​The Gospel for this Sunday, the Ascension of the Lord, Year B, comes from the concluding verses of St Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 16, a direct continuation of verses from last week, and contains the instructions Jesus gives to His disciples before His ascension, and what happens afterwards.

Although they aren’t so much instructions, as regal commands. This is Jesus functioning as King of the universe and conqueror of death.

Our task is to proclaim the good news of Jesus everywhere.

How people respond to that proclamation will determine whether they enter His eternal kingdom or not.

Jesus tells us the signs that will distinguish believers from un-believers. These signs are certainly not associated with the timid; but are associated with those who dramatically extend the kingdom of God.

Only those who have complete confidence in the kingly reign of Jesus can cast out devils in His name, and can expect the sick to get well when they invoke the healing power of God.

This is warrior stuff, and not for the faint of heart, nor for wimps.

It is quite a challenge, isn’t it? Most of us fall a long way shot.
But this is what was considered normal in Gospel times.

Jesus then ascends to His place of kingly power and authority, seated at the right hand of the Father on the throne of heaven.

When the disciples do their part and preach, the Lord Jesus provides the evidence that their preaching is true through the signs and wonders that accompany the preaching; working together to extend the kingdom of God.

There are those for whom this is still happening today, eg Sr Briege McKenna, Damian Stayne, Costandi Bastoli, and those of recent memory, eg Dr John Bonnici Mallia, Fr Emelien Tardiff, and many others.

There are still places on earth where signs and wonders are expected when believers preach, and where if there are no signs and wonders, credibility is lost quickly eg Fiji, Uganda.

This is what the Gospel and the Lord Jesus consider normal.
​
May God grant that we, too, will return to considering this as normal. Amen.   

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 6th Sunday of Easter, Year B, comes from the of St John Chapter 15, a direct continuation of verses from last week, where Jesus continues to reveals Himself as the True Vine and what the implications are for us.

When you look at a classic grape vine, it is very hard to tell where the trunk ends and the main branches begin.

The more our lives are in alignment with Jesus, the more fruitful they will be.

God the Father poured all of His love into Jesus, and Jesus poured all of that love into us. In imitating this ‘agape’ love we will be fruitful. That is allowing the love of Jesus to be poured into us; and pouring that love out on to each other.

This is the simplest explanation of His Will for us.
Simple yes;
easy no.

Sometimes we wonder if we could possibly be in the right place at the right time for God’s kind purposes when it seems so arid and dry. But these are the words He says to us:

“You did not choose Me. No, I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last.”

It is no accident. The Divine vine-dresser selected us to be precisely here, and has pruned our lives in such ways that we will be the most fruitful here. He has commissioned us, appointed us, deliberately set us in this place, so that we can be fruitful. And not an ordinary level of fruitfulness either; He wants quality long lasting fruit – the kind that go to make up Penfolds Grange and will still be extraordinary 100 years from now, not the kind that is only suitable for cask wine.

If we let His love fully in (1st challenge)
and pour that love fully out onto others (2nd challenge)
then this highest kind of quality fruitfulness is assured.

It is precisely in this seemingly barren place that any flourishing will be seen as something only God could do.
​
May God grant that the obstacles in our lives to receiving His love may be melted away, and that the obstacles in our lives that prevent us from loving more fully, may they be melted away too. May His infinite merciful love melt all those obstacles away and cause us to be more fruitful in Him than we have ever been before. Amen.  

​The Gospel for this Sunday, the 5th Sunday of Easter, Year B, comes from the beginning of St John Chapter 15 where Jesus reveals Himself as the True Vine.

In the time of Jesus most people were familiar with the grapevine process. If they weren’t growing grapes in commercial quantity, they certainly had a vine or two at home.

However, for most of us in the 21st century this is not the case.

An exploration of websites and video clips on how to prune a grapevine was eye-opening.

Jesus is the True Vine and we are the branches, and the Father is the vinedresser.

One vintner said that they spend 4-5 months pruning their vines every year. While machines are around to chop off far flung branches, machines cannot replace humans when it comes to the pruning process. Surprisingly pruning is considered the single greatest influence on the quality of the harvest, and the most strategic part of a vintner’s business.

Some plants like roses will produce a harvest from new branches.

But other plants like apple trees and grape vines only produce fruit on 2nd year branches.

This means that the pruning choices have a view to not only this year’s harvest, but also next year’s harvest.

Every grape vine is assessed individually. Each grape vine has a trunk, and most of them have two big branches called cordons. From these cordons the new branches called canes grow, and each cane grows from a bud on an older branch. It is the cane branches that get vastly reduced in the pruning process, so that each spur of previous cane growth has only two promising buds left. Unless these canes are reduced the vines will grow more leaves than grapes and the grapes will be significantly smaller. It is the difference between energy being diffused and energy being concentrated.

If the vine is weak, the vinedresser will leave less buds to grow than average. If the vine is vigorous, the vinedresser will leave more buds to grow than average.

