Twenty Eighth Sunday of the Year

October 9^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.

             

 

 

Readings

Reading I                   2 Kgs 5:14-17

Responsorial Psalm Ps 98:1, 2-3, 3-4

Reading II                  2 Tm 2:8-13

Gospel                        Lk 17:11-19

 

Penitential Rite

• You look kindly upon your people and heal their brokenness.  Jesus, have mercy.
• You teach us wisdom and enable us to discern your presence in the world.  Christ, have mercy.
• You challenge us to appreciate your gifts and share them. Jesus, have mercy.

 

Penitential Rite [Alternative]

·         Jesus, you show God’s compassion to us and heal us.  Jesus, have mercy.

·         Jesus, you show God’s compassion to all outcasts and dispose us to accept them.  Christ, have mercy.

·         Jesus, you give strength to all who suffer for following you faithfully. Jesus, have mercy.

 

Opening Prayer

God of Healing,

you look with compassion upon all your people

and see in them your graceful work of art. . 

Stir within our hearts a belief

that you wish to heal us and make us whole

and that we recognise your life in all people and creation

and that we participate in your healing and reconciliation.

 

Prayer over the Gifts

God of Healing,

may the prayers and gifts we offer in faith and love

serve to open our minds

to your presence amongst all people. 

 

Prayer after Communion

God of Healing,

may the body and blood of Jesus which we have shared

renew, strengthen us and give us courage

to be a gift to those around us

and promote the good of all. 

 

Prayers of the Faithful

Introduction: Let us pray to God for a deeper appreciation of God’s gifts to us and use them for the good of all: The response is: Healing God, fill us with your love.

 

1. That Church and religious leaders may not sacrifice their values for power, success and ambition but commit themselves to promote human dignity and the gospel values of peace, justice and compassion. We pray: Healing God, fill us with your love.

 

2. That all faith leaders may speak with voices that promote the good of all people by challenging politicians to give priority to the common good above political or personal interests. We pray: Healing God, fill us with your love.

 

3. That people who have come to this country as refugees with their history of suffering abuse and various traumas will be respected and their stories honoured rather than vilified. We pray: Healing God, fill us with your love.

 

4. That the lonely figures of dissent within society and the churches may continue to courageously expose injustice, lies and deceit without wavering. We pray: Healing God, fill us with your love.

 

5. That the developed countries of the world have the wisdom to recognise the injustice they inflict on other countries by unfair trade practices, the refusal to cancel debts and the failure to abide by international law. We pray: Healing God, fill us with your love.

 

6. That people engaged in the all forms of media will promote the values of life by seeking the truth and exposing injustice in the churches, politics and business. We pray: Healing God, fill us with your love.

 

7. That we may all, through the teaching of the Gospel, come to a new understanding of justice that goes beyond alms-giving and charity to a redistribution of wealth and sharing. We pray: Healing God, fill us with your love.

 

8. That Australians will not take for granted the riches of culture that have been inherited from the indigenous people of this land and from the people who have come here from other lands. We pray: Healing God, fill us with your love.

 

Concluding Prayer:  We thank you God of healing and reconciliation for hearing our prayers.  May your Spirit give us grateful hearts and show that gratitude in our lives. .

 

Parish Notices

October 12 Anniversary of the Bombings in Bali 2002

October 13 International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction

October 13-19 Anti-Poverty Week

October 15 UN International Day of Rural Women

October 16 World Food Day

 

Further Resources

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs re-structuring.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

My dear religious brothers and sisters, empty convents aren’t useful to the church to be turned into hotels and make money. Empty convents aren’t ours, they are for that body of Christ that are refugees.

Pope Francis, speaking Tuesday in a meeting with members of religious orders.

 

Each one of you, dear friends, carries with you the story of a life riven by the drama of war, by conflicts often linked to international politics… But each of you carries above all a human and religious richness; a wealth to be welcomed, not feared. Many of you are Muslims or of other religions; you come from many countries and from different situations. We must not be afraid of difference! Brotherhood allows us to discover that diversity is wealth, a gift for all!

Pope Francis addressing refugees and asylum seekers on 10^th September 2013 during a visit to the Centro Astalli refugee centre in Rome managed by the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS)

 

Religious men and women are prophets. [...] [T]he vows cannot end up being caricatures; otherwise, for example, community life becomes hell, and chastity becomes a way of life for unfruitful bachelors. The vow of chastity must be a vow of fruitfulness. In the church, the religious are called to be prophets in particular by demonstrating how Jesus lived on this earth, and to proclaim how the kingdom of God will be in its perfection. A religious must never give up prophecy. This does not mean opposing the hierarchical part of the church, although the prophetic function and the hierarchical structure do not coincide. I am talking about a proposal that is always positive, but it should not cause timidity... Being prophets may sometimes imply making waves. I do not know how to put it.... Prophecy makes noise, uproar, some say ‘a mess.’ But in reality, the charism of religious people is like yeast: prophecy announces the spirit of the Gospel.

Pope Francis

 

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else—God is in this person’s life. You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.

Pope Francis

 

The way society responds to the needs of the poor

through its public policies is the litmus test of its justice or injustice.

Economic Justice for All, #123

 

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

George Orwell

 

We are each of us angels with one wing.

And we can only fly while embracing each other;

Luciano de Crescenzo

 

 

The Tenth Leper

Today, my God, I came back to thank you.

The other nine times I forgot.

It was not ingratitude, you understand,

but a careless enthusiasm.

I prayed for healing and when it came

I got swept away on a wave of new energy

and was so busy making up for lost time

that somehow you got left behind.

 

Today, my God, I remembered to come back

to the inner stillness where you waited

to share in my rejoicing. I didn’t run

but returned quietly, holding out my heart

like a bowl, containing all the thanks I knew.

 

You accepted it with pleasure,

saying nothing about the other nine times

and the nine times before that. 

Then, when you gave my heart back to me,

not empty but overflowing with your love,

I experienced yet another healing. 

Joy Cowley, Psalms Down-Under, Catholic Supplies NZ Ltd.

 

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need,

but not every man’s greed.  

Gandhi

 

Prayer

In the midst of conflict and division

We know it is you

Who turns our minds to thoughts of peace.

Your Spirit changes our hearts:

Enemies begin to speak to one another,

Those who were estranged join hands in friendship

And nations seek the way of peace together.

Let Your Spirit be at work in us.

Give us understanding and put an end to strife,

Fill us with mercy and overcome our denial

Grant us wisdom and teach us to learn

From the people of the land

Call us to justice.

Adapted from the Preface of the Eucharistic Prayer for Masses of Reconciliation II by the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council

 

We are beginning to discover

that our problem is worldwide,

and no one people of the earth

can work out its salvation

by detaching itself from others.

