Friday 10 July 2020

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
OUR VISION
To be a vibrant Catholic Community 
unified in its commitment 
to growing disciples for Christ 

Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney 
Mob: 0417 279 437 
Priest in Residence:  Fr Phil McCormack  
Mob: 0437 521 257
Deacon in Residence: Rev Steven Smith
Mob: 0411 522 630
steven.smith@aohtas.org.au
Seminarian in Residence: Kanishka Perera
Mob: 0499 035 199
kanish_biyanwila@yahoo.com
Postal Address: PO Box 362, Devonport 7310
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street, Devonport 7310 
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160 
Secretary: Annie Davies
Finance Officer: Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair:  Felicity Sly
Mob: 0418 301 573

Mersey Leven Catholic Parish Weekly Newsletter: mlcathparish.blogspot.com.au
Parish Mass times for the Month: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com 

Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.

         

PLENARY COUNCIL PRAYER
Come, Holy Spirit of Pentecost.
Come, Holy Spirit of the great South Land.
O God, bless and unite all your people in Australia 
and guide us on the pilgrim way of the Plenary Council.
Give us the grace to see your face in one another 
and to recognise Jesus, our companion on the road.
Give us the courage to tell our stories and to speak boldly of your truth.
Give us ears to listen humbly to each other 
and a discerning heart to hear what you are saying.
Lead your Church into a hope-filled future, 
that we may live the joy of the Gospel.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, bread for the journey from age to age.   
Amen.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us.
St Mary MacKillop, pray for us.


Parish Prayer


Heavenly Father,
We thank you for gathering us together 
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
You have charged us through Your Son, Jesus, with the great mission
  of evangelising and witnessing your love to the world.
Send your Holy Spirit to guide us as we discern your will
 for the spiritual renewal of our parish.
Give us strength, courage, and clear vision 
as we use our gifts to serve you.
We entrust our parish family to the care of Mary, our mother,
and ask for her intercession and guidance 
as we strive to bear witness
 to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.
Amen.
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Arrangements are made by contacting Parish Office. Parents attend a Baptismal Preparation Session organised with a Priest.
Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist: Are received following a Family–centred, Parish-based, School-supported Preparation Program.
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults: prepares adults for reception into the Catholic community.
Marriage: arrangements are made by contacting one of our priests - couples attend a Pre-marriage Program
Anointing of the Sick: please contact one of our priests
Reconciliation:  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 12th July          Ulverstone       10:00am - Livestream
Mon 13th July         No Mass             ... St Henry
Tues 14th July        Devonport         9:30am - Livestream
Wed 15th July        Ulverstone         9:30am … St Bonaventure
Thurs 16th July      Devonport       12noon ... Our Lady of Mount Carmel - Livestream
Fri 17th July          Ulverstone        9:30am
Sat 18th July         Devonport         6.00pm
Sun 19th July        Devonport       10:00am - Livestream

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:
Fr Michael Wheeler, John Reynolds, Suzanne Ockwell, Graeme Wilson, Kevin Hayes, Rex Evans, Athol Bryan, Jill Murphy, Roberto Escobar, Robert Luxton, Jane Fitzpatrick, Mark Aylett, Marlene Heazlewood, & …

 Let us pray for those who have died recently: 
Lita Guison, Brendan Free, Sr Maura McAvoy O.P.,  Max Last, Danny Sheehan, Carole Quinn, Reg Hinkley, Veronica Murnane,

 Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 8th – 14th July, 2020
Patrick Milnes, Lorraine Brown, Melody Hicks, Gwen McCormack, Elaine Winkel, Harry Mochrie, Patrick Kelcey, Imelda Cameron, Laurence Guest, Bryan O'Neill, Frances Gerrand, Clarrie Byrne, Molly Snare, George Armstrong, Doreen Whitchurch, Joy Stephenson, Jean Somers, Mavis Cassidy, Neville Batepola, Mick Nolan, Richard Kelloyne-Lawrence, Bill Scott, Gwen McNamara, Roy O’Halloran, Greta Cooper, John Mason. Also deceased relatives and friends of the Marshall, Speers, Hawes, Pilkington and Willis families.

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

 PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
Today’s Gospel is the familiar parable of the sower. 
I settle down to pray. Perhaps I have a lit candle nearby to remind me of Christ, the light of the world. I may try to put aside my everyday concerns by listening to some gentle, relaxing music. 
In time, I read the story, perhaps several times. I try to put myself in the scene.
Maybe I am part of the large crowd surrounding Jesus. How do I feel when he stands up and gets into a boat?
I listen intently to him.
Maybe I have a garden or even a small plant pot on my windowsill, where I have tried to sow and grow some seeds.
How far can I relate to the experience of the sower?
Perhaps I imagine that I am the soil on which the seeds are sown.
What am I like?
Am I a rich, well-manured loam, or a very thin, rocky topsoil?
Are there other plants already growing there?
I ponder.
I may come to realise that the quality of my soil has changed over the years.
Who or what has led to these changes?
I speak to the Lord freely, from my heart, and tell him what my deep longings are just now. I listen to what the Lord says to me, and take my leave with a slow, grateful sign of the cross.
                                      
Weekly Ramblings
Life has been a little quieter this week as our schools are on holidays for the mid-year break and not having to get to schools means almost a whole extra day for other Parish ‘matters’.

Last weekend we were able to have our 1st weekend Masses at OLOL and it was good to be back with everyone who had gathered and to be able to greet people face to face. It was a little strange not really being able to mix as we would all like but it was good to be together again.

This weekend we will be gathering at Sacred Heart, Ulverstone for the Vigil Mass and then again at 10am on Sunday morning. If you are reading this newsletter via email or on the web you can still book for the vigil Mass this weekend by clicking here: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/vigil-mass-11th-july-2020-tickets-112048823046 or for the Sunday Mass by clicking here: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/sunday-mass-12th-july-2020-10am-tickets-112048915322

At present we are just having the two Masses each weekend and this will continue until an assistant Priest is appointed – which will happen within the next few weeks. We will then be able to look at a broader Mass schedule. Thank you for your patience as we get through these next few weeks.

