LITURGY NOTES FOR 5th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Fifth Sunday of the Year A

February 5^th 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.

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 owners 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.

                    

 

 

    

Give Peace a Voice

Shawn Gallaway, Daniel Barber

Come listen closely

The droning and the drum

Are calling us together

In rhythm with the one

To voice the greater vision

Moving through our minds

Into the open circles

That dreams the dream to life

 

Give peace a voice

Let our hearts be heard

Sounding our choice

To love and preserve

There’s a light in us all

A polished pearl

Give peace a voice

Uniting nations of the world

 

As millions let us march

Beyond the walls of war

With the power of prayer

Imagine there is more

Choosing for our children

The dance of the dove

Coloring the cotton skies

With the language of Love

The Peace Alliance

 

Liturgy of the Word

First Reading Isaiah 58:7–10;

Responsorial Psalm 112:1-9, (10)

Second Reading 1 Corinthians 2:1–5;

Gospel Matthew 5:13–16

 

Penitential Rite

§  Christi Jesus, you are the true light that enlightens all people: Jesus, have mercy.

§  Christ Jesus, you are the light of the world who gives light to those who follow you: Christ, have mercy.

§  Christ Jesus, your light must shine in the sight of people: Jesus, have mercy.

or

• Christ Jesus, light in the darkness: Jesus, have mercy.
• Christ Jesus, hope for the hopeless: Christ, have mercy.
• Christ Jesus, food for the hungry: Jesus, have mercy.

 

Opening Prayer

Loving God,

you call us your people

to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Give us a vigorous faith and a love that genuine,

so all may see our works and reveal your face to the all.

 

General Intercessions

Let us now pray to the God of light that we may truly become the salt and the light of the world. Let us say: Let your light shine in us in the darkness, O God.

 

·         We pray for the Muslim people who were targeted in Quebec this week: may we recognise that this outrage violates the image of God in them and denies the recognition of their dignity and the sanctity of life, we pray: Let your light shine in us in the darkness, O God.

·         We pray for the victims of all wars, especially the children who suffer and suffer when we put our faith in weapons and war: may we look to the Jesus present among us whose gift and call is to build peace between all people, we pray, Let your light shine in us in the darkness, O God.

 

·         We pray for greater justice on earth: may governments and public officials make prioritise the needs of people who are socially deprived especially the aged, the sick, and those who are unemployed or underemployed, we pray: Let your light shine in us in the darkness, O God.

 

·         We pray for peace on earth: may world leaders put an end to words of hatred and threats of violence and revenge and seek peace and understanding through dialogue, we pray: Let your light shine in us in the darkness, O God.

 

·         We pray for the leaders of nations and all people who serve in public office: may they use their energy and wisdom for the common good of their people and peace in the world, we pray: Let your light shine in us in the darkness, O God.

 

·         We pray for nations in political turmoil: soften the hearts of all and allow for protest and civility in discourse on the way to peaceful transitions of power, we pray: Let your light shine in us in the darkness, O God.

 

·         We pray for those who most need our prayers: for those in the path of war and lacking in security that causes them to seek refuge away from their homes; ; for those without nourishing food, fresh water, adequate shelter, access to medical care, hope for the future, we pray: Let your light shine in us in the darkness, O God.

 

·         We pray for the sick: for the chronically and terminally ill; for all people who are weary in body and spirit and live with constant pain, we pray: Let your light shine in us in the darkness, O God.

 

Concluding Prayer: Loving and compassionate God, hear the prayers we offer today for our world, for those we may never meet and for those we love and hold in our hearts. We make this prayer in Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

Prayer over the Gifts

Loving God,

Jesus, your Son, gives himself to us


in these signs of bread and wine

as our food and drink.

Help us to bear witness to him and

make us people-for-others

through our sense of justice and sharing.

 

Prayer after Communion

Loving God,

you have given us the salt and light

of your Word and the bread of life.

May we become a Christian community,

like a city of light on a hill-top,

to bear witness to your integrity,

love and justice in this world.

 

Parish Notices

February 11: World Day of Prayer for the Sick

February 11: Release of Nelson Mandela from prison (1990)

February 12: Commencement of the Freedom Ride (1965) – journey through NSW country towns to raise awareness of racism against Aboriginal people

February 12: Murder in Brazil of Sr Dorothy Stang (2005)

 

Further Resources

Sunday Dinner

Should Christ be incarnate today,

where would he feast?

At lunch with premier or bishop,

professor or priest?

 

Maybe we should investigate

more likely places?

Like sharing a pie with street kids

or hopeless cases?

Perhaps having a cheap pub lunch

with a tanker crew,

or with some tattooed wharfies

at a barbecue?

 

The friend of tax pimps, prodigals,

call girls and sinners,

won’t be dining at the Hilton

with this world’s winners!

Bruce D Prewer, from Beyond Words

 

The Lord's Prayer for Justice

Our Father (Mother) . . . who always stands with the weak, the powerless, the poor, the abandoned, the sick, the aged, the very young, the unborn, and those who, by victim of circumstance, bear the heat of the day.

Who art in heaven . . . where everything will be reversed, where the first will be last and the last will be first, but where all will be well and every manner of being will be well.

Hallowed be thy name . . . may we always acknowledge your holiness, respecting that your ways are not our ways, your standards are not our standards. May the reverence we give your name pull us out of the selfishness that prevents us from seeing the pain of our neighbour.

Your kingdom come . . . help us to create a world where, beyond our own needs and hurts, we will do justice, love tenderly, and walk humbly with you and each other.

Your will be done . . . open our freedom to let you in so that the complete mutuality that characterizes your life might flow through our veins and thus the life that we help generate may radiate your equal love for all and your special love for the poor.

On earth as in heaven . . . may the work of our hands, the temples and structures we build in this world, reflect the temple and the structure of your glory so that the joy, graciousness, tenderness, and justice of heaven will show forth within all of our structures on earth.

Give . . . life and love to us and help us to see always everything as gift. Help us to know that nothing comes to us by right and that we must give because we have been given to. Help us realize that we must give to the poor, not because they need it, but because our own health depends upon our giving to them.

Us . . . the truly plural us. Give not just to our own but to everyone, including those who are very different than the narrow us. Give your gifts to all of us equally.

This day . . . not tomorrow. Do not let us push things ort into some indefinite future so that we can continue to live justified lives in the face of injustice because we can make good excuses for our inactivity.

Our daily bread . . . so that each person in the world may have enough food, enough clean water, enough clean air, adequate health care, and sufficient access to education so as to have the sustenance for a healthy life. Teach us to give from our sustenance and not just from our surplus.

And forgive us our trespasses . . . forgive us our blindness toward our neighbour, our self-preoccupation, our racism, our sexism, and our incurable propensity to worry only about ourselves and our own. Forgive us our capacity to watch the evening news and do nothing about it.

As we forgive those who trespass against us . . . help us to forgive those who victimize us. Help us to mellow out in spirit, to not grow bitter with age, to forgive the imperfect parents and systems that wounded, cursed, and ignored us.

And do not put us to the test . . . do not judge us only by whether we have fed the hungry, given clothing to the naked, visited the sick, or tried to mend the systems that victimized the poor. Spare us this test for none of us can stand before your gospel scrutiny. Give us, instead, more days to mend our ways, our selfishness, and our systems.

But deliver us from evil . . . that is, from the blindness that lets us continue to participate in anonymous systems within which we need not see who gets less as we get more. Amen.

From The Holy Longing by Ronald Rolheiser, OMI.

 

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Elie Wiesel

 

Breaking barriers to peace

God of all,

as we walk together,

Open our hearts

to your tenderness.

Open our minds

to your understanding.

Open our lives

to your challenge.

We are one people, many nations,

building hope through steps for peace.

One world with many barriers,

breaking chains so we dance free.

One voice that shouts for justice

shatters hatred, calls for change.

One God, one world, one people,

turning tables, share the feast.

Amen

Linda Jones, CAFOD

 

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.

Frantz Fanon

 

Poem: So Fragile as We Grow by Meister Eckhart

Someday you will hear all things applaud your wonder.
Life claps in awe of the Divine's performance.
When your veil is removed, you, dear --
you, everyone -- will see
that your being is
Holy.

Raising their children is the primary care and purpose
of some -- this is a blessed state,
for an oasis of love
is found in the
desert.

The heart only reflects the Sky when it is giving and
compassionate.
Who would want to stand before a mirror that was shattered,
and thus distorts our
beauty

that is so fragile
as we grow.

An oasis
for all life the soul becomes
when it is unveiled.

 

Once to every man and nation

Comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of truth and falsehood,

For the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah,

Off'ring each the bloom or blight,

And the choice goes by forever

Twixt that darkness and that light.

 

Though the cause of evil prosper,

Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;

Though her portion be the scaffold,

And upon the throne be wrong:

Yet that scaffold sways the future,

And behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow

Keeping watch above his own.

James Russell Lowell

 

 

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

Dr Martin Luther King

 

To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

Nelson Mandela

 

Compassion for the other comes out of our ability to accept ourselves. Until we realize both our own weaknesses and our own privileges, we can never tolerate lack of status and depth of weakness in the other.

Joan Chittister

 

Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?

Martin Luther King Jr.

 

We do not live to win. We do not live even to finish. We live to persevere and to endure. Nothing more than this is necessary, but nothing less than this will do until that new heaven and that new earth come, the former things have passed away, the sea is no more, and the vision has become the reality.

Peter J. Gomes

 

You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

Martin Luther King Jr.

 

‘When Jean Vanier took two handicapped people into his house 20 years ago, he did something that many considered a waste of time and talent. But for him it was the concrete way from fear to love. He believed that by choosing the broken as his family, he followed the way of Jesus. Impractical, sentimental, naive? Would it not have been better for him to give his energy and talents to the burning issues of our time?

‘He simply did what he felt called to do, but today, 20 years later, young men and women from France, Holland, Germany, India, England, Israel, the Ivory Coast, Honduras, Haiti, Canada, and the United States are working together in countless homes to care for the handicapped. It certainly is not a new world order, or the end of wars and violence, or the beginning of a new foreign policy. But it is a light 'put on the lamp stand where it shines for everyone in the house' (Matthew 5:15).

Henri Nouwen, ‘Living in Joyful Ecstasy,’ Sojourners, August-September 1985

 

Hatred paralyses life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.

Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

The ultimate weakness of violence

is that it is a descending spiral,

begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.

Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

Through violence you may murder the liar,

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

 

Through violence you murder the hater,

but you do not murder hate.

In fact, violence merely increases hate....

Returning violence for violence multiples violence,

adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

 

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

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

Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

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

Martin Luther King Jr

 

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Someone must have sense enough and religion enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil, and this can only be done through love.

Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957

 

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being.

Mahatma Gandhi, 1948

 

As Christians, we believe that we bear the image and likeness of God inside of us and that this is our deepest reality. We are made in God’s image.  However we tend to picture this in a naïve, romantic, and pious way. We imagine that somewhere insides us there is a beautiful icon of God stamped into our souls.  That may we be, but God, as scripture assures us, is more than an icon. God is fire – wild, infinite, ineffable, non-containable.

Father Ron Rolheiser, June 25, 2006

 

Please make all the bad people good

and all the good people nice.

Prayer of a child

David Hayward The Naked Pastor

 

Reflections on the readings

 

Jesus continually takes us back to the roots of true religion, our true connection with God…with its implications for our engagement/encounter re: people and environment. It is not about learning certain creeds, signing mission statements or doing specific spiritual exercises. After lifting up the mostly unlikely people (last week’s gospel) - the poor in spirit, the meek and the merciful, those who mourn and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted. There was also the call to ‘arise’, ‘to get up’. Jesus is speaking to each one of us and suggesting that each one of us has it within us to change our world; to enlighten the dark places of our world. Paul in the letter to the Corinthians is affirming and encouraging the ordinary people in the city. Corinth could be a rough place but those who were called were mainly poor rather than rich, the powerless rather than those with social status. Here we see the reversals that continually confront us in God’s world.

 

Living the Beatitudes involves being ‘salt of the earth’ and ‘light of the world - transforming the earth. The images reveal something to the disciples as to who they are. Through these two images Jesus shares what he is thinking and expects: certainly not to think always of one’s own interests, prestige or power. Though a small group in the midst of the vast Roman empire, the disciples are to be the ‘salt’ that the land needs and the ‘light’ the world lacks.

 

St. Teresa of Avila, had much to say about embodying Christ in daily life. John Michael Talbot in what his St. Theresa’s Prayer captures it here:

Christ has no body now but yours

No hands, no feet on earth but yours

Yours are the eyes through which He looks

Compassion on this world

Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good

Yours are the hands with which He blesses all the world

Yours are the hands

Yours are the feet

Yours are the eyes

You are His body.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours

 

In recent days we have seen women (and men) ‘arise’ and find their voices and strength and inner power in solidarity all over the world. We have seen taxi drivers at JFK Airport refusing to pick up passengers as they stand in solidarity with protestors against draconian laws preventing Muslim people entering the country. We have seen kindness criminalised in Austria and Denmark but people continuing, despite the personal consequences, engaging with and helping asylum seekers and refugees. We have seen people in Fort Lauderdale risking prosecution for feeding the homeless and the hungry. We have seen 1000’s of people, including ex-servicemen, gather at Standing Rock with people who are ‘protecting’ their traditional lands from pollution. These people have put flesh on their beliefs but I wonder if any of them would see themselves as Jesus describes the disciples or us today. But let us not forget how compassion, human dignity, justice were criminalised when Jesus was crucified!

 

However, Jesus says that each one of us has it within us to change our part of the world and enlighten its dark places. Jesus’ ‘You are the salt of the earth…you are the light of the world’ are statements of fact – not ‘you could be, or should be’. Faith is useless if it does not somehow change the world. It is useless if it does not touch our neighbour for the better. God’s presence is manifested by acting here and now; proclaiming justice, peace and goodness. The Beatitudes illustrate God’s heart and the values of God’s Reign. Though always present and active we can hide God’s presence. The world can be harsh, dark and hard. It can seem uncaring. People can find it difficult to see beyond the harshness, the darkness, the hardness and the paralysing conformity of society when it does not mourn when people are hurting; when human rights are not protected; when it does not respond to injustice and violence with peace and reconciliation; when it does not go beyond the callous, winner-takes-all culture of competition.

 

Pope Francis has said that attributing salt and light to many Christians might be misplaced when they are seen by others as judgemental, intolerant, superior, rigid, nasty, racist, controlling, hard-hearted, hypocritical, look like sour-pusses, anti-homosexual or misogynist. Whatever wonderful things the church community may have to offer, if our good deeds are not seen, people feel unwelcome, the humanity embracing God is not experienced, when people do not feel safe; when faith is compartmentalised. Some Christians pride themselves on never mixing religion and politics but it seems that Isaiah makes clear that if this happens then their religion and their politics are suspect. The written word, legalism, conformity, mere administration and traditionalism cannot contribute to the world’s healing or transformation. Isaiah points out that piety and living by the written word does not bring about change. It is lifeless. God’s word must take flesh in each of us – frail as we might be. It is through our humanity, our frailties, even our cracks, that the light shines through. Fasting and prayer without justice do not lead to what God requires. The 58^th chapter in Isaiah is a strident call to return to honouring God.

Why? Because this was happening:

Yet on your fast day you do whatever you want

And oppress all of your workers.

You quarrel and brawl and then you fast

You hit each other violently with your fists. (Is. 58:3)

But let there be a ‘return’ to God by:

If you open your heart to the hungry,

And provide abundantly for those who are afflicted,

Your light will shine in the darkness,

And your gloom will be like the noon. (Is. 58:10)

 

God loathes hypocritical and hollow celebrations; but desires holy, mutually helpful relationships. It is another way of talking about social justice.

 

Isaiah’s attack on conventional religion dismisses not only the practices themselves, but the motives of those who use them to create an image of piety.  God chooses one spiritual discipline above all others– the work of justice/ freedom, including any and all actions that result in the tangible relief of those in need; or to put it another way, any actions that make public life in the streets safer and more productive.  Matthew’s emphasis is definitely on specific ‘deeds,’ specific actions of kindness-charity-justice that are like ‘salt’ or ‘light.’

