Morena – Good morning,
Another week passes and we continue to hear stories of violence, desperation, loss and the breakdown of trust amongst our people. The Olympics have given us some respite with stories of triumph, energy sapping struggles to forge ahead and not everyone wins a medal. But, the four years of effort preceding have launched them into the challenges of participation and pitting their best against the best. We have seen small errors that end up crueling ending their chance at glory.
So much of this reflects humanity. Our consumer society sells us perfection but we know we never get there. Our reliance on products, appliance, power, politics and money paint a picture that never comes anywhere near an experience of testing ones limit, of experiencing a faithful friend and a loving person who assist us in picking up the pieces. Our society has lost its need for empathy, connection and lasting memories of love, joy, fellowship through compassion and forgiveness. We are tied up in things and safety and lock ourselves away from opportunities to reach out and engage with different people. Friendship knows no limits; its intercultural and knows no bounds.
I recently finished a book called Born to Love buy Bruce Perry a Psychiatrist and Trauma expert and co-authored with journalist Maia Szalavitz where they explore the foundations and necessity of ‘empathy’ as the glue in building and maintaining Social Capital a necessity for all humans. As Gretchen Rubin author of the Happiness Project shared after reading the book. “Empathy, and the ties that bind people into relationships, are key elements to happiness.”
We are more aware now than ever of the effects of trauma and its impact, and some of this is generational and it impacts strongly on our society as people are forced into isolation, rights removed or trodden on and the loss of family and tribal connections. This affects us all as we journey – we see more fear, more anger, hurt and disillusionment with all around them. Some brief points that I believe are important to acknowledge and work for:
- Social Capital: They argue that social capital is essential for creating environments where empathy can flourish. High levels of social capital contribute to stronger, more supportive communities where individuals are more likely to engage in empathetic behaviours.
- Importance of Connections: The authors stress that connections between people are fundamental to the development of empathy. Early relationships, particularly those with caregivers, provide the foundation for learning how to understand and respond to others’ emotions. These early connections are critical for building the neural pathways that support empathetic responses throughout life.
- Role of Relationships: Perry and Szalavitz explain that positive, secure relationships help children develop a sense of trust and safety, which in turn supports their ability to empathise with others. Conversely, disrupted or negative relationships can impair this development.
- Impact on Society: The book also explores how societal factors influence social capital and relationships. For instance, social isolation, economic inequality, and fragmented communities can weaken social capital and reduce opportunities for meaningful connections. This, in turn, can negatively impact empathy and social cohesion.
- Practical Implications: Perry and Szalavitz advocate for creating environments—whether in families, schools, or communities—that promote strong, supportive relationships. They suggest that nurturing these connections is essential not just for individual development but for fostering a more empathetic and connected society.
Overall, “Born for Love” underscores the interconnectedness of social capital, relationships, and empathy, highlighting how vital these elements are for both personal development and societal well-being.
From this ,I feel encouraged by what we do in our communities and through our Passionist Family Groups; it informs and encourages us to be aware that we are there to be ‘bread’ for others, to allow God to take the lead as Jesus suggests; with him we can do anything as the gospel implies and that Elijah experiences, in the first reading . St Paul, in the second reading, encourages us; “Be friends with one another, and kind, forgiving each other as readily as God forgave you in Christ.”
So, let us work together building up our community and recognising what our gifts are for and how they can energise and raise spirits as we experienced through our athletes and their commitment and dedication to be their best.
“Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent”
- Marilyn vos Savant
Have a good week – God go with you
Nga Mihi,
Paul
Next week, I am away to New Plymouth for Monday and Tuesday and will catch up with Paul and Linda Darbyshire and the New Plymouth Team and then drive to Palmerston North and catch up with the Palmy North Team
SHARE YOUR PFG STORY:
If you and your Passionist Family Group have a story either past or present to share, then, can I encourage you to do so. I think these stories encourage and advise new and old members to see how these PFG’s illustrate how a Family Group has been an intrinsic part of our lives.
Let’s hear from our Aotearoa groups. Sharing some of your Passionist Family Group stories.
Please email Paul Traynor paulus663@gmail.com – let your words tell us your stories.
These simple and true stories of the spirit and down to earthiness of Passionist Family Groups. Our Motto – “A Family for All”.
Review of our Passionist Family Groups Aims and Goals
Our Australian PFG counterparts have proposed to review our PFG Aims and Goals and invited us to consider joining with them in a review which I thought would be a positive initiative if for no other reason to enlighten our PFG’s that our measure of how we are and how we are going in our groups should be measured through and with these PFG Aims and Goals.
Tina Minichilli, National Coordinator for Australia spoke recently with her National Team and Passionist Advisor Brian Traynor, about the exercise of reviewing the current Aims & Goals of the Movement. They spoke about the consultation process and the wider family. Below are the PFGM Aims & Goals.