This week Archbishop announced the appointment of Fr Ben Brooks as the Administrator of the Meander Valley Parish. Fr Mark Freeman will continue to act as support to the Parish and Fr Ben as he begins this new appointment from 1st August. We wish Fr Ben all the best on his appointment.

Elsewhere in our Newsletter today we have the details for the Ordination Ceremonies for both Steven Smith and Chathura Silva. As mentioned there, due to Covid-19 restrictions, it is not possible for anyone and everyone to be able to attend the ceremonies so the details for the Livestreaming are included in the notice. See my email on Tuesday for other information about this important milestone.

After a recent Finance Committee Meeting the attached Report was presented to be included with the Newsletter this weekend. If you have any queries please address them to the Parish Office via email (merseyleven@aohtas.org.au) with Finance Report in the subject line or via letter. All questions will be handed to the Finance Committee at their next meeting and will be replied to asap. Thanks to the Committee for their ongoing efforts on behalf of the Parish.

Stay safe, stay sane and, if you can, stay at home
  

ORDINATION OF STEVEN SMITH:
With Praise and Thanksgiving to Almighty God the Catholic Archdiocese of Hobart, together with the Smith family, will celebrate the ordination of Steven Paul Smith to the Sacred Order of the Priesthood by His Grace Most Rev. Julian Porteous DD, Friday 24th July at 7pm St Mary’s Cathedral, Hobart. Due to Covid restrictions you are invited to view the ordination ceremony via YouTube.com - search ‘Archdiocese of Hobart’.

THE FOLLOWING WEEK THE ORDINATION OF CHATHURA SILVA:
The Archdiocese of Hobart, together with the Ranmuni Silva family, cordially invite you to join the celebration of the Ordination to the Priesthood of Chathura Ranmuni Silva on Friday, 31st July 2020 at 7 pm.
Due to Covid restrictions you are invited to view the ordination ceremony via YouTube.com - search ‘Archdiocese of Hobart’.


SUPPORTING THE PARISH FINANCIALLY:
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.

  
BECOMING MISSIONARY DISCIPLES EVANGELIUM CONFERENCE 2020
The Archdiocese of Hobart, invites you to attend the Evangelium Conference. The keynote speaker is Jude Hennessy, Director Office of Renewal and Evangelisation from the Diocese of Wollongong. The conference will be taking place on Saturday 29 August, in Launceston. To register or to find out more, go to www.eventbrite.com.au and search ‘Evangelium Conference’. Alternately contact Ella Tobin on 0468 601 517.    
                            

Letter From Rome
A Reformed Roman Curia And A New Batch Of Cardinals


Strange as it sounds, there's word the new constitution is signed and the 

rings have been ordered-  Robert Mickens, Rome, July 10, 2020. 

This article is from the La-Croix International website - you can access the site here but complete full access is via paid subscription

It is perhaps the most ambitious project of the current pontificate: attempting to truly reform the mentality and structures of the Catholic Church's central – and, up until Francis arrived, centralizing– bureaucracy known as the Roman Curia.

Exactly one month after his election in March 2013, the Argentine pope established the "Council of Cardinals".

Originally made up of eight and then nine senior churchman from different parts of the world, the members of this C-9 were given the task of helping Francis in his governance of the Universal Church.

They were also given the very specific project of drawing up a plan to reform the curia by revising the apostolic constitution Pastor Bonus, which currently regulates this Vatican structure.

A draft of the new constitution was completed over a year ago, but the pope wanted to give national episcopal conferences, select heads of religious orders and certain theologians the opportunity to offer more suggestions.

Early in the year there was talk that the final document would be released on the Feast of the Chair of St Peter in February or, at latest, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul at the end of June.

Praedicate Evangelium has already been signed
But then the pandemic hit and the remnant of the C-9, now reduced to just six cardinal-members, cancelled its last three meetings.

So is the project on hold? Not according to a source at the Vatican who claimed the new constitution, Praedicate Evangelium, is done and Pope Francis has already signed it.

It appears the text is currently being carefully translated into the major languages. And once that is done, it will be officially published.

Naturally, this would be extremely out of the ordinary. The middle of Roman summer is not usually the time for launching major Vatican documents or important events. But this is not an ordinary pontificate.

No matter when the new text is unveiled, the ramifications will be manifold and likely historic.

One of the first and most visible of these will be a massive personnel shake-up.

It will take months and even years to implement the changes the new constitution mandates and Francis will have to find the people he can trust and who are on the some page as him to oversee the implementation of the constitution.

Heads will roll
The reformed Roman Curia will require new leadership, as more than two-dozen Rome-based cardinals are sent into retirement.

Pope Francis will name a new prefect at the Congregation for Bishops to replace Cardinal Marc Ouellet. The 76-year-old Ratzinger protégé has held this extremely important post the past ten years.

One of the consequences of the French-Canadian's retirement is that it will significantly diminish his candidacy in a future conclave.

In the post-Vatican II era, when it became normal for bishops to retire at or shortly after 75 years of age, all the men who have been elected pope were still in office at the time of the conclave.

Francis will also be replacing Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, 75, who has exceeded his five-year term as head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments. John Paul II brought the then-rather inconspicuous Sarah to Rome in 2001 to be the No. 2 (archbishop-secretary) at Propaganda Fide.

Once Benedict XVI promoted him and gave him the red hat in 2010, the cardinal has increasingly become one of the Vatican's leading traditionalists and social conservatives.

Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, a 76-year-old Argentine who spent his whole ecclesiastical career in service of the Holy See, will be replaced at the Congregation for Eastern Churches.

A key figure in John Paul II's pontificate, he has been in his current job since 2007. But Sandri will be staying in Rome since he was recently elected vice-dean of the College of Cardinals.

The Congregation for Catholic Education will be getting a new prefect, too.

The present office-holder, Italian Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, has already completed his quinquennium and will be 77 at the end of this month. After spending five years as a diocesan bishop in northern Italy, he came to the Vatican in 2011 during Benedict XVI's pontificate.

Pope Francis will also have to replace Cardinal Beniamino Stella, who has been prefect at the Congregation for the Clergy since the beginning of the pontificate.

