Now uploaded, this week's parish newsletter for the Catholic parishes of the Hurunui and the Chatham Islands.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Friday, September 21, 2012
be the greatest
Coming to Mass each week is the ultimate confrontation with reality. We begin every celebration of the Mass, not by recalling our achievements and high-points, but by ‘acknowledging our sins, and so preparing ourselves to celebrate...’
Not too many decades ago people were encouraged to ignore their feelings. The child was praised for not crying at the death of a parent. A teenage boy was called ‘a baby’ if he cried when experiencing pain. In that ‘stiff-upper-lip’ society, feelings were ignored. The consequences of this ignorance have been tragic.
It is perhaps an inevitable result of such a stoic attitude that has seen the ‘feeling-pendulum’ react to the opposite pole. Now feelings are given the central place in all aspects of behaviour and decision-making. We hear ‘do it if it makes you feel good.’
Each of these extreme attitudes is a serious misunderstanding of the real purpose of feelings in the human design. Feelings are important. We ignore them at our peril. But feelings are also fickle and often misleading. Feelings are easily manipulated by our random wants and irrational fears. If a child’s family convince her that in order to live happily she needs to achieve academically and marry money, she will not feel great (at least initially) when she scores only pass grades and falls in love with one who earns only a satisfactory salary.
When at Mass the priest invites the people to ‘acknowledge our sins’, our mind (if we are healthy) is immediately flooded with feelings of failure. We wrestle with secret struggles and are burdened with the unreasonable (and unachievable) pressures that weigh upon us.
Very often these pressures are caused by our failure to meet the standards that we feel are required of us. Somehow we have come to believe that it is the attaining of these standards (with others and with God) that makes us lovable.
So we can understand the disciples in today’s gospel. While walking along they arguing about which of them is the greatest. When they reach the house Jesus asks them what they were arguing about along the road. They must have been embarrassed because the scripture makes a point of telling us that they responded to Jesus’ question with silence.
Then Jesus teaches them that the way to be great is to seek to be the vulnerable servant of all. Perhaps now they begin to understand what they had failed to appreciate in the opening verses of today’s reading: “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise." We know they didn’t get what Jesus was saying because we hear that “they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to question him”.
It is no surprise that the disciples did not understand Jesus. In too many ways people 2000 years ago were pretty much like citizens of these early years of the twenty-first century. We (as our ancestors before us) have fallen victim to the false conviction that money and power, success and strength will bring us the happiness that we so desperately seek.
The pope notes this in his words to the young people of Lebanon during his visit there last weekend as he exhorts them to “Look for relationships of genuine, uplifting friendship. Find ways to give meaning and depth to your lives; fight superficiality and mindless consumption! You face another temptation, too: that of money, the tyrannical idol which blinds to the point of stifling the person at the heart”.
Jesus is giving us the inside knowledge that the world of advertising and consumerism is so desperate to hide from us: the method to achieving happiness is to seek to serve.
It is of the essence of human existence to seek to be great - even to be the greatest. But the greatest among us is not the one who appears to wield the most power, drive the fastest car, marries the movie (or sporting) star or lives in the biggest house in the ‘best’ street. Such worldly successes bring only fleeting and superficial satisfaction.
Yes, it is good and healthy to seek to be the greatest. But who is the greatest?
The greatest is the one who knows their need for Jesus most intimately. Jesus is not at all interested in how other people view me. The fact that I might achieve fame in the eyes of others, even through good works, is of no interest to the divine heart.
Human greatness is found in the one who humbly acknowledges their sin. This is because when I acknowledge my sin, I am revealing to God my capacity for His mercy and His love. I am giving God the space to take root in me and to overwhelm me. Such an experience is totally transformative. I now realise that all my efforts to satisfy the squeaks of my random feelings have failed. I need more. I need true greatness. I need the life that only God can give me. Now I am truly in touch with my reality. Now I am ready for God.
This is the life of the saint. And only when living as a saint is one able to experience true greatness.
weekly newsletter
You will find the weekly newsletter for the Catholic parishes of the Hurunui and the Chatham Islands by clicking on this link:
If you would like to be on the email list to receive the newsletter updates just send your email to
Friday, September 14, 2012
whose thinking?
“ You are not thinking as God does
but as human beings do ”
(Mk 8)
On Friday (14th), the Church celebrated the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The readings of this Sunday's liturgy reinforce the feast’s emphasis on the centrality of the suffering of the Cross in the life of every Christian.
People of faith celebrate the feast each year knowing that the death of Jesus is the event that gives us hope. Jesus’ death and resurrection gives meaning to all human suffering. Therefore we are proud to make a crucifix visible in our homes.
It is important to remember that the cross was an instrument of torture and death for the ‘trouble-makers’ of the Roman Empire. The modern equivalent would be the electric chair in the United States, or the gallows in New Zealand before 1989.
