Friday 2 October 2020

27th 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
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 5th Oct        NO MASS
Tues 6th Oct        9:30am Devonport  ... Bruno
Wed 7th Oct        9:30am Ulverstone  ... Our Lady of the Rosary
Thurs 8th Oct      12 noon Devonport  
Fri 9th Oct           9:30am Ulverstone   ... Denis & Companions. John Leonardi
Sat 10th Oct       6:00pm Devonport  
    6:00pm Ulverstone
Sun 11th Oct      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: Deb Edwards, Sydney Corbett, Merv Jaffray, Delma Pieri, & …

Let us pray for those who have died recently: Joyce Maxwell, Warren Carpenter, Uleen Castles, Helmut Berger, Judy Freeman, Fr Neville Dunne MSC, Shane Kirkpatrick, Graeme Wilson

Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 30th September - 6th October, 2020
Stephen Harris, George Farrow, Vern Cazaly, Mary Forth, Peter Kirkpatrick, Irene Marston, Allan Clarke, Reg Kelly, Robert Hickman, Audrey Abblitt, Dale Sheean, Audrey Taylor, Jim Masterson, Jack Bynon, Valma Donnelly, Lorraine Sherriff, Kieran McVeigh, Vicki Glashower.
May the souls of the faithful departed, 
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen
                              

PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:

I begin my reflection on this parable of Jesus by placing myself in his presence.

Even now, he is doing wonderful things for me.

Then I read the scripture, slowly, constantly asking Jesus to help me hear and see what he wants to show me.

I may be drawn to the goodness of the landowner, perhaps leading me to reflect on the times I have experienced the goodness of God in my life.

What is my sense of gratitude as I reflect?

Perhaps I am drawn to the person of Jesus, speaking of himself as the son of the landowner.

He comes in love to offer the vineyard to me.

How do I feel towards him as I hear him speak?

Do I feel I am a trustworthy recipient of his gifts?

The Lord of the vineyard is the master of creation – I might end by committing myself afresh to the invitation to work in the portion of the Lord’s vineyard that has been entrusted to me – my family, relationships, neighbourhood, community …

Glory be …

                            

Weekly Ramblings

This weekend we begin our Month of Prayer with the 18th Annual Rosary Pilgrimage. Throughout the day the Rosary will be recited at each of our Mass Centres with an opportunity for any and all parishioners to gather for a time in prayer. A special thanks to the group of parishioners who have been part of this Pilgrimage over the years and who have been faithful to this witness.

As well as the sessions mentioned in the section below there are also the regular, and some additional prayer, times during the month. On Mondays at 9am at St Joseph’s Mass Centre there will be an opportunity to join in the Morning Prayer of the Church; Monday evenings at 6pm the Prayer Group meets at Ulverstone; the Rosary Group meets each Tuesday evening; Eucharistic Adoration occurs every Friday from 10am-midday in Our Lady of Lourdes.

All of these activities occur as part of the life of the Parish and our hope is that by highlighting these and other forms of prayer we might all continue to grow in our faith journey and help others to know the presence of the Risen Lord in our lives.

Stay safe, stay sane and stay warm. 

                        


PRAYER OF SONG – CHANTING
On Sunday 11th there will be an introductory session for the Prayer of Song – Chanting. The session will be held in the Community Room at Sacred Heart Church following the 10am Mass and will explore how Chanting is part of all religious cultures – an immersion in the creative power of the universe. Music involves working in your mind, body, spirit in 4 holy elements – Breath (life of God …); Vibration (world was ‘spoken’ into existence …); Intentionality (feeling the text, listening with the heart …); and Community. Some examples – Simple tones; Antiphons; Repetitive – Taizé. The session will be about an hour.

MORNING PRAYER
As part of our Month of Prayer, Morning Prayer (Lauds), will be recited each Monday in October from 9am to 9.30am at St Joseph’s Mass Centre Port Sorell. Dates are Monday 5, 12, 19 & 26 October. We will use the Prayer of the Church (Divine Office) for the day. Participants will be introduced to the ‘Prayer of the Church’ and provided with the prayers for communal recitation.
If you have questions, require further information or hope to attend contact Giuseppe Gigliotti on 0419 684 134 or gigli@comcen.com.au Covid protocols will be observed.