Either we shall be saved together

or drawn together

into destruction.

Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet and philosopher

 

Liberate us from the chains of fear;

Free us from the closed circles of discrimination;

Liberate us from prisons of prejudice;

Free us from the confines of nationalism.

Liberated us from hate and envy, greed and pride.

Free us from hostility and anger, violence and injustice.

Led us into the way of peace and justice. 

adapted from John Johansen-Berg, England

 

A Soldier

Doug Soderstrom

Not a sacred warrior,

Nor with a bayonet blessed by God,

 

Not even a human being,

Just a simple peasant; a surrogate,

A sacrificial lamb, a frightened child,

Chosen by the rich to be an instrument of war,

 

A cold-blooded, battle-trained beast,

A mindless savage ordered to kill,

 

A molded piece of steel, an object . . . a gear,

A very small cog in a far-reaching engine of death,

An insignificant fleck in the overall fabric of life,

 

A negligible notch on the handle of an enemy's gun,

A mere afterthought for those who extol the wonders of war,

An unkempt grunt,

A lonely gutted, blood-spattered corpse lying on the ground,

Something like the trivial crush of dead dog on a lonely country road,

Dead meat . . . with a tin tag,

 

A sacred breath of life having been stripped from its mother's womb,

A father's pride; his very best friend,

Someone whose name is Abdul, Mohammed, Ishmael, Ibrahim, or      Hassan,

Or then again . . . perhaps even Mike, John, Mark, Eddy, Ben, or Bill,

A world diminished by the loss of another precious child!

September 2004

Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at Wharton County Junior College in Wharton, Texas.

 

Communion becomes a profound source of energy for the healing of suffering. Knowing that we are not abandoned makes all the difference.’

Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is, p. 266

 

Every one of us has a responsibility. Yes, we’ll continue to grieve, and we’ll continue to live in insecurity and fear. But if we turn to God, we know that God is in our midst and loves us and can comfort us. But then we must listen to this God of ours who came into the world in Jesus, and who taught us a whole different way to peace. If we’re willing to listen to God, if we’re willing to follow God’s ways, we can come to peace. If we refuse, if we’re like the elder son in the Gospel who thinks – I’m righteous! I’ve been doing the right thing all my life – He couldn’t listen to his father. If we’re like that, we won’t listen to God. And we’ll move forward in the direction we’re going. And there’s nothing but more violence in the future. It doesn’t take much to look back through history to discover that violence always breeds violence. It’s only when we break the cycle of violence that you can bring peace.

Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton, Homily, September 16, 2001

 

The Church . . . has always taught and continues today to teach a very simple axiom: peace is possible. Indeed, the Church does not tire of repeating that peace is a duty. It must be built on the four pillars indicated by Blessed John XXIII in his Encyclical Pacem in Terris: truth, justice, love and freedom. A duty is thus imposed upon all those who love peace: that of teaching these ideals to new generations, in order to prepare a better future for all mankind.’

Pope John Paul II, January 1, 2004

 

It is to be hoped that hatred and violence will not triumph in people's hearts, especially among those who are struggling for justice, and that all people will grow in the spirit of peace and forgiveness.

Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus

 

We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.’ From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: ‘Disarm, disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.

Julia Ward Howe

 

In the general course of human nature, a power over man's substance amounts to a power over his will.

Alexander Hamilton

 

Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.

Joseph Sobran (1946- ) Columnist

 

A State which dwarfs its men [and women], in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands - even for beneficial purposes - will find that with small men [and women] no great thing can really be accomplished.

John Stuart Mill - (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist

 

We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it.

Robert Jackson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, U.S. representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, Aug. 12, 1945

 

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

Nuremburg War Tribunal regarding wars of aggression

 

A Society that is in its higher circles and middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of ‘success’ to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed.

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite

 

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

Robert F. Kennedy

 

It is a rare day when we are completely satisfied. Usually we are hoping, wishing, longing, thirsting, for something more, something different, something else we think will satisfy us or make our lives happier. We are often like an empty cup waiting to be filled with whatever it is we think is missing in our lives. There are many kinds of inner thirsting. Not to thirst for things of the ego such as recognition, prestige, power and success is very difficult. Once we shake ourselves loose from these longings, our spirit will be more free to thirst for the deeper things of God. We will be much more intent on asking for the living water for our thirsty soul instead of the things that feed our thirsty ego.

Joyce Rupp, The Cup of Our Life

 

Our Creator beyond us,

Yet you dwell among us,

We praise you.

We pray for the home of promise

(which we've never fully known)

as we work to be your welcome in the world.

Grant us this day abundant life.

And forgive us our exiling

as we pray for the peace

to forgive those who exile us.

Lead us out of our need to create boundaries,

and delight us in the diversity of life!

For you are the Keeper of Community,

the Source behind our deepest longing,

and the One who provides an eternal Home.

Amen.

 

Ripping Off The Labels

John van de Laar

We love labels, Jesus.

We parade them on our clothes and on our possessions

to make sure everyone knows

who we are

and what we've accomplished

They're so useful, Jesus.

We use them to divide ourselves up

so that everyone knows where they fit in

where they belong

and where they don't.

 

But, the truth is, our labels are heavy, Jesus.

We have to live up to them, and maintain the status quo they create,

we waste so much time working out who's in and who's out

who it's OK to like

and who we need to shun

and beneath it all, we're afraid that maybe one day

we'll wear the wrong label and not realise it,

and suddenly we'll be the ones who are outside.

So, there's only one thing to do, Jesus.

It's what you've wanted us to do all along,

We're ripping off the labels, throwing them to the wind

and allowing the freedom of “labellessness” to claim us.

We need you to help us to do this, Jesus.

Not just for us, but for all people;

To help us forget our fascination with labels,

our need to classify and divide ourselves,

our fear of those who are different,

strange,

surprising,

challenging.

So that we can all find a way to live and love

in peace and freedom and equality

 

The Life That Ignores Limits

John van de Laar

It hides in every corner,

it crosses every boundary;

Your life, O God, ignores limits.

We know it in the safe ones we love and enjoy;

but, if we look, it appears in those who are different,

challenging,

frightening,

unknown,

strange;

Your life, O God, ignores limits.

It's easy to see in those who are healthy and comfortable;

vibrant, joyful and privileged to have access

to the wonder-inspiring experiences that life offers;

but, if we look, it appears in those who seem lost to life,

poor and weak,

sick and broken and unable to move

beyond their limited horizons;

Your life, O God, ignores limits.

And so we celebrate your life, wherever it may be found,

and we commit ourselves to be life-seekers,

discerning and acknowledging life

in every person, every moment and every space.

Amen.

