Friday, 30 October 2020

Solemnity of All Saints

 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
Assistant Priest: Fr Steven Smith
Mob: 0411 522 630 
Priest in Residence:  Fr Phil McCormack  
Mob: 0437 521 257 
Seminarian in Residence: Kanishka Perera
Mob: 0499 035 199 
Postal Address: PO Box 362, Devonport 7310
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street, Devonport 7310 
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 2783  Email: merseyleven@aohtas.org.au 
Secretary: Annie Davies Finance Officer: Anne Fisher


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:  Ulverstone - Fridays (10am - 10:30am), Devonport - Saturday (5:15pm– 5.45pm) 
Eucharistic Adoration - Devonport: Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus 
Benediction with Adoration Devonport:  First Friday each month 
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – Mondays 6pm Community Room Ulverstone 

SUNDAY MASS ONLINE: 
Please go to the following link on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MLCP1
Mon 2nd Nov        7:00pm Devonport ... Annual Remembrance Mass
Tues 3rd Nov        9.30am Devonport  ... Martin de Porres
Wed 4th Nov        9:30am Ulverstone ... Charles Boromeo
Thurs 5th Nov     8.30am Devonport ... pre-recording Sunday Mass
                             12 noon Devonport  
Fri 6th Nov          9:30am Ulverstone
                             12 noon Devonport
Sat 7th Nov         9:30am Ulverstone
                              6:00pm Devonport  
      6:00pm Ulverstone
Sun 8th Nov      10:00am Devonport    ALSO LIVESTREAM
     10:00am Ulverstone 
 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
                        

Your prayers are asked for the sick:
Jill Cotterill, Deb Edwards, Sydney Corbett, Merv Jaffray, Delma Pieri, & …

Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Oscar van Leent, Stan Laffer, Fr Liam Floyd, Athol Brown, Dolly Eaves, Brian Robertson, Fr Frank Gibson, Graham McKenna 
            
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 28th October – 3rd November, 2020
Lawrence McGuire, Kenneth Sutton, Margaret Doody, Bernard P Marshall, Cyril Allford, Allan Fay, Tom Knight, Edith McCormack, Maurice Evans, John Imlach, Jeremy Oakford.

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

PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:  

After stilling myself and allowing the busyness of my mind to settle, I consciously place myself before the Lord. 
I ask for the grace to open my heart, body and mind to his presence.
I lovingly read this familiar Gospel scene with a curious mind, hoping that I may be open to the possibility of hearing a truth for the first time.
It may deepen my prayer to use my imagination to enter more fully into the Gospel scene. 
I see, hear and feel the crowds ... perhaps I am one of them? 
What do I notice when Jesus starts to speak and teach?
How do people react to him …? How do I react? What do I feel?
Is there a Beatitude that speaks to my own lived experience?
I imagine the crowd leaving, until only Jesus and myself remain sitting on the hillside. 
I share with Jesus my deepest desires … I sit …. I listen … 
When I am ready, I leave the hillside too, and close my prayer with my own words of gratitude.
                                 

Weekly Ramblings

This weekend is the final weekend of our Month of Prayer. Over these weeks we have invited people to pray the Rosary, offered opportunities for people to experience Praying with Chant-Song, Centering Prayer, the Divine Office and this weekend Ignatian Imagining.

Each of these forms are just some of the many ways that people can experience prayer – again, not saying that any particular type of prayer or prayer style is better than any other – this is just a chance to experience something different.

We are currently preparing a Feedback sheet which we will make available to everyone who has participated in one of the events inviting comments from this experience and suggestions for the future.

Now a huge apology. It was only on Tuesday this week that I learnt that the Facebook link to Sunday Mass hadn’t been uploaded over the past two weekends. It comes back to a breakdown in communications in the house and will be rectified for this weekend and into the future.

A reminder that you don’t need a special link to either Facebook or YouTube to find the Sunday Mass. On Facebook it is simply https://facebook.com/MLCP1 and on YouTube simply type Mersey Leven Catholic Parish into the search bar and all our videos are available.

During the month of November our Parish Remembrance Book will be on or near the altar at every Mass as we remember our loved ones during the month. We begin this time of remembering with our Annual Mass for the recently deceased family and friends of parishioners at OLOL next Monday 2nd November at 7pm. Unfortunately, due to Covid restrictions, we will not be having a cuppa after Mass.

Take care, stay safe and stay sane 
                                 

2021 COLUMBAN ART CALENDARS are now available from the Piety Shop at OLOL Church Devonport and Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone. Cost $10.00 each.
                                 
OUR LADY OF MERCY COLLEGE REUNION LUNCH
Furner's Hotel (Chelsea Room) Ulverstone Friday 27th November for interested past pupils of Our Lady Of Mercy College Deloraine at 12 noon. Please phone Mary Owen 0429 354 406 to book a seat as numbers are limited to 20 people.
                                 