 

Isaiah’s exhortation to care for the poor and afflicted fleshes out what living the Beatitudes involves. He calls on us to ‘share your bread with the hungry,’ to ‘shelter the oppressed and the homeless’ and to ‘clothe the naked when you see them.’ We could add ‘provide security to asylum seekers’ and even Muslim people. These are outlined by Jesus throughout the gospel, especially in Matthew 25. For Isaiah, it is only when the people respond to actual human need that ‘light’ emerges. Like Isaiah, Jesus calls us to share bread with the hungry, clothe the naked and meet the needs of the afflicted, including those who are sick or imprisoned.

The scriptures continually remind us that worship, fasting and prayer are only authentic when they lead people to extend themselves for the sake of others (the hungry, the poor, the asylum seeker, the stranger and another marginalised or vulnerable person). For Isaiah, Israel’s transformation will not come about by infrastructure alone but the love expressed for those who are close to God’s heart, the poor.

 

This sometimes seems so remote from people who attend church regularly. This failure, according to Isaiah, makes our religion and our politics suspect. We still hear about boat people being criminals. We still hear about asylum seekers getting more government help than ordinary citizens.  How few question the truth of such statements? We are meant to draw out goodness in the world by supporting what protects, nourishes and enhances life, while rejecting what limits or destroys it. There are times when we cannot let things continue as they are: neglect of the poor, mistreatment of asylum seekers, violence against women, military spending, etc. We are meant to be agents of change – but many are failed by our silence and indifference. If we cannot bring about more humane conditions for all people then maybe we are ‘useless’ for building up God’s reign! We might feel that we lack influence to effect change and affect the world and resist the powers (governments and corporations) that run the world’s business. We are not on our own but united to God and a community of believers. We are called within the church to reflect right-relationships with each other, respecting the ‘hidden God’ in each other (women, gay and lesbian people, poor people, marginated people) and project it outwards to the world.

 

We cannot let our prayer, though not insignificant, let us feel that is all we need to do or that we are okay with God. Prayer must be grounded in concrete action and not sentiment.

 

The metaphors of ‘salt’ and ‘light’ come together on something very important. Salt is useless if it remains isolated in a container. Only by coming into contact with the food and when dissolved in a dish, can it give flavour to what we eat. The same thing happens with light. If it is enclosed and hidden, it can't shed light on anyone. Only when it is amid the darkness can it enlighten and guide us. A Church that is isolated from the world can be neither salt nor light.

 

Pope Francis sees the Church today as often closed in on itself, paralysed by fear, and too alienated from problems and suffering to give flavour to modern life and offer the genuine light of the Gospel. His reaction was immediate: ‘We must head for the periphery.’  He keeps stressing, ‘I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security. I do not want a church concerned with being at the centre and then ends up by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures.’

 

Francis' call is directed at all of us: ‘We cannot passively and calmly wait in our church buildings.’ ‘The Gospel invites us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others.’ He wants to introduce into the Church what he calls ‘the culture of encounter’ if the church is able to heal wounds and warm hearts. God’s people ‘restore’ the ‘breaches’ in society.  The gospel is done in public!  Let’s remember that a grain of salt doesn’t make a lot of difference, and even one well placed light, will not make a city visible in the dark, but doing it together, living in loving community are key elements of our witness to the world.

 

On Living Wide Awake: A Prayer

Mark Sandlin Patheos July 29, 2016

Good and gracious God,

Awaken us.

May we see
violence,
oppression,
hatred,
hoarding,
power,
and
privilege
with eyes wide open.

Even as we’ve make some progress,
assuring more equality for some
and enlivening a sense of
righteous resistance
against the abuse of power
in others,
we have continued to
live in an all too routine
awareness of the places
in this world
where people
needlessly suffer and are abused.

Aware,
but not significantly motivated
to risk our own
abundance or wellbeing
in order to make the world
better for us all.

Awaken us
from our false assumption
that tells us
we can continue on that way
and hope to make a better world.

Awaken us
from our denial
of the reality that
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Awaken us
to the reality that
far too many suffer from the injustice
of not having their basic needs met,
their fundamental human rights met;
clean water,
enough food,
safety,
a roof under which to sleep,
access to heath care,
the right to be treated with dignity,
the right to be treated equally,
freedom from slavery,
freedom from discrimination,
access to education,
reasonable privacy,
life,
the pursuit of happiness.

Help us to not only recognize these rights,
but to recognize that when any lack in them,
it is a threat to all of your Creation.

Awaken us
and encourage us
to pursue access for all people
to those basic human rights…
… and may we “not be satisfied
until justice rolls down like waters
and righteousness
like a mighty stream.”

And in the dark times
that we will surely experience
as we confront
those who wish to hold on tightly
to their power and their privilege,
may we be a light
to one another.

Awaken us
to the reality that the
love,
kindness,
joy,
hope,
peace
and grace
that we offer to each other
are not only
the only truly valuable
things in this life,
but they are the means
through which
we can all work
to create a better
future
and a better
world.

So, awaken us…

Awaken us to each other.

Awaken us to the systemic damage
that occurs every time
even one person
is abused, oppressed or marginalized.

Awaken us to our connectedness.

And awaken us to the possibilities
already present
in this new year.

Amen

LITURGY NOTES FOR THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR, CYCLE A

Claude Mostowik MSC

Fourth Sunday of the Year

Year A

January 29, 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 on this land.

Or

We acknowledge the traditional owners and occupiers of the land where we are now gathered, (the N. people) 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 Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 146:6-7, 8-9, 9-10 Blessed the poor in spirit; the kingdom of heaven is theirs!

Second Reading 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

Gospel Matthew 5:1-12a

Penitential Rite

• You secure justice for the oppressed and give food to the hungry. Jesus, have mercy.
• You raise up those who are bowed down and protect the stranger. Christ, have mercy.
• §You call us to reveal your heart in our peacemaking. Jesus, have mercy.

Opening Prayer

God of our hearts, [or Encouraging God]

you have made your heart visible in Jesus:

you are poor, gentle and humble,

merciful and just, a lover of peace.

Make us people who will arise to transform our world,

as we weep with those who mourn,

hunger and thirst with those who seek what is right and just;

and seek peace by building bridges and roads of peace.

General Intercessions

Introduction: Let us pray to God that we may be among those who seek humility and seek justice. Let us pray, May we be your heart in the world, O God.

1. For those who mourn their loved ones lost to war, disease, injustice and hunger in West Papua, Central African Republic, Myanmar, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia: may they find justice for themselves and peace in their lives, let us pray: May we be your heart in the world, O God.

1. For the people of South Sudan we pray for the spirit of reconciliation and peace to descend upon them: may those whose lives have been full of violence and instability find protection, let us pray: May we be your heart in the world, O God.

1. For people who are persecuted for their following of Jesus: may we live our lives in such ways where we stand strong in the face of injustice and abuse of power, let us pray: May we be your heart in the world, O God.

or

1. 4.For those who pursue active nonviolence in their lives by challenging the powerful, by engaging in dialogue and by striving to raise up those who are made to feel voiceless and powerless: may they see that they are sons and daughters of God, let us pray: May we be your heart in the world, O God.

1. 5.For those who are passionate for justice and right relationship between people: may they not be discouraged when they do not always see the peace and transformation they seek in their lifetime, let us pray: May we be your heart in the world, O God.

1. For those who reveal God’s kindness and compassion by their solidarity with the poor, the vulnerable, the homeless, refugees, people who are different, the aged and children: may they know they are close to God’s heart, let us pray: May we be your heart in the world, O God

1. For those who are persecuted or harassed for meeting hatred with love, for refusing to be silent, or indifferent or walk away from injustice and violence: may they know they are on the same path as the prophets and martyrs for peace, let us pray: May we be your heart in the world, O God.

1. For the people of the Philippines who continue to live with the consequences of natural disasters: may Christ’s heart be made visible in the ‘acts of God’ where children are sheltered, the hungry fed, money donated, the sick and aged assisted, and those lost rescued, let us pray: May we be your heart in the world, O God

Concluding Prayer: Encouraging God, you are present in all the good things that come to us. We pray that we may also see your presence in the challenges we encounter and find strength to reveal your face to the world.

Prayers of the Faithful for the Feast of the Presentation

• For the Church: that the Light of Christ may shine through our lives and reveal God to all who are searching
• For the grace of awareness: that we may recognize Christ in all the ways that Christ is present in our lives, particularly through the poor and in ordinary events
• For the Light of Wisdom for all who lead the church: that their decisions may lead others to Christ and bind the Church in greater unity
• For all who live in darkness: that the Light of the Gospel may open new insight and show the path to life
• For the Light of Justice: that all who suffer unjustly may be strengthen and that God’s saving mercy may bring freedom
• For all members of Religious Communities: that the Spirit will renew them and empower them to give faithful witness to Christ who is the center of their lives
• For growth in prayer: that like Simeon and Anna, we may patiently await God’s word in the silence of our hearts and reflect upon all that God has done for us
• For the Light of Understanding: that God will draw all who study the scriptures into a deeper relationship and toward greater understanding of all that God asks of us
• For all senior citizens: that we may appreciate the gift that they are and learn from their lives
• For all legislators: that God will guide their work for the protection of the powerless and in promoting the common good
• For Light for all world leaders: that God will help all world leaders to see the value and dignity of human life and work tirelessly for peace
• For all who are called to be prophets: that God will strengthen their courage and give them a clear grasp of the truth
• For courage and zeal: that our words and deeds may show forth God’s glory as we live our discipleship each day
• For all who struggle with the cold, for the homeless, for migrant workers, and those who have no heat
• For all who will be participating or attending the Olympic Games: that God will preserve them from harm and help them to recognize the unity of the human family

Prayer over the Gifts

God of our hearts, [or Encouraging God]

these are the gifts of the poor: a bit of food, a little wine.

May we experience life as a gift from you

so that we may give ourselves to you and one another.

Thanksgiving after Communion (Brueggemann- Zuidberg)

The following text is a model for a prayer of thanksgiving after communion, which could take the place of the song or the silent thanksgiving after communion. If it is in the people's leaflet, all could pray it together or it may be slowly read by the prayer leader, perhaps with a very brief pause after each part. If it is read by the priest, he concludes with the Prayer after Communion. Changes have been made for gender inclusiveness.

We thank you, God,

for people who have made themselves poor to enrich others,

whose house is always a place of welcome even to strangers.

We thank you, God,

for people who can listen to the miseries of others,

who heal wounds by making pain bearable,

for people who can console.

We thank you, God,

for people who spread peace and rest,

who are attentive to little things,

who are happy when others are great.

We thank you, God,

for people who hunger for justice

who crave to see every person free,

who suffer when injustice is done to their neighbor.

We thank you, God,

for people whose judgment is gentle,

who respect the mystery of all life,

who open their hearts to forgiveness and reconciliation.

We thank you, God,

for people whose intentions are straightforward,

whose words are sincere,

for people loyal to their friends.

We thank you, God,

for people who believe in roads to peace,

who turn their swords into instruments of friendship,

who work to make their faith credible

by committing themselves to one another.

We thank you, God,

for all the happy people

whose joy and sense of humor

bring smiles to those around them,

and whose liberating lifestyle

is a refreshing ray of hope to all. R/ Amen.

Prayer after Communion

God of our hearts, [or Encouraging God]

you give us Jesus as companion

especially for those who are victims of pride and power.

As we have celebrated this Eucharist together

and received Jesus who has become bread for us,

may we recognise each day your presence in those we encounter.

Further Resources

Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.

Mohandas Gandhi

Christ has no body now, but yours. No hands, no feet on earth, but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ looks compassion into the world. Yours are the feet with which Christ walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which Christ blesses the world.

Teresa of Avila

We do not live to win. We do not live even to finish. We live to persevere and to endure. Nothing more than this is necessary, but nothing less than this will do until that new heaven and that new earth come, the former things have passed away, the sea is no more, and the vision has become the reality.

Peter J. Gomes

A prayer for greatness of heart

Keep us, O God, from all pettiness;

let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.

Let us be done with fault-finding

and leave off all self-seeking.

May we put away all pretense

and meet each other face-to-face,

without self-pity and without prejudice.

May we never be hasty in judgment,

and always generous.

Let us always take time for all things,

and make us grow calm, serene, and gentle.

Teach us to put into action our better impulses,

to be straightforward and unafraid.

Grant that we may realize

that it is the little things of life that create differences,

that in the big things of life, we are as one.

And, O God, let us not forget to be kind!

attributed to Queen Mary Stuart.

How wonderful is it that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Anne Frank

Listening is the first expression of communication in prayer. We know that listening precedes speaking in the development of children’s language skills. The same order applies to the development of our prayer life. Something in our spirit is touched by the Divine Spirit before we are drawn to speak.

Marjorie J. Thompson, Soul Feast

We still need prophets to summon us back to the spiritual roots of wholeness and peace. We still need broadcasters of God’s word and magnifiers of God’s truth, so that we will understand and turn and be healed.

Kenneth L. Waters, Sr. I Saw the Lord

As harsh as nature is for animals, cruelty comes only from human hands. We are the creature of conscience, aware of the wrongs we do and fully capable of making things right. Our best instincts will always tend in that direction, because there is a bond with animals that’s built into every one of us. That bond of kinship and fellow-feeling has been with us through the entire arc of human experience—from our first bare-footed steps on the planet through the era of the domestication of animals and into the modern age. For all that sets humanity apart, animals remain ‘our companions in Creation,’ to borrow a phrase from Pope Benedict XVI, bound up with us in the story of life on earth. Every act of callousness toward an animal is a betrayal of that bond. In every act of kindness we keep faith with the bond. And broadly speaking, the whole mission of the animal welfare cause is to repair the bond—for their sake and for our own.

In our day, there are stresses and fractures of the human-animal bond, and some forces at work that would sever it once and for all. They pull us in the wrong direction and away from the decent and honorable code that makes us care for creatures who are entirely at our mercy. Especially within the last 200 years, we’ve come to apply an industrial mindset to the use of animals, too often viewing them as if they were nothing but articles of commerce, the raw material of science, or mere obstacles in the path of our own progress. Here, as in other pursuits, human ingenuity has a way of outrunning human conscience, and some things we do only because we can—forgetting to ask whether we should.

Excerpt from the Preface of Wayne Pacelle’s book, The Bond (Harper Collins/William Morrow)

The word of the Lord to all of us in any form of exile is, ‘You shall be called Sought Out.’ Those who believe they are far from the life they envisioned may hear the news that someone is looking for them. Lostness is not our permanent state. Loneliness will be filled with the arrival of the One who seeks us.

Gerrit Scott Dawson, Called by a New Name

Too often I looked at being relevant, popular, and powerful as ingredients of an effective ministry. The truth, however, is that these are not vocations but temptations. Jesus asks, ‘Do you love me?’ Jesus sends us out to be shepherds, and Jesus promises a life in which we increasingly have to stretch out our hands and be led to places where we would rather not go. He asks us to move from a concern for relevance to a life of prayer, from worries about popularity to communal and mutual ministry, and from a leadership built on power to a leadership in which we critically discern where God is leading us and our people.

Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus

Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?

Ayn Rand, (1905-1982)

Stability and peace in our land will not come from the barrel of a gun, because peace without justice is an impossibility.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel Prize for Peace recipient 1984

The greater the importance to safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion.

Charles Evans Hughes, (1862-1948) Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

Everything, everything in war is barbaric . . . But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.

Ellen Key, 1916

The ultimate measure of a person is not where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in times of challenge and controversy.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people.

Frank Kent

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

Sir Francis Bacon

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

Plato

When we tolerate what we know to be wrong--when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened--when we fail to speak up and speak out--we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.

Robert Francis Kennedy

Let them call me a rebel and I welcome it; I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of demons should I make a whore of my soul.

Thomas Paine

By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy - indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction.