 

The Ones We Long For

John van de Laar

In a world that too easily wounds and breaks,

we long for those who will heal and restore;

In a world that too easily divides and dissects,

we long for those who will unify and interweave;

In a world that too easily excludes and judges,

we long for those who will include and understand;

And in a world where your call, O God, can still be heard,

we long for the courage to answer,

and to be the ones we long for.

 

Reflections on the readings

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus takes a strange route to Jerusalem, one that most people would not take. Luke is keen to remind us that Jesus is at the border of Samaritan county whose people were despised by the Jews for their hybrid faith – as today the Shiites and Sufis are despised by Sunni Muslims. Of course the Samaritans reciprocated with their own hostility to the Jews who considered them religious and social outcasts. Not only is Jesus traveling through an ‘in-between’ territory, he meets the lepers in this apparently God-forsaken place – and still more so on the borders of town - Naaman is asked to bathe in the foreign to him and dirty Jordan River, and Paul is chained ‘like a criminal’ in prison where no decent people would find themselves. But it is in marginal places, that people are freed from their usual conventions, from business as usual living, to receive God's faithfulness in unexpected and extravagant ways.

We are once again brought us face to face with the Gospel’s scandalous inclusivity. Looking at Face Book and other media sources, we see how tempting it is to find ways to draw lines around people to keep them out, whereas our call is to respond to the world’s desperate need for people who will embrace, include and welcome people without discrimination. We hear again the liberating gospel, as well as in the other readings, where ‘outsiders’ are drawn by God’s love into a new embrace, where they can be included and be at home with God and God’s people.

 

Jesus appears as one marginal person with the marginalised - ten people who must keep their distance because of their infectious disease (leprosy). It is interesting that the Greek text and some contemporary translations describe them not just as ‘lepers’ but also as men. Though a subtle point, it is a humanizing note that respects personal dignity, just as today we refer to people ‘living with disabilities’ and not ‘the disabled’. What is more significant is the personhood, not the disability.

 

Jesus’ journey reveals the strength of God’s compassionate love - and how various people respond. People have different ways of responding to God’s compassion. God’s compassionate love is manifested in Jesus and offered to people who are marginalised, hurting or suffering. Jesus’ journey towards Jerusalem through an ‘in-between’ region, a kind of no-where land symbolises his mission – he is the heart of God sent to all people ready to go to any out of the way places. This ‘in-between’ region [no-man’s land] becomes everyone’s land because God is in this place. These are the kinds of places where God encounters ‘all’ people and they, whoever they are, have the ‘space’ to meet one another. Today’s gospel is just one story manifesting God’s passion for the lost, the marginalised, the abused, the excluded, and the stranger. Jesus’ word bridges the gap between them. We see how shared misery enables people to cross boundaries, to build bridges. The misery of this disease resulted in a hated Samaritan, a stranger and religious half-breed, being companioned with Jewish people.

 

Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, describes in The Sign of Jonas being overwhelmed on a street corner in Louisville in one of his very infrequent excursions outside his monastery in 1948:

 

I found that everything stirred me with a deep and mute sense of compassion. Perhaps some of the people we saw going about the streets were hard and tough – but I did not observe it because I seemed to have lost an eye for merely exterior details and to have discovered, instead, a deep sense of respect and love.

 

Do we see today’s lepers in the isolated, the alienated, the untouchables in our society, and respond with compassion? In fact, the leper is anyone who threatens us or is dangerous and needs top security to keep them away.

 

At the beginning of his public ministry in the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus infuriated the people of his hometown by mentioning the foreigner, Naaman, a foreign military officer, again a non-Jew, who was healed of leprosy by the word of the prophet Elisha. To the Jews, Naaman being a foreigner was bad enough, but being afflicted with leprosy made him doubly unfit for the community. We saw this double unfitness in the leper of the gospel as well. Yet, despite multiple human barriers, God brings healing and restoration. So both the first reading and the gospel are about foreigners/outsiders/ people with double stigmas, and how they respond to God.

 

The story is less about the miraculous cure than the restoration of people to the community, to relationship. More than a cure, this is healing. For some of the gospel characters today, the cure might have been merely getting back to life as it was whereas for the one, the stranger, it was getting a whole new life [healing].  For most it was a reentry into their own Jewish community but for one it was entry into a new relationship of faith and solidarity with all those who acknowledge God’s action in Jesus.  He is invited to get up and go – to live; not return to old ways but a new and creative way of living inspired by his faith.  His new way of living will be grounded on having experienced God’s love for him, having recognised that God is active in the ‘nowhere’ places of our world, and that he now also has a love he can now share in his encounters with others.  It is not business as usual but seizing a second chance.  This can happen to people who have been involved in a car crash or survived cancer or suffered a heart attack.  Some people go back to business as usual as if their experience was no big deal, and others see the experience as another opportunity to live life to the full and to serve.  It comes out of an awareness that life is something gracious and given an awareness that we have creative energies to use for the good of others - or keep them for ourselves.  Although the situations mentioned are not everyday experiences and can be exceptional opportunities, we do not have to wait for a near death experience to realise that our time is limited and the only time we have is ‘the now’.  The ‘present moment’ is all we have; it is the ‘sacrament’, the moment of encounter with the Sacred in our lives. 

 

In today’s scriptures, the voice of God comes from unlikely people. Naaman listens first to a slave girl, and later follows the advice of his servants. A Samaritan leper shows saving faith. Paul is in ‘chains’, in prison, but his gospel is ‘unchained’.

 

For a long time in our church we allowed people to accept a different status for some people from others. Consider slavery which was never condemned until 1965 at the Vatican Council. It was accepted that some people were lesser than other people; that there was a boundary in that God was not fully in them. Then there were the Spanish invasions in Latin America and Central America where native peoples could be killed because they we considered less than human.  However, others understood that that is not the way God is. God is present to every person. God is present in every person and God can speak through all of us. Such changes do not always come from the leadership but from the people themselves.  I think of women who are convinced that they are called by God to priesthood. Could not God be speaking through them, and through the many people who say, ‘Yes,’ to that? We see that God works in the lives of people of integrity regardless of gender or their ethnic or religious backgrounds or sexual orientation.  ‘One would not expect a Samaritan to do the decent thing and say, ‘Thank you!’ because we know what Samaritans are like, don’t we’. Who could we put in place of Samaritans?  ‘You would not expect and Indigenous person to be grateful, would you?’ ‘You know what Muslims are like?’  ‘You know what those Africans are like, and the Immigration Minister has told us so?’  ‘You know what gays are like?’  ‘You know what those people with nose rings and other metal in their bodies are like?’  ‘You know what those people who come here in boats are like?’  It is not be difficult to find other parallels in our communities.  No matter what we come up with, Luke is clearly subverting stereotypes whether racist, political, or those based on gender and sexual orientation.