A wine grower can time rather accurately the interval between pruning and the emergence of new growth; and will use this knowledge to stagger the order in which the sections of vineyards are pruned, so as to stagger the resulting harvests from those vineyard sections. That way, if there is adverse weather at harvest time, not all of it will be lost.

So what does this mean for us?

It means that God the Father invests a massive amount of time and forward planning with each and every one of us individually. Please linger with that thought for a while, and give it a chance to sink in.

It means that on a regular basis He is going to take away things from our lives that are less fruitful in order that more fruitful aspects of our lives can flourish. Knowing this should enable us to more graciously yield to the Father’s will when the time comes to let go of a relationship, place, ministry, hobby, job, - and levels of health and independence.

It means that we should have a level of patience when something new shows up in our lives, or in the lives of others, because often fruitfulness doesn’t come until the second year.

It means that after a period of loss and of feeling dormant, stuck, becalmed, that we can expect a lot of flourishing to happen that feels like it is happening ‘all at once’. But that we need discernment to work out the part of that new growth that the Father is favouring, and to co-operate with that.

It also means that two major things on the front burner and two quietly on the back burner are about as much as anyone can deal with fruitfully.

It means that until we work out what God is favouring, ‘or blowing on’, we should hold all of that new flourishing lightly, because most of it will get trimmed away relatively quickly.

It means that we should trust in Him more, especially when the parts of our lives that He prunes are very painful to let go of.

Amazingly challenging, yes?
​
Dear Heavenly Father, please help us to co-operate more fully with You every time a new season of pruning takes place in our lives. Please grant us the patience and discernment that we need to find the new beginnings that You have lovingly chosen for us. Amen.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Easter, Year B, comes from the middle section of St John Chapter 10 where Jesus reveals Himself as the Good Shepherd.

Most of us have very little to do with sheep, apart from purchasing cuts of meat from a supermarket or similar. Those of us who do have something to do with sheep in Australia have an average size herd of just under 3000 sheep. In the time of Jesus the average number of sheep per shepherd was 100. The smaller size herds make knowing individual sheep possible.

So what could possibly induce a shepherd to be willing to risk his life to save his sheep?

To modern minds this is beyond comprehension; and verging on crazy.

And it is, until you consider the amount of time the shepherd spends with the sheep, and how frequently a shepherd has to check for wounds, health of gums, and the quality of wool. For much of the time the shepherd is alone with the sheep; and has plenty of time to study them and to note and remember their individual differences.

Some will be placid, some will be adventurous, one might have a stiffer leg, a higher pitched bleat, a floppy ear, or be a fussy grazer. It is this long term build-up of the knowledge of what makes each sheep unique, which makes the sheep matter to the shepherd. In the same way it is the long term build-up of relationship of the sheep with the shepherd that engenders trust, making the shepherd matter to the sheep.

Jesus knows us this well. He has studied everything about us, and He can also see the traces of our various lineages too. He remembers who our parents and grandparents were, and He knows the various character traits we share with them.

He knows us this well that we matter to Him, despite being merely sheep.

Yesterday the residents at the local aged care facility had Mass for the first time since Christmas. Many of them we see each week for Communion services, and those unable to attend receive individual visits. Having been reflecting upon this Gospel passage, I could see the parallels. The more we get to know each resident, the more they matter to us. It was so good to have so many of them in the same place, and to reconnect with some we haven’t seen for a while because someone else has been doing their individual visits. At the same time, the absence of those who couldn’t be there was keenly felt.

It strikes me that this is the kind of long term deep relationship that Jesus wants with us, and that He wants for us with each other. It requires us investing time with Him; and investing time with each other.

​Therein lies the challenge because there is no shortcut to this process. 

.......................
There is nothing to compare with one on one time for getting to know someone, or even few on few.

Perhaps that is why parish visitation used to be a core part of a parish priest's ministry. 

These days it tends to be meetings and administration, but it is still possible to carve out time to go and visit the flock, 'just because'.

Admittedly these days it is not advisable to go alone without a companion as a witness and a protection, but it could still be done with a bit of planning and rotations of visiting companions.

I note with some sadness that once upon a time bishops used to come and visit the children preparing for Confirmation. It was an effective way of knowing that the children had been prepared. But these days the bishops seem to delegate that to the priests, and the priests in turn delegate that to the sacramental co-ordinator, and he or she depends on the group leaders - and even then it is a very brave group leader who will say a child is not prepared because they missed lessons, didn't pay attention, or doesn't seem at all interested.

Visiting parishioners and spending time with them is crucial if we are to imitate the Good Shepherd.     

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 3rd Sunday of Easter, Year B, comes from the almost the last verses in the Gospel of St Luke (Chapter 24) and contains an account of Jesus appearing to His disciples on the evening of the Resurrection.

Jesus shows up while everyone is chatting about His encounter with the two disciples on the way to Emmaus.

Even after the accounts of the holy women and the Emmaus disciples, their first reaction to the presence of Jesus is alarm and fright.

It takes some considerable time and patience on Jesus’ behalf before they calm down enough for them to be able to listen to Him.

We see a similar pattern of gradual revelation here as we saw last week with St John’s account.

