Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney
Mob: 0417 279 437
Priest in Residence: Fr Phil McCormack
Mob: 0437 521 257
Seminarian in Residence: Kanishka Perera
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
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,
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 2nd Aug Devonport 10:00am – ALSO LIVESTEAM
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
Let
us pray for those who have died recently: Helen Hendrey, Sr Lawrence (Mary Gibson),
Jim Bassett, Lidia Escobar, Lita Guison, Sr Maura McAvoy O.P., Charles
Max Johnson
PREGO REFLECTION
ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
Weekly Ramblings
Last Friday
night in Hobart I was privileged to be part of the gathering for the Ordination
of Fr Steven Smith to the Priesthood. Although the numbers were restricted
because of Covid regulations the Cathedral had a good number of people and
Clergy from around the Archdiocese who gathered with Fr Steven and his family
for this special moment.
This
weekend we welcome him back to our Parish – officially as our new Assistant
Priest – and he will be the main celebrant at our two weekend Masses. At the
10am Mass on Sunday we will be making a presentation to him from the Parish of
a gift that he will be able to use throughout the years of his ministry as a
Priest.
As Fr
Steven commences work in the Parish there will still be occasions when he will
be away for various activities so we will only slowly re-introducing Masses.
There will be more information next weekend in our newsletter.
This Friday
evening (a past event if you are reading this on Saturday or Sunday) we will be
in Launceston for the Ordination of Chathura Silva to the Priesthood. Sadly,
this is another occasion effected by the Covid restrictions, but it will be
livestreamed via YouTube – go to the Archdiocese of Hobart YouTube Channel to
vie. The ceremony commences at 7pm.
During the
week we launched the Mersey Leven Catholic Parish YouTube page. You can search
us on the YouTube search engine. We are asking everyone who visits the page to
Subscribe – it is a big red button (you can’t miss it) so that when we reach a
certain number of subscribers we will be able to Livestream Parish events to
YouTube.
As an
additional means of sharing communication I am starting a Chat Room from 10am –
2pm on Mondays - https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86570094673?pwd=bzAzY1U4Ukk4QlkvUi9ONit5TzJ1UT09.
I will be working at my desk but the Chat Room will be open if anyone wants to
drop in and talk about any issues that are impacting them or just simply share
your thoughts with me.
Take care and stay safe and stay sane, 
NATIONAL VOCATIONS AWARENESS
WEEK:
This
is a week for the entire Church to consider, support and pray for those
searching for their vocations in life. We might think about and pray for the
young people in our community and in our families this week especially. In
prayer, ask the Lord to enlighten them and give them the grace and courage to
respond to His call. The Lord calls each of us to a particular vocation
(marriage, consecrated life, priesthood or a single life of service.
CONGRATULATIONS and WELCOME Fr Steven as you begin your ministry
amongst us.
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,
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 2nd Aug Devonport 10:00am – ALSO LIVESTEAM
Mon 3rd Aug No Mass … St Dominic
Tues 4th Aug Devonport 9:30am … St John Vianney –
ALSO LIVESTEAM
Wed 5th Aug
Ulverstone 9:30am
Thurs 6th Aug Devonport 12noon … The Transfiguration
of the Lord – ALSO LIVESTEAM
Fri 7th Aug Ulverstone 9:30am …St Sixtus II, St Cajetan
Sat 8th Aug Ulverstone 6.00pm … St Mary of the Cross
MacKillop
Sun 9th Aug Ulverstone 10:00am – ALSO LIVESTEAM
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: Val Laycock, Lauren
Lloyd, Sydney Corbett, Fr Frank Gibson, Brian Robertson, Vinco Muriyadan, Fr Michael Wheeler, John
Reynolds, Suzanne Ockwell, Graeme Wilson, Kevin Hayes, Rex Evans, Athol Bryan,
Jill Murphy, Roberto Escobar, Jane Fitzpatrick, Mark Aylett, Marlene Heazlewood, & …
Let
us pray for those who have died recently: Helen Hendrey, Sr Lawrence (Mary Gibson),
Jim Bassett, Lidia Escobar, Lita Guison, Sr Maura McAvoy O.P., Charles
Max Johnson
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 29th July – 4th August, 2020
Molly
Walsh, John Brown, Helga Walker, Terence Maskell, Kathleen Bellchambers, Dorothy
Smeaton, Jean Fox, Darrell Carlton, Jack O’Rourke, Nancy Padman, Tadeusz
Poludniak, Shirley Fraser, Helena Rimmelzwaan, Nancy Bynon
May the souls of the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen
PREGO REFLECTION
ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
Like Jesus before me, I try to withdraw into a quiet place
of solitude to pray, perhaps out in nature or on a prayer walk.
I ask the Holy
Spirit to help still my inner being; to help me be present to the Lord’s love
and power.
When ready, I read the Gospel slowly several times.
I
probably recognise the story ... but there may be aspects of it which haven’t
struck me before.
I spend as much time as I can with these.
Jesus is grieving
for the violent death of his dear cousin.
Maybe this brings to mind some
sadness and loss in my own life … or maybe in the life of my sisters and
brothers across the world.
I share the depths of my emotions and yearnings with
my compassionate Lord, who truly understands.
I take time to be in the scene in
whatever way I can.
Perhaps I sense the disciples’ mood ... their concerns
about limited supplies ... how they share their resources with Jesus.
I remain
with them as the story unfolds.
What do I notice about Jesus and his
co-operative relationship with the disciples?
How might Jesus be asking me to
labour with him?
I share whatever arises with the Lord.
When I am ready, I beg the Lord to nourish my deepest
yearnings for myself and for this interconnected world.
Glory be...
Weekly Ramblings
Last Friday
night in Hobart I was privileged to be part of the gathering for the Ordination
of Fr Steven Smith to the Priesthood. Although the numbers were restricted
because of Covid regulations the Cathedral had a good number of people and
Clergy from around the Archdiocese who gathered with Fr Steven and his family
for this special moment.
This
weekend we welcome him back to our Parish – officially as our new Assistant
Priest – and he will be the main celebrant at our two weekend Masses. At the
10am Mass on Sunday we will be making a presentation to him from the Parish of
a gift that he will be able to use throughout the years of his ministry as a
Priest.
As Fr
Steven commences work in the Parish there will still be occasions when he will
be away for various activities so we will only slowly re-introducing Masses.
There will be more information next weekend in our newsletter.
This Friday
evening (a past event if you are reading this on Saturday or Sunday) we will be
in Launceston for the Ordination of Chathura Silva to the Priesthood. Sadly,
this is another occasion effected by the Covid restrictions, but it will be
livestreamed via YouTube – go to the Archdiocese of Hobart YouTube Channel to
vie. The ceremony commences at 7pm.
