LITURGY NOTES FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

Second Sunday of Lent

March 4th 2018

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 and 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.

‘Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides

and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love,

and then, for a second time in the history of the world,

man will have discovered fire.’

Teilhard de Chardin

 

 

       

Readings

First Reading Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18

Responsorial Psalm Ps 116:10, 15, 16-17, 18-19

R. (116:9) I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.

Second Reading Romans 8:31b-34

Gospel Mark 9:2-10

Penitential Rite

v  You have shown us God's reign and given us a new vision.  Jesus, have mercy.

v  You have revealed to us the covenant of peace that God has made with us. Christ, have mercy.

v  You show us the God of Peace who transforms our minds and hearts to work for peace in the world. Jesus, have mercy.

Opening Prayer

Transforming God,

you are always faithful.

Open our minds and hearts to your voice

and free us from all that

diminishes our vision of your reign.

Transform us, give us light and strength

to take up our task in life

and to lighten the burden

of our brothers and sisters.

Prayer over the Gifts

Transforming God,

make us holy as you are holy

and compassionate as you are compassionate.

We now bring bread and wine before you.

May this Eucharist help us

to see beyond appearances

and see him who is our strength and joy

and our way to one another.

Prayer after Communion

Transforming God,

we give thanks for this Eucharist

that we have celebrated.

May it lead us out of the darkness of fear

and to commit ourselves more courageously

so that we may respond to you with love

and generous service to all our sisters and brothers

Prayer of the Faithful

Introduction: In the midst of a world filled with fear and anguish, let us pray that we, the Church, will be a sign of hope capable of transforming human existence. The response is:  Let us walk together in the land of the living.

or

Brothers and sisters, let us pray for all whose faith or trust is challenged by the demands of daily living, and especially for those whose challenges seem insurmountable.

·         For our Church, that leaders and members together may be credible to the world of today by sacrificing power and opportunism for a genuine transformation of persons and structures. In this time of listening. We pray: Let us walk together in the land of the living.

·         For people facing the death penalty: may the families of all people who face the death penalty around the world, and especially the families of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran know that the prayers and thoughts are with them to sustain them in this distressing time. In this time of listening. We pray: Let us walk together in the land of the living.

·         For the young people in our world who continue to be victims of ‘sacrifice’ at the hands of the merchants of death, greed and abuse of power: may those with authority use their power to prevent these violent action that continue ever so frequently. We pray: Let us walk together in the land of the living.

·         For world leaders that they will cease using bellicose language against other nations, especially Iran and North Korea, and work to build greater understanding and harmony through listening to one another and acknowledging legitimate grievances. We pray: Let us walk together in the land of the living.

·         For those who live in circumstances that challenge trust in others or in God: those living in war, violence, poverty or any kind of injustice. In this time of listening. In this time of listening. We pray: Let us walk together in the land of the living.

·         For those who are cynical, doubtful, despairing; for all whose faith is tentative or shaken. In this time of listening. We pray: Let us walk together in the land of the living.

·         For Christian people, that they may discover a vision of the world according to God's plan and have the strength to make the sacrifices to bring this to reality. In this time of listening. We pray: Let us walk together in the land of the living.

·         For our world, with all its potential for peace and equity, that people may share the goods of the earth, and that we may give and grant others the right and the opportunity to have a better quality of life. In this time of listening. We pray: Let us walk together in the land of the living.

·         For those who suffer the pain of racial discrimination, especially people of the Islamic faith at this time, that our society become more accepting of difference. In this time of listening. We pray: Let us walk together in the land of the living.

·         For parents whose children have been sacrificed in the name of war, slavery, greed and prostitution, that they may be consoled by the vision of the transfigured One who is our hope and resurrection. In this time of listening. We pray: Let us walk together in the land of the living.

·         For the women and men who are imprisoned because they dared speak out for truth and justice, that their actions may encourage others to overcome their fears. In this time of listening. We pray: Let us walk together in the land of the living.

Concluding Prayer: Transforming God, we have listened to your Son, Jesus Christ.  Open our hearts so that we might continue to receive your word with tenderness and trust, and cooperate with you in transforming the world.  We make this prayer in Jesus' name.

or

Gracious God, you call us to be people of deep faith, especially in the most difficult situations of our lives. Hear the concerns we lay before you, and empower us to place our trust in you, who handed over your only Son on our behalf.

Alternative Prayers of the Faithful adapted from ‘Assisi Pledge for Peace’

• May we proclaim our firm conviction that violence and terrorism are incompatible with the authentic spirit of religion and to doing everything possible to eliminate the root causes of terrorism.
• May we strive to educate people to mutual respect and esteem, in order to help bring about a peaceful coexistence between people of different ethnic groups, cultures, and religions.
• May we commit to fostering the culture of dialogue so that there be an increased understanding and mutual trust between individuals and among peoples.
• May we strive to defend the right of everyone to live a decent life in accordance with their own cultural identity and to form freely a family of their own.
• May we work towards frank and patient dialogue by refusing to consider our differences as an insurmountable barrier but as an opportunity for greater understanding.
• May we commit to forgiving one another for past and present prejudices, and to support one another in a common effort to overcome selfishness, arrogance, hatred and violence, and learn that peace without justice is no true peace.
• May we opt to taking the side of the poor and the helpless, speak out for those who have no voice, and work effectively to change these situations.
• May we take up the cry of those who refuse to be resigned to violence and evil and make every effort to offer the people of our time real hope for justice and peace.
• May encourage every effort to promote friendship between peoples in conviction that it is in the through solidarity and understanding between people that greater harmony is created.
• May we commit to urging our political and religious to make every effort to create and consolidate an environment of solidarity and peace based on justice.

(Adapted from the ‘Assisi Pledge for Peace’ sent by Pope John Paul II to world leaders in February 2002)

Parish Notices

March 1 International Death Penalty Abolition day

March 1 Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day

March 1 International Treaty to Ban landmines comes into force in 1999

March 1 Clean Up Australia Day

March 5 International Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

Further Resources

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Plato (428-348);

Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering, and the lonely right there where you are - in your own homes and in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. Everywhere, wherever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, just rejected by society - completely forgotten, completely left alone.

Mother Teresa (1910-1997); Founder of the Missionaries Of Charity

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

‘We speak of a situation of extreme poverty in our countries. We must remember, however, that this poverty has a very concrete face:

* the faces of the Indigenous peoples and the Afro-Americans who live in inhuman situations, the poorest of the poor;

* the faces of the campesinos who, in our continent, have no land of their own and are exploited by landowners;

* the faces of the factory workers who are badly paid and face difficulties to organize their unions;

* the faces of the outcasts in our large urban centers. They live in the midst of wealth and have nothing of their own;

* the faces of the unemployed who have lost their jobs because of repeated economic crises and unjust models of economic development;

* the faces of our youth who are frustrated and lost for lack of training and orientation;

* the faces of our children, weakened by poverty even before they are born, suffering from physical and mental deficiencies;

* the faces of the aged, more and more numerous, abandoned by a society that only values those who produce wealth.’

These faces of the poor in the Americas call out for a Transfiguration of our unjust economic and social structures.

Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, retired archbishop of Sao Paulo, Brazil, referring to final document of the Latin American Bishops' Conference Meeting in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979.

We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.

Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.

Buddha

I count myself as a spiritual sister to those the US government has murdered, and I am angry at my powerlessness.

Karen Kwiatkowski

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

Albert Einstein

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Albert Einstein

Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.

Anne Louise Germaine de Stael

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

Albert Einstein

What the people want is very simple - they want an America as good as its promise.

Barbara Jordan

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

Albert Einstein

If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.

Joanna Macy (1929-)

Frequently people think compassion and love are merely sentimental. No! They are very demanding. If you are going to be compassionate, be prepared for action.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1931-);

It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.

John Adams

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Leo Tolstoy

If we simply repeat the formulas of the past, our words may have the character of doctrine and dogma but they will not have the character of good news. We may be preaching perfectly orthodox doctrine but it is not the gospel for us today. We must take the idea of good news seriously. If our message does not take the form of good news, it is simply not the Christian gospel.’

Albert Nolan, O.P. in, God in South Africa.

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become victims of the darkness. 

Justice William O. Douglas

It matters not

who you love,

where you love,

why you love,

when you love,

or how you love,

It matters only

that You love.

John Lennon

A Prayer for Peace

Blessed are the PEACEMAKERS,

for they shall be known as

the Children of God.

But I say to you that hear,

love your enemies,

do good to those who hate you,

bless those who curse you,

pray for those who abuse you.

To those who strike you on the cheek,

offer the other also,

and from those who take away your cloak,

do not withhold your coat as well.

Give to everyone who begs from you,

and of those who take away your goods,

do not ask them again.

And as you wish that others would do to you,

so do to them.

From http://www.angelfire.com/md/elanmichaels/christianpeace.html

There is in this world both beauty and the humiliated…and we must strive to be unfaithful neither to the one nor to the other.

Albert Camus

Our goal should not be the benefit of a privileged few, but rather the improvement of the living conditions of all.

Pope John Paul II, Message of Lent 2003

The fundamental starting point for all of Catholic social teaching is the defense of human life and dignity: every human person is created in the image and likeness of God and has an inviolable dignity, value, and worth, regardless of race, gender, class, or other human characteristics.

Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice, A Statement of the Catholic Bishops of the United States

Thomas Merton Peace Prayer

Almighty and merciful God, Creator and ruler of the universe, whose designs are without blemish, whose compassion for the errors of [humans] is inexhaustible, in your will is our peace.

Mercifully hear this prayer which rises to you from the tumult and desperation of a world in which you are forgotten, in which your name is not invoked, your laws are derided and your presence is ignored. Because we do not know you, we have no peace.

From the heart of an eternal silence, you have watched the rise of empires and have seen the smoke of their downfall. You have witnessed the impious fury of ten thousand fratricidal wars, in which great powers have torn whole continents to shreds in the name of peace and justice.

A day of ominous decision has now dawned on this free nation. Save us then from our obsessions! Open our eyes, dissipate our confusions, teach us to understand ourselves and our adversary. Let us never forget that sins against the law of love are punishable by loss of faith, and those without faith stop at no crime to achieve their ends!

Help us to be masters of the weapons that threaten to master us. Help us to use our science for peace and plenty, not for war and destruction. Save us from the compulsion to follow our adversaries in all that we most hate, confirming them in their hatred and suspicion of us. Resolve our inner contradictions, which now grow beyond belief and beyond bearing. They are at once a torment and a blessing: for if you had not left us the light of conscience, we would not have to endure them. Teach us to wait and trust.

Grant light, grant strength and patience to all who work for peace. But grant us above all to see that our ways are not necessarily your ways, that we cannot fully penetrate the mystery of your designs and that the very storm of power now raging on this earth reveals your hidden will and your inscrutable decision.

Grant us to see your face in the lightning of this cosmic storm, O God of holiness, merciful to [all]. Grant us to seek peace where it is truly found. In your will, O God, is our peace.

Amen.

A human person is of more value than the entire world.

 Saint John Eudes

There is a growing awareness of the sublime dignity of human persons, who stand above all things and whose rights and duties are universal and inviolable. They ought, therefore, to have ready access to all that is necessary for living a genuinely human life: for example, food, clothing, housing, . . . the right to education, and work . . . ‘ Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, #26

The true child of God has the strength to use the sword, but will not use it, knowing every human is the Image of God.

Gandhi 

After the Transfiguration 

Grinding up the steep incline,

our calves throbbing,

we talked of problems

and slapped at flies.

Then you touched my shoulder,

said, ‘turn around.’

Behind us floated

surprise mountains

blue on lavender,

water-colored ranges:

a glimpse from God's eyes.

Descending, how could we chat

mundanely of the weather, like deejays?

We wondered if, returning,

James and John had squabbled:

whose turn to fetch the water,

after the waterfall of grace?

After he imagined the shining tents,

did Peter's walls seem narrow,

smell of rancid fish?

Did feet that poised on Tabor

cross the cluttered porch?

After the bleached light,

could eyes adjust to ebbing

grey and shifting shade?

Cradling the secret in their sleep

did they awaken cautiously,

wondering if the mountaintop

would gild again-bringing

that voice, that face?

Kathy Coffey teaches English at the University of Colorado, Denver, and Regis College.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human can fight, and never stop fighting.

e.e. cummings

When we yield to discouragement it is usually because we give too much thought to the past and to the future.

St Therese of Lisieux

Some things you must always be unable to bear.

Some things you must never stop refusing to bear.

Injustice and outrage and dishonour and shame.

No matter how young you are

or how old you have got.

Not for kudos and not for cash,

your picture in the paper

nor money in the bank, neither.

Just refuse to bear them.

William Faulkner

The challenge is to recognize that the world is about two things: differentiation and communion. The challenge is to seek a unity that celebrates diversity, to unite the particular with the universal, to recognize the need for roots while insisting that the point of roots is to put forth branches. What is intolerable is for differences to become idolatrous. No human being's identity is exhausted by his or her gender, race, ethnic origin, national loyalty, or sexual orientation. All human beings have more in common than they have in conflict, and it is precisely when what they have in conflict seems overriding that what they have in common needs most to be affirmed. James Baldwin described us well: 'Each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other — male in female, female in male, white in black and black in white. We are part of each other.

William Coffin Sloane, The Heart Is a Little to The Left: Essays on Public Morality

Christians should never think they honor the greater truth they find in Christianity, by ignoring truths found elsewhere.

William Coffin Sloane, A Passion for the Possible: A Message to U.S. Churches

Too many Christians use the Bible as a drunk does a lamppost — for support rather than for illumination.

William Coffin Sloane, A Passion for the Possible: A Message to U.S. Churches

Credo — I believe — best translates 'I have given my heart to.' However imperfectly, I have given my heart to the teaching and example of Christ, which, among many other things, informs my understanding of faiths other than Christianity…. To love God by loving my neighbor is an impulse equally at the heart of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. It therefore makes eminent sense in today's fractured world for religious people to move from truth-claiming to the function truth plays.

William Coffin Sloane, Credo

Moreover, when we consider how, on a whole range of questions — from the number of sacraments to the ordination of women, pacifism, abortion, and homosexuality — Christians cannot arrive at universal agreement, then we have to be impressed by a divine incomprehensibility so vast that no human being can speak for the Almighty. As St. Paul asks, ‘For who has known the mind of God?’ To learn from one another and to work together towards common goals of justice and peace — this surely is what suffering humanity has every right to expect of believers of all faiths.

William Coffin Sloane, Credo

Globalization of the economy, it is claimed will 'lift all boats.' Today it's becoming clear that it will 'lift all yachts.' It's not doing much for those on their leaking lift rafts.

William Coffin Sloane, Credo

What we and other nuclear powers are practicing is really nuclear apartheid. A handful of nations have arrogated to themselves the right to build, deploy, and threaten to use nuclear weapons while policing the rest of the world against their production. . . . Nuclear apartheid is utopian and arrogant. It is a recipe for proliferation, a policy of disaster. That is why Kofi Annan repeatedly says, 'Global nuclear disarmament must remain at the top of the UN agenda.' Shouldn't nuclear disarmament also be at the top of the churches' agenda?’ 

William Coffin Sloane, Credo

I love to see Christians enter the fray on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged, to fight for housing for low-income families, for decent health care for the aging, for fair treatment for minorities, for peace for everyone — provided that they always remember that there are many causes and more than one solution to problems of injustice and war. Most of all, in these times that are neither safe nor sane, I love to see Christians risk maximum fidelity to Jesus Christ when they can expect minimal support from the prevailing culture.

William Coffin Sloane, Credo

God of Names,

old and new.

God of Peoples,

old and new.

God of Promises,

old and new.

We turn away this season:

from all pride that would own you,

from all lies that would fear you,

from all burdens that would blame you.

We turn for you this season:

from our isolation we turn toward others,

from our chaos we turn to inward calm,

from our crosses of shame we turn toward not glory but solidarity.

We hope against hope...

promising, peopling, naming!

Amen.

From Out In Scripture

Reflection on the readings

All the readings today tell is that Jesus reveals to us what God wants. But what will you do with Jesus’ various epiphanies or revelations as we going into Lent? What will you do with them once we realise where they lead?  What will we do with the words ‘this is my beloved child’ when we realise they are meant for us?  These words that define Lent mean we share, along with Jesus, his chosenness and glory but also rejection and abuse, injustice and death. These words are not just a baptism affirmation but propels us into a way of life that makes God’s Reign visible for others. Some will perceive this as a threat. It is fine to be up on the mountain but going down from the mountain is not for the faint of heart. Perhaps Jesus should have stayed there. Yet he comes back down into the mundane nature of everyday life of misunderstanding, squabbling, disbelieving disciples. He comes down into the religious and political quarrels of the day. He comes down into the jealousy and rivalry that can colour our relationships. He came down into the poverty, injustice and suffering that make up our lives. This is the Jesus who came down the mountain but also was God coming down among us in the incarnation. Jesus came to embrace us out of love. Today’s gospel is another story of Jesus coming down into our brokenness, fear, disappointment, and loss and enter the dark places of the world and the dark places of our lives.

Paul asks: How can we be afraid? ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?’ God came among us through Jesus – became one of us, entered the world we live in - a world that is filled with hatred and violence; a world where people are willing to kill other people, respond to hate with hate, and violence with violence. Jesus was not spared the vilification, abuse, torture and death as many other people are, but we observe how he responded. We need to learn over and over again that he did not respond to that hatred with hatred or violence with violence. He returned love for hate and nonviolence for violence – praying for those who put him to death. This was his way. We have to listen and follow.How can we be afraid of this God? The saintly former archbishop of Recife, Brazil, Helder Camara, once said: ‘Be careful of the way you live, it is the only gospel most people will ever read!’