First He is present, then He speaks to them, then He invites them to inspect His body, and then to touch Him. Jesus then uncovers His hands and feet for them. Then He shows them that He is still capable of eating.

Despite their zombie-like reactions, this is a crucially important encounter. They are seeing their Jesus for the first time as the Crucified and Risen One. It is to this reality that they are to become witnesses to the whole world.

Again, just like in St John, Jesus shows His resurrection before He reveals the evidence of His crucifixion. We know ourselves how much easier it is to talk about Jesus as the Risen One compared to talking about Him as the Crucified One. We all want to partake in His resurrection; we are definitely not so keen on sharing His path of suffering, agony and death. Yet until we know Him both ways, we cannot be effective witnesses.

Once the disciples have calmed down enough for their higher brain functions to kick back in, Jesus comes to the second part of His purpose for this visitation.

It is only now that they have encountered Him as Crucified and Risen that Jesus can unfold the whole wonderful plan of God to them. It is through Jesus, Crucified and Risen, that all of salvation history makes sense. Without this lens we cannot understand the fullness of God’s eternal purpose.

How Jesus does this with the disciples is very different to how He did it with the Emmaus disciples. He deliberately and miraculously opens their minds to fully understand the Scriptures. Can you see that it is important that they receive this revelation directly from Jesus, and not indirectly from the Emmaus disciples, so that we can have confidence that our faith is founded on the power of God and not on human reasoning?

Yet the Emmaus disciples are still a gift to the other disciples, because with all this knowledge to crunch through and make sense of, having them as memory keepers of the best scriptural starting points for understanding these mysteries is a very big blessing.

Jesus tells them to look for all the times in the Law of Moses, in the writings of the Prophets and in the Psalms that prefigured and prophesied about Him, to be amazed at how the Crucified and Risen plan of God permeates the Scriptures, and to see the ultimate reason: inviting people back into full relationship with God through repentance.

We know the Church has taken these words and actions of Jesus seriously because Sunday by Sunday the readings and the psalms are chosen to shed light on each other, with the Old Testament prefiguring the New, and the New fulfilling the Old.

This means that we cannot know Jesus fully unless we know Him Crucified and Risen, AND we also know Him through all of the Scriptures.

This also means that there are levels of understanding the scriptures that can only be opened up to us by the power of God. We should diligently ask for these graces.

We can also see that Jesus knew that it would take the disciples time to unpack and digest all the infused knowledge He gave them. That is the purpose of that first season of Easter weeks. It was a vital preparation for Pentecost. Without this process they could never have preached effectively and authoritatively. We know it worked, because on Pentecost morning Peter gets up and quotes from Joel, 2 Samuel, Isaiah, and Psalms 16, 110 and 132 with great confidence.

Let’s pray.
​
Dear Heavenly Father, where we do not know Your Son Jesus in His resurrection, crucifixion, and Holy Scripture to the extent that You want for us, please grant to us that precious revelation. It doesn’t matter to us whether You use the Emmaus method, the Upper Room method, or a combination of both; only that we come to know Jesus in the fullness that You want for us. Please make that happen so that we can become more effective witnesses to You and to Your wonderfully grand plan of salvation. Amen.  

​The Gospel for this Sunday, Divine Mercy Sunday, Year B, comes from the last part of St John Chapter 20 and contains the first and second appearances of the Risen Jesus to His disciples.

It seems to be God’s modus operandi to want a deep heartfelt commitment from us, and this requires that we come to that point of our own free will and at our own pace. It is a process that takes time. If you remember the parable of the sower, God isn’t interested in those who show lots of initial promise and then fade quickly away. He is interested in those willing to go through the full maturation process and then produce outstanding harvests.

If Jesus had burst upon the disciples with His full brilliance, there would have been immediate response, but responses that were unsustainable over the long term.

We see Jesus reveal His risen Self in stages.

Firstly He comes among them as they are standing together reciting evening prayer. He waits patiently until they realise that He is with them.

Only then does He speak to them. He waits patiently until they have all processed what He said.

Only then does He uncover His hands and side to them, so that they may gaze upon His wounds and begin to understand His passion and death.

Only when they have all seen His wounds does He commission them and begin the activity of the Holy Spirit within them.

We also see that it took the disciples time to process what Jesus showed them of His resurrection, and what it meant.

If they had processed it quickly, Thomas would have seen evidence in their changed behaviour and consequently believed what they told him of the resurrection. But eight days later, the doors are still closed/shut/locked.

We don’t really see any profound change until several weeks have passed and the Holy Spirit comes in power. All of these Easter weeks were needed for Jesus to teach them the many things He couldn’t teach them prior to the resurrection, and for them to begin to get their heads around it.

If Jesus treats them with such patience and merciful kindness, we should do the same for each other.

Have you noticed that people who love to quote Pope Francis about sour faced Christians not being Christians at all are usually naturally cheerful and positive people? It is a stick they like to brow beat the rest of us with at this time of year.