CENTERING PRAYER
The following day, Sunday 18th, there will an introductory session, following the 10am Mass at Sacred Heart, on the practice of Centering Prayer. Many of us are familiar with the term Contemplative Prayer, some of us use this form of prayer regularly. Centering Prayer is a method that helps a person better prepare to enter into Contemplative Prayer. 

OTHER PRAYER FORMS that will be explored during the Month of October The Divine Office – 11am on 25th October at Devonport; and Ignatian Imagining – 11am on 1st November at Ulverstone.
                        

SOLEMNITY OF ST TERESA OF AVILA 15th OCTOBER
A Novena of Masses and Prayers will be offered at the Carmelite Monastery, Launceston, in preparation for this feast from 6th – 14th October. Intentions may be sent to Mother Teresa Benedicta at the Monastery by post 7 Cambridge St., Launceston, phone 6331 3585 or tascarmelvoc@gmail.com

NOVEMBER REMEMBRANCE BOOKS
November is the month we remember in a special way all those who have died. Should you wish anyone to be remembered, write the names of those to be prayed for on the outside of an envelope and place the clearly marked envelope in the collection basket at Mass or deliver to the Parish Office by Thursday 22nd October.

VOCATION REFLECTION DAY
A Vocations Reflection day is to be held at St Michael’s, Campbell Town on Saturday 24 October 2020 from 10:00am - 3:00pm. The program will include prayer and reflection, discussion and several talks including a testimony and a video on seminary life.
Any young man who is interested in attending is invited to contact Fr Brian Nichols: briannichols@bigpond.com
                        

PARISH MOVIE NIGHT
On Behalf of the Mersey Leven Catholic Parish, we would like to invite you to attend the inaugural Parish Movie night.
What: Paul, Apostle of Christ
When: 7pm - Friday 23rd October
Where: Sacred Heart Ulverstone Community Room
Tea and Coffee Provided, A plate of food to share is encouraged.
  
If you would like to see the trailer first, it can be found at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyOqQZUDdO4
                        

Letter From Rome 

A Time For Every Season Under Heaven


Despite Pope Francis' best efforts to renew the Church, perhaps now is just not the time for real reform

-  Robert Mickens, Rome, October 2, 2020. 

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

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven," says Qoheleth.

The list the preacher then puts forth in the third chapter of Ecclesiastes is quite well known. He says there is…
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

But what is this present time in which the Catholic Church is living? Specifically, what sort of time is this for the papacy and the Church's central bureaucracy, the Roman Curia?

It is an important question because, while the community of believers cannot be identified solely with a tiny enclave in the center of the Eternal City, the Vatican is still a vital part of what happens in the institutional Church around the world.

When Pope Francis was elected in 2013 it seemed like the Church was returning to a time of normalcy – "a time to embrace", to use Qoheleth's categories, or actually re-embrace a Catholicism that had the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) as its compass rather than one that was retreating to the anachronistic model shaped by the 16thcentury Council of Trent.

Many Catholics were elated with the "new" pope's first major document, the apostolic exhortation, Evangelii gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel).

They saw it as ushering in "a time to heal" – to heal all the bitter wounds of alienation, listlessness and disaffection that had been caused by his predecessors' gradual, yet steady turning away from the reforming spirit of Vatican II.

With his insistence on synodality – characterized by priests that "have the smell of the sheep" and bishops who sounded out their people in preparation for Synod assemblies in Rome – it felt as if Francis was telling the world's Catholics it was also "a time to speak".

This was especially encouraging and exciting for those women and men theologians that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith silenced during the pontificate of John Paul II, an inquisitional task that Benedict XVI would then foist onto local bishops and religious superiors in order not sully the hands of his own pontificate.

But Francis signaled that it was more than just a time to speak. After all, many Catholics, despite Vatican bans on talking about a whole host of issues, had never stopped speaking.

What the Jesuit pope was actually saying is that this was also "a time to listen".

By example he showed bishops and priests (all Catholics, in fact) that it was not only permissible, but desirable and even necessary to dialogue with – to really listen to – Catholic (and others, as well) who have different opinions, visions or ideas than they.

But times and seasons overlap. Spring turns to summer. Summer gradually fades and makes way for autumn. Autumn is subdued by winter.

