Peter MALONE
LITURGY NOTES FOR PALM SUNDAY OF THE LORD'S PASSION
LITURGY NOTES FOR PALM SUNDAY OF THE LORD'S PASSION
Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion
April 9, 2017
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.
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
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.
‘Nothing is so important to the church as human life, as the human person, above all, the person of the poor and the oppressed, who, besides being human beings, are also divine beings, since Jesus said that whatever is done to them he takes as done to him. That bloodshed, those deaths, are beyond all politics. They touch the very heart of God.’
Archbishop Oscar Romero (assassinated March 24, 1980)
I. BLESSING OF PALMS AND PROCESSION
Introduction by the Celebrant [Alternative]
Today and throughout Holy Week our attention focuses on the sufferings Jesus endured for our sake and how they led to his resurrection and our own rising to new life. We keep in mind also, that Jesus goes on suffering today in his body in the people who are victims of injustice, of deprivation, marginalisation and isolation, betrayal, persecution. Let us pray for them that they may also rise with Jesus and that we may help them to rise to new life.
Prayer of the Blessing of the Palms [Alternative]
Let us pray
God of all life,
we come before you with green branches,
symbols of life and youth,
and of Jesus, who called himself the green wood.
Bless us, and bless these branches.
Let these green twigs and leaves acclaim Christ
as the One who brings us life's fullness,
even though we have to take with him
the hard road of suffering and death
towards the Resurrection. We make this pray
The branches are sprinkled with holy water in silence.
Gospel of the Palm Blessing
**********************
Opening Prayer
Crucified God,
in Jesus your Son you have shown us
that your way is the way of loving service
and the willingness to pay the price
for faithful and unswerving love.
Give us the attitude of Jesus,
that we, too, may have the integrity and courage
to walk in the way of his suffering
and share in his rising.
Prayer over the Gifts
Crucified God,
on the night before he died
Jesus gave himself to his friends
in the form of bread and wine.
As we offer this bread and wine,
may your Spirit give us the courage
to follow Jesus’ way of active resistance to non-violence
and strive to bring about
reconciliation with one another and with you.
Prayer after Communion
Crucified God,
in this Eucharist
Jesus has given himself to us
as he gave himself through his suffering on the cross.
May we learn from him
that true love is love of the enemy.
Final Blessing
May we step gratefully into this Holy Week;
and tread softly for much is already bruised. Amen.
May we go reverently for holiness is found in unlikely places. Amen
May we walk lovingly with the Crucified One
who is the Centre of all things on earth and in heaven. Amen.
General Intercessions
Introduction: Strengthened by the word and example of Jesus, may Jesus’ suffering and death bear fruit in us and in all people. We pray in response: Crucified God, hear our prayers.
- With Jesus who was led out of the city, we pray for all who feel themselves marginalised in the Church, we pray: Crucified God, hear our prayers.
- With Jesus we remember the people of Queensland and northern New South Wales who were severely affected by Cyclone Debbie, the lives uprooted, the lives of people lost and animals killed and environment destroyed, we pray: Crucified God, hear our prayers.
- With Jesus who shares the suffering of crucified peoples, we remember the people of Rwanda who suffered a genocide in 1994 and whose wounds are still open, we pray: Crucified God, hear our prayer.
- With Jesus whose suffering we remember, we pray for all who are living with terminal illness and those who die alone, we pray: Crucified God, hear our prayers.
- With Jesus who was arrested like a criminal, and falsely accused, we pray for all who are in prison and in detention centres, we pray: Crucified God, hear our prayers.
- With Jesus who proclaimed peace, we remember all those who have fought in war and conflicts have returned home bearing wounds that will never heal, we pray; Crucified God, hear our prayers.
- With Jesus who was anointed and comforted in his distress by an unknown woman, strengthen and encourage all who follow by showing their compassion and care for others, we pray: Crucified God, hear our prayers.
- With Jesus who was denied and betrayed by his friends, we pray for all in need and feel abandoned by their neighbours and friends who look away, we pray: Crucified God, hear our prayers.
- With Jesus who was brought before unjust judges, we pray for all who suffer from injustice, abuse and political manipulation, we pray: Crucified God, hear our prayers.
- With Jesus who was scourged and crowned with thorns, we pray for all who are tortured physically and mentally in prisons and detention centres, we pray: Crucified God, hear our prayers.
- With Jesus who carried his cross, we pray for all who have difficulty bearing their afflictions and weaknesses, we pray: Crucified God, hear our prayers.
- With Jesus who was helped to carry his cross, we pray for all people who reach out to others in their sufferings, we pray: Crucified God, hear our prayers.
- With Jesus who was raised from the dead, we pray that peace and justice will rise in our hearts and bring new life to all, we pray: Crucified God, hear our prayers.
Concluding Prayer: Crucified God, hear our prayers and give us all that leads to resurrection and life. Turn our crosses into channels that lead to life and joy as you are with us, in Jesus, forever and ever. Amen
Notices
April 7: World Health Day (http://bit.ly/2mZDIxW)
April 7: International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda in 1994
In every age the true and perennial 'newness of things' comes from the infinite power of God, who says: 'Behold, I make all things new' (Rev 21:5). These words refer to the fulfillment of history, when Christ 'delivers the Kingdom to God…….. that God may be everything to everyone' (1 Cor 15:24,28). But the Christian well knows that the newness which we await in its fullness at the Lord's second coming has been present since the creation of the world, and in a special way since the time when God became [hu]man in Jesus Christ and brought about a 'new creation' with him and through him (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15).
Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, #62
Christ's way of acting, the Gospel of his words and deeds, is a consistent protest against whatever offends the dignity of women.
Pope John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, #15
Stations of the Cross of Jesus Christ
1. Jesus is condemned to death
Jesus is trapped by the same system that brings us the death penalty, the harshness of life in prison, political prisoners, torture, white color crime, racial profiling, the criminalization of the poor, the detention of immigrants, and all the inequities of our world’s ‘criminal justice systems.
2. Jesus is made to carry his cross
Jesus carries his burden as do all those who work the land, labor for low wages, struggle to find work, care for their children and family, loose their homes through foreclosure, worry over their debts, strive for their children, attend poor schools, are abused by their bosses, or in any way struggle to make it in this world.
3. Jesus falls the first time
The burden that crushes Jesus can be compared to the burdens of today - the burden of debt that crushes the poor economies of the world - the unequal distribution of resources which stifles development for many people and nations – the burden of an economic system that oppressed the environment.
4. Jesus meets his mother
Jesus looks on his mother with love and sees all the pain and possibility of relationship, deep family love and fidelity, abuse and violence, mutual loving care, separation and divorce, loneliness and community. Jesus sees all the mothers who are struggling to care for their children.
5. Simon helps Jesus carry his cross
Jesus' story becomes Simon’s story as well. We are all connected with one another. Globalization can be both a burden and a relief, a freedom and a limit. Jesus and Simon are both victims and helpers. Good and evil play out as their lives are connected.
6. Jesus falls the second time
The burden that crushes Jesus is unfair - as are the economic and political inequalities of our day - wages, resources, schools, rights, beauty, power, savings, and taxes. Our systems are not always fair.
7. Veronica wipes the faces of Jesus
This ‘small’ act of charity is a wonderful action of great compassion. It seems to be all that Veronica can do at the moment. The injustice remains. She cannot stop the suffering and death of Jesus. The compassion of Veronica reminds us to do more, to work for social change, for an end to injustice, and for a new way of living together.
8. Jesus comforts the women of Jerusalem
Women seem to bear the burdens of the world in a special way. Women feel deeply the pain and injustice of our systems. The experience of women throughout the ages calls us to end the injustice. It calls us to a new heaven and a new earth, to a new way of being sisters and brothers.
9. Jesus falls the third time
The burden that crushes Jesus is like the burden of materialism. Every time the world worships things before people, power before justice, and consumption before the spirit, we lose what it means to be human and alive.
10. Jesus is stripped of his garments
This radical loss of everything continues to be felt in the lives of all the poor - those without enough food, clothing, shelter, education, employment, respect, dignity, human rights, and community.
11. Jesus is nailed to the cross
Jesus is a person of active nonviolence, yet here he comes to know violence against his person - the same violence that is seen in all our wars and preparation for war, in all the violence on our streets and in our homes, in the hurt inflicted on people in all our weapons of mass destruction, in ethnic cleansing, in genocide, in all the countless examples of violence.
12. Jesus dies on the cross
Power and control seem to be dominating values in our world, yet Jesus seems to lose all of these things that the world considers important. Yet at the same time, in Jesus nailed to a cross, we see a person of great freedom, compassionate love and a special awesome power - the power of the suffering God crying out for justice.
13. Jesus is taken down from the cross
Jesus is radically stripped of everything. He is a human person whose rights and dignity and been taken away. In Jesus, we see all the women and men of our world who still seek their basic human rights - rights to the basics like food, water, clothing, shelter, education, political freedom, development and justice.
14. Jesus is placed in the tomb
Jesus is carefully placed into the earth - an earth that is the divine creation - a planet that we so often abuse as we waste resources, seek profit and convenience before all else, and consume without awareness.
Further Resources
Stations of the Cross – a selection for Good Friday March 25, 2016
View: Justice Stations of the Cross of Jesus Christ
http://www.uiw.edu/mission/documents/stationsslideshow.pdf
View: The Way of the Cross of a Migrant http://cjd.org/1997/04/01/the-way-of-the-cross-of-a-migrant/
View: Peace Stations of the Cross https://educationforjustice.org/pdfs/ej/peacestations.pdf
View: Migrant Workers Journey with the Lord Stations of the Cross
Stations of the Cross by Adolfo Perez Esquivel
View Esquvel's images in anAcrobat file (2MB .pdf)
... or download as an editable Powerpoint presentation with liturgies (5MB .ppt)
Prayer [Credo]
God, I believe that you can do new things. Help my unbelief!
I believe that you can help us to make a way in the desert. Help my unbelief.
I believe that you want to create rivers through the wasteland. Help my unbelief.
I believe that we are not stuck to just repeat the evils of the past. Help my unbelief.
I believe that I can do things that I was not able to do before. Help my unbelief.
I believe that I might be able to forgive my enemy. Help my unbelief.
I believe that peace among nations is possible. Help my unbelief.
I believe that we can overcome the ways of violence. Help my unbelief.
I believe that we can eliminate hunger and poverty. Help my unbelief
I believe that we can overcome racism. Help my unbelief.
I believe that we can create homes for everyone. Help my unbelief.
I believe that we can finally drop the stones of condemnation. Help my unbelief.
I believe that we will have a new heaven and a new earth. Help my unbelief.
God, I believe that together we can do new things. Help my unbelief! Amen.
Source: Unknown
Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty.
Howard Zinn
The absolute desire of 'having more' encourages the selfishness that destroys communal bonds among the children of God. It does so because the idolatry of riches prevents the majority from sharing the goods that the Creator has made for all, and in the all-possessing minority it produces an exaggerated pleasure in these goods.
Archbishop Oscar Romero
When the rich take from the poor, it's called an economic plan. When the poor take from the rich, it's called class warfare. It must be wonderful for President Bush to deplore class warfare while making sure his class wins.
William Sloane Coffin, Credo [collection of excerpts from speeches and sermons]
Bright Sadness is the true message and gift of Lent: ... the sadness of my exile, of the waste I have made of my life; the brightness of God's presence and forgiveness, the joy of the recovered desire for God, the peace of the recovered home. Such is the climate of Lenten worship; such is its first and general impact on my soul.
Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent
What God requires of those who call on God's name is responsive servanthood. God wishes to act in and through us, so Christian hope does not relieve men and women of responsibility. We are not primarily responsible for shrewd analysis of problems, for strategic selection of means, for maximizing the chances of success. We are primarily responsible for turning to God, for attempting to know and do God's will. That well may lead us into actions which are not shrewd, strategic, or successful, as the life of Jesus suggests. But as Jesus' life demonstrates, human action which is faithful to God's will can have transforming effect.
Parker Palmer, The Company of Strangers
Who Would Jesus Bomb?
David Rovics
I've seen you in the markets
I've seen you in the streets
And at your political convention
Talking of your crusade
Talking of your nation
And other things too terrible to mention
And you proclaim your Christianity
You proclaim your love of God
You talk of apple pie and mom
Well I've just got one question
And I want an answer
Tell me, who would Jesus bomb?
Maybe Jesus would bomb the Syrians
'Cause they're not Jews like him
Maybe Jesus would bomb the Afghans
On some kind of vengeful whim
Maybe Jesus would drive an M1 tank
And he would shoot Saddam
Tell me, who would Jesus bomb?
I've seen you on the TV
And on the battleships
I've seen you in the house upon the hill
And I've heard you talking
About making the world safer
And about all the men you have to kill
And you speak so glibly
About your civilization
And how you have the moral higher ground
While halfway around the world
Your explosives smash the buildings
Ah, if you could only hear the sound
But maybe Jesus would sell land mines
And turn on his electric chair
Maybe Jesus would show no compassion
For his enemies in the lands way over there
Maybe Jesus would have flown the planes
That killed the kids in Viet Nam
Tell me, who would Jesus bomb
Yes I hear you shout with confidence
As you praise the lord
And you talk about this God you know so well
And you talk of Armageddon
And your final victory
When all the evil forces go to hell
Well you'd best hope you've chosen wisely
On the right side of the lord
And when you die your conscience it is clear
You'd best hope that your atom bombs
Are better than the sword
At the time when your reckoning is here
'Cause I don't think Jesus would send gunships into Bethlehem
Or jets to raze the towns of Timorese
I don't think Jesus would lend money to dictators
Or drive those SUV's
And I don't think Jesus would ever have dropped
A single ounce of napalm
So tell me, who would Jesus bomb?
Created July 2003
Copyright David Rovics 2003, all rights reserved
This I Dare Believe
This is God’s world, and it is not aimless.
Time has a purpose and God is its steward.
Loving God, I believe, scatter my unbelief.
It is not possible that greed and injustice are forever.
It is not possible that the meek will stay dispossessed.
It is not possible that peacemakers must inevitably fail.
It is not possible that nations will always make war.
It is not possible that the merciful will be always be scorned.
It is not possible that forgiveness will at last dry up.
It is not possible that the weak are doomed to be down trodden.
It is not possible that the hungry will always go unsatisfied.
It is not possible that sincere hearts will always be exploited.
It is not possible that laughter shall finally be stilled.
It is not possible that fear will always outwit love.
It is not possible that the cynics will always be right.
It is not possible that goodness will have flowered in vain.
It is not possible that death will render all things futile.
It is not possible that Jesus will ever be forgotten.
It is not possible that faith will die out on earth.
Christ holds God’s secret in open, wounded hands,
Christ is our future and all will be redeemed.
Loving God I believe, scatter my unbelief.
Peace Which the World Cannot Give
O God,
you love justice and you establish peace on earth.
We bring before you the disunity of today’s world:
the absurd violence, and the many wars,
which are breaking the courage of the peoples of the world;
human greed and injustice,
which breed hatred and strife.
Send your spirit and renew the face of the earth;
teach us to be compassionate towards the whole human family;
strengthen the will of all those
who fight for justice and for peace,
and give us that peace which the world cannot give.
Amen.
World Council of Churches
I once took a count of what sort of things Jesus thought important enough to confront people about in the gospel of Luke. Nine times Jesus confronted people for not showing love in their actions. Nine times he confronted folks for their greed and hoarding, which get in the way of single-minded service toward God and loving action toward the needy. Nine times Jesus confronted people for having divided loyalties, rather than serving God alone. Eight times he confronted people for showing by their actions that they did not recognize his authority. Eight times he confronted people who were seeking places of honor and reputation, and urged instead the way of servant-like humility.
Seven times he emphasized that the crucial question is whether we actually do what he teaches, versus the hypocrisy of claiming to be on the side of righteousness while not doing God's will. Seven times he called people explicitly to repent, to take the log out of our own eye, to stop being self-righteously critical of others and insisting on our own way, and instead to be more humble and loving toward him and toward others.
It is dramatically striking how Jesus' confrontations, and his pronouncing woe, all had to do with ethics. By contrast, he never confronted people about their doctrines. How far some of us have drifted from the way of Jesus!
Glen H. Stassen, Incarnating Ethics
The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from that business.
Eduardo Galeano
It is not scientific doubt, not atheism, not pantheism, not agnosticism, that in our day and in this land is likely to quench the light of the gospel. It is a proud, sensuous, selfish, luxurious, church-going, hollow-hearted prosperity.
Frederic D. Huntington, Forum magazine, 1890
Tears
Terry Moore
I have seen the tears in a single
mother’s eyes
She was crying at the politics that
prevented her from the good life
Or at least simply a life that was
half-way good
Her tears flooded the hood
Drenched the future
Washed away the positive hope
that was attempting to be born
She was eager but torn
Between trying to be politically
correct
And trying to protect
Her own dignity
Her own pride
Her own integrity
Her feelings inside
Finally
She illegally attempted to purse a
can of Similac
Looking over her shoulder as she
jammed it into her backpack
Because it would not fit into her
tiny ripped purse
What could be worse?
Only her getting caught
Stealing a can of Similac for her
baby that could have been bought
Only she gave into the politics and
lost her religion
Gave into a bad decision
And now her babies will suffer and
see
That their momma wanted to, but
couldn’t be
That mother who provided
everything
And we just continue to sing
Dance
Juggle
Run races
Open barbeque joints
Overlook tear covered faces
We just keep
Passing from hand to hand
funding opportunities
Focusing on spinning rims instead
of spending in our communities
I’ve seen the tears of a single
mother
Left to turn left instead of right by
a frustrated lover
Reaching into empty air
Crying rivers that fail to find folks
who care
And we dare to mention the
budget to sore ears
And we squeeze funds for our
highly regarded peers
But what about that single mother
She won’t be vacationing in Europe
or on the beaches of Jamaica or
Spain
It’s more than plain
Can’t we change?
Can’t we feed our single mothers?
So they can cope
Can’t we re-vote?
Or revoke?
Yes, I’ve seen the tears
And now my tears combined
Are rinsing away our chances
Cut the political dances
Let’s stand still for a moment
Because the last dance
Could be the last dance
That turns off the music
on our children’s lives!
Terry Moore is a spoken word artist living in Sacramento. A slam champion, he also works for the Center for Fathers and Families. www.terrymoore.info
It is important when all the instruments of government collapse, we go in the final hour, to the most important line of battle: the people themselves. The people of this nation, I think, and I know it, are awake, and are being more awakened every day. They are hearing, and sensing, the danger that sits on the horizon.
Harry Belafonte, International Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, January 20, 2006
It is well known that Christ consistently used the expression ‘follower.’ He never asks for admirers, worshippers, or adherents. No, he calls disciples. It is not adherents of a teaching but followers of a life Christ is looking for. His whole life on earth, from beginning to end, was destined solely to have followers and to make admirers impossible.
To want to admire instead of to follow Christ is not necessarily an invention by bad people. Admirers are only too willing to serve Christ as long as proper caution is exercised, lest one personally come in contact with danger.
Now suppose that there is no longer any special danger, as it no doubt is in so many of our Christian countries, bound up with publicly confessing Christ. The difference between following and admiring still remains. Does not the Way – Christ’s requirement to die to the world and deny the self – does this not contain enough danger?
The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in word he is inexhaustible about how highly he prizes Christ, he renounces nothing, will not reconstruct his life, and will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires. Not so for the follower. No, no. The follower aspires with all his strength to be what he admires. And because of the follower’s life, it will become evident who the admirers are, for the admirers will become agitated with him. Even these words will disturb many – but then they must likewise belong to the admirers.
Søren Kierkegaard, excerpts from Followers, Not Admirers from Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard
Reflections on the readings
We have palms and hold them up. Remember: Matthew's Gospel has blood spattered all over it. The hands that hold the palms will easily become fists. The child who escaped Herod falls victim to a new cadre of frightened leaders who use fear to control people and keep them afraid. Like so many people before and after him, Jesus dies at the hands of power but this time the bloodshed changes everything. Everything was changed by this death, and God's love is revealed in it. When it was all over, the world was a different place, and the world knew it. (The earth shook. Rocks split. Tombs groaned and fell open to the light) God [became] flesh and blood in order to bring love to life. God showed, 'You don't have to come to me where I am anymore. I will come all the way to you where you are, through my beloved son.’ God comes to find us where we are.
If we are waving our palms today it is not because all is well in our world; not because the suffering or wars, or civil strife, or abuse of power have ended. We cannot close our eyes to reality. There is just too much suffering: the good, the poor and vulnerable are not spared suffering. Jesus reminds us of that today. But, God has entered our ‘holy city’ - the places of defeat and pain and transformed them and contradicted our usual ways of dealing with the cross rather than with might – which Paul says, is foolishness according to the way the world sees things. Here violence is turned to nonviolence (active love). Like Good Friday, something different happens today. We must take part as actors or participants in the drama. There can be no spectators. We cannot look away from Christ’s continuing passion and wounds in the world.
Radical evil got its inning and took its solid turn. We continue to face critical tests of principle. How often must we say never again? So often the world looks away. We say these evils and violence must never happen again – but it does. ‘If the people are silent, the stones will shout out.’ Something powerful happened as Jesus entered Jerusalem. His entry from the East indicated that a new day was at hand.
Old ways of thinking are to be put aside. Might is not right. Power does not liberate. Death is not the end of life. Success is not measure of human worth. Violence does not resolve conflict. God is not indifferent to human plight; human suffering has not fallen on deaf ears. Palm Sunday Rally and March. God hears our cry for help. The entry into the holy city makes every place of suffering holy ground.
So the question arises amidst struggle and tension: ‘who will cry out?’ Jesus knows that 'if the people do not speak up, the stones will cry out.' Today, we remember all who speak out for the voiceless. We remember those beaten and mocked for being faithful and speaking God’s liberating word. We remember those who like Jesus say there must be another way. We have seen in recent times Middle Eastern and North African dictators toppled, as people, longing for freedom, protested and pressured their rulers to make way for democracy. This pattern has been played out many times in the history of human power struggles. This is what the human system of dominance looks like. In Jesus’ time such images of power and control were rather commonplace. Crosses dotted the countryside as a fierce and decisive response t0 and attempts to question or challenge the dominance of the Roman Empire. The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in response to the zealot uprisings in the 60s AD is a reminder of this pattern.
This power over others occurs not only in the political arena, but in business, were competitors are treated as ‘enemies’ and can be mercilessly driven out of business in order to reach the top of the heap. The language of war is often used in sport where opponents will inflict serious injury on one another because the glory of winning is everything, and the losers must be humiliated. And it occurs in religion. Human history has witnessed the same violence, dominance and power struggles between different religious groups and sometimes even within a single religion.
Jesus rides into a setting where there are power struggles, violence and dominance. Jesus began by preaching the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ (manifesto of ‘the Kingdom of Heaven’). Here violence and dominance are absent. The God who invites all people into God’s reign welcomes not so much the powerful, the victorious or the dominant but the grieving, the poor, the meek, the peace-makers, the persecuted – the ones the world might shun as ‘losers’. The heart of Jesus’ message was that the human system is not working. An alternative is needed where equality, compassion, sacrifice and mutual service operate. Where power is not grasped and asserted over others, but is given away and shared. Jesus has stopped talking. He shows us what he means when he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. He reveals the destructive horror of the powers by submitting to their evil machinations, and hanging on their cross. He shows up the emptiness, the poverty, the hidden vulnerability of all dictators by choosing a different way, a way of love and grace and peace that those who cling to power cannot understand and try to stamp out. He comes not to humiliate but to forgive them and invite them into a different way of being.
Many will fail to hear the message. They will see his quest as a failure. They will be so addicted to their power that they will be unable to decipher the creative, gracious alternative he offers. He gives up everything, so that, for those who have ears to hear, an alternative pattern can begin to emerge in the midst of the noise of power and violence.
So today, we stand between the Pharisees (the keepers of the system) and Jesus - God's word; between the stability of the past and the painful beginning of something new. Some will drop out and avoid the tough questions and conversations. YET, others shout and keep telling the story, even to those who refuse to listen as people continue to do with climate change and the plight of asylum seekers. The peace movement was made to feel like a donkey since the invasion of Iraq. But, we know who the donkeys [apologies] are now [US, UK, Australia].