However the truth is that we are all in process; and some might be closer in that process to comprehending the impact of the resurrection than others, but it doesn’t give us the right to denigrate anyone else’s progress or lack thereof.

You could also look upon this process as stages in spiritual growth:

Most of us first get a sense of Jesus when we are gathered together in corporate prayer. For some this will take the form of prayer groups, or worship groups, or liturgical prayer, or the Mass.

When that awareness grows, then we begin to receive communications from Him. That could be the bible verse that jumps off the page, or a deep sense of the rightness of a particular decision, or even the interior voice He sometimes uses.

Only when we have got to know Him to a certain level, does He then take us to the level of understanding Him through His wounds and His Passion. 

Only then when we have begun to understand the sufferings and redemption He won for us, only then can we be sent out as witnesses, and only after the Holy Spirit has had His full way with us.

And a big part of that mission is reconciling relationships into unity through forgiveness. We cannot draw closer to God unless we draw closer to each other as well.

Let us remember that the first disciples actually saw the risen Jesus, and yet they still struggled to comprehend what it meant, and this process took significant time for them too.
​
May the risen Jesus grant us a share in His patience and merciful kindness, so that we might be a lot gentler to ourselves and to each other on our shared journey to comprehend the fullness of the resurrection. Amen.

This Easter I came across a very strange phenomenon – Evening Masses on Easter Sunday being scrapped. Sometimes they were replaced with late morning Masses, but sometimes they were just scrapped.

This is Wrong!

Biblically Wrong! 

And it is time the Liturgy was updated too!

John 20:19-31 contains the answer.
It is the Gospel for every Mass held on the 2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday).

But curiously it contains two stories: what happened on the first ever Easter Sunday evening, AND what happened a week later.

Other big solemnities have different readings for vigil and for Mass during the day (eg Pentecost). Christmas has different readings for vigil, during the night (a.k.a. Midnight), dawn and during the day.

Easter already has vigil and during the day, why not also have special readings and prayers for Easter evening?

You see, Easter Sunday evening should be celebrated with special gusto for two important biblical reasons.
1. It is the time that Jesus first showed His risen Self to His disciples.
2. It is when He initiated the sacrament of Penance.

That’s when Jesus showed up to be with His apostles and disciples.
Shouldn’t we be there to meet Him?
Shouldn’t we be celebrating both things ‘at the time it happened’, like all the other events of the Paschal Triduum?

Wouldn’t it be dreadful if Jesus showed up in our churches at that time with bucket loads of graces to give away – and there was no one there to receive Him, nor His gifts?

The liturgical gurus tell us that the Paschal Triduum does not end until vespers (evening prayer) on Easter Sunday, and there are in some liturgical rites quite a bit of pomp and circumstance attached to Easter Sunday vespers.

There’s no reason why we can’t have the Gospel for Easter Evening as John 20:19-23, and still have John 20:19-31 on Divine Mercy Sunday.

Surely it is time that we gave God proper thanks and praise for the institution of the sacrament of penance!

And then give Him due thanks and praise for His whole grand plan of unfathomable Mercy on the second Sunday of Easter.

It isn’t ‘double handling’.
Both are truly worthy of liturgical veneration.

It is time this ‘missing link’ in the Paschal Triduum was no longer missing.
​
Can I get an Amen, please?

A strange thing happened on Good Friday; an email asking if I’d like to pen 600 words of an inspiring nature about my 2021 Paschal Triduum experiences. At that point the Holy Thursday ceremonies had been sub-par and disappointment was beginning to creep in. With this unusual time in history and the unusual confluence of Passover coinciding with Easter, I had dared to hope for some of the more dynamic manifestations of the Holy Spirit during these holy days.

Rants I could provide.
Inspiration – not so much.

But the consideration did clarify some of what I wanted to see during these holy days:

I'm never going to be happy until I see signs of God's supernatural action during the Triduum.

That means:
*Homilies that are beyond human wisdom and convict and uplift the heart at the same time.
*Pandemonium because people have come back from Holy Communion and have found themselves healed.
*People sitting in the pews long after the ceremonies are over because they have been caught up in God.
 
Things like that.
 
But I haven't seen it yet, so I remain disappointed, because that's how Easter is supposed to be.
 
The Triduum liturgy has the structure and the capacity to hold and channel Resurrection power.

I don’t know about you, but I believe in an Almighty God who can do far more than give me uplifting emotions, and I want far more than that. Emotions come and go. Action changes the status quo. I want action, not only for me and my loved ones, but for everyone present and their loved ones.

I want the newspapers filled with testimonies about what happened during the Triduum.

But I know we can’t get there if the homilies are lacking the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

“Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved. But they will not ask His help unless they believe in Him, and they will not believe in Him unless they have heard of Him, and they will not hear of Him unless they get a preacher…. Faith comes from what is preached, and what is preached comes from the Word of Christ.” Rom 10:13-15a,17

The first homily spoke primarily of the gifts of the eucharist and the priesthood, and didn’t speak much about the Giver, on His night of nights.

The second homily was long, but began to improve mid-way, touching many of the right notes but without any power riding on or through them.