During the
week we launched the Mersey Leven Catholic Parish YouTube page. You can search
us on the YouTube search engine. We are asking everyone who visits the page to
Subscribe – it is a big red button (you can’t miss it) so that when we reach a
certain number of subscribers we will be able to Livestream Parish events to
YouTube.
As an
additional means of sharing communication I am starting a Chat Room from 10am –
2pm on Mondays - https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86570094673?pwd=bzAzY1U4Ukk4QlkvUi9ONit5TzJ1UT09.
I will be working at my desk but the Chat Room will be open if anyone wants to
drop in and talk about any issues that are impacting them or just simply share
your thoughts with me.
Take care and stay safe and stay sane,
NATIONAL VOCATIONS AWARENESS
WEEK:
This
is a week for the entire Church to consider, support and pray for those
searching for their vocations in life. We might think about and pray for the
young people in our community and in our families this week especially. In
prayer, ask the Lord to enlighten them and give them the grace and courage to
respond to His call. The Lord calls each of us to a particular vocation
(marriage, consecrated life, priesthood or a single life of service.
We are grateful for
Seminarian Kanishka Perera who is assisting Fr Mike, Fr Steven, Fr Phil and the
whole Parish Community during his pastoral formation. We wish him God’s love and
blessing as he continues his faith journey.
CONGRATULATIONS and WELCOME Fr Steven as you begin your ministry
amongst us.
Letter From Rome
After A Long Roman Lockdown, Life During Strange Times
Letter From Rome
After A Long Roman Lockdown, Life During Strange Times
Italy is now doing pretty well and, as predicted, many other places are not
- Robert Mickens, Rome, July 31, 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
These have been very strange months. Nobody could have predicted at the end of 2019 when China reported its first cases of the coronavirus just how far-reaching the spread of the disease would be.
But on March 11 the World Health Organization announced that COVID-19 could be characterized as a pandemic.
On that same day I received an email from a priest friend in New York whose time at the North American College here in Rome overlapped with my time there in the mid-1980s.
He comes to Rome each year for a visit and then makes his annual retreat in Assisi. He was writing to find out what the situation was in Italy, where we had just been put into lockdown after cases of infection started exploding in the north of the county.
Mind you, the United States had barely been touched at that point.
Via Casilina VecchiaHere's what I wrote:
The lockdown did not come as a surprise. I figured it would be extended to all of Italy after the people in the north complained that they were being discriminated against....
And there are probably some good arguments for doing this, though I believe there is a bit too much hysteria.
Italians are great hypochondriacs and I think this is why we have so many cases here as compared to elsewhere -- Italians are rushing to get tested. And we also have a very elderly population in this country (2nd oldest in the world), which means there will be more deaths.
Yes, we had another 168 people die in the last 24 hours, so the count is now up to 631. They are mostly "elderly" people. [At the end of July the death toll was 35,141.)
I was supposed to go to Budapest tomorrow, but that trip is out.
We are permitted to travel only for work, family emergencies or health reasons...
This clampdown is more of a penance because it is not of my own choosing. I'm trying to face this as my cross for Lent. But it's not easy!
Besides not being able to go to Budapest, the really BIG inconvenience for me is not being able to go to the gym, which I do daily. I'm going to have to figure out an alternate exercise routine or I may end up murdering the noisy Chinese kids in the flat below me!
But, all in all, life is not so bad. We still have food and lots of wine around! And, as in all things Italian, the lockdown decree is based on basic principles that afford a broad interpretation.
I hope you don't get hit too badly with this in the States, but I fear we are just at the beginning of a full-blown pandemic. I pray that I am wrong.
Keep well and do the Pontius Pilate thing -- wash hands frequently!
Nearly two months later – on May 4 to be exact – this priest friend sent me another email.
He said he had contacted the religious guesthouse where he was booked for accommodations later in the month "to tell them my flight had been cancelled due to coronavirus pandemic… but that I hoped to come there in October".
My reply must have been devastating because he did not write back for several weeks.
This is what I said:
Don't get your hopes up about coming here anytime soon, unless you want to spend the first two weeks in quarantine. That is, if they'll even let you in. I don't foresee any international travel, except for extended stays – i.e. people moving here for work (diplomats, Church personnel, et al.) or those returning for longer study programs.
But any time one enters another country s/he will be obliged to spend the first two weeks in quarantine. And then repeat that upon arrival back home.
So I don't think there will be much international travel until there is a cure or vaccine, or until there is more information about how this coronavirus works. It's not even clear if those once infected have the sufficient antibodies to immunize them from re-infection.
Sorry to say that. Believe me, I had two trips planned for the States to give talks – one in mid-October and another in November… And, of course, I go to Budapest frequently [one side of my family is Hungarian]; and Paris twice a year for work meetings, plus a trip or two to Brussels...
I've resigned myself to the fact that none of this is likely to happen in 2020. I was hoping for next Easter, then a friend who is very well informed with all this stuff right now told me we're hoping for the latter part of summer or fall of 2021! I am schedule to go to Australia in September 2021 to give the keynote address of 50th Jubilee Convention of the National Council of Priests in Melbourne.
The Italian government eased restrictions on some businesses and home lockdown beginning today. But restaurants and bars, barbers, salons... remain closed until June 1st. I can't imagine when they will be able to open gyms under the current social distancing norms. [It actually happened on May 25.]
We now have to wear facemasks all the time when we are out of our homes. They have to be pulled up properly over nose and mouth whenever we are in proximity of others on the sidewalks or enter into a shop or place of business.
Fortunately, cyclists are not obliged to wear the mask while on our bikes. I'm cycling everyday to go to the Vatican press office. Now that home confinement measures have been relaxed, I hope to do a longer ride every evening, too.
Sorry I don't have better news. I was quite angry about all this on March 8th when the really draconian lockdown was announced. But two days later I surrendered to reality and have done just fine with it all. Can't do anything else.
Ten days later (May 14) I wrote to a couple from Rhode Island, who also visit Rome each year, to give them an update on the situation:
We had food delivered from a trattoria near the Colosseum, which has been bringing me Sunday pranzo since Easter.
We are now in our second week of "reopening" and more and more people are wandering out of their cages. It was better for me before. I had the whole historic center practically to myself!
The Romans were very disciplined about staying inside, but they are not so good with social distancing and wearing masks….
Saw a group of young guys the other day doing extremely well at distancing. In fact, they were exemplary. But they were passing around a beer and taking turns drinking straight from the bottle! Italian logic, I guess.
It's getting warmer and people are getting antsy. You probably heard that the EU is making plans to open up borders on the continent – except for those of Italy and Spain.
We're in no rush to start travelling abroad. And we don't really want anyone coming here.
Sorry about that, but most people here feel we've made a huge sacrifice, more than most other countries, and we don't want a new wave of infections.
I certainly hope we find a cure or vaccine so we can finally move beyond this sterile, inhumane way of existing. It's not really "living".
And just a few days ago I sent a New York Times article to a number of friends titled, "Italy is Slowly Waking from the Nightmare". Beppe Severgnini was the author.