The gospel story of the transfiguration is about seeing in a new way. Seeing things as they are and how they could be. The Transfiguration is a narrative of hope, because the one who was rich in divinity, made himself poor to be with us. We are called to step outside of our normal boundaries and listen to Jesus….. who speaks to us through suffering men, women and children. What if we would listen more? In the midst of war and violence, we are called to see the presence of God and the invitation to peace. Abraham learned that God was a God of peace and not of sacrifice. Yet we see young people sacrificed over and over again in places in many places of the world as they are forced to fight battles they have nothing to do. Over and over again we see young people die in schools and shopping centres at the hands of deranged gunmen who have been enabled by ever crazier merchants in weapons. How much we wish that people would come to this conclusion as the crazy call to war against Iran or Russia or Syria or Iraq or North Korea is being ramped up again. In all these places, people just want to live in peace and security. There are more peace-mongers than war-mongers! The vision of Abraham, the standing with Jesus on the mountain could be a way of learning that war and injustice, poverty and hunger are not inevitable.

The Genesis story is about the end of human sacrifice – anything that diminishes the image of God in another. Killing [‘human sacrifice’], whether in war or in refugee detention centres or capital punishment, has no sanction and no place in our religion. This connects with the covenant of peace God made with all creation in the Noah story. It has broad implications for our peace and justice making. God wants us to dedicate ourselves towards life – all life and wellbeing. Abraham saw that violence is not God’s way, but the blood of many young people continues to be offered to God in war by people who have never served in conflict or are merely obsessed with greed and power, or drunk on patriotism. That ’human sacrifice’ continues to be offered in the use of sex slaves, human trafficking, child labour, sweat shops and detention of asylum seekers.

Like the story in Genesis today, it is the male who makes the decision for human sacrifice. Where was Isaac’s mother, Sarah? Was Isaac not her son, too?  We can imagine what she felt? How many women have had their eyes opened to the lies, deceit, waste, the evil sacrifice of humanity to war in the form of their children, husbands, fathers and brothers. When God’s angel stayed Abraham’s hand, it said ‘Enough!’ Abraham's experience was transfiguration - a new way of understanding God. This is a story for all Christians, Jews, Muslims, and people of all other faiths. ‘Enough!’ After 12 years in Iraq, 100’s of billions of dollars that belongs to the poor and 100’s of 1000s of innocent men, women and children dead. Some places like Fallujah were so contaminated by depleted uranium that makes it virtually impossible to give birth to a baby without serious defects if it survives childbirth. Fallujah has come into the news again with the senate appointment of former General Jim Molan, who served there. An ecological crisis has been left in the country. A refugee crisis has been left there and in Syria and Libya. The voice of God today rings out: ‘listen to him’. ‘Put away the sword’. ‘Don't return evil for evil. Return good for evil’.

The Transfiguration is a sign of hope. We have transfiguration moments in our lives. It is possible to see things differently and thus act differently. Jesus saw things that others were unaware of. He noticed the people like the poor widow who gave all she had in the giving all she had; noticed Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree and called him to come down; he felt the woman’s touch who reached out to him in a great crowd hoping to be healed.  Jesus seemed to see things from an upside-down world.  He dissuaded his disciples from dismissing little children, considered unimportant, who climbed all over him. Jesus noticed. He paid attention to things and to nature. In all this he was able to see the presence of God. As he was able to see with the eyes of love, we are called to follow as we come down the mountain. It is possible to see God in others, to recognise their sacredness and dignity. It means making the effort to connect with them. It is possible that we can live together in our diversity: let go of racism; let go of hatred for homosexuals; let go of greed, power and the need to be in control; to let go of violence in word and action; to let go of fear that leads to paralysis and inaction; to let go of the mistrust that prevent conflict and problem resolution – all this because we have been to the ‘mountain’ and come down again knowing that God is in all things, all people, that we are sisters and brothers.

Jesus will not and cannot reject us. His coming down the mountain is to remind us that we do not have to hide the hard and difficult parts of our lives from God. The hope is that Lent will be a time of trusting in God’s mercy revealed through the one who came down the mountain, who became flesh for us, who entered the dark places of our world and seeks out the dark places in our lives to bring them to light, which makes trust and courage possible. For no other reason was Jesus born, lived, died and was raised again, except that we might know that God is unrelentingly and indefatigably for us!

The Gospel today is not just retelling what happened to Jesus but shows us what is involved and demanded whenever and wherever we recognize that Jesus is the Messiah. As Jesus gradually opened the eyes of the blind man at Bethsaida, he also reveals to us the nature and implications of his ‘messiahship.’  What we need to keep in mind, is that which makes it do-able - the realisation that we are not alone in this.

As mentioned earlier, I mentioned earlier Paul tells us, ‘though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness’ (Phil. 2:6-7). Jesus could also have stayed on the mountain too but came down into the mundane nature of everyday life where we find the nitty-gritty details of misunderstanding, squabbles, disbelief, self-centredness, religious and political quarrels of the day, jealousies and rivalry that colour our relationships, down into the poverty and pain that make up our world.

We have been exhorted to listen to Jesus. The message remains the same: love one another, i.e., take care of one another, especially the downtrodden. Whenever we give our time for the benefit of another, we are laying down our life. Whenever we take the time to write on behalf of a person who is being oppressed or ill-treated, even though we are unlikely to ever meet that person, we are laying down our life. Whenever we rally or support a living wage or seek to ensure humane treatment of migrants and refugees, we are laying down our life. Abraham learned to hear God’s desires in a new way and saw that God did not want the death of his son. May we come to understand the social implications of the gospel and learn to speak up for justice for all those who are oppressed in any way. Maybe we have come to see that war and injustice, poverty and hunger, do not have to be.

Again, the Transfiguration is a sign of great hope. It is possible to see the presence of God in Jesus. It is possible to see things in a new way and see God in others. It is possible to let go of racism, to let go of an addiction to money, to let go of power and control, to let go of violence, to let go of inaction, to let go of our blindness and selfishness. It is possible to solve international problems without war. It is even possible to let go of the religious experience on the mountain and come down and find God in all things – the whole of creation. It is possible to see the world as a global community and to see all people as our brothers and sisters. These are moments of transfiguration. They are not just about Jesus but about us: listening, seeing, feeling and responding to bring light, love and compassion to others.

uCatholic

A beautiful little girl with Down syndrome, got up from her seat during a papal audience and went toward the Pope. The girl then sat down near him and the Holy Father continued to speak while holding hands with the little girl.

 

BRINGING THEM HOME: AUSTRALIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION

Claude Mostowik MSC, Director MSC Justice and Peace writes:

LITURGY NOTES FOR THE FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT

First Sunday of Lent

February 18, 2018

Suggested formula for recognition of indigenous people and their land.

We acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land

on which we stand.

We pay our respects to them and 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.

The beauty that will save the world is the love that shares the pain

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, former Archbishop of Milan

Peace remains possible. And if peace is possible, it is also a duty! 

Pope Benedict XVI, Message for World Day of Prayer for Peace 2004

          

 

   

Readings

Reading I Genesis 9:8-15

Responsorial Psalm Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9

R. (cf. 10) Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

Reading II 1 Peter 3:18-22

Gospel Mark 1:12-15

Penitential Rite

• You have established your covenant with the whole of creation, Jesus, have mercy.
• You remind us of your faithfulness through many signs, Christ, have mercy.
• Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant, Jesus, have mercy.

Opening Prayer

Rainbow God [or: God of the Desert],

as Jesus was led into the desert,

may the Spirit open our eyes

to see that a new world is possible.

Open our eyes to what is good and evil

and help us to feel the hunger

for what is good and human

and to give shape to your Reign of truth

by justice and unselfish love.

Prayers of the Faithful

Introduction:  God has made a covenant with us for life with the promise to protect our home, the planet earth. Let us ask for God's strength that we may keep our covenant as we pray in response: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant. [from responsorial psalm]

1.       For our country and for all nations: that we may live in peace and harmony, honoring the dignity and respecting the differences of all people, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

2.      May the Church be open to the world, especially people who are marginalised, and be liberated from all forms of  ambition, injustice, cruelty and oppression, so that Christ’s loving and compassionate face shines forth in all our lives, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

3.       For our community: that God’s Reign may come for us all as we become more aware of and sensitive  to sufferings of people around the world, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

4.      For people living with disadvantage: may Governments will keep in mind and work for those in society who live with disadvantage, remembering the need to Bridge the Gap between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians, alleviate the discouragement of unemployment, and support refugees and the disabled, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

5.       For people living in places of conflict and violence: may people will come to see the beauty and goodness of peace and work for it especially in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

6.      For people facing the death penalty: may the families of all people who face the death penalty around the world, know that prayers and thoughts are with them to sustain them in this distressing time, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

7.       For all living things upon the earth - the animals and plants that feed and clothe us and all that is beautiful in earth, sky and sea: that we continue to see that they are a gift and our responsibility and not to be taken them for granted, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

8.      For our home, the earth – both the land and the oceans: that we may use its resources wisely and responsibly, sharing with all people for the common good, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

9.      For the people on the lowest rung of our society: may we remember that they have experiences and knowledge that we do not have and that we have much to learn from them, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

10.   For leaders of the churches: that they may respond to the needs of people in their everyday lives and appreciate the ability of these people to reach out to others in trust and faith, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

11.   For people who live with a sense of failure:  that they have the courage to make a new beginning with themselves and others, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

12.   For those in positions of leadership in government: that they seriously seek the participation of all people, even the weakest and most vulnerable, in shaping public policy, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

13.   For those who experience the desert because of hunger, strikes, violence, injustice, or exploitation, that hope will be reborn as they encounter persons who support them and struggle with them, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

14.   For those who are passing through deserts of suffering, failures and disappointments:  that the Spirit may give them the strength to overcome their troubles, we pray: Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.

Concluding Prayer: Rainbow God, you have set the rainbow as a sign of promise for the hopes of the human community. We pray that we may keep faith with you, our Creator, in our care of this world and all its inhabitants. 

Prayer over the Gifts

Rainbow God [or: God of the Desert],

the bread and wine we bring before you

will become new life for us.

May this Eucharist impact on our minds and hearts

so that our lives may be changed.

Preface [Alternative]

God is with you.

And also with you.

Let us lift up our hearts.

We lift them to God.

Let us give thanks to our loving God.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

It is indeed right to give you our thanks and praise, O God,

for in tenderness and faithful love

you forgive our sins and guide us when we stray.

When the ancient flood destroyed the world you had created,

you saved Noah and his family from the waters,

and established a covenant with them

and with every living creature for all time.

When Jesus came forth from the waters of baptism,

and proving himself in the wilderness

where waves of temptation threatened to engulf him,

he began to proclaim the good news of your Reign,

calling people to repent and believe in the gospel.

He was cast down to the land of the dead

where he preached even to those lost in the flood,

but you raised him to new life

and seated him at your side

to reign over every authority and power for ever.

Therefore with .....

©2003 Nathan Nettleton www.laughingbird.net (adapted)

Prayer after Communion

Rainbow God [or: God of the Desert],

in this celebration of the Eucharist,

Jesus has spoken to us words of peace,

forgiveness and encouragement;

and breathed life into every living creature through your Spirit.

May the light and life you have created in us

be reflected through our service to one another.

Further Resources

That Life Would Teach Us     (John Van Laar)

(NB: This prayer could also be easily adapted into a Prayer of the Faithful)

God, life – your life – is so freely and abundantly available,

it pulses in all creation, and in every human soul.

Yet we have allowed ourselves to be seduced by death,

and have left ourselves and our planet thirsty and lethargic.

So, where rain forests are destroyed

to exploit immediate resources for short term profits,

we pray that your life would teach us restraint;

Where human waste piles up and poisons the earth,

and the lives of the creatures in it,

we pray that your life would teach us wisdom;

Where the growth and nurture of children is stunted,

by poverty and inequality,

we pray that your life would teach us generosity and compassion;

Where life in all its various expressions is denied and suppressed

by hatred, self-interest, war and megalomania,

we pray that your life would teach us love and humility.

Teach us, O God, to live – to really live,

abundantly, freely, generously and humbly,

that life may be nurtured, multiplied and shared,

– in all its amazing diversity –

through us.

In Christ’s name we pray.

Amen.

‘When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable.’

Jess C. Scott The Intern

‘I envy people that know love. They have someone who takes them as they are.’

Jess C. Scott

‘The human body is the best work of art.’

Jess C. Scott

‘War is what happens when language fails.’

Margaret Atwood

An Orthodox Christian Prayer for Peace

God and Creator of all people on the earth.

Guide, all the nations and their leaders

in the ways of justice and peace.

Protect us from the evils of injustice,

prejudice, exploitation, conflict and war.

Help us to put away mistrust, bitterness and hatred.

Teach us to cease the storing and using of implements of war.

Lead us to find justice, peace and freedom.

Unite us in the making and creating of the tools of peace

against ignorance, poverty, disease and oppression.

Grant that we may grow in harmony and friendship as brothers and sisters

created in your image, to your honor and praise. Amen.

[Adapted from a prayer in the Center of Concern]

To ignore the immense multitude of people who are not only deprived of the absolute necessities of life (food, housing and medical assistance) but do not even have the hope of a better future, is to become like the rich who pretended not to see the beggar Lazarus.

Pope John Paul II (Lent 2003)

Faced with the tragic situation of persistent poverty which afflicts so many people in our world, how can we fail to see that the quest for profit at any cost and the lack of effective, responsible concern for the common good have concentrated immense resources in the hands of a few while the rest of humanity suffers in poverty and neglect?’

Pope John Paul II (Lent 2003)

The world is waiting...for new saints, ecstatic men and women who are so deeply rooted in the love of God that they are free to imagine a new international order.

Henri Nouwen

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

Albert Camus

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

Albert Einstein

It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

Alfred Adler

The form of law which I propose would be as follows: In a state which is desirous of being saved from the greatest of all plagues -- not faction, but rather distraction -- there should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor, again, excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil . .  Now the legislator should determine what is to be the limit of poverty or of wealth.

Plato (427-347 B.C.)

The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad soil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds-where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough-a modest living-and no man is made possessor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

‘I believe that: While we have more than we need on this continent, and others die for want of it, there can be no lasting peace. When we work as hard in peacetime to make this world decent to live in, as in wartime we work to kill, the world will be decent, and the causes for which men fight will be gone.

Agnes Newton Keith Three Came Home

….. wars might be avoided by: universal disarmament; limited national sovereignties; provision for all people of the world: of a rising standard of living, better education, more contact with and better understanding of others; and equal access to the technical and raw materials which are needed for improving life….

J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1946

A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property.

Harold Laski (1930)

What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles.

George Wilhelm Hegel

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.

Dale Carnegie

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.

On the contrary, everything is sacred.

Teilhard de Chardin sj

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. ‘In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. ‘The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war. and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

James Madison, April 20, 1795

I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?

Eve Merriam

All the arms we need are for hugging.

Author Unknown

As followers of Christ, we need to take up our cross in the nuclear age.  I believe that one obvious meaning of the cross is unilateral disarmament.  Our security is in a loving, caring God.  We must dismantle our weapons of terror and place our reliance on God

I am told by some that unilateral disarmament in the face of atheistic communism is insane.  I find myself observing that nuclear armament by anyone is itself atheistic and anything but sane.

Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen

Weapons do not fire on their own.  Those who have lost hope fire them.  Those who are controlled by dogmas fire them.  We must fight for peace undismayed, and fearlessly accept these challenges from those without hope and from the threats of fanatics.

Oscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

In the face of suffering, one has no right to run away, not to see.  In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way.  When someone suffers, and it is not you, they come first.  Their suffering gives them priority…. To watch over another who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God.

Elie Wiesel

Everyone's a pacifist between wars.

It's like being a vegetarian between meals.

Colman McCarthy

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

Abraham Flexner

Draft beer; not people.

Author Unknown

When prophets are silent and faith a distortion

When prophets are silent and faith a distortion,

The bruised reed lies broken, and hope is snuffed out;

We wander through deserts of fear and deception,

Despised and derided and driven by doubt.

The dry bones of exile lie fallen and broken,

We find ourselves lost in the darkness of night;

The leaders are blinded, by God seem abandoned,

While wrong is exalted as if it were right.

When God loses patience with pastors and people

Foundations are shaken and hopes are unsure;

The faith which is broken, the love that's forsaken

Are open through pain to God's promise and cure.

He digs up foundations of guilt and injustice,

He opens the pathway to truth from deceit,

From brokenness, nothingness, renders salvation;

This vulnerable path leads to praise that's complete.

Andrew E. Pratt

Wilderness Experience

Always the place of testing

and paradoxically resting

the desert knows its own

and nurtures them in ways

that comfortable, urbane folk

can never find in town.

What city folk see out there

as landscape harsh and bare

intolerant of living things

under searing sun and wind

is to the desert people

most providentially kind.

Here things mate, seed and grow

such as townsfolk never know

with roots that dig down far

below the shifting sands

into that sturdier ground

which wise souls love yet fear.

Here roo and desert oak,

spinifex and patient folk

prophets and Mary’s son

find angels’ food and strength

to go to any length

trusting in things unseen.

Bruce Prewer 2000

Seeing

It was easy to see You

in holy faces, holy places,

God made flesh in a mother's voice

or in the gentle hands of a nurse

or the smile of a grandmother

 or the laughter of small children.

Every presence of love and beauty

proclaimed Your advent.

