Letter 101 – Paul Traynor – Passionist Family

Morena – Good morning,

I hope this finds you well. The readings this Sunday issue us with a challenge as we follow in the footsteps of Jesus. It’s a journey like any other in the sense that there will be trials, challenges, sorrows, joys and time when we feel alone and times when celebrating with family and friends build and sustain each other in community.

Jesus gives great advice to the disciples in their mission ‘take no extras with you’ and in a sense believe in the gifts you have been given and enter the world as one blessed by God and through and with this blessing open the minds and hearts of those who will listen. Practically, Jesus suggests that those who will not listen ‘shake the dust from your sandal’ and move on. Sometimes, we allow pride to get in the way and we try harder and harder to convince people when all they want is to stay where they are. We need to respect that but also leave it behind.

We can chase relationships, friendships etc only to find that we are making all the effort when for them, it’s over. I come up against this over the years through my work with Passionist Family Groups and life in general and sometimes it is hard but at the end of the day Jesus is right. If nothing is being given then cause no anger just let it be and move on.

I thought I’d share a couple of stories from our birthplace of Passionist Family Groups in Terrey Hills, Sydney This is where it began and still going 51 years later. This for me celebrates what community is and what it can be when we support, nurture, nourish and support one another. Age is not a barrier and isn’t wonderful to witness what a family group can be and what it can be for the community it’s like the fire of spirit which blazes and moves within people’s hearts.

Reports and Stories from Australia PFG’s – Thanks to the PFGM National Team in Australia for allowing us to share these wonderful stories. There are more to come.

NSW Terrey Hills St Anthony in the Fields Parish Celebrates 51 years of Passionist Family Groups: On Sunday, 5th of May, Terrey Hills Parish, New South Wales, celebrated the 51^st birthday of the PFGM with almost 70 Family Group members in attendance. Not even the rain stopped the joy felt in the church and the kitchen afterwards. We are honoured at St. Anthony’s to be keeping the Spirit of Family Groups alive. We have an important and beautiful responsibility to keep the flame alight, as it was at our little ‘tin-shed’ church as Fr. Peter McGrath referred to back in 1972, where the Passionist Family Group Movement was born. Mary Ingham, an original member of the Family Groups of 1972, cut the birthday

cake. -Barbara Lunnon

Celebrating 40 Years of Friendship & Support Carroll/Munro Family Group St Anthony’s in the Fields, Terrey Hills

Our Family Group began as the Carroll Family Group 40 years ago. Initially, there were 10 Families and 2 Single ladies in the Group. Paul and Shirley were our Leaders and guides and welcomed everyone. The group expanded over the years until there were a

total of 34 regularly attending our Monthly events. Diane and Ken Munro became Co Leaders and so the Group became the Carroll / Munro Family Group.

We had planning meetings, and everyone had a say in the next year’s activities oﬀering to host dinners, picnics, walks etc. These sometimes-chaotic meetings achieved varied and popular pursuits enthusiastically attended by all. Weekends away were very

important and well attended for many years. Children from pre-schoolers to teenagers took part in the beginning but as they grew up this inevitably dwindled. All still have fond memories of when they were involved. Our Schedule always included a Home Mass

celebrated by Fr Peter McGrath and by subsequent Passionist Priests, a great privilege for us.

St Anthony’s at the time was a very vibrant Parish and bi-annually we had either a “Winter Madness Concert” or a Parish Fair. Our group were enthusiastic actors in both scenarios with several ‘stars’ emerging. It all helped to ‘bond’ us as a family.

On a more serious note, we have always fulfilled the purpose of the Family Groups to support each other in times of trouble and sadness. Over the years, three teenage suicides were terrible shock and a challenge to our capacity to oﬀer support. However, we did and hopefully made a diﬀerence, sharing the families’ grief. Various illnesses were suﬀered and several deaths have come our way. Our group has now reduced to 4 couples and 6

singles most of advanced age and so we now meet monthly for a lunch together.

I think this story illustrates how a Family Group has been an intrinsic part of all our lives and for many of us, half of our lifetime and counting.

These simple and true stories of the spirit and down to earthiness of Passionist Family Groups. Our Motto – “A Family for All”.

