PLENARY COUNCIL PRAYER
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.
Sunday 9th August 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:
Fr Mike, Marlene Clarke,
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
May the souls of the faithful departed, through
the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen
PREGO REFLECTION
ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
As I prepare to pray, I entrust any distractions to the
Lord, asking for his help in directing my full attention towards him. I may
find it helpful to focus on my breathing as I slow down. When ready, I read
this familiar Gospel, mulling over any image or word that touches me today.
Perhaps I identify with Jesus’s desire to seek a peaceful place to pray to the
Father. I may like to place myself in the scene if this is helpful, pondering
how this might be speaking to me now.
Weekly RamblingsThis has
been an interesting few weeks with the twin ordinations of Frs Steven and
Chathura and their appointment to Mersey Leven and Launceston respectively. As
I’ve mentioned previously, as a Parish we pray for them as they commence their
ministry as Priests in our Archdiocese and wish them every best wish for the
future.
This week
marks the end of the week of Prayer for Vocations – an opportunity for us to
pray that we will continue to find young, and not so young people, who are
willing to give their lives in the service of the gospel by accepting the
vocation to the Priesthood. We all have a vocation to be Christ followers and
so our prayer is also for an increase in our awareness of what it means to be
his witness in the world.
This
morning I went to the Doctor and, whilst it hasn’t been confirmed, I am being
treated for Shingles and am required to self-isolate for the next few days so
Fr Steven is in charge this weekend. This might have some implications for next
week but at this stage things will continue as usual.
Please take
care and stay safe and stay sane, if you can.
SAINT MARY OF THE CROSS MACKILLOP:
Saturday 8th August we celebrate the life of our
first canonised Australian St Mary of the Cross MacKillop.
A quote attributed to St Mary
MacKillop ‘Never see a need without doing something about it’
O God,In every age you call us to be beacons of gospel light, embodying your loving care for all creation, and desire for human flourishing.On this inspiring Feast, may we, like St Mary, have courage to ask the right questions, remove blocks to gospel vision, take new steps in hope and put our lives in your hands.We ask this as disciples of your son, Jesus: Light of his time and all time.One with You and the Holy Spirit Forever and ever.
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
Your prayers are asked for the sick: This has
been an interesting few weeks with the twin ordinations of Frs Steven and
Chathura and their appointment to Mersey Leven and Launceston respectively. As
I’ve mentioned previously, as a Parish we pray for them as they commence their
ministry as Priests in our Archdiocese and wish them every best wish for the
future.
This week marks the end of the week of Prayer for Vocations – an opportunity for us to pray that we will continue to find young, and not so young people, who are willing to give their lives in the service of the gospel by accepting the vocation to the Priesthood. We all have a vocation to be Christ followers and so our prayer is also for an increase in our awareness of what it means to be his witness in the world.
This morning I went to the Doctor and, whilst it hasn’t been confirmed, I am being treated for Shingles and am required to self-isolate for the next few days so Fr Steven is in charge this weekend. This might have some implications for next week but at this stage things will continue as usual.
Please take care and stay safe and stay sane, if you can.
SAINT MARY OF THE CROSS MACKILLOP:Letter From Rome When Rome Falls
More signs that there's no stopping the Catholic Church's long, slow implosion
- Robert Mickens, Rome, August 7, 2020.
This article is from the La-Croix International website - you can access the site here but complete full access is via paid subscription
(Originally published Jan. 23, 2020.)
"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;And when Rome falls – the World."These lines are from Canto the Fourth in Lord Byron's long narrative poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
The great English poet wrote them sometime around 1817 after visiting the Eternal City.
Actually, they are a translation of words written in Latin by another famous Englishman from 8th century – Saint Bede the Venerable.Quandiu stabit colisaeus, stabit et Roma;Quando cadit colisaeus, cadet et RomaQuando cadet Roma, cadet et mundus.
This Roman amphitheater is actually spelled Colosseum and scholars believe Bede was not describing it, but a large bronze statue (Colossus) of Nero, instead.
You can ignore these small discrepancies, but you cannot ignore the principle. It remains.
Namely, there are some institutions that are so sturdy, so ancient and so symbolic that, should they fall, the ramifications would be devastating and far-reaching.