“We discussed that as the Aims & Goals are important we would like to open the feedback to the wider group, such as Parish Coordinators, Key Family Group leaders and people that you identify as key people that can assist with this dialogue in your area/location etc……..
Can I ask that you contact your key people requesting their assistance/ help/ opinion on their thoughts of the Aims & Goals please?
The key objectives from conversations I have been involved with Family Group members is that the aims & goals were very valid years ago but we think they need to be updated.
- Are they still valid
- Are the Aims & Goals representative of our ministry?
- Do they need rewording?
I know you will have your own questions and there are other questions to ask, I am sure.”
AIMS & GOALS PFGM – The original aims and goals
To live and love like the early Christians (see how they love one another)
To share our Christian values
To give example to and involve our children in Christian sharing
To build and promote community in the parish
To support one another in times of need and celebration
Thank you all for your support and understanding – look forward to some feedback.
Send feedback to Paul Traynor paulus663@gmail.com by August 26th, 2024
Scripture reflection: Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time Year B, 11 August 2024.
I am the living bread which has come down from heaven
Almighty ever-living God, whom, taught by the Holy Spirit, we dare to call our Father, bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters, that we may merit to enter into the inheritance which you have promised.
LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: 1 Kings 19:4-8
Responsorial psalm: Ps 33(34):2-9
Second reading: Ephesians 4:30 – 5:2
Gospel: John 6:41-51
Link to readings – click here
This Sunday’s readings show God’s loving kindness and care for us, calling us to live with love. The Psalmist invites us to ’Taste and see that the Lord is good’. We, too, can sing our praises to the Lord, who always hears when we call out to him and frees us from our fears. In the First Reading, God hears Elijah as he cries out, despondent and wanting to give up. God reaches out to him through an angel, who offers food and water and encourages him to eat. This sustains Elijah, giving him the strength to continue his journey.
Similarly, Jesus desires to sustain us in our journey. In the Gospel, he reveals himself to the complaining Jews – and to us – as the ‘bread of life’. To those who are willing to be drawn to him, Jesus desires to be our comfort, our nourishment, our joy and our strength. He feeds us through our faith and our trust in him. The bread that he offers, his own body and way of life, gives life forever. St Paul (Second Reading) reminds us that we are beloved children of God, and urges us to follow Christ’s example of being kind and compassionate, readily showing forgiveness to one another.
Let’s pray always to be open to God’s tender care, and to savour the goodness he gives in our lives.
Reminder: 5 Aims and Goals
- share & celebrate life & faith
- support one another (especially in need)
- reaching out to & include others
- build community/extended family
- show and give example to children
Formation: Another paper from Fr. Brian Traynor CP
Contextual theology…Part 4
There will be new insights and new theological language as we continue to discover that the unfolding universe tells a story of complex diversity and beauty. What seems like randomness and what appears to be clearly directed processes, are drawn together and transformed, sometimes through intense suffering and even out of death. This happens in the galaxies and in our own human experiences. Each form of life, through natural processes, is capable of bringing forth something new. Smaller realities are contained within larger ones. 
An acorn holds within it, the full design of an oak tree. Within each form of life, atomic and sub–atomic particles, molecules, cells, tissues and organs. These form individuals, families, societies, ecosystems, planets and galaxies. It can be said that life is a self-organising emergent process of divine creativity.
It is this view of creation than allows us to imagine and believe that we were ‘there’ at the beginning of life and that we are the universe in human form. Recognising ourselves as one form of the universe and living in communion with other expressions allows us to experience the divine in a profound way. It is no surprise that many people discover an entirely different sense of God when contemplating in the natural world. After all, this was Jesus’ common practice.
Our understanding of the relationship between the human species and the rest of creation has revised theological thinking in the past forty years. This arose in response to an accusation that humans had come to believe they could do whatever we liked to our planet, as a result of a command in the Genesis story. “And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Genesis: 1:28)
This text of Genesis reflects the experience of an ancient people trying to make a living under difficult conditions. Urban people today find it difficult to appreciate the context and the language that was used. The words “subdue” and “have dominion” have been problematic. The Hebrew word translated into English as “subdue” suggests English equivalents such as conquer, subjugate or force.
The Hebrew term translated as “have dominion over” has equivalents such as tread down and reign over. In its original context, this had a quite positive meaning. Israel faced a natural world that was mysterious, powerful and threatening. Within that setting, the text is liberating. It sees nature as good, as part of a God directed world and to be engaged with and used for human purposes. People who have cleared and prepared new ground for a garden or have ploughed rocky ground, know that ‘subdue’ is the proper word to describe this!