Come one, come all, 
BINGO will be recommencing Thursday 5th November.
Eyes down 7:30pm. 
Covid safe procedures will be followed.
Help from anyone wishing to volunteer would be greatly appreciated.
                                 

A SPLENDID SECRET
A highly respected international speaker on spirituality will deliver the 2020 John Wallis Memorial Lecture from England, via zoom, on Tuesday 24 November, 7-8:30 pm. Dr Gemma Simmonds CJ will discuss the spirituality of the Pope’s new encyclical in a lecture entitled “A Splendid Secret: Fratelli Tutti and the Transformation of Relationships”. Due to our Zoom capacity, registration will be required. Please email spirit@graciousgenerosity.com.au to indicate your intention to attend. Local COVID-19 protocols will determine the number of participants at any one location. Further information: Eva Dunn 0417 734 503
                                 

REFLECTION BY FR MICHAEL TATE
The Beatitudes … A Call to Action

How can those suffering grinding poverty such that their whole personality is impoverished – the poor in spirit – be ‘Blessed’? How can those who hunger and thirst for justice be ‘Blessed’? The answer lies in the new community which Our Lord is establishing under the reign of God.

There are people within this new society who do everything possible to lift the poor out of poverty, to comfort those who are mourning, to make sure the gentle share in the earth’s resources, to satisfy the craving for justice. These are ‘saints’ who are merciful, pure in heart, makers of peace.

The full measure of authentic humanity is Jesus Christ. But there are millions, only a few celebrated in the Church’s calendar, who have tried to measure up to the challenge presented by the Teacher of the Beatitudes. These are saints, those who know that they cannot help create the Beatitude society out of some political ideology, but who wholeheartedly respond to the teaching of the One whose Holy Spirit can empower rising to the challenge.

We might pause a moment to pray that God may deal with us mercifully as we fall short of the full stature of the One who embodied the Beatitudes, at the same time as we celebrate the lives of the countless many who have measured up superlatively, the saints whose feast day we celebrate.
                                 


Letter From Rome 

The Pope's 13 New Cardinals And The Next Conclave


Francis has chosen nine new cardinal-electors, but his most decisive pick may be one of the four men who are already beyond the voting age

-  Robert Mickens, Rome, October 30, 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 finally happened.

Pope Francis on October 25 announced that he's decided to hold another ordinary consistory to create new cardinals.

The announcement had been expected the previous Sunday, but it seems the 83-year-old Jesuit pope was not amused that somebody "leaked" the news and he decided to hold it back for another week.

Francis named 13 men who will get the prestigious red hat.

Nine of them, including an Italian Franciscan who is not yet a bishop, are eligible to vote in a conclave. The other four are already 80 or older and cannot participate in the election of the next pope.

These men will formally become cardinals at a Vatican ceremony scheduled for Nov. 28 and Francis is likely to celebrate Mass with them the next day, the First Sunday of Advent. Or at least with those who come for the consistory.

The Vatican has just returned to an almost complete lockdown because of an explosion of new coronavirus cases in Italy. As of next week, the pope will go back to broadcasting his Wednesday general audience online from the Apostolic Library, rather than in the presence of visitors.

So it's not clear if all the cardinals-designate can or will actually show up. Their presence is not necessary as it was explained here a couple of weeks ago.

The list of those Francis has chosen to join the Church's most exclusive "club" in this seventh consistory of his pontificate is, to say the least, "interesting".

The nine who will help elect the next pope
Let's start with the nine cardinal-electors. Four of the first six on the list come as no real surprise or novelty.

Cardinals-elect Mario Grech (the 63-year-old Maltese secretary general of the Synod of Bishops), Marcello Semeraro (the nearly 73-year-old Italian prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints), Wilton Gregory (Archbishop of Washington, also soon to be 73) and Celestino Aós Braco OFM Capuchin (the 75-year-old Archbishop of Santiago, Chile) are all in posts that have been held by a cardinal before.

As in his previous six previous consistories, the real news is who is not on the list.

Francis once again decided to deny the red hat to a number of men who lead major archdioceses around the world – such as Venice and Los Angeles – that are traditionally headed by a cardinal.

Like he's done in the earlier consistories, however, the Latin American pope has again elected to give a conclave vote to bishops (and a simple priest) that come from smaller dioceses and places that have never had a cardinal before.

Such is the case with Cardinal-designate Antoine Kambanda. The archbishop of Kigali, who turns 62 on November 10, will be Rwanda's first member of the Church's electoral college.

Then there is Cardinal-elect Jose Fuerte Advincula, 68, of the Philippines. For the past 11 years he's been archbishop of Capiz, a mid-size diocese by the standards of Asia's most Catholic country.

