Morena – Good morning,
Well, another week and we are basically at the halfway point of 2024. I just cannot get over how quickly the year has gone. And lots has happened over this past six months, new groups, new parishes, good relationships sustained, sadness through illness, sickness, death and grief all part of the ebb and flow of human life. The world around us drowns out the good things due to war, violence and injustice. We find ourselves trying to live life positively but the negativity and loss of hope drowns many of us out.
Yesterday, June 29 the feast of Ss Peter and Paul warriors for the early church and for us in Passionist Family Groups, St Paul sets the marker for building and sustaining small communities, in the early church. His tireless efforts, in an era where the power of Rome was in action and totally on display. Here was someone who overcame his fear and lived with faith in Jesus.
The gospels today share two stories of healing and both draw on the need to ‘not’ be afraid. Fear is a great driver for violence and this misuse of power is associated by dominance and usually hides ones insecurity. These stories provide hope and example. The woman who touches Jesus’ cloak approached in desperation with faith and hope. The response she gets if stand up away from your shame and do not be afraid. Your faith is obvious and your request is granted. What Jesus demonstrates is the power of healing through gentleness and sensitivity.
Then, there is Jairus’s daughter and again the approach of Jesus is a lesson for us come with gentleness and trust. He pays attention through sensitivity and healing to work with the parents not the crowd. In their presence, he presents a gesture of healing; he takes the girl by the hand the girl and asks her to stand up. Amazed, as they all would have been he then deals with the practical side. She needs food.
I continually believe that the signs and miracles in the scriptures all come from a place of love, service, healing and faith. We can so often rattle off prayers and keep to rituals while not following as Jesus did. He addresses what is in front of him, his being present to peoples pain and suffering and uses their faith to demonstrate the power of God through healing. He deals with healing through being practical and sensitive to others. Each healing is a teachable moment of how to live, love, and focus for me on the being in and with community.
It is an awesome things to see people moving from a sort of death to life. To see warmth, friendship, listening, supporting, caring, laughing with and enjoying company and sharing meals. This is all the practical side of building community. We encourage others to drop barriers and see that our actions, small as they may appear bring forth, hope, faith, joy and a sense of belonging. This in turn brings leads us to the road of being like Jesus and with church of action – bringing others to Jesus, to one another and building the community.
Have a good week – God go with you
Nga Mihi,
Paul
Scripture reflection: 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time June 30,2024
Do not be afraid; only have faith
O God, who through the grace of adoption chose us to be children of light, grant, we pray, that we may not be wrapped in the darkness of error but always be seen to stand in the bright light of truth.
LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24
Responsorial psalm: Ps 29(30):2, 4-6, 11-13
Second reading: 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15
Gospel: Mark 5:21-43
Link to readings -click here
Central to today’s readings is Christ the giver of life. We are encouraged to have faith in the Lord and in the life that the Lord brings – not just here on earth, but also in heaven.
The passage from the Book of Wisdom (First Reading) reminds us that God creates all things to have life, and to live that life well, resisting the temptations the evil one will bring. In the Second Reading, St Paul offers guidance on responding to the many kinds of gifts that come from living that life well. We are not asked to make things harder for ourselves, but to use whatever surplus we have to share those gifts with others.
The Psalm is a song of praise and thanks for the gift of life, and the healing promise of the Lord. With the psalmist, we can rejoice in the knowledge that the Lord comes to the help of those who call, regardless of our worthiness. Through the miracles Jesus works in the Gospel, we are reminded once more of the healing, comfort and new life that can be ours, if we but trust in the gift of faith.
This week, I may like to use my time in prayer with the Lord to ask for my own faith to continue to increase, so that I will have more than enough to offer those who are struggling with theirs.
https://youtu.be/4fq8ffjcEcU – Heal our Land – Kari Jobe
Travel, meetings and catch ups this coming week:
Please keep Cambridge parish in your thoughts and prayer as they undergo a relaunch of PFGM in their community. They have had. Good response thus far and we shall see what the eventual enrolments to be. The community was very positive in relation to the relaunch and the group coordinator with the parish coordinator Bernadette Lyon-Manning (despite her broken wrist was a tower of support and encouragement.
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: Articles shared by Brian Traynor CP
Reading Moltmann…… A Reflection by Stan Grant
The work of theologian Jürgen Moltmann was stirred and troubled by history and darkness, as was his soul. Still a teenager, he was conscripted into the Hitler Youth and served three years in a post-war prison camp. He wore the Nazi uniform. He was complicit in the Holocaust. The shadow of Auschwitz loomed over his life.
God found Moltmann in prison. He struggled with the dark side of God. His experiences of death and forsakenness led him to the “divine mystery of the assailed, forsaken and dying Jesus”. Moltmann carried the cross – the burden of the horrors of war – for what he called the 1945 generation. “It was the God-forsakenness of the victims,” he wrote, “and the Godlessness of the perpetrators which made me cry out for God.”
Moltmann’s landmark work, The Crucified God, was considered the first and most profound theological response to Auschwitz. He put the sufferers at the heart of God’s grace. In the crucifixion he saw all of us – perpetrator and crucified – implicated in the horror and hope of the world. “A theology which did not speak of God in the sight of the one who was abandoned and crucified,” Moltmann said, “would have had nothing to say to us.”
