March 19^th 2017

 

Suggested formula for recognition of Indigenous people and their land

 

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we stand

We pay our respects to them for their care of the land

May we walk gently and respectfully upon the land.

or

I acknowledge the living culture of the ……..people,

the traditional custodians of the land we stand on,

and pay tribute to the unique role they play in the life of this region.

or

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land where we are now gathered,

(the ……)  and recognise that it continues to be sacred to them.

 

We hail them: as guardians of the earth and of all things that grow and breed in the soil; as trustees of the waters – [the seas, the streams and rivers, the ponds and the lakes] - and the rich variety of life in those waters.

 

We thank them for passing this heritage to every people since the Dreamtime.

 

We acknowledge the wrongs done to them by newcomers to this land and we seek to be partners with them in righting these wrongs and in living together in peace and harmony.

 

Living Water

Observers think:

‘This man not only

Eats with sinners and outcasts

He’s also too friendly with women

Even foreign women.

How can he be a prophet?’

But the woman thinks:

‘He’s different

His closeness is not a man’s invitation

His nearness is God’s invitation

God’s invitation to change

God’s invitation to discipleship

God’s invitation to live-giving water

My invitation to closeness with God.’

Painting and meditation by Fr. Jim Hasse, SJ,

 

           

 

                                                                          Sharyn Raggett

 

 

‘The presence of God among people did not take place in a perfect, idyllic world but rather in this real world, which is marked by so many things both good and bad, by division, wickedness, poverty, arrogance and war. He chose to live in our history as it is, with all the weight of its limitations and of its tragedies. In doing so, he has demonstrated in an unequalled manner his merciful and truly loving disposition toward the human creature. He is God-with-us. Jesus is God-with-us. Do you believe this? Together let us profess: Jesus is God with us! Jesus is God with us always and forever with us in history's suffering and sorrow.’

Pope Francis (December 18, 2013)

 

Readings

Reading I Exodus 17:3-7

Responsorial Psalm Ps 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9

Reading II Romans 5:1-2, 5-8

Gospel John 4:5-42 or 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42

 

Penitential Rite

·         Christ Jesus, you are living water that purifies our hearts.  Jesus, have mercy.

·         Christ Jesus, you are living water that strengthens our faith. Christ, have mercy. 

·         Christ Jesus, you are living water that quenches our thirst for justice. Jesus, have mercy.

 

Opening Prayer

God of Living Water,

look upon your people,

whose hearts are parched with thirst.

Give us an unquenchable thirst

for the things that matter:

for faith and meaning in our lives,

for hope in a better world

filled with your justice and peace

and a spirit of committed love.

 

or

 

God of Living Water,

we experience your loving kindness

when they encounter your Son, Jesus Christ.

Attune us to his voice and dispose us

to meet him in each person,

that our thirst for life may be quenched

and live in joy and courage.

 

Prayer over the Gifts

God of Living Water,

in bread and wine

Jesus comes amongst us.

May we as a living community,

become a source of hope to all people

who thirst for truth, freedom and justice.

 

Prayer after Communion

God of Living Water,

as the woman at the well encountered Jesus

and believed in him her life was changed.

Jesus has spoken to us through the Word

and revived our strength through the Eucharist.

May we also learn that our lives will be changed

through our response to people who cry for help.

 

General Intercessions

Introduction: Jesus heard the deep longings of the Samaritan woman’s heart. He hears our longings and calls us to response to those of others. Response: Give us the water of life.  

 

·         For the people of Japan as they remember the tsunami and earthquake six years ago: we remember the great loss of life and the destruction caused to may. May their healing and recovery be swift and complete, we pray: Give us the water of life.

 

·         For the Church community: may it radiate the presence of God’s love and acceptance of all peoples and cultures, of the poor and the rich, of the strong and the weak, we pray: Give us the water of life

 

·         For the people who have been affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan  6 years ago especially those who have lost loved ones, suffered injury and lost all their possessions: may God’s face and care be revealed to them in those who act in solidarity and compassion with them, we pray: Give us the water of life.  