William Osler

It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as God's will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe you - try to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as God's will yourself!

Thomas Merton

The history of the race, and each individual's experience, are thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.

Mark Twain

Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.

Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791 ~

When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.

Archbishop Helder Camara

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labours of peace.

Andre Gide

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

Gil Bailie

The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.

Edmund Burke

The problems of this world are so gigantic that some are paralysed by their own uncertainty. Courage and wisdom are needed to reach out above this sense of helplessness. Desire for vengeance against deeds of hatred offers no solution. An eye for an eye makes the world blind. If we wish to choose the other path, we will have to search for ways to break the spiral of animosity. To fight evil one must also recognize one's own responsibility. The values for which we stand must be expressed in the way we think of, and how we deal with, our fellow humans.

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands from her 2001 Christmas Message

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.

General Omar Bradley

We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that is patriotism above the narrow sentiment which usually stops at one's country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in dealing with others... Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognises justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with...the other nations of the world. The first step to this end is to develop peace and goodwill within our borders, by training our youth of both sexes to its practice as their habit of life, so that the jealousies of town against town, class against class and sect against sect no longer exist; and then to extend this good feeling beyond our frontiers towards our neighbours.

Lord Baden-Powell

I hate it when they say, 'He gave his life for his country.' Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honour and glory of their country. We kill them.

Admiral Gene LaRocque.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear.

George Orwell

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.

Robert A. Heinlein

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object.

Abraham Lincoln

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

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.

Buckminster Fuller

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters.

African Proverb

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 colour 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

Being an artist is not just about making art...It is about delivering the vision one is given…and about doing the right thing without sparing oneself.

Lily Yeh.

When I see brokenness, poverty and crime in inner cities, I also see the enormous potential and readiness for transformation and rebirth. We are creating an art form that comes from the heart and reflects the pain and sorrow of people's lives. It also expresses joy, beauty, and love. This process lays the foundation of building a genuine community in which people are reconnected with their families, sustained by meaningful work, nurtured by the care of each other and will together raise and educate their children. Then we witness social change in action.

Lily Yeh.

Psychic void and loss of cultural memory confront the West. How can we recover our identity and cultural meaning without confronting five hundred years of cultural invasion and cultural resistance? The way to new myths is through the path of truth which uncovers the suppressed history and myths of the defeated.

We live in an age which portends danger and even disaster….the expanding hole in the ozone layer, the ‘greenhouse effect,’ the accelerating extinction of plant and animal species, and a dozen more….The roots of these problems are cultural in nature. Humans have been known to inhabit environments for thousands of years with little life-threatening impact.  It is modern Western culture which has created the most alarming of these problems.

The West has achieved world domination. Western worldviews and political agendas dominate every political capital in the world…Western ideologies, views toward nature, versions of economics, art, literature, popular culture, products, and prejudices are practically universal….The West assumes that, to the extend that other peoples are legitimate, they have the same wants and desires, the same propensity for deviousness and competition, the same or nearly the same ambitions as Westerners….

The West has long erred in the direction of dangerous speculation and absence of respect for the obvious dependency of our species on the world which has in fact created us. Science and technology could conceivably exist in a cultural environment of respect and reverence with the forces of life designated as nature. Human knowledge about how natural phenomena function does not necessarily lead to irresponsible behaviors, animal and plant extinction, and the destruction of the biosphere….

The element of our culture which makes a dangerous distance from the natural world is its anthropocentrism — the belief that we are not only different form others, but inherently superior….To recover a relationship to nature we must adopt an art which not only tolerates but celebrates difference and complexity in all things, including life forms and cultures. The reason whole species of plants and animals are being destroyed is that the West is so anthropocentric that there is simply not enough value placed on other species of life. Our culture suffers from an inadequate tradition of delight found in things different from ourselves, an inadequate body of stories, images, sounds, and experiences which reinforce that celebration of difference.

John Mohawk, ‘Toward a Reverence for Nature,’ unpublished paper

They plucked our fruit

They cut our branches

They burned our trunk

But they could not kill our roots

Committee of United Campesinos, Guatemala

No one likes to be criticized, but criticism can be something like the desert wind that, in whipping the tender stalks, forces them to strike their roots down deeper for security.

Polingaysi Qoyawayma, Hopi

How can you own land? In our Inuit knowledge, it's the land that owns us, it's the land that supports us, it's the land that feeds us and we have to respect it.

Aiju Peter, Inuit

We are forced to live in a society that is not of our own making, and which causes a lot of social problems. And we spend millions of dollars trying to address these problems.

Louis Taparjuk, Inuit

Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things.

Jeffrey Zaslow

Christopher Columbus is a symbol, not of a man, but of imperialism. Imperialism and colonialism are not something that happened decades ago or generations ago, but they are still happening now with the exploitation of people ... The kind of thing that took place long ago in which people were dispossessed from their land and forced out of subsistence economies and into market economies -- those processes are  still happening today.

John Mohawk, Seneca, 1992

Go through with the remainder of your days treating everyone fair. That you may be treated the same. When you come to the road to the singing and dancing gourds, you will have no regret, knowing you have done your part while here.

George Webb, Akimel O'odham

We were put here for a reason, to take care of this land. Not because it's something that maybe you say you own ... but because it belongs to the next generation.

Rex Buck Jr., Wanapum

The most cowardly way of quitting is hitting.

Billy Mills

As we walk along the trail of life we carry a bowl and each experience we have is like a stone we pick up and put into the bowl. To change all we have to do is turn the bowl upside down and then show our light there.

Alex Pua, Hawaiian Elder

Everything that gives birth is female. When men begin to understand the relationships of the universe that women have always known, the world will begin to change for the better

Lorraine Canoe, Mohawk

This is what my spirit tells me – get my people together. Get them to believe because if you don’t they are going to go wild. They are going to kill one another. Whoever has sacred places must wake them up, the same as I am doing here – to keep my old world within my heart and with the spiritual. For them to help me and for me to help my people.

Flora Jones, Wintu

Watch your thoughts, they become your words.

Watch your words, they become your actions.

Watch your actions, they become your habits.

Watch your habits, they become your character.

Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

Source unknown

We all come from the same root, but the leaves are all different.

John Fire Lame Deer, Lakota

The ... advice I have to give you is, do not live your life safely. I would take risks and not do things just because everybody else does them. In my generation someone who had a big impact on me was Robert Kennedy, who in one speech said, 'Some people see things the way they are and ask why, and others dream things that never were and ask why not?' I think that is where I hope many of you will be – people that question why things are and why we have to do them the way we have always done them. I hope you will take some risks, exert some real leadership on issues, and if you will, dance along the edge of the roof as you continue for life.

Wilma P. Mankiller, 1992 Principal Chief, Cherokee Nation

We do not want riches, but we want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches, we want peace and love.

Red Cloud, Oglala Lakota

Reflections on the readings

We have another glimpse into God’s heart in the gospel as we ‘hear’ Jesus preaching for the first time and poignantly stating in the Beatitudes the sentiments of God’s heart toward people. They are also radical and elemental challenges which Matthew places at the beginning of Jesus’ public teaching. The readings remind us that God is found in the poorest, the weakest and the most vulnerable among us; that God is not found only in our sanctuaries but in the world we walk through each week. The Beatitudes cover a number of bases - the poor, the meek, the mourner, the peacemaker, etc., - all categories in which many in the crowd could identify with. Jesus speaks to them and calls them blessed even in the midst of their challenges and the opposition they face. What a hopeful thing to hear!

I wonder if the millions of women who gathered in cities all around the world last week also heard words of hope and possibility despite feelings of despair, pain, fear, memories of violence, concern and incapacity. And, one word that emerged was ‘arise’, ‘get up’ during another period of political turmoil and uncertainty. Herein, lies the hope that all seek.

In the non-Catholic lectionary today, Micah speaks to a people during a time of political turmoil and transition. For most of the 8^th century BC, the Assyrian Empire conducted a massive military conquest of Israel and Judah. At the time, this empire was the largest that the world had ever known with its formidable army, advanced weaponry and military tactics, as well as psychological warfare. This supported the empire’s ambitions for political and economic expansion through exploitation resulting in massive deportations and gross economic stratification and equality.

The sense of despair in Micah time may be similar to that of many people today whether in Europe, the United States, African, Asia or Latin America. All wonder if anyone cares. Micah tells the people to ‘rise up!’ As did the leaders among the women who marched around the world last weekend, Micah does not silence the complaints and concerns of the people, but rather affirms their right to rise up and voice their complaints and anxieties about the future. The people are called always to remember God’s faithfulness: that God has brought the people out of slavery and sent leaders to challenge and guide them; and to remember that God walks amongst them. That faithfulness, however, is expressed through the actions of our sisters and brothers who put their voices and their bodies on the line for others.

The unprecedented participation in the worldwide March of Women’s Rights suggests that the spirit of Micah continues. It is alive and well. His view of justice demands that we will continue on behalf of the margins, and that the Women’s March will be much more than a cathartic expression of protest. These actions of justice will prevail despite the political system in power. Justice and love naturally emerge from a covenantal relationship with an unrelenting God.

Zephaniah is clear about what God wants: to seek justice. The psalm complements Zephaniah by praising God for bringing justice to the oppressed, feeding hungry people, and upholding the vulnerable such as widows and orphans. The justice, kindness and humility that God requires are nothing less than a reflection of God’s heart, God’s passion. There is nothing passive about relationship with God and others in the world. Christianity is active, energetic and alive; it movesfrom despair to hope.

God requires us to seek justice with a passion – and maybe even suffer for it. ‘Seek justice’ is a central demand of God. Zephaniah calls for a re-shaping of human society according to God’s ways, i.e., which has practical consequences for people – both the powerful and the powerless. The Beatitudes make some people cringe – especially those of who are comfortable or who do not suffer much for justice sake. Others might cringe when they hear the Beatitudes proclaimed because they seem very passive about our situation in the world when in fact the gospel is not something idealistic but something to be lived.

The gospel passage is often used when explaining the ‘preferential option for the poor’ which recognises that those on the margins and those most negatively affected by the injustices of our world are especially beloved by God and must be especially served by us. Our interconnectedness with God must be lived in justice and mercy if our faith is not be more than platitudes and dreams. There cannot be any division between our worship and justice. This means we constantly look around to see who is left out. This way of looking at things means that would should not be preoccupied with seeing the words of Jesus as directed towards us when we could instead be watching for these people who, in spite of their struggles, have a special closeness with the divine.

In a culture that celebrates wealth and power and uses military might to achieve its ends, Jesus lifts up those on the opposite end of that spectrum as blessed. This is not possible with an individualist spirituality or where self-protection, material gain, power and human wisdom dominate even if considered measures of God’s blessing by some. The gospel says that we encounter God by following different values, different interactions with others and different ways of being in the world. These are expressed by sacrifice, justice, compassion and integrity. We encounter God in the least and most vulnerable in our world who are blessed, not because they were particularly happy or esteemed, or without troubles, but because in a unique and profound way God was near to them.

So, God is known and encountered by living Christ’s different values, different interactions with others and different ways of being in the world. The doorway to God’s presence is through sacrifice, justice, compassion and integrity. This calls us away from a spirituality that separates worship and social action; that separates God’s presence and the work of justice; that leaves us hoping for ‘evacuation’ to another world as this world suffers and dies. Our worship should lead us into lives of justice and transformation, and teach us to encounter God in the least and most vulnerable in our world. Brian McLaren, an American pastor and writer dismisses that ‘evacuation theology’ which believes that this life is merely a ‘testing ground for another, better world’, and that ‘faith is about separation from this world and its issues in order to be ready for this other world’. Such a view makes sense of hating and killing people who have different beliefs to us. Such a view makes sense of treating women, gay and lesbian people, the poor, the sick, the homeless, the stranger as less than human and deserve to be disadvantaged or treated inequitably. Such a view legitimatises abuse the planet with little care for the impact of consumption of resources. This is not Jesus’ message today. As we look again at the Gospel, we find that God is found in our working for justice, in our caring for the least and in our opposing forces of violence, destruction, materialism, greed, and power.

So what does a person of God’s Reign look like? Today’s gospel does not describe eight different people but provides snapshots of people of God’s Reign from different angles. Jesus’ values are very different, counter-cultural: we are confronted with Jesus’ values and those of society. The basic question today is who do we follow – the values of the world or those of Jesus.

Through the centuries, those who have voiced serious doubts about the feasibility of living in response to these radical statements have been as numerous, and perhaps even louder and more convincing in their logic, than those who surrender to the paradox of Christ’s challenges and attempt to live according to them. Tolstoy, Francis of Assisi, Gandhi and Bonhoeffer among others understood Matthew 5:1-12 to contain the central tenets of the Christian faith. Others favour modifying these verses. They claim that they are hyperbole and so can only be taken seriously when toned down. Others teach that Jesus’ words are invitation for believers to live according to an ethic that is the standard for God’s reign which has come near in Jesus, and so believers are to think, speak and do as Jesus did, thus making his mind and heart their own. Nowhere does Jesus more clearly set forth his mind and heart than in the blessings he pronounces in this Gospel.

Today’s readings invite us to collaborate with God and one another in addressing God’s concerns for humanity. Whilst they are not specific actions they are meant to guide and inspire us to act – to be people of the heart, and wounded hearts. Last Sunday we heard from Paul as he was concerned about disunity in the Corinthian community. It was not for the sake of unity but because it was a tool to present an alternative to the world’s way of doing things, to overturn our familiar world and do things differently – to say that we live for others; for right relationship or justice-making, for inclusiveness. Injustice and abuse of power was concretely expressed in the Corinthian community where members believed that they were set apart [special] and superior to others. In these cases, how is it possible to recognise God’s presence in others? Love making and justice making take us beyond ourselves whereas a society based on power, success and materialism tends to close in on itself. This is at the heart of the Beatitudes. Paul spoke of himself as an ambassador for Christ. How can we do that today? It begins first by recognising the humanity of the other; that we are sisters and brothers; that we are called to love one another even when they wound us or commit crimes against us. In the context of the Beatitudes and the situation of the world today we might call it becoming ambassadors of nonviolence.

There was nothing passive about Jesus, the prophets or Paul. We see the heart of God and the heart of Jesus reflected in the Beatitudes. We see where God’s heart and passion lay. The direction of God’s gaze and concern is toward the marginalised and oppressed. God notices the poor, the left behind people; the people who yearn for and attempt to change the world. Do we notice? There is nothing passive about the Beatitudes. Jesus did not pat people on the head and say ‘there, there’. How can one say to a child in Gaza today, 'Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied’? How can one say that to a person enslaved for sex work or a child soldier? How can one go into a poor or socially disadvantaged area and say ‘Blessed are you poor’. How could one go to a persecuted young man or woman in a Palestinian refugee camp and say, ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice, for theirs is the reign of heaven’? I think we would be dismssed as failing to understand the plight of those who are persecuted – and we would reflect God’s lack of understanding as well.

To hunger and thirst for justice – means doing it. And Jesus’ ‘blessed’ is a congratulations and encouragement to those who do seek justice, work for peace. We must make it happen. It means talking to those who have hurt us, not avoiding them or cutting them off. We cannot just admire justice, but we work for it. If we want peace, we must work for it. If we want peace we must find an alternative to the hatred which can make us into monsters. It is impossible to care only about our own community without seeking to reach out to those beyond it. How can have a church where certain groups of people feel excluded? How can we have a country based on the fair go if people feel excluded because of their social status, social abilities, race, gender or religion?

The former archbishop of Galilee, Elias Chacour in his book, We Belong to the Land, offers a powerful translation of ‘blessed’. ‘Blessed’ is the translation of the word makarioi, used in the Greek New Testament, but his study of Jesus’ Aramaic, reveals that the original word was ashray. This word has a very active quality to it. So he translates Jesus words in the Aramaic, as:

‘Get up, go ahead, do something, move,’ Jesus said to his disciples (Chacour, We Belong to the Land, pp. 143-144). Get up, go ahead. Do something, move, you who are hungry and thirsty for justice, for you shall be satisfied. Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you peacemakers, for you shall be called children of God. Do something if you want to be a peacemaker, not a peace contemplator, to build bridges where others build walls.

