Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney
Mob: 0417 279 437
mike.delaney@aohtas.org.au
Priest in Residence: Fr Phil McCormack
Mob: 0437 521 257
pmccormack43@bigpond.com
Deacon in Residence: Rev Steven Smith
Mob: 0411 522 630
steven.smith@aohtas.org.au
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
THE FOLLOWING PUBLIC ACTIVITIES ARE SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Eucharistic Adoration Devonport, Benediction with Adoration Devonport,
Legion of Mary, Prayer Group.
DAILY AND SUNDAY MASS ONLINE: You will need to go to the following link and register: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gHY-gMZ7SZeGMDSJyTDeAQ
Sun 14th June 9:00am LIVESTREAM ONLY ... The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
Mon 15th June No Mass
Tues 16th June Devonport 9:30am - ALSO LIVESTREAM
Wed 17th June Ulverstone 9:30am
Thurs 18th June Devonport 12noon - ALSO LIVESTREAM
Fri 19th June Ulverstone 9:30am ...The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Sat 20th June 9:00am LIVESTREAM ONLY ...The Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Sun 21st June 9:00am LIVESTREAM ONLY
If you are looking for Sunday Mass readings or Daily Mass readings,
Universalis has the readings as well
as the various Hours of the Divine Office - https://universalis.com/mass.htm
Your prayers are asked for the sick: Kevin Hayes, Rex Evans, Athol Bryan, Jill
Murphy, Roberto Escobar, Robert Luxton, Jane Fitzpatrick, Marlene Heazlewood, Barry
Mulcahy, Mark Aylett, & …
Let us pray for
those who have died recently: Teresa Durkin, Shane Yates, Veronica
Murnane, Brian Pilling, Peter Evans, Marie Reid, Don Mapley, Pauline Cooper, Judith Xavier, Pauline Burnett, Reg
Hinkley, Maria Grazia Dell'Orso, Ted Horton, Ian
Ravaillion
May the souls of the faithful departed,
Weekly Ramblings
As I sit down to write these
ramblings I thought of a song by Simon and Garfunkel – part of the title was
3am. As you might expect, I checked with Google and it told me that the song
was Wednesday Morning 3am and was released in 1964. Well it is Thursday morning
and nearly 3am and I have just been talking to a group of people who work in
Parishes around the world and who are involved in Discipleship and
Evangelisation and how can we help our Parishes regroup and be stronger after
being ‘closed down’. 
Stay safe, stay sane and, if you can, stay at home
SUPPORTING THE PARISH FINANCIALLY
To continue supporting the
Parish you can .......,
PLANNED GIVING PROGRAMME:
New envelopes will be distributed
soon. If you are not already part of this programme and would like to join,
please contact the Parish office 6424:2783.
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: BY APPOINTMENT ONLY
THE FOLLOWING PUBLIC ACTIVITIES ARE SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Eucharistic Adoration Devonport, Benediction with Adoration Devonport,
Legion of Mary, Prayer Group.
DAILY AND SUNDAY MASS ONLINE: You will need to go to the following link and register: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gHY-gMZ7SZeGMDSJyTDeAQ
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. Please keep this confirmation email as that will be your entry point for all further Masses or Liturgies.
Sun 14th June 9:00am LIVESTREAM ONLY ... The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
Mon 15th June No Mass
Tues 16th June Devonport 9:30am - ALSO LIVESTREAM
Wed 17th June Ulverstone 9:30am
Thurs 18th June Devonport 12noon - ALSO LIVESTREAM
Fri 19th June Ulverstone 9:30am ...The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Sat 20th June 9:00am LIVESTREAM ONLY ...The Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Sun 21st June 9:00am LIVESTREAM ONLY
If you are looking for Sunday Mass readings or Daily Mass readings,
Universalis has the readings as well
as the various Hours of the Divine Office - https://universalis.com/mass.htm
Your prayers are asked for the sick: Kevin Hayes, Rex Evans, Athol Bryan, Jill
Murphy, Roberto Escobar, Robert Luxton, Jane Fitzpatrick, Marlene Heazlewood, Barry
Mulcahy, Mark Aylett, & …
Let us pray for
those who have died recently: Teresa Durkin, Shane Yates, Veronica
Murnane, Brian Pilling, Peter Evans, Marie Reid, Don Mapley, Pauline Cooper, Judith Xavier, Pauline Burnett, Reg
Hinkley, Maria Grazia Dell'Orso, Ted Horton, Ian
Ravaillion
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 10th – 16th June, 2020
Flores
McKenzie, Phillip Roden, Pat Malone, Eva Zvatora, Judith Rigney, Mary Binks, Norah
Astell, Agnes Rose, Fr
Wilfred Speers C.P., Edith Crabtree, Jimmy Dunlop.