However, climate change has altered this normal pattern. The four seasons are not so clearly demarcated anymore in many parts of the world. And so it is with the ecclesial climate of the Catholic Church.

Yes, this is still a time to speak, a time to embrace and certainly a time to heal. But it seems that it has also become "a time to tear", "a time to break down", "a time to kill" and… "a time for war".

It was shocking to see Pope Francis – a man who has made "mercy" the motto of his priesthood and pontificate – figuratively decapitate a lifelong papal diplomat and senior cardinal in a way that was meant to humiliate him and send a message of fear to others in the Vatican.

Regardless of the reason why the pope took the extraordinarily extreme measure of stripping Angelo Becciu of all his rights as a cardinal (the Vatican has still not said why), the action should have not been done this way.

It signaled that it really is "a time of war" now in the Vatican. Or, perhaps, it might be better to say that only now has Pope Francis decided to openly join the fight.

One can only imagine how frustrated he is with being practically caged inside the Vatican's walls, he who abhors walls and would rather be travelling abroad trying to build bridges.

But this is also a time of pandemic, and no one knows how long it will last. It has brought many things to a halt, even – it seems – in this pontificate.

The long awaited apostolic constitution that is to make concrete, institutional reforms to the Roman Curia and the governing structure of the universal Church has still not been released.

The long awaited investigated report on Theodore McCarrick to determine who in the Vatican and other parts of the Church allowed the defrocked former US cardinal to sexually and spiritually abuse seminarians and young priests has still not been released.

These two documents are important pieces of a real, institutional reform of the Church. But perhaps this is not the time of reform – especially because there seems to be so little enthusiasm for reform among that tiny minority of men (the bishops) that make all the major decisions in the Church.

Perhaps, the time is not right for the reform that is so promisingly spelled out in Evangelii gaudium.

Maybe the Church is really just stuck in "a time to plant". And, thus, reform-minded Catholics can only hope that the seeds Francis has been sowing up till now will take root and not be destroyed by those who come after him.

Sometimes the right pope arrives at the wrong time. That's what the cardinal-secretary of Pope Adrian VI believed of the Dutchman who reigned ineffectively for just a year-and-a-half during the turbulent early 16th century.

The last non-Italian pope before John Paul II was elected in 1978 is entombed in an ornate funereal moment in the German national church in Rome, Santa Maria dell'Anima.

His secretary had these words inscribed on it:
Proh dolor, quantum refert in quae tempora vel optimi cuiusque virtus incidat.
"Alas, how much it matters in what times the work of even the best of men happens to fall!

                        

Knowing From The Bottom

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 vast majority of people throughout history have been poor, disabled, or oppressed in some way (i.e., “on the bottom”) and would have read history in terms of a need for change, but most of history has been written and interpreted from the side of the winners. The unique exception is the revelation called the Bible, which is an alternative history from the side of the often enslaved, dominated, and oppressed people of Israel, culminating in the scapegoat figure of Jesus himself. 

We see in the Gospels that it’s the lame, the poor, the blind, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the sinners, the outsiders, and the foreigners who tend to follow Jesus. It is those on the inside and the top — the Roman occupiers, the chief priests and their conspirators — who crucify him. Shouldn’t that tell us something really important about perspective? Every viewpoint is a view from a point. We must be able to critique our own perspective if we are to see a fuller truth.

Liberation theology - which focuses on freeing people from religious, political, social, and economic oppression — is mostly ignored by Western Christianity. Perhaps that’s not surprising when we consider who interpreted the Scriptures for the last seventeen hundred years. The empowered clergy class enforced their own perspective instead of that of the marginalized, who first received the message with such excitement and hope. Once Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire (after 313), we largely stopped reading the Bible from the side of the poor and the oppressed. We read it from the side of the political establishment and the usually comfortable priesthood instead of from the side of people hungry for justice and truth. Shifting our priorities to make room for the powerless instead of accommodating the powerful is the only way to detach religion from its common marriage to power, money, and self -importance.

When Scripture is read through the eyes of vulnerability — what we call the “preferential option for the poor” or the “bias from the bottom” — it will always be liberating and transformative. Scripture will not be used to oppress or impress. The question is no longer, “How can I maintain the status quo?” (which just happens to benefit me), but “How can we all grow and change together?” Now we would have no top to protect, and the so - called “bottom” becomes the place of education, real change, and transformation for all.