It is a call to all of to get our hands dirty, to build a humane society where people will not be abused and tortured, where voiceless find their voices and are heard, where the powerless are lifted up and stand in dignity. So when Jesus says ‘blessed’ he is saying both ‘congratulations’ and ‘keep at it’. The congratulations and encouragement is there when we struggle to do what is right, what is just and stand with those who grieve. He also urges us to get up and do something.. ‘do something you peacemaker, you who are hungry or thirsty for justice, you who long to have a pure heart… and you will be satisfied. You will be called children of God’.

So let’s get our hands dirty. Let’s also encourage and congratulate those amongst us who are tireless partners with God and others to create a more human world in their little acre of God’s world.

What attitudes need to be stripped away to see the presence of God in the marginal and most vulnerable? Open your eyes to the possibility of Christ dwelling within each of us and calling us on our journey to build a Church that renews the world. The Pope says that mere administration is not enough. Each of us must do some self-examination in order to be an effective part of the Body of Christ. Pope Francis concludes:‘...The great danger in today's world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God's voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades....’ (Evangelii Gaudium, (2), November 24, 2013). May we also be a light to those in darkness.

No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.

Dorothy Day

 

AUSTRALIA DAY MUSIC TO A BEAT, YABUN.

Especially for Syndey and NSW - MSC Justice and Peace director, Claude Mostowik, has sent out this notice for a way of remembering Australia Day, January 26th.

Celebrating Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander culture, art, music, dance, politics and heritage.

LITURGY NOTES FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Claude Mostowik MSC

 

Third Sunday of the Year

Year A

January 22^nd 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 on this land.

 

Or

 

We acknowledge the traditional custodians and occupiers of the land where we are now gathered, (the N. people) 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.

    

 

                    

 

For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest,

nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.

Luke 8:17: English Standard Version (©2001)

 

Readings

First Reading Isaiah 8:23—9:3

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14 The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Second Reading 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17

Gospel Matthew 4:12-23 or 4:12-17

 

Penitential Rite

·         Jesus, your light shines in the darkness of our world, Jesus, have mercy.

·         Jesus, your light shine in us and drives away our fears, .Christ, have mercy.

·         Jesus, your light shines on the Churches that profess your name. Jesus, have mercy.

 

Opening Prayer

Persistent God,

Jesus your Son invites us, gently but insistently,

to listen and to follow him as faithful disciples.

Open our minds to his light,

open our hearts to his love,

so the Reign may grow in each of us

and in the world.

 

or

Persistent God,

it is your love that directs our lives.

May that love,

which exceeds the furthest expression of our human longing,

direct each thought and effort

so that your presence is not obscured in our world

but the peace with justice you offer to all people be realised.

 

Prayers of the Faithful

Introduction: Let us pray to God that the light of Christ may bring hope, love and healing to all. Let us pray: R/ Let the light of Christ shine on us.

 

That Christian communities may reveal to others the light of Christ who was came to heal, to reconcile, to include and proclaim the Reign of God in our world, we pray: R/ Let the light of Christ shine on us.

 

That the leaders of the world may offer hope to people who suffer by giving justice to the oppressed, human dignity to every person, aid and comfort to those who cannot help themselves, we pray: R/ Let the light of Christ shine on us.

 

That peace and unity may be realised in our homes, our communities, our nation, and that there may be no divisiveness in the Christian community, we pray: R/ Let the light of Christ shine on us.

 

That countries which spend billions on weapons and train men and women for war will rather find ways of feeding the hungry, educating those poor and providing for people living with treatable illnesses, we pray: R/ Let the light of Christ shine on us.

 

That people will seek peace through justice rather than peace that comes through victory over the enemy whether that be a neighbour, a colleague, or another nation, we pray: R/ Let the light of Christ shine on us.

 

For the people of Gaza whose lives are constantly threatened by violence, we pray: R/ Let the light of Christ shine on us.

 

For the people whose lives are threatened by lack of adequate shelter, nourishing food and access to medical and psychological care as well as people who live ill chronic pain, infirmity and life-threatening illnesses, we pray: R/ Let the light of Christ shine on us.

 

Concluding Prayer: Loving God, Creator of all life, you promise to be with us when we gather in your name and call upon you. Hear our prayers today for our world, a community, a family and a heart that welcomes life.

 

Prayer over the Gifts

Persistent God,

open our blind eyes to the presence of Jesus

who beckons us to follow him.

May we be open to the hopes and joys,

the anxieties and fears

in the people around us

and lead them to the light of hope.

 

Prayer after Communion

Persistent God,

you have enlightened us

with the word of your Son

and strengthened us with the body of Jesus

which has become bread for us.

May we see that we are called to be lights to the world,

bringing a hope where there is despair,

joy where there is sadness, and

love where there is indifference.

 

Liturgical material for Australia Day/Invasion Day ( from ‘A Prayerbook for Australia’)

 

Prayer of the Day.

Bounteous God,

we give thanks for this ancient and beautiful land,

a land of despair and hope,

a land of wealth and abundant harvests,

a land of fire, drought and flood.

We pray that your spirit may continue to move in this land and bring forgiveness, justice and reconciliation and an end to all injustice;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

A Thanksgiving for Australia.

God of Holy dreaming, God Creator Spirit,

from the dawn of creation you have given your children

the good things of Mother Earth.

You spoke and the gum tree grew.

In the vast desert and dense forest,

and in cities at the water’s edge,

creation sings your praise.

Your presence endures

as the rock at the heart of our Land.

When Jesus hung on the tree

you heard the cries of all your people

and became one with your wounded ones:

the convicts, the hunted and the dispossessed.

The sunrise of your Son coloured the earth anew,

and bathed it in glorious hope.

In Jesus we have been reconciled to you,

to each other and to your whole creation.

Lead us on Great Spirit.

as we gather from the four corners of the earth;

Enable us to walk together in trust

from the hurt and shame of the past

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

Eucharistic Preface

All glory and honour, thanks and praise

be yours now and always,

Lord of every time and place,

God beyond our dreaming.

We give thanks that from the beginning of time your brooded over this ancient land.

In the fullness of time you revealed your Son,

our Saviour Jesus Christ,

who by the power of the Spirit was born of Mary

and lived as one of us.

By his death on the cross

and rising to new life

he offered the one true sacrifice for sin

and obtained an eternal deliverance for his people.

We give you thanks that in him you have revealed to us your presence in the vastness of this land, your love in its fruitfulness and your purpose in tis cycles of death and renewed life.

Therefore with angels and archangels……

Prayer after communion:

Heavenly Father, you have created all humanity

in your image and likeness,

and have revealed your plan and purpose

in calling us your friends and family.

As we have shared this holy meal,

inspire our hearts to see

every man, woman and child

given the dignity and value

which is your purpose and you gift;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Blessing

God of this ancient land, through baptism you have given us an inheritance into one family, give us grace to walk together into the unity of Christ Jesus:

and the blessing of God……..

Parish Notices

January 26 Survival Day/Australia

January 26 1788 Captain Arthur Philip raised the British flag at Sydney Cove

January 26 1972 Aboriginal Tent Embassy was established outside Parliament House in Canberra

January 27 UN International Day of Commemoration for the Victims of the Holocaust

 

Further Resources

Try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them.

Julian Assange, 2007

 

A successful autocracy rests on the universal failure of individual courage.

Marilynne Robinson

 

The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition in surviving adversity. But we now face a task for which we have little experience, the task of surviving prosperity.

Alan Gregg

 

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

Atticus Finch (Harper Lee)

 

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

 

I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned with the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, 'Now is that political or social?' He said, 'I feed you.' Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.

Desmond Tutu

 

When we tolerate what we know to be wrong--when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened--when we fail to speak up and speak out--we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.

Robert Francis Kennedy

 

Let them call me a rebel and I welcome it; I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of demons should I make a whore of my soul.

Thomas Paine

 

By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy - indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction.

William Osler

 

It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as God's will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe you - try to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as God's will yourself!

Thomas Merton

 

Hear me people: We now have to deal with another race---small and feeble when our fathers first met them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and the love of possessions is a disease with them. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule.

Chief Sitting Bull

 

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.

Noam Chomsky

 

Truth never damages a cause that is just.

Mahatma Gandhi

 

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain.

Maya Angelou

 

One must always be aware, to notice -- even though the cost of noticing is to become responsible.’

Thylias Moss

 

To be innocent in America is to permit the continued theft of hundreds of billions of dollars from the state by Wall Street swindlers and speculators. To be innocent in America is to stand by as insurance and pharmaceutical companies, in the name of profit, condemn ill people, including children, to die. To be innocent in America is refusing to resist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are not only illegal under international law but responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. This is the odd age we live in. Innocence is complicity.

Chris Hedges

 

Don't struggle and strive so, my child./ There is no race to complete, no point to prove, no obstacle to conquer for you to win my love./ I have already given it to you./ I loved you before creation drew its first breath./ I dreamed you as I molded Adam from the mud./ I saw you wet from the womb./ And I loved you then.

Mpho Tutu and Desmond Tutu, from Made for Goodness

 

I don't gather that God wants us to pretend our fear doesn't exist, to deny it, or eviscerate it. Fear is a reminder that we are creatures -- fragile, vulnerable, totally dependent on God. But fear shouldn't dominate or control or define us. Rather, it should submit faith and love. Otherwise, fear can make us unbelieving, slavish, and unhuman.

Philip Berrigan

 

If you are what you should be, then you will set the world on fire.’

St. Catherine of Siena

 

There is no such thing as the right place, the right job, the right calling or ministry. I can be happy or unhappy in all situations. I am sure of it, because I have been … deciding to do this, that, or the other for the next five, ten, or twenty years is no great decision. Turning fully, unconditionally, and without fear to God is. Yet this awareness sets me free.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

 

 … If those professing religion shared the life of the poor and worked to better their lot, and risked their lives as revolutionists do, and trade union organizers have done in the past, then there is a ring of truth about the promises of the glory to come. The cross is followed by the resurrection.

Dorothy Day

 

‘Christ does not save all those who say to him: Lord, Lord. But he saves all those who out of a pure heart give a piece of bread to a starving [person], without thinking about him in the least little bit.

Simone Weil

 

We must move away from asking God to take care of the things that are breaking our hearts to praying about the things that are breaking God's heart.

Margaret Gibb

 

I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right.

Anne Frank

 

‘Each one according to [their] means should take care to be at one with everyone else, for the more one is united to [their] neighbor, the more [they are] united with God.’

Dorotheus of Gaza

 

Whirled peas

The prayer below was recited at a ‘Mass for Peace’ in Cincinnati's St. Peter in Chains Cathedral:

‘Prayer for the Decade of Nonviolence’

I bow to the sacred in all creation.

May my spirit fill the world with beauty and wonder.

May my mind seek truth with humility and openness.

May my heart forgive without limit.

May my love for friend, enemy, and outcast be without measure.

May my needs be few and my living be simple.

May my actions bear witness to the suffering of others.

May my hands never harm a living being.

May my steps stay on the journey of justice.

May my tongue speak for those who are poor without fear of the powerful.

May my prayers rise with patient discontent until no child is hungry.

May my life's work be a passion for peace and nonviolence.

May my soul rejoice in the present moment.

May my imagination overcome death and despair with new possibility.

and may I risk reputation, comfort and security to bring this hope to the children.

Mary Lou Kownacki, OSB, January 2, 2008

 

The Bridge Builder

Anonymous

 

Once upon a time two brothers who lived on adjoining farms fell into conflict. It was the first serious rift in 40 years in farming side by side, sharing machinery, and trading labor and goods as needed without a hitch. Then the long collaboration fell apart. It began with a small misunderstanding and it grew into a major difference, and finally it exploded into an exchange of bitter words followed by weeks of silence. A reconciliation was utterly unthinkable.

 

One morning there was a knock on John's door. He opened it to find a man with a carpenter's toolbox. ‘I'm looking for a few days work,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you would have a few small jobs here and there. Could I help you?’

 

‘Yes,’ said the older brother. ‘I do have a job for you. Look across the creek at that farm. That's my neighbor, in fact, it's my younger brother. Last week there was a meadow between us and he took his bulldozer to the river levee and now it is a creek between us. Well, he may have done this to spite me, but I'll go him one better. See that pile of lumber curing by the barn? I want you to build me a fence - an 8-foot fence so I won't need to see his place anymore. Cool him down anyhow.’

 

The carpenter said, ‘I think I understand the situation. Show me the nails and the post hole digger and I'll be able to do a job that pleases you.’

 

The older brother had to go to town for supplies so he helped the carpenter get the materials ready and then he was off for the day, The carpenter worked hard all that day measuring, sawing, nailing.

 

About sunset when the farmer returned, the carpenter had just finished his job. The farmer's eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped. There was no fence there at all. It was a bridge a bridge stretching from one side of the creek to the other. A fine piece of work - handrails and all - and the neighbor, his younger brother, was coming across, his hand outstretched.

 

‘You are quite a fellow to build this bridge after all I've said and done.’ The two brothers stood at each end of the bridge and then they met in the middle, took each other's hand, finally reconciled. They turned to see the carpenter hoist his toolbox on his shoulder, ‘No wait, stay a few days. I've a lot of other projects for you,’ said the older brother.

 

‘I'd love to stay on,’ the carpenter said, ‘but, I have many bridges to build.’

 

On the death of the Beloved [John O’Donohue]

Though we need to weep your loss,

You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,

Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.

 

Your love was like the dawn

Brightening over our lives

Awakening beneath the dark

A further adventure of colour.

 

The sound of your voice

Found for us

A new music

That brightened everything.

 

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze

Quickened in the joy of its being;

You placed smiles like flowers

On the altar of the heart.

Your mind always sparkled

With wonder at things.

 

Though your days here were brief,

Your spirit was live, awake, complete.

We look towards each other no longer

From the old distance of our names;

Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,

As close to us as we are to ourselves.

 

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,

We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,

Smiling back at us from within everything

To which we bring our best refinement.

 

Let us not look for you only in memory,

Where we would grow lonely without you.

You would want us to find you in presence,

Beside us when beauty brightens,

When kindness glows

And music echoes eternal tones.

 

When orchids brighten the earth,

Darkest winter has turned to spring;

May this dark grief flower with hope

In every heart that loves you.

 

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart.

To serve the call of courage and love

Until we see your beautiful face again

In that land where there is no more separation,

Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,

And where we will never lose you again.

 

A Mid-Winter Prayer (for those in the Northern Hemisphere that receive these resources)

From the rising of the midwinter sun to its setting

Scatter the darkness with the light of your love, O Shining One.

Make me short on mean thoughts, long on offering words of comfort

Make me short on being driven, long on paying attention

Make me short on focusing only on my own, long on looking beyond

Make me short on obsessive lists, long on spontaneous acts of kindness

Make me short on mindless activity, long on time to reflect

Make me short on tradition as a habit, long on re-discovery and re-owning

Make me short on rushing and tiring, long on walking and wondering

Make me short on false festive jollity, long on stilling and rooted joy

Make me short on guilt, long on being merciful to myself

Make me short on being overwhelmed, long on peaceableness as I set forth this day

from The Celtic Wheel of the Year by Tess Ward

 

The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise. I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return from the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name. Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth Ailinon, alleluia! I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

 

The ultimate weakness of violence

is that it is a descending spiral,

begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.

Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

Through violence you may murder the liar,

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

Through violence you murder the hater,

but you do not murder hate.

In fact, violence merely increases hate....

Returning violence for violence multiples violence,

adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

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

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

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it. 

Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

‘We either live together, or we die together’

Mohamed El-Sawy, Egyptian Muslim arts tycoon credited with first floating the ‘human shield’ idea where Muslim people attended Coptic Christian services after violent attacks on them by radical groups.

 

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

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

Martin Luther King Jr

 

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a moulder of consensus.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

At the centre of non-violence stands the principle of love.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

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

Martin Luther King Jr

 

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Someone must have sense enough and religion enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil, and this can only be done through love.

Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957

 

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Martin Luther King Jr

 

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

 

Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being.

Mahatma Gandhi, 1948

 

There is a way to know if God is near us or far away: every one who is concerned about the hungry, about the naked, about the poor, about the disappeared, about the tortured, about the prisoner, about all flesh that is suffering , will find God near.  ‘Call out to the Lord and he will hear you.’ Religion is not praying a great deal. Religion involves this guarantee of having my God near because I do good to my brothers and sisters.  The proof of my prayer is not to say a great many words, the proof of my plea is easy to see: How do I act toward the poor? Because God is there.

St Oscar Romero, February 5, 1978

 

Peace cannot be a mere word or a vain aspiration. Peace is a commitment and a manner of life which demands that the legitimate aspirations of all should be satisfied, such as access to food, water and energy, to medicine and technology, or indeed the monitoring of climate change. Only in this way can we build the future of humanity; only in this way can we facilitate an integral development valid for today and tomorrow.

Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Diplomatic Corps, 7 January 2008, n7

 

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,

 

From War Is a Lie, by David Swanson.

1. Wars Are Not Fought Against Evil

2. Wars Are Not Launched in Defense

3. Wars Are Not Waged Out of Generosity

4. Wars Are Not Unavoidable

5. Warriors Are Not Heroes

6. War Makers Do Not Have Noble Motives

7. Wars Are Not Prolonged for the Good of Soldiers

8. Wars Are Not Fought on Battlefields

9. Wars Are Not Won, and Are Not Ended By Enlarging Them

10. War News Does Not Come From Disinterested Observers

11. War Does Not Bring Security and Is Not Sustainable

12. Wars Are Not Legal

13. Wars Cannot Be Both Planned and Avoided

14. War Is Over If You Want It

 

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

Albert Einstein

 

Holy God,

We meet you in the darkness,

we see you in the light.

Shine upon us.

Turn us around from

selfish interest and privilege.

Forgive us and give us courage

to shine with your compassion, justice, and peace.

Amen

Out in Scripture

 

Reflection on the readings

In seminary, we had many books in the library, and on our shelves, of conversion stories – some more inspiring than others; some more joyful than others yet all stories of ordinary people called to extraordinary lives. From conventional beginnings, their contribution to others often extended beyond their lives. Today, God’s word comes to us via an exiled prophet (Isaiah) - a beheaded herald (John the Baptist) - a crucified Messiah (Jesus) - an executed apostle (the Apostle Paul). And God’s word continues to come to us via an assassinated archbishop (Oscar Romero) – an assassinated advocate for peace and racial equity Martin Luther King Jnr) – a poor nun living among the poor in Kolkata (Mother Teresa), to name a few.  They did not have a say in the legacy they would leave behind. They were called.  They responded. They lived and died doing God’s will.  Nothing less can be expected of us either as followers of Jesus. Anything less and we are in the wrong place. 

 

Today’s readings contrast rich and poor people, powerful and bullied people, darkness and light, division and unity, withdrawal and leadership. Isaiah tells how rich nations are humbled and that there is One to come out of the poor, lowly land of Galilee. When Matthew made this prophecy the people heard it like a song of freedom and a reminder of God’s open heart for all. People victimised by armed bullies will see the torturers’ instruments shattered. Cowering servitude will be a thing of the past. Such visions articulate the hopes of any exploited people and can be analogously applied to any situation of injustice and oppression.

 

Paul confronted divisions in the early Christian community as people, newly baptized and searching for identity, aligned and followed those who baptised them rather than the only one to follow – Jesus - the crucified and risen Christ. In Matthew, Jesus withdraws to Capernaum after hearing of John the Baptist’s imprisonment. From here he calls those who were to be his followers. John the Baptist has moved from desert to dungeon. The voice that cried out in the desert is now in prison – a ‘serial troublemaker’ is now out of the public eye. Authorities do what authorities do best – they try to silence people who threaten them as recently when Father John Dear was removed or forced to leave his religious community after decades of being a voice for peace. It happened to Oscar Romero, to Martin Luther King and to John Lennon and countless others. Jesus takes up where John left off but preaches a message of reconciliation and healing. Matthew summarises Jesus' ministry in terms of a light shining on a people in darkness. What began as a call for repentance became a mission to heal, to reconcile, to broaden peoples’ horizons to God’s presence in all people and all places. But it is not something he can do alone.

 

It was a dark time for Jesus, and we can imagine him, as did the writer of the psalm, calling out to God in trust for strength in their darkness and fear - as people continue to do today. This God meets and walks with us in the darkness, in the division and in the solitude, and calls us to light, unity and action.  If we reflect on where we dwell, we might also see that sometimes that darkness may be the darkness of ignorance, self-righteousness, grandiosity and superiority. The division might be due to an ‘us vs. them,’ or ‘mine vs. yours’ mentality that excludes people who are different in any way – the stranger, the refugee, the person of another faith, the person of different sexual orientation?

 

Following in the footsteps of Isaiah and Paul, luminaries such as Mahatma Gandhi, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and today, Pope Francis, have shown us that we can live lives of peace and unity. We need to find ways or strategies to do this in our country, in our communities, in our workplaces, in our homes, in our places of worship, and most importantly, within ourselves. Pope Francis in his World Day of Peace Message (January 1, 2017) called Nonviolence: a Style of Politics for Peace is an excellent reflection and challenge to live in peace with one another and all of creation. It calls for action. It is political as is all work for justice and peace. Jesus’ baptism was his entry into and sharing the world of ordinary people. He proclaims there has been a power shift – and calls others to share in his ministry and service. It is unashamedly political because it is in the ‘people business’. God’s reign requires attention to doing justice and doing it nonviolently. It is unashamedly political.  Marcus Borg in Heart of Christianity (p. 127), writes, ‘The claim that the Bible is political and that the God of the Bible is passionate about justice is surprising, even startling, to many Christians. We have often overlooked it; and when it is pointed out, we often resist seeing it’.

 

And we see in the gospels, people are placed before us called to be agents of God’s justice, healing, reconciliation and love. God always begins from the margins and we have seen that Jesus comes out marginal territory, a geographical backwater, calling marginal people to be disciples. Geography is important. It reflects God’s concerns. Galilee is close to pagan territory and had a mixture of religion. It is a marginal place. And, Jesus called marginal people in marginal places. John’s imprisonment will not stop him as he intensifies his activity of teaching, proclaiming and healing throughout Galilee.

 

Their radical decision to follow needed to be renewed again and again as they faced the implications of proclaiming the reign of heaven. They had to believe that God’s reigning was manifest in their relationship with Jesus and the life he shared with them and that its power overruled everything that could rise up against them.

 

Each of us is called to make the same decision. We have to choose either to regard Christianity as a nice idea, a comfort in difficult times or to make the following of Christ the only thing that makes sense of our life. Christ’s call comes to each of us individually and promises to transform us into everything we could possibly be. Yet, while each must decide for her or himself, we are called together because only together can we make Christ present in our world. What happened on that seashore continues to happen in our own lives. When Christ’s call strikes a chord with us, it’s an invitation to play our part in God’s new world symphony. For the disciples, meeting Jesus that day would not be just another day at work when they were called to abandon fishing with the promise that they would now catch, look for people. They would be casting their faith, words and actions out into the sea of humanity in order to touch hearts and souls.

 

The scriptures tell us that God hears the cry of people oppressed, in chains, poor and those who struggled in sweat and blood to lay the foundations of an oppressive empire. Jesus heard such cries and we as individuals and communities are called to listen to those cries and respond. When Peter and his companions dropped their nets to follow Jesus they were signing on to a movement that offered an alternative community—economic, political, and spiritual—to the dominating imperial system they had lived under. Their call was to be identified first and foremost with service to humanity, to the community, and we are called also to extend that as service for the Earth rather than enslaving human life and destroying the Earth. ‘Fishing for humanity’ must include seeing Jesus’ message as bound up with his and our compassion for the poor; his and our concern for the whole person, his and our opposition to ‘sins’ of exclusion; and systemic injustice – societal sins – [or ‘the normalcy of human civilisation’s violent injustice at a very specific time and a very specific place’ [John Dominic Crossan, God and Empire, p. 111]. As we saw, God is champion of the oppressed who offers freedom from their enemies. Isaiah wrote when Assyria was the imperial power. And Jesus calls us over and over again to choose ‘the radicality of God’s nonviolent justice’ over ‘the normalcy of human civilisation’s violent injustice at a very specific time and a very specific place’ [Crossan, God and Empire, p. 111].

 

Those who follow Jesus are always in the ‘people’ business - not the fish business - or the farming business - or the mineral business - or in any other business people engage in. I remember a poster in the waiting of room of the Department of Immigration saying that the organisation was in the people business but we saw how many people were not being served and very much exploited. One might say that whatever business we are on about.. media, health, education, law enforcement… they are to serve people and the good of the earth. Not to do this is to divide Christ as Paul says. It is to disfigure the image of Christ, God in disguise, on the face of our sisters and brothers.

 

Despite factions in the Christian community, Paul does not demand conformity but inclusiveness. He sought a basis for unity that took the real differences in people into account, whether of class, background or personality. The task of Christian community is to weave a global tapestry where no one is excluded. In the face of mutual suspicion, exclusion, recrimination, accusations, and outing, Paul urged unity and agreement. Christians (and non-Christians) have excluded, persecuted and killed those they deemed to be different—Jews, Muslims, gays, witches, heretics and so on. Most dispiriting is that the bitterest enemies were Christians against Christians, persecuting each other over the slightest differences whether of doctrine, practice, sexuality.

 

Not all Christians distrust, demonise, fear, caricature and separate themselves from each other. We can also find voices of inclusion, embrace, tolerance, welcome and even celebration. The reading from Paul and the gospel stand side by side. Unity for Paul was a counterpoint to the world’s way of doing things; where new life, inclusion, justice are lived out. A diverse community united in love around Jesus has power for healing, for justice, for peacemaking. A diverse community united in love around Jesus exists for others, not for itself. A diverse community united in love around Jesus is not based on worldly power. A diverse community united in love around Jesus exists to heal that which is broken, includes the lost. A diverse community united in love around Jesus can proclaim to those around it ‘We're here for you’.

 

As we work within the systems of this world to bring about justice it is easy to get caught up in factionalism and calls for loyalty of the systems we are meant to challenge. The causes make a great claim on us than Jesus and the values of God’s reign. Even our loyalty to the church or religious affiliations can interfere with these values of God’s reign and living truly in the ‘people business’.  As Pope Francis seems to be saying we are facing threats -violence and war, poverty and greed, consumption and environmental degradation, exclusion and discrimination - to the world’s wholeness. To face them we can do this in the security and strength of the Psalmist today by living a strong and vibrant relationship with God.  When this relationship becomes our primary loyalty we will find ourselves seeking nonviolence in the face of violence, welcoming people with whom we disagree, challenging the injustices within our own organisations and beyond, standing with, sitting with people in solidarity.

 

May we personally and collectively, nurture our own relationship with God. Without it, we can easily grow despondent, cynical and even destructive. The power to live from the reality of God’s reign, to work to change the world and bring justice, flows from knowing God’s light and presence. Ultimately our first calling is simply to follow Christ and invite others to do the same. Changing the world, then, is not our task – it is God’s. We simply get to participate sometimes.

 

LITURGY NOTES FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Press ? for Keyboard Shortcut

LITURGY NOTES FOR THE FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY

Manifestatation of Jesus to the Peoples of all Nations

January 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.

                  

     

 

God of peace and life,

speak to the hearts of those responsible

for the fate of peoples,

stop the `logic' of revenge and retaliation,

with your Spirit suggest new solutions,

generous and honorable gestures,

room for dialogue and patient waiting

which are more fruitful than

the hurried deadlines of war.

John Paul II [adapted for gender sensitivity]

 

Discerning signs has to do with comprehending the remarkable in common happenings, with perceiving the saga of salvation within the era of the Fall. It has to do with the ability to interpret ordinary events in both apocalyptic and eschatological connotations, to see portents of death where others find progress or success but, simultaneously, to behold tokens of the reality.... of hope where others are consigned to confusion or despair. Discerning signs does not seek spectacular proofs or await the miraculous, but, rather, it means sensitivity to the Word of God indwelling in all Creation and transfiguring common history, while remaining radically realistic about death's vitality in all that happens.

William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land.

 

Janet McKenzie

 

Readings

First Reading Isaiah 60:1-6

Responsorial Psalm Ps 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13

R. (cf. 11) Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.

Second Reading Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6

Gospel Matthew 2:1-12

 

Gathering

Once again we gather,

From different homes and circumstances,

With different dreams and ideas,

different values and tastes,

Different in age and colour,

different in gender and language,

Yet, we are one family

– Children of God every one;

We join our hearts in worship,

We join our voices in praise

And we join our lives

as the Body of Christ. Amen.

 

Penitential Rite

• With your coming, your light shines and possibility opens for us. Jesus, have mercy.
• With your coming, we find paths where there were once walls and obstacles. Christ, have mercy.
• With your coming, there is a threshold which we can step over into wholeness by the unexpected questions that open us up. Jesus, have mercy.

or

• Christ Jesus, you came to bring light to those in darkness: Jesus, have mercy.
• Christ Jesus, you came for every person of every nation: Christ, have mercy.
• Christ Jesus, you call us to be people of the light: Jesus, have mercy.

or

• Christ Jesus, you radiate your light on all the nations of the earth: Jesus, have mercy.
• Jesus Christ, you offer justice and peace to all people: Christ, have mercy.
• Christ Jesus, you are merciful on the weak and protect the poor: Jesus, have mercy.

 

Opening Prayer

God of all nations, peoples and cultures

the leading of a star

manifested Jesus, and your presence

to the peoples of the earth. 

Your incarnate Word

pierces the darkness that covers the earth

and signals the dawn of peace and justice.

The nearness of your love 

makes radiant the lives of your people

and beckons all the nations

to walk as one in your light.

 

Prayer over the Gifts

God of all nations, peoples and cultures,

may our offerings today

move us to love ourselves more deeply,

to honour each other more reverently

and to trust you as the source

of every new beginning. 

May your light continue to guide us,

and may every journey be an opportunity

for seeking, revealing, forgiving and changing.  

 

Prayer after Communion

God of all nations, peoples and cultures,

through this Eucharist that we celebrate today,

guide us with your light

so that we might see more deeply

and discern more clearly your presence

in Jesus and one another.

 

Statement of Belief

We believe in the God who made every man and woman in God's image.

We believe in the Christ who died to reconcile every human being to God,

and to restore our common humanity.

We believe in the Holy Spirit that has always hovered over creation,

and ignites love's fire in our hearts.

We believe in the community of faith that worships God, follows Jesus,

and lives by the Spirit.

And we believe in the time

when all things will be made new,

and all things will be brought together under Christ. Amen.

 

Prayers of the Faithful

Introduction: God's love is revealed to us in Jesus. May we be drawn beyond the limits the world imposes and see the light of God in all people. Response: May Christ’s light shine through us upon the world.

·         That the message of Christ’s peace through justice and nonviolence be re-learnt by all who follow him and that were there is violence and conflict we seek peace, reconciliation, compassion, we pray: May Christ’s light shine through us upon the world.

·         That all people discover peace as a gift of God and that it has a human face and heart which drives us towards mercy and compassion to others which tears down walls and barriers of hatred and distrust, we prayer: May Christ’s light shine through us upon the world.

·         That all the churches and faith communities continue to seek God and grow in faith and trust rather than claim exclusive rights on wisdom and truth, we pray: May Christ’s light shine through us upon the world.

·         That as our Orthodox sisters and brothers celebrate Christmas today, leaders of all faiths will be open to the light within them and work together to bring peace and harmony to people in their communities, we pray: May Christ’s light shine through us upon the world.

·         That people affected by floods, fires and hurricanes will receive the assistance they really need to build up their communities and that those who lost loved ones or friends might solace and peace through the care and love of their sisters and brothers throughout the world, we pray: May Christ’s light shine through us upon the world.