One of my pen pals quickly replied and asked if I was planning to go anywhere for my month-long August holiday. This is part of my response:
The Severgnini article is a pretty accurate description of what is going on in Italy. And is exactly how I predicted it back in March – we'll be doing pretty well containing the spread of the virus here in Italy, while the United States (especially!) and some others will still be struggling.
Thus, Italy will keep the others out and we who live here will be staying in.
I've decided not to go anywhere because it's just no fun.
I'm not really that afraid of getting the virus. I understand (and respect) the need for wearing a mask, hand-washing and social distancing. But I don't want to travel for hours on a train or plane with a mask on.
And I don't want to have to engage with folks I do not know or have ever seen while we are masked. It took just one 30 minute trip on a city bus to convince me of this.
I'll stay here in Rome, doing things around the new flat, going for long bike rides into the parts outside the city I do not know very well (e.g. there's a marvelous sprawling Park of the Aqueducts about 8 km from me) and maybe get to the beach.
There will plenty of restaurants and cafes open, so it will be a chance to help out the people and places I already know.
Strange times. But I'm doing well. It could be a heck of a lot worse. I could be stuck in the United States!
See you right back here in September.
Simply Living The Gospel
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
The Rule and the life of the Friars Minor is to simply live the Gospel. —St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) [1]
One of the things I most appreciate about my Franciscan heritage is its alternative orthodoxy. The Franciscan tradition has applied this phrase to itself and its emphasis on “orthopraxy”; we believe that lifestyle and practice are much more important than mere verbal orthodoxy. While orthodoxy is about correct beliefs, orthopraxy is about right practice. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the famous Dominican Doctor of the Church, may have been influenced by St. Francis when he wrote, “Prius vita quam doctrina.” [2] Or, “Life is more important than doctrine.” All too often Christianity has lost sight of that in spite of Jesus’ teaching and example.
Jesus’ first recorded word in at least two Gospels, metanoia, is unfortunately translated with the moralistic, churchy word repent. The word quite literally means change or even more precisely “Change your minds!” (Mark 1:15; Matthew 4:17). Given that, it is quite strange that the religion founded in Jesus’ name has been so resistant to change and has tended to love and protect the past and the status quo much more than the positive and hopeful futures that could be brought about by people agreeing to change. Maybe that is why our earth is so depleted and our politics are so pathetic. We have not taught a spirituality of actual change or growth, which an alternative orthodoxy always asks of us.
Francis loved God above all and wanted to imitate Jesus in very practical ways. Action and lifestyle mattered much more to him than mentally believing dogmatic or moral positions to be true or false. Francis directly said to the first friars, “You only know as much as you do!” [3] Franciscan alternative orthodoxy has never bothered fighting popes, bishops, Scriptures, or dogmas. It just quietly but firmly pays attention to different things—like simplicity, humility, non-violence, contemplation, solitude and silence, earth care, nature and other creatures, and the “least of the brothers and sisters.” These are our true teachers.
The Rule of Saint Francis—which Rome demanded Francis develop—was hardly a rule at all and was more thought of as “Tips for the Road.” Like Jesus, Francis taught his disciples while walking from place to place and finding ways to serve, to observe, and to love the world that was right in front of them. Observation with love is a good description of contemplation.
In Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis writes, “In the heart of this world, the Lord of life, who loves us so much, is always present. God does not abandon us, God does not leave us alone, for God has united . . . definitively to our earth, and God’s love constantly impels us to find new ways forward. Praise be to God!” [4] I believe the Franciscan worldview with its alternative orthodoxy can help us “find new ways forward” and stop being so afraid of change.
On Not Locking Our Doors
This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here
In his book The Secret, Rene Fumoleau has a poem entitled Sins. Fumoleau, who was a missionary priest with the Dene People in Northern Canada, once asked a group of Elders to name what they considered the worst sin of all. Their answer:
The ten Dene discussed together,
And after a while Radisca explained to me:
“We talked it over, and we all agree:
The worst sin people can make
is to lock their door.”
Perhaps at the time this incident took place and in that particular Dene village, you could still safely leave your door unlocked, but that’s hardly sound advice for most of us who are safe only when we have double locks and electronic security systems securing our doors. Still these Dene Elders are right because at the end of the day, they’re speaking of something deeper than a security bolt on our outside door. What does it really mean to lock your door?
As we know, there are many kinds of doors we lock and unlock to let others in and out. Jean-Paul Sartre, the famed French existentialist, once wrote: Hell is the other person. While this may feel very true emotionally on a given day, it is the antithesis of any religious truth, particularly Christian truth. In all the great religions of the world, in the end being with others is heaven; ending up eternally alone is hell.
That’s a truth built into our very nature. As human persons we are constitutively social; meaning we’re built in such a way that while we’re always individual, private, and idiosyncratic at the same time we’re always social, communitarian, and interdependent. We’re built to be with others and there’s no ultimate meaning or fulfillment to be found alone. Indeed, we need each other simply to survive and remain sane. Still more, we need each other for love and meaning because without these there’s no purpose to us. To end up alone is death of the worst kind.
This needs to be highlighted today because both in society and in our churches too many of us are locking a select number of our doors in ways that are both destructive and genuinely unchristian. What’s our issue?
Twenty years ago, Robert Putnam looked at the breakdown of community within our culture and named it with a catchy phrase, Bowling Alone. For Putnam, our families, neighborhoods, and wider communities are breaking down because of an excessive individualism within the culture. More and more, we’re doing things alone, walking within our own idiosyncratic rhythms rather than within community rhythms. Few would dispute this assessment.
However, what we’re struggling with today goes further than the individualism Putnam so playfully names. In the excessive individualism Putnam describes, we end up bowling alone but mostly still inside the same bowling alley, separate from each other but not locked out. Our problem goes deeper. Metaphorically, we’re locking each other out of our common bowling alley. What’s meant here?
Beyond an isolating individualism, we’re struggling today in our families, communities, countries, and churches with a demon of a different sort, that is, with doors locked in bitterness. Politically, in many of our countries we’re now so polarized that the various sides are unable to even have a respectful, civil conversation with each other. The other is “hell”. This is true too inside our families where conversation at the Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner has to carefully avoid all references to what’s going on in the country and we can only be at the same table with each other if we keep our political views locked away.
Sadly, this is now mirrored in our churches where different visions of theology, ecclesiology, and morality have led to a polarization of such intensity that each theological and ecclesial group now stays behind its own solidly locked door. There’s no openness to what’s other and all real dialogue has been replaced by mutual demonization. This lack of openness is ultimately what the Dene refer to as the worst sin of all, our locked doors. Hell then really is the other person. Sartre must be smiling.