 

·         For the people of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and other countries of the Middle East who endure violence and conflict, hunger and displacement, sectarian vilification: that they may through their struggles against oppression and tyranny find freedom and the way of life they choose to live, we pray: Give us the water of life.

 

·         For peace in our hearts so that that conflict will end: may people recognise the humanity of all, especially the enemy, and strive to seek nonviolence ways of dealing with conflict among the nations; violence within communities, neighbourhoods and families, we pray: Give us the water of life.

 

·         For the leaders of nations, economists and politicians: may their decisions be enlightened by a true sense of justice for their people so that peace and well-being develop in the lives of people, we pray: Give us the water of life.

 

·         For meaning in the lives of people: may they have work that makes a difference, a place to call home and people around them they love and who love them, we pray: Give us the water of life.

 

·         For the ill, the infirm, those living with mental illness and the dying: may they find new life in the living water that Jesus' Word offers through the comfort and understanding of others, we pray: Give us the water of life.

 

·         For newcomers to our community: may they find a genuine welcome from their neighbours, we pray: Give us the water of life.

 

·         For the Palestinian and Israeli people: may they continue in dialogue that will lead to respect for each other and peace with justice for all, we pray: Give us the water of life.

 

·         For all the women whose gifts are not recognised, who experience oppression and struggle for justice: may they encounter the liberation experienced by the woman at the well, we pray: Give us the water of life.

 

·         For all people who are engaged in peacemaking and justice: may all the groups and organisations around the world not become discouraged but know that they truly are sons and daughters of the God of peace who will bring forth fruit from their efforts, we pray: Give us the water of life.

 

·         For countries that still rely on the death penalty as  a form of punishment: may they, as we approach the International Day for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, come to realise that this is another violation of the fundamental right to life, we pray: Give us the water of life.

 

·         For the Earth and the depleting fresh water resources: may governments take steps to protect peoples’ rights to clean, fresh water, we pray: Give us the water of life.

 

Concluding Prayer: God of the Living Waters, as we pray with thanks to you we pray that you continue to show us new ways to encounter you through reaching out to others.

 

Further Resources

‘The presence of God among people did not take place in a perfect, idyllic world but rather in this real world, which is marked by so many things both good and bad, by division, wickedness, poverty, arrogance and war. He chose to live in our history as it is, with all the weight of its limitations and of its tragedies. In doing so, he has demonstrated in an unequalled manner his merciful and truly loving disposition toward the human creature. He is God-with-us. Jesus is God-with-us. Do you believe this? Together let us profess: Jesus is God with us! Jesus is God with us always and forever with us in history's suffering and sorrow.’

Pope Francis (December 18, 2013 http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/audiences/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20131218_udienza-generale_en.html )

 

‘Sometimes being listened to is so much like being loved, it is impossible to tell the difference.’

Barbara Pine

 

‘But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.’

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

 

‘Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don't tell them they aren't. Sit with them and have a drink.’

Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)

 

‘We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.’

Thomas Fuller, 17^th century

 

The hope of a secure and liveable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.’

Franklin D Roosevelt

 

The time is always right to do what is right.

Martin Luther King Jr.

A normal person does not want to kill and will avoid it at all costs. The military won't let you remain normal. It doesn't matter if you think you are smart enough not to get caught up in their lies. They will change you. Don't be sucked into the biggest myth and lie that dying for your country is somehow heroic.

Larry Kerschner

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27691.htm

 

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

God is a god of desire, not of power and prestige, and Jesus knew God as the object of all our deepest desires – for joy, for laughter, and the love of friends, for sexual fulfilment.  All of his life and teaching can be summarised as encouraging us to allow our innate desire, which is also God’s desire for us, to break through our fear and self-loathing. And sin is that fear, fear of desire, fear of life and fear of falling into God.