The third homily didn’t mention any of the banquet of scripture readings, and could have been a replay of similar homilies given in different locations; did say all the expected things, but didn’t have Jesus as the primary focus.

When a homily is as it is supposed to be, it makes Jesus present, and enables us to encounter Him.

But that takes not only study, and time, but assiduous prayer and more than ordinary levels of holiness, and it also requires responding to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit (no matter how ‘out there’ they might feel) both in the preparation phase and in the delivery phase.

We also can’t get there without intercessory preparation, i.e. a parish army praying daily all through Lent for those who will attend the Triduum (in whole or in part), that their hearts and souls will be good soil for the Gospel, and further, for the Holy Spirit to act upon them to convict, save, heal, direct and commission those attendees according to His holy will.

Truly inspired parish armies will also pray afterwards that the good seed sown in hearts and souls will come to full harvest under the action of the Holy Spirit.

Yes, God can act sovereignly without these levels of human co-operation, but generally His modus operandi is to work with us rather than without us – as long as we take all our cues from Him.

In all honesty we can’t expect Him to show up and take our plans from good to great without seeking His input in the planning – even though planning without seeking His input (but, perhaps, for a brief 30 second prayer at the beginning of a planning meeting) appears to be our normal modus operandi.
​It takes more intentional effort than that!
​
Please God, may He make us so dissatisfied with our Triduum experiences that we put Him first, front and centre next time, and ever after. Amen.

The Gospel for the Easter Vigil, Year B, comes from the first part of St Mark Chapter 16 and contains the discovery of the empty tomb of Jesus.

Three things stood out to me from this Gospel passage, and they speak of God’s providence, His knowledge and His mercy.

In their hurry to get to the tomb of Jesus as early as possible, and therefore to attract as little attention as possible from passers-by, the women fixated on getting the spices ready and on transporting them successfully have forgotten to bring any man-power with them. The stone covering the entrance to the tomb is extremely large, and not something that the combined might of three women could budge. This worrying thought only dawns on them after they have set out for the tomb, and then consumes their thoughts for the rest of the journey. But God in His providence has already solved this problem for them, and before they even remembered that they needed help. The women don’t have to work out who is going to stay and guard the spices and who is going to go back and get help, they can proceed with their plan.

Only there’s no one to embalm with spices.

However there’s a young man dressed in a long white robe like the upper classes wear, someone of significance, sitting on the tomb ledge.

So much for not being discovered! The women experience a range of emotions that gets translated as alarmed, terrified, greatly astonished, awe struck, struck with amazement. The young man tells them ‘do not be ….’ and he uses the exact same base word for those range of emotions. Telling us that God knows exactly what we are going through, and exactly what we are feeling, and can calm us down.

Since a messenger must have a message to give; explanations for why the tomb is empty of Jesus and the details of a new mission for the women follow.

‘You must go and tell His disciples and Peter.’

If you remember the Passion narrative from St Mark, Peter well and truly blotted his copybook with Jesus; multiple
denials, emphasized with cursing, and with oaths.
Thus this message is important.

It also has at least two layers of meaning. The first layer is ‘go and tell My disciples and take special care that you make sure Peter gets the message’. The second layer is ‘go and tell My disciples, and also go and tell Peter that if he wants to become a disciple again, that the door is open for him to return’. Both layers of meaning are an invitation for Peter to receive the mercy and forgiveness of Jesus. It is quite possible that Peter might have never found the courage to return to the disciples without this merciful message.

So let us rededicate ourselves to the risen Lord Jesus, remembering that His providence anticipates our needs, remembering that He knows us better than we know ourselves, and remembering that He is willing to be reconciled with us no matter how badly we have stuffed things up.

May He help us remember, and may He enable us to increase our trust and confidence in Him. Amen.

​The Instrumentum Laboris (working document) for the first session of the Australian Plenary Council was released on 25 Feb 2021, and I eventually finished reading it sometime in mid-March.

You can read it yourself:
https://plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au/instrumentum-laboris/

It wasn’t an easy read, despite it being beautifully presented. Penitential, it was. Firstly it takes a very long time to set the scene and give a situational analysis of the Church in Australia. Many times I wondered if the document would ever get to the point. Secondly it uses lots of ambiguous language that feels like it was written by a combination of church bureaucrats and school teachers. It would be easy to decode for them, but not for me. I longed for some footnotes that gave situational examples to aid understanding.

In particular I longed for concrete and contextual explanation of this passage from 166:

“Not infrequently, Catholics and their family members find themselves in an uneasy situation regarding particular Church teachings or disciplines, not because they identify any less as Catholic, and not because their attachment to Christ has grown “lukewarm” (Rev 3:16), but because of shifts in cultural norms and expectations that they once relied on to support their Catholic faith. Very often, however, this tension between people’s lived experience and the teachings of the Church reaches the point where people withdraw from parishes or communities, and no longer identify as Catholic.”