 

As various forms of conflict threaten the peace and survival of our planet, religious exclusivity and finger-pointing is not just a form of immaturity – but a very dangerous way to live. Jesus comes into this ‘nowhere land’ challenging us as he crossed all sorts of lines in order to draw circles around everyone. All are loved and accepted by God. Where many tend to define ourselves according to nationality, race, skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, educational level, language and so much more – and use these definitions to justify all kinds of injustice, discrimination and stereotyping, the call to those who follow Jesus is to make outsiders insiders and embrace people not easy to love. This is the gospel of nonviolence that is world-changing. The stories today are deliberately subversive. Those not respectable and despised become models of faith, who recognise God’s loving activity in all places and in all people, who respond to God by being in solidarity with all people, all God’s people. It is a story that lives itself out in every generation. But how do we match up to the recognition of God as a God of all people? Do we genuinely sing the responsorial Psalm 98 with joy because out God’s faithful love is not limited to any one nation? If ours is a multicultural society can we look around at the assembly in church today and praise God for the diversity of people with whom we are in communion?  Or if they are not there, we wonder why?

 

As we gather each week, we hear the words of Jesus challenging us to be healed – of our pride, selfishness, anger, apathy, laziness and deceit, sense of exceptionalism, grandiosity, the need to build walls and barriers. If the Christian community is to retain any prophetic voice, Christ’s radical inclusivity must be embraced daily. It is not about the right prayers prayed, the right theological ideas taught, but where following Christ being one of open arms to all others, being indiscriminate who we serve, love, give to, include, and bless. In Australia, we must not let a word like ‘Muslim’ (as was ‘Samaritan’) become an insult where our faith leads to arrogance, dominance, exploitation, or dismissal of others.

LAY MSC NEWSLETTER

August 2016

 

May the Sacred Heart of Jesus

be everywhere loved

INDEX

Page 3                From the Director Fr Jim Littleton MSC

Page 4-5             Tributes to Mary Smith, Adrienne Hemsley and Chris Topp……… May they rest in peace

Page 5-6            Year of Mercy and Migrant & Refugee Week, 22-28 August 2016 - Bernadette Phillips

Page 6-7             “One Heart – Many Bodies, National Lay Gathering” – Alison McKenzie

Page 7-8             Pope Francis visits World Youth Day 2016 Krakow Poland

Page 8                 Reminders

From the Director

My personal greetings to all of you who are receiving this newsletter. In it I wish to share with you a recent article written by Hans Kwakman MSC about a similarity between Pope Francis and our Founder Fr Jules Chevalier.

              Pope Francis and Fr. Chevalier are both aware of the fact that the

central message of the Gospel concerning God’s unconditional love is received not only for our private consolation, but for the healing of a wounded society. In “Evangelii Gaudium”, the Pope shows himself to be deeply conscious of the ills of modern society. He speaks extensively about the suffering of people and the big challenges faced by today’s world: poverty, inequality, violence and war. He criticizes modern economies that disadvantage the poor. However, the Pope sees the root-causes of the appalling social inequality in today’s society not only in failing economic systems, but also in maladies of the human heart. Above all, he points to two illnesses: indifference and selfishness. He goes even so far as to speak of ‘a globalization of indifference” and declares: “Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were not our responsibility” (Evangelii Gaudium n. 54). Regarding egoism, he urges all of us to say a firm “not to selfishness” (Evangelii Gaudium n. 81).

In his day, Fr. Chevalier felt himself upset by exactly the same social evils, rooted in the human heart. Two evils, he said, are “destroying our unhappy world: indifference and egoism” (Personal Notes, Appendix p. 107). He found “an effective remedy” (Daily Readings January 4), for these evils of the heart in the devotion to “the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is all love and charity.” Why? Because this devotion, he said, will “kindle in all hearts the fire of God’s love found in the Heart of Jesus.”

Pope Francis does not specifically mention the devotion to the Sacred Heart, but he also considers love and charity to be the remedies of today’s social evils. Here he sees a role both for politicians and every private person. Politicians, he says, should get involved in “sincere and effective dialogue aimed at healing the deepest roots of the evils in our world,” while all of us should be convinced that, “charity not only should shape our personal relationships with family, friends, and small groups, but also our social, economic and political relationships”

(Evangelii Gaudium n. 205). Several times, the Pope refers to “the inescapable social dimension of the Gospel message” (Evangelii Gaudim n. 285), which “before all else, invites us to respond to the God of love who save us, … and to go forth from ourselves to seek the good of others” (Evangelii Gaudium n. 39).

Many of you would be aware that a national gathering of people connected with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart was held at Douglas Park on June 10-12. Over 80 people attended and were very enthusiastic about it. A resume of the weekend appears elsewhere in this newsletter.

During the last few months four of our members have passed on to their eternal reward. My thanks to those who have contributed brief eulogies for this Newsletter. May our dear friends rest in peace.

Wishing all of you God’s blessings and peace

Jim Littleton msc

 

Tribute to Mary Patricia Smith (Pat) 5.9.64 – 1.7.2016 - Joyce Devine & Mary Cummins

Mary Patricia Smith (Pat) was born on 5^th September 1924 and passed away on 1^st July 2016. She came to Canberra as a young woman. She met and married her husband and had four children, all boys. She lived in Dickson and the boys were all educated at Daramalan College.

Pat was married for 27 years and was widowed for 24 years. After the death of her husband, the family house was sold and Pat moved to the Catholic Retirement complex in the Parish of Campbell. Pat was friendly with Bishop Pat Power at Campbell and had many discussions with him and they developed a great friendship.

Pat was a member of the Lay MSC Association for many years and we enjoyed lovely discussions at some meetings. Pat’s requiem Mass was celebrated by Bishop Pat Power and Fr Jim Littleton MSC at St Brigid’s Dickson, where she was given a fond farewell.   RIP.

VALE: Adrienne Mary Hemsley - Paul Hemsley.

Adrienne was born in 1936 into a large Lidcombe-based family, daughter of Charles Riggs and Imelda McManus. Adrienne’s siblings were a brother, William (Dec.) and a younger sister, Margaret.

After marrying young in February 1956, Adrienne and her husband Paul moved from their first home in NSW Blue Mountains - where 5 of their six children had been born - to Canberra, via Melbourne, early in 1968. Adrienne’s mother Imelda came to Canberra with them, but sadly died in that first year. Their sixth child was born in 1971.