Stephen McCarthy, in Sebastian Moore’s The Contagion of Jesus, p.120

 

….. by our nature we are likeable and lovers of one another.  We are only mistakenly selfish. Our money-oriented culture heavily reinforces this mistake, telling us that to be likeable we must buy its self-enhancing products, from aftershaves to cars.  The Church, when it’s doing its job and letting Jesus speak in it, tells us that we are naturally likeable and flourish in loving one another.  Sadly the Church is often not doing its job, but teaches instead in conformity with biases of the culture: against women – even now, in spite of feminism – gay and lesbian people, racial minorities, Jews.  This is the whole bunch of us that gospel calls ‘publicans and sinners’, whom Jesus befriended and was crucified for doing so.

Sebastian Moore OSB, The Contagion of Jesus, p.116

 

Women are equally created in the image and likeness of God, equally redeemed by Christ, equally sanctified by the Holy Spirit; women are equally involved in the ongoing tragedy of sin and the mystery of grace, equally called to mission in this world, equally destined for life with God in glory.

Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, She Who Is, 8

 

[The Catholic tradition] is ……a tradition that sees nothing absurd in a group of men [the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith] writing to another group of men [the bishops] about women in the Church.

Sebastian Moore OSB, The Contagion of Jesus, p.109.

 

The Synod Fathers stated: ‘As an expression of her mission the Church must stand firmly against all forms of discrimination and abuse of women’(178). And again: ‘The dignity of women, gravely wounded in public esteem, must be restored through effective respect for the rights of the human person and by putting the teaching of the Church into practice.

John Paul II, Christifideles Laici, 49

 

Christ's way of acting, the Gospel of his words and deeds, is a consistent protest against whatever offends the dignity of women.

John Paul II

 

We must be ‘ . . . promoting equitable treatment of women--on whose under-compensated labor the whole international economic system now depends.

Martin McLoughlin of the Center of Concern

 

Prayer

God, you are good.

The world is filled with your goodness.

In Jesus, we have seen your love

and your desire for transformation.

In the Spirit, alive today,

we know your healing love

and radical, loving wisdom.

You passionately desire human happiness.

God, we’ve noticed that

some people have distorted your record

and have even ruined your good reputation.

Whenever any human life is violated,

your glory is dimmed and dishonoured.

Whenever humans engage in the ways of violence,

your spirit is hindered.

Whenever our beautiful world is abused,

your presence is less visible.

Whenever the systems of our world keep the poor poor,

you are hard to find.

God, we desire to restore your reputation

and expose the wonder of your glory.

Wherever human beings are quickened to fuller and richer life,

your glory is enhanced.

Whenever we can complete the ministry of reconciliation,

your spirit comes alive.

Whenever there is a community of justice and peace,

you are alive among us.

Inspired by a quote from Elizabeth Johnson CSJ, in She Who Is, p. 14

 

Whenever the truth has been suppressed by governments and their agencies or even by Christian communities, the wrongs done to the indigenous peoples need to be honestly acknowledged. The Synod supported the establishment of ‘Truth Commissions’, where these can help resolve historical injustices and bring about reconciliation within the wider community or the nation. The past cannot be undone, but honest recognition of past injustices can lead to measures and attitudes which will help to rectify the damaging effects for both the indigenous community and the wider society. The Church expresses deep regret and asks forgiveness where her children have been or still are party to these wrongs. Aware of the shameful injustices done to indigenous peoples in Oceania, the Synod Fathers apologized unreservedly for the part played in these by members of the Church, especially where children were forcibly separated from their families.

Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia in Oceania, 2001

 

Hitler killed only one person in his lifetime: himself. All the other atrocities that are attributed to him were carried out by people who were only following orders.

Mark A. Goldman

 

The men that American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest the most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

H L Mencken (attributed: source unknown)

 

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always sceptical and tolerant.

H L Mencken

 

Living Water,

flow among us and bring us to life.

Pour your love into our hearts

until our compassion grows

to embrace our deepest conflicts and hardships.

Amen.

 

Prayer for a New Society

All-nourishing God,

your children cry for help against the violence of or world:

Where children starve for bread and feed on weapons;

starve for vision and feed on drugs;

starve for love and feed on videos;

starve for peace and die murdered in our streets.