The bottom, or what Jesus called “the poor in Spirit” in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3), is where we have no privilege to prove or protect but much to seek and become. Jesus called such people “blessed.” Dorothy Day (1897 –1980) said much the same: “The only way to live in any true security is to live so close to the bottom that when you fall you do not have far to drop, you do not have much to lose.” [1] From that place, where few would expect or choose to be, we can be used as instruments of transformation and liberation for the rest of the world.
                                

The Hidden Face Of Evil

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

We tend to be naïve about evil, at least as to what it looks like in everyday life. Our picture of evil has been falsely shaped by images taken from mythology, religious cults, and from books and movies that portray evil as personified in sinister spiritual forces. Demons haunt houses, appear at séances, are summoned up by Ouija boards, contort bodies, and are exorcized by the sprinkling of holy water. Whatever evil does reside inside this concept of demonic forces (and you can believe in them or not) is infinitely eclipsed by the ordinary face of evil which looks out at us from newscasts, is daily manifest in ordinary life, and is manifest too in our own face on a given day.

Mostly we are blind to the hidden evil that foments inside us, tears communities apart, and eats away at God and goodness. The Gospels can help us understand this.

In the Gospels, the evil one has two names because evil works in two ways. Sometimes the Gospels call the evil force “the Devil” and other times they call it “Satan”. What’s the difference? In the end they both refer to the same force (or person) but the different names refer to the different ways in which evil works.  Devil, in Greek, means to slander and to tear things apart. Ironically, Satan means almost the exact opposite. It means to unite things, but in a sick and malevolent way.  

So evil works in two ways: the devilish works by dividing us from each other, tearing us apart, and having us habitually slander each other so that community is forever being torn apart through jealousy and accusation. The satanic, on the other hand, does the opposite, with the same result. The satanic unites us in a sick way, that is, through the grip of mob-hysteria, social hype, self-serving ideologies, racism, sexism, envy, hatred and in a myriad of other malevolent ways so as to draw us into mob-hatred, gang-rapes, lynchings, and crucifixions. It was satanic forces that engineered Jesus’ crucifixion.

When we look at our world today, from politics to social media to what’s happening inside many of our religious circles, we would have to be blind not to see the powers of the “devil” and of “satan” at work (however you personally define and picture these).

Where do we see the devilish at work? Basically everywhere. Today, most everywhere, you see persons sowing division, attributing false motives to others, calling for them to be distrusted and ostracized. Indeed, this is almost the dominant element we see in our politics and in our social media. The result is the breakdown of community, the stalemate in our politics, the breakdown of civility, the loss of trust in the meaning of truth, the smug belief that our own idiosyncratic narrative functions as truth, and the near universal neglect of elemental charity. Today we are witnessing a dangerous breakdown of trust and civility, coupled with a massive erosion of simple honesty. The devil must be smiling.

Where do we see the satanic at work? Everywhere as well. More and more we are retreating into tribes, gangs, with those others who think like us and have the same self-interests to protect. While this can be a good thing, it’s not good when we unite in ways that are rooted in self-serving ideologies, economic privilege, racism, sexism, false nationalism, envy, and hatred. When this happens, our group ceases being a community and becomes instead a mob, a sick one, which at the end of the day, whatever its particular idiosyncratic slogan, ends up chanting, as did the crowds on Good Friday, “Crucify him! Crucify him! It’s significant that in the Gospels almost every time the word “crowd” is used it’s used pejoratively. Commentators tell us that almost without exception every time the word “crowd” appears in the Gospels it could be preceded by the adjective “mindless”.  Crowds are mindless; worse still, they generally have a sick bent towards crucifixion. The renowned Czech novelist Milan Kundera highlights this when he shares his strong fear of “the great march”, the sick fever that so generally infects a crowd and, soon enough, has them chanting “Release to us Barabbas!  And as for Jesus, crucify him!”  This is the face of satan in ordinary life, the actual face of evil.

We need to name this today as we see the ever-intensifying and bitter polarization inside our families, communities, neighborhoods, cities, and countries. Factionalism, anger, bitterness, distrust, accusation, and hatred are intensifying most everywhere, even inside our own families where we are finding it harder and harder to sit down together, be civil with each other, and talk through our political, social, and moral differences. Sadly, even the deadly presence of a pandemic which threatens all of us has worked to divide rather than unite us.