When the Vatican fallsNo doubt many Catholics see the Roman Church and the Vatican similarly to the way Lord Byron used Bede's words to describe the Colosseum.
In their view, if the massive apparatus that has become the Vatican and the papacy were to fall, it would be a disaster not only for Catholicism, but for all of Christianity.
Some of us have noted for a number of years now, that the scenario is not that far-fetched. The Roman Church is in a state of implosion. It has been for a very long time.
Catholics in northern Europe or parts of the Americas where the Church was planted centuries ago know this. They have continuously warned the hierarchs in Rome, who, in turn, have only plugged their ears and shut their eyes.
After all, Rome – indeed, all of Italy – has remained a bastion of Catholic Christianity. Forever. The signs and symbols of the Church and the papacy permeate all of society.
The men of the cloth (and perhaps visitors who do not live here) have always believed the Eternal City – and by extension all of Italy – to be a sprawling, one-industry town. And that industry is Catholicism.
At least that is what people have always pretended. But they can't pretend anymore.
The implosion is being felt in ItalyA well-regarded priest-journalist is predicting that we've just stepped into a new decade "that will see, fatally, the implosion of Catholicism in Italy."
Filippo Di Giacomo, a 68-year-old diocesan priest, says the Italian Church is on the verge of collapse – "its hierarchy, its structures, its territorial presence and, one hopes, its often annoying intrusion" into the country's civic institution and societal life.
He spelled it out in a fascinating article that appeared on Jan. 17 in Venerdì,the weekly magazine published by La Repubblica, Italy's second-best selling daily.
The only thing the Catholic Church is capable of at this point, he says, is adding "mediocrity to mediocrity."
The first thing Di Giacomo notes is that the election of Pope Francis in 2013 marked the end of the monarchical papacy, "an entirely Italian invention from the 11th century, constructed to defend the Church's freedom against interference of the Germanic emperors."
He says this "formidable and efficient machine… has now reached the point of total consumption."
But he adds that the Church in Italy – and by that he means the hierarchy – is "unable to face reality."
No doubt this willful blindness is not limited to Italy's bishops. Prelates from various parts of the world who are currently throwing up obstacles to Pope Francis' efforts to reform the Church are also closing their eyes to reality. But when Rome falls…
No longer the most Catholic country in the worldDi Giacomo observes the clerical world in Italy continues to boast that the Church in Rome and Italy is top of the class universally. But he says the reality is quite different.
For example, Italy was once considered the world's most Catholic country and guarantor of the Church's health and vibrancy. But it now ranks fifth among countries with the most Catholics.
Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines and the United State have all outpaced the Bel Paese. And over the next ten years, Italy will slide further down the list as Catholicism continues to expand rapidly in a number of countries on the African continent.
"Born and raised in the shadow of the monarchical papacy, (the Italian Church) has accumulated structures spread out over 16 ecclesiastical regions. It includes the Apostolic See, a patriarchal see (Venice), 40 metropolitan archdioceses, 20 other non-metropolitan archdioceses, 155 dioceses, 2 territorial prelatures, 6 territorial abbeys and one military ordinariate," Di Giacomo writes.
But that is illusory.
"If you look closer, it appears to be a bunch of empty boxes, or on the way to being gutted, because if the pope is no longer 'begotten not made' by the Italian Church, this Church must take stock of what it really is," the author warns.
Lies, damned lies and statisticsIt's enough to look at the numbers. The statistics don't lie, although Di Giacomo suggests the Italian bishops do. In the very least they are not being completely truthful.
Part of the problem is that it appears that most dioceses and other Catholic entities have not updated their figures in the past ten years. Di Giacomo says you have to look at the "independent research" to find out the real state of affairs.
And it's not pretty.
There are currently 25,610 parishes Italy, plus several thousand more that are non-parochial churches. Di Giacomo estimates that somewhere between 34,000-36,000 are still open, certainly fewer than 40,000.
The problem is there are only 43,523 priests. An estimated 30,000 are from the diocesan clergy, while the rest are members of religious orders.
That is an alarmingly low number when you consider that most – yes, most – of these priests will soon be dead or retired. Fewer and fewer will be replaced.