A native of Italy's Veneto region, the life-long Vatican diplomat with extensive experience in Latin America, turns 79 in August.

The No. 2 official in Cardinal Stella's office, Archbishop Joel Mercier, is also likely to be replaced.

The Frenchman turned 75 at the beginning of the year, just a few days before completing his five-year term as the congregation's secretary.

The pope is expected to accept the resignation of the secretary at Congregation for the Causes of Saints, as well. Archbishop Marcello Bartolucci has been in that job a bit more than ten years. And the Assisi native recently turned 76 years of age.

There had been rumors that Francis was going to fill the No. 2 position at Saints with Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the personal secretary and housemate of Benedict XVI.

But that was before the pope relieved the German prelate, who turns 64 on July 30, from his day-to-day duties as prefect of the Papal Household.

It had something to do with Gänswein's role in Benedict co-authoring a controversial book against married priests with Cardinal Sarah…

Pope Francis will have to find new management for Vatican City State, as well.

The current "governor" is Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, a career papal diplomat who has been in the post since 2011 and is just three months shy of his 78th birthday.

And the secretary general (since 2013) is Archbishop Fernando Vérgez Alzaga, a 75-year-old Spaniard and Legionary of Christ. Both Bertello and Vérgez will be replaced.

Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, one of Benedict's oldest and staunchest Vatican allies, will be relieved of his duties, as well. A priest from Genoa in the mold of the late conservative Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, Piacenza is currently head of the Apostolic Penitentiary.

Francis put him there soon after becoming pope in 2013, removing the Italian from his post as prefect of the Congregation for Clergy just three years into a five-year term.

Other top officials that are 75 years of age or older, and who are going to be replaced or simply retired once the new constitution on the Roman Curia is published, include Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

The popular Italian scripture scholar, who moved from Milan in 2007 to take up this Vatican post, turns 77 in October.

And Cardinal Angelo Comastri, an Italian who became Archpriest of St. Peter's Basilica just a couple of months before John Paul II's death in 2005, will be 76 in September.

Bishop Brian Farrell, who has done outstanding work since 2002 as secretary at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, is already 76 years old.

If Francis is thinking of totally revamping the Roman Curia, it is likely he will accept the Legionary of Christ's resignation.

And while the president of this pontifical council, Cardinal Kurt Koch, is only 70, the German-speaking Swiss prelate has been in this job since 2010. Look for him to be moved or given early retirement.

There are a couple of other cardinals who have already reached retirement age and whose future is not certain.

Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, Archpriest of Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major, just turned 75 on July 4. A priest from Krakow, he was brought to the Vatican in 1987 by the man who ordained him presbyter, John Paul II.

As part of the so-called "Polish Mafia", Rylko spent his entire Roman career at the now-defunct Pontifical Council for the Laity, eventually reigning as president from 2003-2016.

That's the office responsible for approving the new ecclesial movements John Paul so favored. It would be unusual for Francis to remove him from his largely ceremonial post at St. Mary Major, but -- again -- he is not your usual pope…

The other man in red who is already beyond retirement age is Cardinal Luis Ladaria, currently prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Spanish Jesuit turned 76 this past April, but he's been head of the "Holy Office" for only three years. Francis seems to trust him, but does he have enough confidence that Ladaria is the right man to implement the reform that the doctrinal office will be slated to undergo?

The fate of Archbishop Rino Fisichella is still unknown.

The 69-year-old Italian theologian has been president of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization since 2010 when Benedict XVI created the office.

But Francis is shutting it down and folding its work into what is currently called the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (Propaganda Fide).

But the congregation is also going to be transformed and the pope has recently brought the 63-year-old Filipino Cardinal Luis Tagle to Rome to head up that new enterprise.

Five or six of the eight cardinals that make up the Council for the Economy are also expected to be replaced, namely because they are over 75 and already retired from their primary jobs as diocesan bishops.

They include Cardinals John Tong Hon, former Bishop of Hong Kong, soon to be 81;
Agostino Vallini, 80, former Vicar of Rome;
Wilfrid Napier OFM, 79, soon to retire as Archbishop of Durban;
Norberto Rivera Carrera, 78, former Archbishop of Mexico City;
and Juan Luis Cipriani, 76, former Archbishop of Lima.

Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard is also 75, but he remains as Archbishop of Bordeaux, and will likely remain on the council with Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, 71, of Galveston-Houston and the council's 66-year-old coordinator Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich.

And, naturally, the Council of Cardinals – the body that has helped Francis draw up the curial reform – will also have to be replenished.

It's possible that some of them are not even cardinals yet. But that they could be getting the red hat sooner than anyone could have imagined.

The word is that the Vatican recently ordered 15 rings to be made for an upcoming consistory. Again, it would be highly unusual, especially at a time when even churchgoers have to respect social distancing and wear facemasks.

But there is no Church canon that says the red hat ceremonies must be the elaborate galas that they've turned into over the years.

Making new cardinals in a small, more sober setting, at a time one least expects?

Unusual, yes. But not beyond Pope Francis.

                                  

God Cannot Be Thought
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 

Augustinian priest Fr. Martin Laird is an author, retreat leader, and professor of early Christian studies at Villanova University. He is a gifted teacher who makes the history and practice of Christian contemplation accessible to people of all backgrounds. Here he relates the insights of The Cloud of Unknowing to the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), the great theologian and bishop.  

The fourteenth-century author of The Cloud of Unknowing acknowledges the distinction (not separation) between what our love can do and our thinking mind cannot. The author likens it to having two faculties, a faculty (or capacity) of the thinking, calculating mind and a faculty for loving. God created each of these. However, “God is forever beyond the reach of the first of these, the intellectual faculty; but by means of the second, the loving faculty, [God] can be fully grasped by each individual being.” [1] 

The author [of The Cloud] clearly values the thinking mind. It is necessary for understanding (grasping with the mind) created beings and “to think clearly about them.” [2] Thinking mind functions by means of concepts, images, words, and so on. But God is beyond the grasp of concepts; no word can capture God, no word can have the final word on the Word made flesh, who yet dwells among us (John 1:14). “God can well be loved,” the author says, “but [God] cannot be thought. By love [God] can be grasped and held, but by thought neither grasped nor held.” [3] God is eternal, the human mind is finite. If God could be comprehended, surrounded by a concept, this would make us greater than God. We invent the illusion that God is a thing that we lack and must therefore seek, find, and (attempt to) control. . . . 