Creator God,

timeless preserver of resources,

forgive us for the gifts that we have wasted.

Renew for us what seems beyond redemption;

call order and beauty to emerge again from chaos.

Convert our destructive power into creative services;

help us to heal the woundedness of our world.

Liberating God,

release us from the demons of violence.

Free us today from the disguised demon of deterrence

that puts guns by our pillows and missiles in our skies. 

Free us from all demons that blind and blunt our spirits;

cleanse us from all justifications for violence and war;

open our narrowed hearts to the suffering and the poor.

Abiding God,

loving renewer of the human spirit,

unfold our violent fists into peaceful hands;

stretch our sense of family to include our neighbors;

stretch our sense of neighbor to include our enemies

until our response to you finally respects and

embraces all creation as precious sacraments of our presence.

Hear the prayer of all your starving children. Amen.

Pax Christi USA

 

Reflections on the readings

Christianity would be much poorer without today’s gospel narrative - as it would be without the story of the Good Samaritan or Prodigal Son! In today’s gospel, a confrontation occurs. It is not between good and evil but of exclusivist, sexist and racist cultures. We know that the woman came to the well at noon to fetch water in ungodly heat to avoid meeting anyone else. Obviously, the stranger in the form of Jesus did not know her secrets and would soon disappear. At the heart of this story is that God’s love is poured, like water, into our hearts, and did not discriminate when it came to the woman at the well. God comes to us as living water in the form of a stranger. This is how God’s life flows through us. When are outside our comfort zones and break with conventional behavior; when we speak with strangers; when we endure suffering; even when we question and quarrel with God.  Here, Jesus cared more about the woman’s thirst than about her sin. It is this love poured into our hearts that should lead us always to deeper love for God as well as our brothers and sisters without exception. There should be no exclusions, no violence against anyone. That's what we will hear if we listen to the spirit speaking deeply within our own hearts. Pope Francis constantly urges us to look into the eyes of another, to recognise her or his humanity and not trash it whether it is the person who is homeless or the person seeking asylum or the person who has done wrong. This was clear to me in April last year (2016) when I attended a Nonviolence and Just Peace Conference in Rome. In the midst of the stories of violence endured by many of the participants, came the constant refrain that the goal of nonviolent resistance to injustice is to awaken humanity in every person, especially the enemy. One participant (Arsenian Carmi) a Palestinian Christian, shared how she became a refugee in her own city in the ongoing Israeli occupation. She spoke of the injustice people endured which cannot be ‘just’ or be part of God’s ‘plans’ for those created in His image. Sharing about the dispossession and suffering, she told how her family continued to be involved in all the communities with equality and Christian love because she had inherited the value of not reacting to evil with evil. Despite attempts at advocacy, negotiation and the rare implementation of international laws and decisions, the aspired liberation has not born fruit amongst the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions – all of which proclaim, peace and reconciliation. Yet, she like all the other participants from Colombia, South Sudan, Uganda, Mexico, Afghanistan and Iraq, insisted that there was a power in nonviolent resistance.

 

Many people today do ask ‘Is God in our midst or not? How is God amongst us? We may be tempted to scream at God and shout, ‘How can you tolerate such suffering as we try to be in solidarity with people who endure dispossession, violence and death or stand alongside hungry and thirsty people and. Maybe God is present when the humanity of the enemy or the stranger or the foreigner is respected in spite of poverty, hunger, violence. God comes amongst us as a stranger - in the suffering of the poor, the person seeking asylum seekers and refugee, the abused and neglected – and then from those situations shouts back at us and our social systems that cause and perpetuate hunger, poverty, discrimination and inequality. If we truly listen, we can hear the cries of God in the people. We are ever reminded that ‘God loves the world so much that God sent the Son into this world…’ This is how Pope Francis responded last year:  ‘The presence of God among people did not take place in a perfect, idyllic world but rather in this real world, which is marked by so many things both good and bad, by division, wickedness, poverty, arrogance and war. He chose to live in our history as it is, with all the weight of its limitations and of its tragedies. In doing so, he has demonstrated in an unequalled manner his merciful and truly loving disposition toward the human creature. He is God-with-us. Jesus is God-with-us. Do you believe this? Together let us profess: Jesus is God with us! Jesus is God with us always and forever with us in history's suffering and sorrow.’ (December 18, 2013)