Evil doesn’t ordinarily have the face and feel of the devil in Rosemary’s Baby; it has the face and feel of this evening’s newscast.
                                

Counting Sabbath Days In Pandemic Days

Whether it is because we have been confined to our homes for long periods or because our essential work patterns have shifted, most of us would say that the Covid-19 pandemic has led to us losing track of time at some point in recent months. But when the days of the week all blur into one, how easy – and important – is it to keep one of them not just special, but holy? Karen Eliasen unlocks the exhortation to remember the Sabbath and finds the powerful consequences of counting our days.
Karen Eliasen works in spirituality at St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Centre, North Wales.
This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here  

‘Lord, teach us to count our days rightly’ [1]

Losing track of what day of the week it is may or may not have serious consequences for our relationship with God, depending on who is doing the track-losing, under what circumstances – and on the sort of God with whom the track-loser is in a relationship. Equally for someone who is furloughed or laid off at home, or for someone who is an essential worker on the front lines, days may not be readily countable, let alone countable ‘rightly’. Days may instead be experienced as bleeding into each other in a way that makes them all seem more or less alike. Surely God is in all of them, and surely he loves us whatever day of the week it is. End of story.

Unless, of course, the track-loser is a practising Jew tightly bound by the commandment to ‘remember the sabbath day and keep it holy’.[2] This commandment, the fourth of the ten, is regularly touted as being key to our relationship with God – regularly touted, yet far from regularly heeded, if heeded at all. For most Christians, this fourth commandment packs hardly any punch beyond a misunderstood refuelling tactic. In what follows I want to touch on some of the consequences both of remembering and of not remembering the Sabbath from a scriptural perspective, because from that perspective the Sabbath commandment does prove itself to pack a powerful punch – a powerful, life-giving punch of the kind we could do with these days.

Scripture does not beat about the bush when it comes to the consequences of not remembering the Sabbath. ‘Whoever does work on the sabbath day shall be put to death’, is the grim warning built in at the source itself, at the Sinai experience.[3] A thousand or so years later, God is still relaying this message through his prophets. Here through Jeremiah: ‘If you do not obey My command to hallow the sabbath day ... then I will set fire to its [Jerusalem’s] gates ... and it shall not be extinguished.’ And here through Ezekiel: ‘They grossly desecrated My sabbaths. Then I thought to pour out My fury upon them ... and to make an end of them.’[4]  

I think what will prove most helpful here is to stay clear of any kneejerk reactions to such texts – reactions against what we might construe as yet another repellent Old Testament text about a fury-out-pouring God. Instead, we might look at such texts not so much as texts about anything or anyone, a fury-out-pouring God or otherwise, but as texts signalling to us that the Sabbath is somehow, incomprehensibly and inexplicably, fundamentally a matter of life and death. Ironically, it turns out that at a life and death level, Jewish law does provide for a Sabbath exemption, the only one there is. The obligation to save an endangered life always overrides any religious commandment, so that on the Sabbath doctors can operate, soldiers can shoot, rescue workers can dig out, and so on.[5]  But for the rest of us, not saving lives yet not heeding the Sabbath either, are we really to be made ‘an end of’? I like to think that the invitation of these texts is not to be threatened into a terrorised but obedient mindset, but rather to be aroused into curiosity about the nature of the Sabbath experience itself. What on earth about the Sabbath is stirring such vehement non-negotiability? What are we not cottoning on to about the Sabbath? I don’t mean a dilettantish or an academic curiosity about the Sabbath that appropriates a lot of aesthetics or a lot of information, but when all is said and done can take it or leave it. I mean a passionate curiosity such as we have for that which we passionately love, are in love with. A loving relationship curiosity.