I needed eyes sharpened by suffering

before I was able to see You

in the pain of human poverty.

The man who stared at a prison ceiling,

the alcoholic mother, the hungry child,

the old woman who died alone in her flat,

the young victims who grew up

to become abusers themselves,

the people who were in despair

over their inability to make changes,

when I could look at them

through the experience

of my own crucifixions,

I realised that they all looked back at me

with Your eyes.

It took much longer to see You

in places of affluence and power,

in Parliament or at the stock exchange,

or at the helm of a luxury yacht

or residing in a summer palace,

surrounded by material wealth.

But I now discover that in these places

You have the same eyes as the poor,

the disabled, the imprisoned,

the same eyes as my grandmother,

the child, the hospital nurse.

Joy Cowley, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Earth teach me!

Earth teach me patience

as the plants grow slowly

Earth teach me hope

as the plants grow slowly

Earth teach me hope

as the first green shoots break through

Earth teach me courage

as the wild animals protect their young

Earth teach me blessing

 as the sun rises each day

Earth teach me loving kindness

as the birds migrate for winter

Earth teach me freedom

as the birds who fly alone

Earth teach me celebration

as the apples come to full fruit

Earth teach me yearning

as the rain nourishes the drought.

Earth teach me!

Source Unknown

An old man was walking along a beach at daybreak, when he noticed a child ahead of him picking up starfish that had been cast ashore by a storm the night before.  The old man hurried to catch up to her, and asked what she was doing.  ‘Rescuing starfish,’ the child replied.  ‘They'll die if I leave them here when the sun comes out.’ ‘But this beach goes on for miles,’ argued the man, ‘and there are millions of starfish stranded here.  How can your effort make any difference?’ The girl looked intently at the starfish in her hand, then threw it back to the safety of the sea and said, ‘It makes a difference for this one!’

Source Unknown

Maker,

Make of us, still,

creatures of awe,

creatures who know,

creatures who live in connection.

Make in us, still,

the Word-made-flesh,

the water-signed call,

the will to begin again in connection.

Make over us, still,

rainbows announcing hope,

rainbows embracing all,

rainbows calling for conscience in connection.

Amen.

Reflections on the readings

Pope Francis has often called on the Church to be open and welcoming, whatever the cost. He has reminded those in leadership that they should not be a ‘a closed caste’ but lead people in reaching toward all who are rejected by society and the church. He has repeatedly called us to respond (as Jesus did last week towards the leper) without studying the situation and its consequences but reach out to those who far off, to heal people’s wounds and restore them to God’s family. Francis has condemned the ‘narrow and prejudiced mentality’ where people cling to religious laws out of fear and then reject the very people who should be ministered to, that is, anyone on the margins of society and ‘who encounters discrimination.’ He has said, ‘We will not find the Lord unless we truly accept the marginalised!’…‘Truly the Gospel of the marginalised is where our credibility is at stake, where it is found, and where it is revealed’ and that we should see ‘the crucified Lord’ in the hungry and the unemployed, those who are in prison and ‘even in those who have lost their faith, or declared themselves to be atheists, or turned away from the practice of the faith.’

Today we find rich symbols of God's presence among us. The ‘bow in the clouds’ signifies God's covenant of peace with all of us. God is present and cares for the earth and all upon it. The story of Noah is a story of re-creation where things are put together again – healed and reconciled.

Mark with only a few words or brush strokes paints Jesus’ baptism and how he is driven into the wilderness …..a place of danger as well as grace (Spirit) but where one finds the ‘adversary’ [all that opposed to God, the one who hinders anyone from fulfilling one’s promises and faithfulness to God and others]. The Baptismal Ritual in a Latin American Missal has put it in very contemporary terms: one will not be mastered by or collude with violence, war, hatred, nationalism, racism, greed, selfishness and egoism, individualism, materialism, or any ‘ism’, anger, dishonesty, lack of integrity and so forth., Jesus, after being tested in the wilderness, proclaims the nearness of God’s reign: that God is among the poor; among the victims of injustice, and among all who suffer at the hands of others. Lent is our wilderness time. Jesus talked about repentance, which literally means 'a mental revolution', a change of mind and heart.  It means to turn. It means to stop what we’re doing and do something different, or do the same thing in a different way. It requires change. Doing something different can make us rethink, re-establish, who we are with God, who we are with others, who we are within ourselves. In two compelling sentences – ‘The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.’ – Jesus inaugurates and sums up his mission: to break the shackles of sin that enslave humanity, to put us on a path that liberates us from all oppression and teaches us how to love one another unconditionally. Justice is love made flesh and we are called again and again to seize moments for nonviolence and injustice. Pope John Paul ll also called on us to dismantle the ‘structures of sin’ that abound, e.g., the inadequate response to poverty hunger suffered by so many of our sisters and brothers, and made worse by cuts to foreign aid; the madness of war, manufacturing aims and dealing with violence with more violence; the on-going state-sanctioned murder of the death penalty around the world; the violence and injustice of the effects of climate change and environmental degradation. 

Because of God’s tenacious love we are offered a ‘rainbow’ as a sign of presence and solidarity. We are called to turn around <repent> to see God in Jesus present in our lives, one who is big hearted and all-embracing of people rather than mean-spirited, vengeful, demanding and joy-destroying. The revolution that Jesus calls us to is by a new way seeing, having a new mind and heart which is expressed in our relationships with others. That revolution is a refusal to live in or imprison ourselves in the past or concentrate on ourselves.

Jesus lived with the animals. What beasts were they? The real ones that threaten us are within us – the beasts of terror, vengeance, panic, fear and mistrust, greed and envy. Fear has many people in its grip. Much is fostered by Governments to increase their power. We need to ignore the arrogant and powerful who try to shock us with their nasty behaviour and ugly words. Can we move away from their news and dominating ways into the Good News Jesus calls us to – to accept God’s tenacious love for us and for all living things?

The image of the Ark tells us we are all in the same boat. This is the message of the L’Arche communities founded by Jean Vanier where people with disabilities share life and community – people who might otherwise have been swept away by ignorance, neglect, and lack of concern. When Fiji’s Prime Minister presided over the UN Conference on Climate Change in Bonn ((COP 23, 2017) he also said that we are all in the same boat. ‘No-one is immune to the effects of climate change. All 7.5 billion people are in the same boat’. He said that we all face an unprecedented threat to our way of life from the rising sea levels, extreme weather events and changes to agriculture brought about by climate change, but especially our Pacific Island nation neighbours who are fighting for survival - Kiribati and Tuvalu. Because of their vulnerability, we cannot let them slip beneath the rising seas in order to preserve the economies and lifestyles of others. ‘We are all in same boat’. He challenged anyone who believes in justice that they have no other choice than to side with these nations in their struggle. 

The ‘dove’ comes upon us and bids us come ashore in peace; to cease from our forgetfulness; to cease our violence whether in our bed rooms, homes, work places, community, nation or between nations.

As Jesus is filled with the Spirit we can imagine him walking onto the beach of ‘new beginnings’. He calls us to repeat and believe the good news. Let us not believe only the bad news. To take this image of walking onto the beach he wades into the forbidden things. He wades into the worlds of forbidden people that are often estranged. He has created a new Ark of sisterhood and brotherhood. He calls us away from the news of those who hinder the well being of people by their arrogance, abuse of power, their ugly and loveless words and dominant evil. He calls us into the good news: the news that God loves this world, loves us, loves all the forbidden people.

Jesus is resisting the political and religious authorities, by standing in solidarity with people outside the normative social structures: women, the poor, tax collectors, prostitutes, the sick and the possessed, all people who suffer and wonder if they have any hope - as he continues to do with today’s marginalised people.

This is a time to pay attention to the dimensions God requires of a Church big enough to hold all of the human community, with a religion and theology big enough for all the denominations, and all creatures, for a place in the Reign of Peace. We have heard people ask, ‘Will there be room in heaven for the animals? Is there a heaven for the birds and beasts?’  A prior question is: Will there be room on earth for them? Will we learn to live with all creation – humanity, the animals and flora – in harmony; with the planet and all its passengers?

Sin and chaos will continue to appear to have the upper hand. But Jesus preaches, ‘the kingdom of God is at hand.’ Even when Christ is crucified and hope seems dashed, God raises him and, through him, us to new life. There does not appear to be any defeat that God cannot draw life from? Who can ultimately defeat God's will for our good and the good of all creation?

God has not stayed aloof, and has, in Christ, joined us as we struggle to find new ways of being together as human beings. Nothing can overcome God's active and saving presence in the world.

Let’s remember that the reign of God is not a future event but here in the present. It is not a place but about relationships. When Jesus speaks of the reign of God his eyes are fixed on earth and not heaven. God’s reign is among us, he declares. The reign of God exposes division as incompatible with what God intends for human community. The rich cannot exploit the poor without also exploiting God. One cannot infringe upon the humanity of another without also infringing upon God. Anyone who would discriminate against another because of religious, sexual identity, sex, racial background or creed needs to be aware that he/she also discriminates against God.

What is our responsibility, as people in covenant with God, for preserving and renewing what has suffered the results of sin? How are we responsible for the safety and well-being of others? What can we do to help the poor of the world overcome disease and hunger? How are we to care for and renew the natural environment itself? How can we protect human life in all its stages? How can we diminish violence in society? What do we need to do to assure the dignity of each person?

LITURGY NOTES FOR THE SIXTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME, 2018

 

Sixth Sunday of the Year

February 11^th, 2018

Suggested formula for recognition of indigenous people and their land.

We acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land

on which we stand.

We pay our respects to them and 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 occupiers of the land where we are now gathered, ………..  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.

‘My vengeance is that I forgive you.’

A Thanksgiving for Australia

God of the Dreaming

A prayer by the Revd Lenore Parker, an Indigenous Anglican priest

God of holy dreaming, Great Creator Spirit,

From the dawn of creation you have given your children

the good things of Mother Earth.

You spoke and the gum tree grew.

In vast deserts and dense forest,

and in cities at the water’s edge,

creation sings your praise.

Your presence endures

as the rock at the heart of our Land.

When Jesus hung on the tree

you heard the cries of your people

and became one with your wounded ones:

the convicts, the hunted, and the dispossessed.

The sunrise of your Son coloured the earth anew.

and bathed it in glorious hope.

In Jesus we have been reconciled to you,

To each other and to your whole creation.

Lead us on, Great Sprit,

as we gather from the four corners of the earth,

Enable us to walk together in trust,

from the hurt and shame of the past

Into the full day which has dawned in Jesus Christ. Amen.

  

   

 

 

Readings

Reading I Leviticus 13:12, 4446

Responsorial Psalm Ps 32:1-2, 5, 11

Reading II 1Corinthians 10:31-11:1

Gospel Mark 1:40-45

Penitential Rite

• Jesus, you are the peace within us and between us.  Jesus, have mercy.
• Jesus, you are the face of God's compassion in our midst.  Christ, have mercy.
• Jesus, you came to gather all into the peace of God's reign - especially those most excluded. Jesus, have mercy.

or

• Christ Jesus, you heal the sick and pardon the sinner. Jesus, have mercy.
• Christ Jesus, you listen to the cries of the afflicted. Christ, have mercy.
• Lord Jesus, for the times we failed to welcome others. Jesus, have mercy.

Opening Prayer

Compassionate God,

you have become flesh in Christ Jesus.

Heal us from all divides us,

and the prejudice which isolates us.

May we have faith

to reach out and touch the untouchable

and love the unlovable.

Prayer over the Gifts

Compassionate God,

we make this offering in response to your word.

May we be renewed in our minds and hearts

so that we reflect in our lives

your love to those excluded in our society.

Prayer after Communion

God of compassion,

you have nourished us

with the body and blood of your Son.

May we always hunger for his presence in our lives.

Prayer of the Faithful

Introduction: Let us pray to the God of compassion that our hearts may be spacious enough to welcome and love all people in Jesus' name. The response is: God of Compassion, hear our prayer.

or

Introduction: As Jesus welcomed the outcast, touched the untouchable, loved the unlovable, may we be conscious of those we often fail to remember. The response is: God of Compassion, hear our prayer.

• That the leaders of the nations of the world continue to intensify diplomatic efforts and seek new and creative options to avert conflict rather than to resort to war and violence. Hear us, O God. God of Compassion, hear our prayer.

• That leaders of our country will seek to build peace through strong ties of friendship and understand rather than to sow further mistrust and discord by building instruments and weapons of war. Hear us, O God. God of Compassion, hear our prayer.

• That the people of Gaza have their pain and suffering acknowledged, that their rights be respected, and that they receive every assistance in order to live in peace with justice. Hear us, O God. God of Compassion, hear our prayer.

• That the leaders of churches and other faiths raise their voices strongly and call their people to have compassionate hearts towards all people - without prejudice, stereotype and judgment. Hear us, O God. God of Compassion, hear our prayer.

• That as we look into our hearts to recognise whatever ‘demons’ of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other fears might exist in our midst, acknowledge them and seek to overcome them. Hear us, O God. God of Compassion, hear our prayer.

• That on this World Day of Prayer for the Sick we acknowledge the pain and suffering of people, their need for understanding and inclusion and have their illness, particularly mental illness, taken seriously and responded to. Hear us, O God. God of Compassion, hear our prayer.

• That those who are sick and infirm in our community and who are confined to home or bed may experience warm acceptance from their carers, neighbours and families so that they do not experience isolation in their situation. Hear us, O God. God of Compassion, hear our prayer.

• That we will seek to make space for people who seek security, protection or a better life rather than erecting walls to keep them out. Hear us, O God. God of Compassion, hear our prayer.

• That the victims of discrimination, those written off by society, the sick and aged may maintain trust and hope because of those who care for them. Hear us, O God. God of Compassion, hear our prayer.

• That the people who live in remote areas of the world and whose suffering is ignored and their pain unreported may be remembered. Hear us, O God. God of Compassion, hear our prayer.

• That the people who have fallen on difficult times, who have lost their jobs, their homes and means of caring for those they love will find practical and psychological support. Hear us, O God. God of Compassion, hear our prayer.

Concluding Prayer: God of untiring compassion, make us more like Jesus, that the gulf between our prayers and our deeds may narrow, and our touch become more discerning, sensitive and adept in all our dealings with those around us.

Notices

February 11 International Day of Women and Girls inScience

February 11 World Day of prayer for the Sick

February 11 Project Compassion Sunday

February 12 Beginning of the Freedom Ride  in Australia (1965)

February 12 Murder of Sr Dorothy Stang, eco-defender in Brazil (2005)

February 13 Apology to the Stolen Generations by the Australian Government (2008),

February 13 Death of Faith Bandler AC activist for indigenous and South Sea Islander rights (2015)

February 14 St Valentine’s Day

February 14 Ash Wednesday

February 16 Chines New Year/Vietnamese Tet

Further Resources

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.

James Baldwin, Novelist 1924-1987

The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism.

Emma Goldman, Feminist, Labor Advocate, 1869-1940

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It's amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease. When the poor share some of the power that the affluent now monopolize, we will give a damn.

Cesar Chavez - Farm Workers' Union Founder, Human Rights Activist, 1927-1993

Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.

Wendell Berry

The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another's throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose-especially their lives.

Eugene Debs http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29638.htm

Lepers, Jesus and Us [Mark 1:40-45]

Just another leper,

the better left unseen,

‘Surely it’s all their own fault

for not keeping clean.’

Just another aids case

now hidden well away,

‘They must have brought it on themselves

promiscuous or gay.’

Just another boat person

sponging on me and you,

‘They’ve only got themselves to blame

by trying to jump the queue.’

Just another drug addict

shooting up behind the shed,

‘Don’t waste your pity on such trash

they’re better off dead.’

Just one determined Jesus

coming through our lands,

touching all the unclean mob

with warm, saving hands.

© B D Prewer 2002

…whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral, dressed in a shroud….

Walt Whitman [1819-1892] US poet.

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

James Baldwin, writer and civil rights leader.

There is no way to peace along the way to safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Understand that all battles are waged on an unconscious level before they are begun on the conscious one, and this battle is no different. The power structure wishes us to believe that the only options available are those which they present to us, we know this is simply not true, and therefore we must redefine the terrain of this conflict, and clearly, it is a conflict of worldviews and agendas.

Teresa Stover

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

Charles Mackay

Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything - you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

Robert A. Heinlein

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.

John Lennon

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?

Howard Zinn

No matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as the truth.

John F. Kennedy

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

Noam Chomsky

The western world now obeys the precepts of commerce. A bloody demanding religion, if you ask me. The do's and don'ts change every season and your ‘everyone’ doesn't want to be left out, so they rush headlong to comply. That continuous change has a function, a single aim. Maximum consumption. They want to go on milking you. From the cradle to the grave. Face it: You’re a brain washed ,walking purse, a robot,the fuel multinationals run on.

Esther Verhoef

With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

Henry A. Wallace

Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism... A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers.’

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of the colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. Each time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, (s)he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Robert F. Kennedy

We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

Edward Bernays

Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against yours.

You will not find me in stupas,

not in Indian shrine rooms,

nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:

not in masses, nor kirtans,

not in legs winding around your own neck,

nor in eating nothing but vegetables.

When you really look for me, you will see me instantly -

you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says: student, tell me, what is God?

He is the breath inside the breath.

Kabir [1440-1518] Indian mystic and poet revered by both Hindus and Muslims.

Never lose hope...

Every Warrior of the Light

has felt afraid of going into battle.

Every Warrior of the Light

has, at some time in the past, lied or betrayed someone.

Every Warrior of the Light

has trodden a path that was not his.