So couldn’t the Church think up a more attractive title for the feast? ‘Exaltation’ of an instrument of torture? Well, yes, but this would be missing the point.
The Church is insisting that we stay in front of reality - whatever the reality is. And more often than we would like, it is suffering and death that motivates, occupies, and even pre-occupies us.
And this got me thinking about Baptism, this and the fact that it was the anniversary of my own baptism during the week.
On the Holy Land pilgrimage earlier in the year, at Emmaus (where the Community of the Beatitudes have a house and care for the site), we saw the excavation of a baptismal font from the early Christian centuries.
On first glance it looked a bit like a stone grave, dug in a cross-shape, with steps down one end and up the opposite side. It was almost two metres from end to end and a metre deep, to be filled with water.
Why did the first Christians design their baptismal places to resemble graves? Because...
“Baptism, the original and full sign of which is immersion, efficaciously signifies the descent into the tomb by the Christian who dies to sin with Christ in order to live a new life. "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." (Catechism of the Catholic Church par.628)
Fr. Timothy Radcliffe OP has titled his new book “Take the Plunge, Living Baptism and Confirmation”. In the opening pages he notes that about one-third of the world’s population is baptized. He continues:
“People are baptized for all sorts of reasons, perhaps because of a profound experience of conversion, or to pass on their faith to their children, but also just because it is expected, to please the grandparents, to get their children into a Christian school, or just as an excuse for a party or a new hat .... Yet Christians make the grandest claims for baptism. It is our sharing in Christ’s victory over death” (p.1)
Often when I baptise a baby, I want to begin the ceremony by asking the parents: ‘so you want me to baptise your baby; you want me to initiate this beautiful child into the life of Christ, a life of suffering, misunderstanding, betrayal and denial by friends, and death as a criminal...you really want me to initiate your child into this life?’
Now, before you get too anxious about my pastoral style, I can assure you that I have never asked this at a baptism!
But you get my point? When we baptise a child, (or an adult) we are in fact initiating this person into such a life. This does not mean that we are wishing suffering, misunderstanding, denial, betrayal and death on the child. But we are standing honestly before the reality that every human person who has ever lived, has suffered, has been betrayed and denied, has been misunderstood, and has (or will) experience death.
But you get my point? When we baptise a child, (or an adult) we are in fact initiating this person into such a life. This does not mean that we are wishing suffering, misunderstanding, denial, betrayal and death on the child. But we are standing honestly before the reality that every human person who has ever lived, has suffered, has been betrayed and denied, has been misunderstood, and has (or will) experience death.
This is the point. Without Christ, we are hope-less. Without Christ we flail about in a forest of tempting escapes under the guise of (apparent) ‘freedoms’. Without Christ there is no point to life.
But wIth Christ, every human circumstance, however tragic, has meaning and purpose.
We baptise a new Christian because life with Christ is the ONLY life that offers hope in the midst of pain, betrayal, isolation and fear. For the Christian, death is not a future fear. The Christian is one who (in Baptism) has already passed through death ‘that s/he might walk in the newness of life!’
We baptise a new Christian because life with Christ is the ONLY life that offers hope in the midst of pain, betrayal, isolation and fear. For the Christian, death is not a future fear. The Christian is one who (in Baptism) has already passed through death ‘that s/he might walk in the newness of life!’
If we don’t live in this certainty, then we habitually fall victim to “reaching out for the Infinite but in mistaken directions: in drugs, in a disorderly form of sexuality, in totalizing technologies, in success at every cost and even in deceptive forms of piety”. (ref. Pope Benedict in his message to the Rimini Meeting last month)
And this is where we are given an option. We are offered the choice between life and death. Another way of presenting this is to consider the challenge of Jesus in today’s gospel reading: we choose life when we cease thinking as the world thinks, and when we begin to think with the mind of God.
It is the wise person who wakes up to the reality that no thing can adequately answer the desires of the human heart. But there is some ONE, Jesus Christ ('God-with us'), who is eager to satisfy every human need. By our very nature (i.e. as a fundamental characteristic of our human design), humans are made to live as a relationship with Jesus Christ who is God.
In this life with Jesus we appreciate that 'human' thinking is fatally flawed. Advertising tells us that we will be happy with a bigger house, a faster car, a later-model partner, obedient children, more money, better health...the list is endless!
Each of these pleasures might provide momentary satisfaction. But then the yearning returns because, through our persistent and niggling neediness, God is teaching us to think not as humans think, but as God thinks.
Each of these pleasures might provide momentary satisfaction. But then the yearning returns because, through our persistent and niggling neediness, God is teaching us to think not as humans think, but as God thinks.
parish newsletter
You will find the weekly newsletter for the Catholic parishes of the Hurunui and the Chatham Islands by clicking on this link:
If you would like to be on the email list to receive the newsletter updates just send your email to
beauty of creation
Last week, with about 400 friends, I spent a day hiking in the alps between Italy and France. We began by driving into the Little St. Bernard Pass, and climbing together, in single file and in silence (mostly) until reaching a plateau where we celebrated Mass, had lunch, rested and sang.