It’s interesting how evil works. The Gospels give us two separate words for the evil one. Sometimes the evil one is called “the devil” (Diabolos) and sometimes the evil one is called “satan” (Satanas). Both describe the evil power that works against God, goodness, and love within a community. The “Devil” works by dividing us, one from another, breaking down community through jealousy, pride, and false freedom; whereas “Satan” works in the reverse way. Satan unites us in sick ways so as to have us, as groups, demonize each other, carry out crucifixions, and cling to each other feverishly through sick kinds of hysteria and ideologies that make for scapegoating, racism, sexism, and group-hatred of every kind. Either way, whether it’s satan or the devil, we end up behind locked doors where those outside of ourselves are seen as hell.
So it’s true, “the worst sin we can make is to lock our doors.”
Ignatius And The Bible
‘Ignatius was clearly of the view that the biblical stories were potentially a source of life’, says Nicholas King SJ as he explores the way in which the founder of the Jesuits invites those who follow his spirituality to engage with the Bible. How do St Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises help us to use our imaginations as we contemplate biblical narratives and thereby hear the God Who Speaks?
Nicholas King SJ is a Tutor and Fellow in New Testament Studies at Campion Hall, University of Oxford.
This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
Catholics in England and Wales are being invited by their bishops to celebrate, live and share God’s Word through ‘The God Who Speaks’ initiative, and so it seems a good idea this year to celebrate the feast of St Ignatius by reflecting on how he uses the texts of Scripture (almost entirely the New Testament, and mainly gospels) in the Spiritual Exercises. Biblical scholars, even Jesuit biblical scholars, of a certain generation, sometimes feel a bit anxious about this sort of talk; but certainly Ignatius was a most attentive reader of the biblical text, and that is the first rule for those who would take the Bible seriously. For example, he tells us in his Autobiography,[1] at the time of his conversion, that he enjoyed ‘those books, and the thought came to him of briefly extracting some of the more essential elements from the life of Christ and of the saints; and so he set himself to write a book with great diligence…the words of Christ in red ink; and those of Our Lady in blue ink’. He is clearly finding a great deal of life in those narratives.
This leads to a further point, for Ignatius was clearly of the view that the biblical stories were potentially a source of life. A very high proportion of the Bible is narrative, and the point of narrative is that it invites the reader aboard; and the question is not ‘but did this really happen?’ so much as ‘where is the life in this story?’. An obvious example of this comes in the Exercises, where the retreatant is invited into ‘imaginative contemplation’, which is precisely a matter of allowing the ‘mysteries’ to exercise their power, and thereby bring the retreatant into life.
Look at the first two exercises of the Second Week, the incarnation and the birth of Jesus.[2] What is going on here is not exegesis or hermeneutics, but using the imagination to kindle the fire of life. The retreatant is invited to ‘recall the narrative’[3] of the event, and then enter more deeply into the story by attending to the ‘composition, seeing the place’. This creates a story which invites us in. When he turns to the birth of Jesus, Ignatius suggests some vivid details to engage our imagination. For example, the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem is taken, ‘seated on a donkey, taking an ox with them’. This does not come from Luke’s gospel account, but from the imagination of St Francis of Assisi, who seems to have created the first Christmas crib. There is of course nothing wrong with imagination: Christian meditation on Isaiah 1:3 (‘an ox knows its owner, an ass its master’s crib’) is the source of the presence of ‘ox and ass’ at the Bethlehem manger. And the second century Proto-Gospel of James, which is itself an entirely lively and imaginative meditation on the scriptural text, is the first text to give Mary a donkey for the journey.[4]
In that meditation on the incarnation, Ignatius once again uses his imagination to give life to the text (though the Proto-Gospel of James is not the source of this particular detail) by producing a ‘servant-girl’[5] to accompany Joseph and Our Lady. The reason for this servant-girl now becomes clear, when Ignatius invites the retreatant to use her or his imagination to enter into the story and draw life from it, ‘by making myself into a poor little, unworthy little slave, watching them, contemplating them and serving them in their needs, as though I found myself present, with all possible reverence and respect. And afterwards to reflect in myself, to draw some profit in myself.’[6] Here we have clearly departed from the text, in order to find the life of the Spirit through the use of imagination.
Another excellent example of this freedom with regard to the text comes at the beginning of the Fourth Week. The first contemplation is ‘how Christ Our Lord appeared to Our Lady’.[7] Obviously Ignatius had no scripture text to work from here; and conceivably his secretary may have whispered that in his ear, for, on the second time he mentions it,[8] Ignatius adds (can we imagine, slightly irritably?), ‘even though it is not mentioned in Scripture, you can understand it as mentioned, given that he appeared to so many others. For the Scripture presumes that we have understanding, as it is written: “Are you also without understanding?”’ And this exercise, which has proved so powerful for many retreatants, is certainly an excellent example of imagination bringing life. For it invites us, in the contemplation of place, ‘to see the arrangement of … Our Lady’s place or house, looking in detail at its parts, likewise her room and prayer-place’. So, there is a great freedom here; but it is not disrespectful of the biblical text, only using it as a platform from which to find a greater prayerful depth.
What Ignatius is doing in all these examples is akin to what an artist in stained glass does: using the text of Scripture and employing imagination to go prayerfully beyond what is there to find in freedom what the Spirit might be inviting us to discern, and so find the life that lies between the lines of the text. In this context, it is worth observing how respectful Ignatius is of the biblical text when it comes to the ‘mysteries of the life of Christ Our Lord’.[9] Here he is offering ‘points for prayer’, and for the most part they follow the text of Scripture. An interesting exception to this is the story at Matthew 2:1-12, the narrative of the Magi, where these foreigners are twice described as ‘kings’[10]; Ignatius did not get this from Matthew (nor from the Proto-Gospel of James, for that matter), but it is not precisely unfaithful to the text, and was very likely part of the popular imagination of his contemporaries, perhaps fed by stained glass depictions of the story. The reader might reflect on what they are doing when they sing the words of the 19th century American carol, ‘We three kings of Orient are’; does it help them to go deeper into the mystery?
There are very few deviations from the text in these mysteries; when he touches on the visit of Our Lady and Joseph to Bethlehem, Ignatius indicates that this was to ‘acknowledge his subjection to Caesar’,[11] a notion which is not to be found in the text, not even the Vulgate, although you might say that this is the clear implication. The reader will notice about Ignatius’s use of scripture here that he gives simply a brief quotation, to allow the retreatant the freedom to be led in prayer by the Spirit. Even when he says that Jesus ‘practices the trade of a carpenter’,[12] he is careful to give an appropriate citation from Mark.
There is one episode which, like the apparition to his mother after the resurrection, is not in the gospel text, namely Jesus’s ‘farewell to the blessed Mother’.[13] There is no doctrinal problem here, but there is the possibility of a great deal of life for the contemplation of the retreatant who might gain a good deal from imagining the pain of the goodbyes of mother and son; and it is only a tiny detail in the context of the meditation as a whole.