Around the world – today and in past weeks – people have heard the call again to stand against concentrated, oppressive and abusive power. We are called to join them in our following of the ‘suffering One’ with the liberating power that brings peace, justice and harmony to all of creation. This Holy Week is a time to enter the sacrament of suffering, and to read from the present world around us the meaninglessness of violence. And it is not just violence from below, but from above: boardrooms, sweatshops, political leaders.
Jesus asks to be on guard – to be on guard against the violence in our hearts, our lives and our communities. Today we begin to face the great mystery of evil and to stand against it – otherwise we approach with a kiss… and Jesus is betrayed once again. How do we show betrayal? Do we not do that when Christians take up the sword, bless nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, when nuclear weapons are called ‘Peacemaker’, when working for companies that make weapons and fail to raise our voices when our taxes underwrite war and mayhem; and stealing oil and other resources. Jesus says simply to all of us, ‘No more of this!’ But let us not forget the betrayal of people who share our pews or rub shoulders with us. They are grieving at lost, rejection, abuse and vilification and need to be listened to and responded to with compassion.
Many would rather look away from suffering and violence. The sword is still prominent and church leaders continue to bless it. The rooster crows: Wake Up! Martin Luther King once said that the choice is not between violence or non-violence but between violence and non-existence. Jesus journey to Jerusalem indicates where he would be! Who he sits with.
He could have stayed away and preached from a safe distance. But his entry challenges our accommodation to all kinds of power-‘modern Jerusalems,’- misplaced respect for powerful government; religious status; middle class values; physical and intellectual achievement; economic success, etc. As Jesus enters Jerusalem he challenges us to confront our Jerusalems today-where we bow to power, make concessions and avoid the challenges our belief in the gospel require us to face?
He submits, doesn't fight, or hide or try to outwit the powers. He chooses to be there, in Jerusalem, exposed to all the forces against him. It looked like a loser; God seemed to have gambled and lost. But Jesus' submission really was a confrontation with evil: he did not run away, his suffering was God's way of working through him. Through Jesus' loss, we are all winners.
We know from the gospel only a few women remained to bury their friend. The implication was that they were not even worth arresting. They represented the powerless and homeless. It was not long before the church recovered and put men back in charge, but it was women who were there at the cross, at the tomb, present at the foundation, and who lived to tell the story as apostles to the apostles, and passed it on.
It is still the powerless that Jesus is closest to – the converted enemy, the turncoat imperial soldier who proclaims Jesus’ innocence. And it is the he who constantly proclaims our faith across the centuries, over the Golgothas of world history saying: ‘Truly’ all of us aliens, women, marginalised and turncoats come to declare, ‘Truly, this was God’s son.’
Each of us must join Jesus and go ‘up to Jerusalem.’ Like Jesus, our personal Jerusalem may be a place where we seem to be losers: where our faith values are disregarded or trashed; where we face daily encounters with forces that oppose our best efforts; where political structures defeat the disenfranchised; where the world of high tech and privileged education broaden the gap between the haves and the have-nots. We are called to be present to our own experience of Jerusalem and there we are invited to take up the cross and risk what previously we have cherished and clung to. But first, before we straighten our shoulders and prepare for the struggle we must let Jesus go ahead of us. We follow him into the city this week; watch how he surrenders to God's ways and identify with his loss. But, through his death and resurrection we also experience new life. NOTES ON JUST WAR THEORY -EVER JUST AND FOR WHOM?
Notes On Just War Theory – ever just or just for whom?
Fr Claude Mostowik msc Convenor, Pax Christi Australia NSW Photo taken by Fr Shenouda, General Secretary of NSW Ecumenical Council.
War is obsolete. We are not here to fight something or tear something down; We are here to be the example of what is possible. Any sane individual will tell you that violence is … not the way…Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation:
So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other [people] and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are war makers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed – but hate these things in yourself, not in another.
Last Thursday evening the Marrickville Peace Group hosted the film We Are Many. One person who featured a lot was Jeremy Corbyn as he opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In 2015 he caused controversy, as Labour Leader, by his opposition to the bombing of Syria and the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent. Despite asserting support for the use of military forces under certain conditions he was labeled a ‘pacifist’ by critics within the government, the media and his own party. The label was used as a term of shame and insult and that he was about holding up a white flag to any enemies. I mention this at the outset because of the low regard that pacifism (nonviolence) is held in our culture: it is seen as naïve, unrealistic, dangerous, immoral, etc.
Objections found in the media, in academia, political discourse, conversations with friends and relatives and people in the street include:
- Unsuitable for politics and society because it rejects any and all force and violence. There are in face many kinds of pacifism or nonviolence.
- Form of passivity which means do nothing in the face of violent attack. This argument also suggests that it is dangerous because it signals weakness in the face of, and encourages, aggression. Further, it is considered immoral because it is unwilling to protect vulnerable people for the sake of a principle. In fact, people such as Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, John Dear shows us that pacifism and nonviolence is rooted in a vigorous practical opposition to violence as well strategizing for a nonviolence form of politics. Violence must be resisted but not violently. The argument about weakness encouraging aggression is difficult to evaluated because it has not been tried by too many states, but we have the example of Cost Rica. It is immortal to protect some people by killing others which create the conditions for further acts of violence.
- There is the individual attacker argument where a violent personal attack occurs the pacifist is immoral for doing nothing to protect one’s loved ones. This argument fails to understand that unlike a contained incident between a small group of people, the use of military force is a form of organised violence which requires extensive force, a supporting economic base, the construction of a violence-supporting culture (including the cultivation of enmity sufficient for the mass killing of other human beings), and in practice, the organised and deliberate killing by and of people who have no direct involvement in the dispute itself.
- That it is ineffective when faced with overwhelming force used by an unprincipled foe. It is argued that nonviolence only worked in the past because it was employed against democracies, the experience of Hitler and the Nazis proves that nonviolence is naïve and unrealistic and so military force is the only option to stop threats. In fact, the objection that it will not work, nonviolent action does work and has a history to document the claim. Robert Holmes, the ethical philosopher says, ‘we simply do not know whether there is a viable practical alternative to violence, and willnot and cannot know unless we are willing to make an effort, comparable to the multibillion-dollar-a-year effort currently made to produce means of destruction and train young people in their use, to explore the potential of nonviolence action.’
- That pacifism is naïve and unrealistic about human nature and the nature of evil. If we look at the record of military violence: total failure of over 15 years in the war on terror since 911 with the loss of 1.5 million people, millions of refugees, use of torture on a wide scale, terrorist attacks that are increasing and new terrorist groups being formed; since 1945 over 300 wars with 3-4- million dead; ‘the war system’ resulting in over 100 million dead, 10s of millions displaced, scarce resources spent on the military, spread of nuclear weapons……with little or no increase in security, peace, stability or democracy.
The Just War Theory goes back about 1600 years. It has not been restricted to the Catholic Church but was used, abused, by other churches and political institutions. Any talk about the Just War tradition cannot be isolation from the emerging thought and action towards Just Peace – as a way of relating to ourselves, one another, Mother Earth and our God. In 2012, the World Council of Churches published a superb document The Just Peace Companion which was meant to be used alongside another called An Ecumenical Call to Just Peace which at one point says, ‘To care for God’s precious gift of creation and to strive for ecological justice are key principles of just peace. For Christians they are also an expression of the gospel’s call to repent from wasteful use of natural resources and be converted daily. Churches and their members must be cautious with earth’s resources, especially with water. We must protect the populations most vulnerable to climate change and help to secure their rights.’ (p 12). The Just Peace Companion provided extensive direction on implementation of just peace theology and practice by comprehensively reviewing scripture, ethics, values, practices, curricula, human stories, and prayer, to embody just peace within the Christian tradition and within the reality of our world.
Pope Francis has stressed that ‘faith and violence are incompatible.’ In 2014, when addressing Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas, said, ‘Peacemaking calls for courage, much more so than warfare. It calls for the courage to say yes to encounter and no to conflict; yes to dialogue and no to violence; yes to negotiations and no to hostilities.’ In 2015, he said, ‘It is not enough to talk about peace, peace must be made. To speak about peace without making it is contradictory, and those who speak about peace while promoting war, for example through the sale of weapons, are hypocrites. It is very simple.’ Pope Paul Vl’s ‘no peace without justice’ was extended by Pope John Paul II to ‘no peace without justice and no justice without forgiveness’ (2002). Pope Francis has turned our attention to Jesus’ focus on mercy being at the heart of ‘shalom’ and the alternative to violence. He calls war the ‘suicide of humanity’. We have to decide what God we believe in, the Dieu des armées (God of armies) or Dieu désarmé (unarmed God). But: the legitimation of war in Catholic social teaching remains when Jesus’ mission was active nonviolence seen in his engagement viagra with friends and enemies. Modelling ‘just peace’, in care for the outcast whether a sinner or a person in need of healing, love and forgiveness towards the enemies, welcoming of the stranger, as well as challenging domination by religious, political, economic, and military powers, he centred ‘shalom’ on embodying mercy and compassion. Focusing on healing and reconciliation, even with enemies, we see that we are directed towards restorative justice, i.e. focus on the wounds to relationships and how to heal.
Conditions for a just war?
The conditions of a Just War are: it must be fought by a legal recognised authority, e.g., a government; the cause of the war must be just; the war must be fought with the intention to establish good or correct evil; there must be a reasonable chance of success.
Rome Conference Catholic Initiative on Peace and Nonviolence
In April 2016, a ground-breaking and unprecedented gathering occurred co-hosted by Pax Christi International the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. At the time of the conference, Jose Henriquez said: ‘We need to go back to the sources of our faith and rediscover the nonviolence which is at the heart of the Gospel.’ A ‘just peace’ offers a vision and praxis where peace is built up as well the prevention, or defusing, and healing the damage of violence. It calls for a commitment to human dignity and thriving relationships. The goal of nonviolent resistance to injustice is to awaken humanity in every person. The conference said that it is by practicing love and not dehumanising the other that the transforming power of love and action becomes effective. The end of nonviolent resistance is reconciliation with those who have been the oppressor. Love overwhelms hate, making possible the creation of a community that would otherwise be impossible. It is not about passivity but a creative, active nonviolent resistance. The Sermon on the Mount suggests numerous responses to abuse and domination. The invitation is to be creative. All in all, Jesus is presenting an alternative way which is neither flight, flight nor accommodation. It is a form of resistance without being contaminated by the violence that one is resisting. The call is to act against domination by using our imaginations, courage and strength.
In Rome, senior Church people and NGOs (Pax Christi International and others) engaged in open conversation, not only about war but about the presence of an alternative – reflected in the appeal the participants issued for the Vatican to ‘re-commit to the centrality of gospel nonviolence.’ Cardinal Peter Turkson relayed a very supportive and enthusiastic message from Pope Francis, who said, ‘your thoughts on revitalizing the tools of nonviolence, and of active nonviolence in particular, will be a much needed and positive contribution’. Pope Francis’ letter echoed but went further than the messages of his predecessors. He wanted to activate the church of the poor, the church of the people. ‘Humanity needs to refurbish all the best available tools to help the men and women of today to fulfil their aspirations for justice and peace……..‘Accordingly, your thoughts on revitalizing the tools of nonviolence, and of active nonviolence in particular, will be a needed and positive contribution.’ The church needs a viable alternative to war… not preaching peace by righteous hand wringing. He noted that ‘It would be dangerous to identify the gospel message with this or that political program… (because)… The Christian contribution to peace must take a different path’ which lay in recommitting to the centrality of gospel nonviolence and developing practices of Catholic nonviolence and just peace. Cardinal Turkson said that maintaining the just war theory has often obstructed our attention, imagination and will to commit to nonviolent practices. Rarely do Catholic leaders speak about or promote nonviolent resistance (especially boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience, etc.) to injustice and violence; they mount little resistance to enormous military spending; little is heard from them about the need to humanise or illuminate the dignity of our enemies, whether it be ISIS or any other group.
The conference did not intend to invent something new. It was about a return to the sources – to the experience of the early church. The final statement ‘An appeal to the Catholic Church to re-commit to the centrality of Gospel nonviolence’ called for the Catholic Church to commit in doctrine and practice to the central importance of «the Gospel of non-violence ». It was o not content to add a paragraph on non-violence within the doctrine of just war, but called into question a doctrine that has been used to condone war rather than to prevent or restrain it. We called on all ‘not to promote theories of just war’, but to ‘promote non-violent practices and strategies’.
Mairead Maguire, 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner, said, ‘If we haven’t taught the church’s way of nonviolence, then we only leave people with two options: fight or flight.’ The just war tradition taught how to fight. The ‘pacifist’ tradition, when constrained to a point of individual conscience, often resulted in flight. She did not mention another option: that of accommodation. Jesus showed us a fourth alternative: the reign of God where we work to build an inclusive community, which includes so-called enemies, by using the power of nonviolent loving, willing-to-risk-suffering action. Instead of a narrow exclusion he called for the practice of arms-wide-open- inclusion. Just War theory does not work. Very recently again, Cardinal Turkson said that you cannot stop war with war. Just war criteria assume that a strategically applied use of violence under the right conditions will end violence, creating the possibility of peace. This approach does not work given the weapons of mass destructions available, particularly from the perspective of those on the receiving end of the of the one remaining superpower actions. Sr Matty said at the conference, ‘You [Americans] ask, can we talk to terrorists, can we talk to ISIS in Iraq? The answer is yes!……. our destiny as Christians in Iraq is not controlled by ISIS. It is controlled by the United States. ISIS in Iraq is a bunch of desperately hungry people who will kill for some bread. But if the rich people in the U.S., in Russia, in Europe stop arming them, then we will have life. We will live. Otherwise, we will die. If the rich want us to stay alive—as Christians in Iraq—then we will live. If the rich want us to die, then we will die.’
I wondered how many people heard about the Vatican conference that took place in April (2015). Unfortunately, it was largely ignored except by some selected news services. There was no mention of it on the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference website. But it was exhilarating and inspiring to be with 85 people from 35 countries and many active in peace work and human rights who were determined to move our Church forward in its understanding of and commitment to nonviolence and away from the doctrine of Just War. They came from Africa (South Africa, South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya), Asia (Afghanistan, Philippines), Europe (Croatia, Italy), the Middle East (Palestine, Iraq), Australia and the Americas (USA, Colombia, Mexico) with their broad spectrum of peace-building and active nonviolence experiences. They shared their experiences, analysis and effective actions/strategies. I will make mention of some of these later. In my view, these people are the experts on our subject today. They make daily choices to live non-violently in violent situations. They have paid the price in so many ways. One from Iraq said that we can dialogue with ISIS. A Colombian priest declared that there is always scope for dialogue. A Ugandan bishop elaborated on how interreligious leaders had negotiated with the Lord’s Resistance Army. Mairead Corrigan Maguire, spoke about Northern Ireland, and Katerina Kruhonja from Croatia and others shared how they were ‘catapulted by violence’ into finding a faith-based response. US Foreign Policy specialist Maria Stephan, has shown that nonviolence was twice as effective as violence in the 323 conflict situations she analysed, and greater likelihood of producing a sustainable democratic society. Sr Matty and others are the experts that we need to listen to. She proclaimed ‘Just war is killing us! There is no just war’ – a proclamation that fell on very receptive ears. That was the aim of the conference: to listen carefully to what people in those conflict and violent situations have to say about the place of nonviolence in our church teaching. The message was clear. Just war theory is not working. What is needed from the church is leadership on strategic nonviolence and training in conflict resolution; study of the principles of active peacemaking; support for unarmed civilian protection teams; public stands against violence by bishops and priests; preaching on gospel nonviolence; and standing shoulder to shoulder with people in the streets. Together we wrestled with how we could ‘recommit to the centrality of gospel nonviolence.’ As Sister Matty witnessed members of her religious community die for lack of medical care during war, she asked ‘Which of the wars we have been in is a just war?….. ‘In my country, there was no just war. War is the mother of ignorance, isolation, and poverty. Please tell the world there is no such thing as a just war. I say this as a daughter of war.’ (Rose Marie Berger)
Not all present were of the same mind. Some, at the conference, defended the just war theory who tended to be academics and diplomats from the United States and Western Europe, maintaining that just war criteria are useful for restraining excessive use of military force by a state. But, as I mentioned already, those who came conflict zones brought a different perspective. Their message was clear: Just war theory is not working. Nevertheless, the conference was a clear summons to the church to live walk in the path of Jesus’ nonviolence and turn to just peace. It was a call to take steps to reaffirm:
- the centrality of active nonviolence to the life of the Church,
- to prophetically proclaim another way,
- to commit to the long-term vocation of healing and reconciling both people and the planet – according to the vision and message of Jesus.
Outcome: An Appeal to the Catholic Church to re-commit to the centrality of Gospel Nonviolence https://nonviolencejustpeace.net/final-statement-an-appeal-to-the-catholic-church-to-re-commit-to-the-centrality-of-gospel-nonviolence/.
The ‘just peace’ approach is not pacifism but a challenge to become a peaceful and just people/community that includes compassion, mercy, solidarity, reconciliation. Just war has been ineffective in limiting or preventing war, and more often used to ‘justify’ war by religious (George Pell and Tom Frame), political and military decision-makers (Iraq, being one example). ‘Just war’ cannot cultivate the kinds of people that imagine and engage the broad-range of effective nonviolent peacemaking practices. We have ended up with a culture that often glorifies violent actors with terrible consequences on the victims who are usually poor, weak, and vulnerable. We just have to look at one condition of a ‘just war’ that ‘The probability of success would have to be greater than the damage caused. The violence committed within the conflict must be proportional to the damage inflicted, and civilian populations should as much as possible be distinguished from military aggressors’ how this has not been achieved. Technology alone makes it impossible. In fact, the more technological the more barbaric with even less recognition that those being attacked are fellow human beings. (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria).
A Third World War in Instalments
Pope Francis in his World Day of Peace Message Non-Violence: A Style of Politics for Peace has clearly taken note of the conference message and will probably move towards that encyclical we called for. Francis often speaks of the proliferation of hotbeds of violence in terms of ‘A Third World War in Pieces’ or ‘World War III—but in instalments’ which produces serious negative social consequences. The church stands at a watershed: Will it reject the necessity or justification of armed force? Will it counsel the state against the use of violence? Will it promote active, effective alternatives to armed force? Will it confront the evil so clearly at work in the world?
The media is filled with the deafening clamour of war echoes but we do not always consider them as such.
Do we not call it war?
- when unruly police assault and kill young people;
- when governments make war on the young as we saw in the recent Fair Work Commission report on Sunday and public holiday penalty rates;
- when young people are increasingly marginalised from training and the ability to secure work;
- when people of colour are harassed in our cities more than others because of their race and social background;
- when Indigenous people stand up for their rights and dissent discriminatory treatment and they are confronted by a system that does not listen (nuclear waste dumping in South Australia; McArthur River mine, destruction of traditional islands in Hawai’i, South Dakota pipe line; etc);
- the indigenous health gap is still as wide as ever and indigenous incarceration at proportions beyond their population;
- when Indigenous people are killed and ignored when white people killed by Indigenous people is called murder;
- when women, Muslims and gay people are vilified or branded as trouble-makers;
- when people with disabilities do not have full access to services and venues, railway stations, use of public transport; even churches;
- when chainsaws clear forests or assault sacred lands for mining, etc.;
- when mountains lose their tops because of the minerals beneath them;
- when animals are abused in chicken pens, pig pens, forests, jungles and oceans;
- Daniel Quinn (American writer) has written that ‘We’re not destroying the world because we’re clumsy. We’re destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it.’ The dominant culture – the mode of social and political organisation we call civilisation – is killing our planet. Those in power would tell that the status quo is natural, inevitable, even good for society. They imply by their action or inaction that everything is fine. Mass poverty is not a problem. Climate change is not an emergency. Those who warn of dangers and problems are just ‘fear mongering’.
We can only hope that the just war theory which lost credibility, relevance and justness will actually ultimately vaporize. We need to take serious account of the unconscionable collateral damage which traditional considerations of just war theory have shielded if not deflected from public view for way too long. It seems shameful that it has taken so long for the very serious limitations of the ‘tradition’ of just war theory itself were not noticed and named, or reacted against.
‘Just war’ has been interpreted as a male centred ‘ethical’ understanding. Little wonder it has taken so long for the deficit of women’s voices, women’s critique, and women’s opposition to the spurious claims of just war. There are undeclared ongoing wars on so many fronts intentionally pitched against the humanity of women. And then of course there are all those undeclared wars against the humanity of indigenous peoples, still ongoing, readily fueled by blatant greed, racism, imperialism. Indigenous peoples have had their communities ravaged as young men eager for life chances like no others on offer, are seduced by the military myths around patriotism…..myths so dishonestly crafted and cleverly deployed so as to secure unflinching loyalty.
We need ask who is absent from the table and the public discourse and why. These absent people are omnipresent but only as unnamed, unnoticed, unmentioned as fatalities of war; there will be no impressive memorials erected for them, no eulogies, no flags at half mast, no public holidays declared. There are all those who have been and still are being brutalised, oppressed, displaced, maimed, murdered, made mad by many unjust ‘wars’ exacted upon them. There are those millions of people never named, never humanely regarded as victims, casualties, collateral damage, targets of equally unspeakably cruel acts of war, whether primarily psychologically, spiritually, economically, politically or militarily sanctioned.
There is the utterly amoral delusion where we might passively and ignorantly categorise only very specific acts of militarily supported aggression as war, and not those equally heinous politically, racially, religiously acts of inspired death dealing violence against powerless human communities. We need to draw public attention to ongoing injustice especially that which is so often ‘hidden in plain sight’ but never actually seen.
All of the public narrative pertaining to the just war tradition has been deafeningly silent on the extraordinarily brutal ‘wars’ waged and still being waged against those whose particular his and her stories are constantly being denied their proper legitimacy, are deftly and often brutally denied any media mention or worse are utterly misrepresented. There is the stark unconscionable gender and racial imbalance among the world’s political and economic leaders remains as an ominous portend of things yet to come.
Catherine of Siena: ‘Speak the truth in a million voices. It is silence that kills’. Her words are haunting words as we notice how much silence there is, and how it is growing. Sr Jeannine Gramick, a woman who has for decades worked with LGBTI people and suffered for it in the church, recently wrote about the violence of silence. ‘One kind of violence not often recognized is the violence of silence.’ Speaking of the Orlando massacre, she said some in the church were guilty of this kind of violence. The world headlines said that the shooting occurred in a gay club, but Church statements conspicuously passed over any references to the fact that it was lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender that were targeted. Some church leaders issued no statement at all. ‘Silence is violence when, as in this instance, it denies the existence of a whole category of people, people who have been targeted with physical violence because of who they are. If I don’t acknowledge your existence, I do not need to recognize your rights; I do not see that you need added protections. Furthermore, I am unable to know you or to relate to you in a meaningful way.’ The violence of silence kills. (Jeannine Gramick)
Some 230 million people died in war and conflict in the 20th century. And war is hardly a thing of the past but an ever present reality for many countries and peoples. Between 1986 and 2015 United States has been at war in 28 out of the 30 years somewhere in the world, and every year between 1914 and 2014. Worldwide military expenditure continues to increase and the pursuit of peace remains remain a pressing issue for public engagement. Though war did not stand still over the last 1700 years, tremendous increase in brutality and dehumanisation with the incredible weaponry that continues to be invented to kill more people, more ‘efficiently;’ and the metamorphosis of war-fighting from battlefields to closely-packed villages and cities where civilian casualties have increased to 80% or more after World War l. And there have been the deliberate suppression of humane sensibilities among the military which began with US forces when during the Korean War they realized that very few (15%) soldiers actually used their weapons in combat. Within the panoply of wars, nuclear war has a very special place. It is quite remarkable indeed that, whereas the doctrine of the just war has served and can serve still to justify many wars, it can only be used to condemn nuclear war.