It's possible that the pope could move him from the Filipino "seafood capital" to the country's most important city and real capital, Manila. He would thus fill a vacancy that was created earlier this year when Cardinal Antonio Tagle was called to Rome to head the Vatican's powerful evangelization dicastery, Propaganda Fide.

A cardinal from the "peripheries"
The only cardinal-elector of this new group that Francis plucked from the "peripheries", as he's been inclined to do in the past, is Cardinal-designate Cornelius Sim.

The 69-year-old has been the apostolic vicar of Brunei Darussalam since 2004. There are only 17,000 Catholics among the 470,000 inhabitants of this tiny nation located on the island of Borneo, surrounded by Malaysia and the South China Sea.

The cardinal-designate is the only bishop in a country that has all of three parishes.

Many Italians are upset that Francis has again deprived archbishops in Venice, Turin and Palermo from getting the cardinal's hat. But they cannot complain too loudly.

Francis very shrewdly named three of their countrymen electors. But two of them were not expected.

Italians destined for bigger things
Cardinal-designate Augusto Paolo Lojudice, 56, has been Archbishop of Siena since May 2019 after spending four years as an auxiliary bishop of Rome.

The last cardinal to head this Tuscan diocese was a man named Celio Piccolimini and that was in the late 17th century. This particular Piccolomini was also the last of long line of bishops from this prominent noble family. Two of them – Pius II and Pius III – were elected popes.

Cardinal-elect Lojudice is probably not in line to succeed Francis, but the current pope likely has plans to make him the next president of the Italian Episcopal Conference. And that could happen soon.

The current president, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, is already 78 years old. And in the past several days he tested positive for COVID-19.

Plucked from the friary
The third cardinal-elector from Italy came as a real shocker. He's Friar Mauro Gambetti, a 55-year-old Conventual Franciscan (Grey Friar) who is the "custos" or guardian (house superior) of the Sacro Convento of Assisi.

That's the "monastery" next to the famous basilica where one finds the tomb of St. Francis.

Cardinal-designate Gambetti is obviously destined for a new assignment, probably as a bishop in an Italian diocese (Turin, perhaps?) or in some other office, most likely in the Vatican.

What would he do if he were to remain in Assisi? His term as custos of the Sacro Convento will soon be over. In fact, the Conventuals have already appointed his successor."

If I should forget you Jerusalem…"
Meanwhile, Pope Francis has named another 55-year-old Italian Franciscan the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. He's Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, a member of the Order of Friars Minor, the largest male branch of the so-called "Franciscan Family".

Pizzaballa had been apostolic administrator of the Latin Patriarchate since 2016 and it was thought that, not being Arab, he would be brought to head a diocese in Italy.

He's not part of the group of newly announced cardinals, but might there be a red hat in his future, too? Jerusalem is, after all, the place where it all started. It is the Mother Church of Christianity.

And, today, it is also part of what could be called the "periphery". Christians, especially those in communion with Rome, certainly are a minority in the region of the Middle East.

A couple of cardinals "in pectore"?
When it was first suggested last July that the pope was intent on making more cardinals this calendar year, the word was that the Vatican had ordered 15 rings for the occasion. If that is true, who were (or still are) the intended recipients of those other two rings and red hats?

They could be for cardinals Francis has already selected in pectore – that is, without announcing their names at this time because current political difficulties or other factors make it impossible or imprudent.

It is said that John Paul II carefully pondered giving the red hat to Archbishop Michel Sabbah, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1987-2008.

But the Holy See was in a delicate dance with the State of Israel over Church rights and the forging of diplomatic relations. The Israelis were vehemently opposed to the idea of Sabbah, an Arab Christian born in Nazareth, becoming a cardinal.

However, Pizzaballa is a very different character. Although he's lived in Jerusalem since 1990, he is not an Arab-speaker. Instead, he's fluent in modern Hebrew.

The current Israeli leaders would probably oppose any Vatican plans to permanently post a cardinal in what they call the "Jewish State". But if there were anyone they might be persuaded to accept, it would be someone like Pizzaballa.

There are bishops in other places where it is even more plausible that Pope Francis may have named a cardinal or two in pectore. One obviously thinks of China or Turkey. Perhaps the Arab Peninsula. Or what of North Korea?

We may never know. We must wait to see if or when the pope decides he can finally reveal their names.

The Gang of Four: elders who cannot vote
Oh, yes… Francis also announced the names of four men who are age 80 or older who will get the coveted red hat.

Since men of this age cannot vote in a conclave, the only right and duty that distinguishes cardinals from any other bishop, the over-80s are often referred to as "honorary cardinals".