Oddly, for all the richness of Jewish traditions around Sabbath practices (think of the lighting of the candles, the kiddush blessing of the cup of wine, the eating of the braided challah loaf), Scripture itself does not tell us anything specific to do; it tells us only what to not do, namely work. Whatever is actively and concretely involved in remembering the Sabbath remains scripturally speaking elusive. The one hint about what to do on the Sabbath that ripples through all those moving Jewish Friday evening traditions turns up in Isaiah, and it is a hint spectacularly contrasting with the more familiar death threats: ‘If you call the sabbath “delight”  ...  I will set you astride the heights of the earth.’[6]  The Hebrew concept of oneg shabbat, the joy of the Sabbath, which underlies all those non-scriptural Sabbath traditions, comes from this passage. Joy! Delight! Astride the heights! Now that is a glorious reason for keeping the Sabbath, a reason right in line with the Talmud’s description of the Sabbath as ‘a foretaste of the world to come’ – that world to come being the world in which the Messiah weighs in. The medieval midrash on Exodus explains it this way: ‘The scion of David (Mashiach) will come if they keep just one Shabbat, because the Shabbat is equivalent to all the mitzvot.’[7] One Sabbath perfectly (that’s the catch in this context) kept is the equivalent of all the commandments (and Judaism has derived 613 of these from the Torah) perfectly kept. The scriptural message is unequivocal in its suggestion of extreme consequences to how we approach the Sabbath: the extent to which we remember potentially opens us to extreme consolation – the oneg shabbat; the extent to which we don’t remember the Sabbath potentially opens us to extreme desolation – death. If the potential consequences are so extreme, we do indeed need to keep track of what day of the week it is. So what happens when we lose track?

There is hardly anything under the sun that the Talmudic rabbis left undiscussed, but perhaps this applies especially to Sabbath concerns.[8] Suppose a man is lost in the desert, the rabbis wondered, so lost that he loses track of what day it is. How would someone so lost in the desert then remember the Sabbath? The difficulty arises because the seven-day week is a cycle made by man, and it is not made out of anything that can be immediately experienced in nature, including in our own bodies. Yet this man-made week, this socially constructed time unit, has as its apex a Sabbath Day given and made holy by God. Israel’s God may be the God of all Creation, but he is not a nature god – he is a culture god who has great stakes in how we socially structure ourselves. But however we socially structure ourselves, all is thrown to the four winds in the desert. In the Talmud, a discussion about how then to proceed ensues between two rabbis, Rav Huna and Hiyya bar Ra’v:
Rav Huna said: One who was walking along the way or in the desert, and he does not know when Shabbat occurs, he counts six days from the day that he realized that he lost track of Shabbat and then observes one day as Shabbat. Ḥiyya bar Ra’v says: He first observes one day as Shabbat and then he counts six weekdays. The Gemara explains: With regard to what do they disagree? One Sage, Ra’v Huna, held: It is like the creation of the world, weekdays followed by Shabbat. And one Sage, Ḥiyya bar Ra’v, held: It is like Adam, the first man, who was created on the sixth day. He observed Shabbat followed by the six days of the week. [9]

At one level, there is something slightly sinister about this Sabbath discussion on behalf of the lost desert man. Imagine the worst-case scenario where the man stumbles along half dead from hunger and thirst and with no hope of finding a way out. Who would or should truly give a darn what day it is? Why are the rabbis not concerned about his immediate welfare, why do they not exempt him from having to keep the Sabbath (they don’t), and instead offer him something along the lines of a solid list of desert survival tricks? How existentially awful does a body’s situation have to be before something can be prioritised above that oneg shabbat, according to the rabbis? Surely the desert man’s cause is for lamenting, not for remembering the Sabbath, let alone delighting in it. But I am reminded of Tom Wright’s early comment on the pandemic, that what we need now is ‘a time of lament, of restraint, of precisely not jumping to “solutions”.’[10] Coupled with ‘restraint,’ lament becomes the underbelly of the Sabbath, an underbelly acknowledged and explored in Judaism to an extent barely imagined in Christianity.[11] An acknowledged underbelly gives a punch to concepts that otherwise present as not worth bothering about. To begin to appreciate how the Sabbath, complete with underbelly, functions in crises, consider the following two stories from the Holocaust archives.