Every Warrior of the Light

has suffered for the most trivial of reasons.

Every Warrior of the Light

has, at least once, believed he was not a Warrior of the Light.

Every Warrior of the Light

has failed in his spiritual duties.

Every Warrior of the Light

has said 'yes' when he wanted to say 'no.'

Every Warrior of the Light

has hurt someone he loved.

That is why he is a Warrior of the Light,

Because he has been through all this

and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is.

Paulo Coelho, Brazilian Author from his book: Warrior Of The Light

A Eulogy for Peace - by an Old Aboriginal

Why don't white man sit down quiet by fire?

Not stand up and call other country-fella liar.

What white-fella want to talk about fight for?

Everybody have plenty still want more.

He have big house,

Money in pocket,

Yet he not satisfied:

Want to make bigger rocket.

One day I bet pretty damn soon

Rocket go straight like spear

Put man on moon.

Then I bet plenty trouble

Moon and earth burst like bubble.

People go round like leaf in willy-willy,

Tear their hair,

All sorry and silly.

White-fella and him piccannin die in city,

Black-fella in bush, he feel pity.

White-fella wrong, call each other liar,

Should have sat down quietly and talked by fire.

Jack Davis in The First-born and Other Poems Melbourne, J.M. Dent, 1983

Ebony and Ivory

Ebony and Ivory live together in perfect harmony

side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord, why don't we?

We all know that people are the same where ever we go

There is good and bad in ev'ryone,

we learn to live, we learn to give

each other what we need to survive together alive.

Ebony and Ivory live together in perfect harmony

side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord why don't we?

Ebony, ivory living in perfect harmony

Ebony, ivory, ooh

We all know that people are the same where ever we go

There is good and bad in ev'ryone,

we learn to live, we learn to give

each other what we need to survive together alive.

Ebony and Ivory live together in perfect harmony

side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord why don't we?

Ebony, ivory living in perfect harmony (repeat and fade)

Paul McCartney

Mother -- Father God:

Help us to hear the word and put it into practice.

Let us hear again the challenge of the great prophets.

Let us do what is right and love with enthusiasm.

Sophia – Wisdom:

Help us to hear the word and put it into practice.

Help us to discern the way of peace.

Help us to discern the way of right action.

God of heaven and earth:

Help us to hear the word and put it into practice.

Let us hear again the stories of our ancestors in faith.

Let us create new stories today – stories of faith in action.

God of peace and justice:

Help us to hear the word and put it into practice.

Help us to listen to the world and the cries of those in need.

Help us to respond in solidarity with all those in need.

Holy Spirit:

Help us to hear the word and put it into practice.

Fill us with an enthusiasm and joy for what is right and good.

Fill us with virtue that we might do what is good for all.

Center of Concern

Peace is not a passive but an active condition, not a negation but an affirmation. It is a gesture as strong as war.

Mary Roberts Rinehart

The solidarity which binds all people together as members of a common family makes it impossible for wealthy nations to look with indifference upon the hunger, misery and poverty of other nations whose citizens are unable to enjoy even elementary human rights. The nations of the world are becoming more and more dependent on one another and it will not be possible to preserve a lasting peace so long as glaring economic and social imbalances persist.

Pope John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, #157

How can it be that even today there are still people dying of hunger? Condemned to illiteracy? Lacking the most basic medical care? Without a roof over their heads? . . . Christians must learn to make their act of faith in Christ by discerning His voice in the cry for help that rises from this world of poverty.

Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, no. 50

During the last few years, politics has worked perversely: taxes on the wealthy have been cut, and so have programs directed at the poor. The reason isn't difficult to explain. Many Americans-- especially those who have been losing ground have given up on politics. As their incomes have shrunk, they've lost confidence that the ‘system’ will work in their interest. That cynicism has generated a self-fulfilling prophesy. Politicians stop paying attention to people who don't vote, who don't work the phone banks or walk the precincts, who have opted out. And the political inattention seems to justify the cynicism. Meanwhile, the top tier has experienced precisely the opposite--a virtuous cycle in which campaign contributions have attracted the rapt attention of politicians, the attention has elicited even more money, which in turn has given the top tier even greater influence. 

Robert Reich, Former U.S. Secretary of Labor

If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.

Sir Francis Bacon - (1561-1626) Philosopher, essayist, British Lord Chancellor

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world - no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.

Woodrow Wilson 

‘I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win,

than win in a cause that will some day lose’

[Unknown]

O, God,

help us to be agents of healing and border crossers,

help us to form alliances with those who are hurting,

help us to bring together coalitions which will address all forms of injustice,

and help us to risk helping in situations where we may be ‘outed’

even before we are fully ready to claim our rightful places in the community.

Amen

Reflections on the readings

In 2014, former refugee and Governor General of Canada, Adrienne Clarkson gave the Massey Lectures for the Canadian Broadcasting Commission.  In one talk, she referred to the killing of a police officer in Ottawa and how it shook the nation. Then, two days later a mosque was defaced in one part of the city. However, within a few hours, the residents of the town came to restore the mosque. Clarkson spoke of this chain of events - from national tragedy to an act of local decency – not as a matter of tolerance or kindness but of identity – identity defined by relationships with others. She said, ‘… in belonging to ourselves and to society, we have the greatest possibility to live full lives, connected to all human beings.’  Clarkson’s view was that identity and belonging does not mean exclusion of others as we have seen among political leaders who wish to score points when people who are Muslim or asylum seekers or immigrants are vilified. She said, ‘I have made belonging the interest of my life. I was, and am, a child of diaspora. I am someone who, for a while, did not belong anywhere. And I will always be someone who understands the everlasting anguish of not belonging.’ She then continued, ‘We are most fully human, most truly ourselves, most authentically individual, when we commit to the community. It is in the mirror of our community – the street, the neighbourhood, the town, the country – that we find our best selves.’

The good news is that the Incarnation - God becoming flesh – is an ongoing process.. God is continually taking on our flesh, our sufferings and joys, our successes and failures and we continue that. The good news is that God’s vision and movement is directed toward abundant life for all people in every condition of life - not just the privileged, worthy, or healthy. It is living a full life connected to all human beings. And, Jesus in the gospel is approached by one who is considered to be among the ‘living dead,’ alienated from their family and friends, considered a social and religious corpse that haunted the fringes of town, but sought kindness and charity.

All around our world millions of people are on the move from homes in rural areas to cities within their own countries or cross borders into other countries for various reasons such as environmental degradation, violence, and economic injustice. And more and more they are not welcome which raises the question ‘who is in and who is out?’ Leviticus, in stark contrast to the Gospel today, tells us who is out, who is rejected because of fear that his affliction would infect others. So he must live alone and separated from society. Many people on the move encounter  similar reactions and are labelled foreigners or “illegals.” They are accused of stealing jobs, draining community resources, and threatening the way of life. Those in power often used them as scapegoats, stirring passions and distracting attention from underlying problems. Struggling people are given someone to blame, anger, hatred and demonisation.  

John Tayman, in The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai (2006) writes that ‘Leprosy is quite possibly the most powerful metaphor for 'otherness' that there is’. Jesus’ was ‘moved with pity (compassion) not just because of the man’s illness but systems and structures that caused people misery. The gospel focuses on a man’s religious and social alienation and Jesus’ intervention in his life. People are still treated as modern day lepers – undesirables who pollute society and contaminate our way of living or way of life due to their difference in race, culture, social mores, or physical and intellectual disabilities. There was a ‘leper mindset’ in Nazi attitudes and actions towards Semitic people, of Hutus towards Tutsis in Rwanda, the second people to Australia towards the first people.

Jesus healed the man outside the community. That’s how many feel - cast off and forgotten.Today, it might be drug addicts, people living with HIV/AIDS, the unemployed, people in prison or recently out of prison, gay and lesbian people especially when their demands for equality are seen as weakening the moral fibre of our social institutions. Was not  God’s Reign present when Pope Francis met with a transgender woman who had been excluded from her parish and labelled as the ‘devil’s daughter’ by her Spanish parish priest.  Yet, Pope Francis was not afraid to meet with her and her partner. Was not God;s Reign present when we saw Pope Francis embrace and kiss an hideously disfigured man in St Peter’s Square. These are two of many every day examples that occur in our daily lives. But, do our stomachs burn as did Jesus’ stomach when people were excluded for whatever reason?  People have been told on occasion that they should not come to Church on Sunday because they were dirty or smelled bad. And what about people living with disability, LGBTIQ people, elderly people, immigrants, the very poor and even young people? Communities can say that everyone is welcome but no takes responsibility for that welcome as they come through the door.  We also have a choice. Where will we sit and who will we sit with? Will our presence contribute to the taking down the walls that separate people according to religious, social, economic, racial, gender, etc. differences, or build higher walls and greater gaps. The leper’s physical pain and misery was heightened by being considered unworthy of living amongst others. He would also have thought that he was unloved by God. God does not touch us or love us in a vacuum. Did not Job look for the love of God in his companions last week? How many young people have given up on Church or even God because they have been isolated by others in the community or in family, eg.., many gay and lesbian people. Like the leper who would have thought his illness was a punishment from God, many young people have in the past seen their sexual orientation as a punishment from God.

But, we see that Jesus makes no attempt to move away. A few weeks ago, Jesus invited some disciples, who wanted to know where he lived, to ‘come and see’. We are also invited. Where do we see Jesus? We see him anyone reaches out in compassion; we see him when stomachs ache in the face of exclusion and act on it; we see him when we refuse to allow social taboos, colleagues, friends, family, determine our response to another person. We see him when we go beyond the usual boundaries set out by our church and society. Jesus tells us, when he cures the excommunicated leper, where we should be found, that is, ‘outside the pale’ – beyond traditional boundaries. That is where we find him … and his community.

Mark shows us what can happen when God’s Reign takes hold in our world. Though injustice and violence and greed have not been transformed by justice, peace and sharing, the reign of God is at hand as a leper loses his 'other' status.  The reign of God is at hand as we see Jesus associating with those who are the 'other' of his day and he takes on that same status of 'other.' The reign of God is at hand when we seek those at the margins and overcome whatever prevents us from seeing God's image in them. The Reign is present wherever people stand in solidarity with anyone who is marginalised or disregarded. It is present when Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians work together for practical and symbolic reconciliation. It is present when ordinary people quietly and consistently carry out the gospel things they have always done in their neighbourhoods. It is present when any minority group not only seeks its own rights but also seeks the rights of other minority groups [Indigenous people calling for humanitarian treatment of asylum seekers, gays struggling alongside Indigenous people, women, workers, people living with disabilities for their rights.]. Jesus has taken on the ‘otherness’ of others in whatever form they appear to us, and calls us to do the same. Though leprosy seems to have lost much of its stigma, other forms of ‘leprosy’ emerge where new groups can be identified as the least, the last and the lost.

Today we see Jesus again stretch the rules. He touched one whom others would not touch. Embraces one who society isolated. Jesus’ anger was against the social exclusion. I can imagine Jesus saying, ‘You have heard it was said of old, ‘Thou shalt........but I say to you: keep changing everything.’ It is a different model of love and inclusiveness. It is about bringing outsiders inside. Jesus stretched out his hand because his ‘guts’ continue to churn when we try to outcast a person, a group, or a nation – or remove ourselves from their vision. His words and actions indicate that in God’s Reign there will be no outcasts. Will we be part of the chorus of voices that call for inclusion in all its forms despite what those in authority say?  Jesus’ compassion to an ‘outsider’ put him in conflict with the religious leaders and the Law.

We need to ask ourselves who we refuse to touch. Not just physically touch, but also by a lack of concern and respect. To whom do we deny affirmation? Who are those from whom we withhold compassion? Those whom we are content to treat as the non-persons? 

On our part, if we don’t want to touch other lives, if we don’t want to be healing agents of Jesus among the untouchables of society, or for the hard-to-love people in our family or church, then we might understand why God’s Reign is not being realised…and why the church is often seen as irrelevant. Jesus is not referring to a vague person ‘out there’ but the very people we encounter every day….. the reserved or shy, the ugly and the smelly, the thin skinned and the awkward, the depressed, those living with a disability, the over-talkative or the self-opinionated, the socially inept and the bluntly spoken ones? 

Whatever diminishes human life, Jesus reaches out to touch – and he now depends on each of us to do it. We cannot be uninvolved in this broken world where many are kept at a distance because of their race, national origin, lack of education, poverty, physical condition, gender and sexual orientation. Unless we can see the Aboriginal Australian, the Iraqi, the Palestinian or Jewish person, the Syrian, the North Korean, the gay and lesbian, the person addicted to drugs, the person living with mental illness as a child of God, as a sister or brother, then God’s Reign cannot be fully realised. The old law said to exclude people or put them out, but Jesus’ words ring throughout the gospel and in the lives of many faithful people: ‘but I say….. no’….. ‘you shall not harden your heart, nor shut your hand from your peer brother/sister, but you shall open your hand wide to the other.’ (Dt 18:74)

The man’s life was changed not by any observance of religious codes or rituals, but by Jesus’ compassion, his touch and his words. We have already seen in Mark that Jesus doesn’t draw on other authorities for his teaching and practices. Two weeks ago we heard the astonished crowds say, ‘He taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes’ (1:22). The barriers are down; where is God to be found? According to today’s gospel, among the outcasts.

The gospel story should also compel us to come before Jesus like the leper and find that Jesus looks upon us as he did the leper – seeing us as we are and also deeply moved and compelled to touch us, to heal us.

TRADE IN ARMS BY AUSTRALIA - A STATEMENT.

 

Father Claude Mostowik msc

President

Pax Christi Australia

0411 450953

Statement on Trade in Arms by Australia

When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull spoke of ‘Australian jobs, Australian ingenuity and Australian technology’ he announced that Australia wants to be among the 10 big arms manufacturers and traders in the world. It seemed like another version of the old mantra of ‘jobs and growth’. Jobs and growth great! But, we must ask at what cost? At what price?  We must ask why resort to this form of trade, especially when recently our car industry was shut down? The cost of trading in arms manufacture is to facilitate suffering, bloodshed and destruction in so many ways. Does this feed our addiction to all things military? Does it display an incongruent set of values that would lead to exacerbating extreme heat, drought and famine by not addressing climate change and promoting renewable energy.

Very few of the so-called ‘pro-life’ religious leaders – congregational leaders or bishops or –seem to have made a comment or condemned this move. It seems that ordinary decent people are more outraged at this move by our government. Other than Pope Francis, no world leader seems to have consistently called for the elimination of the arms trade. In June 2017, Pope Francis said, ‘It is an absurd contradiction to speak of peace, to negotiate peace, and at the same time, promote or permit the arms trade. Is this war or that war really a war to solve problems or is it a commercial war for selling weapons in illegal trade and so that the merchants of death get rich? Let us put an end to this situation. Let us pray all together that national leaders may firmly commit themselves to ending the arms trade which victimizes so many innocent people.’ In 2015, Pope Francis took aim at the power of the arms industry when he lambasted it as ‘the industry of death’ saying that many powerful people do not want peace because they live off wars – people making money by producing and selling weapons. Referring to a number of conflicts, he asked ‘Is this war or that war really a war to solve problems, or is it a commercial war for selling weapons in an illegal trade, and so that the merchants of death get rich?’

The government’s values seem to be clearly twisted. It has failed to fully support the renewables industry that could export clean energy to the world. Indeed, it has done everything it can to oppose it. What values is the government espousing? It does not seem to be to promoting wellbeing, life, peace, but death and misery, violence and destruction. To underscore this, the government has cut humanitarian aid, which enhances peoples’ lives, to the lowest level in our history and is prepared to become a major weapons manufacturer and exporter.

It is clear now that one reason the government did not acknowledge the home grown ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) Nobel Peace Prize, or congratulate the organisation, was that it would have been seen as inconsistent in the light of recent statements to boost the arms trade in this country. At the heart of this is the old question: is it about people or about profits? 

The arms trade does not work to bring about peace but destruction of people, destruction of sentient life, infrastructure and the environment. It does not contribute to the well-being of people. It does not build schools and hospitals. It is does not build roads and railways that serve ordinary people. It is not just another form trade like the car industry or other manufacturing industry.

It is inconceivable that we could seriously talk of peace whilst relying on this trade for our security whether physical or economic.  As one writer to a newspaper said that the Prime Minister is prostituting this country to join these ‘merchants of death’ in countries filled with conflicts of interest and unable to participate as ‘solid global citizens’. 

Let us remember that the one purpose of arms is to kill and destroy – to kill people who are created in the image and likeness of God. Australia must, if it wants to be a solid world citizen, take the lead and say no to weapon manufacture. The Department of Immigration used to have a poster in their waiting rooms ‘People are our business’ whilst people sitting there waited anxiously for a positive review of their cases. They did not always feel that sentiment. Australia has treated asylum seekers abominably for many years yet we have participated, and will continue to do, in causing people to escape from places of war and conflict, such as Afghanistan, Iran and Syria, and then punish them for seeking security. Australia has compromised human rights standards in its treatment of asylum seekers who arrive by boat. It has compromised those standards in its silence on the treatment of the Rohingya people. It has compromised those standards in its military support of Philippine regime knowing full well that over 12,000 murders, including human rights’ defenders, have been carried out by death squads. How can Australia with its seat on the UN Human Rights Council speak up on human rights abuses perpetrated by governments it is trading with?

It is time for religious leaders of all kinds individually and in unison to condemn this proposal. It may also be an opportunity to ask the question what real problems are we trying to solve by embarking more and more in this form of trade?