The most up-to-date study shows that the average age of priests in Italy is 60, and it's as high as 64 in some areas. But here's the thing. Those statistics are from 2009. Di Giacomo claims that in the eleven years since then, the median age of priests has already risen to eighty. Yes, eight-zero!
"The most cynical among the researchers maintain that in order to bring the Italian Church back to the levels of the 1960s and 70s, seminary enrollment would have to increase by 77 percent and, in some regions, by 200 percent," he claims.
And that, he says dryly, "is a miracle no one seems willing to perform."
Di Giacomo's conclusion is that within ten years the Church in Italy will merely be "a Church of abandoned parishes and shrines.
"This is not a pretty scenario, especially in the eyes of Catholics who don't like the current pope. Because most of them are clinging nostalgically to the various ideological and outdated accessories of this imploding Church, the very bits and pieces the pope says are not essential.
Francis does not seem at all alarmed by this collapse. He knows it must happen so that the Church can be re-born. It must walk the journey of dying and rising.
Going back to our earlier image of the Colosseum and using it once more as a metaphor for the Roman Church in its present state, we can ponder the words of Charles Dickens:"It is the most impressive, the most stately, the most solemn, grand majestic, mournful, sight, conceivable. Never, in its bloodiest prime, can the sight of the gigantic Colosseum, full and running over with the lustiest life, have moved one heart, as it must move all who look upon it now, a ruin. God be thanked: a ruin!"
Simply Living The Gospel 2
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 Franciscans found a way to be both very traditional and
very revolutionary at the same time. By emphasizing practice over theory, or
orthopraxy over orthodoxy, the Franciscan tradition taught that love and action
are more important than intellect or speculative truth. Love is the highest
category for the Franciscan School, and we believe that authentic love is not
possible without true inner freedom, nor will love be real or tested unless we
somehow live close to the disadvantaged, who frankly teach us how little we
know about love.
Love is the goal; contemplative practice and solidarity with
suffering are the path. Orthodoxy teaches us the theoretical importance of
love; orthopraxy helps us learn how to love, which is much more difficult. To
be honest, even my Franciscan seminary training was far better at teaching me
how to obey and conform than how to love. I’m still trying to learn how to love
every day of my life.
As we endeavor to put love into action, we come to realize
that, on our own, we are unable to obey Jesus’ command to “Love one another as
I have loved you” (John 13:34). To love as Jesus loves, we must be connected to
the Source of love. Franciscanism found that connection in solitude, silence,
and some form of contemplative prayer, all of which quiet the monkey mind and
teach us emotional sobriety and psychological freedom from our addictions and
attachments. Otherwise, most talk of “repentance” or “change of life” is
largely an illusion and pretense.
Early on, Francis found himself so attracted to
contemplation, and to living out in the caves and in nature, that he was not
sure if he should dedicate his life to prayer or to action. So he asked Sister
Clare and Brother Sylvester to spend some time in prayer about it and then tell
him what they thought he should do. When they came back after a few weeks,
Francis was prepared to do whatever they told him. They both, in perfect
agreement, without having talked to one another, said Francis should not be
solely a contemplative, nor should he only be active in ministry. Francis was
to go back and forth between the two as Jesus did. Francis jumped up with great
excitement and immediately went on the road with this new permission and
freedom.
Before Francis, the “secular” priests worked with the people
in the parishes and were considered “active.” Those who belonged to religious
orders went off to monasteries to be “contemplative” and pray. Francis found a
way to do both and took his prayer on the road. (That’s why Franciscans are
called friars instead of monks.) In fact, prayer is what enabled him to sustain
his life of love and service to others over the long haul, without becoming
cynical or angry. Francis didn’t want a stable form of monastic life; he wanted
us to mix with the world and to find God amidst its pain, confusion, and
disorder. [1] For me, that is still the greatest art form—to dance while
standing still!
Letting Go Of False Fear
This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here Recently in a radio interview, I was asked this question: “If you were on your deathbed, what would you want to leave behind as your parting words?” The question momentarily took me aback. What would I want to leave behind as my last words? Not having time for much reflection, I settled on this. I would want to say: Don’t be afraid. Live without fear. Don’t be afraid of death. Most of all, don’t be afraid of God!”
