hearts for Christmas?

Registrations for the Jan 2014 Hearts Aflame gathering close in the next few days. This ten-day formation session for young (18-35 year-old) Catholics has become a significant event on the New Zealand Catholic calendar, and a positive life-changing experience for those who take part.

I was fortunate in January of this year to spend a couple of days at the gathering; well over 100 young people, and presenters, lay people, religious sisters and brothers and priests from around the world, gave ten days of their new year to focus on faith.  Unfortunately I cannot be there this year, but you might know of someone who could be there, and perhaps as a Godparent, Grandparent, parishioner or friend you could help them to get there. The cost of the event is just under $500 for everything that happens on site, and travel of course would be extra.

I note this morning that there are only three days before registrations close, but that's enough time for you to make a call to a young Catholic and ask if they would be willing to attend.

And it saves you having to go out into the Christmas rush to buy a present for them - a present that will probably not be around in a century. But their faith will be a reality in a century. It's just a matter of where...

Registrations at this link: Jan 2014 Hearts Aflame

Here's the HA 2013 promotional video:

Trent, 450 years later

It's 450 years today since the closing of the Council of Trent. Most people who have heard of Trent, consider the name synonymous with a defensive Church fighting the attacks of the Reformation.

A few blogs and websites are today offering some useful reflections to mark the anniversary. I'll leave you to read some of these for yourself.

As for us, we live in different times. Last week's Apostolic Exhortation from Pope Francis "the Joy of the Gospel" proclaims faith as a personal encounter with Christ, with no place for defensiveness and fear. 

Here's some of the web links:

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/church-marks-the-450th-anniversary-of-council-of-trent

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-omalley/the-council-of-trent-450-years-later_b_3180148.html

https://www.osv.com/TheChurch/ChurchHistory/Article/TabId/737/ArtMID/13692/ArticleID/13510/Council-of-Trent-shaped-key-Church-doctrines-and-reformed-the-clergy.aspx

the angel of the Lord...

One of my favourite formal prayers is the Angelus. This prayer focusses the pray-er on the moment when God took on human flesh in Jesus, the moment of the conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary.

Take a moment now to appreciate this Millet masterpiece below. Even if you have never seen the image before, you will guess that these peasants are praying.

When the one who commissioned this painting in the mid- 1800’s failed to buy the finished painting, Millet added a church bell tower and renamed his work “Angelus”.

Many of us remember the convent or church bell tolling at midday and early evening at 6. (the 6am bell was often not rung at the request of neighbours). Whatever the Catholic locals were doing when the the bell tolled, at the distinctive 3,3,3,9 ring, all would stop, mid sentence, mid activity. Catholics would stand or kneel to pray.

The bell was the the call to prayer that began without preamble: “The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.”

This prayer of incarnation interrupts our routines and busyness. While it may be difficult to find others to pray the Angelus with, there is nothing to stop us praying alone.

Perhaps the near-midday ring of a nearby phone, or the moment of inserting the key in the car ignition could be for you an 'Angelus Bell'.

The message of the angel interrupted Mary’s daily routine and life’s dreams to such an extent that ‘she was greatly troubled’. “But how can this be...”.

From the moment of Mary’s response “be it done unto me, according to thy Word”, Mary life was fulfilled. This does not mean that Mary lived in blissful earthly happiness every subsequent moment. Jump ahead 12 years to her search for a missing son, or 33 years later to the moment when she held her dead son. But always, in the depth of her heart, she was at peace in God.

This depth of peace, at a deeper level than all daily demands and regular routines, is also the deepest desire of every human person. This peace is our "default setting".

There is a challenge in allowing God to enter our lives. It is not a simple or easy birth. In the moment of deepest desire for the fulness of God’s life, we also feel the pain of having to let go of our old attachments. While we know that our personal dreams, projects and likes can never deliver the depth of joy and peace we desire, their is a deceptive and superficial comfort in these familiar traps.

It is rare to hear the Angelus rung these days, but some creative geek has designed an Angelus App for a cell phone or ipad. I have downloaded it and use it. I am looking forward to being with a crowd of people and hearing other people's phones joining with mine to ring this ancient call to prayer. This is a great way to learn the prayer since the words pop up on the phone as the ring sounds.

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Tap here to hear (as above) the Angelus ring clip from Irish TV

How to pray the Angelus

An "Angelus App" for your phone

victim, persecutor, rescuer

Last Saturday I led a reflection day for our parish of the Good Shepherd, Hurunui. There are few things that are as helpful for a community as the opportunity to retreat together. Of course not all parishioners take part, only a relatively small number, but numbers are not important since there is nothing more positively contageous than one person seeking to live the life of Christ fully. 

As I prepared for the day I was thinking about Pope Francis' Exhortation last week entitled "the Joy of the Gospel." If you have followed Pope Francis' words and actions over the past eight months you won't find any surprises in his writing. However it is encouraging and helpful after having seen the evidence of this man who seeks to follow Christ in his public papal role, to have this insightful reflection revealing his motivation and mission in a single document.

A number of people have commented that Pope Francis is a man who never seems to be defensive.  While defensiveness is often hailed as a virtue (perhaps when I defend the values or the people I hold dear), it is always motivated by fear which is the opposite of love. A country may maintain a defence force, but only because they fear an enemy attack. 