And mostly that's what they are. They enter the college already retired. And often they are academics, theologians and lifetime mid-level Vatican officials. In short, they will have little influence on the big decisions that are made in Rome or at a conclave.

Two men from this group that the pope will make cardinals next month are somewhat different.

The prophetic voice
Cardinal-designate Raniero Cantalamessa is an 86-year-old Capuchin Franciscan priest who has been the Preacher of the Papal Household since the pontificate of John Paul II. He was a pioneer of the Catholic Pentecostals Movement in the late 1960s, better known today as the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.

He is a prophetic preacher and, at times, he can be a firebrand. He could be a persuasive voice in pre-conclave talks that all cardinals – both those who can and those who cannot vote – are obliged to attend before the electors are locked in the Sistine Chapel to select the next Bishop of Rome.

But there is one other man, an 80-year-old, whose influence at the Vatican should not be under-estimated – not now nor at the next conclave, if it should take place in the next couple of years, which is very likely.

A very rare bird
Cardinal-designate Silvano Tomasi may be the single most important name Francis put on the biglietto (the list) for the November 28 consistory.

But you would not know this by reading press reports, which have focused almost exclusively on Tomasi's 13 years as the Holy See's permanent observer at the UN offices in Geneva.

Italian-born, but a naturalized US citizen, he is a member of the Scalabrini Missionaries, a religious congregation dedicated to caring for immigrants and migrants.

Reports have mostly concluded that the pope is making Tomasi an "honorary cardinal" in recognition of his service in promoting unilateral diplomacy during his time in Geneva.

Somewhat more astute Vatican watchers, however, have pointed out that it's the cardinal-designate's expertise in the field of migration that has earned him the red hat.

That's a bit closer to the truth. Tomasi worked for a number of years at the now-defunct Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerants and did brilliant work as its secretary (or No. 2 official – the one that runs daily operations) from 1989-1996.

An unexpected, but life-changing career change
When the head of that office – the future Cardinal Giovanni Chelli – was about to retire, experts in migration were pushing to have Tomasi take over the top job. But the Cardinal Secretary of State, Angelo Sodano, was saving the seat for some lifelong papal diplomat he could have John Paul reward with a red hat.

As a consolation prize, Sodano had Tomasi – who was then still a priest – named apostolic nuncio to Ethiopia and Eritrea in 1996. It was hardly a plum diplomatic post, but the newly ordained Archbishop Tomasi did stellar work.

He was then sent to Geneva in 2003 where he was saddled with being the Vatican's voice at numerous UN agencies, most of which dealt with issues – that he admitted – were beyond his competence. But he found resources and people who helped inform and shape the excellent work he did.

Archbishop Tomasi returned to Rome in 2016 after his "retirement". He had early stages of Parkinson's and most people thought he would lead a quiet life in a Scalabrinian community.

A hidden hand behind Vatican reforms
But Pope Francis had other plans and quietly gave him a new and not much publicized task – one of the most important in the current pope's effort to reform the Roman Curia.

Francis entrusted Tomasi with overseeing the creation of the department now known as the Dicastery of Promoting Integral Human Development, which is headed by Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana and has Cardinal Michael Czerney as one of its department heads.

It was mammoth challenge; much bigger than most people who have never worked in the Vatican might appreciate.

But Tomasi – with tact, diplomacy, trustworthiness and genuine affability – was able to merge several previously existing Vatican offices, including the one where he had once served as secretary, into a single super-dicastery without causing a civil war.

Vatican officials agree that it was just short of working a miracle.

Pope Francis immediately recognized Tomasi's skillfulness in human relations and also appointed him to flank Cardinal Angelo Becciu, pontifical delegate to the Order of Malta, to help reform that Vatican-affiliated organization.

Now that Becciu has been forced to relinquish his rights as a cardinal, it is expected that the pope will make Tomasi the pontifical delegate.

These are the real reasons why Pope Francis is making him a cardinal. And not just for the present, but also for that time -- probably in the not too distant future -- when the cardinals are called to elect a new pope.

You can bet that Cardinal Silvano Tomasi will play a key role in shaping the conclave. He knows all the players as well as anyone. And with his unique skillset he will be moderator, if not a kingmaker.

He may be the most important cardinal this very unconventional pope has created up to now.
                                 

Stardust And A Divine Spark


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 
 
In her book Race and the Cosmos, Dr. Barbara Holmes presents a new way for us to address oppression by recognizing who we are and the commonality we share as members of the human race. When we encounter other ways of knowing, we may find ourselves discomforted and even distressed by the pain that our nation, our church, or even we ourselves have caused others. Today, I want to offer a perspective that can lead to healing and wholeness, instead of our too ready defensiveness. Holmes writes:  
So much has changed since Dr. King expressed [in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”].  his hope for a “not too distant tomorrow” of radiant human mutuality. . . . 