I’m a cradle Catholic, born to wonderful parents, catechized by some very dedicated teachers, and I’ve had the privilege of studying theology in some of the best classrooms in the world. Still it took me fifty years to rid myself of a number of crippling religious fears and to realize that God is the one person of whom you need not be afraid. It’s taken me most of my life to believe the words that come from God’s mouth over three hundred times in scripture and are the initial words out of the mouth of Jesus whenever he meets someone for the first time after his resurrection: Do not be afraid!
It has been a fifty-year journey for me to believe that, to trust it. For most of my life I’ve lived in a false fear of God, and of many other things. As a young boy, I had a particular fear of lightning storms which in my young mind demonstrated how fierce and threatening God could be. Thunder and lightning were portents which warned us, religiously, to be fearful. I nursed the same fears about death, wondering where souls went after they died, sometimes looking at a dark horizon after the sun had set and wondering whether people who had died were out there somewhere, haunted in that endless darkness, still suffering for what they’d had not gotten right in life. I knew that God was love, but that love also held a fierce, frightening, exacting justice.
Those fears went partially underground during my teenage years. I made my decision to enter religious life at the age of seventeen and have sometimes wondered whether that decision was made freely and not out of false fear. Looking back on it now however, with fifty years of hindsight, I know that it wasn’t fear that compelled me, but a genuine sense of being called, of knowing from the influence of my parents and the Ursuline nuns who catechized me, that one’s life is not one’s own, that one is called to serve. But religious fear remained unhealthily strong within me.
So, what helped me let go of that? This doesn’t happen in a day or year; it is the cumulative effect of fifty years of bits and pieces conspiring together. It started with my parents’ deaths when I was twenty-two. After watching both my mother and father die, I was no longer afraid of death. It was the first time I wasn’t afraid of a dead body since these bodies were my mother and father of whom I was not afraid. My fears of God eased gradually every time I tried to meet God with my soul naked in prayer and came to realize that your hair doesn’t turn white when you are completely exposed before God; instead you become unafraid. My fears lessened too as I ministered to others and learned what divine compassion should be, as I studied and taught theology, as two cancer diagnoses forced me to contemplate for real my own mortality, and as a number of colleagues, family, and friends modeled how one can live more freely.
Intellectually, a number of persons particularly helped me: John Shea helped me realize that God is not a law to be obeyed, but an infinitely empathic energy that wants us to be happy; Robert Moore helped me to believe that God is still looking on us with delight; Charles Taylor helped me to understand that God wants us to flourish; the bitter anti-religious criticism of atheists like Frederick Nietzsche helped me see where my own concept of God and religion needed a massive purification; and an older brother, a missionary priest, kept unsettling my theology with irreverent questions like, what kind of God would want us to be frightened of him? A lot of bits and pieces conspired together.
What’s the importance of last words? They can mean a lot or a little. My dad’s last words to us were “be careful”, but he was referring to our drive home from the hospital in snow and ice. Last words aren’t always intended to leave a message; they can be focused on saying goodbye or simply be inaudible sighs of pain and exhaustion; but sometimes they can be your legacy.
Given the opportunity to leave family and friends a few last words, I think that after I first tried to say a proper goodbye, I’d say this: Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of living or of dying. Especially don’t be afraid of God.
The Parish Of The Future
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 hereIn July, the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy issued an instruction on the “pastoral conversion” of the parish community in the service of the evangelizing mission of the Church. While the focus of the document was clearly on evangelization, it also made a number of important points regarding the reality of parish life moving forward. Here are three:
1) The Parish of the Future Will not Be Limited by GeographyMy own parish, which was launched in 1968, like others of that era, introduced facilities not previously known in most parishes: ample parking, restrooms, handicapped accessibility, a “cry room,” and fellowship space immediately adjacent to the sanctuary. Parish leaders at the time wisely anticipated that how people would experience church in the future would change. And it did.
The parish of the future will approach the Internet in the same way. As the document notes, mobility now means not just geographic movement but also increased fluidity in every context and environment where people live and work, and in all their various forms of communication. If our people are living some significant portion of their lives online then the parish should be there, too. Parish “boundaries” might remain a canonical and administration consideration, but practically, in the age of the Internet, they will become increasingly irrelevant.