I recall hearing a story years ago about the newspaper delivery boy who every morning would receive verbal abuse from the same man after delivering his newspaper. Every morning the boy would give the same response to this attack: "Have a nice day."  A neighbour who often noticed this one day took the chance to ask the boy why he responded so kindly to the man's abuse. The boy's response: "I'm not going to let him decide how I am going to act."

WIth all of this in mind I began Saturday's reflection day. As the day progressed I realised again just how important the example of Pope Francis and the paper boy is for we who seek to live fully. And then I remembered the "Karpman Triangle" as an especially  helpful tool for the one who seeks to live without the imprisonment of defensiveness.

Stephen Karpman is an American psychiatrist who presented his "triangle" to help clarify a central problem that most of us have in our relationships. In the clip below, this 'drama triangle' is applied to a work situation. But the same artificial roles of 'persecutor' 'rescuer' and 'victim' are at play in our families, parishes, schools, social networks... (anywhere people are together).

I suspect that if Jesus was presenting his Sermon on the Mount today, Stephen Karpman might get a mention.

What do you think?

it's Advent

There is a story told of the holy French priest Jean Vianney (Ćure d’Ars d.1859). He noticed an elderly man who would spend hours in the church before the Blessed Sacrament. 

The ćure was curious about what happened in this man’s prayer. ‘What do you do when you are praying” he asked the man. The old man’s answer has become the classic instruction for contemplative prayer: “I look at Him, and He looks at me.”

The simplicity of the man’s prayer is deeply appealing. So much that is taught and written about prayer serves only to convince us that prayer is a complex project to be mastered.

We forget that prayer is the most natural human activity. Prayer is the 'default-setting' for humans. Prayer is always God’s action in us. 

Our desire for the divine life within us is the purest prayer we can pray. To sit in silence and stillness before God is the best we can do.

When I think about the ćure’s conversation with the elderly man, I see that he was deeply at home with God; much more at peace with God than I often am. Most times I feel unable to look at God. My guilt and shame renders me more like Adam in the garden who took to cover, unable to return the divine gaze.

But there is hope for me. God does not need me to do anything in my prayer. I simply give God the gift of time, and I sit or kneel. If looking at God is difficult for whatever reason, I need not be concerned. In these moments I simply know that however preoccupied my own vision, God is always looking at me with gentle love and mercy. 

God’s gaze on me is the heart of prayer. God does all the work—and I am transformed.

The busyness of pre-Christmas days can be exhausting. How easy it is for us to lose perspective. We forget that God is holding us in love in every moment. 

These Advent days invite us to set moments in the midst of our full lives to remember that God is with us. To know that we are held firmly in God’s vision is the most comforting human experience. In this gaze we see our sin and weakness. In humble shame we cast our eyes downward. But the God of love continues to look upon us with transforming love. This posture before God is the heart of contemplative prayer.

Francis: new face of Benedict

Media broadcasts in recent days have carried news of the publication of Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation "The Joy of the Gospel".

It is significant and unusual for a papal document to make secular news headlines, and is undoubted evidence that eight months after his surprise election, Pope Francis is an attractive and formidable world presence.

The new document, while a substantial fifty thousand words, is an easy read for anyone who has spent a couple of years at high school, and who sincerely seeks truth and beauty. That "seeking truth and beauty" point is important since many might begin to read, and quickly tire feeling discomfort at the pope's challenges and his intimate way of focussing on Jesus Christ as the heart of all joyful and healthy human life. Before many blog readers were born, Pope John Paul's first encyclical began with the same intimate emphasis: "Jesus Christ, is the centre of the universe and of history". Redemptor Hominis 4 March 1979

Even those who never miss an opportunity to criticize popes seem to be struggling to find a negative slant for their comments about "the Joy of the Gospel". This is not surprising since the pope provides his own robust critique of the world and the church, and he does not shy from explicit attacks on unjust and corrupt systems and structures both in the world and in the church. In short, Pope Francis does the work of his opponents for them. 

Perhaps the greatest surprise in these pages is the seamless blend of the themes, styles and emphases of Benedict and Francis. The "Francis factor" is naturally evident in what one blogger calls his "now-familiar flashes of homespun language." One example: "an evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral!" (par.10) 

Another blogger is a bit shocked that Pope Francis strongly endorses Pope Benedict's "hermeneutic of continuity." Certainly both popes' positions on key and controversial issues is clear and consistent. 

At this eight-month anniversary of his election, Pope Francis seems to delight in claiming as his personal motto the words of Pope Benedict who eight months after his own election published the encyclical "God is Love." (Christmas 2005) Pope Francis writes: 

"I never tire of repeating those words of Benedict XVI which take us to the very heart of the Gospel “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” (par.7)

Wednesday of next week (4 December) is the 450th anniversary of the opening of the Council of Trent. Today "Trent" is commonly synonymous with with a fearful and defensive church. In these past eight months, we have witnessed Pope Francis actively breaking through fear with love, and setting aside defensiveness to welcome all people of good-will with open arms and affectionate and merciful embrace. His natural and extroverted manner gives the writings of his predecessor a new face, and so he presents a new and welcome face of the Church to the world.

Advent I, parish newsletter

You can find the weekly newsletter for the Catholic Parish of the Good Shepherd, Hurunui, now uploaded to the parish website www.catholichurunui.co.nz.