Wheat and grape

If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask what you will and you shall get it. It is to the glory of my Father that you should bear much fruit, and then you will be my disciples. 

John 15:6 - 8

 The Gospel writers – and Jesus himself – used the images that lay outside their doors. We know the first disciples were simple Galileans (Acts 2:7), fishermen mostly. Their mothers and wives ground grain for bread, perhaps kept vines for house wine and vinegar, sought out fresh herbs from local markets, perhaps kept a fig tree, shaded themselves from the heat under giant mustard trees, walked through fields of wheat, and clothed themselves in woollen robes, woven from the wool of sheep cared for by shepherds.

Throughout his Gospel, John weaves the images of bread (wheat) and wine (vines). The richness of these images goes well beyond simile, metaphor or analogy, to symbol. Wheat is crushed and broken in the grinder, the husk is discarded, a leaven added, and the bread rises and is food for the hungry. Like wheat, the grapes are harvested and crushed underfoot, yeast is added to the juice and it is then fermented, the spirit arises from the wine and becomes drink for the thirsty. These Eucharistic elements are pre-figured throughout the text, ensuring that the reader and listener slowly develop and understand that Jesus’ presence pervades not only the Gospel, but all of creation (John 1:1ff).

By way of extension Jesus says of himself: I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing ….. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples (15:5f).

From this we understand our dependence on Jesus and our need to remain connected, in conversation with him in order that our lives are full and rich and that the fruit of our labours will challenge and transform the world in which we live. This is not impossible, whether we look at the martyrology (of the saints), or at the people who have made a difference in our own lives. Look at the impact that the elderly Blessed John XXIII made not just in the life of the church, but on the world, or our own St Mary of the Cross MacKillop.

This is not beyond you or me. We might not be up there in that great catalogue of the holy, but the transformation that your relationship with Jesus might make in you, or in your spouse, your family and work colleagues could be immeasurable.

Further, in the same way that John explores Jesus’ presence through creation and Eucharist, we are invited to participate more readily both in celebrating creation and living out the Eucharist every day. This indeed would be ready fruit.

Peter Douglas

 

 

 Reverend Murray Campbell

VCAT Given New Powers to Investigate Christians for Praying

MURRAY CAMPBELL

Which society is the following report depicting?

… human rights commission intends to use the full range of its new powers to investigate church groups and other organisations engaged in gay conversion practices, including seizing documents and pursuing them in court if they do not comply with orders.

The Andrews government gave the commission wide-ranging powers as part of its ban on gay conversion practices earlier this month, and Ms Hilton said the commission would not be shy about using them …

Under the reforms, anyone can make a report to the commission about change and suppression practices from any member of the community.

The commission can then investigate that complaint, but it also has significant power to conduct “own-motion” investigations where there is indication of serious or systemic problems.

This could involve forcing a person or organisation to take, or refrain from taking, certain actions to comply with the Equal Opportunity Act. Such undertakings and notices will be enforceable at VCAT. The commission will also have the power to compel documents and other information, and will educate the community to prevent such practices from occurring.

If I had removed references to Victoria and Daniel Andrews, one could be forgiven for thinking the report was describing an authoritarian State like China or Iran. Surely this story in The Age  isn’t talking about a free and democratic society where the people have the right to discuss, debate, persuade, and even to help one another; sadly, this is Victoria.

A Cultural Revolution 

Sinicization is the regime of cultural and ideological conformity currently being forced upon the Chinese people by an authoritarian regime. Soon we will have our own version here in Victoria: the State will subject its citizens to new invasive and intrusive laws designed to strip people of basic freedoms with regard to conscience, speech and association. Perhaps we should call it, Victorianization.

The instrument of this program is the “Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020,” passed by the Victorian Parliament last month. This act, as discussed previously on this website, seeks to prevent any person or institution making any attempt to change (or possibly question) a person’s own feelings about their sexuality or gender. The Act provides for criminal charges and penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment and fines of $200,000. There is also a civil avenue for people wishing to make complaints against fellow Victorians. Even an anonymous complaint will be a sufficient reason for VCAT to open an investigation, compel you to produce personal documents and information, and force you to attend reeducation programs that will teach you what to believe about sexuality and gender.