May the souls of the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God,
rest in peace.
Amen
Weekly Ramblings
As I sit down to write these ramblings I thought of a song by Simon and Garfunkel – part of the title was 3am. As you might expect, I checked with Google and it told me that the song was Wednesday Morning 3am and was released in 1964. Well it is Thursday morning and nearly 3am and I have just been talking to a group of people who work in Parishes around the world and who are involved in Discipleship and Evangelisation and how can we help our Parishes regroup and be stronger after being ‘closed down’.
The conversation is about re-entry
not re-opening because there have been numerous ways that our Parishes have
continued to operate but in different platforms. One of those platforms has
been our livestreaming of Masses – I shared with people on our email list a
video clip challenging whether that is the best way to go. I am about to join
another discussion (hence the 3am) about how to use the online medium to better
enhance the faith life and journey of our parishioners. The webinar is over,
and I’ve been back to bed for a few hours’ sleep.
In my discussions with various
people one question has been asked consistently, and it was repeated in the
webinar – Why are we online? What are we trying to achieve? In the first
instant it was because I wanted to ensure that people had access to a virtual
liturgy. It was put together hurriedly and all we have done is basically
livestreamed a Mass – with some enhancements as Deacon Steven assisted with
technical advice and expertise. Yes, it has been a means by which we have
allowed our community to gather albeit virtually, but I would be the first to
admit that there are better options available with better production etc.
But if it is about providing an
entry point into who we are as a Parish and providing an opportunity to build
faith and encourage people to participate in our Community we have a long way
to go. As we move forward we will need to decide – do we provide an online
presence by livestreaming or will we revert to just to celebrating Mass in our
various Mass Centres and leave online to others?
Big question. If we decide to move
forward with an online presence it will mean a big commitment of resources and
big commitment of volunteers to run the process but it could mean that we
provide a pathway for younger members of our Parish to have an involvement and
renewed commitment to their faith. Are we willing to take the chance?
On another note next Friday, 19th,
is the Feast of the Sacred Heart and we will be celebrating one of our weekday
Masses at Sacred Heart Church at 9.30am. It will be a great chance for the
Parish to celebrate this feast day – please contact the Parish Office as we are
only allowed 40 people at Mass on any day.
There will also be a change to our
daily livestreaming of Mass as we are not able, at this time, to livestream
Mass from Ulverstone. At this time Mass will be livestreamed on Sunday 14th,
Tuesday 16th, Thursday 18th , Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st.
Any changes will be made known asap.
Stay safe, stay sane and, if you can, stay at home
SUPPORTING THE PARISH FINANCIALLY
Thank
you to all who have so generously continued their financial support of the
Parish during the COVID-19 restrictions. Your contributions are very much
appreciated.
To continue supporting the
Parish you can .......,
· Drop
your contribution into the Parish Office during our usual office hours
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am -3pm)
· Make
an electronic transfer of funds directly into the CDF – Commonwealth Bank Account Name: Mersey Leven;
BSB: 067 000; Acc No: 1031 5724 and in the description simply add your
name and/or envelope number thank you.
PLANNED GIVING PROGRAMME:
New envelopes will be distributed
soon. If you are not already part of this programme and would like to join,
please contact the Parish office 6424:2783.
Please do not use the new envelopes until the starting date – Sunday
5th July. Thank you!
Letter From Rome
Like A Disney Theme Park, The Vatican Is Dying Without Tourists
Letter From Rome
Like A Disney Theme Park, The Vatican Is Dying Without Tourists
Like A Disney Theme Park, The Vatican Is Dying Without Tourists
Meanwhile, Pope Francis soldiers on with his mission to reform the Church - Robert Mickens, Rome, June 12, 2020.
This article is from the La-Croix International website - you can access the site here but complete full access is via paid subscription
This article is from the La-Croix International website - you can access the site here but complete full access is via paid subscription
Rome has started to buzz again, as residents of the Eternal City eagerly look for ways to return to some semblance of life as it was before the coronavirus caused it to shut down for nearly three months.
Almost all stores and shops were able to resume business on May 18 and just a couple of weeks later, on June 3 to be exact, people could start travelling to other regions of the peninsula. All the countries in the European Union also opened their borders.
Restaurants and cafes in the Italian capital, especially those with outdoor seating, are showing encouraging signs of life again.