Have a good week – God go with you

Nga Mihi,

Paul

Scripture reflection: 15^th Sunday in Ordinary Time July 13,2024

Take nothing for the journey except a staff

O God, who show the light of your truth to those who go astray, so that they may return to the right path, give all who for the faith they profess are accounted Christians the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ and to strive after all that does it honour.

LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: Amos 7:12-15
Responsorial psalm: Ps 84(85):9-14
Second reading: Ephesians 1:3-14
Gospel: Mark 6:7-13
Link to readings – click here

Our readings this week invite us to reflect on the wonder of being chosen to be part of God’s plan. In the First Reading, we hear how Amos, a shepherd, responds to God’s call to bear witness. Despite not being welcomed, he stands his ground, knowing that he has been given his mission by the Lord.

The Psalmist, giving thanks for the blessings his people have received, rejoices in the peace, justice, mercy, faithfulness and prosperity that God gives to those who trust in him. In the Second Reading, St Paul explains to the Ephesians how we have always been a part of God’s plan. Because of the grace and blessings showered upon us, we have been freed from our sins and become adopted children of God.

Mark’s Gospel relates how Jesus sends out his disciples to teach his message of love and forgiveness. Carrying nothing but a staff, they are to trust that they will find welcome and hospitality in many places, and stay undeterred by the rejection they will find elsewhere.

This week we pray for the wisdom and insight to recognise the call of the Lord in our own lives. However ill-equipped we might feel, we ask for the courage and strength to step out, safe in the knowledge that we are never alone, and that God will provide for us.

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 1

In last week’s newsletter We reflected on ‘The Last Judgment’ painted by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, between 1495-1498. That was a very different time from today and a long time after Jesus spoke of the Last Judgment! The painting reflects something of Michelangelo’s thinking at the time, rather than when Matthew’s gospel was written or 2024.

In November last year, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had approved new statutes for the Pontifical Theological Academy which called for a major push toward developing a “fundamentally contextual theology, capable of reading and interpreting the Gospel in the conditions in which men and women live each day,”

Francis said that in a “synodal, missionary and outgoing church,” theologians must also dialogue with other sciences and with members of other religions and that helping Catholics have a deeper understanding of the faith will be possible only if theology grapples with their questions and concerns”. He added that ““Promoting theology in the future cannot be limited to abstractly re-proposing formulas and patterns of the past.”

If people resemble the times they live in more than their parents, we should be finding ways to speak about what we know that wasn’t known in earlier times, or what we always knew but understand differently in these times.

Ever since the gospels were written there has been an attempt to blame the Jewish people for the death of Jesus, even though crucifixion was clearly, a Roman punishment. But the early Christians were living under Roman occupation and oppression, so it wasn’t wise to blame the Romans!

In different periods of history this gospel emphasis has led to cruel anti-semitic treatment, mainly for Jews, although the term ‘semitic ‘refers to a set of languages belonging to an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with peoples of the Middle East, that including Arabs, Jews, Akkadians, and Phoenicians.

We have seen a change in the emphasis given to limbo and purgatory in the past forty years and especially since Pope Benedict’s 2007 ruling, and our understanding of hell and heaven has also changed.

In 1999, Pope John Paul 2^nd said, “Heaven, or the happiness in which we will find ourselves, is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a personal relation [with God]…..This final condition can be anticipated in a certain sense now on earth….Moreover, the pictures of Hell given to us in Sacred Scripture must be correctly interpreted. They express the total frustration and emptiness of a life without God. More than a place, Hell is the state of the one who freely and finally removes oneself from God, the source of life and joy”.

The painted images of hell and the sermons that struck fear into people’s hearts are virtually now a ‘thing of the past’. With what we have learned from evolution and cosmology it is necessary to find a language that more accurately expresses what we now know. Former Adelaide priest Denis Edwards, is one Australian theologian that did this. It is an ongoing challenge.

Living in a very rational thinking culture as we do, our younger generation in particular, have little appreciation of myth. Fortunately they are exposed to our first nations peoples’ creation myths, but the risk is that these myths are dismissed as irrelevant, despite explaining how a people became who they are, and who they have been for at least 60,000 years.