These are the new powers given to VCAT (Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal) which are the focus of The Age’s story.

Dishonesty and Misinformation

Dishonesty and misinformation have sadly controlled much of the recent debate. First of all, Government reports glaringly avoided the historical reality of how conversion therapy came from mainstream psychology, and not from religious groups. For example, it wasn’t that long ago that aversion therapies were taught at a university here in Melbourne and practised by doctors. Second, contrary to rhetoric offered by the Government and activist groups, conversion practices (e.g. aversion therapy) were always rare and unusual in religious settings.

However, instead of  limiting legislation to banning an archaic practice that everyone agrees is wrong, the Parliament has outlawed praying and even talking with another person about sexuality and gender. People are free to discuss, pray, and counsel so long as their view of sexuality and gender conforms to the current set of theories being preached by activists. One problem is that these theories are so fluid, that even activists can’t keep up with the latest moral rights and wrongs.  It is worth highlighting that gay, lesbian and feminist representatives have all expressed concerned that these new laws will prevent people from seeking the care and support that they have every right to find.

What would Jesus do? How were early Christians encouraged to respond to questions about sexuality? Certainly with grace and kindness, to love and serve others, and to affirm the pattern given by God in Scripture. Indeed, all these factors belong together.

Clear Principles

For example, on one occasion Jesus was asked a question about marriage and divorce. He responded to the questioner by affirming that the basis for marriage is the way humans are created:

Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. (Matt 19:1-9)

The Apostle Paul, with equal clarity, called out the sexual practices of the Corinthians and called for change:

Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God … Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies”. (1 Cor 6:10-11; 18-19)

One of the assumptions attached to today’s sexual ethics—and enshrined in this legislation—is the idea that orientations ought to be expressed sexually. If you feel a certain way, that feeling ought to be affirmed and lived. For Christians, the Bible points the way to a more fulfilling identity. The Bible describes Jesus Christ as the most complete human being to ever live and he never had sex with anyone. To encourage a person to follow Jesus’ example is now anathema and yes, apparently illegal, in Victoria.

Should people be free to talk about sexuality and gender, even encouraging a Christian view, without fear of the State hauling them before a tribunal?

Should churches have the freedom to encourage their members to live in accord with Christian beliefs on marriage, sex, and gender?

In case readers assume that these laws are only targeting clergy, anyone can be investigated and anyone charged.

The Government told The Age that they are willing to discuss things with the faith community. Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner Kristen Hilton holds out an olive branch (poison ivy, to be accurate),

We’ll be working with survivor groups but will also be working with faith leaders because it’s an opportunity to create an understanding…

Kristen Hilton told The Age her office also wanted to educate faith leaders and the broader community about the harm caused to LGBTI people by suggesting there is something wrong with homosexuality. 

The State, with all its spiritual insight and theological astuteness, is going to educate Churches about what we can and cannot say and pray? I don’t think so. Can we not coexist as good neighbours despite holding onto a different worldview? The State is not God, the Premier is not Archbishop, and VCAT is not the board of Elders. Let the reader understand, we are not talking about the law prohibiting invasive and harmful treatments that doctors were once trained to deliver; we are talking about banning consensual conversations and praying with people who are wanting to engage.

Activists have lobbied for Victorian society to be radically rewired and the Government has done their bidding. The average Victorian ought to be familiar with this imposition and overreach. Religious Victorians are now faced with a decision, will we obey Caesar or will follow God? This is not a choice that should ever be forced on people’s but it is the position in which many Victorians now find themselves.

---

First published at murraycampbell.net

Murray Campbell lives in Melbourne with his family. He’s served as Lead Pastor at Mentone Baptist Church since 2005. Formerly, he was a classical pianist. You can follow Murray on twitter @MurrayJCampbell.

Murray is a member of the TGCA editorial panel and co-oversees the Current Events channel.

The article may be found at:

https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/vcat-given-new-powers-to-investigate-christians-for-praying/

2 March 2021

 

 

Foolish?