And the traffic is back, as the Urb's notoriously aggressive motorists try to reclaim the city's potholed streets from a surprisingly significant chunk of the population that recently discovered how to ride a bicycle.
But the tourists, whose presence and pocketbooks have become increasing essential to the local economy, are still few and far between. So few, in fact, that Rome seems like a "normal" city right now.
It's actually quite nice to have the town all to ourselves again, something we've not experienced since last century when there was still something called "low season" for tourism.
That ended with the Great Jubilee of 2000 when the Vatican and the City of Rome teamed up to create a tourism infrastructure with a very specific goal – ensure that there will always be hordes of visitors all year round.
A Vatican that's addicted to tourism
Even during the once sacrosanct summer holiday period of Ferragosto, when everything used to be closed during the entire month of August, the city now plays host to lots of tourists.
If much of Rome has become over-reliant on the tourist industry, the Vatican has become positively addicted to it.
And it shows right now.
Via della Conciliazione, the long and wide (mostly) pedestrian avenue leading from the Tiber River to St. Peter's Square, is usually so crowded with people that it's almost impossible to navigate with a bike.
But these days you could easily land a Boeing-747 on its empty stretch.
The square, itself, remains pretty much deserted. At certain hours of the day, mostly nuns and priests, their faces covered with surgical masks, can be seen traversing its cobblestoned expanse.
Probably they are either coming from or going to work in the Roman Curia or some other place in Vatican City.
Pope World on the Tiber
There are also several police cars parked in the square and at its outer edges. The cops have been keeping watch here since the lockdown and the re-opening, checking the few stragglers that have, so far, made their way back to "Pope World on the Tiber".
And, ironically, that's exactly what the Vatican feels like right now – a Disney-like theme park that's been closed for the season. There are no crowds. There are no tourists.
It is a sad spectacle. And conveys a worrying message. This has long been seen as the center of Catholicism. Or as a friend once remarked with irreverent sarcasm: "It's the dead center of the Church, emphasis on dead."
The mobs of tourists and "pilgrims" that usually fill St. Peter's Square and clog up its surrounding streets served to hide how dead – and irrelevant – the Vatican is already and is becoming more still.
But now that they are not here, it's a lot easier to spot the characters in this clerical theme park – Pope World's alternatives to Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Winnie the Pooh, Cinderella, Tinker Bell and all the rest…
A lot of them are cardinals, mostly old and doddery.
There's one! Famous for posing in outlandish ecclesiastical costumes from a bygone era, he makes his way down Borgo Pio. He's completely covered in black – a long cassock, wide-brimmed fedora and black leather gloves.
With his anti-coronavirus mask drawn up to the frames of his spectacles, he looks as if he's wearing a burka. Indeed, wafting from a coffee shop in the distance one can hear the sounds of "A Whole New World", the hit song from the Disney film "Aladdin"…
Time for true reform
Meanwhile, in this bizarre Vatican world Pope Francis tries his best to carry on with his mission to re-energize and "convert" his fellow Catholics to Gospel-based Christianity; re-unite the separated Churches in full communion; and bring together the entire world in an urgent, fraternal project to save our planet – our common home.
"Praise be to you, Lord!"
The coronavirus lockdown brought the Roman Curia to a halt. It deprived the Holy See of much needed revenue from its tourist trade, especially through the Vatican Museums. And it grounded a pope who usually travels abroad four or five times a year.
Christianity did not collapse. And the world did not stop turning.
But the structure and functioning of Rome-based, Euro-centric Catholicism has never looked more anachronistic. The post-Constantinian Church continues to implode.
And Pope Francis, now 83, should probably shelve any more foreign trips and focus entirely on his long, drawn-out plan to truly reform the Church's bureaucratic headquarters, the Roman Curia.
The lockdown has shown that now's the time.
A Hidden Wholeness
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
Alongside all our knowing must be the equal and honest “knowing that I do not know.” That’s why the classic schools of prayer spoke of both kataphatic knowing—through images and words—and apophatic knowing—through silence and symbols.
Apophatic knowing allows God to fill in all the gaps in an “unspeakable” way, beyond words and within the empty spaces between them. The apophatic way of knowing was largely lost to Western Christianity during the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, and we have suffered because of it. As the churches wanted to match the new rationalism of the Enlightenment with what felt like solid knowing, they took on the secular mind instead of what Paul calls “knowing spiritual things in a spiritual way” (1 Corinthians 2:13). We dismissed the unique, interior access point of the mystics, poets, artists, and saints.