Online church will never be a replacement for the Sacraments, but it will be the parish’s new front door, where everyone begins. And parishes of the future will be creative in how they transition newcomers to physical attendance and participation in the Sacraments.
These parishes will design everything – even church sanctuaries – to reflect this opportunity. Investments in audio, visual, and networking technology will be paramount in budgets and evangelization strategies. Staffing will be driven by it. And quality will count more than ever because competition will be increasingly competitive.
2) The Parish of the Future Will Look Much DifferentThe document acknowledges a scary but very real reality that the parish of the future may look very different than it does today. The COVID-19 crisis has acted as an accelerator of the trends of declining attendance, engagement, and finances that parishes across our country have been facing for decades. This will have consequences.
As in business, it might be true for parishes that the ‘middle’ will shrink. In the future, there may be fewer mid-size parishes (150-400 in weekend attendance). Small, boutique parishes, which serve a particular demographic, musical or liturgical style, or ecclesiology will continue to carve out a niche for themselves. But it will be the larger, well-resourced parishes, which benefit from economies of scale, where the great majority of people will find themselves. Staffing, technology, as well as new ways of being church together, like adult small groups, will certainly emerge as very important considerations for these churches.
3) The Parish of the Future Will Require Strong LeadershipThe document reflects at length on the nuances of parish governance given the challenge of priest shortages and parish consolidations in many parts of the world. In these situations, the right relationship in governance must be struck between clergy and laity.
While this debate has been going on for years, and will likely continue as the shortage of clergy becomes even more acute.
But what will not be debated is the emerging reality that in the fast-changing world that increasingly is churchworld, leadership matters. Everything in a parish rises or falls based on getting leadership, at every level, right. The good news is that leadership is a skill and can be strengthened by practice, education, and coaching.
The parish of the future will survive and thrive because of bold, visionary, creative, and dynamic leadership.
Mary MacKillop - Australia's First Saint
History was made on Sunday 17 October, 2010, as Blessed Mary MacKillop was canonised in Rome and became Australia’s first saint. The Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart introduce us to their co-founder, a woman whose relationship with the Church was complex, but her faith in and service of God unceasing.
On Sunday October 17, Mary MacKillop became Australia’s first declared saint when she was canonised by Pope Benedict XVI in St Peter’s Square, Rome.This article was taken from a prepared text by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart.This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
This was an historic day for the Church and for Australia, as the Universal Church recognises Mary as someone who lived a life of heroic goodness, born of her closeness to God and her love of all she met, particularly the poor and marginalised. In canonising her, the Church held Mary up to us and to all who come after us, as a special companion and example for us in our own lives.
Who was Mary MacKillop?Mary MacKillop was an ordinary woman who lived an extraordinary life.
She was born in Fitzroy, Melbourne on 15 January 1842 to Scottish immigrants, Alexander and Flora MacKillop. The family home for Mary and her seven siblings was faith-filled, but often turbulent and troubled due to Alexander’s various failed business dealings which created insecurity in the family income. About her early life she writes, ‘My life as a child was one of sorrow, my home when I had it a most unhappy one.’ For much of their lives the family was dependent on relatives for shelter and support. At age 16, Mary became the main provider for the family. She worked as a governess, then as shop assistant in the stationers ‘Sands and Kenny’, and finally as a school teacher in Portland, Victoria. At 18, Mary moved to Penola, South Australia to work as a governess/teacher for relatives. With a real heart for educating poor children, Mary was soon teaching not only her cousins but many other children from the local area. At Penola, she met Fr Julian Tenison Woods and together they started a school for poor children. In 1866, the pair became co-founders of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. It was the first religious order to be established by an Australian.
Over the next several years the Order grew and the Sisters travelled the countryside setting up schools, orphanages for abandoned or neglected children and other good works for those in need. They were prepared to follow farmers, railway workers and miners into isolated outback areas and live as they lived. Mary and her Sisters soon moved into Queensland and eventually to New South Wales, Victoria and New Zealand.