However, the clouds of race and racism in American continue to loom, threatening and dangerous. . . . The ghosts of oppression are shape-shifting into new forms and expanding their territory. . . . Despite the apparent advances of women, people of color (POC), and the LGBTQIA+ community, racism, violence, xenophobia, and anti-immigrant tropes seem to be on the rise. 

Although this is a discouraging reality, I am convinced that a community-called-beloved is possible. This is an admittedly fragile possibility, but it is not a utopian dream. I believe that people of good will harbor a persistent hope that our planet can be a place of belonging for all its inhabitants. To view the world differently is to recognize the delusions that we have willingly embraced and admit our own complicity in the empowerment of systems of oppression. 

In America, we have encoded the languages of equality, freedom, and justice into our myths of national “goodness,” yet we remain infatuated with power and privilege. Also, we support corrupt and rapacious political and economic systems that prey on the vulnerable. It will take a shift in language and purpose to free us from this limited and materialistic view of human potential. 

Perhaps the language of science, cosmology, and physics can help us to see our plight and our opportunity. . . . [With] chaos in our social systems, we are in such dire need of vision, imagination, and love of neighbor that this rhetorical experiment is worth a try. Currently, we are using language to disguise our commonalities and exacerbate our differences. Narratives about POC often emphasize inherent inferiority and criminality, when the truth is that all of us embody stardust and a divine spark with cosmic origins. 

We come from mystery and return to it at the end of the life journey. What a gift to be on earth during an era when the universe is making itself known to and through the human race. We are part of an unfolding that is ongoing, yet, around the planet, people and systems are in crisis and we don’t seem to know what to do. . . . Perhaps the first steps require that we free ourselves from negative stereotypes and recognize our common cosmic origins. 
                                 

What Kind Of House Can You Build For Me?

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

What’s right and what’s wrong? We fight a lot over moral issues, often with a self-assured righteousness. And mostly we fall into that same self-righteousness whenever we argue about sin. What constitutes a sin and what makes for a serious sin? Different Christian denominations and different schools of thought within them lean on various kinds of biblical and philosophical reasoning in trying to sort this out, often bitterly disagreeing with each other and provoking more anger than consensus.

Partly that’s to be expected since moral questions must take into account the mystery of human freedom, the limitations inherent in human contingency, and the bewildering number of existential situations that vary from person to person. It’s not easy in any given situation to tell what’s right and what’s wrong, and even more difficult to tell what’s sinful and what’s not.

Intending no offense to how our churches and moral thinkers have classically approached moral questions, I believe there’s a better way to approach them that, more healthily, takes into account human freedom, human limitations, and the singular existential situation of every individual. The approach isn’t my own, but one voiced by the Prophet Isaiah who offers us this question from God: What kind of house can you build for me? (Isaiah 66, 1) That question should undergird our overall discipleship and all of our moral choices.

What kind of house can you build for me? Men and women of faith have generally taken this literally, and so from ancient times to this very day have built magnificent temples, shrines, churches, and cathedrals to show their faith in God. That’s wonderful, but the invitation Isaiah voices is, first and foremost, about the kind of house we’re meant to build inside ourselves. How do we enshrine the image and likeness of God inside our body, our intellect, our affectivity, our actions? What kind of “church” or “cathedral” is our very person? That’s the deeper question in terms of moral living.

Beyond a very elementary level, our moral decision-making should no longer by guided by the question of right or wrong, is this sinful or not?  Rather it should be guided and motivated by a higher question: What kind of house can you build for me? At what level do I want live out my humanity and my discipleship? Do I want to be more self-serving or more generous? Do I want to be petty or noble? Do I want to be self-pitying or big of heart? Do I want to live out my commitments in a fully honest fidelity or am I comfortable betraying others and myself in hidden ways? Do I want to be a saint or am I okay being mediocre?

At a mature level of discipleship (and human maturity) the question is no longer, is this right wrong? That’s not love’s question. Love’s question is rather, how can I go deeper? At what level can I live out love, truth, light, and fidelity in my life?

Allow me a simple, earthy example to illustrate this. Consider the issue of sexual chastity: is masturbation wrong and sinful? I once heard a moral professor take a perspective on this which reflects the challenge of Isaiah. Here, in a paraphrase, is how he framed the issue: “I don’t believe it’s helpful to contextualize this question as did the classical moral theology texts, by saying it’s a grave disorder and seriously sinful. Nor do I believe that it’s helpful to say what our culture and much of contemporary psychology is saying, that it’s morally indifferent. I believe that a more helpful way to approach this is not to look at it through the prism of right or wrong, sinful or not. Rather, ask yourself this: at what level do I want to live? At what level do I want to carry my chastity, my fidelity, and my honesty? At what point in my life do I want to accept carrying more of the tension that both my discipleship and my humanity ask of me? What kind of person do I want to be? Do I want to be someone who is fully transparent or someone who has hidden goods under the counter? Do I want to live in full sobriety?” What kind of “temple” do I want to be?  What kind of house can I build for God?