Is this about going to Mass on Sundays, cohabitation, same sex attraction, blended families, or about some, all or even more than this? How do you even begin to discuss this passage without knowing what the original catalyst for the passage was? How do you begin to frame questions that ask, ‘prove to me how attachment to Christ hasn’t grown lukewarm despite being out of synch with Church teachings, disciplines and practices…by what other means can you show strong attachment to Jesus Christ (John 12:26, James 2:17-18)?’?

I admit I was struggling to reconcile the somewhat rosy view the Working Document paints compared to what I am seeing in the pews. Then Philippa Martyr’s article came up while I was trying unsuccessfully to find any online commentary on the Working Document which wasn’t a clone of the official press release. It is well worth a read:
https://gaudiumetspes22.com/2021/03/05/stranded-under-the-southern-cross-news-from-a-shrinking-church/

I found it a more accurate analysis of the Catholic Church in Australia 2021.

In particular I found her imagery of a carapace to be valuable, viz:

“I tend to see the Church in Australia as consisting of the ‘real Church’ and an unpleasant outer structure that I call The Carapace. The Carapace is like The Borg in Star Trek, if it helps. It attaches itself to the real Church and feeds off it. Its principal purpose is to employ people, and its mission is to protect the Church’s assets at all costs.”

What bothers me greatly is that the Instrumentum Laboris seems to be written by the carapace, and the vast majority of the delegates for the Plenary Council sessions will come from the carapace.

What else bothers me is that God seems to be a minor stakeholder among many instead of the One and Only opinion that matters.

Why else would there be so much virtue signaling about sexual abuse, indigenous issues, women in leadership issues, ecology, etc? I’m not saying that they aren’t important, just that they pale into insignificance against the urgency of saving souls from eternities in hell. Dealing with these things of necessity will be part of that primary mission, for the salvation of the people in these minorities, but they should never overshadow that primary mission.

Which matters to God the most?

What matters to God the most?

I put it to you that growth in relationship to Him (holiness), family (His plan that predates Scripture), and bringing people into relationship with Him (mission) and co-operating in expressing His love to others (service: which is the natural overflow of increase in holiness and mission) are what matter most to God.

On everything but service we are not doing well at all, and even our service is usually human powered service rather than Holy Spirit empowered service.

My view from the pew looks like this:

Everything starts from Holy Spirit inspired preaching. But for Holy Spirit inspired preaching to happen lots of prayer, study of scripture and sacred tradition, openness to the charismatic workings of the Holy Spirit and surrender to the workings of the Holy Spirit are necessary; and the preacher has to be able to effectively use the language and language idioms of those he is preaching to.

It is ‘hymns, hospitality and homilies’ or ‘music, ministry and message’ that either engages a newcomer and keeps them returning or turns them off for good. Generally we are mediocre when it comes to hymns and hospitality with the occasional flash of brilliance, but where we consistently fall down is in homilies.

When was the last time a homily encouraged you to pray?
When was the last time a homily invited you to go to confession? (and made it available)
When was the last time a homily opened your eyes to how good and great God is?
When was the last time a homily made you want to know Jesus better?
When was the last time a homily kept you awake and hanging on every word?
When was the last time a homily contained anything memorable that wasn’t a pre-prepared joke?

Every day I pray that God will use the words of the homilist that day to touch hearts. Often I wonder if God hears me because even I can only decode on average 3 words out of 5 from our overseas-born priests, and the most common question when Mass is over is ‘What did he say?’.

But a preacher doesn’t have to be in a pulpit. We pew dwellers are just as bad because we talk far more about parish politics, weather and medical ailments than we ever do (if we ever do) about Jesus, about inspiration we have found in Gospel passages, answers to prayers, and about living out the vocations we have been called to.

There is such laser focus on encouraging priestly vocations that you could be forgiven for thinking that vocations to family life, religious vocations, career vocations and vocations to special non-ordained ministries aren’t important at all. Yet apart from a very few exceptions to the rule, priestly vocations grow in strong families and in devotionally vibrant parishes.

When was the last time you saw any parish-based initiatives for encouraging and supporting marriages and families?

Did you know that Australia has no (nil, nada, ziltch, zero) Retrouvaille ministry/weekends for marriages in crisis?

Schools. Shudder. They are supposed to be places where the Catholic faith is taught and flourishes. Yet they are places where those who do teach the demanding parts of the Gospel are persecuted in various subtle and non-subtle ways. But these days no one in the parish knows anyone with children at the local Catholic primary school, and vice versa, and about the only person who visits both places is the parish priest and any assistant priest. What we actually have are non-government schools. At what point do we call a halt to the massive investment in schools that don’t evangelise, barely catechize and consistently churn out students indistinguishable from atheists and agnostics?

Families with faith have been choosing not to send their children to Catholic schools, many have chosen to home-school, some have chosen Christian schools, and the rest are sending their children to state schools partly because the cost/benefit analysis has swung the other way. In times past parents were willing to pay the extra cost of the Catholic school because it helped support the development of faith in their children.

The view from the pew can look very different from the view of the carapace.