When it comes to the Exercise on Jesus’s temptations,[14] Ignatius has the three temptations that you find in Matthew and Luke, as opposed to Mark’s scantier account. He records them in the order followed by Matthew, as opposed to Luke (and it is noticeable that he has a preference for Matthew, as a general rule), even though here he mentions Luke first.
There is an interesting example of this attention to the text where Ignatius distinguishes three types of calling of the first disciples[15]: there is ‘Saint Peter and Saint Andrew’ (John 1:40-42); then a different sort of call ‘as St Luke says in chapter 5’, with the intention of going back to possess what they had left; then ‘thirdly, to follow Christ Our Lord for ever’, where he cites Matthew 4 and Mark 1. Ignatius clearly has in mind here that there are ways of inviting the retreatant to go deeper into the vocation, but he is not advocating for any particular one of them; and, quite clearly, he is reading the gospel text most attentively. Interestingly, between ‘three times’ and ‘were called’, Ignatius has written ‘it seems that’, so he or a secretary have seen the point of being careful about what the Scripture says.
You can see something of the same at Exercises §282 and §286, where Ignatius sees two different stories: Luke 7:36-50, the anointing of Jesus’s feet, though Ignatius ascribes this to ‘the Magdalen’; and ‘the supper at Bethany’ (Matthew 26:6-10), where the woman is once more identified as ‘Mary’, though this identification is only made in John’s Gospel. This is perfectly defensible, and there are contemporary scholars who see these as two different stories.
Ignatius’s attentiveness to the text is also on display where he puts together the two different accounts of the Last Supper, in Matthew 26:20-30 and John 13:1-30.[16] The first of these is what is often called the ‘institution narrative’, and the second is the ‘washing of the feet’, where John does something rather different. Ignatius, however, is reading the text very carefully. Many modern scholars would say that he is quite right to link those two events, that the fourth evangelist is well aware of the synoptic version, so the addition of Jesus performing this strikingly servile task as a way of interpreting what the Eucharist is about springs from a most sensitive and attentive reading of what is before him.
It must also be said that Ignatius knows the difference between various different texts, for example that in Gethsemane Luke, in at least some significant manuscripts, has the detail that ‘his sweat became like drops of blood going down onto the ground’.[17] Ignatius includes some details that are found only in Luke (Jesus being sent by Pilate to Herod, and Pilate and Herod becoming friends in consequence).[18] Likewise, he takes from Matthew the detail about the placing of the guard.[19] And we should observe that he always gives biblical references.
What, then, about the ‘apparition to Joseph of Arimathea’, which appears slightly unexpectedly.[20] It is not in the gospels, of course, but Ignatius might argue that the apparitions were always to those who were his disciples, and clearly Joseph comes into that category. Ignatius is evidently aware of the difficulty, for he adds ‘as is piously meditated and read in the life of the saints’, a phrase that he has added after crossing out ‘says the gospel of Nicodemus’. The words to Thomas, too, from John 20: ‘put your finger here’ have the added words ‘and see the truth’.[21] This is not in John, but has the merit of being a thoroughly Johannine formulation.
******
Ignatius is admirably respectful of the text of Scripture. His aim in suggesting texts for the different ‘mysteries’ of the Exercises is not a matter of loading the dice; the retreatant is simply invited to use various statements, normally single sentences, as a basis for prayer. Ignatius is aware of differences between the various gospel authors, and knows the text very well indeed. He is an admirable model for us as we try to listen out for the voice of the God who speaks.
[1] Autobiografia §11.
[2] Exx §101-119.
[3] See St Ignatius of Loyola, Personal Writings (ed. Joseph Munitiz and Philip Endean); the Spanish is traer la historia.
[4] See Proto-Gospel of James 17.
[5] una ancila (Exx §111).
[6] Exx §114.
[7] Exx §218.
[8] Exx §299.
[9] Exx §261- 312.
[10] Exx §267.
[11] Exx §264.
[12] Exx §271, Mark 6:3.
[13] Exx §273.
[14] Exx §274.
[15] Exx §275.
[16] Exx §289.
[17] Luke 22:44.
[18] Exx §293-295.
[19] Matthew 27:62-66, Exx §298.
[20] Exx §310.
[21] Exx §305.
These have been very strange months. Nobody could have predicted at the end of 2019 when China reported its first cases of the coronavirus just how far-reaching the spread of the disease would be.
But on March 11 the World Health Organization announced that COVID-19 could be characterized as a pandemic.
On that same day I received an email from a priest friend in New York whose time at the North American College here in Rome overlapped with my time there in the mid-1980s.
He comes to Rome each year for a visit and then makes his annual retreat in Assisi. He was writing to find out what the situation was in Italy, where we had just been put into lockdown after cases of infection started exploding in the north of the county.
Mind you, the United States had barely been touched at that point.
Via Casilina VecchiaHere's what I wrote:
The lockdown did not come as a surprise. I figured it would be extended to all of Italy after the people in the north complained that they were being discriminated against....
And there are probably some good arguments for doing this, though I believe there is a bit too much hysteria.
Italians are great hypochondriacs and I think this is why we have so many cases here as compared to elsewhere -- Italians are rushing to get tested. And we also have a very elderly population in this country (2nd oldest in the world), which means there will be more deaths.
Yes, we had another 168 people die in the last 24 hours, so the count is now up to 631. They are mostly "elderly" people. [At the end of July the death toll was 35,141.)
I was supposed to go to Budapest tomorrow, but that trip is out.
We are permitted to travel only for work, family emergencies or health reasons...
This clampdown is more of a penance because it is not of my own choosing. I'm trying to face this as my cross for Lent. But it's not easy!
Besides not being able to go to Budapest, the really BIG inconvenience for me is not being able to go to the gym, which I do daily. I'm going to have to figure out an alternate exercise routine or I may end up murdering the noisy Chinese kids in the flat below me!
But, all in all, life is not so bad. We still have food and lots of wine around! And, as in all things Italian, the lockdown decree is based on basic principles that afford a broad interpretation.
I hope you don't get hit too badly with this in the States, but I fear we are just at the beginning of a full-blown pandemic. I pray that I am wrong.
Keep well and do the Pontius Pilate thing -- wash hands frequently!
Nearly two months later – on May 4 to be exact – this priest friend sent me another email.
He said he had contacted the religious guesthouse where he was booked for accommodations later in the month "to tell them my flight had been cancelled due to coronavirus pandemic… but that I hoped to come there in October".
My reply must have been devastating because he did not write back for several weeks.
This is what I said:
Don't get your hopes up about coming here anytime soon, unless you want to spend the first two weeks in quarantine. That is, if they'll even let you in. I don't foresee any international travel, except for extended stays – i.e. people moving here for work (diplomats, Church personnel, et al.) or those returning for longer study programs.
But any time one enters another country s/he will be obliged to spend the first two weeks in quarantine. And then repeat that upon arrival back home.