The Sisters moved freely about the colonies, wherever they learned of a need, a freedom which was resisted by some bishops and others. In 1871 Mary became the subject of a campaign by some of the priests of Adelaide who complained to the Bishop about Fr Woods’ direction of the Order and Mary’s administration and personal conduct. This culminated in Bishop Sheil excommunicating Mary from the Church. Shortly before he died in 1872, Bishop Sheil recognised his mistake and lifted the excommunication, and Mary was completely exonerated of any wrongdoing. As a result of these events, she made the epic journey to Rome by sea in 1873/74 to have the rule of her Order approved by the Pope. Despite her increasingly poor health, Mary’s Sisters continued to flourish in their work for the poor and needy in Australia and New Zealand. She died in North Sydney, on the site where her tomb now lies, in 1909, aged 67.
The Road to SainthoodEven at the time of her death, those who knew her, or knew of her extraordinary work, spoke openly of her holiness – her heroic goodness. Cardinal Moran, the Archbishop of Sydney, is reported as having said after his final visit to her that, ‘This day I consider I have assisted at the death bed of a saint’. The Australian press, both secular and religious, were uncommonly united in speaking of her holiness, her heroic service of God, her open hearted love for the poor and deprived, and her determination to bring a Catholic education to the children of the colonies. Ordinary people also exhibited extraordinary signs of devotion to her.
After many years gathering together the necessary information on Mary’s life, the official Cause for the Canonisation of Mary MacKillop was begun in 1925. In January 1995, Pope John Paul II beatified Mary MacKillop during a Mass at Randwick Racecourse, Sydney. This followed official recognition of a woman being miraculously cured of cancer after praying for Mary’s intercession. The recognition in December 2009 of a second miracle, also a woman being cured of cancer, ensured Mary’s path to canonisation.
A Saint for our TimeThe Church does not make a saint – it recognises a saint. Canonisation is the act by which the Holy Father declares in a definitive and solemn way that a Catholic Christian is actually in the glory of heaven, intercedes for us before the Lord and is to be publicly venerated by the whole Church.
Canonisation is a double statement – about the life of the person and also about the faith of the people who are alive at this moment. They are as much a part of the canonisation as the person who is being recognised.
Sr Anne Derwin, the Congregational Leader of the Sisters of St Joseph, said Mary’s canonisation will be an occasion for gratitude and an opportunity for personal reflection.
‘Mary MacKillop lived her life with an unwavering sense of gratitude and confidence that God would always provide,’ she said.
‘She spoke over and over of “our good God” and she lived with grateful receptivity of God’s love and all that God’s love asked of her in life. She truly imitated the Christ to whom she had committed her life.
‘At this historic time, let us be truly grateful to God for the gift of canonisation which calls us to renewal of our commitment to Christ and to the mission of God in our world’.
Love is the goal; contemplative practice and solidarity with
suffering are the path. Orthodoxy teaches us the theoretical importance of
love; orthopraxy helps us learn how to love, which is much more difficult. To
be honest, even my Franciscan seminary training was far better at teaching me
how to obey and conform than how to love. I’m still trying to learn how to love
every day of my life.
As we endeavor to put love into action, we come to realize
that, on our own, we are unable to obey Jesus’ command to “Love one another as
I have loved you” (John 13:34). To love as Jesus loves, we must be connected to
the Source of love. Franciscanism found that connection in solitude, silence,
and some form of contemplative prayer, all of which quiet the monkey mind and
teach us emotional sobriety and psychological freedom from our addictions and
attachments. Otherwise, most talk of “repentance” or “change of life” is
largely an illusion and pretense.
Early on, Francis found himself so attracted to
contemplation, and to living out in the caves and in nature, that he was not
sure if he should dedicate his life to prayer or to action. So he asked Sister
Clare and Brother Sylvester to spend some time in prayer about it and then tell
him what they thought he should do. When they came back after a few weeks,
Francis was prepared to do whatever they told him. They both, in perfect
agreement, without having talked to one another, said Francis should not be
solely a contemplative, nor should he only be active in ministry. Francis was
to go back and forth between the two as Jesus did. Francis jumped up with great
excitement and immediately went on the road with this new permission and
freedom.