·         That on this feast of the Epiphany we are reminded that as Jesus came as a light to all people, the exclusion of anyone through racism, stereotyping, discrimination and xenophobia contradicts the good news of Christ, we pray: May Christ’s light shine through us upon the world.

·         That all those who are dominated by fear, overwhelmed by doubt and submerged in depression, come to trust through the light and peace of the living God, we pray: May Christ’s light shine through us upon the world.

·         That the powerful nations of our world, like the three Kings, will take different paths, by having the courage and integrity to recognise that their actions can cause threats to peace, and not imposing limits on dialogue, peace-making and compassion, we pray: May Christ’s light shine through us upon the world.

·         That those who govern, and we ourselves, might be free to build up this world to bring peace, to protect the weak, and create justice for all, we pray: May Christ’s light shine through us upon the world.

·         That God’s people everywhere, and especially the members of our parish family, will see that the light of God also shines beyond its confines in people and places we least expect, we pray: May Christ’s light shine through us upon the world.

Concluding Prayer: God of different journeys, you revealed your Son to all the peoples of the earth. Fill all with your joy and help those who search for you to find the stars that you have placed in their lives to lead them along the way.  We ask this in Jesus' name.

 

Alternative Prayer of the Faithful

Introduction: Brothers and sisters, on this day we remember we have brothers and sisters in Christ in every land who are praying in every language, let us join them in interceding for our world as we pray, ‘Be born in us; be born in our world.’

1. Where there is the darkness of war, we pray … Be born in us; be born in our world.
2. Where there is the darkness of intimidation and threat, we pray … Be born in us; be born in our world.
3. Where there is the darkness of poverty, we pray … Be born in us; be born in our world.
4. Where there is the darkness of hunger, we pray … Be born in us; be born in our world.
5. Where there is the darkness of homelessness, we pray … Be born in us; be born in our world.
6. Where there is the darkness of illness, we pray … Be born in us; be born in our world.
7. Where there is the darkness of fear, we pray … Be born in us; be born in our world.
8. Where there is the darkness of hatred, we pray … Be born in us; be born in our world.
9. Where there is the darkness of hopelessness, we pray … Be born in us; be born in our world.
10. Let us pray quietly for a moment for those places in our lives where we most need light … (in our families, in our work, in our suffering, in our doubt, in our loneliness, in our fear of loss.) In all those dark places, we pray …  Be born in us; be born in our world.

Concluding Prayer: God of Peace, your son, Jesus, came among us to be the light of the world. Make us believe in the light so that we become people of the light, and shed the light of your love, peace, and hope to all who seek it.

 

Eucharistic Preface [Alternative]

May God be with you.

And also with you.

Let us lift up our hearts.

We lift them up to God.

Let us give thanks to God

We give God thanks and praise.

 

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

for you are the fulfilment of all our searching.

Since the time when you created all things

you have had a plan

— hidden in mystery through the ages —

to draw all the world into one body,

and to share with all peoples your promises of glory.

And now the light has risen, the mystery is made known:

your beloved child, Jesus, is revealed to the whole world

as Saviour and Redeemer,

and as the One who reigns in justice and peace.

You made him known first

to the magi from the east,

who came to pay him homage,

though they knew of him only what the silent stars could tell.

And now, you draw us again to the feet of Jesus,

to offer our gifts of praise to the Christ, the light of the world.

Therefore with .....

©Adapted from 2000 Nathan Nettleton www.laughingbird.net

Further Resources

I care not if you are an American, Iraqi, Israeli, Palestinian or whose flag you live under.

I care not that you worship a God, or what his name may be.

I care not that you like or dislike me.

I care not whose head adorns the money that buys your comfort.

I care that you should be treated with the same dignity and respect I demand for myself and for my family.

In fact I demand it!

I demand that the rights of each person regardless of place of birth is respected, not because of their wealth or achievements but for the dignity that is the birthright of all who are born to this earth.

Life demands not that we prosper at the expense of another but that we share our humanity and call a crime a crime, regardless of who the victim is, or who the villain.

Let us not walk in arrogance across the globe speaking of freedom while our hands are stained in centuries of blood.

Let us not preach to the world as victims and use the crushed bodies of the two thousand seven hundred and fifty nine people who perished on 9/11 as a weapon to plunder a world that has long experienced the same devastation at our hands.

Our tears and screams for justice are bitter taunts to a world that has been bombed and bullied by a nation to sure of it's own goodness.

A man that has lived his life without looking at his past and identifying those sections of his character that have brought pain to others is a tyrant. A nation and its people who refuse to acknowledge its crimes and the suffering of its victims is an evil to the world and should expect only evil as its reward.

How poor we are when we consider our own pain more worthy than the suffering of others.

‘Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.’

John Adams

 

 

How poor we are when we consider our own pain

more worthy than the suffering of others.

 

     

In Christ Jesus 'there does not exist among you Jew or Greek, slave or freedom, male or female. All are one in Christ Jesus.' . . . It is in Christ that the Church finds the central cause for its commitment to justice, and to the struggle for the human right and dignity of all persons.

US Bishops, Brothers and Sisters are Us

 

War is the spectacular and bloody projection of our everyday living. We precipitate war out of our daily lives; and without a transformation in ourselves, there are bound to be national and racial antagonisms, the childish quarreling over ideologies, the multiplication of soldiers, the saluting of flags, and all the many brutalities that go to create organized murder.

J. Krishnamurti

 

History is an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

Ambrose Bierce, American writer, 1842-1914

 

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

Noam Chomsky

 

You see, when a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry.

The leaders stigmatize the enemy with every vice they can think of, every evil and human depravity. They stimulate their people's natural fear of all other men by channelling it into a defined fear of just certain men, or nations. Attacking another nation, then, acts as a sort of catharsis, temporarily, on men's fear of their immediate neighbours.

This is the explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all massacres, and all attempts at genocide.

Taylor Caldwell, The Devil’s Advocate (1952), p. 299

 

You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion

Meister Eckhart

 

We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity.... But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.

Meister Eckhart

 

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it.

Joseph Conrad

 

To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation that is governed by shopkeepers.

Adam Smith

 

Thank God that at this hour I am dangerous to the war profiteers of this country who rob the people on the one hand, and rob and debase the government on the other; and then with their pockets and wallets stuffed with the filthy, bloodstained profits of war, wrap the sacred folds of the Stars and Stripes about them and [about] their blatant hypocrisy to the world.

Kate Richards O'Hare's Address To the Court Proceedings on the Sentencing of Mrs. Kate Richards O'Hare by Hon Martin J. Wade

     

 

An Inter-faith Prayer for Peace

God, you are the source of life and peace.

Praised be your name forever.

We know it is you who turn our minds to thoughts of peace.

Hear our prayer in this time of crisis.

Your power changes hearts.

Muslims, Christians and Jews remember, and profoundly affirm,

that they are followers of the one God, children of Abraham, brothers and sisters.

Enemies begin to speak to one another;

those who were estranged join hands in friendship;

nations seek the way of peace together.

Strengthen our resolve to give witness to these truths by the way we live.

Give to us:

understanding that puts an end to strife;

mercy that quenches hatred, and

forgiveness that overcomes vengeance.

Empower all people to live in your law of love.

http://www.diochi.org.uk/content/prayer4.htm,  Pax Christi

 

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

Voltaire.

 

In the course of twenty centuries of history, the generations of Christians have periodically faced various obstacles to this universal Mission. Despite such adversities, the Church constantly renews her deepest inspiration, that which comes to her directly from the Lord: To the whole world! To all creation! Right to the ends of the earth! She did this once more at the last Synod, as an appeal not to imprison the proclamation of the Gospel by limiting it to one sector of mankind or to one class of people or to a single type of civilization.

Paul VI, On Evangelization in the Modern World, Evangelii Nuntiandi

 

When I tell the truth,

it is not for the sake of convincing those

who do not know it,

but for the sake of defending those that do.

William Blake

 

Heroism on command,

senseless violence,

and all the loathsome nonsense

that goes by the name of patriotism –

how passionately I hate them!

Albert Einstein

 

Prayer

Let us beg from Christ the gift of peace

for all who are suffering as a result of conflicts old and new.

Day after day, I bear in my heart

the tragic problems of the Holy Land;

every day I think with anxiety

of all those who are dying of cold and hunger;

every day there reaches me the desperate cry

of those who, in so many parts of the world,

call for a fairer distribution of resources

and for gainful employment for all.

Let no one lose hope

in the power of God's love!

May Christ be the light and support

of those who believe and work, sometimes in the face of opposition,

for encounter, dialogue and cooperation

between cultures and religions.

May Christ guide in peace the steps

of those who tirelessly devote themselves

to the progress of science and technology.

May these great gifts of God never be used

against respect for human dignity and its promotion!

 

Maybe it is not the darkness we fear most,

but the silences contained within the darkness.

Maybe it is not the absence of the moon that frightens us,

but the absence of what we expect to be there.

A wedge of long-billed curlews

flying in the night

punctuates the silences,

and their unexpected calls remind us

that the only thing we can expect is change.

Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

 

Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals.

Colman McCarthy

 

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918- ) Russian writer, Soviet dissident.

 

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life - happiness, freedom, and peace of mind - are always attained by giving them to someone else.

Peyton Conway March:

 

It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.

James Baldwin

 

This focus on money and power may do wonders in the marketplace, but it creates a tremendous crisis in our society. People who have spent all day learning how to sell themselves and to manipulate others are in no position to form lasting friendships or intimate relationships... Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security.

Rabbi Michael Lerner

 

Do not pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger.

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers,

pray for powers equal to your tasks.

Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle.

Every day you shall wonder at yourself,

at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God. Amen.

Philip Brooks

 

We are all called to be contemplatives in the heart of the world - by seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, everywhere, all the time, and [God's] hand in every happening; seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor.

Mother Teresa

 

We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.

Hildegard of Bingen

 

While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight; while children go hungry, as they do now, I'll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do, I'll fight; while there is one drunkard left, while there is a poor girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I'll fight - I'll fight to the very end!

William Booth

 

Christianity is being concerned about your fellow [human], not building a million-dollar church while people are starving right around the corner. Christ was a revolutionary person, out there where it was happening. That's what God is all about, and that's where I get my strength.

Fannie Lou Hammer 

 

This is the rule of most perfect Christianity, it's the most exact definition, its highest point, namely, the seeking of the common good. For nothing can so make a person an imitator of Christ as caring for [their] neighbours.

St. John Chrysostom

 

We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process, crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them.’

Jean Vanier

 

In everyone there is the capacity to wake up, to understand, to love.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

 

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

George Bernard Shaw

 

Mary represents the 'rebel consciousness' that is essential to Jesus' gospel. Wherever the gospel is preached, we must remember that its good news will make you crazy. Jesus will put you at odds with the economic and political systems of our world. This gospel will force you to act, interrupting the world as it is in ways that make even pious people indignant.

Emmanuel Katongole

 

One of the major reasons for government secrecy is to protect the government from its own population,

Noam Chomsky

 

What is a rebel? A (man) who says ‘no’.

Albert Camus

 

The major western democracies are moving towards corporatism. Democracy has become a business plan, with a bottom line for every human activity, every dream, every decency, every hope. The main parliamentary parties are now devoted to the same economic policies - socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor - and the same foreign policy of servility to endless war. This is not democracy. It is to politics what McDonalds is to food.

John Pilger

 

(Men) seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

Thomas Carlyle, Goethe's Works

 

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

Clarence Darrow

 

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) Poet, playwright, written December 4, 1937

 

I think you have to deal with the confused situation that we're faced with by seizing on the glimpses and particles of life, seizing on them and holding them and trying to make a pattern of them. In other words, trying to put a world back together again out of its fragmentary moments.

Archibald MacLeish

 

Journalism is concerned with events, poetry with feelings. Journalism is concerned with the look of the world, poetry with the feel of the world.

Archibald MacLeish

 

This is the fundamental debate in our society: Are we a nation of citizens or a nation of consumers? Are we a democracy run by citizens, or are we a corporatocracy that holds consumers locked in dependency by virtue of their consumption?

Thom Hartmann

 

They had their cynical code worked out. The public are swine; advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket.

George Orwell

 

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else....Their purpose, in brief, is to make docile and patriotic citizens, to pile up majorities, and to make John Doe and Richard Doe as nearly alike, in their everyday reactions and ways of thinking, as possible.

H. L. Mencken, (1880-1956) American Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Linguist, Lexicographer, and Critic

 

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.... O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people!

Patrick Henry, (1736-1799) US Founding Father

 

O God of justice, you sent your Christ

to establish your realm of freedom and peace on earth as in heaven.

Prosper every effort to challenge arrogance,

prejudice and fear, and

to thwart all forms of discrimination,

degradation and oppression.

Through the one who died at the oppressor's hands, Jesus Christ,

our redeemer, who lives and reigns with you

and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

 

God, all Light, all Truth,

we seek you.

Show us the way in this world and at this time.

Shine on us. O, shine on your entire world.

Shine with your peace, justice and compassion.

In the name of Jesus, Light and Truth. Amen.

Arise, shine; for your light has come,

and the glory of God is upon you’ (Isaiah 60:1).

 

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.

 

Reflections for the feast of Epiphany

Epiphany challenges us to see traces of God’s presence everywhere but particularly in places where it might be overlooked. In March 1958, (Thomas Merton) who lived in a monastery for 17 years had his eyes opened on the corner of street: ‘In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the centre of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness…. … This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. … I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.’ This was a turning point in Merton’s monastic vocation as he penetrated deeply into the meaning of what it meant to be human. It meant seeing God’s presence and involvement in our lives and in our troubled world.

 

Any real ministry must begin with noticing especially the people easily overlooked. God’s movement or presence among us reveals a merciful heart burning with love for hurting people and a hurting creation. Too often, because of our agendas we can miss what God is doing amongst us. Today, Matthew disrupts our comfortable thoughts and pastoral tranquillity in the hope that we truly hear the gospel. Despite the often fairy tale depictions of the nativity story, the story of the magi is rooted in the politics of domination and the costly resistance to it. Their arrival in Jerusalem was an upset of political equilibrium (or at least its pretense), and a calling into question of the rule of an insecure puppet king. The cut throat politics that led to Jesus’ death were very present at his birth as well Herod responded with murderous rage and the holy family found themselves refugees on the run.

 

Today we see again the Jesus through whom God reaches out to people. We know how at Christmas God came down and dirty to seek out and touch the poor, marginalised, unnoticed, outside the group. God did not wait till things were peaceful and calm in the world but precisely into this troubled world.

 

This feast reminds us where we - the Church - should be…. not just among our own but to expand the boundaries of our concern to those that God choose to make a home amongst: people who do measure up or the oppressed [indigenous, gay people, Palestinians, persecuted Christians and other minorities, etc.]. What a direct challenge to the self-interested and nationalistic political leaders (the ‘Herods’ of this world) and to the churches.  Two characteristics are evident in our political, social, economy and relational world today: defensiveness and otherness. People increasingly see themselves as distinct from and ‘other than’ others. In business, companies strive to set themselves apart and distinct from their competitors. Nations draw boundaries, and identify more and more who is an enemy and who is a friend, and thus invest huge amounts  in militarism to defend what is ‘uniquely theirs’ – at great cost to themselves and others. Today’s feast reveals that Christ crosses all of these boundaries, refusing to be defensive or self-protective, and refusing to draw lines of separation – and in drawing creation into one gives up his own safety, security and comfort in order to do it. Too often our faith becomes exclusive, something to defend against others who have different perspectives. Epiphany reveals an alternative view of God’s presence, as something we do not earn but is given, that this presence is found in engaging compassionately and sharing with others and in our protecting and defending the least. How often do we in our communities even as the question as to ‘Who needs to be included in our community now?’ and ‘Who needs to be protected?’ Once, again, we are invited to make friends with all the wrong people!!!