To Moltmann, the crucified Christ “became the brother of the despised, abandoned and oppressed”. To identify with Christ meant “solidarity with the sufferings of the poor and the misery of both the oppressed and the oppressors”. The misery of the oppressors? Must I extend love and forgiveness to the perpetrators? Moltmann says yes. That is the gift of what he called “the suffering of creative love”.
When I read Moltmann, I heard the words of my ancestors. I understood more of my culture and my faith as a Wiradjuri person. In his theology, I heard the echo of Yindyamarra – a Wiradjuri spiritual practice of love, kindness, respect and silence, which requires me to be responsible for all that happens in my ancestral Country, re sponsible not just for myself but for the actions of others. It asks me to love not only those who love me but to extend love to those who may even do us harm.
My forebears would not have survived without Yindyamarra. They eschewed hate and resentment. When I look at my parents, I see a scarred grace. That’s the truth of Moltmann’s theology. It reaches across the boundaries of culture and time to unite us in a transcendent love. Moltmann and Yindyamarra have softened my soul. Yindyamarra is a truly Wiradjuri response to a world of bitterness, historical vengeance and hard-bordered identity. For me, it is also Christian.
Moltmann put me at the foot of the cross. He revealed how the crucifixion asks us all to humble ourselves to forgiveness. This is a theology of hope in an age when hopelessness can pose as virtue. Moltmann said living without hope was like no longer living: “Hell is hopelessness.” Hope, Moltmann said, is our defence against the “seeds of resignation” from which grow the latest utopian “ideological reign of terror”. Hope, love and forgiveness are the antithesis of resignation; together, they are the foundation from which we might change the world and seek justice that affirms us all.
Resentment is resignation; reconciliation also can be resignation. Reconciliation too often appears forced, contrived or convenient. Reconciliation requires more than proforma government apologies or “truth-telling”. However sincere, political reconciliation will always be unfulfilling. Reconciliation is not a transaction; it must be a gift.
Apology proceeds from atonement and love. Truth-telling must proceed from grace. The truth is not a battleground. If truth is a weapon, there will never be peace.
“Yindyamarra requires me to be responsible for all that happens in my ancestral Country, responsible not just for myself but for the actions of others. It asks me to love not only those who love me but to extend love to those who may even do us harm.” Such is the difference between politics and faith. Politics sees reconciliation as an end; faith sees reconciliation as an open door. Moltmann described it as a “not yet being” – history that is not closed but open towards the future. Miroslav Volf, one of Moltmann’s students, says we must “remember rightly”. We must not forget the wrongs of the past, but history need not be a ball and chain.
Volf, a Croatian, had to confront the volatile, brutal history of the former Yugoslavia. In his landmark work of modern theology, Exclusion and Embrace, Volf wrestles with the challenge of forgiveness. Moltmann asked if Volf could forgive a Chetnik – a Siberian nationalist fighter. Volf answered no, but added that as a Christian, he must. Volf had to reach for divine grace. He began with the acceptance that there “simply are no innocents”: we are born into a fallen world.
Volf says the victim also must repent. It is another hard lesson. Volf means we must relinquish hatred of the “enemy”. Victims, he says, often mimic the behaviour of the oppressors. Victims, he writes, need to repent of what the perpetrators do to their souls.
Simply, exclusion perpetuates violence – embrace requires forgiveness.
Pease remember in your thoughts and prayer:
- Please remember Leanne Hintz daughter of Clair and Ray Hague from Levin and all the family
- Bernadette Lyon Manning – who broke her wrist and damaged her front teeth is on the mend but a way to go getting her wrist right. Her husband Michael has been a great caregiver.
- Robyn Burns (Hill) she is now home and the next part of recuperation begins. She has a long recovery time. She is making progress.
- Please remember Terry Nelson son of father Gray Nelson and daughter Catherine in your prayers Terry has been diagnosed with brain tumours.
- 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 – he continues to struggle with pain etc from Chronic Pancreatitis. 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.
- Please keep a Lisa Bowe (Adriana van de Pas’s daughter)who just delivered a baby daughter Grace Therese Hope – baby is doing well and Lisa recovering from a difficult time at birth but good.
- 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
- Aidan son of Josie and Phil McIntyre –his parents are his caregivers.
- Your own intentions
Humour:
- Why should you never throw grandpa’s false teeth at a vehicle? You might denture car.
- Why are Christmas trees bad at knitting? They always drop their needles.
- What did the lunch box say to the refrigerator? Don’t hate me because I’m a little cooler.
- What do you do to have a space party? You planet.
- Why couldn’t the tree get on his computer? Because he could not log on.
- What’s a skeleton’s favourite type of road? A dead end.
- What did the grape say when it got stepped on? Nothing, just a little wine.
- What did the alien say to the landscaper? Take me to your weeder.
- Me: “I want to write when I grow up.”
Dad: “Why don’t you left instead?” - How many apples grow on an apple tree? All of them.