of lots of other people too – from Socrates in antiquity to the firemen who gave their lives on the morning of 9/11. Our big stories about Jesus being one with God depend on the fact that he, and he alone, rose from the dead, and was seen by the very disciples who had failed him. We proclaim his death precisely because it was not the end. He also rose, and he will come again. Lent is the preparation for Easter: the celebration of new life, not of God’s death.
Lent thus cannot be a time for wallowing in the negative. The English word ‘Lent’ comes from the same root as ‘length’. Lent, the time of spring’s first stirrings, is a time for our being lengthened. We are to grow into the full stature of Christ, to move nearer the kingdom prepared for us before the world’s foundation. It may be very noble, and may meet some psychological need within ourselves, to think about Lent as our trying hard, as our effort. But when we think that way, the focus is probably on ourselves. What Lent is really about is opening ourselves to someone else, about stretching ourselves, so that we can receive the gift of new life coming from God alone.
Many churches in these days will sing the hymn that begins:
Forty days and forty nights
Thou wast fasting in the wild;
Forty days and forty nights
Tempted, and yet undefiled.
Think of Jesus, hungry and tempted, and the next step seems just obvious:
Should not we Thy sorrow share
And from worldly joys abstain,
Fasting with unceasing prayer,
Strong with Thee to suffer pain?
Well, maybe. But by the time we get to this stage in that hymn, I normally feel pretty uneasy. Those well-crafted lines make the whole business sound so heroic, so stiff upper lip, what the British Empire was built on. If we resist our temptations to chocolate or alcohol, we somehow gain merit, and rise above mere sensuality.
But this way of thinking does not have much to do with the gospel. When Matthew and Luke in their different ways name the temptations Jesus faces, it seems as though Jesus himself is growing into, being stretched towards, the full reality of his mission. He has to recognise that his way is not that of simple miracle-working, despite the triumphs with which his career in the gospel seems to open. He has to realise that his kingdom is a kingdom in the truest sense, a kingdom given from above, and therefore not of this world (John 18: 36-37). Jesus is not proving his moral fibre, but growing in his sense of his own identity.
This piece could almost be called ‘On Not Giving Up For Lent’. Almost, but not quite. What is important is that we avoid superstitious practices that are at best mere window-dressing, and at worst thoroughly destructive, reflecting the styles of religion from which Jesus came to free us. The real point is about the mindset we bring to Lent. I am trying to insist that Lent is ‘this great season of grace’, God’s gift to the Church – to use the words of the Missal when it was still in native English. Lent places us before the author and pioneer of our faith, Jesus Christ, and asks us how we might follow him more deeply. Lent is only Christian if it is positive.
In his Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius Loyola in various ways encourages us to pray, not out of our conventional selves, or with the skills we have already developed, but rather from the parts of ourselves that are being ‘shaken up by different spirits’ (Exx 6). We need to be in touch with what can transform us, what makes us confront new questions, what stretches our commitment and identity. It is that kind of focus that should characterise Lent. Where am I growing? Where are there questions in my life? Where am I being called to something deeper – something which, precisely as such, I cannot get my head round? What is my equivalent of the desert, of Jesus’s temptations? How can I enter into that place fully, freely, generously?
Now, such questions may well still give us the normal answers. Lay off the sugar or the cigarettes or the meat – not because the enjoyment I get from such things is bad in itself, but because the pleasure they give may be dulling my awareness of the tough issues that really matter. And though no-one can live at full spiritual stretch all the time, it is good for us to have a designated six weeks every year when we try more intensively to open ourselves to God’s stretching. We should not be too ambitious; if we are, we’ll almost certainly fail, get discouraged, and give up some time round the first Sunday. We need realistic targets: enough to stretch us, not so much as to crush us. We need to go slowly, to seek sustainable growth.
When such considerations inform our indulgence in standard Lenten penance, well and good. But we can also be creative, and develop practices that are less conventionally ‘penitential’. Some of us might need to give up some element of our religion. Some of us may need to sleep more. Some of us, particularly if we are given to the single or celibate life, may need to work more deeply at our relationships, and stop avoiding the all too challenging ways in which they alone can stretch us.
Lent is for lengthening, not for constriction. As we begin the forty days, we need to ask the Spirit where we are being called, here and now, to grow. We need to ask ourselves what we must do in order to further that divine purpose. We need to stop confining ourselves, and instead be open to the one who calls light out of darkness, brings life out of death. It is not really about our effort, still less about our looking miserable. Rather, with humble pride, we boast that all we can do is to plant and to water. The real growth, the true lengthening, comes from God (1 Corinthians 3:5-7).