An example may be useful…
In recent years the St Vincent de Paul Society went through a centralization process, and created regional hubs for furniture and other items. The people managing the hubs were happy. Some of the people in the local outlets were happy ‘it’s great, we refer them to the hub’. But those who knew how things worked pre-hub, and the people in need were not happy. Locally there used to be a room where furniture could be stored on a temporary basis. For the hubs to work, they were told rooms like these had to be stopped. The thing is, those rooms enabled society members to respond quickly when needs became manifest. With a hub, you have to send requests up, wait for decisions, and for action to be sent down, and sometimes have to follow-up the requests, all of which means many days, if not weeks, before needs get met. As for the person in need who had enough trouble asking for help the first time, now they have to travel to the hub to get help; and ask for help a second time. How many of them don’t take the extra step? For some the transport costs alone would be prohibitive. For others it was so hard to admit they needed help, it would be a long time before they attempted to admit it again. Or they would seek other alternatives with quicker responses to their urgent emergencies.

Even more seriously, the local outlet loses the opportunity to begin a relationship of accompaniment with that person in need, and the probability of needy people falling through the cracks increases. But the hub managers will only see the turnover of furniture and other items, and fluctuation in staffing levels, and never record or quantify these other losses, and will assume everything is going great guns.

Thankfully there have been moves towards decentralization again.

There are very good reasons why the Church values the principle of subsidiarity, and why any moves towards adding bureaucratic layers for co-ordination of smaller entities has to carefully make sure that the principle of subsidiarity is not violated.

Pope Francis has encouraged leaders to take on the smell of the sheep, to take time to be with those on the fringes and on the front lines. It is the only way to find out what is really going on.

An example may be useful…
A person serving at the diocesan curia has responsibilities for parish support. Most of this person’s time is spent liaising with parish staff and with parish members who voluntarily take on co-ordination roles. The parish support team puts together a Lenten discussion group programme, sends it out to the parishes. Some groups will meet every year regardless. Other groups will only form if there is active encouragement from the pulpit, and some recruitment and engagement of group leaders. Some parishioners will use the contents of the programme privately.

The parish support team will know how many programmes got sent out, and have a rough idea how many groups formed and how many participated. But they don’t usually get information on how many programmes were thrown out because they were still on the display table several weeks later, nor information about why parishioners left them there, nor information about why groups didn’t form, nor why anyone gave up part way through (individually or group). The only way you get that information is by talking incognito (without them knowing what your role is) with people in the pews whom you have never met before and truly listening to what they have to say, even if it isn’t what you want to hear. (eg. “I picked it up, but I put it back when I saw you needed to download stuff. I’m not that good with computers, and there’s no one at home who is any better at it than me, no one who could help me if I got myself into computer trouble.”)

Can you see how from a curial vantage point everything could look rosy, and better than last year? And yet from a pew dweller’s view point it could look very different indeed?

That’s why I am so worried that the Instrumentum Laboris seems to be written by the carapace, and the vast majority of the delegates for the Plenary Council sessions will come from the carapace who haven’t taken on the smell of the sheep.

A few passages from the Instrumentum Laboris caught my eye:

Passage 74 page 27
Rather, Pope Francis, echoing the thoughts of his predecessors since the Second Vatican Council, insists that an authentically Gospel-inspired renewal of the Church flows from a renewed encounter with Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit and gives rise to a ‘pastoral conversion’ of the entire Church, a renewal that is expressed in a ‘missionary option’ or ‘missionary impulse’ for making the saving love of God known in every place.

Amen. Amen. What we all need more than anything is a deeper encounter with Jesus, and a deeper encounter with the Holy Spirit. Without that, nothing, but nothing changes for the better. We can’t make it happen, that is up to God Himself. But we can make the conditions and environment more conducive for those encounters to happen. Things like encouraging private individual prayer, corporate prayer (prayer meetings, public devotions, liturgy), scripture study, reconciling strained relationships, forgiveness of wrongs done to us, getting to know each other better so as to grow in unity, self-discipline, generosity to others, encouraging more frequent visits to the sacrament of penance, and asking God (individually and corporately) to grant us these precious encounters.

Passage 123 page 41
Submissions to the Council also raised what Pope Francis, among others, has identified as the danger of an unhealthy culture of clericalism within the priesthood and in the wider Church. At its most extreme, this has been identified as a significant factor in the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. It can also undermine the mission that belongs to the entire Church and discourage the exercise of gifts within it. Some fundamental questions arise in light of this concern: What are the causes of such a culture of clericalism? What are the theological, structural, psychological or spiritual influences that can contribute to it and how might the Church better equip its clergy and laity for mission today and for increasing co-responsibility in the decades to come?

Clericalism encourages an ‘us and them’ mentality, with ‘us’ being far superior to ‘them’. Sadly our seminaries are still full of it. We have seminarians visiting parishes on placement and making the assumption that no one in the parishes knows how to use incense properly except for them. That assumption most certainly gets up the noses of parishioners who have been serving at the altar and using incense for decades. Then there’s the practice of getting 2nd year seminarians and above to always wear soutanes at Mass, even if they are sitting in the congregation. That’s visibly making an ‘us’ and ‘them’ distinction well before the vocational discernment process has scarcely begun. It is very difficult to get to ‘we’ and ‘team’, albeit with different gifts and vocational callings, if from the ‘get go’ seminarians are treated as heroic and special. For the mission of the Church to proceed, ie the making of disciples of Jesus, clerics can’t do it without laity, and laity can’t do it without clerics. We vitally need each other. It is one of those ‘both/and’ things. Mutual respect will get us much further in that mission than clericalism.