St. Augustine, the great teacher of love that knows and knowledge that loves, reflects on his own experience of looking for God as an external object, a thing—just huge—that could be located and fixed in space and time. In his Confessions, he relates how all this changed when he at last forgot himself. 
But when unknown to me you caressed my head,
and when you closed my eyes lest they see things
that would seduce me,
I began for a little while to forget about myself,
and my madness was lulled to sleep.
When I awoke in you, I saw very differently,
infinite in a very different sense.
But what I saw was not seen with the eye of the body. [4] 

For decades Augustine searched for God where God cannot be found—outside himself in conquest, career, and ambition. Only when God casts him into sleep (Genesis 2:21) does something immensely creative happen. Augustine awakes in God and beholds what only the inner eye can behold: the traces of God as luminous vastness. As we journey toward the God who causes us to seek, may we discover our own grounding silence and awake in God who has found us from all eternity. 

[1] The Cloud of Unknowing, in The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works, trans. A. C. Spearing (Penguin: 2001), 23.
[2] Ibid., 27.
[3] Ibid, 27-28. 
[4] St. Augustine, Confessions, 7, 14, trans. Benignus O’Rourke (Darton, Longman, and Todd: 2013), 286.
Martin Laird, An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation (Oxford University Press: 2019), xiii-xiv, xv-xvi.
                                 

Deeper Things Under The Surface

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

Imagine this. You are the dutiful daughter or son and your mother is widowed and living in an assisted living facility. You happen to be living close by while your sister is living across the country, thousands of miles away. So the weight falls on you to be the one to help take care of your mother. You dutifully visit her each day. Every afternoon, on route home from work, you stop and spend an hour with her as she has her early dinner. And you do this faithfully, five times a week, year after year.

As you spend this hour each day with your mother, year after year, how many times during the course of a year will you have a truly stimulating and deep conversation with your mother? Once? Twice? Never? What are you talking about each day? Trivial things: the weather, your favorite sports team, what your kids are doing, the latest show on television, her aches and pains, and the mundane details of your own life. Occasionally you might even doze off for a while as she eats her early dinner. In a good year, perhaps once or twice, the conversation will take on some depth and the two of you will share more deeply about something of importance; but, save for that rare occasion, you will simply be filling in the time each day with superficial conversation.

But, and this is the question, are those daily visits with your mother in fact superficial, merely functionary because your conversations aren’t deep?  Are you simply going through the motions of intimate relationship because of duty? Is anything deep happening?

Well, compare this with your sister who is (conveniently) living across the country and comes home once a year to visit your mother. When she visits, both she and your mother are wonderfully animated, they embrace enthusiastically, shed some tears upon seeing each other, and seemingly talk about things beyond the weather, their favorite sports teams, and their own tiredness. And you could kill them both! It seems that in this once-a-year meeting they have something that you, who visit daily, do not have. But is this true?  Is what is happening between your sister and your mother in fact deeper than what is occurring each day when you visit your mother?

Absolutely not. What they have is, no doubt, more emotional and more affective, but it is, at the end of day, not particularly deep. When your mother dies, you will know your mother better than anyone else knows her and you will be much closer to her than your sister. Why? Because through all those days when you visited her and seemed to talk about nothing beyond the weather, some deeper things were happening under the surface.When your sister visited your mother things were happening on the surface(though emotionally and affectively the surface can look wonderfully more intriguing than what lies beneath it.) That is why honeymoons look better than marriage.

What your sister had with your mother is what novices experience in prayer and what couples experience on a honeymoon. What you had with your mother is what people experience in prayer and relationships when they are faithful over a long period of time. At a certain level of intimacy in all our relationships, including our relationship with God in prayer, the emotions and the affectivity (wonderful as they are) will become less and less important and simple presence, just being together, will become paramount. Previous to that, the important things were happening on the surface and emotions and affectivity were important; now deep bonding is happening beneath the surface and emotions and affectivity recede in importance. At a certain depth of relationship just being present to each other is what is important.

Too often, both popular psychology and popular spirituality do not really grasp this and consequently confuse the novice for the proficient, the honeymoon for the wedding, and the surface for the depth. In all of our relationships, we cannot make promises as to how we will always feel, but we can make promises to always be faithful, to show up, to be there, even if we are only talking about the weather, our favorite sports team, the latest television program, or our own tiredness. And it is okay occasionally to fall asleep while there because as Therese of Lisieux once said: a little child is equally pleasing to its parents, awake or asleep, probably more asleep! That also holds true for prayer. God does not mind us occasionally napping while at prayer because we are there and that is enough. The great Spanish doctor of the soul John of the Cross tells us that as we travel deeper into any relationship, be it with God in prayer, with each other in intimacy, or with the community at large in service, eventually the surface will be less emotive and less affective and the deeper things will begin to happen under the surface.
                                   

How One Parish Is Approaching 'Online Church'


This article is taken from the weekly Blog of Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Timoneum, Baltimore. You can read his blog here

When our parish first closed its doors three months ago in observance of COVID-19 guidelines, everything we did in response seemed like a temporary solution to a temporary problem.  We anticipated that our experimental forays into Zoom staff meetings, Masses said to a camera and empty pews, online small groups, and new social media channels (our youth ministers even got into TikTok) would be a way to meet a need and then go back to normal once the quarantine ended.  But here we are, four months later and little, if anything, seems to have significantly changed about the situation.

 Recent statistics show that cases and hospitalizations are rising in certain communities, indicating that the “first wave” of the Covid pandemic is far from over.  Many experts are suggesting that the current increase could just be a prelude to a “second wave” as temperatures drop, and indoor gatherings become more widespread this fall and winter.  The reasons for these increases are certainly up for debate. But, no matter who you blame, the point remains that the virus has been, and will continue to be, around for much longer than we previously anticipated.