Strangely enough, this unknowing offers us a new kind of understanding, though we have an old word for it: faith. Faith is a kind of knowing that doesn’t need to know for certain and yet doesn’t dismiss knowledge either. With faith, we don’t need to obtain or hold all knowledge because we know that we are being held inside a Much Larger Frame and Perspective. As Paul puts it, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known myself” (1 Corinthians 13:12). It is a knowing by participation with—instead of an observation of from a position of separation. It is knowing subject to subject instead of subject to object.
It took me years to understand this, even though it is straight from the Franciscan school of philosophy. Love must always precede knowledge. The mind alone cannot get us there, which is the great arrogance of most Western religion. Prayer in my later years has become letting myself be nakedly known, exactly as I am, in all my ordinariness and shadow, face to face, without any masks or religious makeup. Such nakedness is a falling into the unified field underneath reality, what Thomas Merton (1915–1968) called “a hidden wholeness,” [1] where we know in a different way and from a different source.
This is the contemplative’s unique access point: knowing by union with a thing, where we can enjoy an intuitive grasp of wholeness, a truth beyond words, beyond any need or capacity to prove anything right or wrong. This is the contemplative mind which Christianity should have directly taught, but which it largely lost with tragic results for history and religion.
[1] Thomas Merton, “Hagia Sophia: Dawn,” In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, ed. Lynn R. Szabo (New Directions: 2005), 65.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer (Paulist Press: 2014), 15-16.
A Magnificent Defeat
This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here
Where’s the fairness in life? Why are some people so undeservedly blessed in this world while others are seemingly cursed? Why are craftiness, self-serving ambition, taking advantage of others, and dishonesty so frequently rewarded? This has no quick answer.
In his book The Magnificent Defeat, the renowned novelist and preacher, Frederick Buechner, takes up this question by focusing on the biblical character, Jacob. He, as we know, twice cheated his brother, Esau. Catching him hungry and vulnerable, Jacob buys his birthright from him for a meal. More seriously, he poses as Esau, tricks their father, and steals the blessing and the inheritance that was Esau’s by right. Everything about this seems wrong and calls for retribution, yet Jacob’s life seemingly teaches the opposite. In contrast to his cheated brother, Jacob lives a very richly blessed life and is favored by God and by others. What’s the lesson? Are God and life really on the side of those who do this type of thing?
Buechner builds his answer by moving from the pragmatic and the short-range to the spiritual and the long-range.
First, from a pragmatic point of view, the story of Jacob teaches its own lesson, namely, that as a matter of fact in this life people like Jacob, who are intelligent, crafty, and ambitious often do end up being rewarded in ways that people like Esau, who are slower on the draw, don’t. While clearly this isn’t the moral teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, other parts of scripture, including some teachings of Jesus, do challenge us to be intelligent, to work hard, and indeed at times to be crafty. God doesn’t necessarily help those who help themselves, but God and life seem to reward those who use their talents. But there’s a fine moral line here and Buechner draws it out brilliantly.
He asks: when someone who does what Jacob did and it brings him riches in this life, where is the moral consequence? The answer comes to Jacob years later. He is alone one night when a stranger leaps upon him and the two of them end up wrestling silently with each other throughout the entire night. Just as dawn is breaking and it seems Jacob might win, everything is suddenly reversed. With an infinitely superior strength that he seems to have deliberately held back until now, the stranger touches Jacob’s thigh and renders him helpless. Something deeply transformative happens to Jacob in that experience of helplessness. Now that he knows that he is finally defeated, he no longer wants to be free of the stranger’s grasp; instead he clings fiercely to his former foe like a drowning man. Why?
Here’s Buechner’s explanation: “The darkness had faded just enough so that for the first time he can dimly see his opponent’s face. And what he sees is something more terrible than the face of death — the face of love. It is vast and strong, half-ruined with suffering and fierce with joy, the face a man flees down all the darkness of his days until at last he cries out, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me!’ Not a blessing that he can have now by the strength of his cunning or the force of his will, but a blessing that he can have only as a gift.”
There’s an entire spirituality here. The blessing for which we are forever wrestling can only come to us as gift, not as something we can snatch through our own talent, cunning, and strength. By his wit and cunning, Jacob became a rich, admired man in this world. But in struggling for all those riches he was wrestling with a force he unconsciously perceived as someone or something to be overcome. Eventually, after many years of struggle, he had an awakening. Light dawned, through a crippling defeat. And in the light of that defeat he finally saw that what he had been struggling with for all that time was not someone or something to be overcome, but the very love he was wrestling for in all his efforts to achieve and get ahead.