This, I believe, is the ideal way we should stand before the moral choices in our lives. Granted, this isn’t a spirituality for persons whose moral development is so weak or impaired that they are struggling still with the more fundamental demands of the Ten Commandments. Such persons need remedial and therapeutic help, and that’s a different (though needed) task.

And one further point, this moral choice comes to us, as do all the invitations from God, as an invitation, not as a threat. It’s through love and not threat that God invites us into life and discipleship, always gently asking us: what kind of house can you build for me?
                                 

St Henry Morse SJ: 'A Saviour Of Life Unto Life'

Of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales canonised on 25 October 1970, ten were Jesuits. Among them were saints such as Edmund Campion, Nicholas Owen and Robert Southwell, whose stories are well known. Yet on the fiftieth anniversary of the martyrs’ canonisation, occurring as it does amid a pandemic, Michael Holman SJ, a former Provincial of the Jesuits in Britain and is Acting Superior of the London Jesuit Community, invites us to study the life of a lesser known Jesuit martyr, St Henry Morse, ‘priest of the plague’. 
This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here  
 
On 25 October 2020, the Church in England and Wales will celebrate a significant anniversary. On that day fifty years ago, in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Pope Paul VI canonised forty men and women all of whom were martyred in England and Wales during the Reformation and the years that followed, between 1535 and 1679.

In his homily, the pope, while praising the martyrs’ ‘fearless faith and marvellous constancy’, noted that in so many other respects they were so different: ‘In age and sex, in culture and education, in social status and occupation, in character and temperament, in qualities natural and supernatural and in the external circumstances of their lives’. What united them all was an ‘interior quality of unshakeable loyalty to the vocation given them by God and the sacrifice of their lives as a loving response to that call’.

In 1970, I was a pupil in the Jesuit college in Wimbledon. Devotion to these martyrs was a prominent feature of school life: we were encouraged to think of them as our heroes. Stories of their lives and especially their bloody, violent deaths, were often told in assemblies and during religious education lessons. Their portraits hung on the walls of the corridors and classrooms. There was one painting which featured all forty of them, standing in their lay or religious dress around an altar underneath a gallows with the Tower of London, where many were imprisoned, looming in the background. Two of the four houses to which we belonged were named after two of these martyrs, Edmund Campion and Robert Southwell, and the others after St Thomas More and St John Fisher, martyrs who had been canonised 35 years previously.

Even as a schoolboy, I was conscious of being part of a minority Catholic community, separate from and to some extent feeling threatened by the dominant Protestant culture of the country in which we lived, and which even then regarded us as somehow foreign. I remember discussing with one much admired history teacher the number of high offices of state from which we Catholics were excluded and I was fascinated by how Catholic historians would interpret the history of the Reformation period differently from most of those who wrote our textbooks. Every Friday afternoon the whole school would attend benediction in the nearby Sacred Heart church at which we would recite a prayer for the conversion of England.

Some of these divisions were reflected in my family life. My mother was born Catholic and my father a life-long member of the Church of England. I remember the upset I felt when I was told that, as theirs was a ‘mixed marriage’, they were not allowed singing, only organ music, at their wedding and that it took place not inside but outside the sanctuary of the church. At Easter and Christmas when I was a small boy my father would take himself off to Christ Church, the nearby Anglican church, and to this day it saddens me that he always went there alone.

When martyrs are canonised, we are encouraged not only to honour what they did and how they died but to take them as models for our own lives as well. We can also ask them to intercede for us, that their virtues might be ours too. We live in happily more ecumenical times and Catholics, by and large, find themselves accepted in public life, so do these martyrs have anything to say to the way we live our discipleship of Jesus today?

This question has surfaced for me a good deal in recent months as the anniversary approached. Ten of the forty martyrs were brother Jesuits which has made the question still more poignant. What, if anything, do they have to say to my living the Jesuit vocation in a very different world? Furthermore, we have recently reorganised our seven Jesuit houses in London into one community in seven locations, a structure curiously similar to that which existed in the seventeenth century. Might our new community’s patron be found among these ten?

One of these martyrs has particularly caught my attention. Less well-known than St Edmund Campion, who left behind a stellar career at Oxford to become a Jesuit and priest, or the poet St Robert Southwell, or the builder of priest-holes St Nicholas Owen, St Henry Morse ministered in London and became known as the ‘priest of the plague’. As our one London community was established during a pandemic, with a number of our men engaged in work not unlike his, he appeared to be one suitable candidate for our patron.