Ancient myths helped communities understand their experiences of fertility, birth, rain, sunshine, landscape, animals, plants and food and a lot more. These myths also explained how people could or should interact with the world around them. Successive generations modified these myths to better explain the existence, attitudes and customs they had inherited from their ancestors in the light of new learning.

This included appreciating why their neighbours had different stories, beliefs and customs from them. These stories often told of mighty characters or forces that explained these realities.

Humans are meaning makers. We seek to know where we come from, where we are going and what certain events ‘mean’. We are also story tellers and we know that when we tell stories or when we hear stories, the real truth is not in the actual events as they affected individuals, but in the ongoing meaning of the story for the people affected by them.

Myths help us to appreciate mystery, awe, and a connectedness with what is both deeply within and beyond us. Myths do not seek to tell history, nor objective truth. Adults tell children stories of talking animals and of Santa Claus and other characters who form a part of children’s imaginary world. Rational minded people devour fictitious novels or watch movies, happily aware that the story is not ‘real’. Adults enjoy opera, dance, poetry and music and can, for a time, ‘lose themselves’ in the sheer enjoyment of these experiences.

Myths are created to give us insight into the deeper meaning of life, not to provide us with facts. We do need to learn to tell our stories differently. As chimneys have disappeared from homes, stories of Santa Claus entering people’s homes have needed to change in their detail. Myths have to be told differently to bring out their truth in the light of present day circumstances. At the same time, ancient writings confirm that human nature has not changed much over the centuries.

If a group of people live in a barren landscape underneath a smouldering mountain, they will develop stories to explain their origins, their history, their customs and laws and their relationship with their surroundings. The mountain would certainly feature in the stories, unlike another group living by the sea where no mountain has ever been seen. Stories emerge to describe the significance of particular features such as rock formations, the colours of birds and the nature of animals. We know from the accounts of various explorers what incredible reactions some peoples had when they first saw a white person! Obviously when people encounter humans who look and sound radically different from themselves, they are likely to create stories that helps them explain these differences. Most cultures live with a sense that things are not as they are meant to be, or as they once were. There is a sense that something has been lost, and this something is idealised as harmonious, joy filled and connected with the sacred. Modern people often experience this when they ‘go to the bush’. Here they appreciate the unhurriedness of city life, the open attractive landscape with its array of beauty and a sense of connectedness with other people as well as with nature.

Ancient myths made people more conscious of the spiritual dimension that surrounded them. In ways we are only beginning to comprehend, these early people already ‘knew’ of our dependence on the moon for the seasons and on the sun for life. They gazed at the stars in wonder, not knowing in our s ense of knowing that being humans they were made of stardust, and they felt drawn to a relationship with the stars.

Humans first appeared in the Paleolithic, (or old stone) age, but they awakened to an entirely new way of life 10,000 years ago, during Neolithic village life, when language, religion, cosmology, arts, music and dance all began their development. During the Paleolithic period there is no evidence that people believed in a single supreme God. Such a belief seems to less than 4,000 years old. Among late Paleolithic people, some certainly experienced an intense feeling of mysteriously ‘knowing’ something that is real but cannot be seen. Interestingly it was this, that early humans responded to before becoming concerned about creation stories or moral behavior. The early religious myths, rituals, worship and cave drawings, sought to connect with mysterious powers rather than literally explain people’s origins. These practices are what we know as ‘religion’ and religion emerged as an integral part of the human story, along with tools and fire.

Author Karen Armstrong writes about the Axial Age mentioned last week, “All the sages taught their disciples to look within themselves for truth and not to rely on the teaching of priests and other religious experts. Everything should be questioned, and old values must be subjected to critical scrutiny.” This critical examination led to a more interior and ethical interpretation of their myths.

Because the gods had become remote, it was increasingly difficult to believe that gods and humans derived from the same source or could be experienced in such a human way. Rituals of sacrifice became more important than the gods to whom they were offered, highlighting the twin characteristics of myth: story and ritual. One without the other, weakens the power of the myth. To these twin dimensions, a third was added during the Axial age, that of correct ethical behaviour displayed by compassion and justice.