Before Francis, the “secular” priests worked with the people in the parishes and were considered “active.” Those who belonged to religious orders went off to monasteries to be “contemplative” and pray. Francis found a way to do both and took his prayer on the road. (That’s why Franciscans are called friars instead of monks.) In fact, prayer is what enabled him to sustain his life of love and service to others over the long haul, without becoming cynical or angry. Francis didn’t want a stable form of monastic life; he wanted us to mix with the world and to find God amidst its pain, confusion, and disorder. [1] For me, that is still the greatest art form—to dance while standing still!
Recently in a radio interview, I was asked this question: “If you were on your deathbed, what would you want to leave behind as your parting words?” The question momentarily took me aback. What would I want to leave behind as my last words? Not having time for much reflection, I settled on this. I would want to say: Don’t be afraid. Live without fear. Don’t be afraid of death. Most of all, don’t be afraid of God!”
I’m a cradle Catholic, born to wonderful parents, catechized by some very dedicated teachers, and I’ve had the privilege of studying theology in some of the best classrooms in the world. Still it took me fifty years to rid myself of a number of crippling religious fears and to realize that God is the one person of whom you need not be afraid. It’s taken me most of my life to believe the words that come from God’s mouth over three hundred times in scripture and are the initial words out of the mouth of Jesus whenever he meets someone for the first time after his resurrection: Do not be afraid!
It has been a fifty-year journey for me to believe that, to trust it. For most of my life I’ve lived in a false fear of God, and of many other things. As a young boy, I had a particular fear of lightning storms which in my young mind demonstrated how fierce and threatening God could be. Thunder and lightning were portents which warned us, religiously, to be fearful. I nursed the same fears about death, wondering where souls went after they died, sometimes looking at a dark horizon after the sun had set and wondering whether people who had died were out there somewhere, haunted in that endless darkness, still suffering for what they’d had not gotten right in life. I knew that God was love, but that love also held a fierce, frightening, exacting justice.
Those fears went partially underground during my teenage years. I made my decision to enter religious life at the age of seventeen and have sometimes wondered whether that decision was made freely and not out of false fear. Looking back on it now however, with fifty years of hindsight, I know that it wasn’t fear that compelled me, but a genuine sense of being called, of knowing from the influence of my parents and the Ursuline nuns who catechized me, that one’s life is not one’s own, that one is called to serve. But religious fear remained unhealthily strong within me.
So, what helped me let go of that? This doesn’t happen in a day or year; it is the cumulative effect of fifty years of bits and pieces conspiring together. It started with my parents’ deaths when I was twenty-two. After watching both my mother and father die, I was no longer afraid of death. It was the first time I wasn’t afraid of a dead body since these bodies were my mother and father of whom I was not afraid. My fears of God eased gradually every time I tried to meet God with my soul naked in prayer and came to realize that your hair doesn’t turn white when you are completely exposed before God; instead you become unafraid. My fears lessened too as I ministered to others and learned what divine compassion should be, as I studied and taught theology, as two cancer diagnoses forced me to contemplate for real my own mortality, and as a number of colleagues, family, and friends modeled how one can live more freely.
Intellectually, a number of persons particularly helped me: John Shea helped me realize that God is not a law to be obeyed, but an infinitely empathic energy that wants us to be happy; Robert Moore helped me to believe that God is still looking on us with delight; Charles Taylor helped me to understand that God wants us to flourish; the bitter anti-religious criticism of atheists like Frederick Nietzsche helped me see where my own concept of God and religion needed a massive purification; and an older brother, a missionary priest, kept unsettling my theology with irreverent questions like, what kind of God would want us to be frightened of him? A lot of bits and pieces conspired together.
What’s the importance of last words? They can mean a lot or a little. My dad’s last words to us were “be careful”, but he was referring to our drive home from the hospital in snow and ice. Last words aren’t always intended to leave a message; they can be focused on saying goodbye or simply be inaudible sighs of pain and exhaustion; but sometimes they can be your legacy.
Given the opportunity to leave family and friends a few last words, I think that after I first tried to say a proper goodbye, I’d say this: Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of living or of dying. Especially don’t be afraid of God.
In July, the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy issued an instruction on the “pastoral conversion” of the parish community in the service of the evangelizing mission of the Church. While the focus of the document was clearly on evangelization, it also made a number of important points regarding the reality of parish life moving forward. Here are three:
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ReplyDeleteThank you