 

Isaiah shows us a new way of being God's people. The marginalised often have life squeezed out of them and these are invited to imagine a different world; to dream of a future beyond the present harsh realities. Ephesians also says that outcasts, non-Jews, non-churched peoples are called by God, and are God’s people and are called to change the world. The emphasis is on the radical act of inclusion. God wants to draw all in. We cannot be content with our ‘faith’ if it does not touch suffering people. We are told that we are all insiders and objects of God’s love. There are no boundaries to God’s love and others need to be awakened to their insider status. We see in the gospel a preview of the Jesus who having attracted the Magi will later attract Samaritan adulterers, immoral prostitutes, greasy tax collectors, despised Roman soldiers, and ostracised lepers.

 

The gospel offers us choices. Do we respond to the God of mercy or to try to contain God within the bounds of our doctrines and imagination? The choice to take another road, as did the magi, is a choice to do things differently. It is the choice, as Jesus said in the gospel last week, ‘being about the things of God’ – the things close to God’s heart. New visions call for new paths. It might touch on our prejudices or our personal and communal comfort zones that lead us to welcome the marginalised where they stand on their feet as equals. Like Bethlehem, at first sight, the poor and the forgotten ones seem insignificant, but they are very important because this is how God comes to us - through them.

 

The Magi show us show where Christ may be found. Not in palaces but in the humpy, the sick bed, the asylum seeker, the person on the street, the abused person, next to the homeless person on the street we avert our eyes from. Jesus was born in the midst of political and religious hostility and violence – which still continues. The people of Mosul and Aleppo know it. The indigenous people at Standing Rock in North Dakota and in the Philippines know this. The victims of Boko Haram in Nigeria still live with this and know it. The victims of the Taliban and Isis, and the victims of US, Russian and Saudi, bombs know it. The Palestinians know it. The 8 million Uighurs in China know it. The Tibetans know it. The poor know it. The Indians in the Amazon jungle of Brazil know it. Many gay and lesbian people know it. All know firsthand the threats, injustice and cruelty. Yet, all in some way shine with their gifts of humanity.

 

So, what do we hear in this story? We hear that God has sent a one who will upset the powers. We hear that the smallest things, even a newborn baby, can terrify the arrogant, and bring them down in the end. We hear that the smallest things, like a new born baby, can melt the heart of the hardened of people. We learn that God's loving reach transcends every obstacle within or without, and pushes us beyond them, too.

 

Epiphany is any time when God appears in surprising places and pushes against our constructed realities as Thomas Merton found. How can God show up as a baby born in impoverished circumstances to poor parents? How is it possible that people of different races, ethnicities, cultures and social standing will come to worship this child? How might we see one another in a different light now, today, maybe for the first time, because of this child? We have other sightings where God in the 12 year old Jesus turns up in the temple engaging with the old men of faith which shifts their thinking and attitudes where wisdom can now come in unexpected places and unexpected people. In another sighting, a prophet (John the Baptist) is preaching by the river and God in Jesus comes asking for baptism like a common person, and leaves people wondering what must change in their own lives if God has shown that nothing is too lowly for a servant of heart and a spirit of love. The point is that when God makes an appearance, things change: the way we see ourselves; the way we see our responsibilities; how we live with others; the way we long for freedom from fear; the way we long to trust more and make us more willing to risk our comfort and our routine.

 

As we might meet God in new places, could we imagine God being surprised about the places and situations we might also show up; places and situations and involvements that might have gone against any expectations others or we would have had of ourselves, going against what might considered normal, safe, and comfortable, beyond the usual confines of our lives.

 

God’s boundaries have been stretched and continue to be stretched by becoming one of us. Maybe a simple question for ourselves might be where would God be surprised and relieved to find us? If simple gestures and changes can lead us to new places and keep us open to surprise, maybe God and you and I will meet one another where we both least expect it.

The magi not only exposed a sham king and the great political dangers of worshiping a hunted baby Messiah, they also brought gifts. Their gift-giving is a summons to us to make of our lives individually and corporately a witness of hope in and for a broken, despairing world. Like the world Jesus was born in, ours is a world of political and economic oppression, of homelessness and forced migration, of violence and fear-mongering. On this Epiphany we celebrate the fullness of the Christmas story and continue to make the foolish claim that tenderness triumphs and that love wins. That this love continues the ‘incarnation’ of God in our daily lives who has come inclusively – for all people: Jew and non-Jew, the rich and the poor, the oppressed and the oppressor. This inclusivity is what continues to show the gospel up as scandalous and revolutionary.

LITURGICAL NOTES FOR THE 4th SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Claude Mostowik MSC

Fourth Sunday of Advent Year A

December 18^th 2016

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 on this land.

 

For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.

Luke 8:17

 

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

George Orwell, English essayist, novelist, & satirist (1903 - 1950)

 

Telling the truth is not treason!

 

Not only is another world possible, she is one her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

Arundhati Roy

Mother of the Streets by Robert Lentz

Each year, larger numbers of homeless people live on the streets of modern cities. These people may be jobless workers, battered women, the untreated mentally ill, or simply those too poor to get by. They tend to be ‘invisible’ to the rest of society, but they are a real presence of Christ in our midst, demanding charity and justice for the hungry and naked. They extend the incarnation of Christ, the Suffering Servant, in history.

 

This icon depicts the Mother of God as the mother of those on the streets. Her garments, and those of Jesus, are covered with jewels and gold decoration, to reveal the hidden worth and dignity of street people, who are living icons of God.

 

In 1984 the U.S. Catholic bishops declared, ‘To turn aside from those on the margins of society, the needy and the powerless, is to turn aside from Jesus. Such people show His face to the world.’ Such people are also a presence of Church, for where Christ is, there is His Church.

Readings

Reading I Is 7:10-14

Responsorial Psalm Ps 24:1-2, 3-4, 5-6

Reading II Rom 1:1-7

Gospel  Mt 1:18-24

 

Opening Prayer

Coming and ever-present God,

your promise is spoken

in the psalms of David,

the words of the prophets,

the dream of Joseph.

In the womb of Mary,

your Word takes flesh.

Teach us to welcome Jesus, God with us,

and to proclaim through our lives

the good news of  Jesus’ his coming,

so that people of all times and places

may know the One who wishes to be reborn in them. 

Prayer over the Gifts

Coming and ever-present God,

in this bread and wine we offer

you give us Jesus, your Son

as our God-with-us.

May we welcome him in people in need

and hear his constant call to us each day.

 

Prayer after Communion

Coming and ever-present God,

in this Eucharistic celebration

you have given us Jesus, our God-with-us,

and we receive the fullness of your life and love.

May we see that Spirit of Jesus

is the source of our power

and that our world can become fresh

and renewed by our engagement with it.

 

Prayers of the Faithful

Introduction: God hears the cries of all people.  Let us entrust to God all our longings and those of poor and vulnerable people. The response is: We seek your face in our world, O God. [adapted from the responsorial psalm]

·         As Christmas and Chanukah become orgies of consumption and undermine the deep message of these feasts, may we not forget our obligations to relieve the suffering of the poor and the powerless, we pray:  We seek your face in our world, O God.

·         As we have taken the symbol of hope reborn embodied in Jesus’ birth to challenge the rule of imperialism, may we strive to bring an end global poverty and to the suffering of the world’s children, we pray:  We seek your face in our world, O God.

·         As our earth struggles to breathe, may we encourage our leaders to take the difficult and responsible steps to bring down climate warming so that we respect God’s creation and leave a legacy of peace and well being for future generations, we pray: We seek your face in our world, O God.

·         As this religious time is in danger of becoming an adjunct to capitalism, may those who are rooted in a spiritual sensibility lift their voices to challenge the profligate spending at this time, we pray:  We seek your face in our world, O God.

·         As we purchase goods and gifts for our loves ones and friends, may we be mindful of the costs of these products to the poor of the world in terms of slavery and human trafficking, we pray: We seek your face in our world, O God.

·         As more than half the world’s children suffer the effects of poverty, war and HIV/AIDS, which denies them a healthy and safe childhood, may we raise our voices for peace through justice, we pray:  We seek your face in our world, O God.

·         As people seek hope in dark times, may our Christian communities encourage women and men, inspired by Christ, to reveal God's generous love through their humanity. We pray:  We seek your face in our world, O God.

·         As more and more children and families live on the streets in our towns and cities, or live alone or away from home, may they experience each day the love and communion from the ‘angels’ that reach out to them, we pray:  We seek your face in our world, O God.

·         As our world continues to seek a unity of humanity aside from professions of faith, may the spirit of Christmas create love, tenderness and generosity in our relationships towards people of other faiths and cultures throughout the year we pray: We seek your face in our world, O God.

·         As most countries abandon the death penalty, may those countries still using it – especially China, Iran and the USA – recognise the dignity of all human life and move towards abandoning this practice, we pray:  We seek your face in our world, O God.

Concluding Prayer: Eternal and loving God, of mystery, may our living in this Advent and Christmas be for us be a living event which challenges to become like and have the heart of Jesus.  

 

Further Resources

 

Cosmic Creed - Questions - Advent

Do you believe in God, Source and incarnating power of the immense cosmic space and time,

who personally knows and cares about each person

in the small and most intimate moments of our lives?

Do you believe in God who is intensely personal,

Taking flesh in fathers, but is much more than fathers,

Taking flesh in mothers, but is much more than mothers,

who is ultimately MYSTERY

and before whom we must stand wordless and in awe?

 

Do you believe in the divinely human Jesus, born of Mary,

    Who emerged from among us to open our eyes to the presence of God working in all creation?

 

Do you believe in Jesus as the special revelation of our knowledge of God,

Who sometimes used images of women and mothers,

Who sometimes used images of men and fathers,

Who sometimes used images of birds, and trees, seeds and weeds

To help us sense the incredible power and earthy intimacy of God’s love?

 

Do you believe in Jesus as the one who called people beyond our personal wounds and illnesses

to be witnesses of God’s healing love, forgiveness and comfort?

 

Do you believe in Jesus who from the cross in agony found the strength to love and forgive those who betrayed, tortured, reviled and executed him,

And who rose to offer comfort, love, forgiveness and hope and to entrust his mission to us?

 

Do you believe in the Holy Spirit of God

Working in and through creation to forgive and comfort, heal and rebuild

Communities of hope and love in universal solidarity?

 

Do you believe in the global community of faiths living in that Spirit,

Invited to help bring the New Creation to birth in our time and on this Earth?

 

Do you believe that you are a part of this community in Christ’s Spirit,

called every day to spread this hope and comfort

in rebuilding our communities, our Church, our nation, our world?

 

Are you willing and grateful to live in this Spirit all the days of your life and through your death and re-birth into everlasting life?

 

We, in and of your immense universe of cosmic time and space,

give you our deepest thanks, our Loving God,

through Christ our Lord and in the Living Spirit. Amen.

 

Walking the Path of Peace

Let us have faith in the possibility

Of walking the path of peace.

Let us have hope that we may move beyond

The present spiral of sorrow and death.

Let us have the active love that recognizes

The possibility of forgiveness, dialogue and reconciliation.

 

As we look to the Cross,

We can see God’s wisdom:

Violence is not answered with violence,

Death is not answered with the language of death.

In the silence of the Cross,

May the noise of weapons cease;

In the teaching of the Prince of Peace,

May we find the way to a world of reconciliation.

 

Let us pray for reconciliation and peace,

let us work for reconciliation and peace,

and let us all become, in every place,

Men and women of reconciliation and peace!

So may it be.

Jane Deren

 

Warning: Advent Virus

Be on the alert for symptoms of inner HOPE, PEACE, JOY AND LOVE. The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to this virus and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions. This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world.

 

Some signs and symptoms of the Advent Virus:

* A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.

* An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.

* A loss of interest in judging other people.

* A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.

* A loss of interest in conflict.

* A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom.)

* Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.

* Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.

* Frequent attacks of smiling.

* An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.

* An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the

uncontrollable urge to extend it.

 

A Hymn to God Beyond All Names

O all-transcendent God what other name describes Thee?

What words can sing Thy praises?

No word at all denotes Thee. What mind can probe Thy secret?

No mind at all can grasp Thee.

Alone beyond the power of speech, all that men can speak of springs from Thee.

Alone beyond the power of thought, all that men can think of stems from Thee.

All beings proclaim Thee - beings that can speak, beings that cannot.

All beings revere Thee - beings that have reason, beings that have none. The whole world's longing and pain mingle about Thee.

All beings breathe Thee a prayer, a silent hymn of Thy own composing.

All that exists Thee uphold, all beings in concert move to Thy orders.

Thou art the end of all that is, Thou art one, Thou art all;

Thou art none of the beings that are, Thou art not a part and not the whole.

All names are at Thy disposal; how shall I name Thee, the only unnamable?

What mind's affinities with heaven can pierce the veils above the clouds?

Mercy, all-transcendent God, what other name describes Thee?

St. Gregory Nazianzus

 

When we walk out of the place of worship we walk with fresh, recognizing eyes and a re-created, obedient heart into the world in which we are God’s image participating in God’s creation work.

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p. 113).

 

 

…..the reign of God is making headway - and for this I am grateful. Do continue to be Spirit-filled and challenging.

Sr Dorothy Kazel, O.S.U, martyred in El Salvador in 1980

 

The future belongs to those who give the next generation reasons to hope.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit priest, paleontologist

 

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house.

God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives.

God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war.

God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives,

and God is with us if we are with them.

Bono, the lead singer of U2, in a sermon 2005, before the US President

 

Every journalist should be supporting Assange 100%.

John Pilger

 

The present situation of the world, from the point of view of development, offers a rather negative impression. . . .Without going into an analysis of figures and statistics, it is sufficient to face squarely the reality of an innumerable multitude of people--children, adults and the elderly in other words, real and unique human persons, who are suffering under the intolerable burden of poverty. There are many millions who are deprived of hope due to the fact that, in many parts of the world, their situation has noticeably worsened. Before these tragedies of total indigence and need, in which so many of our brothers and sisters are living, it is the Lord Jesus himself who comes to question us.

John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 13

 

While everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates . . . For I can see in the midst of death, life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists.

Mohandas K. Gandhi

 

The future starts today, not tomorrow.

Pope John Paul II

 

The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the (man) in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.

Pope John Paul II

 

Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of (men)…… War is a defeat for humanity.

Pope John Paul II

 

In our own time, there are so many needs which demand a compassionate response from Christians. Our world is entering the new millennium burdened by the contradictions of an economic, cultural and technological progress which offers immense possibilities to a fortunate few, while leaving millions of others not only on the margins of progress but in living conditions far below the minimum demanded by human dignity. How can it be that even today there are still people dying of hunger? Condemned to illiteracy? Lacking the most basic medical care? Without a roof over their heads?

Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, #50

 

Any human society, if it is to be well-ordered and productive, must lay down as a foundation this principle, namely, that every human being is a person, that is, human nature is endowed with intelligence and free will. Indeed, precisely because he is a person he has rights and obligations flowing directly and simultaneously from his very nature. And as these rights and obligations are universal and inviolable so they cannot in any way be surrendered. If we look upon the dignity of the human person in the light of divinely revealed truth, we cannot help but esteem it far more highly; for people are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, they are by grace the children and friends of God and heirs of eternal glory.

Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, #9-#10

 

We must make haste. Too many people are suffering. While some make progress, others stand still or move backwards; and the gap between them is widening.

Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio

 

We must repeat that the superfluous goods of wealthier nations ought to be placed at the disposal of poorer nations . . . If prosperous nations continue to be jealous of their own advantage alone, they will jeopardize their highest values, sacrificing the pursuit of excellence to the acquisition of possessions.

Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio

 

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Alice Walker

 

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account.

Alice Walker

 

To be innocent in America is to permit the continued theft of hundreds of billions of dollars from the state by Wall Street swindlers and speculators. To be innocent in America is to stand by as insurance and pharmaceutical companies, in the name of profit, condemn ill people, including children, to die. To be innocent in America is refusing to resist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are not only illegal under international law but responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. This is the odd age we live in. Innocence is complicity.