For many of us, this will also be the real awakening in our lives, waking up to the fact that in our ambition and in all the schemes we concoct to get ahead, we are not wrestling with a someone or something to be overcome by our strength and wit; we are wrestling with community, love, and with God. And it will undoubtedly take the defeat of our own strength (and a permanent limp) before we realize what we are fighting against. Then we will give up trying to win and instead cling like a drowning man to this face of love, begging for its blessing, a blessing that we can have only as a gift.
Believing that our blessing lies in winning, we strive to wrestle our lives away from others until one day, if we are lucky enough to be defeated, we begin to beg others to hang on to us.
In Times of Darkness
‘All of us who live from the gift of faith are witnesses of hope – a real, practical hope, which is not trapped in the old patterns but can realise new possibilities.’ James Hanvey SJ draws our attention to the work of the Spirit to bring us into communion with one another, a communion in which we see Christ in every hopeful or sorrowful face.
James Hanvey SJ is Secretary for the Service of the Faith for the Society of Jesus.
This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
In times of darkness, through all pandemics, wars, and upheavals, we can feel absence and confusion more than presence.
Yet we know from our own experience that Christ is always present, calling to us, leading us even from within the darkness, ‘for the darkness is not dark to you’ (Psalm 139:12).
The particular gift of faith, one that is deepened and confirmed throughout the gospel and experienced every day in the Church’s liturgy, is the recognition that even when ‘the divinity hides itself’, God is always labouring and working for us.
In these months our quarantined and self-isolating world has discovered again the symbol of the rainbow. The promise is made secure in Christ that God will never abandon our world to emptiness and darkness. Especially in this Easter time, we see the wounded but Risen Christ come not as judge but as consoler.
Only faith can see this, and this is why faith, far from being an obstacle, is a hope; a consolation that gives us the strength to believe in the possibility of transformation: of new life and new beginnings.
This is why all of us who live from the gift of faith are witnesses of hope – a real, practical hope, which is not trapped in the old patterns but can realise new possibilities.
This is the imperceptible work of the Spirit in us, and in all those whose minds and hearts are searching for better ways of living together, of being in a real communion.
How then do we bring authentic consolation to our suffering world?
I believe that the gospel opens up paths of encounter with our world, especially those who are lost, abandoned, and forgotten. Those, too, who may not acknowledge any faith but long for a better world, a more compassionate and just community, a new way of sharing life with the whole of God’s good creation, still becoming and evolving.
Whenever we hear the words of Christ and attend with an open heart, we see ourselves and those around us in a new light. We see that the beatitudes are not just something for the future, but even now they are among us. The corporate and spiritual works of mercy are already our solidarity and communion in action. They are the paths on which the Spirit is leading us to encounter the face of Christ in each other.
Covid-19 has exposed the fragilities and the illusions, the inequalities and the failures of our systems.
It has also revealed the many faces of generosity; humble and heroic faces of service and self-sacrifice even to the point of death. Lives put at the service of others barely known except in their desperation and need.
The forgotten, the aging, the disabled and marginalised, those who are exposed to violence whether domestic or state, those who have no ‘place to shelter’. Every day they appear in the statistics and in the news. But in Christ anonymous numbers become faces. In them He shows His face. Not the faces of celebrity or fashion that our imagination or our art has created, but the faces of the people we hide from, or prefer not to know because they are not beautiful - except to Him. In their faces He looks at us: the face of sorrow, the face of the resurrected one. (Novo millennio ineunte §24)
Our work is not to paint another beautiful face for people to admire in the galleries of our hygienic imagination. Our work is to look upon the faces of sorrow and hope, and to make them even more visible. So that the faces to which we have become blind shine more urgently and radiantly. They are Christ’s testimony to us and to our world of another way of being: to see each other again through His eyes in compassion and in service; in communion beyond division.
With simple faith we ask that the life of the Holy Spirit will carry us beyond the virus to the communion, the koinonia, in which we celebrate the sharing of our goods for the good of these vulnerable ones who have nothing to give us in return but their blessing.
For all its destruction and evil, the virus humbles us and frees us; it offers us another way of being, another way of seeing beyond the old ‘normal’ to see into the face of Christ, to recognise again the paths that lead to the Kingdom for which we pray and hope. ‘Come, Holy Spirit, and renew the face of our earth.’
You can watch this article as a video - In Times Of Darkness - by Fr Hanvey SJ here
Almost all stores and shops were able to resume business on May 18 and just a couple of weeks later, on June 3 to be exact, people could start travelling to other regions of the peninsula. All the countries in the European Union also opened their borders.