The Afghan Youth Volunteers for Peace say ‘talk of peace must walk. It promotes social positive consequences and allows the achievement of real progress, and non-violence can acquire a more comprehensive and new meaning as a realistic political method that gives rise to hope. If this political method flows from the rights and the equal dignity of every person which need to be safeguarded without any discrimination and distinction, then non-violence, understood as a political method, can constitute a realistic way to overcome armed conflicts. A book I read last year by Yasmine Sherif called The Case for Humanity talks about the will to power versus the will to humanity. A political approach recognises the force of right over the right of force. Dispute settlement may be reached through negotiation without degenerating into armed conflict. Within such a perspective the culture and identity of peoples are respected and it overcomes the view that some are morally superior to others. It means that no nation can remain indifferent to the tragedies of another. It means a recognition of the primacy of diplomacy over the noise of arms. Arms trade is so widespread that it is generally underestimated. Illegal arms trafficking supports not a few world’s conflicts. Non-violence as a political style can and must do much to stem this scourge.
I have promoted here that the alternative to the Just War doctrine is that of Just Peace. Without it, peace is not possible. This is the peace that Pope Francis outlines in Laudato Si’. This is the way of gospel nonviolence. It cultivates justice and peace in ourselves, our relationships, our social and political structures, and our culture, whilst also resisting injustice and violence in this areas. To do this it is necessary to recognise and acknowledge suffering, violence and harm rather than blame and punishment them. This is restorative justice.
Buckminster Fuller (Richard Buckminster ‘Bucky’ Fuller, American architect, systems theorist, author, designer and inventor. 1895-1983):
LITURGY NOTES FOR THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT
LITURGY NOTES FOR THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT
Fifth Sunday of Lent
April 2, 2017
Suggested formula for recognition of Indigenous people and their land
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we stand
We pay our respects to them for their care of the land
May we walk gently and respectfully upon the land.
or
I acknowledge the living culture of the ……..people,
the traditional custodians of the land we stand on,
and pay tribute to the unique role they play in the life of this region.
or
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land where we are now gathered,
(the ……) and recognise that it continues to be sacred to them.
We hail them: as guardians of the earth and of all things that grow and breed in the soil; as trustees of the waters – [the seas, the streams and rivers, the ponds and the lakes] - and the rich variety of life in those waters.
We thank them for passing this heritage to every people since the Dreamtime.
We acknowledge the wrongs done to them by newcomers to this land and we seek to be partners with them in righting these wrongs and in living together in peace and harmony.
Reading I Ez 37:12-14
Reading II Rom 8:8-11
Responsorial Psalm Ps 130:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
Gospel Jn 11:1-45 or 11:3-7, 17, 20-27, 33b-45
Penitential Rite
- God of the living, Jesus, our resurrection and life, you forgive our timid and wavering hope that binds us. Jesus, have mercy.
- God of the living, through Jesus, you call us out of our graves and put your Spirit in us. Christ, have mercy.
- God of the living, through Jesus, you call humanity to freedom
from a world of death. Jesus, have mercy.
or
- Christ Jesus, you call us to new life: Jesus, have mercy.
- Christ Jesus, you call us to follow you with faith and trust: Christ, have mercy.
- Christ Jesus, you call us from the darkness into the light: Jesus, have mercy.
Opening Prayer
God of Life,
you showed your glory to humanity
by sending Jesus your Son
to confound the powers of death.
Call us forth from our tombs
Change our self-centredness into self-giving,
break the bonds which hold us,
so that we embrace the world you have given
by working to transform the darkness of pain
in the life and joy of Easter.
Prayer over the Gifts
God of Life,
as Jesus offers himself
through our sharing in his body and blood
may we too offer ourselves with him
to bear the burdens of our sisters and brothers
Prayer after Communion
God of Life,
Jesus reassures us
that he is the resurrection and the life
and that we have fullness of life
when we believe in him.
May his body and blood nourish
and make us grow day by day
that we may live his life to the full
through our commitment
to releasing people from their burdens.
General Intercessions
Introduction: Let us pray to the God of Life who calls us to freedom and new life. The response: You are our resurrection and life.
· From the tomb of self-sufficiency, may we admit our need for God and for one another, we pray: You are our resurrection and life.
· From the tomb of self-preoccupation, may our eyes be opened to the needs of others around us – especially the most vulnerable, we pray: You are our resurrection and life.
· From the tomb that results only in violence and conflict, may we work to be peace in our lives and seek it in our wider world, we pray: You are our resurrection and life.
· From the tombs of the dead in violence and conflict, we pray for the people of Libya, Ivory Coast, Bahrain and other places of the Middle East that are engulfed in violence, we pray: You are our resurrection and life.
· From the tomb of excessive busyness, may we take time to think, listen and to pray, we pray: You are our resurrection and life.
· From the tomb of self-imposed obligations, may we free ourselves from the unimportant, the fleeting and the material and allow ourselves to experience the essential, the eternal and the spiritual, we pray: You are our resurrection and life.
· From the tomb of apathy and ignorance, may we be awakened and sensitive to the plight of the poor and all that oppresses, we pray: You are our resurrection and life.
· From the tomb of melancholy and despair, may we recognise and appreciate the blessings of that come our way every day, we pray: You are our resurrection and life.
· From the tomb of hopelessness and scepticism, may we be free from the shackles of undue anxiety knowing that we belong to God, we pray: You are our resurrection and life.
· From the tomb of unfounded fears, may we be freed from all unnecessary concerns and find new courage and freedom, we pray: You are our resurrection and life.
· From the tomb of the darkness of violence, may peace come among the nations, within our families and communities, and within our, we pray: You are our resurrection and life.
· From the tomb of injustice, may a fair distribution of goods and opportunities come to people so that they can live lives to the full and have for their children’s, we pray: You are our resurrection and life.
Concluding Prayer:God of Life, hear the prayers of your people so that they can be liberated from the many tombs that bind them.
Prayer for World Peace Jane Goodall
(This prayer can easily be used as a form of prayers of the faithful. I have made the suggested breaks in the prayer if they are helpful)
We pray to the great Spiritual Power in which
we live and move and have our being.
We pray that we may at all times
keep our minds open to new ideas and shun dogma;
that we may grow in our understanding of the nature of all living beings
and our connectedness with the natural world;
that we may become ever more filled with
generosity of spirit and true compassion and love for all life;
that we may strive to heal the hurts that we have inflicted on nature
and control our greed for material things, knowing that
our actions are harming our natural world and the future of our children;
that we may value each and every human being
for who he is, for who she is,
reaching to the spirit that is within,
knowing the power of each individual to change the world.
We pray for social justice,
for the alleviation of the crippling poverty
that condemns millions of people around the world
to lives of misery - hungry, sick, and utterly without hope.
We pray for the children who are starving,
who are condemned to homelessness, slave labor, and prostitution,
and especially for those forced to fight, to kill and torture
even members of their own family.
We pray for the victims of violence and war,
for those wounded in body and for those wounded in mind.
We pray for the multitudes of refugees, forced from their homes to alien places
through war or through the utter destruction of their environment.
We pray for suffering animals everywhere,
for an end to the pain caused by scientific experimentation,
intensive farming, fur farming, shooting, trapping,
training for entertainment, abusive pet owners,
and all other forms of exploitation
such as overloading and overworking pack animals,
bull fighting, badger baiting, dog and cock fighting and so many more.
We pray for an end to cruelty,
whether to humans or other animals,
for an end to bullying, and torture in all its forms.
We pray that we may learn the peace that comes with forgiving
and the strength we gain in loving;
that we may learn to take nothing for granted in this life;
that we may learn to see and understand with our hearts;
that we may learn to rejoice in our being.
We pray for these things with humility;
We pray because of the hope that is within us,
and because of a faith in the ultimate triumph of the human spirit;
We pray because of our love for Creation, and because of our trust in God.
We pray, above all, for peace throughout the world
Notices
April 7 Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwandan Genocide
April 8 Holocaust Memorial Day
April 9 Palm Sunday March and Rally – Please come and bring your friends. Banners welcome.
April 10Signing of the treaty banning biological warfare by 120 nations in 1972
April 11Pope John Xlll’s encyclical Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth)
Further Resources
To wash the feet of a brother or a sister in Christ, to allow someone to wash our feet, is a sign that together we want to follow Jesus, to take the downward path, to find Jesus' presence in the poor and the week. Is it not a sign that we too want to live a heart-to-heart relationship with others, to meet them as a person and a friend, and to live in communion with them?
Jean Vanier
Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practice them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator.
Vatican Council ll Gaudium Et Spes, 27
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...
Second Vatican Council ll Gaudium Et Spes, 26
We incarnate the duty of hearing the cry of the poor when we are deeply moved by the suffering of others. Let us listen to what God’s word teaches us about mercy, and allow that word to resound in the life of the Church.
Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 193
Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths.
Pope Francis, Laudato Si, 20
Let us not leave in our wake a swath of destruction and death…
Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 215
Everything is interconnected, and this invites us to develop a spirituality of that global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the Trinity.
Pope Francis, Laudato Si, 240
Every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. ... Every now and then I ask myself, 'What is it that I want said?' I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King Jr., tried to love somebody.
Martin Luther King Jr., from his sermon The Drum Major Instinct
The power of nonviolence is not circumstance-specific. It is as applicable to the problems that confront us now, as to problems that confronted generations in the past. It is not a medicine or a solution so much as a healing process. It is the active spiritual immune system of humanity.
Marianne Williamson, from The Healing of America
Who feeds the world? My answer is very different to that given by most people. It is women and small farmers working with biodiversity who are the primary food providers in the Third World, and contrary to the dominant assumption, their biodiversity based small farms are more productive than industrial monocultures.
Vandana Shiva
There is need for awareness that the mountains and rivers and all living things, the sky and its sun and moon and clouds all constitute a healing, sustaining sacred presence for humans which they need as much for their psychic integrity as for their physical nourishment.
Thomas Berry
The circumstances of our lives are another medium of God’s communication with us. God opens some doors and closes others.... Through the wisdom of our bodies, God tells us to slow down or reorder our priorities. The happy coincidences and frustrating impasses of daily life are laden with messages. Patient listening and the grace of the Spirit are the decoding devices of prayer. It is a good habit to ask, What is God saying to me in this situation? Listening to our lives is part of prayer.
Marjorie J. Thompson, Soul Feast
God’s love sets me free to enter into community with other people—even when the community is a very limited one and is not the total communion that my heart desires. Only when I live in communion with God can I live in a community that is not perfect. Only then can I love the other person and create a space in which we might be quite distant or very close, but we can still allow something new to be born—a child, friendship, joy, community, a space where strangers and guests can be received.
Henri Nouwen, Lecture at Scarritt-Bennett Center
Jesus had a remarkable way of being a friend to every person he met. We sense in him the ability to welcome the stranger, to find the hidden gift in those others called sinners, to strengthen the ability of the loving to love more. He loved some by confronting them with the ways in which they were unloving and exploitative of others. He challenged the hypocritical in those who made it their right to judge others with constant reminders that we not only must not but cannot judge another He found important ways to invite all to discover and cherish the lovable in themselves.
Paula Ripple, Called to Be Friends
Tell the universe
Tell the universe what you've done
Out in the desert with your smoking gun
Looks like you've been having too much fun
Tell the universe what you've done
Tell the universe what you took
While the heavens trembled and the mountains shook
All those lives not worth a second look
Tell the universe what you took
You've been projecting your shit at the world
Self-hatred tarted up as payback time
You can self destruct-that's your right
But keep it to yourself if you don't mind
Tell the universe where you've been
With your bloodstained shoes and your dunce's grin
Got to identify next of kin
Tell the universe where you've been
[Tell the Universe is a collaborative effort between Bruce Cockburn, Julie Wolf, Ben Riley and Steve Lucas. [Comments by Bruce Cockburn about this song, by date: December 5, 2003: ’This is aimed at all the Bushes, Rumsfelds and Saddams ...all those people that think there's not enough pain around.’ February 29, 2004:’I confess I was thinking about a certain world 'leader' when we wrote [see above note about collaboration] this song.’]
‘In the gospel according to Luke, Jesus began his public life by reading a passage from Isaiah that introduced his ministry and the mission of every parish. The parish must proclaim the transcendent message of the gospel and help: bring 'good news to the poor' in a society where millions lack the necessities of life; bring 'liberty to captives' when so many are enslaved by poverty, addiction, ignorance, discrimination, violence, or disabling conditions; bring 'new sight to the blind' in a culture where the excessive pursuit of power or pleasure can spiritually blind us to the dignity and rights of others; and 'set the downtrodden free' in communities where crime, racism, family disintegration, and economic and moral forces leave people without real hope (cf. Lk 4:18).
U.S. Bishops, Communities of Salt and Light
Pius XI . . .'taught what the supreme criterion in economic matters ought not to be. It must not be the special interests of individuals or groups, nor unregulated competition, economic despotism, national prestige or imperialism, nor any other aim of this sort. On the contrary, all forms of economic enterprise must be governed by the principles of social justice and charity.'
John XXIII, Mater and Magistra, 38-39
A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, people do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought, within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.
Martin Luther King Jr.
‘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 . . . ‘
The Church and the Modern World, #26
Life, especially human life, belongs to God; whoever attacks human life attacks God's very self.
The Gospel of Life (Donders translation), #9
In Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection, we are shown that the last word in human existence is not death but God's victory over death. Divine love, manifested in its fullness in the paschal mystery, overcomes death and sin, which is its cause (cf. Rom 5: 12).
John Paul II, General Audience, April 19, 2000
Love and Justice
Love and Justice are not in competition or conflict. Justice is love structured in society. Love without a passionate commitment to justice is an underdeveloped, deformed type of Christianity.
Peace is possible
Peace is possible, peace is a duty,
peace is a prime responsibility of everyone!
May the dawn of the third millennium see the coming
of a new era in which respect for every man and woman
and fraternal solidarity among peoples will,
with God’s help,
overcome the culture of hatred,
of violence,
of death.
John Paul II, ‘Urbi et Orbi’ Message, Easter 1999
The responsibility for war rests not only with those who directly cause war, but also with those who do not do everything in their power to prevent it.
Pope John Paul II, Catholic Relief Services: the Beginning Years by Eileen Egan (NY: Catholic Relief Services, 1988), pp. 155-156
Prayer for Peace
If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbours.
If there is to be peace between neighbours,
There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.
Lao-Tse
Christ moves among the pots and pans
Teresa of Avila
We live in a country that is addicted to incarceration as a tool for social control. As it stands now justice systems are extremely expensive, do not rehabilitate but in fact make the people that experience them worse and have no evidence based correlatives to reducing crime. Yet with that track record they continue to thrive, prosper and are seen as an appropriate response to children in trouble with the law. Only an addict would see that as an okay result.
James Bell
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
John F. Kennedy
Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
Haile Selassie, last Emperor of Ethiopia
The hottest places in hell are reserved for
those who in a period of moral crisis
maintain their neutrality.
Dante
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
Ernest Hemingway
[Man] is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for ‘the universal brotherhood of man’ - with his mouth.
Mark Twain
It is by uniting their own sufferings for the sake of truth and freedom to the sufferings of Christ on the Cross that human beings are able to accomplish the miracle of peace and are in a position to discern the often narrow path between the cowardice which gives in to evil and the violence which, under the illusion of fighting evil, only makes it worse.
Pope John Paul II, Centesium Annus, #25
Christ crucified and risen, the Wisdom of God, manifests the truth that divine justice and renewing power leavens the world in a way different from the techniques of dominating violence. The victory of shalom is won not by the sword of the warrior god, but by the awesome power of compassionate love, in and through solidarity with those who suffer.
Elizabeth Johnson CSJ, She Who Is, p. 159
Reflections on the readings
Today’s gospel proclaims the truth that Jesus is the lord of life. He has power to call us out of our tomb. We do not have to be physically dead in order to be raised up. We can be dead in the midst of life when we remain indifferent (‘globalisation of indifference’ as Pope Francis called it) to the plight of other people and unable to weep with them. Is this not like living in a tomb? Jesus’ voice calls us all away from making the tomb our natural habitat. It challenges us to take responsibility for our sister and brother who is also loved by Jesus. If we see someone buried alive we are invited to do as Jesus did, and calls us to do: call them, and help them go free., Pope Francis, in his first 2017 general audience, reflected on Christian hope by reflecting on the prophet Jeremiah’s reflection on Rachel's inconsolable sorrow and mourning for her children who ‘are no more,’ where she refused to be consoled to express ‘the depth of her pain and the bitterness of her weeping.’ Francis said that her weeping represents every mother and every person throughout history who cry over an ‘irreparable loss.’ There is a call for sensitivity in our case and the assurance that God does respond in a loving and gentle way with genuine ‘words of tears’. For Francis tears generate hope: ‘So often in our life, tears sow hope, they are seeds of hope.’ The Pope is aware as many of us that death seems to be our constant companion.
Today's readings are about dying and coming to life. Death takes many forms and so does life. Ezekiel addresses a people alive but as good as dead - a shattered and captive nation exiled in Babylon. Death was their companion. Death has been the constant companion in Iraq, Yemen, Palestine (Gaza) and Syria; by earthquakes and tsunamis. Death has been a companion of people who were sexually and physically abused as children living with their ‘secret’ until opened up. Death is a companion in hospices, our homes by domestic violence, our streets, human trafficking and slavery. Death is a companion when people are victims of human trafficking and slavery. There is injustice of all kinds. Death is a companion when gossip kills peoples’ reputations, devaluation, prejudice, negativity, meanness, ignorance, homophobia, racism, sexism, etc. There are people who have stopped living because they have stopped living because they have stopped being for others or caring for themselves. Jesus’ voice in the gospel calls us all away from making the tomb our natural habitat.
When a person we love dies we are very aware of the absence in our life. Somehow that absence, that hole, can overtake us. That hole or absence was seen in the lives Martha and Martha at Lazarus’ death. Martha’s cry is expressed by anyone whose child dies; a loved one has cancer; etc. Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus. Jesus wept at Lazarus' death. What makes God weep? Jesus weeps over the death of a friend. We too have so many deaths to weep over: 100’s of 1000’s of deaths in the fighting in Syria; the millions at threat from drought and famine in Yemen, Sudan and Somalia; the countless refugees who have died trying to get to Europe on the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea; ongoing deaths in the violence in South Sudan; deaths from acts of terrorism all over the world even by those considered our allies; deaths from ethnic and racial fighting in countless places; deaths of those without adequate medical care; deaths of young people suicide; the many deaths of children who do not get adequate nutrition; deaths from the use of the death penalty; deaths of people who die alone and feel unloved; the living deaths and sometimes suicide of young people who live in closets to hide their sexual orientation; the deaths from all kinds of addiction; deaths from pollution and the use of toxic chemicals; and the death of our planet and so many species of plants and animals.
Can we not hear the Syrian mother’s cry as her child dies of starvation? Can we not hear the cry of the woman living detention whose husband has dosed himself in petrol and killed himself to protest his treatment by our government’s immigration and border force system? Can we not hear the cry of the parents whose child is locked up in the tomb of drug addiction? Can we not at least hear the cries of children held in our immigration detention centres?
Martha asks Jesus ‘Where were you when I needed you?’ It is a powerful image: God in Jesus stands outside the tomb and weeps. He calls us to participate in liberating one another from our tombs. People in situations of neglect, disadvantage, conflict, dying of preventable diseases might challenge the ‘first world: ‘Jesus, if your spirit had been present in Christians, then my brother/sister would not have died’. We are assured that we are not alone. Though we acknowledge our pain, raise questions, express disappointment in God, and stare at the grave we are told that in our most vulnerable moments, God in Jesus stands with us at the grave and promises life. When Jesus says that he is the resurrection and the life, he is saying that no darkness, no tomb, no suffering is so dark, for him and for God. Nothing is beyond God’s power - not sin, violence, injustice, disbelief, evil and death itself. Paul in his letter to the Romans says: ‘Nothing can separate us from the love of God.’ But if Jesus weeps, does he not also weep when religious people fail to respect life and human dignity? or at the lifelessness and lack of passion in peoples’ hearts to bring about a better world? or at the continued disrespect shown to our First Peoples? or at executions that still take place in Iran, China, USA, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Japan or Korea? or at our selectivity in promoting life in some areas and not others? or at the inhumane and deadening punishment we inflict on people in prison? or at insensitivity and indifference to the treatment seeking asylum? or at the hurt inflicted on people who are different to us [people of other faiths and cultures, gay and lesbian people, people with different intellectual and physical capacities?
The ‘dry bones’ story in the first reading illustrates God’s desire for us to not just have life, but to have it fully and passionately. We are called into life (authenticity) and liveliness (passion). It occurs through our attention to the ‘bodies’ of others through service, compassion, risk taking.
Israel’s exile to Babylon was a grave war crime where she became ‘no people’. The ‘dry bones’ has its parallels today as has been outlined earlier. Will those bones ever be put back together? Will they ever come together in unity through peace and reconciliation, through mutual respect of peoples’ difference? When Lazarus comes forth still enshrouded in the clothes of a dead man, Jesus addresses the community/us: ‘Unbind him; let him go free’.
We have a part to play in helping one another be unbound and emerge into the light of new life. We saw this image last week in the healing of man born blind. We saw it in the woman at the well, as she took her rightful position in her community.
John 11 is midpoint and the focus of the gospel. Everything leads to it, and everything that follows is seen in light of Jesus' words: ‘I am the resurrection and the life’. It is the heart of our belief. As stated earlier, nothing is beyond God’s power - not sin, violence, injustice, disbelief, evil and death itself. The Lazarus and the dry bones stories focus on those who struggle to live and believe whilst surrounded by death and need to hear and respond to the call to ‘Come out!’ from darkness into light; death into life, unfreedom into freedom.
Fullness of life exists when our lives are shaped by love: when centred on the world/creation and not ourselves; when we give joy to all whom we touch; when we work at peace building - with self, others and God; when our patience, acceptance and kindness go beyond our kind to those who are different, when we listen to people and help them find their voices to speak their truth to those who think they are the decision makers.
We are not just isolated bodies but part of a community. God's life-giving power is shown when we are closest to our simple humanity, when connected to others; to their ache of longing, to their cherishing tenderness, to their anguish. Jesus says to us: ‘Untie him and let him go free.’ It is the community of believers that frees and turns us in the direction of new life. What depth of faithful love is necessary to bring life out of the decomposing corpse of my life, my country, world and church? When the ‘corpse’ seems to have rotted away, we ask if these bones can still live?
Like Jesus, we are sent to stand at the tombs and call one another from them, untie and set the other free. The gospel is about life by building relationships and a better and transformed world for all. Often we hold ourselves and others captive by our fears and self-image and by the way others define and name us. We imprison people by our judgments, prejudices, fear and isolation. Jesus needs us to remove the stone that blocks people from coming to life. We have the power to unbind one another and free each other and love another into life. Soon Jesus will give us the Easter message of freedom. 'If you bind one another, they will be bound, if you free them, they will be set free.' We hold the key that will unlock the door.
Lent calls to us: ‘Let's start over. Let's be born again’... and creation renews itself. 'I have come that you may have life and have it to the full.' And the story of the dry bones is that God does not stop trying to put us together, to bring us together.
Hearing the Word and receiving Christ's Spirit gives us a new vision of life and transformed world: appreciation of life and creation with its wonders; commitment to life-giving words and actions; promoting the beauty and diversity of peoples and cultures; to notice those who are frail and unprotected; uncared for; struggling in poverty, mental illness, loneliness, vilified, unjustly treated, etc.
When God’s Spirit comes upon us we must ‘come out’ – be people who seek life for others as for ourselves: speak and build peace. Jesus says: ‘Lazarus come out.’ Jesus says to those around him: ‘Untie him and let him go.’ Our world needs a voice that will invite us out of our tombs and into freedom: freedom from the culture of violence, death, racism, discrimination, debt, revenge, and blindness to the needs of others. It also needs our voices that invite our sisters and brothers out of their tombs. We are challenged not to shy away from the sacrifices and struggles that arise as we work for life and justice in our world.
LITURGY NOTES FOR THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT
LITURGY NOTES FOR THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT
Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 26, 2017
Suggested formula for recognition of Indigenous people and their land
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we stand
We pay our respects to them for their care of the land
May we walk gently and respectfully upon the land.
or
I acknowledge the living culture of the ……..people,
the traditional custodians of the land we stand on,
and pay tribute to the unique role they play in the life of this region.
or
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land where we are now gathered,
(the ……) and recognise that it continues to be sacred to them.
We hail them: as guardians of the earth and of all things that grow and breed in the soil; as trustees of the waters – [the seas, the streams and rivers, the ponds and the lakes] - and the rich variety of life in those waters.
We thank them for passing this heritage to every people since the Dreamtime.