 

 

For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength 

1 Corinthians 1:25

We are amongst the few. There is sufficient evidence that Jesus of Nazareth, a rabbi who lived in the first century of the Common Era, who lived peripatetically with a group of followers, had lived. He had a particular zeal in getting to the core of his Jewish faith. He had an affinity and empathy with those who lived on the margins. He met hostility with the vision he proclaimed and ultimately lost his life in a political manoeuvre. The evidence is substantive.

His followers and their communities, after some time and much upheaval, gathered a great number of stories about Jesus, re-viewed them through the eyes of faith and the patrimony of their scriptures and placed them on record. There is also evidence that there was some 'latitude' granted in their recollection - a miraculous pregnancy, wine turned to water, deaf made hearing, the ill healed, dead raised, and finally, following his death this Jesus of Nazareth himself was raised to life and continued his ministry for some 40 days before leaving his followers.

There is fact, and there is faith. Armed only with fact, many dismiss the claims of the communities of faith as being foolish, and can be derisive of the 'fairy tales and myths' upon which they believe our faith is built. Then, of course, there are those whose faith is utterly dependent on a 'biblical' understanding of faith, 'sola scriptura', which arose in the Reformation and which states that the scriptures are the sole infallible sources of authority for Christian faith and practice. That being so, many a biblical scholar has exegeted every aspect of the divine from the scriptures to leave nothing but a piece of lifeless literature, while at the other end of the spectrum are those who believe in the absolute inerrancy of the scripture and are often (but not always) seen to possess a literalist understanding.

There has been a disarming divide - which has been over 100 years in the making - since the rise of modernism in the arts, literature, philosophy and psychology - between what we now call liberal and conservative. In our context it is applied to our beliefs and practices. In the Catholic context liberals are often seen as possessing a somewhat 'flexible' attitude to the moral, liturgical, sacramental doctrine both Church and scriptural - while conservatives are seen to maintain a firmer, even solid and less flexible attitude.

Non-believers of all kinds poke their noses at Christians for the dishevelled state of our churches and the disarray of our competing ideologies and lack of unity.

We continue to see wisdom and strength in our beliefs and attitudes, but we sorely underestimate God's. Somehow, through the morass of our folly, God continues to work in us and through us. The Good News of Jesus Christ continues to be proclaimed in every corner of the world - despite the obfuscations, detours and downright errors. This is the wisdom of God.

Paul writes with characteristic directness: For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:22 - 24).

 

Peter Douglas

 

 

Richard Rohr ofm

Action and Contemplation: Part One

Sacred Silence

Most of us who live in a capitalist culture, where everything is about competing and comparing, will find contemplation extremely counter-intuitive. How do we grasp something as empty, as harmless, as seemingly fruitless as the practice of silence? Only when we know that it also offers a “peace beyond understanding” (Philippians 4:7) and a “joy that no one can take from you” (John 16:22).

Silence needs to be understood in a larger way than simply a lack of audible noise. Whenever emptiness—what seems like empty space or absence of sound—becomes its own kind of fullness with its own kind of sweet voice, we have just experienced sacred silence.

When religious folks limit their focus in prayer to external technique and formula, the soul remains largely untouched and unchanged. Too much emphasis on what I call “social prayer” or wordy prayer feeds our egos and gives us far too much to argue about. That is surely why Jesus emphasized quiet prayer in one’s own “inner room” and warned us not to “babble on as the pagans do” (Matthew 6:5-7). Oh, the years we Catholics and others have wasted arguing about liturgy in a juridical way! For me, law and liturgy are two different realms. How can we truly pray when we are preoccupied with formula and perfection of technique?

If we can see silence as the ground of all words and the birth of all words, then when we speak, our words will be calmer and well-chosen. Our thoughts will be non-judgmental. Our actions will have greater integrity and impact.

When we recognize something as beautiful, that knowledge partly emerges from the silence around it. It may be why we are quiet in art galleries and symphony halls. If something is not surrounded by the vastness of silence and space, it is hard to appreciate it as singular and beautiful. If it is all mixed in with everything else, then its particularity does not stand out.