Restaurants and cafes in the Italian capital, especially those with outdoor seating, are showing encouraging signs of life again.
And the traffic is back, as the Urb's notoriously aggressive motorists try to reclaim the city's potholed streets from a surprisingly significant chunk of the population that recently discovered how to ride a bicycle.
But the tourists, whose presence and pocketbooks have become increasing essential to the local economy, are still few and far between. So few, in fact, that Rome seems like a "normal" city right now.
It's actually quite nice to have the town all to ourselves again, something we've not experienced since last century when there was still something called "low season" for tourism.
That ended with the Great Jubilee of 2000 when the Vatican and the City of Rome teamed up to create a tourism infrastructure with a very specific goal – ensure that there will always be hordes of visitors all year round.
A Vatican that's addicted to tourism
Even during the once sacrosanct summer holiday period of Ferragosto, when everything used to be closed during the entire month of August, the city now plays host to lots of tourists.
If much of Rome has become over-reliant on the tourist industry, the Vatican has become positively addicted to it.
And it shows right now.
Via della Conciliazione, the long and wide (mostly) pedestrian avenue leading from the Tiber River to St. Peter's Square, is usually so crowded with people that it's almost impossible to navigate with a bike.
But these days you could easily land a Boeing-747 on its empty stretch.
The square, itself, remains pretty much deserted. At certain hours of the day, mostly nuns and priests, their faces covered with surgical masks, can be seen traversing its cobblestoned expanse.
Probably they are either coming from or going to work in the Roman Curia or some other place in Vatican City.
Pope World on the Tiber
There are also several police cars parked in the square and at its outer edges. The cops have been keeping watch here since the lockdown and the re-opening, checking the few stragglers that have, so far, made their way back to "Pope World on the Tiber".
And, ironically, that's exactly what the Vatican feels like right now – a Disney-like theme park that's been closed for the season. There are no crowds. There are no tourists.
It is a sad spectacle. And conveys a worrying message. This has long been seen as the center of Catholicism. Or as a friend once remarked with irreverent sarcasm: "It's the dead center of the Church, emphasis on dead."
The mobs of tourists and "pilgrims" that usually fill St. Peter's Square and clog up its surrounding streets served to hide how dead – and irrelevant – the Vatican is already and is becoming more still.
But now that they are not here, it's a lot easier to spot the characters in this clerical theme park – Pope World's alternatives to Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Winnie the Pooh, Cinderella, Tinker Bell and all the rest…
A lot of them are cardinals, mostly old and doddery.
There's one! Famous for posing in outlandish ecclesiastical costumes from a bygone era, he makes his way down Borgo Pio. He's completely covered in black – a long cassock, wide-brimmed fedora and black leather gloves.
With his anti-coronavirus mask drawn up to the frames of his spectacles, he looks as if he's wearing a burka. Indeed, wafting from a coffee shop in the distance one can hear the sounds of "A Whole New World", the hit song from the Disney film "Aladdin"…
Time for true reform
Meanwhile, in this bizarre Vatican world Pope Francis tries his best to carry on with his mission to re-energize and "convert" his fellow Catholics to Gospel-based Christianity; re-unite the separated Churches in full communion; and bring together the entire world in an urgent, fraternal project to save our planet – our common home.
"Praise be to you, Lord!"
The coronavirus lockdown brought the Roman Curia to a halt. It deprived the Holy See of much needed revenue from its tourist trade, especially through the Vatican Museums. And it grounded a pope who usually travels abroad four or five times a year.
Christianity did not collapse. And the world did not stop turning.
But the structure and functioning of Rome-based, Euro-centric Catholicism has never looked more anachronistic. The post-Constantinian Church continues to implode.
And Pope Francis, now 83, should probably shelve any more foreign trips and focus entirely on his long, drawn-out plan to truly reform the Church's bureaucratic headquarters, the Roman Curia.
The lockdown has shown that now's the time.
A Hidden Wholeness
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
Alongside all our knowing must be the equal and honest “knowing that I do not know.” That’s why the classic schools of prayer spoke of both kataphatic knowing—through images and words—and apophatic knowing—through silence and symbols.
Apophatic knowing allows God to fill in all the gaps in an “unspeakable” way, beyond words and within the empty spaces between them. The apophatic way of knowing was largely lost to Western Christianity during the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, and we have suffered because of it. As the churches wanted to match the new rationalism of the Enlightenment with what felt like solid knowing, they took on the secular mind instead of what Paul calls “knowing spiritual things in a spiritual way” (1 Corinthians 2:13). We dismissed the unique, interior access point of the mystics, poets, artists, and saints.