So I don't think there will be much international travel until there is a cure or vaccine, or until there is more information about how this coronavirus works. It's not even clear if those once infected have the sufficient antibodies to immunize them from re-infection.
Sorry to say that. Believe me, I had two trips planned for the States to give talks – one in mid-October and another in November… And, of course, I go to Budapest frequently [one side of my family is Hungarian]; and Paris twice a year for work meetings, plus a trip or two to Brussels...
I've resigned myself to the fact that none of this is likely to happen in 2020. I was hoping for next Easter, then a friend who is very well informed with all this stuff right now told me we're hoping for the latter part of summer or fall of 2021! I am schedule to go to Australia in September 2021 to give the keynote address of 50th Jubilee Convention of the National Council of Priests in Melbourne.
The Italian government eased restrictions on some businesses and home lockdown beginning today. But restaurants and bars, barbers, salons... remain closed until June 1st. I can't imagine when they will be able to open gyms under the current social distancing norms. [It actually happened on May 25.]
We now have to wear facemasks all the time when we are out of our homes. They have to be pulled up properly over nose and mouth whenever we are in proximity of others on the sidewalks or enter into a shop or place of business.
Fortunately, cyclists are not obliged to wear the mask while on our bikes. I'm cycling everyday to go to the Vatican press office. Now that home confinement measures have been relaxed, I hope to do a longer ride every evening, too.
Sorry I don't have better news. I was quite angry about all this on March 8th when the really draconian lockdown was announced. But two days later I surrendered to reality and have done just fine with it all. Can't do anything else.
Ten days later (May 14) I wrote to a couple from Rhode Island, who also visit Rome each year, to give them an update on the situation:
We had food delivered from a trattoria near the Colosseum, which has been bringing me Sunday pranzo since Easter.
We are now in our second week of "reopening" and more and more people are wandering out of their cages. It was better for me before. I had the whole historic center practically to myself!
The Romans were very disciplined about staying inside, but they are not so good with social distancing and wearing masks….
Saw a group of young guys the other day doing extremely well at distancing. In fact, they were exemplary. But they were passing around a beer and taking turns drinking straight from the bottle! Italian logic, I guess.
It's getting warmer and people are getting antsy. You probably heard that the EU is making plans to open up borders on the continent – except for those of Italy and Spain.
We're in no rush to start travelling abroad. And we don't really want anyone coming here.
Sorry about that, but most people here feel we've made a huge sacrifice, more than most other countries, and we don't want a new wave of infections.
I certainly hope we find a cure or vaccine so we can finally move beyond this sterile, inhumane way of existing. It's not really "living".
And just a few days ago I sent a New York Times article to a number of friends titled, "Italy is Slowly Waking from the Nightmare". Beppe Severgnini was the author.
One of my pen pals quickly replied and asked if I was planning to go anywhere for my month-long August holiday. This is part of my response:
The Severgnini article is a pretty accurate description of what is going on in Italy. And is exactly how I predicted it back in March – we'll be doing pretty well containing the spread of the virus here in Italy, while the United States (especially!) and some others will still be struggling.
Thus, Italy will keep the others out and we who live here will be staying in.
I've decided not to go anywhere because it's just no fun.
I'm not really that afraid of getting the virus. I understand (and respect) the need for wearing a mask, hand-washing and social distancing. But I don't want to travel for hours on a train or plane with a mask on.
And I don't want to have to engage with folks I do not know or have ever seen while we are masked. It took just one 30 minute trip on a city bus to convince me of this.
I'll stay here in Rome, doing things around the new flat, going for long bike rides into the parts outside the city I do not know very well (e.g. there's a marvelous sprawling Park of the Aqueducts about 8 km from me) and maybe get to the beach.
There will plenty of restaurants and cafes open, so it will be a chance to help out the people and places I already know.
Strange times. But I'm doing well. It could be a heck of a lot worse. I could be stuck in the United States!
See you right back here in September.
Simply Living The Gospel
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
The Rule and the life of the Friars Minor is to simply live the Gospel. —St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) [1]
One of the things I most appreciate about my Franciscan heritage is its alternative orthodoxy. The Franciscan tradition has applied this phrase to itself and its emphasis on “orthopraxy”; we believe that lifestyle and practice are much more important than mere verbal orthodoxy. While orthodoxy is about correct beliefs, orthopraxy is about right practice. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the famous Dominican Doctor of the Church, may have been influenced by St. Francis when he wrote, “Prius vita quam doctrina.” [2] Or, “Life is more important than doctrine.” All too often Christianity has lost sight of that in spite of Jesus’ teaching and example.
Jesus’ first recorded word in at least two Gospels, metanoia, is unfortunately translated with the moralistic, churchy word repent. The word quite literally means change or even more precisely “Change your minds!” (Mark 1:15; Matthew 4:17). Given that, it is quite strange that the religion founded in Jesus’ name has been so resistant to change and has tended to love and protect the past and the status quo much more than the positive and hopeful futures that could be brought about by people agreeing to change. Maybe that is why our earth is so depleted and our politics are so pathetic. We have not taught a spirituality of actual change or growth, which an alternative orthodoxy always asks of us.
Francis loved God above all and wanted to imitate Jesus in very practical ways. Action and lifestyle mattered much more to him than mentally believing dogmatic or moral positions to be true or false. Francis directly said to the first friars, “You only know as much as you do!” [3] Franciscan alternative orthodoxy has never bothered fighting popes, bishops, Scriptures, or dogmas. It just quietly but firmly pays attention to different things—like simplicity, humility, non-violence, contemplation, solitude and silence, earth care, nature and other creatures, and the “least of the brothers and sisters.” These are our true teachers.
The Rule of Saint Francis—which Rome demanded Francis develop—was hardly a rule at all and was more thought of as “Tips for the Road.” Like Jesus, Francis taught his disciples while walking from place to place and finding ways to serve, to observe, and to love the world that was right in front of them. Observation with love is a good description of contemplation.
In Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis writes, “In the heart of this world, the Lord of life, who loves us so much, is always present. God does not abandon us, God does not leave us alone, for God has united . . . definitively to our earth, and God’s love constantly impels us to find new ways forward. Praise be to God!” [4] I believe the Franciscan worldview with its alternative orthodoxy can help us “find new ways forward” and stop being so afraid of change.
On Not Locking Our Doors
This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here
In his book The Secret, Rene Fumoleau has a poem entitled Sins. Fumoleau, who was a missionary priest with the Dene People in Northern Canada, once asked a group of Elders to name what they considered the worst sin of all. Their answer:
The ten Dene discussed together,
And after a while Radisca explained to me:
“We talked it over, and we all agree:
The worst sin people can make
is to lock their door.”