During their two years in Melbourne, Paul and Adrienne had joined the Teams of Our Lady, and this had introduced them to the support and faith development offered by Catholic Lay Movements. Not long after arrival in Canberra they joined a parent education program fostered by MSC’s Terry Naughton, and Frank Andersen. Later they were accepted as MSC Associates. Adrienne was also admitted to the Associates of the OLSH Sisters. She and Paul were among the foundation parishioners of St Vincent de Paul Parish, Aranda.

Their three sons Martin, Stephen and Michael went to Daramalan College, and daughters Maryanne, Louise and Margaret went to what is now Merici College. Margaret completed her final years of school at Daramalan when that College became co-educational.

Shortly after they arrived in Canberra, Adrienne was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia. The family was indebted to the spiritual support of fellow parishioners, the Teams and the Associates. In the final years of her life she suffered from serious respiratory illness. She received much consolation in her illnesses from her deep and prayerful faith and the devoted love of her extended family.

Adrienne went home to God on 27 June 2016.

Following a Requiem Mass in St Vincent’s, in which Fr Jim Littleton, msc, concelebrated, she was buried with her mother in Woden cemetery ACT.                                                        

Tribute to Chris Topp – Fr John Franzmann msc

The funeral service for Chris Topp took place in McGrath Hall at Chevalier College on Friday 15^th July. This is a brief excerpt from the eulogy delivered by his wife Trish.

Chevalier was the centrepiece of Chris’s working life –he taught there for exactly half of his 70 years. He was not a Catholic but became deeply imbued with the MSC emphasis on the importance of the heart.   He was deeply interested in heart questions: what was the heart of education, how to educate the heart, how to tune one’s heart, how to become attuned to the heart of anything and everything.   He began as a teacher, became head of the Social Sciences department, then Yr. 11 coordinator, Admin Master and the first lay Deputy Head, and finally, a teacher again. He trained the athletics squad, he began the tradition of the Year 11 play, he was part of the group which rewrote the structure of the school executive, he oversaw the integration of girls into the school, he became identified with the new and growing number of Wilderness courses. On retirement, he mentored staff and was then invited to become Chairman of the Board. He was awarded by the College in October of last year the Esprit du Chevalier.  

Woven throughout his life was Chris’s love of the bush and of bushwalking. Chris has said that the bush was his church, and this was absolutely in keeping with his sense of the centrality of the natural world in what it meant to be human. Every single time we were outside of a town, whether it was a new piece of country to us, or a much-loved familiar site like the Gib, the South Coast or his beloved Blue Mountains walk, he would wonder aloud at what life might have been like for the indigenous people before white settlers and how they might have been part of this land.   His attention to detail in the bush was indeed a sacramental view – that everything visible was simply a sign of some inner meaning. His sense of the bush was one of the blessedness at the heart of things and he ALWAYS felt that he learnt and was made more resilient by the time he spent there. There is an aboriginal term, dadirri, which roughly translates as an inner deep listening and quiet, still awareness --- and this is as close a description as any of what Chris thought was most important in life. He and Des Ryan wrote the first Wilderness courses at Chev, long before these became more common in other schools.   He spent countless weekends taking students on bush trips. Later when Wilderness became not just a co-curricular activity but approved courses from Year 7 to Year 12, he took hundreds of students on expeditions.

He found a new love for pottery. Dabbling in clay and learning to use the wheel were activities really suited to his personality – natural materials, learning about the different types and qualities of clay and of kilns, about shape and form and glazes, and the continual, consistent patience of the potter. There were also lessons which we later realised needed to be applied during his illness.   The need to be willing to destroy and start again; to not invest your ego in your own creations but to let go when a batch of fired pots didn’t work for either technical or artistic reasons; to be willing to be patient and look again the next day at a newly fired pot because it had turned out differently from the way you’d hoped or expected.   And the central, spiritual one of life itself being a continual process of centering, shaping and firing.   The number of biblical analogies to the potter took on a new meaning.

 

Year of Mercy and Migrant and Refugee Week

“Turning the boats back” is a cruel and unmerciful response to the reality of an ongoing humanitarian crises. As Bishop Long knows only too well this is not the first time desperate people have arrived on our shores by boat. We welcomed them in the 70’s and offered them safety and a better life……now we show no mercy or compassion?

Surely we can do better !!!!

Migrant and Refugee Week: 22-28 August 2016

The Australian Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office (ACMRO) has published a kit to mark Migrant and Refugee Week and help us ponder how we can help and advocate for the rights of migrants and refugees.

The kit contains Pope Francis' Message for the World Day of Migration, focusing on the theme:  Migrants and Refugees Challenge Us. The Response of the Gospel of Mercy. 

"Migration movements are now a structural reality, and our primary issue must be to deal with the present emergency phase by providing programmes which address the causes of migration and the changes it entails, including its effect on the makeup of societies and peoples. The tragic stories of millions of men and women daily confront the international community as a result of the outbreak of unacceptable humanitarian crises in different parts of the world," said Pope Francis. "Indifference and silence lead to complicity whenever we stand by as people are dying of suffocation, starvation, violence and shipwreck. Whether large or small in scale, these are always tragedies, even when a single human life is lost.

Migrants are our brothers and sisters in search of a better life, far away from poverty, hunger, exploitation and the unjust distribution of the planet’s resources which are meant to be equitably shared by all. Don’t we all want a better, more decent and prosperous life to share with our loved ones?"

The resource kit also includes a message from Bishop Long, who himself arrived in Australia as a "boat person," and reflections on the implications of the Year of Mercy for policy and action.

Download the 102nd World Day of Migrants and Refugees Kit from the Australian Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office (ACMRO).

One Heart – Many Bodies

A national gathering of lay people connected with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart

On the 10^th – 12^th June over 80 lay people, representing almost every MSC ministry in Australia, gathered at Douglas Park for what we came to name as our first Australian Lay Chapter.

The purpose of the gathering was to develop a representative statement from the diverse family to be presented at the up-coming MSC Chapter. We invited Sr Therese Carroll rsj to be our facilitator, knowing that she is also to facilitate the up-coming Chapter for the MSC. Her facilitation was superb.

We began the gathering with a prayer ritual that incorporated significant scripture passages and music and snippets of the MSC story. The symbol of two hearts beating as one was a feature of the prayer space. The opening ritual began with a calling of the roll, reminiscent of the beginning of each Provincial Chapter. The names of each group were called in turn and people stood and responded – ‘Yes- we are here’. This ritual was repeated again at the end of the gathering – this time with each person attaching a red ribbon to the heart to signify their commitment to be God’s Heart on Earth in their own place.