Strangely enough, this unknowing offers us a new kind of understanding, though we have an old word for it: faith. Faith is a kind of knowing that doesn’t need to know for certain and yet doesn’t dismiss knowledge either. With faith, we don’t need to obtain or hold all knowledge because we know that we are being held inside a Much Larger Frame and Perspective. As Paul puts it, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known myself” (1 Corinthians 13:12). It is a knowing by participation with—instead of an observation of from a position of separation. It is knowing subject to subject instead of subject to object.
It took me years to understand this, even though it is straight from the Franciscan school of philosophy. Love must always precede knowledge. The mind alone cannot get us there, which is the great arrogance of most Western religion. Prayer in my later years has become letting myself be nakedly known, exactly as I am, in all my ordinariness and shadow, face to face, without any masks or religious makeup. Such nakedness is a falling into the unified field underneath reality, what Thomas Merton (1915–1968) called “a hidden wholeness,” [1] where we know in a different way and from a different source.
This is the contemplative’s unique access point: knowing by union with a thing, where we can enjoy an intuitive grasp of wholeness, a truth beyond words, beyond any need or capacity to prove anything right or wrong. This is the contemplative mind which Christianity should have directly taught, but which it largely lost with tragic results for history and religion.
[1] Thomas Merton, “Hagia Sophia: Dawn,” In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, ed. Lynn R. Szabo (New Directions: 2005), 65.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer (Paulist Press: 2014), 15-16.
A Magnificent Defeat
This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here
Where’s the fairness in life? Why are some people so undeservedly blessed in this world while others are seemingly cursed? Why are craftiness, self-serving ambition, taking advantage of others, and dishonesty so frequently rewarded? This has no quick answer.
In his book The Magnificent Defeat, the renowned novelist and preacher, Frederick Buechner, takes up this question by focusing on the biblical character, Jacob. He, as we know, twice cheated his brother, Esau. Catching him hungry and vulnerable, Jacob buys his birthright from him for a meal. More seriously, he poses as Esau, tricks their father, and steals the blessing and the inheritance that was Esau’s by right. Everything about this seems wrong and calls for retribution, yet Jacob’s life seemingly teaches the opposite. In contrast to his cheated brother, Jacob lives a very richly blessed life and is favored by God and by others. What’s the lesson? Are God and life really on the side of those who do this type of thing?
Buechner builds his answer by moving from the pragmatic and the short-range to the spiritual and the long-range.
First, from a pragmatic point of view, the story of Jacob teaches its own lesson, namely, that as a matter of fact in this life people like Jacob, who are intelligent, crafty, and ambitious often do end up being rewarded in ways that people like Esau, who are slower on the draw, don’t. While clearly this isn’t the moral teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, other parts of scripture, including some teachings of Jesus, do challenge us to be intelligent, to work hard, and indeed at times to be crafty. God doesn’t necessarily help those who help themselves, but God and life seem to reward those who use their talents. But there’s a fine moral line here and Buechner draws it out brilliantly.
He asks: when someone who does what Jacob did and it brings him riches in this life, where is the moral consequence? The answer comes to Jacob years later. He is alone one night when a stranger leaps upon him and the two of them end up wrestling silently with each other throughout the entire night. Just as dawn is breaking and it seems Jacob might win, everything is suddenly reversed. With an infinitely superior strength that he seems to have deliberately held back until now, the stranger touches Jacob’s thigh and renders him helpless. Something deeply transformative happens to Jacob in that experience of helplessness. Now that he knows that he is finally defeated, he no longer wants to be free of the stranger’s grasp; instead he clings fiercely to his former foe like a drowning man. Why?
Here’s Buechner’s explanation: “The darkness had faded just enough so that for the first time he can dimly see his opponent’s face. And what he sees is something more terrible than the face of death — the face of love. It is vast and strong, half-ruined with suffering and fierce with joy, the face a man flees down all the darkness of his days until at last he cries out, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me!’ Not a blessing that he can have now by the strength of his cunning or the force of his will, but a blessing that he can have only as a gift.”
There’s an entire spirituality here. The blessing for which we are forever wrestling can only come to us as gift, not as something we can snatch through our own talent, cunning, and strength. By his wit and cunning, Jacob became a rich, admired man in this world. But in struggling for all those riches he was wrestling with a force he unconsciously perceived as someone or something to be overcome. Eventually, after many years of struggle, he had an awakening. Light dawned, through a crippling defeat. And in the light of that defeat he finally saw that what he had been struggling with for all that time was not someone or something to be overcome, but the very love he was wrestling for in all his efforts to achieve and get ahead.