Passage 131 page 43
There is not a well-developed understanding and practice of the Church as a community of missionary disciples. The Plenary Council offers the Church in Australia an opportunity to consider carefully, and prayerfully, what steps must be taken to awaken this awareness of the missionary vocation of every Catholic, for all the baptised are called equally to live and proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

This is true. Although there are sub-groups within parishes that have this awareness eg catechists. Vatican II speaks eloquently of the universal call to holiness and the universal call to mission and so have subsequent papal documents. Encouraging us pew dwellers to read these texts is one thing, helping us to understand how to respond in our own lives is quite another since most of us have no idea what that looks like, nor what it feels like. A possible way forward is gathering and sharing testimonies of how God has used pew dwellers to make disciples, with particular emphasis on how pew dwellers came to understand what God was calling them to do, and how that mission developed over time.

Not everyone is going to be called to be an evangelist (nor to the same evangelistic mission field eg family, co-workers, young people, PSTD sufferers etc); not everyone is going to have a calling to specific works of mercy; not everyone is going to have a calling to accompany people through the RCIA process. So there needs to be intentionality about gathering a wide range of stories, and in presenting them with an openness to the multiplicity of God’s callings. It is really easy to unconsciously fall into the trap of ‘God has called me to be a preacher, it is so wonderful and exciting, therefore God is calling everyone to be preachers’, thereby putting unnecessary burdens/guilt on listeners who may be called to very different missions.

Passage 135 page 44
Underpinning such renewal of practices and methods within dioceses, parishes, migrant communities and movements must be the renewal of sacramental life and prayer among all Catholics for it is the encounter with Christ in the midst of the Church that rekindles hope and makes genuine renewal possible. This is seen in the Emmaus story in Luke’s Gospel (24:13-35) where, in the midst of the disciples’ difficulties and even disillusionment, the faith of the followers of Jesus is restored and a new future opened for them by this encounter.

Without prayer and the sacraments, there is no fuel for mission. We can’t give what we don’t have. What we most need to give are God’s love and access to Jesus. Prayer and the sacraments give us access to the infilling of God’s love, and to experiential encounters with Jesus. We haven’t done a good job of proclaiming this truth about prayer and the sacraments, by and large it has been a well-kept secret, when it should have been ‘shout it from the rooftops’ stuff. Again one of the best ways to renew sacramental life and prayer is to gather testimonies from pew dwellers who are living as missionary disciples. We need to share with each other what a difference prayer (personal and communal) and the sacraments (baptism, penance, eucharist, confirmation, anointing of the sick, marriage, holy orders) make in our lives. It is good news, in fact it is great news. All of them make a big impact. But again, sensitivity is needed, because some people feel and experience lots and some people feel and experience little even when God’s grace is just as active in both. It is all too easy for a focus on feelings and experiences to get us chasing them rather than God, and for this focus to make those who barely feel or experience anything to rate themselves as second class citizens of the kingdom of God. For this reason it is always wise to focus more on the fruits eg growth in patience, generosity, peace, trust, improvement in relationships etc.

Passage 197 page 67
It is this assurance that should encourage us and empower us to speak and act with that parrhesia, that boldness and courage, which are a gift of the Holy Spirit: We need the Spirit’s prompting, lest we be paralyzed by fear and excessive caution, lest we grow used to keeping within safe bounds. Let us remember that closed spaces grow musty and unhealthy. When the Apostles were tempted to let themselves be crippled by danger and threats, they joined in prayer to implore parrhesia: “And now, Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to Your servants to speak Your Word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29). As a result, “when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31).

It is my dearest desire that when the delegates gather for both of the sessions of the Plenary Council that they dedicate somewhere between a half day and a full day as representatives of the faith communities of Australia to imploring this parrhesia for Australia – and that they do so before they start any discussion of the Working Document. What this needs to be is heartfelt spontaneous prayer ebbing and flowing as the Holy Spirit prompts. Apart from an introduction and a conclusion, it needs to be totally unscripted. It needs to be allowing God to dredge up from the depths of our soul’s expressions of our personal, corporate and national desire for Him and for the dynamic action of the Holy Spirit in our midst, in words, songs, groans and anything else He inspires. It needs to include our leaders begging pardon of God for the ways we have failed Him personally and corporately, to include confessing our failures and our shortcomings, and asking God to step in, to take control, to take leadership and give us sure guidance and the courage to respond with an active Yes to everything He wants us to do.

Without this, nothing else will really matter.

Come Holy Spirit, Come!,
and through this Plenary Council
make of this nation Australia
the promised great south land
in complete synch with You.
Amen.

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