Both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures teach that God is good and has made a good world. In the first chapter of Genesis after every stage in creation, we are told that God looked at what had been made and saw that it was good. The heavens and the earth and the sea, the plants, and the animals are all good. All of this is said before humanity entered the scene. The world without people is good in and of itself, and good in God’s eyes.
Another significant theme of Genesis, is the fall of creation. The original goodness of creation is seen to have been corrupted by the sinfulness of humanity (Adam and Eve). Some suggest that we abandon this symbol because we know that a perfect paradise never existed in any literal sense. The theory of cosmic and biological evolution teaches us that the universe emerged from a flaring of light (“big bang”) 13. 8 billion years ago, and expanded and developed into the present world. Earth formed from a star that died, so death has always been a part of that expansion and development.
Original sin can be viewed not as a fall from some primordial perfection (in Eden) but as recognition that we are still developing, still evolving; that we have not yet achieved what God is inviting us to become. Humanity has failed to actualise the potential provided for goodness, justice, and love. In fact ‘we’ have introduced massive evils and deep suffering and we have spoiled our natural environment by ruthless and reckless exploitation in quest of wealth, power, and glory. That one hundred million people died in wars in the last century is proof of this.
In the United States, the Apollo moon shot and the Human Genome Project both had budgets of less than one billion dollars. Since 2000, the US has spent US$40 billion in nanotechnology research, but it has fallen well below China and even India and Saudi Arabia who spend more than the US on nanotechnology which refers to the manipulation of matter on the scale of atoms and molecules. This is an incredibly small ‘world’. Only atomic microscopes are able to see things on the Nano scale. A nanometre (nm) equals one billionth of a metre. It takes ten atoms of hydrogen side-by-side to equal one nanometre. It is estimated that there would be 
78,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in a grain of sand! A DNA molecule is 2.5 nm wide, and a human hair is 80,000 nm thick. That’s small!
Nano biotechnology is expected to integrate biological materials with synthetic materials to build new molecular structures. New living systems may be created in laboratories out of a synthesis of living and non-living parts which will be programmed to perform specific tasks in the human body.
It has been suggested that if we replace ten percent of our red blood cells with nanobots (Nano robots), we could do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, or sit at the bottom of a swimming pool for four hours. Nanobots could travel inside the body and brain to perform therapeutic functions as well as enhance our strength and intelligence. This highlights the serious ethical questions we face protecting society and the environment in the future.
An article in Australian ‘Weekend Magazine’ by Helena de Bertodano on July 20th, explained the increasing practice of women freezing their embroyos and using technology to pre-screen each embryo for potential health problems related to the 1200 conditions and diseases about which there is genetic information. Some theologians claim that what is good for us is the vision of well-being, God has in store for us. To show that vision of well-being, Jesus gave us a double commandment: love God and love your neighbour. In bioethics, this translates into the principle of beneficence – if there is an opportunity to do good, it should be taken.
What is not clear to date regarding nanotechnology, is whether its advances will offer anything relevant to our commitment to love God and love our neighbour. What counts as ethical as we compare various scenarios, and who is the custodian of such moral decision making?
We know that hazardous and untested chemicals are routinely used as additives in consumer goods. They add certain qualities such as flexibility to plastics, scent to beauty and cleaning products, and fire resistance to soft furnishings. Recently it has been reported that 14,000,000 kilograms of sunscreen makes it way into the oceans each year. Many synthetic sunscreens contain chemical absorbers that are often used to filter ultraviolet light and they may be highly toxic to developing corals and marine life.
Some chemicals go through the cell into the DNA, disrupting its elegance and thereby changing the genetics and inflicting suffering on every descendent of a species. The use of Thalidomide is an example of the horrible effects of some chemicals used in health treatment.
The film Erin Brockovich told the story of Love Canal, a suburb of Niagara Falls, New York, over 20,000 tons’ tonnes of chemicals were dumped beneath where later, a school and housing were built. Health studies noted increases in miscarriages, still births, crib deaths, nervous breakdowns, hyperactivity, epilepsy, and urinary tract 
disorders, within the suburb. From 1974 to 1978, nine of sixteen children born in the area suffered birth defects. This included children born with three ears, double rows of teeth, and intellectual retardation. Of twenty-two pregnancies in 1979, only four normal babies were born.
The DNA of these individuals is forever damaged and will be carried by the human race. Birth defects such as these are often carried unknowingly and some experts predict that the worst of them remain hidden for twenty years. Every member of the (human) species has a unique DNA and together they form the human gene pool. If the DNA of every human who has ever lived was collected and stored it would fit in a space the equivalent of a drop of water! Everything that will happen to humans in the future depends on the quality of that combined DNA.