For many of us, this will also be the real awakening in our lives, waking up to the fact that in our ambition and in all the schemes we concoct to get ahead, we are not wrestling with a someone or something to be overcome by our strength and wit; we are wrestling with community, love, and with God. And it will undoubtedly take the defeat of our own strength (and a permanent limp) before we realize what we are fighting against. Then we will give up trying to win and instead cling like a drowning man to this face of love, begging for its blessing, a blessing that we can have only as a gift.
Believing that our blessing lies in winning, we strive to wrestle our lives away from others until one day, if we are lucky enough to be defeated, we begin to beg others to hang on to us.
In Times of Darkness
‘All of us who live from the gift of faith are witnesses of hope – a real, practical hope, which is not trapped in the old patterns but can realise new possibilities.’ James Hanvey SJ draws our attention to the work of the Spirit to bring us into communion with one another, a communion in which we see Christ in every hopeful or sorrowful face.
James Hanvey SJ is Secretary for the Service of the Faith for the Society of Jesus.
This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
In times of darkness, through all pandemics, wars, and upheavals, we can feel absence and confusion more than presence.
Yet we know from our own experience that Christ is always present, calling to us, leading us even from within the darkness, ‘for the darkness is not dark to you’ (Psalm 139:12).
The particular gift of faith, one that is deepened and confirmed throughout the gospel and experienced every day in the Church’s liturgy, is the recognition that even when ‘the divinity hides itself’, God is always labouring and working for us.
In these months our quarantined and self-isolating world has discovered again the symbol of the rainbow. The promise is made secure in Christ that God will never abandon our world to emptiness and darkness. Especially in this Easter time, we see the wounded but Risen Christ come not as judge but as consoler.
Only faith can see this, and this is why faith, far from being an obstacle, is a hope; a consolation that gives us the strength to believe in the possibility of transformation: of new life and new beginnings.
This is why all of us who live from the gift of faith are witnesses of hope – a real, practical hope, which is not trapped in the old patterns but can realise new possibilities.
This is the imperceptible work of the Spirit in us, and in all those whose minds and hearts are searching for better ways of living together, of being in a real communion.
How then do we bring authentic consolation to our suffering world?
I believe that the gospel opens up paths of encounter with our world, especially those who are lost, abandoned, and forgotten. Those, too, who may not acknowledge any faith but long for a better world, a more compassionate and just community, a new way of sharing life with the whole of God’s good creation, still becoming and evolving.
Whenever we hear the words of Christ and attend with an open heart, we see ourselves and those around us in a new light. We see that the beatitudes are not just something for the future, but even now they are among us. The corporate and spiritual works of mercy are already our solidarity and communion in action. They are the paths on which the Spirit is leading us to encounter the face of Christ in each other.
Covid-19 has exposed the fragilities and the illusions, the inequalities and the failures of our systems.
It has also revealed the many faces of generosity; humble and heroic faces of service and self-sacrifice even to the point of death. Lives put at the service of others barely known except in their desperation and need.
The forgotten, the aging, the disabled and marginalised, those who are exposed to violence whether domestic or state, those who have no ‘place to shelter’. Every day they appear in the statistics and in the news. But in Christ anonymous numbers become faces. In them He shows His face. Not the faces of celebrity or fashion that our imagination or our art has created, but the faces of the people we hide from, or prefer not to know because they are not beautiful - except to Him. In their faces He looks at us: the face of sorrow, the face of the resurrected one. (Novo millennio ineunte §24)
Our work is not to paint another beautiful face for people to admire in the galleries of our hygienic imagination. Our work is to look upon the faces of sorrow and hope, and to make them even more visible. So that the faces to which we have become blind shine more urgently and radiantly. They are Christ’s testimony to us and to our world of another way of being: to see each other again through His eyes in compassion and in service; in communion beyond division.
With simple faith we ask that the life of the Holy Spirit will carry us beyond the virus to the communion, the koinonia, in which we celebrate the sharing of our goods for the good of these vulnerable ones who have nothing to give us in return but their blessing.
For all its destruction and evil, the virus humbles us and frees us; it offers us another way of being, another way of seeing beyond the old ‘normal’ to see into the face of Christ, to recognise again the paths that lead to the Kingdom for which we pray and hope. ‘Come, Holy Spirit, and renew the face of our earth.’
You can watch this article as a video - In Times Of Darkness - by Fr Hanvey SJ here
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