The beauty of the mountain scenery was breathtaking. The images capture little of the reality.
But even more beautiful was the community of faith that hiked together. While others sang in foreign languages I took the chance to gaze around at the beauty of this gathering of pilgrims - the people surpassing the scenery in beauty of course...
...after all the mountains, the sky and the beauty of nature was just God's preparation (day 1-5 of creation), before on day 6 creating the human person in the divine image.
The beauty of the mountain scenery was breathtaking. The images capture little of the reality.
But even more beautiful was the community of faith that hiked together. While others sang in foreign languages I took the chance to gaze around at the beauty of this gathering of pilgrims - the people surpassing the scenery in beauty of course...
...after all the mountains, the sky and the beauty of nature was just God's preparation (day 1-5 of creation), before on day 6 creating the human person in the divine image.
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| Mont Blanc |
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| Giant's tooth (left) and Rochefort Arête |
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| Mass is about to begin |
Otematata - where it all began
You have read the title so you will guess that this picture is of the Catholic Church in Otematata. This is where on 10 September 1961, I was baptised. The Church is no longer there.
(Can anyone tell me what happened to it - I took the picture in the early 1980's)
At my birth a couple of weeks earlier I first breathed on my own. But it was only when Fr. Reg O'Brien poured the water and called on God "I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" that I really began to live.
Fr. O'Brien would have prayed this in Latin. But God listens in every language. The pope reminded us of this yesterday in the Wednesday Audience. Listen to the young guy in this clip (jump ahead to 37 seconds to hear him)
I have been thinking a bit about baptism this week prompted by a couple of things. I will blog my thoughts here tomorrow, and in the parishes newsletter this weekend.
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ps. If you don't know when you were baptised, you might like to find out by sending an email to the church/parish where you were baptised with your full name, parents names and your date of birth. When you do find out, celebrate the anniversary each year as your own personal major feast.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Christmas shopping
As I write the Christmas Clock is telling me that there are only 108 days, 33 hours until Christmas Day.
Many parents, grandparents, Godparents, aunts and uncles struggle in choosing a gift for young people. Many of you are committed in your Catholic faith, but are uncertain about giving a gift that is explicitly Catholic.
If you are a parent or Godparent, you have made a public declaration that you will do all you can to support the faith education of those you 'parent'. So, no need to be shy about giving a gift that helps to live out your promise!
Here is a gift idea. If you get hold of a copy now you can enjoy it yourself in the weeks before Christmas.
Thirty years ago the Catechism of the Catholic Church was published. While most of you have seen this catechism, few Catholic have spent time savouring the contents. Perhaps the lack of pictures and the lots of words is off-putting?
Last year a response to that criticism was published. "YOUCAT" (short for 'Youth Catechism'). It is the Catechism in attractive format and ideal for people of all ages. It is especially directed at people aged 16 - 30ish.
In his introduction, Pope Benedict challenges young people: "You need to be more deeply rooted in the faith than the generation of your parents."
You may be able to find this locally. The Catholic Diocese of Christchurch Youth Team will be able to you tell you where you can find this.
plans for peace
For those who are willing to pray with the Church, the daily Prayer of the Church offers real food for faith.
"I know the plans I have in mind for you – it is the Lord who speaks – plans for peace, not disaster, reserving a future full of hope for you. Then when you call to me, and come to plead with me, I will listen to you. When you seek me you shall find me, when you seek me with all your heart; I will let you find me – it is the Lord who speaks."
Jeremiah 29
Thursday, September 6, 2012
paralympics and reason
Unfortunately I am not getting a chance to see too much of the London Paralympics.
The exceptionally high TV ratings suggests that viewers are inspired and captivated by these athletes who have overcome disability to achieve excellence.
It is easy to forget that New Zealand, and the majority of the countries represented by these athletes, have laws that place these men and women on death-row...
...if their disability is discovered (or even suspected) In utero.
Surely there is a lack of sound use of reason here?
Then this morning I read an article ('facebook'ed by Brendan Malone) that really got me thinking. Article at this link. The piece is subtitled "It's an appalling dilemma."
I agree - it would be an appalling dilemma if I thought that the decision about the life or death of my disabled child was mine to make.
The beauty of Catholic Faith gives an environment in which God has gifted us with freedom to make all the decisions that are (by divine design) human decisions, and to leave to God all the decisions that (by divine design) are God's alone to make.
This is in no way an abdication of human responsibility. Instead, in this environment of faith, we are free from such appalling dilemmas.
Let's be reasonable. Surely there is hypocrisy at play if I admire these disabled athletes for their achievements, while at the same time considering their disabilities as justification for abortion?
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