Chris Hedges

 

To be innocent in America means we passively permit offshore penal colonies where we torture human beings, some of whom are children. To be innocent in America is to acquiesce to the relentless corporate destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species. To be innocent in America is to permit the continued theft of hundreds of billions of dollars from the state by Wall Street swindlers and speculators. To be innocent in America is to stand by as insurance and pharmaceutical companies, in the name of profit, condemn ill people, including children, to die. To be innocent in America is refusing to resist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are not only illegal under international law but responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. This is the odd age we live in. Innocence is complicity.

Chris Hedges

 

Each time society, through unemployment, frustrates the small man in his normal functioning and normal self-respect, it trains him for that last stage in which he will willingly undertake any function, even that of hangman.

Hannah Arendt, Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility, (1945)

 

We cherish this hope: that distrust and selfishness among nations will eventually be overcome by a stronger desire for mutual collaboration and a heightened sense of solidarity.

Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio

 

Genuine progress does not consist in wealth sought for personal comfort or for its own sake; rather it consists in an economic order designed for the welfare of the human person, where the daily bread that each person receives reflects the glow of love and the helping hand of God.

Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio

 

What good is it if Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago if I do not also give birth to the son of God in my time and culture?

Meister Eckhart, [13^th cent.]

 

we must ‘look forward to the point when the whole mystery of God will be known in the clasp of your brother [or sister’s] hand.’

Sebastian Moore osb, Monk of Downside Abbey

 

Magnificat (Prayer for Reconciliation)

My soul comes in the darkness of unknowing to the secret room of God.

My spirit seeks understanding in the happenings of these days,

because God looks upon the people in a new way.

 Yes, from this day forward

All generations will speak of these strange events as wonderful,

and those of us who walk blindly trusting, will be called blessed.

For the presence of the Almighty, the most loving One, is felt in our land.

Holy is the name of the One who is eternally new.

 

God's guiding hand reaches from age to age

for those who grope and stumble in search of the saving way.

We are shown the power of being present to one another,

while our proud expectations for our chosen nation are shattered.

The warrior-king we expected to establish us on earth as the righteous power

has not come.

And we see instead the promised messenger as a common man.

The hungry of heart are fed with enabling love.

In places where there was need,

people now give to others from their abundance.

The rich are troubled and stripped of their power.

Glory to You: Source of all Being, Eternal Word and Holy Spirit,

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.

Source: unknown

 

The ‘God’ [the followers of Jesus] were now experiencing in the company of Jesus was incomparably more real than the God of traditional religion. It was as though they saw through the hallowed symbols and rituals to the burning reality itself. The corollary was: if this fails, if Jesus fails, if this movement piles up against the stone wall of this world, then God is finished. The only God now believable would have proved powerless. There would be no going back to the traditional God.

Sebastian Moore OSB, The Fire and the Rose are One, p.80)

 

We must move away from asking God to take care of the things that are breaking our hearts to praying about the things that are breaking God's heart.

Margaret Gibb

 

Christ does not save all those who say to him: Lord, Lord. But he saves all those who out of a pure heart give a piece of bread to a starving [person], without thinking about him in the least little bit.

Simone Weil

 

The bewilderment of Golgotha is its necessary climate. No instruction, no intuition, no vision even, can dislodge guilt from its central position in the human soul, whence it directs the soul’s perception of God. Nothing short of the catastrophe can do that. When the catastrophe has done its work and left the soul in pieces, no longer holding itself together under the dreaded infinite power, then at last the Absolute can be encountered not as power but as love: the Absolute encountered as love, not by any equation that the mind or heart of man could conceivably dream up, not in thought, but in the psyche.

Sebastian Moore, The Fire and the Rose are One, pp.90-91

 

Consolation, when it comes, is what Ignatius called ‘consolation without a cause’. This is one of the principle ways in which the presence of God is known, in which a new thing of the soul is known to be of God: when a previous period of severe God-deprivation has made it impossible for this lifting of the soul to be anything else than a touch of God.

Sebastian Moore, The Fire and the Rose are One, p.106

 

It was only the conflict between Jesus and the forces of this world that the disciples had to face the ultimate crisis of the soul, the death of God which dissolves the master-slave relationship and leaves a void. That void is filled by Jesus newly and bewilderingly alive: alive in a way for which there is no category and in which life’s ultimate value and meaningfulness are not shadowed and questioned by death.

Sebastian Moore, The Fire and the Rose are One, p.112.

 

Jesus reassures us that every effort to love ourselves and others more faithfully, however imperfectly we are able to do this, is a response to God’s call to love as he loved. It is a response to the two greatest commandments as they stand in relationship to one another

Paula Ripple, Called to Be Friends

 

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity, and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not. Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

 

Many find Jesus’ teaching on enemy love and forgiveness a stumbling block to faith. Because we find it too difficult to practice, we dismiss it as unrealistic and utopian. We should think again, and we should pray that it is not unrealistic, because this congruence of Jesus—the consistency between his teaching on forgiveness and his action on the cross—is really our only hope. It is all that stands between us and the consequences of our monumental frailty. Thank God today that Jesus died as he lived, because with those words, ‘Father, forgive...’ he forgives us all, and he forgives us still.

Peter Storey, Listening at Golgotha: Jesus’ Words from the Cross

 

When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.

Dresden James

 

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

Teresa Stover

 

The soldier does not wish to appear a coward, disloyal, or un-American. The situation has been so defined that he can see himself as patriotic, courageous, and manly only through compliance.

Stanley Milgram

 

Fascism is capitalism plus murder.

Upton Sinclair, (AKA: Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr), American Novelist and polemicist, 1878-1968

 

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998), Historian and author

 

The coward wretch whose hand and heart can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start from the slightest pain or equal foe.

Bertrand Russell

 

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), Russian novelist

 

Our enemies didn't adhere to the Geneva Convention. Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them even unto death. But every one of us -- every single one of us -- knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them.

John McCain, Republican US Senator

 

... the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret.

Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author

 

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Friedrich Nietzche

 

The bad things that happen are repetitions of bad things that have always happened—war, racism, maltreatment of women, religious and nationalist fanaticism, starvation. The good things that happen are unexpected, and yet explainable by certain truths which spring at us from time to time, but which we tend to forget:

 

Political power, however formidable, is more fragile than we think. Note how nervous are those who hold it.

Ordinary people can be intimidated for a time, can be fooled for a time, but they have a down-deep common sense, and sooner or later they find a way to challenge the power that oppresses them.

People are not naturally violent or cruel or greedy, although they can be made so. Human beings everywhere want the same things: they are moved by the sight of abandoned children, homeless families, the casualties of war; they long for peace, for friendship and affection across lines of race and nationality.

 

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

 

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

 

We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

Howard Zinn, ‘Born Yesterday’, Tikkun Magazine

 

Eternal Spirit, Lover of our souls and bodies,

We thank you and praise you for your enduring love.

May we cherish our own embodiment

as we do yours – that fleshly-wrap housing the Spirit

of infinitesimal power and grace.

May we continue to honor the Temple within,

and gratefully treat our body

that reflects your very presence.

In the name of Jesus, Immanuel, God with us. Amen.

Some reflections on the readings……….

‘Do not be afraid’ is a refrain that is dotted throughout the Bible.as applied to Abraham, to Daniel; to Zechariah; to Mary at the Annunciation; the startled shepherds at Jesus’ birth, to Peter, James and John on the mountain [transfiguration]; to Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb; and finally to Joseph. It was spelt out to Ahaz who relied on what was outside him for security rather than the God who walks with all of us.

We have many reasons to be afraid: domestic violence and abroad; climate change; job insecurity; our children’s futures; street violence and drugs; bullying in school and workplaces; and, economic insecurity. This fear is makes us turn on Muslim people, asylum seekers who will take our jobs, the growth of China, US belligerency; racism as expressed by Donald Trump and Pauline Hanson. Fear can interfere with our capacity to relate to people in need and to respond to God’s word. It is fear that causes us to scapegoat people. It causes us to scapegoat people; to separate ourselves from others. It makes us want to protect our borders from asylum seekers. It is fear that wants us to build more security around ourselves – whether psychologically or physically – rather than engage in dialogue and understanding. Our world seems so fear-filled and fear-full. We hear how people are intimidated as the powerful patriarchal system still has a strangle hold on millions of people around the world. This is the system that makes war on innocents; that peddles war to our young and creates child soldiers, that can shamefully appoint a military man as chancellor of a Catholic university without question; that puts children into slavery and the sex trade; that victimises the pregnant young girl by finding new ways of shaming her; that judges people with mental illness or other disabilities as ‘unprofitable’; that sees same-sex marriage as a threat not only to marriage but also to society; that persecutes the vulnerable who seek our protection – whether they be youth, women, refugees and asylum seekers.

‘Do not be afraid’ is the Advent and Christmas message. We are reminded that it is love, not fear, that is to be the critical characteristic of our lives – that it is love, not fear, that is to be the critical characteristic of our lives.

Joseph responds to God’s word through the messenger. He is enabled to act with compassion, to forego his rights and privileges, especially his patriarchal prerogatives, and take Mary to be his, and ours. Joseph teaches us that the purpose of marriage is less about sex and reproduction but about caring, compassion and protection of the other.

Christmas offers a chance to reconsider our options, to think again, to go back to our dreams, and listen for the voices that say: Do not be afraid to forgo your privileges. The inability to forgo those privileges affects women, people of colour, and people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Whether distinctions of race, family, citizenship, money, class, sexual orientation, gender privilege, age, beauty, training, education, or all of the above - what is being conceived in all of us is a name which means ‘God Is With Us’  - God with all of us, not just some of us…

Can we contemplate for a moment that it is God's Spirit who makes all things new through this baby? That God is always coming to us in surprising places and surprising [less expected] people to offer new life. As God with us, we hear that God is decisively present in our world and makes everything new. The Gospels provide all the evidence for that: wherever Jesus came, he showed up where people were in need, and he saved them - lepers, the deaf, the blind, the lame, the hungry, the unclean, even the dead. His very presence makes new life possible.

But there is something comforting in that the gospels today link Jesus through Joseph with a pretty dodgy house of David. Just reading about David we hear of intrigue, murder, betrayal and adultery. Jesus’ family. The comforting thing is that trawling through the Davidic dynasty is that Jesus seems quite content to own all is his ancestors – the good, bad and ugly the implication is that Jesus is happy to own us. It is a powerful motivation to put away our fears. Brennan Manning in his book The Ragamuffin Gospel says there is something radically wrong. The powers of this world have bent our minds and twisted the good news of the gospel into religious bondage and distorted the image of God into an eternal, small-minded book-keeper. This is reflected in the Christian community where the elite are honoured and the ordinary ignored. Too many people are living in the house of fear and not in the house of love.

The shock and the scandal of the good news is ‘the furious love of God’ (Chesterton). The God of Jesus is the only God we have ever heard of that loves sinners… whereas the corporate gods despise sinners, the weak, the vulnerable, the marginalised, the slack ones, the ones who continue to fail. The Christmas story is that God is with us as never before in our flesh born of a woman: God is with us in the healing with a touch, forgiving with a word, instilling courage into hopeless hearts; betrayed by a kiss, put to death, but also raised - with us. Those among us who have had losses this year will feel poignantly the gaps and holes that have been left by the passing of a mother, father, child, sibling or dear friend. These are very real but the One Who is Coming every day comes also to touch those places with compassion and love to enable us to continue our journey of recognising  the face of Jesus in the many ‘others’ that cross our paths.

Though Mary is silent today, Matthew is not silent about women. He includes five from Jesus’ genealogy – all women who in some way defied sexual norms. Rahab who saved Joshua in Canaan ran a brothel. Judah’s daughter in law, Tamar, dressed herself as a prostitute and lured him into having intercourse with her so that she would no longer be a childless widow. Ruth, Naomi’s daughter in law, saved them both from starvation by seducing Naomi’s older cousin, Boaz. Bathsheba, the wife of one of David’s generals produces a son for him (David), who in turn had the general murdered in battle. Then there is Mary, who is never identified as Joseph’s wife, though he is identified as her husband. This ‘sordid’ history must serve as a prelude to Jesus’ attitude toward women: he reaches to the woman accused of adultery including woman labelled as prostitutes, the Samaritan woman who had five husbands, the woman possessed by demons, the bent over woman, the woman with the haemorrhage, and finally the woman who anointed his feet with costly ointment. Jesus met these women, and many other people in the irregularities of their lives. These represent all people who with little to lose have cast their lot in with one who does not conform to the expectations of the world (or the church).

Though Joseph does not get much attention in the Church Matthew begins with him at centre stage. He names this child ‘Jesus’ (the liberator) and ‘Emmanuel’ (God is with us and will be with us). As liberator he will ‘save people’ from all that oppresses them and prevents fullness of life because of selfishness, greed, violence and vengeance. Christ's liberation is not the political liberation the Hebrews expected. They expected one who would seize power and rule like other kings, whereas true political liberation is from the injustice where the claims of the dominant culture will be dismantled and nullified by his solidarity with marginal and vulnerable people.

The name ‘Emmanuel’ (God is with us) is more than a nice name for a sweet baby. It tells us that the chill of our world has been pierced by love and that this love will not let go of us. It is not just a title but a name that frames the whole of Matthew’s Gospel. It tells the story of what God is about -that God is not a distant cheerleader but present and will always be with us and travels with us through our lives. In Jesus, all could encounter God and experience God's saving grace, God's tender mercies, God's healing love. But we know that in Jesus we hear about God's expectations, too, even though we know they are beyond our capacity. Those beautiful Beatitudes are hard to live up to, as are many of the teachings of Jesus. When we are afraid or feel we can never measure up to the demands of the gospel, we might ponder with Joseph the meaning of the name of Jesus, ‘he will save,’ and remember that it's God who is acting here, not us. In our own efforts to be ‘righteous, ‘there's One who helps us when we fall short, One who is always with us.’ In fact, that's why ‘Emmanuel’ frames the entire Gospel of Matthew: it begins with a baby who is ‘God with us,’ and ends with that child, grown, promising that he will always be with us: ‘In many ways the whole purpose of Matthew's Gospel is to show how Jesus is 'Emmanuel', God with us, and at the end of the story [28:20] Jesus will promise to be Emmanuel for the rest of human history as well’

Joseph participates in liberation. The Angel Gabriel, who whispered the Qur'an into Muhammad’s ear, and who continues to speak to us of God, comes to dispel our fears. ‘Do not be afraid.’ Many people seem fear-filled and fear-full. People are intimidated as the powerful patriarchal system has a strangle hold on millions of people around the world: this system  makes war on innocents; peddles war to our young and creates child soldiers; unquestionably puts a military man as chancellor of a Catholic university; puts children into slavery and the sex trade; victimises the pregnant young girl and finds new ways to shame her; that has little room for a woman outside of marriage; judges people with disabilities as ‘unprofitable’; sees same-sex marriage as a threat to marriage and to society; persecutes the vulnerable who seek our protection.

Joseph responds to God’s word through the messenger. He is enabled to act with compassion, to forego his rights and privileges, especially his patriarchal prerogatives and take Mary to be his, and ours. Joseph teaches us that the purpose of marriage is not just sex and the reproduction of children, but caring, compassion and protection of the other. The good news is that God responds to faithfulness by generating new life. Joseph is a sign of the many who practise faithfulness without fuss or fanfare. That is repeated in peoples’ lives over and over again in our parishes, local communities, cities and rural places.

The challenge for us is to recognise God’s presence in all situations and circumstances. We can doubt God’s love in times of grief, pain and trauma, but we find comfort, healing and strength when we are able to experience God’s ‘with-us-ness’ even in such times. And, when we are able to help others to recognise and experience God’s presence and love in their lives – whatever they may be going through – then we have truly become Advent people.

 

May we be aware of, and care for, those in need as a visible reflection of God’s care. Beyond the walls of the church, simple compassion and solidarity can reflect God’s care. Whatever we may choose to do, the key to experiencing Immanuel again this Advent, is to offer ourselves to be ‘little Immanuels’ in practical ways in our own world.