Perhaps at the time this incident took place and in that particular Dene village, you could still safely leave your door unlocked, but that’s hardly sound advice for most of us who are safe only when we have double locks and electronic security systems securing our doors. Still these Dene Elders are right because at the end of the day, they’re speaking of something deeper than a security bolt on our outside door. What does it really mean to lock your door?
As we know, there are many kinds of doors we lock and unlock to let others in and out. Jean-Paul Sartre, the famed French existentialist, once wrote: Hell is the other person. While this may feel very true emotionally on a given day, it is the antithesis of any religious truth, particularly Christian truth. In all the great religions of the world, in the end being with others is heaven; ending up eternally alone is hell.
That’s a truth built into our very nature. As human persons we are constitutively social; meaning we’re built in such a way that while we’re always individual, private, and idiosyncratic at the same time we’re always social, communitarian, and interdependent. We’re built to be with others and there’s no ultimate meaning or fulfillment to be found alone. Indeed, we need each other simply to survive and remain sane. Still more, we need each other for love and meaning because without these there’s no purpose to us. To end up alone is death of the worst kind.
This needs to be highlighted today because both in society and in our churches too many of us are locking a select number of our doors in ways that are both destructive and genuinely unchristian. What’s our issue?
Twenty years ago, Robert Putnam looked at the breakdown of community within our culture and named it with a catchy phrase, Bowling Alone. For Putnam, our families, neighborhoods, and wider communities are breaking down because of an excessive individualism within the culture. More and more, we’re doing things alone, walking within our own idiosyncratic rhythms rather than within community rhythms. Few would dispute this assessment.
However, what we’re struggling with today goes further than the individualism Putnam so playfully names. In the excessive individualism Putnam describes, we end up bowling alone but mostly still inside the same bowling alley, separate from each other but not locked out. Our problem goes deeper. Metaphorically, we’re locking each other out of our common bowling alley. What’s meant here?
Beyond an isolating individualism, we’re struggling today in our families, communities, countries, and churches with a demon of a different sort, that is, with doors locked in bitterness. Politically, in many of our countries we’re now so polarized that the various sides are unable to even have a respectful, civil conversation with each other. The other is “hell”. This is true too inside our families where conversation at the Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner has to carefully avoid all references to what’s going on in the country and we can only be at the same table with each other if we keep our political views locked away.
Sadly, this is now mirrored in our churches where different visions of theology, ecclesiology, and morality have led to a polarization of such intensity that each theological and ecclesial group now stays behind its own solidly locked door. There’s no openness to what’s other and all real dialogue has been replaced by mutual demonization. This lack of openness is ultimately what the Dene refer to as the worst sin of all, our locked doors. Hell then really is the other person. Sartre must be smiling.
It’s interesting how evil works. The Gospels give us two separate words for the evil one. Sometimes the evil one is called “the devil” (Diabolos) and sometimes the evil one is called “satan” (Satanas). Both describe the evil power that works against God, goodness, and love within a community. The “Devil” works by dividing us, one from another, breaking down community through jealousy, pride, and false freedom; whereas “Satan” works in the reverse way. Satan unites us in sick ways so as to have us, as groups, demonize each other, carry out crucifixions, and cling to each other feverishly through sick kinds of hysteria and ideologies that make for scapegoating, racism, sexism, and group-hatred of every kind. Either way, whether it’s satan or the devil, we end up behind locked doors where those outside of ourselves are seen as hell.
So it’s true, “the worst sin we can make is to lock our doors.”
Ignatius And The Bible
‘Ignatius was clearly of the view that the biblical stories were potentially a source of life’, says Nicholas King SJ as he explores the way in which the founder of the Jesuits invites those who follow his spirituality to engage with the Bible. How do St Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises help us to use our imaginations as we contemplate biblical narratives and thereby hear the God Who Speaks?
Nicholas King SJ is a Tutor and Fellow in New Testament Studies at Campion Hall, University of Oxford.
This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
Catholics in England and Wales are being invited by their bishops to celebrate, live and share God’s Word through ‘The God Who Speaks’ initiative, and so it seems a good idea this year to celebrate the feast of St Ignatius by reflecting on how he uses the texts of Scripture (almost entirely the New Testament, and mainly gospels) in the Spiritual Exercises. Biblical scholars, even Jesuit biblical scholars, of a certain generation, sometimes feel a bit anxious about this sort of talk; but certainly Ignatius was a most attentive reader of the biblical text, and that is the first rule for those who would take the Bible seriously. For example, he tells us in his Autobiography,[1] at the time of his conversion, that he enjoyed ‘those books, and the thought came to him of briefly extracting some of the more essential elements from the life of Christ and of the saints; and so he set himself to write a book with great diligence…the words of Christ in red ink; and those of Our Lady in blue ink’. He is clearly finding a great deal of life in those narratives.
This leads to a further point, for Ignatius was clearly of the view that the biblical stories were potentially a source of life. A very high proportion of the Bible is narrative, and the point of narrative is that it invites the reader aboard; and the question is not ‘but did this really happen?’ so much as ‘where is the life in this story?’. An obvious example of this comes in the Exercises, where the retreatant is invited into ‘imaginative contemplation’, which is precisely a matter of allowing the ‘mysteries’ to exercise their power, and thereby bring the retreatant into life.
Look at the first two exercises of the Second Week, the incarnation and the birth of Jesus.[2] What is going on here is not exegesis or hermeneutics, but using the imagination to kindle the fire of life. The retreatant is invited to ‘recall the narrative’[3] of the event, and then enter more deeply into the story by attending to the ‘composition, seeing the place’. This creates a story which invites us in. When he turns to the birth of Jesus, Ignatius suggests some vivid details to engage our imagination. For example, the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem is taken, ‘seated on a donkey, taking an ox with them’. This does not come from Luke’s gospel account, but from the imagination of St Francis of Assisi, who seems to have created the first Christmas crib. There is of course nothing wrong with imagination: Christian meditation on Isaiah 1:3 (‘an ox knows its owner, an ass its master’s crib’) is the source of the presence of ‘ox and ass’ at the Bethlehem manger. And the second century Proto-Gospel of James, which is itself an entirely lively and imaginative meditation on the scriptural text, is the first text to give Mary a donkey for the journey.[4]
In that meditation on the incarnation, Ignatius once again uses his imagination to give life to the text (though the Proto-Gospel of James is not the source of this particular detail) by producing a ‘servant-girl’[5] to accompany Joseph and Our Lady. The reason for this servant-girl now becomes clear, when Ignatius invites the retreatant to use her or his imagination to enter into the story and draw life from it, ‘by making myself into a poor little, unworthy little slave, watching them, contemplating them and serving them in their needs, as though I found myself present, with all possible reverence and respect. And afterwards to reflect in myself, to draw some profit in myself.’[6] Here we have clearly departed from the text, in order to find the life of the Spirit through the use of imagination.