Miriam Raz-Zunszajn was the daughter of the rabbi of Wereszczyn in Poland; she was eight years old when the Germans invaded Poland on a September Friday in 1939. Here is how she describes that evening’s Sabbath in her memoirs:
Dark clouds covered the sky. Thunder, lightning and rain. The faces of my mother and father were even grayer than the clouds. War! say my parents, and I understand from their reaction that war is something menacing, even though I don’t know exactly in what way. ... In the evening, the Shabbat table is covered with a festive white tablecloth, the braided challahs are also covered by their special cloth, the silver candlesticks glisten as always, but this time it is completely different. Grandmother and Mother bless the candles, but the blessing is accompanied by bitter weeping and takes a very, very long time. ... On this Shabbat, we remain indoors and don’t go out for a walk as we usually do. We are cut off from the material world, but the material world does not cut itself off from us. The thunder of cannons becomes even louder, closer, and no one knows what to expect when it reaches us. One thing happens after another, the world around me seems to be sinking into a whirlpool. [12]

If this comes from the beginning of the war, here is a recollection from near the end of the war. In her book The Female Face of God in Auschwitz, Melissa Raphael relates this story from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp:
In Bergen-Belsen, in the first months of 1945, Bertha Ferderber-Salz remembers listening to an old Hungarian woman softly intoning a Sabbath prayer as she lay in utter dereliction in the darkness and stench of a filth-sodden bunk. The dying woman then wished Ferderber-Salz ‘A good week! A good week to you, to the family, and to all the House of Israel. Amen!’ When asked if she had been praying, the old woman replied ‘in a weak and barely audible voice’, ‘It is our duty to praise God at all times and in every place. God hears our prayers even when they are said from the deepest pit. And even if He does not come to our aid, there are other Jews in the world for whom we should request a good week.’[13]
Be our days like those barely breathed from inside ‘the deepest pit’ or that feel like ‘sinking into a whirlpool’, or like days lost in the desert or like our current pandemic days, or for that matter plain good old days – whatever our days be, let our prayer be to count them rightly. That way we can begin to remember the Sabbath, and be consoled by its intimations of ‘the world to come.’

In the early days of the pandemic, a poem by Lynn Ungar entitled Pandemic made the rounds of various responding Internet platforms. In a way, I have in all of the above been following the ‘what if’ of the poem’s first few lines:
What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath –
the most sacred of times?
In such a sacred time, a Sabbath time, our relationship with God through our relationship with the world is at its most intimate. Not surprisingly, the ending note of Ungar’s poem reflects this Sabbath quality:
Promise this world your love –
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live. [14]
 
[1] Psalm 90:12. All Scripture texts are taken from the Tanakh translation by the Jewish Publication Society  – the JPS.
[2] Exodus 20:8.
[3] Exodus 31:15.
[4] Jeremiah 17:27; Ezekiel 20:13. The whole of chapter 20 in Ezekiel is one long rant against Sabbath ‘desecrators’.
[5] This practical principle in Jewish Law is called pikuach nefesh in Hebrew, which simply means ‘saving life’.
[6] Isaiah 58:13-14.
[7] Shemot Rabba  25:12; 1:1. Shemot  is the Hebrew name of the Book of Exodus, and simply means ‘names’ as Exodus starts with a list of names; Rabba, meaning ‘great’ and is a term generally applied to the Torah/Pentateuch midrashim. Mitzvot is the Hebrew for commandments.
[8] The Shabbat tractate is the longest of the six tractates making up the Talmud – and that is to say nothing of the tractate devoted entirely to the law of Sabbath boundaries.
[9] Shabbat 69a-b: Losing Track of Shabbat. For those interested, the above discussion continues with a convoluted ‘way of proceeding’ to cover all the possibilities in a kind of gamble that somewhere in there then will be a hit on the actual Sabbath Day.
[10] Tom Wright, God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath (SPCK, 2020).
[11] Walter Brueggemann makes this observation in the preface to his Sabbath As Resistance: ‘As in so many things concerning Christian faith and practice, we have to be reeducated by Judaism that has been able to sustain its commitment to Sabbath as a positive practice of faith.’
[12] Miriam Raz-Zunszajnn, Like Birds in Black and White, 2002. This extract, and many others like it, is available at www.yadvashem.org, the website of The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem.
[13] Melissa Raphael, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theory of the Holocaust (Routledge, 2003), p. 57. One angle of her book uses the ‘world to come’ aspect of the Sabbath as a kind of standpoint from which to engage with the Holocaust.
[14] Jewish Sabbath traditions have a long history of delving deeply and creatively into this wedding imagery – greeting the Sabbath Bride, engaging with the Sabbath Queen, experiencing the Shekinah (the feminine presence of God dwelling amongst his people) of Jewish mysticism. But that’s another story.











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