 

A RECOMMENDATION, AN ABORIGINAL FILM STORY, SWEET COUNTRY

SWEET COUNTRY

Australia, 2017, 110 minutes, Colour.
Bryan Brown, Sam Neill, Hamilton Morris, Matt Day, Ewen Leslie, Natassia Gory Furber, Gibson John, Anni Finsterer, Tremayne Doolan, Trevon Doolan, Thomas M. Wright.
Directed by Warwick Thornton.

Here is a film which should be seen by as wide an audience as possible, especially Australian audiences, both indigenous and non-indigenous.

It is based on events that took place in 1929 and was filmed in South Australia. Director and cinematographer, Warwick Thornton, received great acclaim for his film about young people in and around Alice Springs, Samson and Delilah (2009). Thornton has photographed quite a number of films, including The Sapphires, as well as directing some short stories in The Darkside and an episode in Tim Winton’s The Turning.

At one stage, a remark is made that this desert outback is a sweet country, good for cattle. However, audiences immediately realise that it is not necessarily a sweet country for indigenous people. As the credits begin, there is a close-up of water boiling and racist remarks being made offscreen. Then there is a close-up of Sam, an older aboriginal man in a court case. How did this happen?

Sam (a first screen appearance by Hamilton Morris, highly effective and persuasive) lives with his wife and niece on a land spread, managed by a God-fearing, Bible-reading owner, Fred Smith (Sam Neill). All are equal on this property. Suddenly, a neighbouring landowner, Harry Mitchell (Ewen Leslie) comes to ask for help from Fred and then asking for its permission to take Sam and his family to help with work. Harry Mitchell served on the Western front, does not believe in God’s presence nor in equality. He is harsh with Sam, has a lustful eye on the niece, exploits Sam’s wife. He is also harsh with the young aboriginal lad, Philomach, who belongs to another neighbouring spread.

Complications ensue, the boy, in chains, runs away, Mitchell goes in pursuit, confronting Sam, guns drawn and Mitchell shot. Sam realises that in killing a white man, it will be hard for him to get a hearing and justice. He and his wife go walkabout.

In town, the local policeman, Fletcher, Bryan Brown, is definitely in charge, a touch of the genial but also more than a touch of the arrogant. A significant part of the plot is his going out into the desert in pursuit of Sam and his falling victim to the desert and lack of water.

When Sam gives himself up, a young judge (Matt Day) arrives, rejects the suggestion that the case be held in the bar, takes it outside with a desk and deck chairs. Fred is there in support of Sam.

The court scene is very moving, the young judge, rather inexperienced and a bit full of himself, makes demands in his questions, impatient for answers, not appreciating the pace of indigenous reflection and response.

The screenplay leads the audience to an appreciation of Sam, as well as the old aboriginal man, Archie (Gibson John also in a first film role) who was taken from his family and is subservient to the white owner, to watching Philomach, and wondering where he will finish. But the film also dramatises the exploitation of the indigenous, both men and women, by insensitive and cruel white men, treating the workers as the equivalent of slaves, no respect for them as persons, a rugged atmosphere, a rugged life, with seemingly no future for the indigenous men.

But, in 2018, almost 90 years later, an indigenous director all is telling the story and reminding everyone of the shame.

LITURGY NOTES FOR THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Fifth Sunday of the Year

February 4^th 2018

Suggested formula for recognition of indigenous people and their land.

We acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land

on which we stand.

We pay our respects to them and 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.

‘…whoever closes his eyes to the past 

becomes blind to the present. 

Whoever does not wish to remember inhumanity 

becomes susceptible to the dangers of new infection.’ 

Richard Von Weizaecher, former President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Speech 5/8/85

Only the truth is revolutionary

        

The good news of the resurrection of Jesus is not that we shall die and go home to be with him, but that he has risen and comes home with us, bringing all his hungry, naked, thirsty, sick prisoner [brothers and sisters] with him.

Clarence Jordan

Readings

First Reading Job 7:1-4, 6-7

Responsorial Psalm Ps 147:1-2, 3-4, 5-6 R. Praise the Lord, who heals the brokenhearted.

Second Reading 1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23

Gospel Mark 1:29-39

Penitential Rite

·         You bring home and protect all those who are displaced. Jesus, have mercy.

·         You heal the broken hearted and bind up their wounds. Christ, have mercy.

·         You raise up the lowly and the poor in spirit. Jesus, have mercy.

Opening Prayer

Healer of brokenhearted, [or: Tenderhearted God]

in faith and love we ask you,

to watch over the whole human family

and encourage all of us

to be engaged in the healing of our world.

Jesus revealed you as a God of life

by touching those in need of healing.

Fill us with his tender love and concern,

that we too may follow him

in bringing his healing power

to all those who suffer.

Prayers of the Faithful

Introduction: Let us pray to God who sends us to mend that which is broken, bridge that which is alienated, and heal that which is diseased. May we, together with all women and men from all the religions of the world show all people God’s love and welcome.

1. For people in war countries ravaged by conflict, violence and misery – especially Syria, the Ukraine, Gaza, West Papua, we ask your healing. God of the brokenhearted, hear us.
2. For all displaced people - in refugee camps, those escaping from oppression, those crowded on unseaworthy boats and those towed back out to sea by unwelcoming countries, we ask your healing.  God of the brokenhearted, hear us.
3. For people who are ‘doing it tough;’ - the unemployed and people living with disability and terminal illness, those in despair over broken relationships, those grieving the death of a loved one, we ask your healing. God of the brokenhearted, hear us.
4. For those throughout the world who are suffering and do not have the means to ease their pain: for those without access to nourishing food, clean water, needed medication and adequate health care, we ask your healing. God of the brokenhearted, hear us.
5. For a deeper commitment to the health and care of our planet and its resources so that those who come after us may share in the goodness of creation. God of the brokenhearted, hear us
6. For teachers that their important work of education be acknowledged and that education is a journey, not a commodity, we ask your healing. God of the brokenhearted, hear us.
7. For children going to school for the first time and who are leaving the security of the family home, we ask your healing. God of the brokenhearted, hear us.
8. For those who care for the sick - doctors, nurses, chiropractors, psychologists and all those in healing professions, we ask your healing. God of the brokenhearted, hear us.
9. For the leaders of nations, that they make justice and service the foundations of the social order and bring to all a sense of dignity and human fulfillment, we ask your healing.  Healing God, hear us.

Concluding Prayer: Healing God, as we place these heartfelt prayers before you keep us awake to our responsibility to be your caring and healing presence in the our world.

Prayers of the Faithful for World Day of Prayer for the Sick February 11 – coincides with the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes

Introduction: O God, Everlasting Love, enfleshed in Christ Jesus, poured upon us through the Holy Spirit, we come to You (today, this evening, this morning . . .) to receive our prayer for those among us who are ill.

·         Tender, compassionate God, fill us that we may receive all who are ill with your love, we pray . .

·         Life-giving God, fill us, that our faith will assure those who are suffering, that their pain will blossom into life, we pray . . .

·         Strength-giving God, pour into all who care for the sick, the embracing, enduring love of Jesus, we pray . . .

·         Source of Love, fill us with vision and courage to pursue research that will bear fruit in healing, we pray . . .

·         Welcoming God, receive from our hands the loved ones we return to you, we pray . . .

·         Righteous God, empower us to struggle against the injustices of the present health care systems, we pray . . .

Concluding Prayer O God, hear our prayer—these we have spoken and those yet in our hearts. We trust in your loving response, through Christ the Risen One. Amen.

Prayer over the Gifts

Healer of brokenhearted, [or: Tenderhearted God]

may the bread and wine

you give us for our nourishment

enable to us become sacraments

of your healing presence in our world.

Prayer after Communion

Healer of brokenhearted, [or: Tenderhearted God]

you make us one in Christ

as we share in the one bread and the one cup.

May we bring your liberation

to the world with respect

and by working together

towards its healing.

A Four-fold Franciscan Blessing

v  May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

v  May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

v  May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

v  May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really CAN make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God's grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

Notices

February 4 Birth of Rosa Parks 1913

February 4 Birth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906

February 6 International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation.

February 8 International Day of prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking and feast of St    Josephine Bakhita (Patron)

February 8 Birth of Martin Buber

February 11 World Day of the Sick.  Message of Pope Francis for 26^th World Day of the Sick 2018. Theme Mater Ecclesiae: ‘Behold, your son... Behold, your mother. And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.’ (Jn 19:26-27) https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/sick/documents/papa-francesco_20171126_giornata-malato.html

February 11 Release of Nelson Mandela from prison 1990

Further Resources

Human beings … need humanity. They need heartfelt concern. Those who work for the Church’s charitable organisations must be distinguished by the fact that they do not merely meet the needs of the moment, but they dedicate themselves to others with heartfelt concern, enabling them to experience the richness of their humanity. Consequently, in addition to their necessary professional training, these charity workers need a ‘formation of the heart’: they need to be led to that encounter with God in Christ which awakens their love and opens their spirits to others. 

Pope Benedict XVI, Encyclical Deus caritas est

The beauty that will save the world is the love that shares the pain.

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan

Individual initiative alone and the mere free play of competition could never assure successful development. One must avoid the risk of increasing still more the wealth of the rich and the dominion of the strong, whilst leaving the poor in their misery and adding to the servitude of the oppressed.

Pope Paul IV, On the Development of Peoples, #33

Love for others, and in the first place love for the poor, in whom the Church sees Christ himself, is made concrete in the promotion of justice.

Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, #58

When I was young, I admired clever people.  Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel, 1907-1972, Jewish Theologian and Social Activist

The effects of kindness are not always seen immediately. Sometimes it takes years until your kindness will pay off. Sometimes you never see the fruits of your labors, but they are there, deep inside of the soul of the one you touched.

Dan Kelly

I Am Here Now Prayer for the World Day of the Sick (2006)

When I’m feeling so sick and tired

lost in a fog, restless and wired

oh so alone, chilled to the bone

my cries of absence just sink like a stone.

Suddenly strangers and friends heed the call

weaving compassion connecting us all.

Arms of these angels bring warmth and esteem,

their labor of love birthing forth a new dream.

Words become flesh, I know not how.

A prayer, a promise, a vow:

simply, I Am here now. I Am here now.

When I ache I can’t contemplate,

you know my desire for you is so great.

I seek your presence & long for your face,

remembering tenderly your warm embrace.

You heard my cry & reached out your hand,

leading me back to that great promised land.

You opened my eyes, now I could see

it was you all along who were pursuing me.

Words become flesh, I know not how.

A prayer, a promise, a vow:

simply, I Am here now. I Am here now.

I can cling to the future & past,

but with you I can dwell in the present at last.

The great I Am whose flames never fade

is in you and me; that’s the way we were made.

With nothing to lose, I take off my shoes

& choose to be one with You,

the bringer of good news.

In sickness & health, no matter to me,

we’re brothers and sisters in solidarity.

Words become flesh, I know not how.

A prayer, a promise, a vow:

simply, I Am here now. I Am here now.

Rod Accardi, Supervisor National Association of Catholic Chaplains [adapted for gender inclusiveness]

You Raise Me Up

Josh Groban

When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary;

When troubles come and my heart burdened be;

Then, I am still and wait here in the silence,

Until you come and sit awhile with me.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;

You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;

I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;

You raise me up… To more than I can be.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;

You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;

I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;

You raise me up… To more than I can be.

There is no life – no life without its hunger;

Each restless heart beats so imperfectly;

But when you come and I am filled with wonder,

Sometimes, I think I glimpse eternity.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;

You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;

I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;

You raise me up… To more than I can be.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;

You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;

I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;

You raise me up… To more than I can be.

Graceful

Bouas and Cleves

Some wise words from my grandmother ....

I went one day for a walk out in the street,

The first person I met there had no feet.

‘Well hey brother, what happened to you

To make you look the way you do?’

‘Well I was one of the people in the war.

The one's you forget once the war's been fought.

But I didn't have much luck, as you can see,

And as I sat here I found my peace.’

The next day I went to a shopping mall,

Saw a woman just as she had a fall.

When I stopped to pick her up I could see,

She was blind, as blind could be.

With every word she said, she smiled.

We stood around and talked and laughed for a while.

She told me all about her family

And I could see that she was happy.

So, when you're feeling down, take a look around.

When you're feeling hurt, you just think of her.

I got a phone call just the other week,

From a friend with whom I had to speak.

He told me that he had the HIV,

A big black cloud descended over me.

Within just a few short months it seemed,

This man that had such energy,

Wouldn't be taken to the hospital,

He wanted to die graceful.

Gracefully, he died so gracefully.

Gracefully, he died so gracefully.

So, when you're feeling down take a look around.

When you're feeling hurt, you just think of her.

And when the night is long, you can sing this song.

©The Hottentots 2001

Freedom Song

Carl Cleves and Parissa Bouas

In the beginning there was sun for all to share

Happy people roamed, the children of the earth

We knew the mysteries, the stories and the secrets

We had our hardship, but our hardship we could bear

We found new ways to change the lifestyle we were living

It brought great freedom when we discovered oil

But like before it was greed that brought war,

And yet we keep asking for more

Come and seek justice and take hold of freedom

The word don't mean nothing while people abuse it

And now freedom sees us wasting our resources

And now freedom sees us raping the earth

But like before it was greed that brought war,

And yet we keep asking for more

©Hottentot Party 1998-2001

Going to the moon and beyond is not very far to go. Far greater distances have yet to be journeyed within our own hearts and minds.

Author Unknown

Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.

Mark Victor Hansen

We all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade. ...And the great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct. It is a good instinct if you don't distort it and pervert it. Don't give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be the first in love. I want you to be the first in moral excellence. I want you to be the first in generosity.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1929-1968, American Civil Rights Leader

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1929-1968, American Civil Rights Leader

Sometimes we feel that we've got to climb a mountain or raise a monument to leave our mark on the world. What we fail to recognize is that often we make a difference simply by existing, by handling what life gives us. Maybe the way we deal with our challenges and our rewards inspires someone else to achieve worthwhile things in their own life.

Blaine Lee

What we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours: Which do we want more of?

Julia Cameron, American Teacher, Author, Artist and Poet

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th US president (1890-1969)

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest...and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war.

Plato

The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering - a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons - a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting - three hundred million people all with the same face. 

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four 

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, science for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable an ignorable war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Albert Einstein 

Either man is obsolete or war is. War is the ultimate tool of politics. Political leaders look out only for their own side. Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers.

R. Buckminster Fuller 

The principal power in Washington is no longer the government or the people it represents. It is the Money Power. Under the deceptive cloak of campaign contributions, access and influence, votes and amendments are bought and sold. Money established priorities of action, holds down federal revenues, revises federal legislation, shifts income from the middle class to the very rich. Money restrains the enforcement of laws written to protect the country from abuses of wealth--laws that mandate environmental protection, antitrust laws, laws to protect the consumer against fraud, laws that safeguard the securities markets, and many more.

Richard N. Goodwin - Speechwriter for John F. Kennedy

Money becomes evil not when it is used to buy goods but when it is used to buy power... economic inequalities become evil when they are translated into political inequalities.

Samuel Huntington - Political Scientist

Most loving God,

As your desire for mercy for the poor is unrelenting,

may we be unrelenting in our pursuit of mercy for all;

As your compassion for the suffering of the poor knows no limit,

may our hearts overflow with compassion for all;

As you long for justice for the poor,

may we strive for justice for all.

Forgive us our meager faith that doubts your providence and bounty,

and our abiding neglect of your Son in the poor and needy of the world;

Open our eyes to the structures of oppression from which we benefit,

and give us courage to accept our responsibility,

wisdom to chart a sound course amid complexity,

and perseverance to continue our work until it is thoroughly finished.

Breathe your life-giving Spirit afresh

into your Church to free us from apathy and indifference,

and so bless and direct our endeavors

that we may be agents of your mercy, compassion, and justice,

to the end that new life and hope may abound

and your Name be praised in every place;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation

Prayer for Peace

Let us, then, pray with all fervor for this peace

which our divine Redeemer came to bring us.

May He banish from the souls of all

whatever might endanger peace.

May He transform all people

into witnesses of truth, justice and love.

May He illumine with His light

 the minds of rulers,

so that, besides caring for

the proper material welfare of their peoples,

they may also guarantee them

the fairest gift of peace.

Finally, may Christ inflame the desires

of all people to break through the barriers which divide them,

to strengthen the bonds of mutual love,

to learn to understand one another,

and to pardon those who have done them wrong.

Through His power and inspiration may all peoples

welcome each other to their hearts as sisters and brothers,

and may the peace they long for ever flower and ever reign among them.

Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris

God of our present and our past,

Help us to remember how you have empowered people

to work for positive change in our world.

Grant us courage and a vision of the future

to affirm and defend the right to wholeness for all people.

Amen.

Reflections on the readings

In an interview on Youtube a couple of years ago Stephen Fry was asked was what he would say to God if he met God face to face. He said: ‘I would call God an evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’ - a bastard for having invented cancer and insects that burrow into children’s eyes. Because God is the creator of everything and all-powerful, God should/could do something to change the situation. Listening to Fry. I found myself saying that I do not believe in that God you are talking about either.

This is where I imagine Job expressing similar sentiments given the situation he was in: he had lost everything-his children, possessions, lands, and servants; he contracted a terrible disease and left to sit on a dung heap. BUT he does not come to the same conclusions. Yes, how can God be close to the broken-hearted when for many people this God seems more aligned to those in power, or those who abuse power, or the wealthy or those who wield unspeakable harm on the innocent?