We worked in small groups drawn from a range of ministries. The facilitation process began with the question: Who are we? We drew on the Emmaus story as we reflected on what we heard, in pairs, focusing on ‘Where did my heart burn?’ and ‘When were my eyes opened?’. This led to a reflection on the question: Who are we called to be? Three themes emerged from this session that can be summarized as a mission focus, a naming of the qualities that are central to who we are and the deep and unshakable knowledge that we live refreshed and sustained by God’s love. The conversation moved from here to the creation of a symbolic representation of what we could look like in the future. This session was underpinned by an input from Phil Fitzgerald which provided a wonderful framework from which to go deeper. Steve Dives brought the day to closure celebrating a beautiful Eucharist that had been prepared by the young adults who were present.

Sunday morning was the time when each group prepared their question or statement for the Chapter. It was formulated firstly as an affirmation to the MSC and then a comment. Group by group expressed their profound gratitude to every member of the province for leading us, for sharing their spirit and for being for us God’s Heart on Earth. There was not a dry eye in the room. From the diversity of opinion and experience present at the beginning of the gathering came statement after statement expressing our desire, our willingness and our earnest hope to be able to walk with and beside professed MSC into a new future and our hope that we will be heard.

The evaluations of the gathering were very affirming. People were grateful to be able to meet each other and to experience the diversity of our MSC family, and many expressed a sense of belonging and inclusiveness that they found uplifting and nourishing. Many expressed the desire for another such gathering.

 

Thank you to the Province for enabling this gathering to happen. You will see footage of it at your Chapter and we hope the future will unfold in a way that enables us to fully participate in Jules’ vision of a tree withthree branches. Thank you to Fred Stubenrauch and the steering committee for their meticulous and persistent organization, without which the event would never have happened.                                      

Alison McKenzie

 

POPE FRANCIS VISITS, WORLD YOUTH DAY 2016 Krakow, Poland.

(Vatican Radio) Our correspondent in Krakow, Lydia O’Kane, looks back at the highlights and gives her personal impressions of Pope Francis’ 5-day visit to Poland during which he attended the World Youth Day gathering, visited the site of the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz and travelled to Poland’s most revered shrine, the Jasna Gora at Czestochowa.

The fields of the Campus Misercordiae and Blonia Park are empty now in Krakow, but the echoes of Pope Francis’ rallying cries remain in both these grounds; the encouragement to dream big, not to be afraid to take risks, not to be discouraged, and to get up off one’s comfortable sofa and leave a mark on life. 

The Pope came to Poland, the beloved homeland of his predecessor St John Paul II with a message; a message of hope, mercy, and compassion for young people here at a time when the world is experiencing deep suffering and terrible cruelty.

This was a visit to celebrate the bringing together of young pilgrims from all over the world with one thing in common the love of God, but it was also a pastoral visit with unforgettable images.

The Pope’s slow solemn walk through the infamous gate at Auschwitz and his silent prayer in the cell of St Maximillian Kolbe will endure for years to come. As will his emotional visit to pay homage to the Black Madonna of Czestochowa.  

But where there are tears there can also be joy, such as the unforgettable scenes of youth enthusiastically encountering other pilgrims from around the world at Blonia Park and Campus Misericordiae. There was also a delighted Pope Francis who looked positively thrilled to be taking public transport once again in the form of a tram ride through Krakow, and the little girl at the paediatric hospital in the city who literally melted the Pope’s heart by drawing him one.

At the final Mass of this youth meeting, Pope Francis told the young pilgrims that “World Youth Day begins today and continues tomorrow, in your homes, since that is where Jesus wants to meet you from now on.”  

What is clearly evident here in Krakow is that the youth are ready and willing for the challenge. They want to show people back in their own countries that it’s ok to stand up and express one’s faith with pride. They want show that there is a cheerful aspect to the Church and they want to let it shine through just like here at World Youth Day. They also want to tell their communities back home that Jesus is alive and his mercy never ends.

Before leaving Poland, Pope Francis gave the World Youth Day pilgrims here an appointment for Panama City in 2019. Many have already planned to go, but until then, the seeds have been planted; now it’s up to them to help them grow.

REMINDER

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Fr Jim Littleton msc

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Fr Jim Littleton MSC

National Director, Lay MSC                                         Lay MSC Newsletter

Daramalan College                                                       Bernadette Phillips, Editor

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http://www.facebook.com/heartworks.

One Heart – Many Bodies

A national gathering of lay people connected with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart

 

On the 10^th – 12^th June over 80 lay people, representing almost every MSC ministry in Australia, gathered at Douglas Park for what we came to name as our first Australian Lay Chapter.

The purpose of the gathering was to develop a representative statement from the diverse family to be presented at the up-coming MSC Chapter. We invited Sr Therese Carroll rsj to be our facilitator, knowing that she is also to facilitate the up-coming Chapter for the MSC. Her facilitation was superb.

We began the gathering with a prayer ritual that incorporated significant scripture passages and music and snippets of the MSC story. The symbol of two hearts beating as one was a feature of the prayer space. The opening ritual began with a calling of the roll, reminiscent of the beginning of each Provincial Chapter. The names of each group were called in turn and people stood and responded – ‘Yes- we are here’. This ritual was repeated again at the end of the gathering – this time with each person attaching a red ribbon to the heart to signify their commitment to be God’s Heart on Earth in their own place.

 

We worked in small groups drawn from a range of ministries. The facilitation process began with the question: Who are we? We drew on the Emmaus story as we reflected on what we heard, in pairs, focusing on ‘Where did my heart burn?’ and ‘When were my eyes opened?’. This led to a reflection on the question: Who are we called to be? Three themes emerged from this session that can be summarized as a mission focus, a naming of the qualities that are central to who we are and the deep and unshakable knowledge that we live refreshed and sustained by God’s love. The conversation moved from here to the creation of a symbolic representation of what we could look like in the future. This session was underpinned by an input from Phil Fitzgerald which provided a wonderful framework from which to go deeper. Steve Dives brought the day to closure celebrating a beautiful Eucharist that had been prepared by the young adults who were present.

Sunday morning was the time when each group prepared their question or statement for the Chapter. It was formulated firstly as an affirmation to the MSC and then a comment. Group by group expressed their profound gratitude to every member of the province for leading us, for sharing their spirit and for being for us God’s Heart on Earth. There was not a dry eye in the room. From the diversity of opinion and experience present at the beginning of the gathering came statement after statement expressing our desire, our willingness and our earnest hope to be able to walk with and beside professed MSC into a new future and our hope that we will be heard.

The evaluations of the gathering were very affirming. People were grateful to be able to meet each other and to experience the diversity of our MSC family, and many expressed a sense of belonging and inclusiveness that they found uplifting and nourishing. Many expressed the desire for another such gathering.

Thank you to the Province for enabling this gathering to happen. You will see footage of it at your Chapter and we hope the future will unfold in a way that enables us to fully participate in Jules’ vision of a tree with three branches. Thank you to Fred Stubenrauch and the steering committee for their meticulous and persistent organization, without which the event would never have happened.