 

We hear about the woman’s past and most people may be self-congratulatory. Never done that! I am not like that! While they might have make a few mistakes in their past, they are nothing like this woman with her history. We may not have done what the woman did but what about the pleasures, power and exclusiveness that satisfy us and isolate us from others? With what enemy are we unwilling to sit and talk, to eat and drink? How tolerant are we of those who belong to other religious or cultural traditions or sexual orientations? Do we believe the value of creative conversation, even when exhausted, even with our own young people who may have questions, sometimes abrasive, that well up from deep within them?

 

If we carefully listen to the gospel today, we see how Jesus respected the full humanness, the dignity, of this woman. The law was secondary when weighed against respect for her. Respectable Jewish men did not hang out in public with another woman, and certainly not with Samaritan women. None of this extraordinary encounter could have happened if Jesus had not been the most radical liberator who breaks taboos and crosses boundaries. He is free to be fully human, not Jewish.The Eugene Peterson translation of the Bible (The Message) has Jesus responding this way: ‘…the time is coming,’ Jesus says, ‘it has, in fact, come – when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. It's who you are and the way you live that counts before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people God is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before God in their worship.’

 

Jesus sees the person. We struggle to welcome refugees and asylum seekers who come with few resources except their perseverance, determination and innate skills and find only suspicion, vilification and prejudice. Jesus offers the ‘living water’ of hope to all people, of deliverance from the oppressive practices that deny them their true dignity. We are assured that God does not judge on the basis of society’s values but ‘in spirit and in truth. Clearly, as we listen to the gospel, our respect for another must flow from the fact that we all bear God’s imprint.

 

God is in our midst. How often we forget this. We forget that the one who meets us here and everywhere is the One who has something to give from his heart. This one has allowed his heart to break open and let the world in. We hear how, in Jesus, God comes to us in the form of a stranger and speaks to us through the stranger, the other. We have things to say to each other: the black person to the white, the Christian to the Muslim; the Muslim to the Jew, employees to employers, gay to straight, women to men, young to old, Aboriginal to non-Aboriginal, asylum seekers and new-comers to Australians. It can change our thinking, our attitudes and our behaviour. We see that God will be worshiped in the heart of every person who is reconciled; where racial and social barriers, religious and sexual prejudices are abolished. What matters most was that Jesus would not let any differences (or laws) prevent the Samaritan woman from being called into new life and new mission. Martin Buber once said, 'All real living is meeting.' We are liberated for life - for ourselves, and for all others.

 

Jesus shows us that we need to challenge 'man-made' boundaries and break the dividing walls of prejudice. If Jesus had kept within the bounds of the expected behaviour of his day, his encounter with the woman would have been superficial with superficial results or even nonexistent. We see how it begins: Jesus cares more about the woman and her ‘thirst’ than about her sin.

 

So, let us give up our hardened hearts that separate us from others. Much human behaviour is towards self-defeating destruction. People are holy, not denominational boundaries and sectarian shrines. God is holy – not cities, states and nations. Places are holy only because God’s people live there who worship God and not make ‘gods’ of their divisions or market practices. The destructive divisions of Samaritan and Jew, Palestinian and Jew, Christian and Muslim, Orthodox and Reformed, Protestant and Catholic, Sunni and Shiite are ultimately artificial and there will come a time when true believers recognise that God is Spirit. We cannot proclaim God’s Reign as safe and exclusive. What is required is an engagement with the full humanity of the ‘other.’ It requires vulnerability as manifested by Jesus who goes to the well and asks for water, who expects the other to have something to offer him – and he in turn can offer what the other seeks. So often we expect ‘the other’ to drink from our well. We need to take the risk of drinking from their wells and discovering the common ground of our humanity.