Here the story of Jesus is revolutionary where God and power are separated: God as a baby. God poor. God helpless on a cross. God with a crown of thorns on his head. Caesar is the one who has the power. We have a choice: which one will we follow? Follow what is right and get strung up for it. Or, cosy up to power and do as you are told. By saying that he will fearlessly stare ultimate power in the face and call it by its real name, I think Fry shows that he is on the side of the angels even though not believing in them. Jesus: God is not some distant observer but suffers alongside all humanity. This God is not a command and control astronaut responsible for some wicked experiment on planet earth.

But many people are still oppressed by this image. Job is not afraid to complain about his situation. He struggles to believe that God ‘heals the brokenhearted’ (Psalm) when life takes an uncaring or terrifying turn. The gospel reminds us that despite human suffering and unspeakable horrors everywhere, we must address them. We can choose to give in to discouragement or take our cue from people like Mother Teresa, Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day and others who tended to the metaphorical ‘Lazarus at the gate’ by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and easing suffering in their respective neighbourhoods. There are people who sit with asylum seekers on hunger strike (Manus Island) to express solidarity. There are people of all ages who risk arrest and conviction (around the country) for nonviolently protesting inhumane treatment of people seeking asylum and protection.

After Job had lost everything, we hear how his companions originally sat in silence with him. That is often the best posture – silence - when a person is in intense suffering. But that initial silence gave way to attempts to counsel Job and convince him that he must be at fault, he must have done something wrong. His misery must be a punishment by God for some wrongdoing. For them, good people were ‘blessed’ in this life with wealth, health and family and sinners were punished with poverty and pain. Enter again, that malicious and capricious God Stephen Fry railed against.

Whilst Job cries out against this life, as we would, the whole book attempts to understand how an all-good and powerful God can permit the suffering of an innocent. But Job is not struggling against the God of compassion who joins him in his suffering and suffers at his losses but against the God of his friends - a capricious God of retribution who gambles with peoples’ lives. Job did not need them to belittle him or dismiss him, like anyone in distress, but to hear God say through them, ‘I love you’; ‘I’m here for you’; ‘is there anything I can do to help’, or ‘I don’t understand what you are going through by I’m here to support you anyway’, or ‘I’m sorry you are in pain’, or ‘though this must be difficult for you, you will get through this’.

Jesus is also confronted with the question: which God? He responds through action, as did Paul, and countless people today, by being compassionate and sympathetic with people who are overburdened. He could see people’s lives diminish before him either through physical illness or social injustice. His country was occupied by a foreign power. The footprints of war and conflict were all over his land as they are today in Syria, Yemen, Palestine and Latin America. Today we witness more and more youth sleeping under bridges or in doorways and paths of our cities. Innocent children needlessly die every day due to malnutrition or lack of healthcare. People sold into slavery. Soldiers coldly killing people with impunity in the Philippines, Mexico, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan.

These questions cannot be adequately answered but they can be responded to. Jesus does not accept the belief that suffering was due to sin or infraction of a religious rule, as Job’s friends suggest. Jesus' message about God is quite the contrary. Suffering is an inherent aspect of the human condition, though we cannot find an adequate explanation for it. Jesus did not answer these questions but showed us how to respond. He directs us toward the needs of others. He shows us how to deal with life’s tragedies: approach those who suffer, take their hands, help them up, heal the broken hearted and bind up their wounds.

Simone Weil, the French philosopher, mystic, and political activist, as a plaque on her grave: ‘My solitude held in its grasp the grief of others.’ Susan Sontag wrote that Simone Weil had the courage to live a life that was agonizingly identical to her principles, principles based in the alleviation of other people’s suffering.

Last week, we saw Jesus in the synagogue healing a man. Today, he leaves the synagogue for the house of Peter’s mother-in-law and finds many people there seeking care. Attending to some local concerns, he goes to the edge of town where he was absorbed in prayer until disturbed by his disciples. He has slipped off to a quiet place to pray. We might ask why Jesus would go off alone in the face of so much need. Why be inactive, or silent, or in solitude, when people’s needs are so great? It was in these moments of solitude that he saw the bigger picture, the wider world that God loves and embraces. Here he deepened his awareness of God's peace, compassion, tenderness and love for all. Here he heard the words he was to speak. This is where God’s agenda became more focused and evident – the healing of people and repairing the world. It was here that he became sensitised to the interconnectedness of all things and that God’s mercy is available wherever we are, whoever we are, whatever our circumstances. Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese peace activist and Buddhist monk, says that ‘practicing peace’ means ‘being peace’ in such everyday aspects of living such as walking, eating and dialoging with one another. We need to uproot the seeds of violence and war that germinate in our own being. We need to establish peace in our hearts and look at the sources of violence and war in ourselves: anger, fear, hatred, misunderstanding, and possessiveness. God wants us to live fully, starting right now by doing everything possible to build God’s Reign, through struggling for the dignity, the rights, and the well-being of all people, especially through the striving for justice. This is to repair the world. It does not occur in our enclosed synagogues or churches or mosques or temples but in our streets, our homes, shopping centres, the workplace and in the media. Note the symbolism of Jesus leaving the synagogue to go where the people are and where there is need - the house of Peter’s mother-in-law.

Speaking to the fear of terrorism and war, Thich Nhat Hanh has observed that the roots of evils such as fear, hatred, misunderstanding, and violence - cannot be removed by the military. Bombs and missiles cannot touch these inner demons. For Jesus, the practice of looking deeply does not mean being inactive. We become very active when we act with love and compassion, living in such a way that a future will be possible for people close to us and not so close to us.

We need to acknowledge and celebrate our power to bring about positive change peacefully, alone or collectively, in the face of social or cultural resistance. We are all custodians of a great energy for transformation. That energy lay within us. It is the energy that enables us to change our daily lives [acting locally] - the way we think, speak, and act – and we begin to change the wider world [acting globally].

I have said before how I stop at night with a dim light or candle and allow the words of a poem or passage of scripture or other writer take over like a prayer. This is a moment when I can listen to the words of a ‘stranger’ or ‘other’ who informs me of his or her world. St Benedict speaks of listening 'with the ear of the heart'. These strangers invite us to listen as they speak of suffering, loss, love, joy, dreams and dreams deferred. They find an echo in the human heart – and God speaks through these means as well. These friends show us God-filled ways of responding. Talking to and listening to 'strangers' may be the most important thing we do – for ourselves and the world! Yesterday, I purchased new book called Sacred Strangers: What the Bible’s Outsiders Can Teach Christians by Mary Haught. But we need to give ourselves that time away, little scraps of heaven, in order to see the world with God’s eyes and be God’s heart in the world. Paul offered himself in service of others and became all things to all people. There lay our invitation and challenge. Can we do any less in the face of other people’s suffering? Can we continue to allow the elderly languish? Can we continue to say that the Indigenous people have received more than other people from the government which has been wasted by bureaucracy? Can we continue to allow children starve? Can we continue to allow asylum seekers have their minds, hopes and bodies break down because our hardheartedness and narrow-mindedness? Can we allow hatred, prejudice, divisive patriotism rule our world? Can we continue to support bigotry or indifference by our silence? We can be sensitised to this in those moments apart, in silence and prayer, and go into the world with new vigour, stronger voices, or we can succumb to the kind of silence that is tyrannical: that continues to allow the innocent to suffer. So to see an to who the God Job seeks, let us look at the God present with and engaged with people in Jesus in today’s gospel.

 

LITURGY NOTES FOR THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR.

Fourth Sunday of the Year

January 28, 2018

Suggested formula for recognition of indigenous people and their land.

We acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land

on which we stand.

We pay our respects to them and 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.

Only the truth is revolutionary

      

 

The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat it. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken.

Born in 1960, Kevin Carter was an award winning South African photojournalist. He began his career photographing scenes of the violent struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. However, it was a 1993 picture of a famine victim in Sudan that would change his life forever.

‘He heard a soft, high-pitched whimpering and saw a tiny girl trying to make her way to the feeding center. As he crouched to photograph her, a vulture landed in view. Careful not to disturb the bird, he positioned himself for the best possible image. He would later say he waited about 20 minutes, hoping the vulture would spread its wings. It did not, and after he took his photographs, he chased the bird away and watched as the little girl resumed her struggle.’

This picture earned Carter the 1994 Pullitzer Prize for feature photography. ‘I swear I got the most applause of anybody,’ Carter wrote back to his parents in Johannesburg. ‘I can't wait to show you the trophy. It is the most precious thing, and the highest acknowledgment of my work I could receive.’ Carter's joy would not last.

Friends and colleagues would come to question why he had not done more to help the child in the photograph. ‘The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering,’ said the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, ‘might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene.’

Burdened with feelings of guilt and sadness, Kevin Carter took his own life On July 27, 1994. His suicide note stated in part, ‘...I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain . . . of starving or wounded children...’

Readings

Reading I  Dt 18:15-20 God will raise up a prophet.

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

R. (8) If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts

Reading II  1 Cor 7:32-35 Do what will help you devote yourselves to the Lord

Gospel Mk 1:21-28 Demons recognize Jesus as the Holy One of God

Penitential Rite

1.       Jesus, you speak your liberating word to us: Jesus, have mercy.

2.      Jesus, you make a deep impression on us and give us the courage to change: Christ, have mercy.

3.       Jesus, you move us to become more and more like you: Jesus, have mercy.

Penitential Rite [Alternative]

1.       Jesus, you came to heal us and to restore us to fullness of life: Jesus, have mercy.

2.      Jesus, you have made us sons and daughters of the living God: Christ, have mercy.

3.       Jesus, you made yourself one of us so that we could see in you the perfect image of God: Jesus, have mercy.

Opening Prayer

Faithful God,

you have spoken to us in Jesus,

who lived as he spoke

and whose message became flesh and blood.

Make us people of vision and integrity

who speak in your name with authority and truth.

May our voices stir up people who will bear witness to your Reign

of community and serving love.

Prayers of the Faithful

Introduction: We pray to our God for men and women who can speak God’s word with the assurance and authority of faith. We pray in response: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

1.       For the leaders of the Church, that they may receive God's word with humility and pass it to the world without fear or compromise, we pray: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

2.      For those who speak in the name of people whose voices are not heard or disregarded, that they may not be silenced by fear or the powerful voices in society, we pray: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

3.       For countries such as the USA, China, Japan, Iran, Iraq, Bangladesh, and others, that continue to use capital punishment that they may come to see that justice is not served by this and it, like all violence, is a failure of humanity, we pray, May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

4.      That we recognise that violent conflict is strongly correlated with human rights violations and work to oppose all violations of human rights – no matter how small, we pray: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

5.       That services to people in country/rural areas be provided for people suffering of all kinds of illness, physical and mental, and that these services may help to reduce the great loss of life by suicide, we pray: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

6.      That we acknowledge the identity of others by overcoming willful neglect, greed, selfishness and the blind tolerance of unacceptable inequality and injustice, we pray: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

7.       That we continue to work towards achieving the Strategic Development Goals to demonstrate to the poorest and the most vulnerable people in the world that we have their interests at heart, and that they are as important and as valuable as we are, we pray: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

8.      That we find ways of building a mutuality of respect across the boundaries of inequality and difference where the preventable death of any person, anywhere in the world, diminishes all of us, we pray: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

9.      That the rich and wealthy countries give priority to the elimination of poverty and disease rather than to security against terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, we pray: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

10.   That all people who are victims of domestic violence may have their voices and pleas heard and acknowledged and that ways be found to bring healing to all involved, we pray: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

11.   That all who suffer at a young age may experience the love and attention of people who care for them, we pray: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

12.   That our society make more room and show effective concern for people living with mental illness in the community, we pray: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

13.   That all those in hospitals and nursing homes may be given much human, loving care and be visited by those dear to them, we pray: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

14.   That in our communities we may dare to lighten one another’s suffering and learn to share each other’s pain, we pray: May our hearts not be hardened, O God.

Concluding Prayer: Gracious God, you loved us so much that you sent your Son to show us your presence in our world. May we hear the voice of Jesus and see his face in each person we meet.

Prayer over the Gifts

Faithful God,

as we bring before you

these gifts of bread and wine,

accept our meagre efforts to give shape to your word

in the language of our lives.

Prayer after Communion

Faithful God,

in Christ , you have brought us together

by your powerful word and sharing.

As we return to everyday life,

speak your liberating message to us in each moment.

Open our ears and hearts

to your ever-new language

and let it lead us to you

together with our sisters and brothers.

Parish notices

January 30: Commemoration of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.

Further Resources 

A time comes when silence is betrayal

Martin Luther king Jr

The ultimate weakness of violence

is that it is a descending spiral,

begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.

Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

Through violence you may murder the liar,

but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.

Through violence you murder the hater,

but you do not murder hate.

In fact, violence merely increases hate....

Returning violence for violence multiples violence,

adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1929-1968, American Civil Rights Leader

What we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours: Which do we want more of?

Julia Cameron, American Teacher, Author, Artist and Poet

In every forest, on every farm, in every orchard on earth, it's what's under the ground that creates what's above the ground. That's why placing your attention on the fruits that you have already grown is futile. You cannot change the fruits that are already hanging on the tree. You can, however, change tomorrow's fruits. But to do so, you will have to dig below the ground and strengthen the roots.

T. Harv Eker, Motivational Speaker and Author

From the pain comes the dream.

From the dream comes the vision.

From the vision come the people.

From the people comes the power.

From this power comes the change.

Peter Gabriel, English Musician and Social Activist

Listening to the cry of those who suffer violence and are oppressed by unjust systems and structures, and hearing the appeal of a world that by its perversity contradicts the plan of its Creator, we have shared our awareness of the Church's vocation to be present in the heart of the world by proclaiming the Good News to the poor, freedom to the oppressed, and joy to the afflicted.

Synod of Bishops, Justice in the World 1971

The more a person wants to live in the absolutes of God, the more essential it is for this absolute to be rooted in the midst of human suffering.

Brother Roger of Taize

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Martin Luther King Jr

Suffering and joy teach us, if we allow them, how to make the leap of empathy, which transports us into the soul and heart of another person. ln those transparent moments we know other people's joys and sorrows, and we care about their concerns as if they were our own.

Fritz Williams:

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Eleanor Roosevelt

But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.

Paulo Coelho

The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering - a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons - a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting - three hundred million people all with the same face.

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.

George Orwell (1903-1950)

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

Thomas Jefferson 

The ultimate measure of a [man] is not where [he] stands in moments of comfort, but where [he] stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Martin Luther King, Jr. 

I'm often amazed at the way politicians, who spend hours poring over opinion poll results in a desperate attempt to discover what the public thinks, are certain they know precisely what God's views are on everything.

Simon Hoggart

Going to church no more makes you a Christian than sleeping in your garage makes you a car.

Garrison Keiler

How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get enough people to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?

Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, February 1845

There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used.... Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.

Gil Bailie

When shall it be said in any country of the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance or distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes not oppressive; the rational world is my friend because I am friend of its happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast of its constitution and government.

Thomas Paine 

A true revolution of values will say of war, ' This way of settling differences is not just.'… I call on Washington today, I call on every man and woman of goodwill all over America today: Take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late; a book may close. And I don't know about you -- I ain't going to study war no more.

Martin Luther King 

Zealotry of either kind - the puritan's need to regiment others or the victim's passion for blaming everyone except himself - tends to produce a depressing civic stupidity. Each trait has about it the immobility of addiction. Victims become addicted to being victims: they derive identity, innocence and a kind of devious power from sheer, defaulting helplessness. On the other side, the candle-snuffers of behavioral and political correctness enact their paradox, accomplishing intolerance in the name of tolerance, regimentation in the name of betterment.

Lance Morrow, essayist, professor

The powerful have invoked God at their side in this war, so that we will accept their power and our weakness as something that has been established by divine plan. But there is no god behind this war other than the god of money, nor any right other than the desire for death and destruction. Today there is a ‘NO’ which shall weaken the powerful and strengthen the weak: the ‘NO’ to war.

Subcomandante Marcos - No to war, February 16, 2003 

Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs: 

Arundhati Roy 

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter:

African proverb

In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning and cruelty.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian writer

What experience and history teach is this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770-1831) German philosopher

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

Robert Lynd, (1879-1949), Anglo-Irish essayist, journalist

It is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return.

Socrates, 469 - 399 BC

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

Georges Bernanos

The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That's why we want to be considerate of every man--Who knows what's in him, why he was born and what he can do?

Maxim Gorky

Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor.

Ginetta Sagan

Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life….

Nelson Mandela

I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

Thomas Paine

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian writer, from On Life and Essays on Religion

"Free inquiry requires that we tolerate diversity of opinion and that we respect the right of individuals to express their beliefs, however unpopular they may be, without social or legal prohibition or fear of success.

Paul Kurtz, ‘A Secular Humanist Declaration,’in On The Barricades, 1989

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities,"

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : ‘Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.’

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but beautiful - struggle for a new world.

Rev. Martin Luther King, ‘Beyond Vietnam’ A Time to Break Silence

‘In the end only kindness matters’

Hands

If I could tell the world just one thing

It would be that we're all OK

And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful

And useless in times like these

I won't be made useless

I won't be idle with despair

I will gather myself around my faith

For light does the darkness most fear

My hands are small, I know

But they're not yours, they are my own

But they're not yours, they are my own

And I am never broken

Poverty stole your golden shoes

It didn't steal your laughter

And heartache came to visit me

But I knew it wasn't ever after

We'll fight, not out of spite

For someone must stand up for what's right

'Cause where there's a man who has no voice

There ours shall go singing

My hands are small I know

But they're not yours, they are my own

But they're not yours, they are my own

I am never broken

In the end only kindness matters

In the end only kindness matters

I will get down on my knees, and I will pray

I will get down on my knees, and I will pray

I will get down on my knees, and I will pray

My hands are small I know

But they're not yours, they are my own

But they're not yours, they are my own

And I am never broken

My hands are small I know

But they're not yours, they are my own

But they're not yours, they are my own

And I am never broken

We are never broken

We are God's eyes

God's hands

God's mind

We are God's eyes

God's hands

God's heart

We are God's eyes

God's hands

God's eyes

We are God's hands

We are God's hands

Jewel, Hands-

We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war.