It was during this Axial Age that the great Hebrew prophets challenged the long serving tradition of the Hebrews worshipping other gods beside the God of Israel. Now, they declared, this was the only God. The turning point for the people of Israel was the deportation of their people to Babylon in 586BCE. It was during this exile that the well-known creation story of Genesis was written. Here the people were exposed to the famed Hanging Gardens, to massive temples and an advanced culture, but amidst this profound display of power, paganism lost its appeal for the people of Israel and they finally responded to the call of the prophets for a radical acceptance of ‘their’ one God.

One hundred and fifty years later, following years of calling for a more rational approach, Plato expressed his dislike for Greek tragedy because it was too emotional. Plato dismissed myth in preference for reason, although this had little impact on Greek religion at the time, which continued to featured sacrifice to the gods and the celebration of festivals for several more centuries. Greek thought has significantly influenced the response to myth by Christianity in particular.

This became obvious with the advent of the scientific age in the sixteenth century. When searching for ultimate meaning, Judaism and Islam recognized that mysticism, spirituality, ritual and prayer were vital adjuncts to philosophy. Within Western Christianity, many religious figures also promoted this attitude but they were small voices compared with those who had rediscovered the works of Plato and Aristotle.

The advent of modern Western civilization founded on technology, showed little concern for conserving the past. It was concerned with efficiency, and ensuring new ideas could provide economic or social benefit. The advances made led to political and social upheaval and intellectual thinking that saw no place for myth, and worse still, dismissed it as useless and false. The heroes of modernization were scientists or pragmatic inventors, and they had little interest in preserving mythical modes of thinking.

The more people possess in terms of comfort and technology, the more unhappy the general population seems to be, with the incidences of depression and general ill-health higher than ever.

There is a story told of a tourist who complimented a fisherman on the quality of his fish how little time it took him to catch th em. The tourist suggested that if he stayed longer, he could catch more fish. The fisherman explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family. When asked how he spent the remainder of his time, the fisherman said that he did not need to rise early. He fished for a little time, played with his children, sat and talked with his wife, and in the evenings, he often visited friends in the village where they often talked and sang songs.

The tourist suggested that if the man started his day earlier he could fish longer and sell the extra fish. With the extra money he could buy a big boat, and as he caught more fish he could buy a second and a third, and so on until he had a fleet. “If you handle the transactions carefully”, the tourist advised him, “you could earn enough to move to a big city and have a big house. I might only take twenty years”. The fisherman asked what he would do then, and the tourist said “after you have made all that money you could retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, spend time with your wife and sing songs with your friends!”

Modern technology alone, is not enough to answer the needs of the human heart. Humans yearn for more than physical comfort and intellectual challenge. We search for the deeper meaning of life and how can this be experienced. Ancient myths sought to address these questions.

Some may not be totally adequate for today, but in their core, their truth is as meaningful as ever. Some are saying we need a new myth, or as Passionist Thomas Berry suggested, ‘a new story’. It will not be complete, but if it helps us to identify who we are, where we have come from, where we are going and why we are here, it will offer something that modern religion is largely failing to do today. Interestingly, Karl Rahner suggested that religious people of the 21^st century would have be “mystics (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all.”

Pease remember in your thoughts and prayer:

Please Jenny Epplett, Preston and family after the death of her brother which was very sudden.
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 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:

I went on Amazon to buy a lighter but all they had were 3,472 matches.
What do you need to make a highway in an art studio? A mile marker.
How does Vin Diesel keep in touch with the Fast and Furious crew? On a Zoom call.
What has four wheels and flies? A garbage truck.
How much does a chimney cost. Nothing, it’s on the house.
Why do only some couples go to the gym? Because some relationships don’t work out.
You don’t need a parachute to go skydiving. You need one to go skydiving twice.
How do you make 7 even? Take away the S.
Why is sausage bad for you? It brings out the Wurst in people.
What do you call a broken clock? A waste of time.
Why did the teddy bear turn down a slice of cake. He was stuffed.
What’s an astronaut’s favourite board game? Moon-opoly