We acknowledge the wrongs done to them by newcomers to this land and we seek to be partners with them in righting these wrongs and in living together in peace and harmony.
I come to you weak
God, I come to you weak and empty;
my prayers are thin and dry.
My heart is hardly awake, nodding off,
my mind, divided and wandering.
You receive my feeble, wayward prayers,
as if they are perfect and whole:
‘Beloved, your presence is all that I seek,
your presence alone my delight.’
O Steadfast One, my faith is fragile some days,
so easily traded for easy assurance,
or even the sleep of not caring.
And you hold me as a newborn.
‘Beloved, your presence is all that I seek,
your presence alone my delight.’
O Mystery, some days it just is too hard,
to listen, to hear, to obey.
And yet this cry in me, my very despair—
is your voice, your aching for me,
your closing your hand about mine, weak and trembling,
your spirit embracing my own.
‘Beloved, your presence is all that I seek,
your presence alone my delight.’
My Lord, I do not know how to love,
but yours is the love that will save me.
I do not know how to pray at all,
but I can sit in the light,
and let your presence enfold me and hold me,
and let you answer me:
‘Beloved, your presence is all that I seek,
your presence alone my delight.’
Steve Garnaas-Holmes Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net
b
Readings
Reading I 1 Sam 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a
Responsorial Psalm Ps 23: 1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6
Reading II Eph 5:8-14
Gospel Jn 9:1-41 or 9:1, 6-9, 13-17, 34-38
Penitential Rite
· Jesus, you touch our eyes and open them to your world as it is and could be. Jesus, have mercy.
· Jesus, you touch our ears and open them to the cries of the poor and the lonely. Christ, have mercy.
· Jesus, you touch our hearts and open them to your love and compassion. Jesus, have mercy.
Opening Prayer
Illuminating God, [God of Light]
Jesus spoke peace to a world in conflict
and brought the gift of reconciliation to all people
by his suffering and death.
Teach us to follow his example:
may our faith, hope and charity
turn hatred to love, conflict to peace,
injustice to justice
and death to fullness of life.
Prayer over the Gifts
Illuminating God, [God of Light]
Jesus comes among us
in these signs of bread and wine.
May we recognise him also
in the person ‘begging’ along our path,
the one who is living with a disability,
the refugee, and the unemployed.
Prayer after Communion
Illuminating God, [God of Light]
wake us up from the darkness of sin
and the sleep of complacency and indifference
by the power of Jesus, your Son.
Let the light of Christ shine in us,
so that those around us may discover
your goodness, compassionate love, life and truth.
General Intercessions
Introduction: We pray with open hearts to the God who enlightens our lives. The response to each petition is: Let your light shine on us, O God.
- We pray to the God of peace that the people in every land and every nation may have the vision to seek an end to war and create peace with justice, we pray: Let your light shine on us, O God.
- We pray to the God of the poor that people of vision will open their hearts and walk in solidarity with with the poorest of the poor who struggle to sustain life, provide for their loved ones, and live without access to nourishing food, clean water, adequate shelter, available health care, for creative solutions to the unequal distribution of the world’s goods, we pray: Let your light shine on us, O God.
3. We pray to the God of freedom that we may also strive to bring liberation through our presence and compassion to those who are enslaved by poverty, addiction, ignorance, discrimination, violence or trafficked in any way, we pray: Let your light shine on us, O God.
4. We pray to the God who cries at the plight of people seeking asylum and the hearts that are closed to them: we remember the many who have drowned seeking freedom and peace and security and those recently killed at sea in Yemen by aerial bombing, we pray: Let your light shine on us, O God.
5. We pray to the God of healing that we may strive to bring sight to a culture that pursues power and pleasure and is blinded and indifference to the dignity and rights of others, we pray: Let your light shine on us, O God.
6. We pray to the God of the downtrodden that we will strive to set the downtrodden free in communities where crime, racism, sexism and disintegration forces people to live without hope, we pray: Let your light shine on us, O God.
7. We pray to the God beyond gender that as we strive to overcome the inequities that women experience in education, labour and health care, we pray: Let your light shine on us, O God.
8. We pray to the God who is impartial so that we might not judge others by appearances but by what they bear in their hearts, we pray: Let your light shine on us, O God.
9. We pray to the God who was a wandering Aramean that we might that we might open to accept and appreciate the gifts that immigrants and refugees bring to our communities, we pray: Let your light shine on us, O God.
10. We pray to the God of nonviolence, so that the peoples of the Middle East such as Iraq, Libya and Syria may proceed without violence and lead to greater stability for the whole nation where the leaders are dedicated to the needs of the people, including the minority faiths, we pray: Let your light shine on us, O God.
Concluding Prayer: Illuminating God, may see as you see as Jesus opens our eyes to the injustices in which we share and strive to restore the hopes of people in the values of truth, dignity and justice.
Or
Concluding Prayer: O God, you are the light in our darkness. Shine on us today and hear our sincere prayers for your world. Give us the eyes to see your presence among us and hearts to welcome you in each person we meet. We pray always in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Further Resources
We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.
William Ewart Gladstone
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful and whatever is powerful may be just.
Blaise Pascal
Never, for the sake of 'peace and quiet', deny your own experience or convictions.
Dag Hammarskjold
Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war.
John Andrew Holmes, Wisdom in Small Doses
In the name of peace
They waged the wars
Ain't they got no shame
Nikki Giovanni
The church is obliged by its evangelical mission to demand structural changes that favor the reign of God and a more just and comradely way of life. Unjust social structures are the roots of all violence and disturbances. … Those who benefit from obsolete structures react selfishly to any kind of change.
Archbishop Oscar Romero, November 1979. Assassinated March 24, 1980
There is need for awareness that the mountains and rivers and all living things, the sky and its sun and moon and clouds all constitute a healing, sustaining sacred presence for humans which they need as much for their psychic integrity as for their physical nourishment.
Thomas Berry
The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he's the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
Malcolm X, Audubon Ballroom, December 13, 1964
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.
Albert Camus, 1930-1960
We will surely get to our destination if we join hands
Aung San Suu Kyi
If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all the youthful vision and vigour, then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come out of our college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow.
William Allen White.
But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.
Robert F. Kennedy
The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear Brothers [and Sisters], we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are
Thomas Merton
The vision of a culture lies in what becomes its major institutions, in what it remembers as its most impacting events, in who it sees as its heroes.’
Joan Chittister
We have longed to taste the resurrection. We have longed to welcome its thunders and quakes, and to echo its great gifts. We want to test the resurrection in our bones. We want to see if we might live in hope instead of in the ... twilight thicket of cultural despair, in which standing implies many are lost.
Daniel Berrigan
What we do is so little that we may seem to be constantly failing. But so did [Christ] fail. He met with apparent failure on the Cross. But unless the seeds fall into the earth and die, there is no harvest.
Dorothy Day
Prayer for Countries in Conflict
From injustice and division,
let them know your love.
From violence and injury,
may they realize your forgiveness.
From despair and darkness.
may they have hope.
From sadness and grief,
may they again know peace and joy.
God of compassion and peace,
kindle in the hearts of all your children love for peace,
and guide with your wisdom the leaders of ………. (name country or region)Kenya
as they work to bring about peace and justice in their land.
We ask this in your name, Lord. Amen
adapted from A Prayer for Peace in Kenya
By Sr. Anita Jennissen, OSF
Message from the grave
You, last of all that knew your tribal tongue,
Sleep now with them in this ancestral ground.
Above your grave the towering, ancient wrong
Speaks in a silence pregnant and profound.
Beside your grave I stand, among your folk
Who loved this land before the white man came,
Burned by the burning words you never spoke,
I ask for forgiveness for my people's shame.
For named and nameless ills your people bore
From us, who killed by bullet, axe and pride.
For our stone blindness; for the day we tore
In kindness' name your children from your side.
What could we answer if your ghost should rise
To curse our children's children from the grave?
You rise - but with redemption in your eyes
Before we knew to ask it, you forgave.
Extract from a poem by Michael Thwaites, written at the grave of Teresa Clements, who was buried in the small Aboriginal community of Cummeragunja in southern NSW in 1959. Read by Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, at the Block in Redfern, after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made his Apology to the Aboriginal Stolen Generations, February 14, 2008. [Sydney Morning Herald, February 15, 2008]
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Pius XI . . . 'taught what the supreme criterion in economic matters ought not to be. It must not be the special interests of individuals or groups, nor unregulated competition, economic despotism, national prestige or imperialism, nor any other aim of this sort. On the contrary, all forms of economic enterprise must be governed by the principles of social justice and charity.'
Pope John XXIII, Mater and Magistra, 38-39
Could someone explain to me why the U.S. threatened to break the patent on Cipro after three anthrax deaths, yet vigorously resists tampering with intellectual property rights when someone suggests breaking the patent on AIDS drugs for the sake of 25 million infected Africans?
Philip Yancey in Christianity Today
Women are equally created in the image and likeness of God, equally redeemed by Christ, equally sanctified by the Holy Spirit; women are equally involved in the ongoing tragedy of sin and the mystery of grace, equally called to mission in this world, equally destined for life with God in glory.
Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, She Who Is, 8
The Synod Fathers stated: 'As an expression of her mission the Church must stand firmly against all forms of discrimination and abuse of women'(178). And again: 'The dignity of women, gravely wounded in public esteem, must be restored through effective respect for the rights of the human person and by putting the teaching of the Church into practice.'
John Paul II, Christifideles Laici, 49
Christ's way of acting, the Gospel of his words and deeds, is a consistent protest against whatever offends the dignity of women.
John Paul II
We must be . . . promoting equitable treatment of women – on whose under-compensated labor the whole international economic system now depends.
Martin McLaughlin, Center of Concern
The Christian who takes part in the Eucharist learns to become a promoter of communion, peace and solidarity in every situation. More than ever, our troubled world, which began the new Millennium with the spectre of terrorism and the tragedy of war, demands that Christians learn to experience the Eucharist as a great school of peace, forming men and women who, at various levels of responsibility in social, cultural and political life, can become promoters of dialogue and communion.
John Paul II, Mane Nobiscum Domine, October 2004
Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
James Anthony Froude
’There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgement. When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom- freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse. Herein undoubtedly lies part of the attractiveness of a mass movement.’
Eric Hoffer
Beat me with the truth, don't torture me with lies.
Author – Unknown
‘Read, every day, something no one else is reading.
Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.
Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.
It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.’
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) German Dramatist
Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.
Henry Miller (1891-1980) American writer
The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs. Self-conceit often regards it as a sign of weakness to admit that a belief to which we have once committed ourselves is wrong. We get so identified with an idea that it is literally a ‘pet’ notion and we rise to its defense and stop our eyes and ears to anything different.
John Dewey
It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion.
Aristotle in Politics, J. Sinclair translation, pg. 226, 1962
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
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
But that's the whole point of corporatism: to try and remove the public from making decisions over their own fate, to limit the public arena, to control opinion, to make sure that the fundamental decisions that determine how the world is going to be run -which include production, commerce, distribution, thought, social policy, foreign policy, everything-are not in the hands of the public, but rather in the hands of highly concentrated private power. In effect, tyranny unaccountable to the public.
Professor Noam Chomsky, interviewed in Corporate Watch
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
Susan B Anthony.
The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.
Jane Addams
The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?
John Adams
Even the sceptical mind must be prepared to accept the unacceptable when there is no alternative. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.
Douglas Adams
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.
There is a very wide range of methods, or forms of nonviolent action, and at least 125 have been identified. They fall into three classes:
Nonviolent protest:
Methods are symbolic in their effect and produce an awareness of the existence of dissent. Under tyrannical regimes, however, where opposition is stifled, their impact can in some circumstances be very great. Methods of nonviolent protest include marches, pilgrimages, picketing, vigils, 'haunting officials', public meetings, issuing and distributing protest literature, renouncing honours, voluntary emigration, and humorous pranks.
Nonviolent non-cooperation:
If sufficient numbers take part, they are likely to present the opponent with difficulties in maintaining the normal efficiency and operation of the system; and in extreme cases the system itself may be threatened. Methods of nonviolent non-cooperation include various types of strikes, various types of boycotts and various types of political non-cooperation.
Nonviolent intervention:
These methods share some features in common with the first two classes, but also challenge the opponent more directly; and, assuming that fearlessness and discipline are maintained, relatively small numbers may have a disproportionately large impact. Methods of nonviolent intervention include sit-ins, fasts, reverse strikes, nonviolent obstruction, nonviolent invasion, and parallel government."
Gene Sharp The Technique of Nonviolent Action
Prayer
God, I believe that you can do new things.
Help my unbelief!
I believe that you can help us to make a way in the desert.
Help my unbelief.
I believe that you want to create rivers through the wasteland.
Help my unbelief.
I believe that we are not stuck to just repeat the evils of the past.
Help my unbelief.
I believe that I can do things that I was not able to do before.
Help my unbelief.
I believe that I might be able to forgive my enemy.
Help my unbelief.
I believe that peace among nations is possible.
Help my unbelief.
I believe that we can overcome the ways of violence.
Help my unbelief.
I believe that we can eliminate hunger and poverty.
Help my unbelief
I believe that we can overcome racism.
Help my unbelief.
I believe that we can create homes for everyone.
Help my unbelief.
I believe that we can finally drop the stones of condemnation.
Help my unbelief.
I believe that we will have a new heaven and a new earth.
Help my unbelief.
I believe that with your Spirit we can all see things in a new way.
Help my unbelief.
God, I believe that together we can do new things.
Help my unbelief! Amen.
Author – Unknown
Seeing
Keep us from our self-imposed blindness, Jesus;
hold our heads firmly in your grasp so we cannot look away
from those who are broken;
pull us forward so that we cannot avoid
encountering those who are suffering;
break our hearts, so that we cannot resist
the tears of those who grieve;
Help us, Jesus, to be always seeing;
and seeing, help us to find a way
to act in mercy toward the hurting,
to act in defiance of the corrupt,
and to act in hope for the healing of our world.
Amen.
John Laar Sacridise January 20, 2015
You will come
Holy One,
you will come to me this day.
You will hide in the little events.
In the friends and stranger,
in those whom you send me to love,
you will be present.
In the feelings and perceptions
that arise in me you will be whispering.
In the the low murmurings,
the leanings of my soul,
you will be gently nudging me.
In the light, in the silence,
you will come to me.
And I will be ready
to say yes.
Steve Garnaas-Holmes Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net
Seeing The Signs
It would be much easier, Jesus,
to ignore the hard truths around us:
the widening gap
between rich and poor,
the consistency with which the powerful
get their way,
the bending of rules and the self-enrichment
of the connected and influential,
the lack of adequate care, protection and resources
for the most vulnerable among us;
we would rather not see these signs.
It would be much easier if we could just pretend everything was alright,
if we could prophesy goodness and light,
and ignore the darkness and evil;
if we didn’t have to offend the status quo,
or challenge the comfortable;
if we could convince ourselves that the cross,
was just a one time thing –
your calling, not ours.
But, we can’t do this, Jesus, because we know too much;
your Gospel has captured us and opened our eyes,
and we have become slaves to love,
the love that must speak for the voiceless,
the love that must challenge injustice,
the love that draws lines of division
between truth and denial,
between compassion and expediency.
Give us the courage to acknowledge what we see,
to name the signs of the times,
to disrupt the ‘way things are’
in the name of what should be,
to divide in order to heal and restore,
and to be crucified for the sake of love.
Amen.
John Laar Sacredise January 20, 2015
God, who celebrates our bodies and our liberation from oppression,
help us to reach out and support those
who are in processes of coming out and being healed,
who are coming to awareness of the gifts
of your presence in our bodily selves.
Help us also to realize that we, as your defenders, often get it wrong
and end up oppressing those whom you have freed.
Forgive us for these abuses and
help us to accept ourselves as you have accepted and freed us.
Amen.
from Out in Scripture
Reflections on the readings
Today’s gospel provides a fascinating story of what happens when the lights go on for someone, when someone’s eyes are opened and see what is really going on. The man born blind obtains an alternative view of who is in control. He sees the truth he was subjected to can no longer be tolerated as the forces of authority strike back with naked hostility towards him and Jesus. Jesus is such a dangerous figure for openly proclaiming that his mission was to open the eyes of the blind and to set free those held captive in the darkness. We see how the powers operate when people have their eyes opened and see the truth. They try smear campaigns as in the gospel story the man is called a liar and fraud and one who knows nothing. The leaders are in a panic to discredit Jesus, to obfuscate the miraculous event by declaring it invalid on religious and doctrinal grounds. The once blind man, couldn’t care less, he says ‘I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’ But when people have really seen the light for themselves, it is almost impossible to get them to shut up and go back to sitting in the darkness and not be cowed by the hostility that it provokes. They show a different leadership.
There are contemporary movements conspiring to keep us in the dark. Henry Giroux (https://www.henryagiroux.com/) has called this ‘the violence of organised forgetting’. It leads to a moral paralysis. He says that ignorance has become a form of weaponised refusal to acknowledge the violence of the past towards individuals or towards whole people. This ignorance revels in a culture of media spectacles in which public concerns are translated into private obsessions, consumerism and fatuous entertainment. James Baldwin rightly warned, “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
Failure to learn from the past has disastrous consequences. This ignorance is not just about the absence of information but threatens the capacity to question and paralyses agency. We have witnessed how people like Donald Trump can gain a platform by promoting values of “greatness” which actually serve to erase the memory of social and political progress achieved in the name of equality and basic human decency, history and thought itself are under attack.
In Australia, we may be aware of these processes where we are told that everything that is being done by the government is for our security or our best interests. But we struggle to get our eyes open and see the truth. Our political leaders deliberately misled us and kept us in the dark regarding the reasons for invading Iraq, of which I am very away today as I write these notes on March 19 and note that I have not heard one mention of this in the news today.
‘Operational Matters’ is the reason why the authorities hide what is happening to refugees and asylum seekers as they are confronted by Border Force and the Navy on the high seas and what happens to them. The fact that that Australia’s immigration detentions have until now been hidden in very remote places such as Manus Island and Nauru, is to prevent anyone from known the conditions under which the people live. Spin doctors and vested interests devise strategies to keep us in the dark.
The readings show that followers of God are expected to see things from a unique perspective. God does not see as humans see. Where humans go on appearances and God looks into the heart (cf. reading from Samuel). And we expected to go beyond the appearances that frequently dead-end our understanding of people, things and situations. We have to view them in a new light; to become conscious of dimensions that, without that light, we’d never notice. Much of Pope Francis’ ministry has shown a passionate concern for those on the edges of society or on the margins of our concern. We are forced to look at them in different ways to the past. He has pointed out our blind spots whether towards migrants and people seeking asylum, people in prison, people of other faiths, especially Muslims, people living with mental illness or disability or people who are homeless. completely different eyes than we looked at them before.
The gospel story is not about one person’s blindness but about what the disciples, and us, do not see. The neighbours of the once-blind man and those who regularly saw him begging are unable to identify him. They could see, they often passed by him, but they had never looked. Those around him still see sin when there was healing. Jesus did the wrong thing on the Sabbath and the man is reviled for his insolence when questioned by the indignant leaders. Their questions are born of suspicion and unwillingness to consider wonder and the action of God in the world. And we know they cast him out.
This whole convoluted argument, and the unwillingness to accept people once considered unacceptable, is embedded in our cultural conversation about sexuality, intimacy, marriage, race, and family life. Gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual people live in a strobe-lit milieu of acceptance and endangerment, and the Church is a mine field of condemnation and acceptance, parish by parish and denomination by denomination. Mental illness has become the public whipping boy for serial killings. And whose fault is it? is the leading question in the public mind at every tragic event. However, we are directed towards what is the loving action….even when we see a homeless person on the street and choose who will engage with that person.
In his very very large book, Far From the Tree, Andrew Solomon, explores the proposition that being exceptional is at the core of the human condition—that difference is what unites us. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; children who are prodigies, children conceived in rape, children who become criminals and children who are transgender. What Solomon documents is where love triumphs over prejudice. He says that all parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent should parents accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves. After a decade of research and interviews with 100’s of families, Solomon mines the eloquence of ordinary people facing extreme challenges. We see in the gospel how Jesus uses these situations as public teaching opportunities and opportunities for loving action. He proclaims the diversity that unites, to the woman at the well last Sunday and to the man born blind. Jesus confronts deep prejudices with loving action. There is no middle ground to walk. There is no acquiescence to the fine points of the law about Sabbath. He confronts, as did Pope Francis, when he said it is better to be an atheist rather than a hypocrite. He challenges us to see the person first and foremost. Faced with human need, people matter most. Jesus demonstrated this last week when he was moved more by the Samaritan women’s need than her past. Jesus does not see an affliction but the person in need. No one is excluded. Maybe we had better take a second and third look at those on the edges of our social circle and world to see the person who also happens to be crippled, socially awkward, homeless, suffering from Alzheimer’s, etc. We might be the blind person and by paying attention to persons and not just their afflictions, our eyes might be opened and we too led to seeing Jesus. Many people in our community know what it is like to be shut out, told to wait, given second best, told they are no good or not good enough. This sight that we gain through Jesus is a dangerous thing. It can get us into trouble especially when people will not see or cannot see what we see. This unwillingness to accept people once considered unacceptable, is embedded in our cultural conversation about sexuality, intimacy, marriage, race, family life and disability.
In Afghanistan, the Afghan Youth Volunteers for Peace (aged from 15-22) walk, talk, rally for peace and host delegations of peace activists from various countries. These unlikely people send out a different message to those in authority who supposedly know what they are doing and know only about fighting. Their message is: 'Why Not Love?' These youth have not been discouraged by insults and ridicule and had their signs vandalised. They believe, as one 15 year old boy, Abdulai says, ‘I know if I take revenge, the cycle never ends. In place of revenge, we should seek reconciliation and friendship.’ These young people have also heard the insulting words the blind man did: ‘Who are you? You're just a beggar and you're going to teach us? We're the religious leaders.’ This happened to the Afghan politician, Malalia Joya, who has been expelled from the Afghan parliament when she criticised corruption and war making by those in parliament. As the blind beggar got an insight into Jesus and then did the work of Jesus, these Muslim people, follow the path to true humanity, and work for change and transformation. They have seen differently and acted differently.Those who are in power and arrogantly wish to hold on to it will not listen because it challenges the status quo and personal power. The corruption, power-grabbing and judgmental condemnation of anything new and different is a mark of those who cannot see – although they always protest that they see clearly. On the other hand, the acceptance, healing and grace that Jesus shows – and the response in worship of those who have been made to see by Christ’s touch – is the mark of those who “live in the light”.
How will we, as Jesus’ followers, be a light and follow his way with regard to contemporary issues that confront us today: trafficking in Thailand, oppression of the Rohingya people in Myanmar and Bangladesh; the bombing of civilians and Somali people seeking asylum and escaping from Yemen; the choice of peace and nonviolence over violence; to be welcoming and inclusive over discrimination (people seeking asylum, GLBTIQ people, the First peoples of our nation); choosing to speak out rather than being silent. As Jesus was drawn towards people who were the most rejected, we are called to be countercultural and not accept the way society deals with ‘the dogs’.
The emboldened responses of those no longer willing to be rejected can infuriate those not yet willing to consider acceptance. Some congregations, placing a high value on niceness, can be reluctant to engage the questions.
As we walk through this Lent we ask ourselves a dual question: How often do I quibble with inessentials (eating meat on Fridays) to avoid facing the gospel? How do we focus on giving up things rather than taking on things especially in regard to other people and the environment? How often does my vision of Jesus become clouded over by selfishness, by our culture, by fear—so that though I claim sight I am in fact still blind?
LITURGY NOTES FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT
LITURGY NOTES THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT
March 19th 2017
Suggested formula for recognition of Indigenous people and their land
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we stand
We pay our respects to them for their care of the land
May we walk gently and respectfully upon the land.
or
I acknowledge the living culture of the ……..people,
the traditional custodians of the land we stand on,
and pay tribute to the unique role they play in the life of this region.
or
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land where we are now gathered,
(the ……) and recognise that it continues to be sacred to them.
We hail them: as guardians of the earth and of all things that grow and breed in the soil; as trustees of the waters – [the seas, the streams and rivers, the ponds and the lakes] - and the rich variety of life in those waters.
We thank them for passing this heritage to every people since the Dreamtime.