Albert Einstein

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life flow no longer into our souls.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

God of our present and our past,

Help us to remember how you have empowered people

to work for positive change in our world.

Grant us courage and a vision of the future

to affirm and defend the right to wholeness for all people.

Amen.

Reflections on the readings

Mark presents Jesus beginning his public life with a significant event. He, and his first followers, go to a synagogue and join the reflections on the scriptures being read that day. Those present note that he does not wander or ‘bull on’ about possible understandings or interpretations, but speaks clearly, decisively and boldly ‘with authority.’ He is seen as speaking with authority because he is authentic. To emphasise this, he acts with boldness when he performs an exorcism where the unclean spirit or demon who recognises Jesus as ‘the Holy One of God.’ One of the most prophetic acts of Pope Francis to inaugurate his emphasis on ‘mercy’ was to go to Lampedusa in defiance of politics and opinions to show where he stood with people who were lost, hurting, unsafe and unwanted. Francis’ fast paced journey reflected Mark’s fast-paced journey with Jesus towards Jerusalem. It will be no easy walk. For the follower of Jesus, this journey takes us through the heart of the world – through places of death, suffering, pain, corruption and destruction. But any discipleship that ONLY takes us through safe places where there are warm homes and happy meals should be suspect.

Jesus ministry, and our discipleship, is always about putting flesh on words. Religion can be complicated when those who participate in it complicate it when they bring with them their own needs for personal status or proof of piety and their prejudices and worry about religious minutiae. However, in the synagogue, the people heard a new voice that spoke clearly, plainly, directly, understandably, and ‘with authority.’

We hear the saying: be careful for what you pray for because it may come to you. In the first reading, the people get what they asked for, ‘a prophet…from among their own people…… who will speak to them everything that I command.’ They wanted God to speak through one of their own.  God’s mission has always been carried out through people - ordinary people like farmers, shepherds, children, women who were tapped on the shoulder to serve as prophets and confront ‘idolatry’. Idolatry is to look for love and security where there is none. When people struggled to appreciate God’s love, it was then incarnated in Jesus, in order to relate to us in an ever more personal way. To find other means of love is form of idolatry. It is no so much about statues or images or artefacts that fill our lives. More often idolatries are the ways our lives coalesce, imperceptibly, around the ‘invisible unholy.’ Idolatry’s normalcy becomes a comfort and is taken for granted. We get so used to violence in the Middle East and rationalise it, the violence of 50, 000 street children in Kabul at the moment, the violence where 100’s of 1000’s of people are looking for a safe place to be and to live and be welcomed, the violence that causes the  wailing of mothers seeing their children die in theirs arms because of hunger, or because their homes have been destroyed by weapons we sell, or the killings of black people or people who may drug addicted by police. We can easily justify this status quo!!!

Be careful what you pray for because prophets are inconvenient reminders of our everyday idolatries and how they have hardened us in the structures of death. ‘God will raise up a prophet like me from among your own people,’ says Moses. In the face of the realities the people faced, God would send one like Moses who would point to God’s calling, and callings, every day. This prophet will not be a stranger with a new perspective or expertise that does not already reside within the community. The fact that this prophet comes from among the people will make her/his words more difficult to listen to because she/he is one who is familiar and thus easy to ignore. This familiarity means that her/his words will cut deep. The prophet sees how we relate and who we connect with, who we sit with. Do we want to know? The prophet sees who has to do the heavy lifting while others have their fill and deepen the inequality among people. Do we want to know? As one called from within a people, the prophet will speak to us of idolatry – not in terms of belief and worship but the realities of relationships with our neighbours and the strangers and the estranged among us. It would be easy to resist and dismiss the prophet as being crazy, too emotional or too radical. Do we want to know? It happens all the time when it comes to those who warn about world poverty, the use of violence over active nonviolence, homelessness, ignoring the stranger, prejudice against people from different faiths, ethnic background or sexual orientation. Do we want to know? Will we refer to them as too crazy or too radical because their words cut deep or will we listen to their words as they display the courage and risk to lead others to a place that reflects the inclusiveness of God’s reign?

But we are called to be God’s prophets and messengers and speak the ‘truth’ about our everyday realities. Jesus chose ordinary people from various backgrounds to share his mission – to speak and incarnate God’s love. This is our baptismal calling. The words attributed to St Francis demonstrate what God has done in Jesus, does in Jesus and what we are called to do: preach always and if necessary use words. As today’s gospel reveals, the most effective way to proclaim God’s word is through action. It may be through presence, sharing of stories, sharing of suffering, and practice of hospitality. This is the ‘speaking with authority’ that so astonished the people in the gospel. This was something that I think was missed by many in the churches with same-sex marriage debate and plebiscite where some tended to abstractions rather than seeing, as did Jesus, that the people we are called to be with are flesh and blood.

Words can produce avoidance as much as understanding. They can dazzle with ‘knowledge’ that ‘puffs-up,’ as Paul knew well. They can seem impressive even necessary– for a while. But then comes an authentic voice, gesture, act from a person who speaks as one ‘with authority,’ leveling prior questions and controversies. Religious people can, unlike Jesus, be prone to words and abstractions which seem urgent and important but as Paul, in response to many religious controversies, called people back to the gospel, not just by another religious argument, but a transforming experience that is available to all people, whoever they are. This is the consistent theme of the scriptures and provides the only necessary criterion for distinguishing between ‘true’ and ‘false’ religious interpreters. Healing is the result of the authentic interpretation. ‘God-talk’ can distract us from reality and human engagement: they hurt rather than to heal; they divide rather than unite; they instill hatred rather than love; they deceive rather than enlighten; the tear down rather than build up. This is the babble the gospel confronts today. Jesus’ direct ‘Shut up!’ needs to be repeated by those who can see through the babble.

So when the people asked for a prophet, what did they hope for? One who would confirm them in their prejudices and comfortable lifestyle? Or, or one who would move them towards a ‘new way’ of living and being? One who speak the word of corporate and political figures or who would speak God’s word?

Last week the USA commemorated the birth of Martin Luther King. In 1973, a university professor recalled how Martin Luther King’s appearance at a rally a decade before captured the attention of every listener. Men and women, young and old, poorly and richly dressed, black and white (as well as the other colours people are labelled with) sat or stood while they pressed against their neighbours as they listened. This professor was amazed that all seemed to be listening. Their attention had been captured as he spoke with authority as his words - his truths, hopes, dreams, metaphors, stories, confessions, criticisms, and challenges – touched his hearers.

Jesus’ encounter with the people left them astonished. They are a healing and liberating force. For Mark, healings and exorcisms raise the broader question of social oppression. The political impact was to seek the root cause of marginalisation of people. We see here a story of power displacement. The people had been listening to old news, spoken without authority. Is this still not the experience of many in the church? Jesus does not trot out  what he has heard from others but speaks  with authority from within himself - freely and fearlessly proclaiming a loving God - not an oppressor God; a friendly presence who invites us to live creatively – not a menacing and controlling God as promoted by the religious leaders.  

There is a power play operative in the gospel. We are called to take sides in a conflict – one between those who speaks of love, compassion, equity, peace and nonviolence; and those who promote fear, judgementalism, hatred, deception division and violence. Jesus has displaced the religious leaders from their accustomed power over the people and puts a lie to the view among those appointed to leadership that their status, position and power gave them authority and the right to impose their will on ordinary people. Genuine authority inspires and encourages. It authors in people a sense of their own agency, their capacity and power to be part of a world that could be changed.

Deuteronomy and Mark raise the raise the question ‘who speaks for God’? and ‘how do we know that God is speaking’?  Intuitively, we know when God is speaking if justice, creativity and beauty are being promoted; if the common good is sought; if diverse opinions and lifestyles are respected; if creativity, adventure and compassion is unleashed in people; if it enables people to be big-hearted; if inclusiveness, hospitality and interdependence are promoted. Who is central in God’s reign? Now we need also ask, ‘who will speak for God?’

We have seen even in very recent times how people in authority – political, religious, and cultural - have been displaced from their positions because they have been silent, abusive, neglectful and disrespectful whilst attending to their own status. Their words and actions were empty of God’s loving presence. We have seen and know of people who are more concerned with being ‘good’, not making mistakes, not rocking the boat, but do not take the risk of following of Jesus. Israel had many prophets, as does the church and society. God speaks through them. Many were and still are killed or tortured. They are still imprisoned or killed in Egypt, Israel, Latin America, various countries in Africa, Russia, Sri Lanka, China, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Indonesia, France, and the USA in order to silence them. That silence (in particular by Australia) continues as the people of West Papua continue to suffer oppression (torture, killings, dispossession, and environmental degradation) at the hands of the Indonesian military. That silence continues as Rohingya people are killed or forced out of Myanmar. That silence is observed as Israel continues to kill children and others or imprisons children who challenge the occupation. Israel, as today, had a reputation for persecuting its prophets and listening to false prophets. It continues to silence Israeli peace activists and human rights activists who oppose the cruel treatment of Palestinians. The false prophets are like the ‘babblers’ – the ’evil spirits’ – who lull the people into complacency, who instill fear and hate; who try to tell them that injustice is necessary at times to protect ourselves as we still do with refugees; who tell us that we have to go to war to make peace; who tell us that certain groups of people are scapegoated in order deflect us from other problems; who tell us we are not racist so that we do not have to confront our past treatment of Indigenous people. . These are the competing voices that want us to accept a status quo that leaves us passive: to accept as normal domestic violence that kills and maims many women and some men; to accept as normal the abuse of children; to accept as normal the inequality of women in church and broader society; to accept as normal the ongoing oppression of the people of Papua and destruction of homes and killing of children and innocent people in Palestine; to accept as normal the wailing of Afghan or Yemeni faces covered in the rubble and dust of missiles cowardly fired from drones. London, Washington, Canberra, and Paris continue the ongoing babble. Our Department of Immigration continues this babble when it justifies the interminable detention of people seeking asylum in the name of saving lives from risky journeys, stopping people smugglers and national security. Such words and actions are diversionary tactics. They cripple, disable and enslave. But, those who challenge this are seen as crazy, radical, emotional and unhinged.

The true leader, like Jesus, invites us to ‘come and see’ the places and people where God is truly present and active; where people struggle to be faithful in their relationships and engagements. Jesus spoke with ‘authority’. It was liberating. It was forgiving. It was inclusive. He did not say nice things or intimidate but declared that God’s Reign is about healing and transformation. As indicated already, many contemporary voices - ‘evil spirits’ - compete with Jesus’ message of a big-hearted God of compassion as opposed the small-hearted God of religious dogmatism, retribution, and legalism.

Jesus comes among us and invites us to recognise the authority we have - and accept it. If we do not speak with the authority of Jesus to decry sin, injustice and inhumanity, who will? If our voices will not insist on the truth when so many lies abound, whose will? We can do this in our own homes, workplaces, in our streets, in our letter-writing and phone calls to politicians and religious leaders. Let us not only imagine a different world but also live towards bringing it about. Jesus drew people to a loving God, not to blind submission to the Law. We can do that as well and stir up love for life, to live out of goodness and kindness, forgiveness and a love that excludes nobody. This is itself healing.

David Hayward The Naked Pastor January 21, 2018

LITURGY NOTE FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Third Sunday of the Year

January 21^st 2018

Suggested formula for recognition of indigenous people and their land.

We acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land

on which we stand.

We pay our respects to them and 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.

Readings

Reading I Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Responsorial Psalm Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 R. Teach me your ways, O Lord.

Reading II 1 Cor 7:29-31

Gospel Mk 1:14-20

Opening Prayer

God of the living,

You have formed us in your own image.

Dispel from us, your people, the fear of death 

and awaken within us

a liberating faith, hope and love 

so that we may take our place in the new creation.

or

Your loving presence, O God, 

draws near to us in the person of Jesus.

Your word calls us to faith; 

your power transforms our lives.

Free us to follow in Christ’s footsteps, 

so that nothing may hold us back 

from answering your call.

Presider Let us join with believers all over the world and pray for those whose lives are at risk, those who are suffering and in need of protection. The response is: God hears the cry of the poor

1. For countries that continue to use capital punishment: may they come to see that justice is not served in this way, and like all violence, is a failure of humanity, we pray, God hears the cry of the poor.

2. For those who serve in government: may they make decisions that protect the most vulnerable without attention to personal or political gain, we pray, God hears the cry of the poor

3. For political leaders: may they speak out on behalf of all people who are denied their political freedoms rather than be selective, we pray, God hears the cry of the poor

4. For the work of the church: may it affirm and protect the lives of the most vulnerable — the very old and the very young and those yet to be born; prisoners, refugees, the very sick, the poor and all those whose voices are not heard, we pray, God hears the cry of the poor

5. For church authorities: may they use their voice to proclaim the presence of God’s reign present for those who live in fear of torture, political oppression, prejudice, discrimination, and even death, can call abusers of all kinds to repentance, we pray, God hears the cry of the poor

6. For all Christian congregations: may they come together in service to those in need, we pray, God hears the cry of the poor

7. For the underemployed and the unemployed as they struggle to find a job, pay their bills and provide for their families, and those who have no home in which to sleep this night, we pray, God hears the cry of the poor

Presider Loving God, creator of all life, we join together with believers everywhere and ask that you hear our prayers this day. Give us confidence in your love for us and your power to provide what we need. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

or

Presider Compassionate God, we acknowledge that we are all in need of repentance. Grant us the humility and the courage to become the people you call us to be. Help us especially when change seems difficult, or even impossible. May we choose to walk in the ways of your Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen

Prayer over the Offerings

Living God,

with these gifts of bread and wine

we bring before our desire to follow Jesus your Son.

Accept us with these offerings

and give us the strength to follow

the words of life and the example of Jesus.

Prayer after Communion

God of the Living,

Jesus has spoken to us and calls us

to be his disciples and to come after him.

Open us to his new world to all that is true, good and loving.

Give us the courage to go where he goes

and follow him on the road to you.

Dates

January 25 Promulgation of Second Vatican Council by Pope John XXlll in 1959

January 26 Survival Day (for some) and Australia Day (for others). 

Janaury 26 Establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972

January 27 UN International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust

Further Resources 

Jesus’ calling ordinary working people to follow him (as in the case of Simon and Andrew, James and John and Levi) occurred far more frequently than we usually thing.  If Jesus lured the brothers by telling them that they would soon be fishing for people, what image might he have used in called farmers, or shepherds, or artisans, or house wives, or even tax gatherers? Would he have told villagers from the Galilean countryside that he would teach them how to harvest people, or shepherds that they would learn how to pastor men and women, or tax gatherers how to collect human lives, or bakers how 6to make living bread?  Indeed, if Jesus could invite a married man like Simon to discipleship and expect that he readily would follow him, what would have prevented him from called a married woman? 

William Reiser, Jesus in Solidarity with His People: A Theologian Looks at Mark, pp. 60-61.

My greeting is one filled with hope for a more serene world, a world in which more and more individuals and communities are committed to the paths of justice and peace. 

Pope Benedict XVI, Message for World Day of Prayer for Peace 2006 

The members of the Church, as members of society, have the same right and duty to promote the common good as do other citizens. Christians ought to fulfill their temporal obligations with fidelity and competence. They should act as a leaven in the world, in their family, professional, social, cultural and political life.

Bishops Synod, Justice in the World, #38

Daily human events clearly evidence how much forgiveness and reconciliation are undeniably needed for bringing about a real personal and social renewal. This is valid in interpersonal relations but also among communities as well as nations.

John Paul II, Lent 2001

Prayer of Solidarity

Holy Compassion, you who hear the cries of those in anguish,

Be with us now to bring them to safety and to speak out against those who exploit.

Holy Love, you who shout with us ‘No’ to human trafficking in all its forms,

Be with us now to restore freedom to the trafficked and their families.

Holy Justice, you who rage with us against the injustices of trafficking,

Be with us now to take action to prevent and end this violence.

Holy Wisdom, you who know the worth of every human being,

Be with us as we erase this sinful practice from the face of the earth.

© Diann L. Neu, Co-director of WATER, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And, taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a Heaven creature or into a hellish creature - either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Ring out old shapes of foul disease, 

ring out the narrowing lust of gold, 

ring out the thousand wars of old, 

ring in the thousand years of peace. 

Alfred Lord Tennyson 

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

Dear young people of every language and culture, a high and exhilarating task awaits you: that of becoming men and women capable of solidarity, peace and love of life, with respect for everyone. Become craftsmen of a new humanity, where brothers and sisters — members all of the same family — are able at last to live in peace. 

Pope Benedict XVI, Message for World Day of Prayer for Peace 2001 

Peace remains possible. And if peace is possible, it is also a duty! 

Pope Benedict XVI, Message for World Day of Prayer for Peace 2004

Perhaps it's the belief that we shouldn't have any problems, any discomfort, any pain, that makes modern life seem so distressing. Life doesn't match our image of how it should be, and we conclude that life itself is wrong. We relate to everything from that narrow, fearful perspective of ‘I want’ - and what we want is to feel good. When our emotional distress does not feel good, we recoil from it. The resulting discomfort generates fear, then fear creates even more distress, and distress becomes our enemy, something to get rid of. Let us instead examine our basic requirement that life should be comfortable. This one assumption causes all of us endless difficulties.

