Come to my table

There was plenty of grass there, and as many as five thousand men sat down. Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks and gave them out to all who were sitting ready; he then did the same with the fish, giving out as much as was wanted. When they had eaten enough he said to the disciples, ‘Pick up the pieces left over, so that nothing gets wasted.’ So they picked them up, and filled twelve hampers with scraps left over from the meal of five barley loaves. 

John 6: 10a - 13

Toni has a growing collection of cookbooks. She has plugged away at recipe books gifted to her by her children and daughters-in-law or left to her by her mother, aunts and grandmothers. Once we would regularly entertain friends, but now find ourselves regularly - if not daily - welcoming our children and grandchildren for meals. It has been a gentle transition, especially in the last few years when Toni's dad lived cheek by jowl with us. Now retired, Toni carefully prepares each meal with a part of the day set aside for cooking (while someone else is kept busy scanning the world news) and the result is a lavish feast. Cooks enjoy sharing their successes and are keen for feedback. Cooking is indeed a skill well worth possessing and growing, but without hospitality great food is just food, another meal.

Over the last two weeks we have hosted my brother David, his wife Glenda and sister Adelaide. While they stayed in our son's home down the road, meals were had with us. On arrival there were drinks to offer, appetizers and welcoming conversation about the events of the day. There was companionship, affability, homeliness, the retelling of childhood stories and gossip about old friends and family. Most of all there was/is respect shared around a common table and experience. These are moments to value deeply.

One of the keys to Jesus’ ministry is hospitality, to his disciples and to strangers. This is no more clearly evident than in his feeding of the 5000 with no less than 5 barley loaves and two fish (John 6:1 – 15). It is Jesus’ intention from the beginning that he provides for them all, indeed there were twelve hampers full when they were finished. There are, naturally, many layers to this story – it is Eucharistic, it is a precursor to the heavenly banquet that awaits the faithful, it also reveals the growing awareness of Jesus’ messiahship and his reluctance to be the kind of messiah that the crowd was seeking.

John’s Gospel delights in its rich images of bread and wine, and these become metaphors for Jesus himself, and in the context of the Eucharist itself, the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. The interplay is tantalising and fascinating. And the link is Jesus’ desire to offer God’s hospitality to all – we are all welcome to his table, each of our stories is waiting to be heard, a banquet has been prepared, our cups overflow and the rich conversation brings pleasure and joy.

We don’t need to put on a feast to be hospitable. A cup of tea will do when we’re caught short. Extending hospitality is something we learn, like the way we cook. We model it on our families and it is a case of ‘doing to others as you would have others do to you’. It truly is a Gospel value. While meals may be memorable, the companionship of our friends and family around the table is the stuff of life.

The inimitable Kevin Bates SM in his 1991 song, 'Love calls me back' wrote:      

                            Come to my table, taste of my Word

                            Bring me the life that you’ve lived.

                            Bring in the dancing. Bring in the pain.

                            Bring me the whole of your journey.

Peter Douglas

 

Australian archbishop: Catholics will 'need to adapt' to liturgy restrictions

By Courtney Mares, 22 July 2021, CNA, Rome Newsroom

Australian Catholics will need to adapt to liturgical restrictions, according to the archbishop of Melbourne, one of a number of Australian bishops to respond to Pope Francis’ sweeping changes to celebrations of the Traditional Latin Mass.

“There are a number of priests in our archdiocese and a good number of God’s people who have been celebrating the Mass in the 1962 ritual of Pope St. John XXIII, and who will now need to adapt and make some adjustments in what can happen in our archdiocese into the future,” Archbishop Peter Comensoli said in a video posted on July 22.

“For some, it will be not an easy moment to make an adjustment, and I want to acknowledge that. But for most of us, and most of our priests of the archdiocese, we will not really notice much of a difference because we have been using this ritual that I’m holding here now for some 50 years, and it’s something that we’re quite familiar with and is common to us,” he said.

In the video filmed in front of the high altar at Melbourne’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Comensoli said that Pope Francis wanted the current Roman Missal to be more “strongly emphasized, so that it might be an expression of the unity of the Church throughout the world.”

Pope Francis issued a motu proprio called Traditionis custodes  (“Guardians of the tradition”) on July 16. The document made changes to his predecessor Benedict XVI’s 2007 apostolic letter Summorum pontificum, which acknowledged the right of all priests to say Mass using the Roman Missal of 1962, which is in Latin.

Mass according to the 1962 Roman Missal is referred to variously as the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, the Tridentine Mass, the Traditional Latin Mass, the usus antiquior, and the Vetus Ordo.

With Traditionis custodes, Pope Francis said that it is now each bishop’s “exclusive competence” to authorize the use of the extraordinary form of the Mass in his diocese.

Since the motu proprio’s promulgation, some bishops have said that priests may continue to offer the Traditional Latin Mass in their dioceses, while others have banned it.

In a July 21 letter to clergy, Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney granted permission “to those priests competent in offering Mass according to the 1962 Roman Missal to continue to do so, either privately or in those places that already have an Extraordinary Form Mass on their schedule, subject to COVID-19 restrictions and until further instructions are forthcoming from me.”

Fisher also asked priests to “consider carefully and respectfully the reasoning and instructions of the Holy Father, to help in promoting unity and good order in the Church, to continue to foster a fruitful devotion to the Mass, and to give priority to serving the pastoral needs of God’s people.”

Traditional Latin Masses are currently offered in St Mary’s Cathedral and St. Michael’s parish in Sydney on Sundays, as well as at a personal parish administered by the priests of the Fraternity of St. Peter, according to the Catholic Weekly, the newspaper for the Archdiocese of Sydney.

Archbishop Comensoli also issued a letter to clergy in Melbourne on July 17, saying that he needed time “to pray, study, and consult the new law of the Church.”

In the interim, the archbishop said that he was only granting the faculty to offer the Traditional Latin Mass without a congregation present.

“I draw your attention to the directive … that the celebration of the Mass according to the 1962 Ritual is no longer permitted in parochial settings,” Comensoli said.

The archbishop also noted that these restrictions would not apply to the personal parish in Melbourne, St. John Henry Newman.

“I do not intend to rush to putting in place definitive directives,” Comensoli said.

“It is, for me, a time to examine my own conscience -- and I encourage you each to do the same -- in how I am celebrating the liturgy of the Church, and to more ardently conform myself to the worthy and dignified celebration of the Roman Rites,” he said.

“Let us use this moment to better exercise the ars celebrandi [the art of celebration] and renew our conformity to the third typical edition of the Missale Romanum [Roman Missal].”