 

Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman transformed her from being a stranger among her own people into a messenger of hope for them.  We have people who are on the edges in every community and in every church. They may not be completely excluded, but would be unsure of acceptance and question their right to belong. Every community has people who are ‘thirsty’, who struggle to make ends meet and have little access to the fullness of life. There are people whose lives are dry and desolate because of wrong choices they have made or the effects of other peoples’ action. In his Lenten Message, Bishop Vincent Long (cf. his message below) intimates that we long for a community that will embrace and include not only ourselves but those who have been wronged and also done wrong. What is needed is an environment that is supportive and enables people to live a vibrant and meaningful life. This is the ‘living water’ that people long for: where there is healing, restoration, freedom and connectedness. As followers of Jesus we also have this ‘living water’ to offer one another and make all the difference to the so-called ‘Samaritan outcasts’ amongst us.

 

 

A Lenten Message from the Bishop of Parramatta, Vincent Long OFM Conv.

My dear people,

Lent is an important season for us Catholics insofar as it reminds us of the need for conversion. We cannot live life to the full if we gloss over the inconvenient truths about ourselves. We cannot grow to full maturity if we ignore the obstacles that prevent us from reaching our potential. Pope Francis always asks people to pray for him because he says he is a sinner. It is characteristic of a true Christian who recognises the darker side of himself and seeks metanoia, a change of heart.

Bishop Vincent Long OFM Conv. Image: Diocese of Parramatta.

More than ever before, the Catholic Church in Australia needs to recognise the dark crimes of sexual abuse against children and vulnerable people under its care, and the untold damage done to them and their loved ones. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has delivered a shameful indictment not simply on the perpetrators and their enablers but the Church’s collective and systemic betrayal of the Gospel.

Nevertheless, I believe firmly that the Church must be grateful for the work of the Royal Commission. More importantly, we must seize this Kairos, this moment of grace, this opportunity as a catalyst for change and not treat this period as a temporary aberration. It can never be business as usual again. We must have the courage to see how far we have drifted from the vision of Jesus, repent of our sins, and face up to the task of reclaiming the innocence and the powerlessness of the Servant-Leader.

We the custodians of the Church have woefully failed you and especially God’s little ones. Instead of demonstrating that fundamental ethos of care for those who have been harmed and are vulnerable, we the bishops, the leaders, have been shown to have cared primarily for the Church’s own security, reputation and interests. In many ways, we have behaved like the Prodigal Son. We have squandered the Church’s patrimony; we have betrayed your trust. And so it is time for us to come home to the heart of the Gospel. We need to convert to the radical vision of Christ and let it imbue our attitudes, our actions and our pastoral practices.

I have been a learner in how to be a leader after the example of Christ in the Diocese of Parramatta. I want to thank the survivors of abuse who have participated in the Royal Commission and who have personally allowed me the opportunity to hear your stories and to enter into the depth of your painful experience. I have much to learn from you.

I want to thank the faithful parishioners, religious and priests who continue to witness and serve generously in spite of the label of ‘guilty by association’. I can only pledge to walk with you through this ‘valley of darkness’ where our ‘sins have been laid bare’ to the hope of a Church which is purified and humbled, and yet more of a sacrament of God’s love in the world.

So dear friends, dear people of the Diocese of Parramatta,

The paschal rhythm summons us to a discipleship of humility, weakness and vulnerability, of dying and rising in Christ. We are challenged by the words of Ezekiel to remove the heart of stone from us and to have a heart of flesh instead.

As the Church, we must die to the old ways of being Church, which is steeped in a culture of clerical power, self-protection and cover-up. We must learn to rise to a Christ-like way of humility, inclusivity, compassion and powerlessness.

Lent leads to Easter glory. It is Jesus Christ who changes our darkness to light, our sorrow to joy, our suffering to glory and our death into life. May we have the courage and faith to live the paschal rhythm as it unfolds, even through one of the darkest chapters in our history. Let us pray that the Lord may give us a new heart and a new spirit as we enter into the season of renewal in the Church.