 Meanwhile, churches are grappling with how to respond.  Those that have re-opened to partial attendance have seen that attendance limited indeed, attracting far fewer numbers than they might have hoped. In many cases, attendance has steadily declined as the weeks have passed and the initial excitement worn off.  For better or for worse, Mass attendance will not be dictated by whether our doors are open or closed.  People will return when they feel they can do so safely.  So far, they have voted with their feet: they aren’t ready to return.

 Efforts to engage those who have not returned to church have been, in my estimation, overlooked and under-resourced in the haste to resume in-person gatherings.  Church online remains our greatest opportunity to stay connected to these parishioners and engage our community.

 The virtues and vices of bringing church into the online sphere have not been discussed widely, at least not that I have seen.  This conversation needs to happen – now more than ever.  The conversation may even bring out those in the church who disparage it or dismiss it as a threat to the understanding of the sacramental nature of the church. This is a legitimate critique, which I understand. However, my guess is that online church will emerge as a force for a renewed interest in the sacraments, born of an encounter with the beauty of the liturgy which was inaccessible for those who have stayed away from church.

 I am certainly not an expert on technology, or liturgy, or crisis leadership.  But I do think I have something to contribute to the conversation on online church.  My parish has been streaming our weekend Masses online for many years, cultivating a resource that has been fruitful for many, especially here in our local community.  Besides the value it has for the homebound, elderly, and those in nursing homes, online church has been a huge value in attracting the unchurched to our parish.

 Here is my addition to the conversation:

 1. Our online platform is designed to be synchronous with and in support of our in-person worship.  While continuing to stream Masses online, our plan is to welcome a limited number of parishioners by reservation-only to our Sunday morning 9:00am and 10:45am Masses beginning August 2nd. We have worked hard to design, implement, and test drive a safe, healthy environment for those guests while at the same time preserving the vibrance and joy of our weekend experience.  But even this in-person effort will start online, with the introduction of an online reservation system.  Initially, we will have 50 reservation openings for 50 individuals or families.

 2. Next, we will continue to upgrade and expand our technology so that we can provide a world class online experience for the vast and hopefully growing number of parishioners and guests who will be joining us there.  We will continue to livestream our Saturday 5pm Mass (without congregation) and our Sunday morning Masses (with limited congregations), rebroadcasting Mass online throughout the day.  

 3. We will continue to explore ways in which we can engage our online community and move them from mere passive consumers to active and praying congregants.  These efforts currently include:

  • Live chat with chat hosts, a new lay ministry which engages with and chats with those joining us online
  • A prayer room for prayer requests
  • Our “Virtual Café” Zoom room for after Mass fellowship
  • The presence of live staff who appear before and after Mass to make announcements, give shout outs to attendees, provide instruction about the Mass, and invite participation

4. Strive to be a “mobile-first” church. This includes continuing to offer our kids programs (“All Stars” and “Time Travelers”) online and providing an online program for our student ministry this Fall.  We will continue to explore ways to effectively move our discipleship steps online, including giving, serving, and small group life, as well as move other programs online like our new members class and Sacramental preparation.
We are a sacramental community and we must gather for the sacraments; they require our physical presence. But we live in a digital community from which we dare not be absent.
                               

Ignatius of Loyola: Theology As A Way Of Living

‘What Ignatius gives us is not a scholastic or academic theology; it is not a theory, but a theology that is lived and experienced. In this sense, too, our theology becomes a daily action, shaping and making our lives.’ To celebrate the Feast of St Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, on 31 July, James Hanvey SJ exposes the theological vision manifested in the Spiritual Exercises and in Ignatius’s life.
Rev. Dr. James Hanvey SJ lectures in Systematic Theology at Heythrop College, University of London.
This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here 

There have been many books written about Ignatius of Loyola and many more about his Spiritual Exercises. Few have been written about his theological vision. Hugo Rahner begins to open up this dimension on Ignatius for contemporary students in the 1950s, yet Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s observation that Ignatius as a theologian has still to be appreciated continues to be true. This is understandable because Ignatius is not a formal theologian. The Spiritual Exercises are a sort of practical, experiential theology that leads to a converted and consecrated freedom in action, not a treatise on Christology, ecclesiology, grace and nature. The same is true for the Constitutions of the Society and we can see how much this theology is his life in Ignatius’s letters and Spiritual Diary. Everything in these writings reveals an immanent living theology which is applied to the realities of persons, places and circumstances. Hence, the danger in trying to extract a formal theology lies in forgetting that it is a lived theology first. However, the other danger is that we forget that Ignatius has an objective vision which is tested within the tradition of the Church.

Neither the Exercises nor his other writings sanction a pure subjectivism which is the danger in the contemporary vogue for therapeutic spirituality. Here, strongly influenced by psychoanalytic and person-centred practice, the subject’s self-referential experience is the dominant hermeneutic. The risk in so much of the contemporary ‘Spirituality industry’ is that it becomes secularised anthropology, whereas Ignatius always offers an uncompromising ‘theology’. Understanding this is important for correcting another misinterpretation of Ignatius, namely, voluntarism. Where this has been part of Jesuit spirituality and culture it has owed more to the prevailing rationalism and suspicion of strongly affective and mystical dimensions of Ignatian spirituality than it has to an authentic appropriation of the sources. The Exercises, and indeed the whole example of Ignatius’s life, certainly expect the subject to spare nothing in the service of God and his Kingdom, but this flows from an inexhaustible gratitude for what one has received from the Divine Majesty at such cost. The determined ordering of all one’s energies in the service of Christ, and the desire to participate as completely as possible in the work of salvation require a disciplined asceticism of love for God and for neighbour, but this ‘freedom’ is far from the indifference of a stoic self-mastery, though it may teeter on the brink of this distortion.

The subject’s life, the interior drama of desires and freedom, and the struggle and the discipline of realities that both circumscribe us and offer new possibilities are all present, but Ignatius sees them in relation to God who is actively present at their centre. The whole work of the Exercises is to give us a new point from which to see the world in all its astonishing diversity and especially to see the way in which the Son is present in its midst, ‘labouring and working’ for its healing. That work is to bring all things under the sovereignty of the Divine Majesty so that all created things, and especially the glory of God’s creation, the human person, can enjoy the plenitude of life.