Another excellent example of this freedom with regard to the text comes at the beginning of the Fourth Week. The first contemplation is ‘how Christ Our Lord appeared to Our Lady’.[7] Obviously Ignatius had no scripture text to work from here; and conceivably his secretary may have whispered that in his ear, for, on the second time he mentions it,[8] Ignatius adds (can we imagine, slightly irritably?), ‘even though it is not mentioned in Scripture, you can understand it as mentioned, given that he appeared to so many others. For the Scripture presumes that we have understanding, as it is written: “Are you also without understanding?”’ And this exercise, which has proved so powerful for many retreatants, is certainly an excellent example of imagination bringing life. For it invites us, in the contemplation of place, ‘to see the arrangement of … Our Lady’s place or house, looking in detail at its parts, likewise her room and prayer-place’. So, there is a great freedom here; but it is not disrespectful of the biblical text, only using it as a platform from which to find a greater prayerful depth.
What Ignatius is doing in all these examples is akin to what an artist in stained glass does: using the text of Scripture and employing imagination to go prayerfully beyond what is there to find in freedom what the Spirit might be inviting us to discern, and so find the life that lies between the lines of the text. In this context, it is worth observing how respectful Ignatius is of the biblical text when it comes to the ‘mysteries of the life of Christ Our Lord’.[9] Here he is offering ‘points for prayer’, and for the most part they follow the text of Scripture. An interesting exception to this is the story at Matthew 2:1-12, the narrative of the Magi, where these foreigners are twice described as ‘kings’[10]; Ignatius did not get this from Matthew (nor from the Proto-Gospel of James, for that matter), but it is not precisely unfaithful to the text, and was very likely part of the popular imagination of his contemporaries, perhaps fed by stained glass depictions of the story. The reader might reflect on what they are doing when they sing the words of the 19th century American carol, ‘We three kings of Orient are’; does it help them to go deeper into the mystery?
There are very few deviations from the text in these mysteries; when he touches on the visit of Our Lady and Joseph to Bethlehem, Ignatius indicates that this was to ‘acknowledge his subjection to Caesar’,[11] a notion which is not to be found in the text, not even the Vulgate, although you might say that this is the clear implication. The reader will notice about Ignatius’s use of scripture here that he gives simply a brief quotation, to allow the retreatant the freedom to be led in prayer by the Spirit. Even when he says that Jesus ‘practices the trade of a carpenter’,[12] he is careful to give an appropriate citation from Mark.
There is one episode which, like the apparition to his mother after the resurrection, is not in the gospel text, namely Jesus’s ‘farewell to the blessed Mother’.[13] There is no doctrinal problem here, but there is the possibility of a great deal of life for the contemplation of the retreatant who might gain a good deal from imagining the pain of the goodbyes of mother and son; and it is only a tiny detail in the context of the meditation as a whole.
When it comes to the Exercise on Jesus’s temptations,[14] Ignatius has the three temptations that you find in Matthew and Luke, as opposed to Mark’s scantier account. He records them in the order followed by Matthew, as opposed to Luke (and it is noticeable that he has a preference for Matthew, as a general rule), even though here he mentions Luke first.
There is an interesting example of this attention to the text where Ignatius distinguishes three types of calling of the first disciples[15]: there is ‘Saint Peter and Saint Andrew’ (John 1:40-42); then a different sort of call ‘as St Luke says in chapter 5’, with the intention of going back to possess what they had left; then ‘thirdly, to follow Christ Our Lord for ever’, where he cites Matthew 4 and Mark 1. Ignatius clearly has in mind here that there are ways of inviting the retreatant to go deeper into the vocation, but he is not advocating for any particular one of them; and, quite clearly, he is reading the gospel text most attentively. Interestingly, between ‘three times’ and ‘were called’, Ignatius has written ‘it seems that’, so he or a secretary have seen the point of being careful about what the Scripture says.
You can see something of the same at Exercises §282 and §286, where Ignatius sees two different stories: Luke 7:36-50, the anointing of Jesus’s feet, though Ignatius ascribes this to ‘the Magdalen’; and ‘the supper at Bethany’ (Matthew 26:6-10), where the woman is once more identified as ‘Mary’, though this identification is only made in John’s Gospel. This is perfectly defensible, and there are contemporary scholars who see these as two different stories.
Ignatius’s attentiveness to the text is also on display where he puts together the two different accounts of the Last Supper, in Matthew 26:20-30 and John 13:1-30.[16] The first of these is what is often called the ‘institution narrative’, and the second is the ‘washing of the feet’, where John does something rather different. Ignatius, however, is reading the text very carefully. Many modern scholars would say that he is quite right to link those two events, that the fourth evangelist is well aware of the synoptic version, so the addition of Jesus performing this strikingly servile task as a way of interpreting what the Eucharist is about springs from a most sensitive and attentive reading of what is before him.
It must also be said that Ignatius knows the difference between various different texts, for example that in Gethsemane Luke, in at least some significant manuscripts, has the detail that ‘his sweat became like drops of blood going down onto the ground’.[17] Ignatius includes some details that are found only in Luke (Jesus being sent by Pilate to Herod, and Pilate and Herod becoming friends in consequence).[18] Likewise, he takes from Matthew the detail about the placing of the guard.[19] And we should observe that he always gives biblical references.
What, then, about the ‘apparition to Joseph of Arimathea’, which appears slightly unexpectedly.[20] It is not in the gospels, of course, but Ignatius might argue that the apparitions were always to those who were his disciples, and clearly Joseph comes into that category. Ignatius is evidently aware of the difficulty, for he adds ‘as is piously meditated and read in the life of the saints’, a phrase that he has added after crossing out ‘says the gospel of Nicodemus’. The words to Thomas, too, from John 20: ‘put your finger here’ have the added words ‘and see the truth’.[21] This is not in John, but has the merit of being a thoroughly Johannine formulation.
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Ignatius is admirably respectful of the text of Scripture. His aim in suggesting texts for the different ‘mysteries’ of the Exercises is not a matter of loading the dice; the retreatant is simply invited to use various statements, normally single sentences, as a basis for prayer. Ignatius is aware of differences between the various gospel authors, and knows the text very well indeed. He is an admirable model for us as we try to listen out for the voice of the God who speaks.
[1] Autobiografia §11.
[2] Exx §101-119.
[3] See St Ignatius of Loyola, Personal Writings (ed. Joseph Munitiz and Philip Endean); the Spanish is traer la historia.
[4] See Proto-Gospel of James 17.
[5] una ancila (Exx §111).
[6] Exx §114.
[7] Exx §218.
[8] Exx §299.
[9] Exx §261- 312.
[10] Exx §267.
[11] Exx §264.
[12] Exx §271, Mark 6:3.
[13] Exx §273.
[14] Exx §274.
[15] Exx §275.
[16] Exx §289.
[17] Luke 22:44.
[18] Exx §293-295.
[19] Matthew 27:62-66, Exx §298.
[20] Exx §310.
[21] Exx §305.