Henry Morse was born in 1595 in Broome, a small Suffolk village less than a mile from the Norfolk border where he was baptised into the Church of England. He was executed before a crowd of thousands on 1 February 1645 at Tyburn in London. Fr Philip Caraman SJ’s biography of Morse is more than 60 years old and aspects of it have no doubt been superseded by more recent scholarship, but his account of Morse’s life is well worth reading: it is vividly told and packed full of detail drawn for the most part from primary sources. Caraman paints a picture of an unfailingly generous man who in the most adverse of circumstances served the poorest with little or no regard for his own safety and with great kindness.

Many aspects of Morse’s life raise questions. By the age of nineteen, after a year in Cambridge and another at the Inns of Court, he had taken himself off to the English College founded by Cardinal William Allen at Douai in northern France where he became a Catholic. He returned to England to settle his family affairs prior to beginning his studies for the priesthood. He was arrested, probably at Dover, and thrown into a prison for four years where he ministered to the sick. He was eventually released when improved relations with Spain led to an amnesty for imprisoned Catholics. Seemingly undeterred, he returned to Douai before being sent to the English College in Rome where he was taught by Jesuits and where he was ordained priest in 1624. It was here he conceived the idea of joining the Society of Jesus. He served his novitiate while ministering in the Newcastle area and while serving another period of imprisonment in York, where again he engaged in charitable work among his fellow prisoners, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. On release in 1628, he was banished from England and then acted as a chaplain to English and Irish troops attached to the Spanish army in the Low Countries before being sent back to England in 1633.

What was it that enabled him to defy convention and choose a way of life that was not only unconventional but which put his life at risk? What was it that enabled him again and again while in prison to turn his attention from himself to the needs of others? How was it that, despite years of imprisonment, he longed to return to England even though he knew of the dangers that awaited him there?

His freedom was remarkable. Where did it come from? Certainly, he had a strong conviction that the Catholic Church was the one true Church. Certainly too, he had an equally strong desire to be of service to his brothers and sisters whose eternal salvation, as he understood it, was at risk so long as they were separated from this Church. But especially significant, it seems to me, is what one contemporary of his in Rome, Ambrose Corby, wrote in a memoir of Morse: he was a ‘lover of the cross of Christ’. Was this love the source of his freedom? A love that led him to desire to be as closely associated with Jesus as he could be; to share Jesus’s sufferings and to be with Jesus as he shared the suffering of others?

It’s this desire to be with Jesus, wherever that love may take us, which Fr Gerald O’Mahony wrote about in the context of the third week of the Spiritual Exercises when the retreatant prays for ‘sorrow with Christ in sorrow, anguish with Christ in anguish, tears and deep grief because of the great affliction Christ endures for me’ (Spiritual Exercises §203):

I would rather
be here with you
than anywhere else
without you

I would rather
have nothing
and be with you
than have everything else
without you

I would rather
be mocked and ridiculed
with you than be living comfortably
and well thought of
without you

Morse’s freedom was much in evidence when he was sent by the Jesuit superior in London, Fr Matthew Wilson, to work in the area of the parish of St Giles in the Fields, near present day Tottenham Court Road station and to the south of Bloomsbury, then a poor and densely populated area of London. His ministry amongst the plague victims was undertaken together with the secular priest John Southworth, also one of the canonised martyrs whose body now lies in the Chapel of St George and the English Martyrs in Westminster Cathedral. He began with some days of prayer in a Jesuit rest-house near the village of Cheam in Surrey, an hour’s ride from London.

Morse arrived in St Giles in the spring of 1635. It was with the coming of warmer weather in April that the extent of the outbreak of plague was recognised as more than a minor occurrence. Reading Caraman’s account, one is struck by the at least superficial similarities of conditions then with those that mark today’s pandemic. The best scientific advice was followed, as then supplied by the Royal College of Physicians. Plague victims and their families were placed in strict social isolation; others avoided eating and socialising with them lest they caught the plague. With visiting forbidden, loneliness became a problem. Business collapsed and unemployment increased with consequent lawlessness. Some refused to report their illness and failed to isolate, and consequently the plague spread and the number of victims increased. Theories about the cause of the plague abounded. Some ‘conversed with the infected’ to find out ‘the nature, origin and way of curing the plague’, while others saw it as the judgment of God with puritan preachers blaming it on papist idolatry.

Morse and Southworth set about bringing relief both to Catholic families, who were denied support from the Anglican parishes, and others as well. Funds needed to be raised for food, medicines and clothing. This required considerable organisational skill and a special committee was established for the purpose. The first to be asked to contribute were wealthy Catholics in London. Collections were then extended to Catholic congregations throughout the country. The principal donor was the Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria. Elizabeth Godwin gave testimony to Morse’s work at his trial: ‘I being a poor labouring woman never did or was able to keep a servant, and being shut up seven weeks, buried three of my little children, which Mr Morse relieved with Her Majesty’s and divers Catholics’ alms’.