Ezra Bayda, Saying Yes to Life: (Even the Hard Parts)

No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and likewise a society with many sores will twitch when someone has the courage to touch one and say: 'You have to treat that. You have to get rid of that.'

Oscar Romero

I no longer pray for God to be present, or God to give me guidance. What I pray for is openness to God…. God is always present. We build the walls that separate us from God. It is our responsibility to tear them down and open ourselves to God.

Mary Kay Sauter, Unmasking the Holy

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

John Kenneth Galbraith 

The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.

John Flynn, 1944

Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.

John Pierpont Morgan

Every morning is a fresh beginning. 

Every day is the world made new. 

Today is a new day. 

Today is my world made new. 

I have lived all my life up to this moment, 

to come to this day. 

This moment - this day – 

is as good as any moment in all eternity. 

I shall make of this day – 

each moment of this day –

a heaven on earth. 

This is my day of opportunity.

Dan Custer

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain American Author

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox.

Barry Lopez:

Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Helen Keller:

Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. Arundhati Roy:

We do not want a PAX Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women -- not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

John F. Kennedy (1963)

When the rights of just one individual are denied, the rights of all are in jeopardy!

Jo Ann Roach

Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-----torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians-----which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

George Orwell

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought! 

Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder! 

Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings! 

Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! 

Be heroes in an army of construction!

Helen Keller

Don't be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don't be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces.

Jean Paul Marat

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing

Albert Einstein

The plea of necessity, that eternal argument of all conspirators.

William Henry Harrison - (1773-1841), 9th U. S. President . Letter to Simon Bolivar, 27 September 1829

We tell lies when we are afraid... 

afraid of what we don't know, 

afraid of what others will think, 

afraid of what will be found out about us. 

But every time we tell a lie, 

the thing that we fear grows stronger. 

Williams Tad

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein

The aim of military training is not just to prepare men for battle, but to make them long for it.  Louis Simpson

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

Albert Camus

Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.

John Adams

They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. That is too much, even for a joke. ... Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.

Eugene Victor Debs

It is only through the heart that one sees clearly ~ what is essential is invisible to the human eye.

Antoine Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

A Listening Heart

There is a magnet in a seeker’s heart

whose true north is God.

It bends toward the Voice of God

with the ear of the heart

and, like sunflowers in the sun,

turns all of life toward

the living of the Word.

This listening is pure of pride

and free of arrogance.

It seeks wisdom—

everywhere, at all times—

and knows wisdom by the way

it echoes

the call of the scriptures.

The compass of God implanted

in the seeker’s heart

stretches toward truth

and signals the way to justice.

A truly listening heart knows

that we lose the chance for truth

if we give another—any other—

either too much, or too little,

control over the conscience

that is meant to be ours alone.

And yet, at the same time

mutual obedience,

real listening,

holy listening

forever seeks the spiritual dialogue

holy wisdom demands.

This listening with the heart

to the insights of another

is not the obedience of children,

or soldiers,

or servants,

or minions.

It is the obedience given to a lover

because of love alone.

Joan Chittister, The Monastery of the Heart: An Invitation to a Meaningful Life (BlueBridge)

Christianity is not supposed to make you secure. Christianity is supposed to give you the courage to walk into an insecure world knowing that you’re not alone and to embrace the radical insecurity. If you’ve got to spend your time proving that you’re better than someone else — males are better than females, whites are better than blacks, heterosexuals are better than homosexuals — you’re always building yourself up by pushing somebody else down. But, you shouldn’t need to build yourself up unless you’re radically insecure. Religion feeds into that radical insecurity with triumphalism — ours is the only religious route you can take to get to God. That’s a really strange idea.

John Shelby Spong

Anybody can observe the Sabbath but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.

Alice Walker, from In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens

The work of God is the calling of a people, whether in the Old Covenant or the New… That men and women are called together to a new wholeness is itself the work of God, which gives meaning to history.

John Howard Yoder

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motion of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn't go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

Wendell Berry, poet, environmentalist, farmer

The nature of water is yielding, and that of a stone is hard. Yet if you hang up a bottle filled with water above the stone so that the water drips drop by drop, it will wear a hole in the stone. In the same way the word of God is tender, and our heart is hard. So when people hear the word of God frequently, their hearts are opened to the fear of God.’

Abba Poeman

What we do is very little. But it is like the little boy with a few loaves and fishes. Christ took that little and increased it. [Christ] will do the rest. What we do is so little that we may seem to be constantly failing. But so did [Christ] fail. [Christ] met with apparent failure on the Cross. But unless the seeds fall into the earth and die, there is no harvest.

Dorothy Day

I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace.

Frederico Garcia

Weapons are the tools of violence; all decent men detest them. Weapons are the tools of fear; a decent man will avoid them except in the direst necessity and, if compelled, will use them only with the utmost restraint. Peace is his highest value. If the peace has been shattered, how can he be content? His enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself. He doesn't wish them personal harm. Nor does he rejoice in victory. How could he rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Lao-tzu

War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.

Leo Tolstoy

[He] who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Albert Einstein

Am I not destroying my enemies what I make friends of them?

Abraham Lincoln

Did you know that the worldwide food shortage that threatens up to five hundred million children could be alleviated at the cost of only one day, only one day, of modern warfare.

Peter Ustinov

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us--avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

Petrarch

For it isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

Eleanor Roosevelt

We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men ... who feared ... to defend causes which were unpopular .... The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay ... and whose fault is that? Not really his; he didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

(Excerpted from the March 9, 1954 See It Now broadcast, as quoted in In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow 1938-1961, pp 247-8.)

No one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result.

Ludwig von Mises

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men— not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

Edward R. Murrow. US broadcast journalist & newscaster (1908 - 1965) Speech to his staff 1954,

A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.

Edward R. Murrow US broadcast journalist and newscaster (1908 - 1965)

When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained. Edward R. Murrow US broadcast journalist & newscaster (1908 - 1965)

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

Edward R. Murrow

If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable. 

Edward R. Murrow

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar. 

Edward R. Murrow

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices. 

Edward R. Murrow

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.

Edward R. Murrow

The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue. 

Edward R. Murrow

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. 

Edward R. Murrow

We cannot make good news out of bad practice.

Edward R. Murrow

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. 

Edward R. Murrow

Christians and all other believers have a specific role to play in proclaiming moral values and in educating people in ecological awareness, which is none other than responsibility towards self, towards others, towards creation. What is required is an act of repentance on our part and a renewed attempt to view ourselves, one another, and the world around us within the perspective of the divine design for creation. The problem is not simply economic and technological; it is moral and spiritual. A solution at the economic and technological level can be found only if we undergo, in the most radical way, an inner change of heart, which can lead to a change in lifestyle and of unsustainable patterns of consumption and production. A genuine conversion in Christ will enable us to change the way we think and act.

Common Declaration on Environmental Ethics of John Paul II and the Ecumenical Patriarch His Holiness Bartholomew I, June 10, 2002

Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And, taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a Heaven creature or into a hellish creature--either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

O God, all holy one, you are our Mother and our Father and we are your children. Open our eyes and our hearts so that we may be able to discern your work in the universe. And be able to see Your features in every one of Your children. May we learn that there are many paths but all lead to You. Help us to know that you have created us for family, for togetherness, for peace, for gentleness, for compassion, for caring, for sharing. 

‘May we know that You want us to care for one another as those who know that they are sisters and brothers, members of the same family, Your family, the human family. Help us to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks, so that we may be able to live in peace and harmony, wiping away the tears from the eyes of those who are less fortunate than ourselves. And may we know war no more, as we strive to be what You want us to be: Your children. Amen.

Desmond M. Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.

Ellen Goodman

As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this

Paul Robeson, actor, singer, author, and political activist (1898-1976).

The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.

Terry Tempest Williams

This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.’

Terry Tempest Williams

The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.

Terry Tempest Williams

Faith is not about finding meaning in the world, there may be no such thing -- faith is the belief in our capacity to create meaningful lives.

Terry Tempest Williams

I wonder how it is we have come to this place in our society where art and nature are spoke in terms of what is optional, the pastime and concern of the elite?

Terry Tempest Williams

How do we remain faithful to our own spiritual imagination and not betray what we know in our own bodies? The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy.

Terry Tempest Williams

Philosophy should always know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters down the walls of cities and murders the women and children amid the flames and the purloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.

Stephen Crane

I will be harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject i do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.

William Lloyd Garrison (1805 - 1879)

To think deeply in our culture is to grow angry and to anger others; and if you cannot tolerate this anger, you are wasting the time you spend thinking deeply. One of the rewards to deep thought is the hot glow of anger at discovering a wrong, but if anger is taboo, thought will starve to death.

Jules Henry, Culture Against Man, 1963.

Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.

St Augustine.

As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.

Clarence Darrow

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Bishop Desmond Tutu

How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?:

Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845

There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used.... Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.

Gil Bailie

Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered Expression.

Gerard K. O'Neill, 2081

25 GREAT TRUTHS TO LIVEBY

William Blake wrote ‘we are put on earth a little space to bear the beams of love' but very few have the courage to follow the path of the heart. Here are 25 great truths to help guide you: Allen L Roland

Here are25 truths to live by but the greatest of them all is this one~ the most powerful force in life is love.

And the path of the heart is the only path that leads to your authentic self and your part in the loving plan~ and relationship is the vehicle.

The most destructive habit.                                       Worry

The greatest Joy.                                                            Giving

The greatest loss                                                             Loss of self-respect

The most satisfying work                                            Helping others

The ugliest personality trait                                       Selfishness

The most endangered species                                  Dedicated leaders

Our greatest natural resource                                   Our youth

The greatest ‘shot in the arm’                                    Encouragement

The greatest problem to overcome                        Fear

The most effective sleeping pill                                              Peace of mind

The most crippling failure disease                          Excuses

The most powerful force in life                                                Love

The most dangerous pariah                                        A gossiper

The world's most incredible computer                 The brain

The worst thing to be without                                  Hope

The deadliest weapon                                                  The tongue

The two most power-filled words                           ’I Can’

The greatest asset                                                          Faith

The most worthless emotion                                     Self-pity

The most beautiful attire                                            SMILE!

The most prized possession                                       Integrity

The most powerful channel of communication                Prayer

The most contagious spirit                                         Enthusiasm

The greatest test                                                             Relationship

The greatest gift                                                             Your authentic self

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com

Yes, get our attention, God.

In the midst of the mundane,

call us and help us hear.

Appear to us and help us see.

Grant us the courage to embrace change.

From you alone comes the transformation

that creates new relationships and a new world.

May it be so.

Amen.

A couple of reflections on the readings…..

How often do we write someone off? How often do we not expect much from them? How often do we disregard someone who is the equivalent to a ‘slum dog’ as seen in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’? We have power to harm, to divide, to separate, to scapegoat, to ignore. Last week I suggested that the readings continually remind us that there are no God-forsaken places or people. All are able to be transformed and live. Nathaniel quips in John’s gospel ‘What good can come out of Nazareth?’ on hearing that Jesus came from there. Indeed, what good can come out of place like that? Nothing but the one who speaks of life, peace, renewal, reconciliation, a new world, a new way of relating. Nothing but the one who lives compassionately, peacefully, and kindly and calls us to do the same. Jonah also faces that question: ‘What good can come out of Nineveh?’ I am sure we know people and places close to home that we might say that about or at least think of them in that way and dismiss them. We can have that tendency when we talk about African youth in our cities or some schools that appear to be socially deprived.

Yet, God chooses the unlikely to proclaim the good news as has happened through women, women, children and poor people. No doubt also through people who living with sickness or disability, indigenous people, gay and lesbian people. Recently, we heard of a New Zealand bishop (Bishop Stephen Lowe of Hamilton) tell us that the church is a facing a ‘Galileo moment’ with the voices and challenges that coming through many young people on homosexuality (Robert Shine Church Faces ‘Galileo Moment’ on Homosexuality Says Bishop. New Ways Ministry.  https://www.newwaysministry.org/2018/01/10/church-faces-galileo-moment-homosexuality-says-bishop/).

We are all called to proclaim the good news of a new age coming and the good news is about building a ‘culture of encounter’ that takes in love of neighbour and love of the enemy and love of the stranger. We are called to ‘fish’ or draw people in as we hear in the Gospel. We are also called to listen. It might mean that those to whom we to proclaim the ‘good news’ might actually proclaim the ‘good news’ to us as Bishop Lowe suggested. We are not just those who will ‘fish’ for others but from time to time we too will be ‘fished’. Jonah was trying to avoid his call and was taken into his ministry in an unexpected way. St Paul was knocked down on the way to Damascus when he was forced to view his path. How many of us have had the experience of being in places where we have been ‘knocked to the ground’ by those to whom we are sent.

Those who preach the gospel are not the only ones who live out the gospel call or proclaim it. Teachers, waiters, bartenders, doctors, nurses, parents, neighbours, and complete strangers do it. These people through their commitment and generosity proclaim to us in different ways. People in our cities and towns – homeless, ex-prisoners, people who are addicted - who we would not give a second glance have touched the lives others in ways that made all the difference. They have tried to not take advantage of the other, forgiven offences, been patient with the people who different or annoying, refused to take part in gossip or vilify or engage in sexist or demeaning talk, shared what they have, been sensitive to people who are vulnerable or failed to do not meet the expectations of the majority. What good can come from people who are lesbian and gay? What good can come out of people who are Indigenous Australians despite the fact that they have walked with God long before Jesus or even Abraham walked the earth and have shown us much about the importance of Spirit, sharing, community and connection with others and the land? What good can come from a group of homeless people on our streets despite the fact they can show great kindness, care and support to one another?

Jesus came to inaugurate a new age which we are called to continue. The ‘new age’ comes in the moments when we go beyond ourselves, refuse to yield to the status quo or to what is comfortable, act generously towards another, work for peace rather than inflame a divisive situation. What good can come out Nazareth?  What good can come out Nineveh? What good can come out of the bush? What good can come out of my life?  More than you think.

Jonah was changed by the people he was sent to. He had a harsh message for them and they surprisingly and unexpectedly responded positively. These people were willing to be changed. He wanted to bring down punishment upon them, but it was through them, these Ninevites, these not so nice people, that God touched Jonah’s heart. He was able to see goodness in them and also to see that the God he thought he knew was not really God. Unlike the disciples in the gospel who caught fish, Jonah was caught by one. Can we be open to seeing God at work when we or another acts out of compassion and sensitivity rather than indifference and neglect? Can we see God at work when ordinary people will risk their lives for complete strangers whether it be a war zone or in the emergency services or a passer-by who sees someone in distress or vulnerable. such as the peace shields in Iraq to help us see the humanity of people?

Discipleship is part of a new community which through its forgiveness, receptivity, compassion, justice-making and service draws in others is not an end in itself. It is not an end in itself and nor is church membership.

God continues to send men and women towards Nineveh. Where is our Nineveh today? Nineveh is found among other places in the back-streets and lanes of our cities festering with prostitution, drug and crime. Nineveh is found in the ivory tower of the corporate establishment where the destinies of the majority of the world are decided without any attention to their interests and welfare. Nineveh is found in the diocesan offices where decisions can be made without reference to or consideration of the messiness and pain that people have to live in. But going to Nineveh is also like going out to engage with, and love the enemy. It might be those police officers carrying out President Duterte’s instructions and killing suspected drug addicts. It might be the politician whose policies are so reprehensible and inhumane. It might be the person in my own community who makes like extremely difficult because of his or her self-centredness, lack of consideration or even bullying. Loving the enemy means going to Nineveh. That is the hardest part of our faith but it is crucial. Jonah was not sent to the people of Israel who were already believers and neither are we. God invites us to bring the Good News to unimaginable places and ‘impossible’ situations. The good news for us is that these ‘hopeless’ cases are not too hopeless after all. That is the message of Nineveh today.

The story of Jonah is nothing but an outrageous story about God’s mercy. The joke was on this reluctant prophet, and many believers in our churches, who think that God has the same prejudices, hates, tastes as we do. Jonah learned a lesson about mercy when he recognised God’s love and mercy symbolised in the unexpected gift of shade in the sweltering heat. He knew he did not earn this. Our call, as that of the disciples, is to allow Jesus to open our hearts to God’s gift of love and then demonstrate God’s overwhelming kindness to others. As the scribes and Pharisees are upset at Jesus befriending sinners, giving away God’s love and upsetting the moral order and the legitimate demands of religion, we see parallels in those who are upset at people who advocate for asylum seekers, upset the rule of ‘law’, and give to people who are perceived to be undeserving. We also saw this clearly in the lead up and during the recent plebiscite on same sex marriage. We see this when people call for welfare assistance to people who are homeless, unemployed or disadvantaged in other ways. It is seen as unfair to good hardworking people who have made sacrifices to obey God’s laws when they discover that God loves everyone! These complaints are echoed in our media and in church circles. The greatest obstacle to the church becoming more and more a community of grace and mercy comes not from sinners who reject God, but from religious people who reject sinners and cannot imagine sharing the same space or table with them. The gospel surprise is that God loves everyone and will go to any lengths, as we see time and time again, to bring home the lost person. The gospel challenge is less to those who appear lost and wayward but to us, God’s family, to welcome sinners and love them as God loves them. Pope Francis has begun a revolution. He changed the conversation in the church by focusing us on the God of Mercy. Mercy is the gate that opens up a way for others to enter the community and also our hearts.

LITURGY NOTES, SECOND SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TTIME