Vast amounts of money have been spent on military defence, while hazardous waste contamination s have continued to risk huge damage to the gene pool of human and other species with everlasting consequences. Children need to be educated so that they can shape a future, rather than be victims of a tragic decline.
The beauty of art came out of human DNA, however we sometimes want to pay more attention to externals than to this beauty. The cathedrals in Britain were a helpful aerial guide to German bombers so Hitler ordered that they not be destroyed. They remained intact while millions of human lives were destroyed. Some rejoiced that these magnificent buildings survived. But is their beauty anything compared with one human life? Or ‘what about a sparrow’? Jesus might ask.
Catholic social teaching is concerned with moral behaviour in response to all aspects of human life. Rapid human-induced climate change is a moral issue because of its effects on humans and on the Earth. The Church has developed ethical criteria to guide our responses. These include the right of all people to a safe environment; just development, economic and social structures; equitable and ecologically sustainable development; the rights of future generations to resources; food security for all nations; developing countries sharing technology and welcoming environmental refugees, and governments promoting the common good.
We must be conscious of the need to ‘care for our earth’ and consider ecological concerns within the framework of justice and moral responsibility. Responding to this challenge is made easier when we recognise that all life emerged in the primal fireball and that all forms of life on earth are interwoven in a form of kinship. Humans are partners in creation. What we do to the environment, we do to ourselves.
We are connected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk
To be continued…..
Pease remember in your thoughts and prayer:
- Please Jenny Epplett, Preston and family after the death of her brother which was very sudden. Also, other family loss and daughter who is in need of support.
- Remember Leanne Hintz daughter of Clair and Ray Hague who died recently from Levin and all the family
- Bernadette Lyon Manning – who broke her wrist and damaged her front teeth is on the mend.
- Robyn Burns (Hill) she is now home and the next part of recuperation begins. She has a long recovery time. She is making good progress.
- Please remember Terry Nelson son of father Gray Nelson and daughter Catherine in your prayers Terry has been diagnosed with brain tumours. .
- Please keep Brian McFlynn in our prayers who is undergoing cancer treatment. Also, his wife Eleanor and their family in your prayers..
- Please keep Paul and Linda Darbyshire in your thoughts and prayer amid new challenges they face. They are in need of prayerful support.
- Please keep in your prayer Tim Bartell’s son, Sam who is currently in hospital. Prayerful support for Sue and Tom and mum Sue.
- Please keep Jocelyn Bryant who is undergoing Chemotherapy also remember her husband Kevin and family, in your thoughts and prayer
- Please keep Christine Geoghegan and family in your thoughts and prayer.
- Please keep Richard Gibbs in your prayer he continues to slowly improve. Remember his wife Sue who has just been a pillar over the past 3 years.
- Please keep Robert van de Pas in your prayers Also Adriana his mother who is supporting him.
- Please remember Preston and Jenny Epplett’s daughter she has just completed her course of chemotherapy
- Please keep Debbi Davidson’s husband Bryan in your prayer
- Please keep Charlie and Maggi in your thoughts and prayer as they support their daughter and her partner
- Please keep David, Victoria and baby in your prayers. There has been some positive progress and it now looks as if this baby will make it to full term.
- Keep in mind all those who are struggling with various aspects of mental health.
- Please remember Martin van der Wetering in your prayers as his health still is causing him grief and discomfort.
- Please remember Phil Drew a former Passionist along with his wife Anne and family
- Please keep in your prayers those who continue to deal with the after effects of droughts on the horn of Africa. Also weather effects on other countries across the planet
- Please keep Bob Buckley in your prayers-
- Keep in prayer the people of Ukraine
- Keep people in Gaza and Israel in your prayer – these acts from both sides have had a horrible effect on the innocent as always.
- Please pray for Dot and Neill Wilson (Invercargill) – their son-in-law Mark married to Dot’s daughter Anita has been diagnosed with aggressive brain tumour, Please keep in mind their daughter Bailey and son Taylor.
- Remember Pat and Rod Carson
- Your own intentions
Humour:
- What do you call an elephant in a telephone booth? Stuck.
- A man walked into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. The bartender said, “Does the animal talk?” And the parrot replied, “I don’t know.”
- What do you get when you cross a parrot with a caterpillar? A little walkie-talkie.
- Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide.
- What do you call a deer with no eyes? No eye deer.
- What do you call a fish with no eyes? Fshhhh
- A pony walks into a noisy bar and tries to order a beer. Bartender says “I can’t hear you! You’ll have to speak up!” Pony says: “Sorry! I’m a little horse!”
- Why did the chicken cross the road? To show the possum it could be done.
- Why aren’t dogs allowed in bars? Because they can’t control their licker!
- Why did the baseball player get fired? He ran 3 bases then walked home.