It was the personal nature of Morse’s ministry which, it seems, made the deepest impression. Each week, a list of the sick was presented to the parish from which Morse made his own. When visiting their houses, he wore a mark on his clothing and carried a white stick so that others could avoid him. ‘All the while he was in close contact with the plague-stricken’, wrote Fr Alegambe, one his first biographers, in 1657, ‘entering rooms infected with foul and pestilential air, sitting down on a bed in the midst of squalor of the most repulsive and contagious nature’.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Fr Southworth complained of the ‘unworthy timidity of his companion’. Morse did not at first touch the victims he visited, administering confession and communion but not extreme unction. Morse accepted the rebuke and thereafter gave all three sacraments to the dying.

Morse’s care for the sick and dying is all the more remarkable as he himself caught the disease. He was cared for by a Catholic, Doctor Turner, who massaged the boils on the priest’s body and then lanced them. When Morse complained of the risk Turner ran by treating him in this way, Turner replied that it was his duty to serve personally a priest who had devoted himself to saving the lives of the poor.

His care extended to the dead as well, at a time when they were denied the rituals of the Church, and bodies were removed by night on carts and tipped into common graves. He would sit with the dying, close their eyes after death, wash and layout their bodies and bless them before burial. It was said of him that it was his kindness that prompted men and women to seek repentance, and kindness that won many converts.

It was on the charges of being a priest and of winning converts, thereby withdrawing them from their faith and allegiance to the king, that Morse was arrested in August 1636. When he was found guilty of the first charge, he thanked the judge ‘from the bottom of my heart’. Of the second he was found not guilty. On 23 April 1637 he made his solemn profession in prison before Fr Edward Lusher who was so inspired by Morse’s example that he himself cared for the victims of the Great Plague in London nearly 30 years later and died from the infection.

Morse was released from prison never having been sentenced on the first charge following the intervention of the king. He left the country, served as a chaplain to an English regiment in the service of Spain and returned to England for the last time in 1643. Another period of imprisonment in Newcastle and Durham followed, and once again Morse ministered to his fellow prisoners. In January 1645, he was arraigned before a court and sentenced to death on the first charge of which he had been found guilty nine years before.

In the early morning of 1 February, Morse celebrated his final Mass in Newgate prison and bade farewell to his fellow prisoners. He was then dragged on a hurdle through the streets of London and, with the noose round his neck, he struck his breast three times as a sign to a priest in the crowd to give him final absolution. ‘In the presence of an almost infinite multitude looking on in silence and in deep emotion’, wrote Ambrose Corby, ‘died Fr Henry Morse, a saviour of life unto life … upright sincere and constant. May my end be like his’.

I found myself physically moved by Caraman’s account of Morse’s last morning and death. It was as though I had lost a friend. A friend, maybe; but a model, a patron?

A younger Jesuit said to me recently that for him there were two qualities at the heart of a Jesuit vocation. These were ‘obedience’ and a commitment to the magis: doing willingly whatever our superiors ask us to do and always giving it our best. Morse is certainly an outstanding example of both, as he surely is of that quality often identified in him, kindness. Morse shows us all what kindness is: going to the help of those who are poorest, bringing that help with tenderness and compassion, paying attention to the organisational matters without which that help is not possible, focussing more on their needs than on our own safety while all the time seeking to bring about in those whom we help a reconciliation, a closer relationship with Jesus. Without this our kindness is not complete and Morse shows us that it is this very kindness which the Lord uses to bring reconciliation about. As my younger Jesuit friend also reminded me, love always begets love.

What accounts for the quality of this man’s life? We can point to his love for Jesus on the cross: his desire to be with Jesus, to become like Jesus, to go with Jesus wherever Jesus went. But I wonder if his gratitude is not more fundamental still. We get a glimpse of this gratitude of his in a prayer he wrote shortly after Fr Lusher had received his solemn profession in prison:

May God grant that while I live I may never cease to act in a manner worthy of this high honour which I acknowledge I have done nothing to deserve from his hand and providence; and may I bear always in my heart the testimony of my gratitude, and, as long as I live never cease to give thanks for it, if not by the increase of good works, at least by the desire to accomplish them.
Today we are all walking through very strange times when we need the example of men and women who can help us find meaning in what is happening. St Henry Morse, priest of the plague, is one such outstanding example. He encourages us to respond to events happening around us in the spirit of Jesus by making the most of the opportunities we are given to serve those who have least with generosity, with compassion and with his hallmark kindness, knowing that thereby we may bring them closer to God. His inspiration reaches across the centuries.

St Henry Morse, pray for us!

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