Alison McKenzie

 

CHASING ASYLUM, A TIMELY DOCUMENTARY - AND FOR ELECTION WEEKS

 

CHASING ASYLUM

Australia, 2016, 97 minutes, Colour.

Directed by Eva Orner.

Although this sounds something like an understatement, Chasing Asylum is a documentary that should be seen by every Australian, especially by every politician. It is a film of special pleading rather than bias (as it has been accused of), cinema documentation of the plight of asylum seekers and refugees in the Detention Centres on Nauru and Manus Island.

The writer-director, Eva Orner, has credible credentials. She spent a decade overseas producing documentaries, most notably Alex Gibney’s Taxi to the Darkside which won her a producer’s Oscar.

Concerned about the asylum issues, especially after the Tampa incident in 2001 and the coalition government’s response, issues about which all Australians are concerned (although in different ways in their support or non-support of the asylum seekers), Eve Orner began this project, filming in 2014, able to film footage secretly on both Nauru and Manus, striking images, shocking images which are reminders of the extraordinary inhumanity experienced by those detained. The point is made that those in Australian prisons who have committed crimes know the length of their sentence and possibilities for parole – but that the asylum seekers and refugees are detained indefinitely. And what is that condition responsible for in terms of mental apprehension a deterioration, let alone all the other repressions and harsh conditions that they experience?

The film gives some outline of the history of dealing with asylum seekers and refugees, Nauru after 2001, the people smuggling, the boats arriving or being lost at sea with large loss of life, the concerns about border protection, the Sovereign Borders policy, the stopping boats policy as well as the turning back of the boats, the 2014 decision that no boat person would ever settle in Australia. The film also indicates the physical and mental deterioration of so many men and women, also children, the sexual abuse, the deaths of the Iranians in riots or by Coalition or Labor.

But, some whistleblowers have been interviewed, some identified and seen by face, others just by suggestion and voice. Of these, some were employed by the Salvation Army. The manager of one of the centres is also interviewed, expressing his dismay. And the appointee, who had worked in prisons, expresses his revulsion about conditions, about death threats to him were he to speak publicly, and his resigning in disgust, unable to help. One of the young women, who is motivated by selflessness to go to Nauru but not realising what it was like, the repercussions for the people as well as for herself, is very direct and has a lot to say which needs listening to.

The film does not try to find any solutions for coping with people smugglers, turning back the boats or not, or other political stances. What it does do is to show the inhumanity to men, to women, to children, in putting them indefinitely into sub-standard, often unsanitary, conditions, tents and huts, communal facilities, that could alarm an audience watching this film and trying to imagine how they would deal with being put in similar situations.

A point is made that the two Iranians who died seem to be economic migrants, especially when the families of both men are interviewed in Iran – but, of course, there are economic migrants everywhere (including many who came in past decades to Australia). Their claims have to be considered along with others but there is no need for them to be dehumanised along the way. We are reminded that there are Conventions about migrants and refugees that Australia has signed up to.

While the following points are not made in the film, watching the film makes an audience realise that the asylum seekers have come from different cultures, communities, colder geographical climates, dietary differences and makes them ask whether any acknowledgement is made by the authorities at the Centres, for language, for religious traditions, for the roles of men and women in these societies, in the need for children to grow as children with play and education.

This is a documentary for this particular time – and its release during the very long election campaign of 2016. It is a cinema document that will be important in decades to come as later generations look back and ask questions about policies and humanity in the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.

There is a dedication of the film to Malcolm Fraser who, at the time was not considered to be left-wing or a bleeding heart, was able to deal with large migrations of Vietnamese in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, setting up offshore processing which moved comparatively rapidly and then bringing those approved to Australia by air and settling them. And the question is asked why this cannot be done now.

Peter Malone MSC

INAUGURATING LAY MSC SECTION

[Listed under the heading, Who We Are]

 

JUSTICE ISSUES: DRONES AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE: MOVIE - EYE IN THE SKY

Review: SIGNIS, WORLD CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION FOR COMMUNICATION. 

It was once thought that God’s eye was in the sky. Nowadays, with satellites in space and with drones and surveillance machinery so readily available, governments and military do have eyes, many eyes, in the sky.

This is a story about a drone strike, the role of the military, politicians in Britain, in the United States, legal advice, the technicians who calculate collateral damage in the case of a strike, intelligence and photo recognition, and the pilot and his associate who pulls the trigger.

Most people probably, give little thought in their everyday lives to the existence of drones, the missions, the dropping of bombs. When they do, it is usually as the result of media headlines, taking out of some terrorist leaders or the sad news of collateral damage of civilians being killed and injured in explosions.

This is where Eye in the Sky takes us, 105 minutes of screen time to give thought to all the implications of drones, strikes and the consequences.

At the opening of the film in Nairobi, we see little girl and her father mending her hulahoop and her playing in the yard (later, as a reminder of the strictness of Somalia’s Al Shebab, she is told not to play in front of a customer who disapproves of children, playing according to Sharia law). As the little girl appears throughout the film, going up the street to sell loaves of bread that her mother is baking, we appreciate that the question of collateral damage is going to be raised in her regard at least.

The film gives immediate information about the central characters and the places where decisions will be made: at a military base in England, at a conference room in Whitehall, London, in an image recognition centre in Hawaii, local offices for collaboration with Kenyan military authorities and the room in the Nevada desert base where the pilot who will pull the trigger will watch screens and wait for orders.

We are brought up to date with the situation, a British citizen who has married a terrorist and has been radicalised, an American citizen flying in to join the local terrorist cell, the Somalis who are operating in Kenya and antagonistic towards the Kenyan government and its alliance with the UK and the US. When intelligence comes in that these suspects are in the one building, the Colonel in England makes a plan for the capture of the terrorist with British and American passports.

Most audiences will be amazed at the amount of surveillance available, the clarity of the images, the ability to zoom in and out – not just from drones in the sky but from mini-drones, mechanical birds with surveillance eyes and, then, a small mechanical beetle which can fly into rooms and around rooms bringing in extra detail to all those watching in Africa, Britain and the United States.

The screenplay has all those involved in making decisions about the strike tackling all the reasons, for and against, moral decision-making and its being grounded in rational arguments as well as emotional arguments.

The Colonel in charge is played by Helen Mirren who noted that the part was originally written for a male actor but changed for her. She is in contact with a general who goes to Whitehall for decision-making about the strike with the Attorney General, the ministers of the Crown. He is Alan Rickman in one of his final roles, and Jeremy Northam and Richard McCabe as the ministers. Monica Dolan appears as another minister who has strong views about the repercussions of the strike.