We acknowledge the wrongs done to them by newcomers to this land and we seek to be partners with them in righting these wrongs and in living together in peace and harmony.
Living Water
Observers think:
‘This man not only
Eats with sinners and outcasts
He’s also too friendly with women
Even foreign women.
How can he be a prophet?’
But the woman thinks:
‘He’s different
His closeness is not a man’s invitation
His nearness is God’s invitation
God’s invitation to change
God’s invitation to discipleship
God’s invitation to live-giving water
My invitation to closeness with God.’
Painting and meditation by Fr. Jim Hasse, SJ,
Sharyn Raggett
‘The presence of God among people did not take place in a perfect, idyllic world but rather in this real world, which is marked by so many things both good and bad, by division, wickedness, poverty, arrogance and war. He chose to live in our history as it is, with all the weight of its limitations and of its tragedies. In doing so, he has demonstrated in an unequalled manner his merciful and truly loving disposition toward the human creature. He is God-with-us. Jesus is God-with-us. Do you believe this? Together let us profess: Jesus is God with us! Jesus is God with us always and forever with us in history's suffering and sorrow.’
Pope Francis (December 18, 2013)
Readings
Reading I Exodus 17:3-7
Responsorial Psalm Ps 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9
Reading II Romans 5:1-2, 5-8
Gospel John 4:5-42 or 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42
Penitential Rite
· Christ Jesus, you are living water that purifies our hearts. Jesus, have mercy.
· Christ Jesus, you are living water that strengthens our faith. Christ, have mercy.
· Christ Jesus, you are living water that quenches our thirst for justice. Jesus, have mercy.
Opening Prayer
God of Living Water,
look upon your people,
whose hearts are parched with thirst.
Give us an unquenchable thirst
for the things that matter:
for faith and meaning in our lives,
for hope in a better world
filled with your justice and peace
and a spirit of committed love.
or
God of Living Water,
we experience your loving kindness
when they encounter your Son, Jesus Christ.
Attune us to his voice and dispose us
to meet him in each person,
that our thirst for life may be quenched
and live in joy and courage.
Prayer over the Gifts
God of Living Water,
in bread and wine
Jesus comes amongst us.
May we as a living community,
become a source of hope to all people
who thirst for truth, freedom and justice.
Prayer after Communion
God of Living Water,
as the woman at the well encountered Jesus
and believed in him her life was changed.
Jesus has spoken to us through the Word
and revived our strength through the Eucharist.
May we also learn that our lives will be changed
through our response to people who cry for help.
General Intercessions
Introduction: Jesus heard the deep longings of the Samaritan woman’s heart. He hears our longings and calls us to response to those of others. Response: Give us the water of life.
· For the people of Japan as they remember the tsunami and earthquake six years ago: we remember the great loss of life and the destruction caused to may. May their healing and recovery be swift and complete, we pray: Give us the water of life.
· For the Church community: may it radiate the presence of God’s love and acceptance of all peoples and cultures, of the poor and the rich, of the strong and the weak, we pray: Give us the water of life
· For the people who have been affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan 6 years ago especially those who have lost loved ones, suffered injury and lost all their possessions: may God’s face and care be revealed to them in those who act in solidarity and compassion with them, we pray: Give us the water of life.
· For the people of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and other countries of the Middle East who endure violence and conflict, hunger and displacement, sectarian vilification: that they may through their struggles against oppression and tyranny find freedom and the way of life they choose to live, we pray: Give us the water of life.
· For peace in our hearts so that that conflict will end: may people recognise the humanity of all, especially the enemy, and strive to seek nonviolence ways of dealing with conflict among the nations; violence within communities, neighbourhoods and families, we pray: Give us the water of life.
· For the leaders of nations, economists and politicians: may their decisions be enlightened by a true sense of justice for their people so that peace and well-being develop in the lives of people, we pray: Give us the water of life.
· For meaning in the lives of people: may they have work that makes a difference, a place to call home and people around them they love and who love them, we pray: Give us the water of life.
· For the ill, the infirm, those living with mental illness and the dying: may they find new life in the living water that Jesus' Word offers through the comfort and understanding of others, we pray: Give us the water of life.
· For newcomers to our community: may they find a genuine welcome from their neighbours, we pray: Give us the water of life.
· For the Palestinian and Israeli people: may they continue in dialogue that will lead to respect for each other and peace with justice for all, we pray: Give us the water of life.
· For all the women whose gifts are not recognised, who experience oppression and struggle for justice: may they encounter the liberation experienced by the woman at the well, we pray: Give us the water of life.
· For all people who are engaged in peacemaking and justice: may all the groups and organisations around the world not become discouraged but know that they truly are sons and daughters of the God of peace who will bring forth fruit from their efforts, we pray: Give us the water of life.
· For countries that still rely on the death penalty as a form of punishment: may they, as we approach the International Day for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, come to realise that this is another violation of the fundamental right to life, we pray: Give us the water of life.
· For the Earth and the depleting fresh water resources: may governments take steps to protect peoples’ rights to clean, fresh water, we pray: Give us the water of life.
Concluding Prayer: God of the Living Waters, as we pray with thanks to you we pray that you continue to show us new ways to encounter you through reaching out to others.
Further Resources
‘The presence of God among people did not take place in a perfect, idyllic world but rather in this real world, which is marked by so many things both good and bad, by division, wickedness, poverty, arrogance and war. He chose to live in our history as it is, with all the weight of its limitations and of its tragedies. In doing so, he has demonstrated in an unequalled manner his merciful and truly loving disposition toward the human creature. He is God-with-us. Jesus is God-with-us. Do you believe this? Together let us profess: Jesus is God with us! Jesus is God with us always and forever with us in history's suffering and sorrow.’
Pope Francis (December 18, 2013 http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/audiences/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20131218_udienza-generale_en.html )
‘Sometimes being listened to is so much like being loved, it is impossible to tell the difference.’
Barbara Pine
‘But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.’
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
‘Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don't tell them they aren't. Sit with them and have a drink.’
Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)
‘We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.’
Thomas Fuller, 17th century
The hope of a secure and liveable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.’
Franklin D Roosevelt
The time is always right to do what is right.
Martin Luther King Jr.
A normal person does not want to kill and will avoid it at all costs. The military won't let you remain normal. It doesn't matter if you think you are smart enough not to get caught up in their lies. They will change you. Don't be sucked into the biggest myth and lie that dying for your country is somehow heroic.
Larry Kerschner
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27691.htm
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
God is a god of desire, not of power and prestige, and Jesus knew God as the object of all our deepest desires – for joy, for laughter, and the love of friends, for sexual fulfilment. All of his life and teaching can be summarised as encouraging us to allow our innate desire, which is also God’s desire for us, to break through our fear and self-loathing. And sin is that fear, fear of desire, fear of life and fear of falling into God.
Stephen McCarthy, in Sebastian Moore’s The Contagion of Jesus, p.120
….. by our nature we are likeable and lovers of one another. We are only mistakenly selfish. Our money-oriented culture heavily reinforces this mistake, telling us that to be likeable we must buy its self-enhancing products, from aftershaves to cars. The Church, when it’s doing its job and letting Jesus speak in it, tells us that we are naturally likeable and flourish in loving one another. Sadly the Church is often not doing its job, but teaches instead in conformity with biases of the culture: against women – even now, in spite of feminism – gay and lesbian people, racial minorities, Jews. This is the whole bunch of us that gospel calls ‘publicans and sinners’, whom Jesus befriended and was crucified for doing so.
Sebastian Moore OSB, The Contagion of Jesus, p.116
Women are equally created in the image and likeness of God, equally redeemed by Christ, equally sanctified by the Holy Spirit; women are equally involved in the ongoing tragedy of sin and the mystery of grace, equally called to mission in this world, equally destined for life with God in glory.
Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, She Who Is, 8
[The Catholic tradition] is ……a tradition that sees nothing absurd in a group of men [the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith] writing to another group of men [the bishops] about women in the Church.
Sebastian Moore OSB, The Contagion of Jesus, p.109.
The Synod Fathers stated: ‘As an expression of her mission the Church must stand firmly against all forms of discrimination and abuse of women’(178). And again: ‘The dignity of women, gravely wounded in public esteem, must be restored through effective respect for the rights of the human person and by putting the teaching of the Church into practice.
John Paul II, Christifideles Laici, 49
Christ's way of acting, the Gospel of his words and deeds, is a consistent protest against whatever offends the dignity of women.
John Paul II
We must be ‘ . . . promoting equitable treatment of women--on whose under-compensated labor the whole international economic system now depends.
Martin McLoughlin of the Center of Concern
Prayer
God, you are good.
The world is filled with your goodness.
In Jesus, we have seen your love
and your desire for transformation.
In the Spirit, alive today,
we know your healing love
and radical, loving wisdom.
You passionately desire human happiness.
God, we’ve noticed that
some people have distorted your record
and have even ruined your good reputation.
Whenever any human life is violated,
your glory is dimmed and dishonoured.
Whenever humans engage in the ways of violence,
your spirit is hindered.
Whenever our beautiful world is abused,
your presence is less visible.
Whenever the systems of our world keep the poor poor,
you are hard to find.
God, we desire to restore your reputation
and expose the wonder of your glory.
Wherever human beings are quickened to fuller and richer life,
your glory is enhanced.
Whenever we can complete the ministry of reconciliation,
your spirit comes alive.
Whenever there is a community of justice and peace,
you are alive among us.
Inspired by a quote from Elizabeth Johnson CSJ, in She Who Is, p. 14
Whenever the truth has been suppressed by governments and their agencies or even by Christian communities, the wrongs done to the indigenous peoples need to be honestly acknowledged. The Synod supported the establishment of ‘Truth Commissions’, where these can help resolve historical injustices and bring about reconciliation within the wider community or the nation. The past cannot be undone, but honest recognition of past injustices can lead to measures and attitudes which will help to rectify the damaging effects for both the indigenous community and the wider society. The Church expresses deep regret and asks forgiveness where her children have been or still are party to these wrongs. Aware of the shameful injustices done to indigenous peoples in Oceania, the Synod Fathers apologized unreservedly for the part played in these by members of the Church, especially where children were forcibly separated from their families.
Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia in Oceania, 2001
Hitler killed only one person in his lifetime: himself. All the other atrocities that are attributed to him were carried out by people who were only following orders.
Mark A. Goldman
The men that American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest the most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
H L Mencken (attributed: source unknown)
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always sceptical and tolerant.
H L Mencken
Living Water,
flow among us and bring us to life.
Pour your love into our hearts
until our compassion grows
to embrace our deepest conflicts and hardships.
Amen.
Prayer for a New Society
All-nourishing God,
your children cry for help against the violence of or world:
Where children starve for bread and feed on weapons;
starve for vision and feed on drugs;
starve for love and feed on videos;
starve for peace and die murdered in our streets.
Creator God,
timeless preserver of resources,
forgive us for the gifts that we have wasted.
Renew for us what seems beyond redemption;
call order and beauty to emerge again from chaos.
Convert our destructive power into creative services;
help us to heal the woundedness of our world.
Liberating God,
release us from the demons of violence.
Free us today from the disguised demon of deterrence
that puts guns by our pillows and missiles in our skies.
Free us from all demons that blind and blunt our spirits;
cleanse us from all justifications for violence and war;
open our narrowed hearts to the suffering and the poor.
Abiding God,
loving renewer of the human spirit,
unfold our violent fists into peaceful hands;
stretch our sense of family to include our neighbors;
stretch our sense of neighbor to include our enemies
until our response to you finally respects and
embraces all creation as precious sacraments of our presence.
Hear the prayer of all your starving children. Amen.
Pax Christi USA
Reflections on the readings
Christianity would be much poorer without today’s gospel narrative - as it would be without the story of the Good Samaritan or Prodigal Son! In today’s gospel, a confrontation occurs. It is not between good and evil but of exclusivist, sexist and racist cultures. We know that the woman came to the well at noon to fetch water in ungodly heat to avoid meeting anyone else. Obviously, the stranger in the form of Jesus did not know her secrets and would soon disappear. At the heart of this story is that God’s love is poured, like water, into our hearts, and did not discriminate when it came to the woman at the well. God comes to us as living water in the form of a stranger. This is how God’s life flows through us. When are outside our comfort zones and break with conventional behavior; when we speak with strangers; when we endure suffering; even when we question and quarrel with God. Here, Jesus cared more about the woman’s thirst than about her sin. It is this love poured into our hearts that should lead us always to deeper love for God as well as our brothers and sisters without exception. There should be no exclusions, no violence against anyone. That's what we will hear if we listen to the spirit speaking deeply within our own hearts. Pope Francis constantly urges us to look into the eyes of another, to recognise her or his humanity and not trash it whether it is the person who is homeless or the person seeking asylum or the person who has done wrong. This was clear to me in April last year (2016) when I attended a Nonviolence and Just Peace Conference in Rome. In the midst of the stories of violence endured by many of the participants, came the constant refrain that the goal of nonviolent resistance to injustice is to awaken humanity in every person, especially the enemy. One participant (Arsenian Carmi) a Palestinian Christian, shared how she became a refugee in her own city in the ongoing Israeli occupation. She spoke of the injustice people endured which cannot be ‘just’ or be part of God’s ‘plans’ for those created in His image. Sharing about the dispossession and suffering, she told how her family continued to be involved in all the communities with equality and Christian love because she had inherited the value of not reacting to evil with evil. Despite attempts at advocacy, negotiation and the rare implementation of international laws and decisions, the aspired liberation has not born fruit amongst the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions – all of which proclaim, peace and reconciliation. Yet, she like all the other participants from Colombia, South Sudan, Uganda, Mexico, Afghanistan and Iraq, insisted that there was a power in nonviolent resistance.
Many people today do ask ‘Is God in our midst or not? How is God amongst us? We may be tempted to scream at God and shout, ‘How can you tolerate such suffering as we try to be in solidarity with people who endure dispossession, violence and death or stand alongside hungry and thirsty people and. Maybe God is present when the humanity of the enemy or the stranger or the foreigner is respected in spite of poverty, hunger, violence. God comes amongst us as a stranger - in the suffering of the poor, the person seeking asylum seekers and refugee, the abused and neglected – and then from those situations shouts back at us and our social systems that cause and perpetuate hunger, poverty, discrimination and inequality. If we truly listen, we can hear the cries of God in the people. We are ever reminded that ‘God loves the world so much that God sent the Son into this world…’ This is how Pope Francis responded last year: ‘The presence of God among people did not take place in a perfect, idyllic world but rather in this real world, which is marked by so many things both good and bad, by division, wickedness, poverty, arrogance and war. He chose to live in our history as it is, with all the weight of its limitations and of its tragedies. In doing so, he has demonstrated in an unequalled manner his merciful and truly loving disposition toward the human creature. He is God-with-us. Jesus is God-with-us. Do you believe this? Together let us profess: Jesus is God with us! Jesus is God with us always and forever with us in history's suffering and sorrow.’ (December 18, 2013)
We hear about the woman’s past and most people may be self-congratulatory. Never done that! I am not like that! While they might have make a few mistakes in their past, they are nothing like this woman with her history. We may not have done what the woman did but what about the pleasures, power and exclusiveness that satisfy us and isolate us from others? With what enemy are we unwilling to sit and talk, to eat and drink? How tolerant are we of those who belong to other religious or cultural traditions or sexual orientations? Do we believe the value of creative conversation, even when exhausted, even with our own young people who may have questions, sometimes abrasive, that well up from deep within them?
If we carefully listen to the gospel today, we see how Jesus respected the full humanness, the dignity, of this woman. The law was secondary when weighed against respect for her. Respectable Jewish men did not hang out in public with another woman, and certainly not with Samaritan women. None of this extraordinary encounter could have happened if Jesus had not been the most radical liberator who breaks taboos and crosses boundaries. He is free to be fully human, not Jewish.The Eugene Peterson translation of the Bible (The Message) has Jesus responding this way: ‘…the time is coming,’ Jesus says, ‘it has, in fact, come – when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. It's who you are and the way you live that counts before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people God is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before God in their worship.’
Jesus sees the person. We struggle to welcome refugees and asylum seekers who come with few resources except their perseverance, determination and innate skills and find only suspicion, vilification and prejudice. Jesus offers the ‘living water’ of hope to all people, of deliverance from the oppressive practices that deny them their true dignity. We are assured that God does not judge on the basis of society’s values but ‘in spirit and in truth. Clearly, as we listen to the gospel, our respect for another must flow from the fact that we all bear God’s imprint.
God is in our midst. How often we forget this. We forget that the one who meets us here and everywhere is the One who has something to give from his heart. This one has allowed his heart to break open and let the world in. We hear how, in Jesus, God comes to us in the form of a stranger and speaks to us through the stranger, the other. We have things to say to each other: the black person to the white, the Christian to the Muslim; the Muslim to the Jew, employees to employers, gay to straight, women to men, young to old, Aboriginal to non-Aboriginal, asylum seekers and new-comers to Australians. It can change our thinking, our attitudes and our behaviour. We see that God will be worshiped in the heart of every person who is reconciled; where racial and social barriers, religious and sexual prejudices are abolished. What matters most was that Jesus would not let any differences (or laws) prevent the Samaritan woman from being called into new life and new mission. Martin Buber once said, 'All real living is meeting.' We are liberated for life - for ourselves, and for all others.
Jesus shows us that we need to challenge 'man-made' boundaries and break the dividing walls of prejudice. If Jesus had kept within the bounds of the expected behaviour of his day, his encounter with the woman would have been superficial with superficial results or even nonexistent. We see how it begins: Jesus cares more about the woman and her ‘thirst’ than about her sin.
So, let us give up our hardened hearts that separate us from others. Much human behaviour is towards self-defeating destruction. People are holy, not denominational boundaries and sectarian shrines. God is holy – not cities, states and nations. Places are holy only because God’s people live there who worship God and not make ‘gods’ of their divisions or market practices. The destructive divisions of Samaritan and Jew, Palestinian and Jew, Christian and Muslim, Orthodox and Reformed, Protestant and Catholic, Sunni and Shiite are ultimately artificial and there will come a time when true believers recognise that God is Spirit. We cannot proclaim God’s Reign as safe and exclusive. What is required is an engagement with the full humanity of the ‘other.’ It requires vulnerability as manifested by Jesus who goes to the well and asks for water, who expects the other to have something to offer him – and he in turn can offer what the other seeks. So often we expect ‘the other’ to drink from our well. We need to take the risk of drinking from their wells and discovering the common ground of our humanity.
Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman transformed her from being a stranger among her own people into a messenger of hope for them. We have people who are on the edges in every community and in every church. They may not be completely excluded, but would be unsure of acceptance and question their right to belong. Every community has people who are ‘thirsty’, who struggle to make ends meet and have little access to the fullness of life. There are people whose lives are dry and desolate because of wrong choices they have made or the effects of other peoples’ action. In his Lenten Message, Bishop Vincent Long (cf. his message below) intimates that we long for a community that will embrace and include not only ourselves but those who have been wronged and also done wrong. What is needed is an environment that is supportive and enables people to live a vibrant and meaningful life. This is the ‘living water’ that people long for: where there is healing, restoration, freedom and connectedness. As followers of Jesus we also have this ‘living water’ to offer one another and make all the difference to the so-called ‘Samaritan outcasts’ amongst us.
A Lenten Message from the Bishop of Parramatta, Vincent Long OFM Conv.
My dear people,
Lent is an important season for us Catholics insofar as it reminds us of the need for conversion. We cannot live life to the full if we gloss over the inconvenient truths about ourselves. We cannot grow to full maturity if we ignore the obstacles that prevent us from reaching our potential. Pope Francis always asks people to pray for him because he says he is a sinner. It is characteristic of a true Christian who recognises the darker side of himself and seeks metanoia, a change of heart.
Bishop Vincent Long OFM Conv. Image: Diocese of Parramatta.
More than ever before, the Catholic Church in Australia needs to recognise the dark crimes of sexual abuse against children and vulnerable people under its care, and the untold damage done to them and their loved ones. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has delivered a shameful indictment not simply on the perpetrators and their enablers but the Church’s collective and systemic betrayal of the Gospel.
Nevertheless, I believe firmly that the Church must be grateful for the work of the Royal Commission. More importantly, we must seize this Kairos, this moment of grace, this opportunity as a catalyst for change and not treat this period as a temporary aberration. It can never be business as usual again. We must have the courage to see how far we have drifted from the vision of Jesus, repent of our sins, and face up to the task of reclaiming the innocence and the powerlessness of the Servant-Leader.
We the custodians of the Church have woefully failed you and especially God’s little ones. Instead of demonstrating that fundamental ethos of care for those who have been harmed and are vulnerable, we the bishops, the leaders, have been shown to have cared primarily for the Church’s own security, reputation and interests. In many ways, we have behaved like the Prodigal Son. We have squandered the Church’s patrimony; we have betrayed your trust. And so it is time for us to come home to the heart of the Gospel. We need to convert to the radical vision of Christ and let it imbue our attitudes, our actions and our pastoral practices.
I have been a learner in how to be a leader after the example of Christ in the Diocese of Parramatta. I want to thank the survivors of abuse who have participated in the Royal Commission and who have personally allowed me the opportunity to hear your stories and to enter into the depth of your painful experience. I have much to learn from you.
I want to thank the faithful parishioners, religious and priests who continue to witness and serve generously in spite of the label of ‘guilty by association’. I can only pledge to walk with you through this ‘valley of darkness’ where our ‘sins have been laid bare’ to the hope of a Church which is purified and humbled, and yet more of a sacrament of God’s love in the world.
So dear friends, dear people of the Diocese of Parramatta,
The paschal rhythm summons us to a discipleship of humility, weakness and vulnerability, of dying and rising in Christ. We are challenged by the words of Ezekiel to remove the heart of stone from us and to have a heart of flesh instead.
As the Church, we must die to the old ways of being Church, which is steeped in a culture of clerical power, self-protection and cover-up. We must learn to rise to a Christ-like way of humility, inclusivity, compassion and powerlessness.
Lent leads to Easter glory. It is Jesus Christ who changes our darkness to light, our sorrow to joy, our suffering to glory and our death into life. May we have the courage and faith to live the paschal rhythm as it unfolds, even through one of the darkest chapters in our history. Let us pray that the Lord may give us a new heart and a new spirit as we enter into the season of renewal in the Church.
LITURGY NOTES FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT
LITURGY NOTES FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT
Second Sunday of Lent
March 12, 2017
Suggested formula for recognition of Indigenous people and their land
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we stand
We pay our respects to them for their care of the land
May we walk gently and respectfully upon the land.
or
I acknowledge the living culture of the ……..people,
the traditional custodians of the land we stand on,
and pay tribute to the unique role they play in the life of this region.
or
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land where we are now gathered,
(the ……) and recognise that it continues to be sacred to them.
We hail them: as guardians of the earth and of all things that grow and breed in the soil; as trustees of the waters – [the seas, the streams and rivers, the ponds and the lakes] - and the rich variety of life in those waters.
We thank them for passing this heritage to every people since the Dreamtime.
We acknowledge the wrongs done to them by newcomers to this land and we seek to be partners with them in righting these wrongs and in living together in peace and harmony.
Readings
Reading I Genesis 12:1-4a
Responsorial Psalm Ps 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22
Reading II 2 Timothy 1:8b-10
Gospel Matthew 17:1-9
Penitential Rite
- Christ Jesus, radiant with God’s peace, your light shines on us. Jesus, have mercy.
- Christ Jesus, beloved Son of God, you confirm us in God’s love. Christ, have mercy.
- Christ Jesus, God’s favour rests on you, you strengthen us with your presence. Jesus, have mercy.
Or
- On our faces that are indifferent and withhold love, let the light of your face shine: Jesus, have mercy.
- On our tired, fearful and discouraged faces, let the light of your face shine: Christ, have mercy.
- On suffering, lonely and despairing faces, let the light of your face shine: Jesus, have mercy.
Opening Prayer
Transfiguring God,
as we stand in the presence of Jesus, your Son,
his radiant face gives us light and peace.
May sin not disfigure nor divide us.
May his transfigured face
shine on all of us and give us courage
so that we too may become lights to one another.
For the Prayer of the Faithful
Introduction: In the midst of a world that numb and filled with fear and anguish, we pray that the Church will rise up and be a sign of hope which transforms human existence. We pray in response: May your light shine on us, O God.