God as the source of our freedom to be and to act
In this sense, the world for Ignatius is radically theocentric. But it is precisely because we are so completely and radically grounded in God, ‘Our Creator and Lord’, that far from restricting or losing our freedom, we come to possess it. In contrast with the many forms of freedom that are offered to us, it is a freedom which allows us to be ‘disposed’ in the redemptive work of Christ and the building of the Kingdom. Such freedom comes through our search and desire for it, but it is always a gift. It is not the freedom of the autonomous, self-made and self-making individual of contemporary culture. It is not the liberation of the Enlightenment or Modernity or even Postmodernity. Rather, it is a freedom which can only be discovered in relationship of ‘handing over’, of precisely not belonging to self but living in and through the other who is Christ and the ‘other’ that we discover in the form of a world that needs to be healed – this incarnate, redemptively active Christ who is ‘in’ our world. [1] It is signalled at the very beginning of the Exercises in the notes of annotations, where the idea of a ‘retreat’ – a withdrawal and seclusion – is the material expression of our desire to gain favour in the sight of the Divine Majesty, that we may be more disposed to service of our Creator, and be united with Him.[2] In the Principle and Foundation, the grace of this relational freedom is also described as an active grace which encompasses every aspect and circumstance of our life.[3] It becomes an unchanging prayer which orientates every prayer of the Spiritual Exercises: the exercitant prays that all his or her ‘intentions, actions and operations may be purely ordered to the praise and reverence of His Divine Majesty.’[4] It is a stunningly simple but profound prayer. It is the prayer of our whole life, placing us under the sovereignty of God and His Kingdom.

None of this excludes the rich insights into the dynamics of the human psyche and our relationships which are illuminated in the contemporary human sciences. It does mean, however, that we come to understand ourselves and our world – social and material – through God, not apart from Him. Implicitly, therefore, Ignatius will always challenge our latent or implicit secularisation. This is why, though the Ignatian vision and practice has an extraordinary freedom to engage with the whole of human reality, it needs always to be vigilant and rooted – in affect, intellect and acts – in God.[5] Without this groundedness, even the gift of freedom becomes the occasion of a conversion to the secular i.e. the world in which I am the centre, that I endeavour to create either without reference to God or where I use God to legitimate my creation.[6]

I think Ignatius learned this in his experience at Loyola during his convalescence when he began to understand the captivity and allure of worldly dreams. It would have been easy to ‘baptise’ them but not fundamentally change them in a neat transference from the earthly to the heavenly King. Alert to this danger, he discovered the evangelical tools of service in the rules for discernment, especially of the 2nd week of the Exercises, and the profound, searching examination and call of the 3rd mode of humility, which should surely be the interior norm of every member of the Society and the touchstone of the daily examen. [7] These exercises embody a deep and constant inscription of the way of Christ that shapes our actions as well as our desires. In them, the meaning and the form of power is transformed. They describe the strange new world of God’s activity, not ours; each day they teach us about the apocalyptic struggle for the Kingdom and the true nature of Christ’s Lordship. Ignatius gives us the means of living in a world in which God ‘labours and works’ for our salvation, upholding it and working for its good.[8] The source of our action is not a naive, humanistic optimism but a profound, Christian realism. What these tools give us is not a scholastic or academic theology; it is not a theory, but a theology that is lived and experienced. In this sense, too, our theology becomes a daily action, shaping and making our lives. The ‘lived theology’ of Ignatius is our living the reality of the Incarnate and Resurrected life in our history. In this sense it is, of course, the active life of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the dynamic and open horizon of Ignatius’s vision of the world and the desire to be sent into it is a profound experience of the Spirit and its mission to reconcile all things in Christ (Col 1:13-20). In this way, Ignatius’s lived theology is the grace of entering into the dynamic salvific economy of the Triune God; our learning to live in and express the Amor Amans – the Love Loving – that is God’s self. This is the heart of the apostolic life.

Prosaic language and the mysticism of experience
The writings of Ignatius betray little poetry or rhetoric. They do not have the intellectual fluency of a speculative theologian, the engaging personal élan of a Teresa, or the ‘Lámparas de fuego’ (lamps of fire) that one catches even in John of the Cross’s theological commentary on his poetry. For Ignatius, language itself is not the experience; it is merely an instrument to communicate reality. Ignatius does not offer us a literary mysticism. There is no esoteric vocabulary which only the initiated can decipher and interpret. Ignatius is not a fluent writer but it is not only this: he knows words can excite and draw us into their own world. They have a special resonance and weight but only because they are firmly rooted in a vivid and normative experience. So we find an oddly limited and repetitive vocabulary that is worth attending to in two ways: first, it is ostensive in the sense that it points to an experience; it names the theological-spiritual landscape that Ignatius knew and mapped. It strives after a minimalist accuracy, partly out of respect for the reality, and party not to draw attention to itself. Second, it is always concrete and grounded. It names, locates and orientates us whenever we encounter it. In its own way, it is the language of sincerity and directness – there is no rhetorical dissimulation – and, paradoxically, its combination of minimalism and concreteness, precisely because it disciplines speculation and description, produces a sense of dynamism and encounter. It is essentially a language of living relations and processes; a language of the heart’s deepest desires and the intellect’s ordering of them into expressive, incarnated truth. In the sparest way, it expresses the engagement of the whole person situated in the external and interior worlds.