The main American is the pilot, Aaron Paul, sitting with his associate in a small hut, unlike a cockpit, at the Nevada base.

Most of the action seems to be playing in real time – or at least it seems that way. The situation inside the targeted house changes dramatically bringing an urgency for a decision to be made as quickly as possible, the Colonel urging immediate action, supported by the general in Whitehall, but complications arise with the opinions of the ministers, the need to contact the Foreign Minister who is in Singapore, contacting the American Secretary of State who is in Beijing, the Prime Minister who is giving a speech in Strasbourg.

In the meantime, the little girl is selling bread at a table-stall outside the wall of the targeted building, bringing that extra dimension of collateral damage into the consideration. And the question: is the death of one little girl in collateral damage to be preferred over the potential for 80 or more people to be killed by suicide bombers in public areas. All sides of the argument are presented with some drama as the local agent, a Somali, who has controlled the beetle in the house, makes an attempt to buy all the bread so that the little girl will go home.

This means that the film is a challenge to moral stances, whether one agrees with the military making the strike decision or those who hesitate, thinking compassionately about collateral damage or weighing up the odds about public opinion if the UK and the US authorise a strike with a consequent death or whether the terrorists, Al Shebab, will be blamed for greater acts of terror and massacres.

There is a tension throughout the film, more so as the audience begins to weigh up the choices and identify with one or other approach.

In one sense, it may be thought that there is a satisfactory ending, but, on the other hand, not.

___________________________________________________________

EYE IN THE SKY

UK, 2016, 102 minutes, Colour.

Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman, Jeremy Northam, Barkhad Abdi, Iain Glenn, Phoebe Fox, Aisha Takow, Richard McCabe, Monica Dolan, Michael O'Keefe, GavIn Hood, Laila Robbins.

Directed by GavIn Hood.

SANCTUARY AND ASYLUM

 

  

International Christian Peace Movement

National President: Father Claude Mostowik MSC

61+2+9550 3845

0411 450 953

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

Pax Christi Australia Solidarity Statement with Churches and Religious Institutes Offering Sanctuary to Asylum Seekers

Pax Christi Australia is a branch of the International Ecumenical Peace movement, Pax Christi International. Pax Christi is heartened and encouraged by the actions of some churches in this country in their response to the recent High Court 6-1 decision to support the deportation of people back to Nauru. These churches have decided to offer sanctuary to refugees facing deportation to renewed violence and violations of their human rights. Pax Christi Australia is calling on more churches, parishes and cathedrals to stand together in reviving an ancient Christian tradition in providing sanctuary inside a church where people fleeing unjust civil authorities can reside. We acknowledge that it is not recognised in common law now, but the action of the churches is a challenge to a policy that has been and continues to harm innocent people who have not committed a crime.

This solidarity is not about politics but very much related to humanity and morality. Many commentators outside the church have stated that though the High Court has decreed the legality of Government legislation this does not mean it is moral or humane. We have recently condemned legal actions in Saudi Arabia in the knowledge that legality does not equal morality or humanity.

Pax Christi Australia is calling on the wider church in Australia in join together in this movement. This is a time to show courage and leadership where many people despair at the inhumanity that is perpetrated again innocent people. This leadership will also offer people who think that all laws must be followed irrespective of the harm they do that there is another way… the way of the gospel and Christ’s example.

To remain inactive and silent in the face of injustice, to not stand in solidarity with those who have the courage to resist injustice would leave a great stain on our humanity as well as violating the humanity of people who are victims of all kinds of abuse under these laws.

Along with the churches who have offered sanctuary, Pax Christi Australia cannot ignore the consequences of the High Court ruling which many recognise will inflict further trauma on already traumatised people. People have suffered and been traumatised. We will not say yes to further trauma being caused.

Fr Claude Mostowik msc

President

February 4, 2016

 

FROM THOMAS MERTON

The young monk Thomas Merton had a revelation on a busy street corner in Louisville, Kentucky. (A plaque now marks the spot.) ‘In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut,’ he wrote . . .

‘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, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. . . . 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.’

KINGDOM OF GOD TODAY

Kingdom.  Of.  God.

This is not simply a personal ethic. I often hear evangelicals and conservatives say, ‘God wants everything from us’ and ‘God demands our all.’ But somehow many also claim that ‘everything’ and ‘all’ doesn’t include our politics because Jesus only gave us a personal ethic.

The fact is that the Kingdom of God is more than personal. It is political, but it is a radically different kind of politics because it subverts the political status quo. From the beginning of human history, the political status quo has been run by the same dynamic – violence.

But the Kingdom of God subverts the politics of violence. Make no mistake: When Jesus used the term ‘Kingdom of God,’ he was being politically subversive. He was charged with high treason, because in using that phrase he was directly confronting the Kingdom of Rome.

These two political realms function in entirely different ways. The Kingdom of Rome functioned with violence, terror, and exclusion. But this point is crucial: Rome wanted peace. In fact, Rome named its project the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace, and wanted to spread it throughout the known world. Unfortunately, the only method Rome knew to achieve ‘peace’ was through violence. As Rome conquered new lands in the contradictory name of the Pax Romana, it carried the sword and the crucifix along with it. And if anyone resisted, they would likely be killed.

As all Christians know, that’s exactly what happened to Jesus. Why was Jesus killed? It wasn’t because he said, ‘Hey guys. I’ve got a personal ethic here, let’s all just love each other! Look, bunnies. Yay! Aren’t they cute!’

No……………….

In the face of terrorism in France and throughout the world, those who follow Christ can have only one response – resist violence with nonviolent love.

In the face of refugees fleeing countries torn to shreds by terrorism, those who follow Christ can have only one response – resist the urge to exclude refugees by showing them gracious hospitality that lends without hope of receiving anything in return.

If we choose any other personal or political ethic, we aren’t living by the Kingdom of God………..

……..love doesn’t guarantee security, but neither does violence. The point for Christians is to not be run by fear, but by love. To follow him means to trust that as we live into the Kingdom of God we can show hospitality and lend to everyone in need, without expecting anything in return, because we know that there will be enough for everyone.

Read more https://www.ravenfoundation.org/the-anti-christ-immigration-response-of-us-governors-and-the-kingdom-of-god/

 

‘May Thy kindom* break forth unto our broken world-

Through our living commitment to peace with justice.

Through our care for our poor, our stranger and our marginalized.

Through our active practice of nonviolence through loving words, thoughts and deeds.

Through our care of our environment in the way we live and share resources.

Through our exercise of endless hospitality and openness to embrace another.

Through our generosity in compassion, mercy and forgiveness..

May Thy kindom come.’

*not a misprint.

KIDS' RIGHT TO FREEDOM