- That Church will be enlightened by the radiant presence of Christ in its love and acceptance of all peoples and cultures without discrimination: people who are poor and rich, the strong and the weak, we pray: May your light shine on us, O God.
- That all the children of Abraham who believe in the one God – Jews, Muslims and Christians – be transfigured by the light of Christ as they respectfully dialogue with each other, acknowledge and welcome differences and cherish each other’s gifts, we pray: May your light shine on us, O God.
- That the people of Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Thailand, South Sudan, Central African Republic, and Nigeria will have their genuine aspirations for peace and freedom, we pray: May your light shine on us, O God.
- That leaders of nations, economists and politicians, poets and artists, will be inspired by the light of Christ to bring justice and peace to their people, we pray: May your light shine on us, O God.
- That all who suffer, all who are marginalised and who have been wounded, especially by the Church, may have their stories told and received and find hope and courage by the support they receive, we pray: May your light shine on us, O God.
- That members of parliament find the courage to speak out with compassion against the injustices perpetrated against people who are living with mental illness; people in prisons and people seeking asylum, we pray: May your light shine on us, O God.
- That government and business leaders work together to provide genuine and just programmes to our neighbours so that the people will live a dignified life and develop a just peace, we pray: May your light shine on us, O God.
- That doing Lent we might focus more on what we can do in building relationships in our communities and workplaces by our attentiveness, generosity and kindness, we pray: May your light shine on us, O God.
- That the church heed the Gospel mandate to cherish all life, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, welcome the refugee and care for all those who are most in need, we pray: May your light shine on us, O God.
- That writers, musicians, artists and all who create beauty listen to the divine voice within them as they work so that they may participate in the transfiguration of the world, we pray: May your light shine on us, O God.
Concluding Prayer: Transfiguring God, open our hearts so that we might continue to receive your light as we cooperate with you in transforming the world.
Prayer over the Gifts
Transfiguring God,
may we see beyond this bread
and recognize Jesus in our midst.
As this bread and wine
becomes our food and drink of life,
may we become to those around us
bread of strength and a source of joy
and reveal to them the face of Christ.
Deliver Us [after the Lord’s Prayer]
Deliver us, Transfiguring God, from every evil
and grant us peace in our day.
Open our eyes to our shortcomings
and wake us up from our complacency,
that we may follow Jesus, your Son, without fear,
and thus hasten the coming in glory
of Jesus Christ, our Saviour……
Prayer after Communion
Transfiguring God,
may Jesus give us the courage
to listen to his voice
and to carry out your plans.
Keep us firm in the hope
that everything has meaning
as we respond to you with love
and generous service
to all our sisters and brothers
Notices
March 12 Call to Mercy Mass, St Mary’s Church 21 Swanson Street, Erskineville, at 11.30 followed by light refreshments. All are welcome to this Mass, particularly anyone who feels in any way marginalised in the church.
March 17 St Patrick
March 19 St Joseph, husband of Mary
March 19 Foundation of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart at Penola in South Australia in 1866
March 19 Invasion of Iraq by USA, Australia and other allies in 2003
Further Resources
Although the Gospel invites us to stand with the blessed and become one of them, who among us wants to be poor, hungry, weeping, or persecuted? Who does not aspire to be rich, well-fed, laughing, and popular? Who dares love our enemies, bless those who persecute us, and do good to those who hurt us? This is the discipleship challenge of Jesus.
John Dear sj, from Transfiguration: A Meditation on Transforming Ourselves and Our World
‘No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.’
Edmund Burke
‘We were taught under the old ethic that man's business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ''Am I my brother's keeper?'' That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.
Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death’:
Eugene V. Debs, 1908 speech
‘[I]n such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.’
Albert Camus
... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
Alex Carey
I cannot accept that to be realistic means to tolerate misery, violence and hate. I do not believe that the hungry man should be treated as subversive for expressing his suffering. I shall never accept that the law can be used to justify tragedy, to keep things as they are, to make us abandon our ideas of a different world. Law is the path of liberty, and must as such open the way to progress for everyone.
Oscar Arias Sanchez, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and President of Costa Rica
Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.
Albert Camus
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
Frederick Douglass
There is no room for legal hair-splitting when it comes to the humane treatment of detainees - not in a nation founded on the rule of law and respect for human rights.
Senator Dick Durbin
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
Albert Einstein
You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way.
Will Rogers
Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education... no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
Abraham Flexner
My idea of our civilization is that it is a shoddy, poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meannesses and hypocrisies
Mark Twain
Is man's civilization only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?
Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, vol III, book V, chapter 7
And the wind shall say ‘Here were decent godless people; Their only monument the asphalt road, And a thousand lost golf balls.’
T.S. Eliot
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
Albert Einstein
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
Martin Luther King Jr
The spiritual life depends on the Unseen.
Each day try to see more good in people,
more of the Unseen in the seen.
Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Love of neighbour is an absolute demand for justice, because charity must manifest itself in actions and structures which respect human dignity, protect human rights, and facilitate human development. To promote justice is to transform structures which block love.
Justice in the World, 1971 Synod of Bishops
Equally worrying is the ecological question which accompanies the problem of consumerism and which is closely connected to it. In their desire to have and to enjoy rather than to be and to grow, people consume the resources of the earth and their own life in an excessive and disordered way. At the root of the senseless destruction of the natural environment lies an anthropological error, which unfortunately is widespread in our day. Human beings, who discovers their capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through their own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of the things that are. Human beings think that they can make arbitrary use of the earth, [abusing] it without restraint to their will, as though it did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which the human person can indeed develop but must not betray. Instead of carrying out their role as a co-operator with God in the work of creation, human beings set themselves up in place of God and thus end up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannized than governed by them.
John Paul II, Centesius Annus, 37
It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.
Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize
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?
Kathy Coffey
The purpose of Lent is not only expiation, to satisfy the divine justice, but above all a preparation to rejoice in God's love. And this preparation consists in receiving the gift of God's mercy - a gift which we receive in so far as we open our hearts to it, casting out what cannot remain in the same room with mercy. Now one of the things we must cast out first of all is fear. Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves. If we were terrified of God as an inexorable judge, we would not confidently await God's mercy, or approach God trustfully in prayer. Our peace, our joy in Lent are a guarantee of grace.
Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration
Contemporary American churches in particular do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership—either of entering into or continuing in fellowship of a denomination or a local church.... Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have not yet decided to follow Christ.
Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Discipline
The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, ‘Give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you.... Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.’ Both harder and easier than what we are all trying to do.
C.S Lewis, Mere Christianity
The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses.
Edward Abbey
The death of a single human being is too heavy a price for the vindication of any principle, however sacred.
Daniel Berrigan
War paralyses your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood. It degrades and stupefies with the sense that you are not responsible, that 'tis not yours to think and reason why, but to do and die,' like the hundred thousand others doomed like yourself. War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.
Alexander Berkman
It seems that 'we have never gone to war for conquest, for exploitation, nor for territory'; we have the word of a president [McKinley] for that. Observe, now, how Providence overrules the intentions of the truly good for their advantage. We went to war with Mexico for peace, humanity and honor, yet emerged from the contest with an extension of territory beyond the dreams of political avarice. We went to war with Spain for relief of an oppressed people [the Cubans], and at the close found ourselves in possession of vast and rich insular dependencies [primarily the Philippines] and with a pretty tight grasp upon the country for relief of whose oppressed people we took up arms. We could hardly have profited more had 'territorial aggrandizement' been the spirit of our purpose and heart of our hope. The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.
Ambrose Bierce, Warlike America
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods
Albert Einstein
COWARDICE, n. A charge often levelled by all-American types against those who stand up for their beliefs by refusing to fight in wars they find unconscionable, and who willingly go to prison or into exile in order to avoid violating their own consciences. These 'cowards' are to be contrasted with red-blooded, 'patriotic' youths who literally bend over, grab their ankles, submit to the government, fight in wars they do not understand (or disapprove of), and blindly obey orders to maim and to kill simply because they are ordered to do so-all to the howling approval of the all-American mob. This type of behaviour is commonly termed 'courageous.
Chaz Bufe
There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility.
J. Bronowski
The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.
Mahatma Gandhi
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enem.
James Madison
There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
Bertrand Russell
The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself:
Robert Ingersoll
Silence is more musical than any song.
Christina Rossetti
There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Aldous Huxley
Oppression can only survive through silence.
Carmen de Monteflores
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
Robert Louis Stevenson
You have not converted a [man] because you have silenced him.
John, Lord Morley
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Andre Gide
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
Andre Gide
There are admirable potentialities in every human being. Believe in your strength and your youth. Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself, 'It all depends on me.'
Andre Gide
Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself - and thus make yourself indispensable.
Andre Gide
Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.
Andre Gide
I submit to you that if a (man) hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
Martin Luther King, Jr Speech in Detroit, June 23, 1963
Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: - 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'
Martin Luther King, Jr Speech at Civil Rights March on Washington, August 28, 1963
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.
Martin Luther King, Jr Speech at Civil Rights March on Washington, August 28, 1963
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Strength to Love, 1963
The ultimate measure of a (man) is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where [he] stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Strength to Love, 1963
...And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Speech in Memphis, April 3, 1968, the day before King was assassinated
Most glorious and inclusive God,
Help us to see your transfiguring powers
when we encounter you in inclusive communities.
Help us to feel your transfiguring powers
as you call our ancestors to attest to your hopes for us and our communities.
Help us to experience your transfiguring powers
as we encounter Jesus resisting oppressive powers in his day and ours.
Help us to encounter you transfigured before us
as we join you in bold ministries of inclusion, intimacy, and justice.
Transfigure our world.
Amen.
Call us out, O God, from familiar settings.
Lead us into unexplored regions,
and make our lives a blessing to all whom we meet.
Give us courage to explore you and to explore ourselves openly.
Amen.
Some reflections on the readings
Mount Tabor [the Mount of the Transfiguration] is steep; rugged and hard to climb. It is narrow and dangerous. And below is the vast, unending plain of Jezreel. There is nothing there. It is out of the way - bleak, isolated and stark.
Genesis today refers to how barren human history can be and has been. Barrenness is a metaphor for hopelessness. There is also the promise of fertility, new life, the newness of all things and new history. There is a radical breaking away from the old [oppression, hopelessness and futility] in leaving the secure barrenness for the sake of a risky future. Abram’s experience is repeated in the experience of the millions of immigrants and refugees today.
The gospel invites us to see things from another viewpoint, to see things in a new way. The cloud images the presence of God in our doubting, suffering and uncertain lives. But, how is the mountaintop experience connected with the poverty, hurt, suffering and injustice around us? The transfiguration is not removed from our lives. The very 'stuff' of daily human life is charged and transformed by his presence with us; who helps us see the importance of what seems ordinary. Gerard Manley Hopkins: 'The world is charged with grandeur of God.' Our world is transfigured because of Christ. The Transfiguration is a turning point in Jesus’ story and our story. And there were no doubt many transfiguring moments for Jesus, e.g., his encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman who asked that he heal her daughter. Her refusal to let him off the hook when he said it was not right to fed the dogs before his own people caused him to see that the gospel must go to the ‘dogs’; it must go to those who marginalised, disempowered, violated and abused in some way.
As usual the disciples fall asleep at very crucial moments. It reflects the tendency to close our eyes to the reality of others around and among us rather than allowing them to be transfiguring moments. The gospel invites us again to see in a new way - from the bottom up; from the point of view of ‘the dogs’; the outsider; the vulnerable; the woman; the asylum seeker; the youth on the streets. This is not a top-down approach.
Our seeing is often affected by the media, our history and experiences, our cultural biases and even our fears. The ‘transfiguration experience’ we need today is to see things with the eyes of Jesus, and from the perspective of the poor, the powerless, women, people of other cultures.
Through the cloud God says, ‘This is my Son, the beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’
Listen to him. And see the light of God in a new humanity; see the transfiguration.
Listen to him in the soldier who rejects war and military activity; see the transfiguration.
Listen to him in the member of parliament who risks censure for speaking out with courage on behalf constituents who are rarely heard, or rarely considered; see the transfiguration.
Listen to him in the dissenter or whistleblower who speaks the truth and risks his or her life or freedom; see the transfiguration.
Listen to him in those who divest from corporations that destroy peoples’ lives and the environment; see the transfiguration.
Listen to him in all who offer their lives for the sake of others who are strangers; see the transfiguration.
‘This is my beloved on whom my favour rests - the favour of grace, spirit, justice, care for the poor, obedience. Listen to him and not to anyone else.’
We are invited to look at the world differently. We need to uphold our belief in a better world especially when our hope is challenged. Belief in this alternative world makes true life possible. It calls for a kind of ‘craziness’ to change the world. It calls for a questioning and challenging of everything – especially when ‘the good is presented as evil’ and ‘evil presented as good’.
Rather than putting on ‘sackcloth and ashes’, rather than ‘fasting’ or ‘abstaining’ and depriving ourselves of food, alcohol, etc., could we consider doing something different?
- Challenge individualism and promote community and solidarity.
- Challenge racism and ethnocentrism, homophobia and sexism, and promote openness and diversity.
- Challenge lazy imitation, and promote inventiveness and creativity.
- Challenge mere tolerance and indifference, and seek to create understanding and compromise.
- Challenge the mere doing of ‘good things’ which do not touch the causes of suffering; and strive to create a true spirit of justice.
- Challenge complacency and self-sufficiency; and strive to for solidarity and interdependence.
- Challenge propaganda and lies, especially about the poor, the vulnerable, the unemployed and marginalised people, and strive to build a spirit of truth.
- Challenge hypocrisy and self-righteousness in the Church; and seek to build a church of the poor and the powerless.
- Challenge jokes, unkind language, slander, debasement of others, demonisation and dehumanisation by politicians and religious leaders.
Through their mountain-top experience the disciples see there is more to Jesus than they thought. How often do we ever hear the church say something positive about us? We hear mostly condemnation – not good enough; not trying hard enough. The gospel says that there is more to each of us than meets the eye – and that we are also worth listening to. Each of us – whoever we are and wherever we are from – bears the imprint of God. ‘Listen to him! Listen to her’.
Last Sunday, we saw how Jesus was tempted to not be human: to reject who he was; to doubt what he knew to be true; to settle for less than what God promised. We can all be tempted in this way. Jesus’ revenge was to live well through justice, building peace and relating with compassion.
If God is revealed in the face of Jesus, Jesus is revealed in the human faces – ‘a thousand faces, not his’ as one poet put it. We need only to open our eyes to witness the daily revelations of Jesus' presence. Jesus made clear that we should change and start to shine. Lent calls for a transfiguration of our hearts and minds.
Let us look on his face where we find our gaze being drawn where his is directed: God and our neighbours. Being faced by Jesus means radical welcome, dignity, being loved. To know the glory of that face, we cannot ignore any human face. ‘The hardest thing is when people behave as if you are not there’ [said a person with a physical disability]. Society often behaves like that towards people living with disability, mental illness. The disability or poverty or sexual orientation is seen but not the face. Can we discover the beauty that only comes from being looked upon with love, appreciation and delight?
The ’transfiguration experience’ returns us to the world: not to be more pious, or doctrinally sound; or deferent to authority, or withdrawing from and being untouched by everyday cares and questions. We need to go down the mountain again. A genuine ‘transfiguration experience’ results in greater involvement that changes, transforms, heals - to work miracles for the poor and marginalized. The disciples thought they 'left the world' below.
This gospel critiques the tendency in the church to continually tell people they are not good enough or doing enough. The words spoken over Jesus are spoken over each one of us. And we are called to listen to one another. When everyone says ‘not good enough’, God says ‘I am well pleased’. Jesus leads the disciples around cliff edges, over rocky roads, down the mountain to the dirty towns and hurting people and unbelieving officials and ineffective institutions, where the sick and outcast, the abandoned waited for them. When we think of how our church can act. We look at how Jesus and the way we act. He was always the compassionate, welcoming, loving, forgiving messenger of God. People are still rejected because of who they are. People of homosexual orientation are often failed. Many have not felt welcome or accepted as the people God made them. We also fail to ensure full equality for every person within the church. Women are discriminated against. They are not allowed to receive all the church’s sacraments. They are not allowed to minister as priests within the church. We see in the gospels how Jesus related to women and how he broke down the barriers and rules that discriminated against women – as well as the downcast, the poor and the oppressed. The church often fails to work to change what is unjust in the world. The story of the Transfiguration makes me wonder if we got it all wrong when we ended up building church buildings instead of building up the ‘church’ -- Jesus sends them all down in the valley to work - refusing Peter's offer to build buildings.
So for our spiritual journey to have any meaning we have to wade into the throngs of humanity amongst us. We cannot doze off and go to sleep at these crucial moments because of fear or apathy or both.
The transfiguration is not a one off event. It is constantly recurring. Jesus transfigured many people - the broken, the wounded, and the wayward. He called to the deepest part of people and transfigured them by the power of God's love. For Jesus that experience was getting closer to who we really are when we hear our name called in love. When that happens we become different and enabled to face the future – to ‘get up’ and go down rocky slopes and faces all measure of people. And he would have been transfigured by them as well. We have a responsibility to construct a world without poverty, war and violence, a place where no one goes hungry; all races and ethnic groups flourish as in a vast garden of many colours. But building this world of peace and justice will require hard work and sacrifice on our part.
Steve Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People recalls an experience on a NY subway one morning. People quietly sat on the train - some reading, others dozing, others contemplating with their eyes closed. It was a peaceful and calm scene. At one stop, a man and children entered the carriage. The children began yelling, throwing things, and grabbing people's newspapers. Though disturbing, their father just sat and did nothing. Steve could not believe the man's insensitivity as he allowed his children run wild and do nothing about it. Clearly, everyone else in the carriage was also annoyed. Finally, Steve said with as much patience he could muster, ‘Your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn't control them a little bit more?’ The man looked up as if coming into consciousness for the first time and said, ‘Oh, you are right. I can do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died an hour ago. I don't know what to think and I suppose they don't know how to handle it either.’ Suddenly Steven Covey saw things differently and thus felt differently and behaved differently. His irritation vanished. No longer did he have to control his attitude or his behaviour. He felt sympathy and compassion for this man's pain.
Nothing had changed in the carriage: the same people, the same irritation, and the same kids. What changed was a way of seeing it all and with the seeing, a change of behaviour. It was a moment of transfiguration, of revelation. We have to see differently to recognise such revelations of God in our daily lives
LITURGY NOTES FOR THE FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
LITURGY NOTES FOR THE FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
First Sunday of Lent
March 5, 2017
Suggested formula for recognition of indigenous people and their land.
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land
on which we stand.
We pay our respects to them 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 more desperate the world becomes, the more intimate and determined becomes the life-sustaining embrace of God... We hear God's word: ‘Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground' (Exod. 3:5). The whole world is now holy ground. We must remove our sandals. Grace is barefoot... Jesus -- crucified, barefoot, the shattered, broken Christ - speaks to the shattered, broken world. The cross is the most holy ground before which the very sandals of God are removed.’
Kosuke Koyama
Liturgy of the Word
First Reading: Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 51:3-4,5-6,12-13,17 R. Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.
Second Reading: Romans 5:12-19
Gospel Reading: Matthew 4:1-11
Penitential Rite
- You have established your covenant with the whole of creation. Jesus, have mercy.
- Through many signs you remind us of your mercy. Christ, have mercy.
- Your ways are love and truth to those who keep your covenant. Jesus, have mercy.
Penitential Rite
- Jesus, you chose to serve God and people rather than to be served. Jesus, have mercy.
- Jesus, you chose to take the way of the cross rather than seek to impress people. Christ, have mercy.
- Jesus, you made love and service of the poor the foundation of God’s reign rather than power and wealth. Jesus, have mercy.
Opening Prayer
God of the desert,
you formed us from the clay of the earth
and breathed into us the spirit of life,
but we turned from your face and sinned.
During this time of repentance
we rely on your mercy.
You call us to renew our relationship with you
through Jesus, your Son.
Opening Prayer
God of the desert,
in the desert Jesus struggled
and overcame all temptations to power and privilege..
In these forty days of Lent
turn our hearts towards your peace,
your forgiveness,
the light of your love,
and your concern for people.
May we find life and joy in our service of one another.
Prayer of the Faithful
Introduction: As people of the new covenant, let us pray to God who calls us to be faithful as God is faithful to us and compassionate to our sisters and brother as we live our vocation to love. The response is: God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
- That countries at risk of famine and reeling from civil conflict such as South Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen will be remembered and rendered assistance when the events in the USA seem to take our attention from this real and distressing situation, we pray: God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
- That countries that have reduced foreign in order spend more on their military will come to see that that their security and peace – a just peace- rests on foreign aid that truly lifts people from their poverty, we pray: God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
- That church leaders may enter into dialogue with all their people and appreciate the gifts that each member has in building up the reign of God, we pray: God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
- That people who live with a sense of failure may find the courage to make a new beginning with themselves and others, we pray: God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
- That the community of believers may in the midst of life’s desert, be capable of peacefully building people’s hope of achieving full liberation, we pray: God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
- That the role of women in peacemaking in society and church be acknowledged as we all strive for equal participation in decision making, we pray: God, in your mercy, hear our prayer..
- That those who experience in their lives the scourge of hunger, strikes, violence, injustice, or exploitation will have their hope reborn as they encounter persons who support them and struggle with them for their rights, we pray: God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
- For the people in Fukushima Prefecture in Japan who continue to live with the after effects of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami: may they know that they are remembered in their suffering and trauma and find healing in their solidarity with one another, we pray: God, in your mercy, hear ur prayer.
- For all who are baptised that their baptism will impulse them to live a new kind of life, as children of the God of Life and the God of all creatures large and small, we pray: God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
- For all people who seek the basic necessities and who seek to live their lives in dignity and freedom that they may find peace through justice by engaging in true dialogue and respect with one another, we pray: God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
- That we as a people may overcome our fear of others by engaging with those who are different to us so that we may live in peace with all nations especially those in the Pacific, we pray: God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
- That we may be strengthened by the spirit of compassion so that we may work for change where the forgotten at home and overseas are made visible and empowered, we pray: God, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Priest: God of the desert, as we begin this Lent we ask you to help us make an authentic and strong effort to achieve conversion of our hearts so that our personal and community lives may be transformed.
Prayer over the Gifts
God of the desert,
out of the wilderness new life emerges.
May this Eucharist impact on our minds and hearts
so that our lives may be changed.
Prayer over the Gifts
God of the desert,
in this bread and wine
Jesus comes among us as food and drink
so that we may serve you and one another.
May we strive to be just rather than powerful
and learn from him who came to do you will.
Prayer after Communion
God of the desert,
you who breathed life into every living creature
have poured into us your spirit.
May the light and life you have created in us
be reflected through our service to one another.
Prayer after Communion
God of the desert,
we have been strengthened in this Eucharist.
May we choose life by taking his way of love
to our sisters and brothers.
Community Notices
March 10 Ash Wednesday
March 11 Devastation by earthquake and tsunami in the Fukushima Prefecture, Japan in 2011 with the deaths of 18,500 people
March 15 World Consumer Rights Day
Further Resources
Human security is a child who did not die,
a disease that did not spread,
a job that was not cut,
an ethnic tension that not explode in violence;
a dissident who was not silenced.
Human security is not a concern with weapons –
it is a concern with human life and dignity.
Pax Christi International 2009
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 on Lent 2003
In our time humanity is experiencing a turning-point in its history, as we can see from the advances being made in so many fields. We can only praise the steps being taken to improve people’s welfare in areas such as health care, education and communications. At the same time we have to remember that the majority of our contemporaries are barely living from day to day, with dire consequences. A number of diseases are spreading. The hearts of many people are gripped by fear and desperation, even in the so-called rich countries. The joy of living frequently fades, lack of respect for others and violence are on the rise, and inequality is increasingly evident. It is a struggle to live and, often, to live with precious little dignity. This epochal change has been set in motion by the enormous qualitative, quantitative, rapid and cumulative advances occurring in the sciences and in technology, and by their instant application in different areas of nature and of life. We are in an age of knowledge and information, which has led to new and often anonymous kinds of power.
Pope Francis Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium para. 52
Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.
Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “throw away” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.
Pope Francis Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium para. 53
The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you put in the bank belongs to the poor.