Its restraint also serves another purpose: it creates space for us. It allows us to make these words our own through the experiences and relationships they direct us to and allow us to have. It is not that Ignatius is only ‘a tongue-tied mystic’; he uses language to point us to the concrete reality of encounter from which language should not distract nor create its own relationship. His words are not the words of a narcissistic author which direct us back to the authorial centre and control. They are governed by an apostolic pedagogy. Ignatius gives us our freedom; his words do not take us over and they always open up the experience, they allow us to reencounter it, they never substitute for it. The words are always a means, never an end. I think a clue is given in instruction to the Director in the Spiritual Exercises. His or her task is to test the truth and facilitate it but not get in the way, not to draw attention to him or herself.[9] This creates a new style in which the speaker is only a facilitator. From it we learn how to make language itself an apostolic instrument rather than a rhetorical display. This may help us understand why reading Ignatius is an odd experience. The imagery is spare, direct, clear, concentrated and strong. It is rarely abstract and always personal. The habitual ways in which Ignatius speaks of God – ‘The Divine Majesty’, ‘The Creator and Lord’, ‘The Eternal King’, ‘The Divine Goodness’ – are not primarily metaphysical titles or abstract categories. They are the linguistic sites of a personal relationship, the fountains of an ever-present, experiential encounter. Such spare language and imagery remains remarkably consistent in all his writings and we can glimpse its glowing affective intensity in texts like Ignatius’s Spiritual Diary. We find it again in the Constitutions, where we stumble over language which is so familiar from the Exercises but well embedded into their baroque structure. We could easily dismiss this as some sort of automatic linguistic piety or genuflection. It is not, however, a naïve language but one that is personal and self-aware; it is performative. When we come across those titles of ‘The Creator and Lord’, the ‘Divine Majesty’ etc., or we are invited to consider things before this God whom we have come to know in such names, the language serves to locate us in an experience. We are reminded and relocated within the fundamental orientations of our life of service. The primary relationship from which we live is invoked. We are called to integrity of decision and action by being made accountable to the God we meet in the relationship of redemption and salvation. In other words, it is a language of accountability before the King in whose service we are enlisted.

Such a complex text like the Constitutions is dynamic and experiential. It lives out in its structure the preparatory prayer of the Exercises; it is always orienting itself to God. Having mapped out the place where we should be – in discernment with our superiors, in our studies, building up the unity of the Body etc. – it invites us ‘to keep always before us, first, God.’ What it discloses is a way of seeing the world and God’s action in it that is at first curious until we understand what it is attempting to do. We can stumble over images which clearly come out of a pious, religious, medieval imagination, but we are not on some quaint, historical tour. Rather, we find ourselves in a dynamic world of creative process and drama; the words and the structures are all struggling to do justice to the God who is salvifically active in all things; who has summoned us into his world, the energy and kairos of the Gospel. In this sense, we inhabit a landscape that is both old and completely modern in its breadth and conceptuality. In other words, as we have already observed but now grasp in his characteristic voice, Ignatius is alive to the luminous energy of the Divine economy.

Some key themes
There are many aspects of Ignatius’s vision and practice that merit close study. His understanding of the Trinity or the Incarnation, the struggle of the Kingdom of the Enemy and the Kingdom of Christ, or the Rules for Thinking with the Church, have in various ways received attention. It would require much greater scope than this limited essay affords to treat these themes and others as they deserve. There is one aspect, though, which has not received much attention, yet in part it may account for the modernity of Ignatius’s thought. It is the extraordinary relational way of thinking and seeing that marks the Ignatian vision; the refusal to distort these into some logical form or process and the determination to try to comprehend the vitality of our interconnectedness. It is a wisdom but it is not detached. Rather it is an ‘active wisdom’ that is alive both to the unity and the creative diversity of our relational realities. This relational way of seeing things is undoubtedly grounded in his own mystical experience of a Trinitarian God: a God who chooses to be intimately related to the world as both Creator and Lord. The relational structure of Ignatius’s theology is immediately apparent in the Spiritual Exercises, the Spiritual Diary, the Letters and the Constitutions, even when parts may have been written by his secretary, Polanco.

The human person is never considered except in and through a nexus of relationships. We are never allowed to stand outside these relationships on our own; there is no sovereign self, exercising a contemplative grasp of the whole from some vantage point outside the material, historical and existential process of life. Indeed, it is part of the illusion of sin to think that we can exercise such independence. In fact, Ignatius understands that sin is itself a web in which we are caught whether it be in the primal history of the Fall of the Angels or in the active malignity of evil that seeks to delude and ensnare us, ‘so that no province, no place, no state of life, no individual is overlooked.’[10] This is not just a colourful medieval mystery play in which we are given a part. It is an engagement with the ‘mysterium inquitatis’ that cannot be reduced to a projection of our own subjective woundedness. We can only begin to understand the extent of our entrapment – epistemological as well as psychological and existential – when we allow ourselves to stand in our relationship to Christ. Christ suddenly casts a light that exposes the way in which evil spins its own relational reality; it has a history, it creates its own determining structures from which we cannot break by our own strength or intelligence. In this, Ignatius takes us into the apocalyptic understanding of the Gospel, but he never allows us to stand lost outside of the saving relationship with Jesus, our Saviour and Lord. It is a mark of our healing when we come to appreciate the truth of our dependence, our connectedness. But this connectedness is a living experience of being sustained and cared for, of being upheld and carried even when I want to deny or break away from this truth. Our ‘conversion’ is one of mind and will when we come to understand all creation – natural and supernatural – ‘interceding... for me’.[11] That action of intercession is not a trivial act – it is the movement of life itself, of being which expresses its goodness in this act of life-giving generosity even when I wound it.

What Ignatius opens up for us is the unity between the act of creation and redemption and the gift or grace of participation. He invites us to understand our connectedness as gift and through that to express our own restored connectedness in gratitude – which is a loving reverence and self-gift. That work of intercession belongs to all created things in their goodness but it also discloses that it is a profoundly relational mark of being itself. Even more than this, it participates in the salvific economy of the Triune Life. It locates me in a community: it is the community of creation and also of the Church – the concrete community in which I live in history but the community that also intercedes and carries me – the ecclesia of the heavenly court that also ‘labours and works’ for my salvation and the restoration of creation. There is an intimate and profound ‘communio’ here between the Church and creation which is discovered in their salvific mission and being.[12]