St. Basil the Great
Meals that are just – a prerequisite for true nourishment of the soul – are not easy to come by. For we must take into consideration who sits around our table (how inclusive and diverse our circle is); who raises our food and how; who prepares and serves the meals and how they are treated; and what we eat. By this standard, how many of our meals do justice?
Ched Myers
A Prayer for Ash Wednesday or Through Lent
The darkness asks us questions.
You are out there and we do not see.
You invite us into the night,
the stillness, the loneliness, the desert place.
We cannot see our shadow;
the cold damp of unknowing rises up from beneath our feet.
We tread cautiously, tentatively.
We are afraid,
afraid of ghosts
haunting us with spectres of guilt
and shame.
We would like to run back,
reach the river bank,
swim the Jordan,
sit in the sun by the sea,
mending our nets.
But you have brought us here
- with no bread.
When we look we can see only ourselves,
our darkness.
When we read,
it is invisible words which cannot be grasped,
thoughts we cannot clutch,
hope we cannot capture.
Yet the wild honey remains a taste in our mouth,
a memory for a new day.
Why have you brought us here?
What miracle will you perform for us?
The darkness sighs around us,
dense with your unseen presence,
close to our breathing,
close to our breathing.
O darkness, enlighten us,
embrace us with your invisible love.
Let us see your glory in the ashes.
Take us by the hand that we may trust the darkness.
Minister to us by your Spirit that we may not be afraid.
Jesus, keep the beasts away.
Amen
William Loader
‘The intensest love that humanity has ever known has come from religion, and the most diabolical hatred that humanity has known as come from religion.’
Swami Vivekananda, 19th century Hindu religion leader
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, England
Civil disobedience is, traditionally, the breaking of a civil law to obey a higher law, sometimes with the hope of changing the unjust civil law. ... But we should speak of such actions as divine obedience, rather than civil disobedience. The term 'disobedience' is not appropriate because any law that does not protect and enhance human life is no real law.
Sister Anne Montgomery, R.S.C.J.
We are not asked to subscribe to any utopia or to believe in a perfect world just around the corner. We are asked to be patient with necessarily slow and groping advance on the road forward, and to be ready for each step ahead as it become practicable. We are asked to equip ourselves with courage, hope, readiness for hard work, and to cherish large and generous ideals.
Emily Greene Balch
The question should not be 'What would Jesus do?' but rather, more dangerously, 'What would Jesus have me do?' The onus is not on Jesus but on us, for Jesus did not come to ask semidivine human beings to do impossible things. He came to ask human beings to live up to their full humanity; he wants us to live in the full implication of our human gifts, and that is far more demanding.
Rev. Peter J. Gomes, professor and minister at Harvard University who passed away in February 2011.
Praying is no easy matter. It demands a relationship in which you allow someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your person, to see there what you would rather leave in darkness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched.’
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Humility leads me to do anything I can do in any situation without having to do everything in every situation.’
Sister Joan Chittister
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.
'An old man was walking along a beat at daybreak, when he noticed a girl 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 young woman 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
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 though
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!
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
Beware of being too rational. In the country of the insane, the integrated man doesn't become king. He gets lynched.
Aldous Huxley, Island
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
To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.
Tacitus
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
General Smedley Darlington Butler
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
James Madison
When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children, but they never ask the women and children what they think
Pat Schroeder
The conceited villager believes the entire world to be his village. Provided that he can be mayor, or humiliate the rival who stole his sweetheart, or add to the savings in his strongbox, he considers the universal order good, unaware of those giants with seven-league boots who can crush him underfoot, or of the strife in the heavens between comets that go through the air asleep, gulping down worlds. What remains the village in America must rouse itself. These are not times for sleeping in a nightcap, but with weapons for a pillow, like the warriors of Juan de Castellanos: weapons of the mind, which conquer all others. Barricades of ideas are worth more than barricades of stones.
Jose Marti,
I bear solemn witness to the fact that NATO heads of state and of government meet only to go through the tedious motions of reading speeches, drafted by others, with the principal objective of not rocking the boat.
Pierre Trudeau
I think that NATO is itself a war criminal.
Harold Pinter
If you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there's a chance for you to contribute to making a better world. That's your choice.
Noam Chomsky, The Chronicles of Dissent
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 manoeuvring for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers
R. Buckminster Fuller
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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
To save your world you asked this man to die; Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?: W. H. Auden: ‘Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier’
Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted into each others' pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
Franklin D. Roosevelt : April 16, 1953
What is love if it remains invisible and intangible? … Grace cannot function in a world of invisibility. Yet, in our world, the rulers try to make invisible ‘the alien, the orphan… the hungry, thirsty…. Sick and imprisoned’. This is violence…. The gospel insists on visibility – the emaciated bodies of starved children must remain visible to the world. There is a connection between invisibility and violence. People, because of the dignity of the image of God they embody, must remain seen. Faith, hope and love are not vital except in ‘what is seen’…. Religion seems to raise up the invisible and despise what is visible. But it is the ‘see, hea4r, touch’ gospel that can nurture the hope which is free from deception.
Kosuke Koyama, ‘Together on the Way: Rejoice in Hope’
http://wccx.wcc-coe.org/wcc/assembly/pth3-e.html
The rejoicing of a private and exclusive community fails to invite all to hope. That is not the gospel. Hope with all creation, and rejoice with all creation! What a far-reaching horizon (Ps. 139:7-10)!
This horizon is not a hallucination. For God no one is a stranger. Every person -- whatever his or her cultural, religious, racial, political identity -- is known to God as an irreplaceable and incomparable person. This is the root of God's wholesome ecumenism. But when our actions say ‘I am not my brother's keeper’ (Gen. 4:9) -- the clearest most understandable expression of sin -- we treat God as a stranger. To say ‘I am not my brother's keeper’ is to look upon others as pollution. This destroys the foundation for hope for the world. ‘Rejoice in hope’ is to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. If hope is not experienced now, it may not be experienced in the future.
We cannot love our neighbours unless we are open to being loved by our neighbours. We cannot extend hospitality to strangers unless we accept hospitality from strangers. The gospel upholds this two-way traffic. One-way traffic breeds self-righteousness.
Kosuke Koyama, ‘Together on the Way: Rejoice in Hope’
http://wccx.wcc-coe.org/wcc/assembly/pth3-e.html
‘Loving ourselves, our families, our neighbours, our country and every living things is the reason we are here on earth. If we follow the ripple in the pond where a stone hits the water, we can easily see that the entire pond is affect by that one little stone. If the stone represents love, and it drops somewhere in our universe, that love will send its ripple throughout the entire universe. It is the same with anger and hate. We must choose which ripples we wish to send into our universe’
Bob Randall, Songman: The Story of an Aboriginal Elder, Sydney, ABC, 2003, p.242.
“The fundamental sin is exploitation, whether it be expressed in the domination of male over female, white over black, rich over poor, strong over weak, armed military over unarmed civilians, human beings over nature. These analogously abusive patterns interlock because they reset on the same base: a structure where an elite insists on its superiority and claims the right to exercise dominative power over all others considered subordinate, for its own benefit. … What is being looked for is not simply the solution to one problem, but an entire shift of world view away from patterns of dominance toward mutually enhancing relationships.”
Elizabeth Johnson CSJ. She Who Is, pp.27-28
O God Source of Life, Creator of Peace,
help Your children, anguished and confused,
to understand the futility of hatred and violence
and grant them the ability to stretch across
political, religious and national boundaries
so they may confront horror and fear
by continuing together
in the search for justice, peace and truth.
With every fiber of our being
we beg You, O God,
to help us not to fail nor falter. Amen.
Rabbi H. Rolando Matalon
Ever-welcoming God,
you invite us to bring all that we are,
our questions and our failures,
into your life-giving presence;
Give us courage to live before you without pretense,
that we may know the joy of forgiveness and renewal
without fear of expulsion.
Amen.
OutinScripture
Reflections on the readings……
Today we return to our origins and remember who we are, how we are meant to be, and how the story has changed. Where life was meant to be shared [Genesis], God's word has been perverted and God’s image in people (others and ourselves) has been disfigured and maimed. The readings are very contemporary: about our lives and inconsistencies, of struggles to be faithful, of broken relationships, of the search for wisdom, the fullness of life, of a meaningful relationship with God and one another that embraces a compassionate responsibility for the every living thing.
According to Matthew, when Jesus was baptized, he was outed by the Spirit as God’s own beloved. For him it meant struggling to discern how to live with that knowledge. He had to wrestle, as we all do, who or what will define our identity. Will a hostile, albeit, subtle other (the tempter, or today church, or government, or corporation) define us, or will we strive to define for ourselves what it means to be a child of God.
We see how we have become addicted to immediate satisfaction which leads to exploitative behaviour, human trafficking and corporate irresponsibility. Greed for wealth and what it brings has led to a shortage of resources for some, unhealthy dependence on fossil fuels, climate change and devastation of natural resources and many species, while leaving many people with desperate need as they are paid unfairly, or subject to unjust trade restrictions. The desire for power and fame has led to celebrity voyeurism, dissatisfaction with quiet and gentle living, and an increasing sense of powerlessness among those who are unable to reach the heights of fame that our world seems to demand.
Jesus’ example of facing temptation and overcoming it reminds us that justice can only be done as we learn to live lives of discipline and simplicity, of consideration and sharing, of prayer and service. Jesus was tempted to see God’s reign in terms of controlling everything –where the world would be pain-free if he took power to himself – thus making a sham of any genuine love. We see that obtaining worldly power demands turning one’s back on God and the human vocation to love. Pope Francis has described the devil’s kingdoms as the places where ‘everything comes under the laws of competition ... where the powerful feed upon the powerless’ (Evangelii Gaudium, ‘The Joy of the Gospel,’ #53). But Jesus offers an unequivocal ‘no’ to the idolatry of power. He declines the invitation to a life dedicated to self-service rather than love, compassion, solidarity and justice. What we see in the readings today is a rejection of enticements to power and greed in order to say yes to his vocation as God’s Son. Our humanity is constantly attacked: to think small, to be mean; to be loveless; to seek violent ways of responding to conflict; to seek the easy way out.
We have the opportunity to see ourselves, how we can be there more for others; how we can bring some hope to the story of disfigurement and maiming in others and in creation. The gospel is about seeing, hearing and touching; how we grow in compassion; how we make love and compassion with justice visible; how we stand with others. Can we listen to Jesus with ears open to the truth? Prayer is making a space so that we can be sensitive to God and respond in ways that touch others, where we can attend to the best interests of others. Prayer is hearing God clamouring through the voices and situations of people around us. Prayer is allowing our heart to be broken open so that the world can enter. Jesus always models a way to be human; how we can be people with a heart and passion of God for humanity and creation. He models ways in which we can resist all that does not promote fullness of life for ourselves and other.
If the gospel causes us to be less engaged, less relational, less people of the heart then it is distorted and fails to reflect God’s loving heart in Jesus. This is the kind of religion we should give up for Lent.
We see in the temptations the drive to substitute the fullness of life for self-centredness and greed; obsession with reputation and power, the need to control and manipulate; the temptation to a small, safe, comfortable and conventional life.
In his recent Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis formulates a number of challenges for us. He reminds that despite improvements in areas such as health care, education and communications, the majority of our sisters and brothers are barely living from day to day with consequences such as the spread of disease, people gripped by fear and desperation, even in the so-called rich countries. Lack of respect for others and violence are on the rise, and inequality is increasingly evident. It is a struggle to live and, often, to live with precious little dignity. We are in an age of knowledge and information which has led to new and often anonymous kinds of power. He calls for choices to a number of realities flowing that power:
No to an economy of exclusion. We may not kill but we have to stand for the value of human life but saying ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality which also kills; where it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?. How can we stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. The laws of competition and the survival of the fittest mean that the powerful feed upon the powerless. Masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.
No to the new idolatry of money whose dominion over ourselves and our societies is calmly accepted and where the current financial crisis overlooks the fact that it originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person! The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. This system tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits leaving whatever is fragile, like the environment, defenseless before the interests of a deified market.
No to a financial system which rules rather than serves because it leads to the manipulation and debasement of the person, whereas we are called to a committed response which is outside the categories of the marketplace.
No to the inequality which spawns violence because until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples are reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence. The poor and the poorer peoples are accused of violence, yet without equal opportunities the different forms of aggression and conflict will find a fertile terrain for growth and eventually explode. Whilst economic mechanisms promote inordinate consumption, unbridled consumerism combined with inequality proves doubly damaging to the social fabric. Inequality eventually engenders a violence which recourse to arms cannot and never will be able to resolve.
When presented with political power in the world and tempted to show his stuff and muster his magic, Jesus reserves glory for God alone. That power is clearly reflected in military spending, the manufacture and sale of arms, making and laying of landmines, development of nuclear weapons; environmental destruction, use of vengeance and revenge as some short cut way of making peace. Though trillions of dollars and pounds and Euros are spent on bombs, only some will be used. But they still explode in peoples’ faces: the faces of millions who hungry, homeless, lack education or decent health care, have no food, no shelter, no education, no decent health care.
Jesus focuses on loving and serving God. He offers an alternative to the way of power and domination of the world. The sin of the ‘first humans’ was to reject their humanness. Jesus would not step outside the confines of humanity. Even when ‘good ends’ were dangled in front of him, he resisted displays of control, power, domination and manipulation. He preferred to draw people to himself by remaining faithful to his full identification with us which began at his baptism when he stepped into the waters of the Jordan with the rest of those people there. Jesus says 'Yes' to another world – a world of justice and integrity; a world of human life and dignity; a world of acceptance and inclusiveness.
The propensity to grasp rather than receive infects our lives, crafting economic and political structures that protect ourselves at the expense of others. These can creep into the tiny choices we make every day between loving or resisting love. An unrestrained search for power, even when carried out with good intentions, leads to evil ways. The end does not justify the means. Going to war to build peace; to make the world safe for freedom and democracy; to protect our national interests!!! The story of temptations should be read with an eye towards the attitudes of human beings toward power - those attitudes present in Jesus' time as well as those attitudes we see present in our time.
The justice of God's Reign requires living in ways that are consonant with this justice. With respect to living out the demands of our humanity and justice, the temptations show us that we constantly face 'short cuts' that are proposed to us.
There is little evidence that people actually hear God's word 'in Church'. No doubt there are exception. There are rare instances where God spoke to people as they prayed in the Temple, but God gets the message across to us in our day-to-day lives. God's work in Jesus was accomplished in the wilderness, in the world. It happens in the lives of people and we know in the past that has included so-called ‘pagans’. They have revealed to Israel the world that Christ does not endorse. Sometimes those voices have to be rather strident in order to get the message across to those who are comfortable in their little world and unable or unwilling to hear about others. Stridency is inevitable when issues of justice and injustice are involved. It could be part of the movement of the Spirit. The issues and questions that God is concerned about are those about our relationships in our day-to-day lives - and these are the questions God confronts us with as we live in this world.
'If you are the Son of God….’ If you have special relationship with God - call on God to perform a miracle to feed yourself. Why should anyone beloved by God have to suffer hunger, or any other pain? Should God not protect from all harm and pain [hunger, a tsunami, failure in one's life projects, sickness, doubts, restlessness, worry] those closest to God like Jesus? That would make religion a cruel joke. Judging from Jesus' response, God does not offer a quick fix for our problems, no massive food supply; no end to questions and ambiguities in our lives. Jesus could have spared himself the pain that bedevils the lives of millions of people in our world. But he would have distanced himself from us. He would not have lived a truly human life. And we would not be able to identify with him or claim that he truly knows our human struggles.
What have we learned by going our own way? We have learnt how to make wars and advanced weapons of war; cheat on another; lie for our own gain; elect leaders that represent our narrow concerns and interests against the 'others'; exclude the poor from our vision and concern; busy ourselves so that we do not have to reflect on our nakedness. The media gives us daily examples of how we have gained 'knowledge' and how we use it against one another and ourselves.
The question of choices was clearly portrayed in the movie Of Gods and Men for seven foreign Trappist monks at a monastery in Algeria during the civil war in the 1990’s. Their mission was to witness to a life of prayer and contemplation and service the very poor people in the area by providing them medical assistance, education and other services. As the terrorism grew intense day by day, the monks witness the horror of townspeople being ruthlessly murdered. Some European construction workers had been murdered and a woman on a bus was stabbed by Islamic fundamentalists for not wearing a veil. The monks realised that they could not escape the same fate if they remained in place. They were advised by the Algerian government to leave for their own safety. The movie moves to a scene where the monks meet in their chapter room struggling to come to a unanimous decision. Do they leave for safety or stay with the people they lived in solidarity with and face certain death? The discussion, sharing, silences are like a period in the wilderness as the monks struggle with their fears, their faith and their passion. What would they decide? In fact, the audience is also being asked, ‘what would you decide’?
Finally the monks chose to stay and not abandon the people. They feel that they have been sent to work and pray among the oppressed people of the country, and would not abandon them, no matter the danger or suffering. Like Jesus in the wilderness, they offer us, despite the tears and apprehension, the possibility of another way to live and what the world might look like when transformed by the spirit of Christ.
In a powerful statement, the Abbott muses aloud: ‘If it should happen on day, and it could be today, that I become a victim of terrorism, which somehow seems to encompass all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like them to be able to associate this death, my death, with so many equally violent ones allowed to fall into anonymity. My life is of no more value than any other, nor any less value. I have lived long enough to know that I share the evil which seems to prevail in the world and even in that which would strike me blindly.’ They were all beheaded in 1996.
We have a share in the practice of injustice and violence but we also have a share in trying, with Christ, to restore and heal the world. Lent is about healing - our healing and the world’s healing; it is about connecting with one another, the environment and God. It is about redistribution and solidarity. It is about compassion. It is about making God’s heart visible in our lives. Lent is that special time of the year when each of us is called to see what is truly ‘in our hearts.’ And to help us do that, we do as Jesus did: We go into the ‘wilderness’ for 40 days; we pray, fast, and remind ourselves again to be faithful to what our true calling is: ‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.’
LITURGY NOTES FOR THE EIGHTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR, CYCLE A
LITURGY NOTES FOR THE 8th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR, CYCLE A
Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
February 26, 2017
Suggested formula for recognition of indigenous people and their land.
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we stand.
We pay our respects to them 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 and occupiers of the land where we are now gathered, (the Gadigal people of the great Eora nation,) 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.
Readings
First Reading: Isaiah 49:14-15
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 62:2-3, 6-7, 8-9 Rest in God alone, my soul.
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Gospel Reading: Matthew 6:24-34
Penitential Rite
· Christ Jesus, you remind us to keep seeking God’s will and the good of people around us: Jesus, have mercy.
· Christ Jesus, you show us in your life God’s never ending care for us: Christ, have mercy.
· Christ Jesus, you invite us to keep trusting in God’s care for all creation, even our enemies: Jesus, have mercy.
Opening Prayer
Most loving God,
your care surpasses
even the tender love of a mother.
May this word and sacrament
renew and strengthen our trust in your loving care,
that we will abandon all anxiety
and see your reign above all.
General Intercessions
Introduction Let us pray trust to the loving God as we bring before God all the needs and concerns of all people. Let us pray: R/ Our help comes from you, O God (or In you we trust, O God).
- For God's people, that they may through the ministry of the church experience the tender and steadfast love of God and share it with others. Let us pray: R/ Our help comes from you, O God (or In you we trust, O God).
or
- For the Church: that it may be a living sign of God's caring love for people by its concern for the poorest among us. Let us pray: R/ Our help comes from you, O God (or In you we trust, O God).
- For the leaders of the world: that they may look after the welfare of the people entrusted to them and bring them peace, justice and human dignity. Let us pray: R/ Our help comes from you, O God (or In you we trust, O God).
- For people who are burdens with problems and worries: may they know the strength that comes from trusting in God. Let us pray: R/ Our help comes from you, O God (or In you we trust, O God).
- For asylum seekers and refugees: that they may in their search for security and well-being be afforded true dignity and respect in their places of arrival. Let us pray: R/ Our help comes from you, O God (or In you we trust, O God).
- For asylum seekers who have lost their lives in their attempts to find peace, justice and security, and those who have died at the hands of those intended to care for them: that they may find the peace that they never found on earth. Let us pray: R/ Our help comes from you, O God (or In you we trust, O God).
- For people who live in situations of poverty, social exclusion, violence and conflict: that they know that God weeps for them in their pain and suffering and longs for us to respond with humanity. Let us pray: R/ Our help comes from you, O God (or In you we trust, O God).
- For the people in Syria, Iraq, Myanmar, the Ukraine, the Central African Republic, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo: may peace come to the people so that they may live in justice, fraternity and harmony. Let us pray: R/ Our help comes from you, O God (or In you we trust, O God).
- For people living in poverty and need: may they experience something of God’s concern for them through the generosity of our hearts. Let us pray: R/ Our help comes from you, O God (or In you we trust, O God).
Prayer: God of love, give us the trust in you that will enable us to live our lives joyfully so that we may complete the work you have entrusted to us.
Prayer over the Gifts
Most loving God,
you have prepared for us,
the gifts before us.
You provide us with food and drink
that lead to fullness of life.
May we continue to offer you our life and efforts,
as a token of our deep and lasting trust in you.
Prayer after Communion
Most loving God,
in this Eucharist you have reassured us
that you walk with us each day.
Help us to be mindful of all living things,
our sisters and brothers and all creation
and give us the courage to work
for your reign of goodness and mercy,
of integrity and committed justice.
Resources
Further resources
‘I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.’
Henry David Thoreau Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
‘How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.’
Henry David Thoreau
‘The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light and with a lamp lengthen out the day.’ Henry David Thoreau
‘It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.’
Henry David Thoreau
‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.’
Henry David Thoreau Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
‘What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.’
Henry David Thoreau
‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.’
Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
‘If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.’
Henry David Thoreau
‘You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.’
Henry David Thoreau
‘If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.’
Henry David Thoreau Walden
‘Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.’
Henry David Thoreau Walden and Other Writings
‘I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.’
Henry David Thoreau Walden
‘There is no remedy for love, but to love more.’
Henry David Thoreau
‘Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.’
Henry David Thoreau
‘When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.’
Frederic Bastiat
‘Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know that government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last, has become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed -- first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf.’
Gerry Spence, Lawyer and author - From Freedom To Slavery
‘Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.’
Hugo Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice
‘The dissenter is every human being at those times of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.’
Archibald Macleish (1892-1982) Assistant Secretary of State under Franklin Roosevelt
‘The most powerful tool in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.’
Stephen Biko
Reflections on the readings
In the seminary we were asked to a novel by the Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo called Silence. It is being made into a film. It is a beautiful and very disturbing book. It has the marks of a deep grace that overturns things and causes us to question what we thought we knew before. It begins beyond Japan (in every way), and we journey with Portuguese missionaries on a long sea journey until they arrive in a Japan where the threat of capture and torture and death constantly hanging over their heads. We also see what the preaching of the Christian gospel meant for those who embraced it in 17th century Japan. It is a story of apostasy and also of martyrdom as the characters share something of the terrible silences of God. Elie Wiesel also wrote of this in Night and the Holocaust for the Jewish people.) But the breaking of God’s silence in this novel is striking and transforming. As with contemporary stories of torture, we see just what people will endure under duress whether out of faith, anger or sheer defiance.
Endo shows us a historic clash of cultures in this 17th century European missionary to Japan and his flock of Japanese converts, as they endure a fierce persecution. It gets down to basics about what Christ’s death means for believers. As we approach Lent, we might also be called to ‘silence’ and darkness, about a Christian who is forced to make a terrible choice in a time of great personal darkness — in a time when God seems silent. Mother (Saint) Teresa of Calcutta wrote about her sense of ‘abandonment’ by God. Today’s readings call us to trust in God’s providential care and love for us in our everyday lives. Faith, though, always tests not just us, but who we think God is, and who God is for us (this God who ‘is love’). How can we know for sure? We have to trust in the God we know. It is not a question of God’s existence but who and what is God.
Maybe Jesus’ ‘Do not worry about tomorrow’ also cause us to question who God is. We could ask what planet is Jesus on. With Syria, Iraq, Thailand, Egypt, the Ukraine boiling over, with random violence evident in many way, unemployment increasing and more people threatened with job loss, natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, fires and typhoons, more young people are under stress and hurting themselves or others, what is Jesus talking about? What do these words mean for people who are fleeing fighting, are persecuted for their faith, when food security, access to water, land for planting or for farming, health care, basic education are far from certain? People worry about their life, if they will have enough to eat, provide health care, and clothe themselves, and Jesus says, ‘Do not worry about tomorrow’. Most of the people who would have been listening to Jesus would have been those living from hand to mouth, some probably unemployed or sick, with consequent and immediate anxieties about food and clothing for themselves and their families. Jesus is sharing with us his vision of God’s care and providence for all that God has made, and the right response of disciples to the gift of life. His words about birds and lilies are not meant to be romantic. He is leading us to see and trust in God’s care for us. In calling attention to birds, flowers, and other living elements of God’s vibrant creation, Jesus reminds us of God’s care for all creatures. Moreover, such reflection on creation offers one route for re-centering ourselves in the face of challenges.
Where the rich might be worried about money, either because they fear losing it or want to make more, the poor can also be worried about money because they have none. Both rich and poor can be consumed by concern about money; a consuming passion. Jesus is not denying legitimate and responsible concern for material goods, but his concern is the integration of this into every life in a way that does not enslave. We saw in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:44-45) how radical sharing and redistribution of wealth practiced by the early Christians shaped them into a people given to gratitude and generosity, not anxiety. It is something we see amongst the poor in the Philippines and Peru. The refusal to obsess about food and drink and clothing—the basic necessities of life—make it possible to practice true gospel hospitality: does my neighbour (even my enemy) have enough to eat, drink, and wear?
Clearly Jesus is aware of our needs and stresses. He offers a solution and this is the key point of the reading today: ‘Seek first the reign of God, and God’s righteousness (God’s justice).’ We need to begin again, to re-centre ourselves, and build on foundations stronger than fear and anxiety that can lead to greed and selfishness. To really seek God’s reign means working towards the day when everyone can live a fully human life; live in peace. Jesus’ concern is that we ‘seek God’s reign’. God’s righteousness or justice is about our relationships with one another. We live in a world that is interconnected but many live individualistic lives that numb them or leave them indifferent to theirs sisters and brothers. We are constantly confronted with God’s question to Cain, ‘Where is your brother/sisters?’ Many of the troubles people face today go back to the indifference of corporations where profits are more important than people and where governments will bail out banks and financial institutions but fail to support ordinary people who risk losing their home. The global financial crisis a few years ago which impoverished millions of people was largely caused by the indifference and greed of financiers around the world. And those who were most affected were even demonised and further punished with the trickle down cruelty of austerity measures whilst those who caused the crisis were rewarded and even bailed out. They were not held to account. ‘Where is your brother/sister’? God wants us to reflect on our relationship with the goods of the earth. How do we relate to the goods of the earth and to one another in the human family? How do we view them? Do we see them as gifts to be shared or to be possessed? Do we care that the clothes we buy from places such as Bangladesh and other Asian countries are at the price of people receiving barely enough to live on and working in unsafe conditions? Do we care that 14 million children died of hunger every year? Do we care that the people crossing the Mediterranean are escaping extreme and life-threatening poverty? Do we care if they end up at the bottom of sea or those who travel by boat to Australia to escape violence, persecution and conflict, drown?
We need to focus our attention on right relations, compassion, sharing, truth-telling, righteousness. We need to be people who reflect an alternate way of living besides consumption and arrogance that put first things first.
In the First World we can tend to emphasise individualism over the common good or care for creation and the survival of the planet. Jesus’ words and Catholic Social Teaching steer toward a future that is sustainable and secure. These words run contrary to repeated suggestions that ‘the age of entitlement is over’. It is not over for those with the means to care for themselves and profit at the expense of others. The gospel is saying that ‘entitlement’ comes from the fact that we are cared for by God and that we bear God’s imprint. The common good fosters a situation where people can live in vibrant local communities; where the quality of life for all takes precedence over the accumulation of wealth and possessions by individuals or nations; where diversity is welcomed and protected; and where weapons are replaced by dialogue and diplomacy to resolve conflict locally, nationally and internationally.
The gospel today unmasks our inhumanity and raises some hard questions for us:
Why do people die of hunger, if we have the resources to share with everyone?
Why is there competition when our humanity is bound up in solidarity?
Why does competitiveness define us as people and nations when solidarity is the mark of humanity and Christlikeness?
Why do we continually accept an economic system that is based on unending growth and profit when that system marginalises many and leaves them in poverty?
Why is consumerism more a like a ‘philosophy of life’ knowing that it triggers artificial needs that drain us of our human spirit and sensibility?
Why do we still worship money, power and wealth for our security rather than see that our security comes from caring for the most needy and vulnerable among us?
Jesus calls us to a new kind of reality. His intent is less about judging and more about calling us to understand our motives and our own questions in relation to his question. The dilemma for us as Christians is our particular place in the world and the perspective that it gives us. It is important that we do not numb ourselves, our hearts and our spirits from the reality of starvation, lack of shelter, unemployment, the movement of people escaping violence. Those who have resources and wealth bear a deep responsibility, especially those who stake out a claim of serving God. Jesus says that this responsibility is never finished and that this question of wealth must be a primary question for us. It requires us to ask ourselves again and again—how did this wealth accumulate? Is anyone in need because of it? Jesus is calling us reflect about our relationship with the goods of the earth. How do we look upon all the creation that God has given to us? Do we see it as a gift, as something that really doesn’t belong to any one of us? Whatever we have, it’s a gift from God ultimately. How do we relate to the goods of the earth and to one another in the human family. If we really seek the reign of God, that means that we’re working towards the day when everyone will have a full human life. Everyone will live in peace, fullness of life and joy.
Still, even in failure, God does not desert us when our projects fail or come up short.
Though many struggle and worry over real concerns, Jesus’s words could broaden our vision and help us focus less on ourselves and more on those in need; less about getting and more about giving; less worrying about our own welfare and turning our attention to others. Choices we asked to make do not happen once in our lifetime. They come daily, in large and small ways.
What will be the consequences of my choices for self and others?
The urgent cry <‘No to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills’> to all people by Pope Francis has often been concealed. In very expressive words, he sums his outrage: ‘it cannot be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two point. This is a case of exclusion. We cannot stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving. This is a case of inequality.’
We live under ‘the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose.’ As a result, ‘while the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few.’
‘The culture of well-being anesthetizes us and we lose our cool if the market is offering something that we haven't yet bought, while all those lives cut short due to lack of opportunities seem to be a spectacle that doesn't affect us in any way.’
This is the Gospel. It is a message that needs to echoed in our Christian communities if we are not to become incapable of ‘feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor. We no longer weep for other people's pain.’
LITURGY NOTES FOR THE SEVENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR, CYCLE A
LITURGY NOTES FOR THE SEVENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR CYCLE A
Claude Mostowik MSC
Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
February 19, 2017
Suggested formula for recognition of indigenous people and their land.
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we gather.
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 and occupiers of the land where we are now gathered, (the Gadigal people of the great Eora nation,) 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.
Readings
First Reading: Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 103:1-2, 3-4, 8, 10, 12-13 R./ The Lord is kind and merciful.
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 3:16-23
Gospel Reading: Matthew 5:38-48
Penitential Rite
· Christ Jesus, teach us to forgive those who have harmed us. Jesus, have mercy.
· Christ Jesus, show us how we can be good to those who have wounded us. Christ, have mercy.
· Christ Jesus, show us how we have pained and injured others. Jesus, have mercy.
Opening Prayer
God of tenderness,
in Jesus, your Son,
you have shown us your tenderness
and embrace us as your sons and daughters.
Reveal you heart within us,
so that we may be merciful and understanding
and to accept everyone without condition
as you have accepted us.
or
God of tenderness,
in Jesus you challenge us
to renounce violence and forsake revenge.
Teach us to recognise even our enemies
as your sons and daughters
and to love them without measure or discrimination.
General Intercessions
Introduction Let us pray to God who is kind and merciful to all people, the deserving and underserving, so that we imitate God’s all-embracing love. Let us pray: R/ Show your loving kindness to your people, O God
· For the Church, God's people, that it may not be divided into factions: that it may preach and practice forgiveness, healing and rehabilitation, let us pray: R/ Show your loving kindness to your people, O God
· For the Churches separated from one another by centuries of misunderstanding and disputes, that they may approach one another in Christ in mutual forgiveness, cooperation and love, let us pray: R/ Show your loving kindness to your people, O God
· For children that have been institutionally abused by those who should have cared for them, that their stories be heard from their point of view so that may receive a fair hearing and receive justice, R/ Show your loving kindness to your people, O God
· For all of us, that we may forgive one another from the heart, seek no revenge, bear no grudges, learn to see others as people loved by the same God, let us pray: R/ Show your loving kindness to your people, O God
· For those who have hurt us in any way, and whom we find difficult to love, let us pray: R/ Show your loving kindness to your people, O God
· For countries and people who carry a historical memory of pain, suffering and conflict, may they seek to address these issues and seek peace, let us pray: R/ Show your loving kindness to your people, O God
· For our families, that we may not be discouraged by one another's shortcomings but be attentive to the goodness that is in each and seek peace and happiness together, let us pray: R/ Show your loving kindness to your people, O God
· For our Christian communities, that they may be places of reconciliation, of mercy and compassion, let us pray: R/ Show your loving kindness to your people, O God.
· For communities and peoples who are still consumed by hatred and violence, that they listen to the their hearts and the voices of the other to seek reconciliation and peace, let us pray: R/ Show your loving kindness to your people, O God
Prayer Merciful God, fill our hearts with your love and help us to look at one another with your own eyes. May we rise above our human weakness and keep faithful in loving you and loving one another.
Prayer Over the Gifts
God of tenderness,
we bring before you these gifts of peace
to celebrate the feast of love of your Son.
May we discover his presence within us
and to create one another anew
with the same liberating and forgiving love
which you have shown us.
Prayer After Communion
God of tenderness,
may this celebration with your Son
bring us peace to share with one another.
May his words and life teach us
to forgive one another wholeheartedly.
Notices
Palm Sunday
Rally and March
April 9, 2017 – 2.00pm
Hyde Park North, Sydney
Bring banners, flags and posters for your groups
Further details will be provided in the coming weeks.
Further Resources
We are called to be instruments of God, so that our planet might be what he desired when he created it and correspond with his plan for peace, beauty and fullness.
Pope Francis, Laudato Sí, 53
Every ecological approach needs to incorporate a social perspective which takes into account the fundamental rights of the poor and the underprivileged.
Pope Francis, Laudato Sí, 93
Wars shatter so many lives. I think especially of children robbed of their childhood.
Pope Francis, 18 January 2014
Peace is the outcome of a long and demanding battle which is only won when evil is defeated by good.
Pope John Paul II, 1 January 2005
It is to be hoped that hatred and violence will not triumph in people's hearts, especially among those who are struggling for justice, and that all people will grow in the spirit of peace and forgiveness.
Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 27
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. Justice will never be fully attained unless people see in the poor person, who is asking for help in order to survive, not an annoyance or a burden, but an opportunity for showing kindness and a chance for greater enrichment. Only such an awareness can give the courage needed to face the risk and the change involved in every authentic attempt to come to the aid of another. It is not merely a matter of "giving from one's surplus", but of helping entire peoples which are presently excluded or marginalized to enter into the sphere of economic and human development. For this to happen, it is not enough to draw on the surplus goods which in fact our world abundantly produces; it requires above all a change of life-styles, of models of production and consumption, and of the established structures of power which today govern societies.
Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 58
May nonviolence become the hallmark of our decisions, our relationships and our actions, and indeed of political life in all its forms.
Pope Francis, Message for World Day of Prayer for Peace 1 January 2017
"And so long as you haven't experienced this:
To die and so to grow,
You are only a troubled guest on the dark earth."
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"If your everyday practice is to open to all your emotions, and to all the people you meet,
to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that – then that will take you as far as you can go. And then you will understand all the teaching that anyone has ever taught."
"Lo ho quel che ho donato – I have what I have given"
Gabriele D'Annunzio
"Nothing lasting can be built without a desire by people to live differently and exemplify the changes that they want to see in society."
Omnia Marzouk
Great God, who has told us
"Vengeance is mine,"
save us from ourselves,
save us from the vengeance in our hearts
and the acid in our souls.
Save us from our desire to hurt as we have been hurt,
to punish as we have been punished,
to terrorize as we have been terrorized.
Give us the strength it takes
to listen rather than to judge,
to trust rather than to fear,
to try again and again
to make peace even when peace eludes us.
We ask, O God, for the grace
to be our best selves.
We ask for the vision
to be builders of the human community
rather than its destroyers.
We ask for the humility as a people
to understand the fears and hopes of other peoples.
We ask for the love it takes
to bequeath to the children of the world to come
more than the failures of our own making.
We ask for the heart it takes
to care for all the peoples
of Afghanistan and Iraq, of Palestine and Israel
as well as for ourselves.
Give us the depth of soul, O God,
to constrain our might,
to resist the temptations of power
to refuse to attack the attackable,
to understand
that vengeance begets violence,
and to bring peace--not war--wherever we go.
For You, O God, have been merciful to us.
For You, O God, have been patient with us.
For You, O God, have been gracious to us.
And so may we be merciful
and patient
and gracious
and trusting
with these others whom you also love.
This we ask through Jesus,
the one without vengeance in his heart.
This we ask forever and ever. Amen
prayer for world peace
Sister Joan Chittister osb (Benedictine sisters of Erie)
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
John O'Donohue Beannacht from Anam Cara © 1997.
Refuse to fall down.
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down
lift your heart toward heaven
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled,
and it will be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you
from lifting your heart
toward heaven —
only you.
It is in the midst of misery
that so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good
came of this,
is not yet listening.
refuse to fall down
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Reflections on the readings
Some years ago a Clint Eastwood movie called Unforgiven was released and has been shown on TV a number of times. The theme, like in many movies, is that of a wronged person or group exacting revenge on ‘evil’ perpetrators. The vengeance exacted on the villains is limitless because ‘they have it coming.’ It is easy to forget about moral considerations as we share in the reverie of personal payback. The desire for revenge because of hurt done to oneself or to loved ones can be strong. This is the violence we view each day in the form of foreign invasion, armed or drone attacks on perceived and real enemies or even in the case of mandatory sentencing of offenders in the community. We use social media as a weapon and rejection against people we disagree with, those ‘conservatives’ or ‘lefties’, people of other religions or sexual orientation. As long as we do this, we fall short of God’s holiness and we inflict ‘death’ on each other.
Jesus teaches what ‘perfection’ or ‘holiness’ is to be like – compassionate and non-violent, refusing to retaliate when harmed, and seeking the best even for those who consider us to be their enemies. Clearly, holiness is not about avoiding things, but doing things that make a difference and transform. It is all about social justice, non-violence and community, and as Paul suggests, hospitality.
Many people would have welcomed Jesus' call to love God and neighbour but they may have understood neighbour as outlined by Moses. The love called for was reserved for fellow Israelites or one’s kin. Jesus broadens this to include everyone, Jews and Gentiles, friends and enemies. This could be seen as going overboard or extreme. But, he could not be clearer: there is no virtue in just cheering for your own team, in loving those who are like you and love you. It must consist in loving the enemy. Sticking to your own kind was not a value Jesus embraced. That is why there is always the call to go out to the peripheries, to the ‘not like me’. Though this does not always occur in ‘the real world,’ we must also ask where has violence or retribution got us? What has it or does it achieve? Maybe that is Jesus’ point - do the unexpected to break down conflict and create the possibilities for a relationship, to recognise the humanity even in the enemy. The call is to ‘flip the script’ as one writer wrote recently. An industry of images exists to make the ‘enemy’ look inhuman and to incite our hate. It is part of all conflicts where cartoons of Germans, Japanese, Russians, Middle Eastern or Asian people turn their human faces into the faces of dumb or malevolent beasts.
In April 2016, I attended a conference co-hosted by the Vatican’s then Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and Pax Christi International on the call to the church to come back to educating itself and living the gospel of nonviolence. This unprecedented and ground-breaking conference was challenging 1600 years of church doctrine of ‘the just war’ and called for a move towards ‘just peace’. The ‘just war’ doctrine, though devised to limit war, came to justify war and none of its conditions are fulfilled as we saw in the invasion of Iraq as just one example.
Most of the conference participants had come from places of extreme violence in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and also Croatia, after the savage war there. All had suffered violence in some way or seen their loved ones tortured, imprisoned, and/or murdered. Yet, all were still committed to the gospel of nonviolence as a means towards reconciliation and peace. These were the experts on nonviolence who had embraced Jesus’ call to love even one’s enemy. The nonviolent God loves even those who seek to destroy God. A child of God will not introduce hatred or anyone’s destruction into the world.
Love of enemies is not an appendage or something tacked onto Jesus’ teaching. It was part and parcel of the call to ‘perfection’. It means taking a new attitude towards the enemy because God wants hatred and destructive violence eliminated from the world. Anyone who is like God will not nourish hatred against anybody. They will seek the welfare of all, even their enemies.
Love of enemy does not mean having feelings of affection, sympathy, or fondness towards those who harm others or ourselves. It's natural for us to feel wounded and humiliated. We are to worry when we go on nourishing hate and the thirst for revenge. Loving one’s enemy involves not doing wrong or seeking or wanting to harm the other. It is not merely avoiding evil towards the other, but actually being ready to do good if the other is found to be in need. Our humanity is bound up more with forgiveness than in taking revenge.
Last week we heard Jesus say, ‘You have heard it said… but I say to you…’ He repeats that today and begs us to pay attention to the deeper meaning of the Law though ‘an eye for an eye’ and ‘love your neighbours and hate your enemies’ are probably more preferable to our sensibilities and our need for a quick sense of justice as already mentioned earlier. Rivalry, revenge, hatred, making people pay back for any hurt are the usual ways of our world. Jesus offers a radical new way of seeing the Law. Instead of force or violence to overcome evil Jesus suggests mercy, forgiveness, prayer and love for the ones who have hurt you. Jesus’ message shows us how to be makers and sowers of peace by changing conflict into opportunities for peace, reconciliation and forgiveness to participate in creating a world without violence. Force and coercion cannot achieve the milieu Jesus has in mind when speaking of God’s reign in our midst. Paul offers the profound reason for loving and respecting one another: we are the temple (dwelling place) of God. Recently, a man whose daughter had been murdered sought, after some time of hatred and pain, to seek out the murderer and be reconciled with him when he realised that his hatred was not poisoning the other but poisoning himself.
Jesus is not suggesting passivity, but to make a response to defuse violence. By imagining a non-violent world and then putting his teachings into action, we will probably feel like exiles in our own land especially when we attempt to include when others call for exclusion; when we attempt to call for compassion rather than vengeance; when we want to welcome the stranger where others want them rejected. But at this moment I struggle to find in an enemy in my life. Could it be the neighbour or the fellow traveller on the railway station whose smoking irritates the lungs of the people around me? Could it be the person I live with who seems lacking in awareness, manners or consideration? Could it be those people in power (religious or political or corporate) whose dominating, misogynist or homophobic rhetoric builds up structures that threaten vulnerable people? Are these the enemy or is it the enemy within me? Is it both? Though one might want to be an advocate for those who are trapped in the crucifying realities of death, we need to recognise that we are also the enemy because we benefit from this system of discrimination and exceptionalism where people are seen as less than human and more as ghosts because of their of race, gender, sexual orientation or social position. Though I am unsure about my enemy, I know that there are many people who are not protected: those expelled from society because of their social situation and living in homelessness or with some addiction or mental illness; those living in terrifying situations of domestic violence; the people living under the worsening situation in Syria as this proud nation is torn apart by hatred, rivalry, murder and the lust for power. The enemies Jesus would have had in mind are still abundant in our world. They might be in our community or neighbourhood. Not being so sure who my enemy, I ask how I can interpret Jesus’ command for other people? How do we promote self-sacrifice for people who have already sacrificed much? How does one talk about forgiving a perpetrator when one has been abused, violated or assaulted? How does one tell a victim of hatred that they are to love the one who hates them? How does one tell peasant or indigenous people to love the soldiers in the Philippines move them from their land, or rape and kill with impunity. All we can do is see ourselves and the other as a work in progress with God at work within us. The call to be perfect, to be holy, is expansive. It can accommodate the paradox of loving amidst hate where people can find themselves on both sides of the equation, yet knowing that all the time we are loved, interrogated and moving towards perfection in compassion, love, mercy and hospitality.
In a TV program in 2005, (http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1453904.htm Andrew Denton in Enough Rope), Johnny Lee Clary a former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) leader was interviewed about his journey from a world of hate to one of tolerance. He was taught about prejudice, racism and bigotry by his father in a society where a non-white person was the exception. An uncle introduced him to the KKK. When his father shot himself, his mother abandoned Johnny and his sister because her new partner did not want them around. This made the teenager a perfect recruit for the KKK. He was told by teachers that he was an ignorant little hoodlum who would go to jail. Seeking acceptance, he joined the KKK. His tasks were to sniff out racial trouble and by inciting fear got the white people to further stereotype black people. He was petrol that added to the flames of racial strife.
At 21, he became the Grand Dragon of Oklahoma. So, even police members of the KKK called him ‘Sir’. In 1979, at age 22, he met a black minister, Reverend Wade Watts. He was caught off guard when the minister unexpectedly held out his hand. Johnny shook the minister’s hand without thinking. The Klan rule book says, ‘The physical touch of a non-white is pollution.’ When Johnny looked at this hand after shaking hands, the minister said, ‘Don't worry, Johnny. It don't come off.’ When verbally abused, the minister responded, ‘God bless you, Johnny. You can't do enough to me to make me hate you. I'm gonna love you and I'm gonna pray for you, whether you like it or not.’ A few years later Johnny burned down the minister’s church. He threw rubbish over his lawn. When they burned across the street, the minister came out offering hotdogs and marshmallows for the barbeque. He could not deal with the positive responses he received. Sometime later, when the minister entered a restaurant, 30 KKK members also entered and surrounded the minister. They said they would do to him what he was about to do to the chicken that was on his plate. Looking up, he picked up the chicken and kissed it. This caused much laughter even among his comrades. The KKK was defeated by an elderly man. Some years later Johnny left the clan and exchanged one powerful set of beliefs for another. He too had ‘flipped the script’. He concluded the TV interview saying, ‘I feel like I belong to the human race’. I could do something that's gonna make a difference…..’ He had also become a minister.
What might our world look like if we worked harder at loving our enemies than we do at killing them? What might it mean if we measured holiness not by church attendance or avoiding wrong but rather by the extent to which we extend compassion and justice to others?
DIALOGUE WITH PRESIDENT DUTERTE, PHILIPPINES - FR BEN ALFORQUE MSC
DIALOGUE WITH PRESIDENT DUTERTE, PHILIPPINES - FR BEN ALFORQUE MSC
February 6, 2017
Fr. Ben Alforque (Convenor, Kapayapaan)
Kapayapaan urges President Duterte to continue peace talks with NDFP
A peace advocacy group is appealing to President Rodrigo Duterte to change his mind about terminating the peace talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).
The Kapayapaan Campaign for a Just Peace (Kapayapaan) said a termination or even suspension of the talks would reverse the “positive and substantial” gains achieved by three rounds of talks between the government and the revolutionary movement.
Kapayapaan was formed in early 2015 as a campaign network pushing for the resumption of the peace talks under then Pres. Benigno Aquino III. Among its original members were then Davao City Mayor Duterte and party list rep. Silvestre Bello III, now chairperson of the government’s peace panel.
“The way we see it, the talks are progressing at an unprecedented rate. It would be tragic for the President to stop the talks at this point. It is unfortunate that both sides have lifted their unilateral ceasefire declarations but the talks can and should continue,” said Kapayapaan Convenor Fr. Ben Alforque.
He said that in the 3rd round of talks last month, the GRP and NDFP panels signed a supplemental agreement on human rights and international humanitarian law while their reciprocal working committees have agreed on several provisions of the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER). On top of that, drafts were exchanged on the agreement on political and constitutional reforms while talks for a bilateral ceasefire are scheduled later this month.
“Pres. Duterte does not have to look far to find a compelling reason to continue the talks. Peace is the only and most compelling reason for the talks. We ask the President to stay the course. Please listen to the cry of the poor and the nation. It is in their behalf that peace negotiations should continue,” said Alforque.#