When I begin to understand and sense that this grace lives in all things, then I am ordered in a joyous self-emptying of loving service to the world. Already, I have begun to see that at the heart of all these relations is Christ. To follow him is not to leave the world, but to enter more completely and intensely into its life, its woundedness, its struggle against emptiness, falsehood and death. To step into this new world of relationship and commit myself to it is not to restrict my freedom but to discover it. But it is only discovered in and through the Person of Christ. Again, this is no abstract or theoretical relationship or possibility, but one that is real, concrete, personal and immediate. The relationship that I am called to is that of ‘companion’; it is one of love that ‘labours and works’ with Him to restore all the broken relationships which prevent life. It is not an exaggeration to say that the whole of what Ignatius (and the Society of Jesus) understands by mission – notwithstanding the ocean of words that has been expended upon the theme – is contained in the Gospel of John:

God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved. (John 3:14-17)

It is because we live that experience of Love and are drawn into it through our relationship with the Son, that we become the bearers of the message of life to the world in the words and deeds given us by the Spirit, who is the Lord and Giver of Life. Indeed, for Ignatius our whole life is to be sent, to participate in this mission of the Spirit. It is the Spirit that is at the heart of all our relationships and orders them in this dynamic of reciprocity – the response we make to God’s self-gift in our ‘take and receive all......’[13]

The final great active moment in which Ignatius asks us to find ourselves is the Contemplation to attain the Love of God at the end of the Exercises.[14] It is not contemplation in the sense of an intellectual exercise; it is a performative act of loving self-gift. Only in that offering, in which we are both giving and being given being – the graced indwelling kenosis of the Spirit of Love (Jn 14:21; 15:8-17) – can we really experience the life that is God’s life, the life that is the life of all life. Yet the Contemplation to attain Love is not only the end to which all our Exercises have been leading, it is also the daily reality in which we live. There is a sense in Ignatius, something we have learnt through the Exercises, that to live in this God, to be taken in His mission to the world, is also to go on growing. Indeed, there is a relationship between our practice of the ministry and works of God’s love in the world and the deepening of our capacity to receive this life in ourselves. Here, living this grace increases our capacity and aptitude for it and there is no limit to this growth. With this comes a growth in our ability to judge or discern things correctly because we come to see them more and more in relation to God and His salvific plan. Our mind and heart become healed and our will becomes strengthened and attuned to do what is right – what generates that new life of the Kingdom. Love ‘sets things in order’; in loving we come to develop a ‘compassio’ with the things of God. [15] This is the source and shape of our mission and the gift of discernment. We have already indicated the relational nature of wisdom in Ignatius, but now we can recognise that it comes as gift of the Spirit active in our lives: not just understanding but of knowing how to love. It is the Spirit, the astonishing grace-filled generosity of God, that continues to pour into our hearts (Rom 5:5).

So, Ignatius understands that theology is this: not a speculative endeavour of the intellect but a life that lives in Christ; a love that comes to be – in deeds and not words – for the life of the world.
                                
[1] Cf. Gal. 5.1; 13-24 which is critical for understanding the freedom sought in the Spiritual Exercises (Sp. Exx.). It is a freedom which comes as a ‘grace’ and is the work of the Spirit signifying the new life of Christ. It is a creative, generative freedom, ordered to the works of love, especially the service of neighbour, and notice, too, how for Paul it becomes the touchstone for discernment. The Pauline criteria also help us to correct what might be a tendency to see the effects of consolation and desolation largely in terms of the interior life of the individual. Paul makes it clear that the ‘fruits’ of desolation and consolation often go beyond our own individual inner life to have consequences on the community and the life-giving potential of our relationships. There is also recognition of the problem of ‘freedom’ and especially of its works within the Exercises. This has to do with disputes with Protestantism. Cf. §369.
[2] Sp. Exx. Ann. § 20. Note the progressive deepening of the movement described. This threefold pattern of the grace desired, which is ultimately the grace of being with Christ in his redemptive work, is repeated in several different forms in the course of the Exercises cf. §95-98; 104; 135 ff. Esp. 147; 165 ff.
[3] Sp. Exx. §23.
[4] Sp. Exx. §46.
[5] Sp.Exx. §237.
[6] Cf. The Parable of the Three Classes of Men, Sp. Exx. 149 ff.
[7] Sp.Exx. §136-148; 165-168.
[8] Cf. Sp. Exx. 237 which is a description of the activity of the salvific Economy by which God’s providence is understood as the outpouring of his Love – a Love which is now seen to have the form of Christ. The attributes of God, justice, goodness, mercy are understood as real acts in creation, and therefore manifestations of the Kingdom. Through the grace of the union of service/companionship we are also enabled to participate in these attributes and make them our actions. It is part of the ‘realised eschatology’ that belongs to the Exx. and allows us to see that Nadal’s gloss on Jesuits as ‘contemplatives in action’ might be better understood within this scriptural category rather than an attempt to reconcile the active and contemplative forms of religious life.
[9] Sp. Exx.§15
[10] Sp. Exx. §50; § 141.
[11] Sp. Exx. §60.
[12] Added to the Exercises are The Rules for Thinking with the Church, and their controversial test § 365, ‘What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines.....’ Clearly these ‘rules’ arise out of the controversies of the time, especially Protestantism. In emphasising the Hierarchical Church as the ultimate arbiter of truth the Exx. intend us to understand our relational indebtedness within the economy of grace. It is important see that these rules are about maintaining an undivided Kingdom and an undivided Church. The obedience is not just to a hierarchy but to ‘Christ our Lord’ and ‘the one Spirit’ who hold sway ‘for the salvation of souls.’ But one should not simply read the Exx. within this historical context alone. Within the text, there is clearly an integrated sense of the ‘communio’ of being – part of the restoration which Christ brings about as Head of Creation. An Ignatian understanding of the Church has also to see it with the communio of being, integral to the mediation of the redeemed and sanctified life. In this sense, Christ as head of his Church and of Creation is also the active Truth which informs the whole economy. Christ has epistemological importance and our companionship with Him has epistemological significance for us which is worked out not only in terms of the created world and ecclesiology.
[13] Sp. Exx. §234.
[14] Sp. Exx. § 230.ff.
[15] Ignatius’s sense of this finds more formal theological expression in St Thomas, who says from the habit of charity the spiritual man will have a sense of what is a right judgement, what is in accordance with God’s salvific purpose. Cf. Summa Theologiae II-II 60.1. ad 2. Also, II-II, q 45, a.2c.

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