As one author I read years ago said, silence is the net below the tightrope walker. [1] We are walking, trying to find the right words to explain our experience and the right actions to match our values. Silence is that safety net that allows us to fall; it admits, as poets often do, that no words or deeds will ever be perfectly right or sufficient. So the poet keeps trying, for which we are grateful! The great spaciousness and safety net beneath a tightrope walker is silence; it offers freedom from self-preoccupation and the fear of making a mistake. A regular practice of contemplation helps us trust that silence will uphold us, receive our mistakes, and give us the courage to learn and grow.

References:
[1] Max Picard, The World of Silence, trans. Stanley Godman (H. Regnery: 1964, ©1952), 22.

From Richard Rohr, Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation (Franciscan Media: 2014), 7-9.

 

 

 

A luminous mystery

 Transfiguration (1516 - 20) by Raphael

Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain where they could be alone by themselves. There in their presence he was transfigured: his clothes became dazzlingly white, whiter than any earthy bleacher could make them. 

Mark 9:2 - 3

One of the ‘Luminous Mysteries’ appended to the Rosary of our parents and grandparents by the late Pope St John Paul II was the Transfiguration of the Lord. The disciples Peter, James and John are witness to the appearance of Elijah and Moses together with a transfigured Jesus. The image that often attends this experience is that painted by Raphael between 1516 and 1520. This high altar piece now hangs in Pinacoteca Vaticana of the Vatican Museum. I was privileged to view it and meditate on its beauty and composition when I visited Rome.

Yet as rich as Raphael’s expression is, it cannot contain the depth and breadth of what the disciples saw and felt, of the early Church and of our experience of the divine in our own lives, although his attempt is nothing short of majestic.

The Transfiguration, then, is not just a retelling of an event, it is the event. It incorporates the story of Israel’s salvation, the messiahship and mission of Jesus, and reveals the transformation that awaits us within the kingdom (the here and now) but which also anticipates our own exaltation at the end of time.

The Transfiguration reveals a part of the inner mystery of Jesus and part of our potential as human beings seeking divinity. Here is Jesus, alongside Moses, the redeemer of the Hebrews from their slavery in Egypt, with Elijah, the great prophet who worked miracles, who ascended into heaven in a whirlwind and who would return to announce the coming of the Messiah.

The early Church was in need of this affirmation and doubtlessly co-constructed this pericope to advance their understanding of their place in this extraordinary story.

As such the Transfiguration is my story too. It is about my journey. It is about raising my consciousness and awareness of the presence of Jesus in my life and his capacity to transform me into a vehicle for his Good News. It is also your story should you choose to engage in and invest yourself in it. It needs to be retold in your own life, as a story of hope, as fulfilment of a promise.

Raphael’s Transfiguration is most worthy to meditate upon, pray with it as part of your Rosary devotion, but most of all – live it out in hope.

 

Peter Douglas

 

LENT REFLECTION by Anne Chisholm

Blessings may break from stone

Every week through Lent, a writer will reflect on a time of pain and challenge, and what good – if any – came of it. Anne Chisholm begins the series.

Bittersweet fruit of the womb

IN 1975, I inherited my younger sister’s son, Jesse. He was five years old. In 2002 I inherited her granddaughter, Tabitha. She was one. And so, as a consequence of two agonising premature deaths (my sister was 30 when she died; her son was 31) I found myself, despite, as it turned out, being unable to bear my own child, able to become a mother and then a grandmother: to find, in stepping into my sister Clare’s shoes, two of the determining, demanding and most joyful relationships of my life. Through death I had been given some of the greatest happiness I have known.

I have often, over the years, contemplated this paradox, this bittersweet gift. I have even wondered if it might, deep down, be a source of guilt, as if benefiting in any way from my sister’s death should feel wrong. But guilty though I often feel about all kinds of things, I do not and never have felt guilty about this. When I think of Clare, and what she lost and I gained, I feel first deeply sad for her and then a surge of gratitude towards her.

Over the years, people have occasionally asked me if it was a difficult decision to take on Jesse, whether taking on such responsibility was hard. The answer has always been no; it was never difficult, because it felt inevitable and profoundly right. This, surely has always been what families do, have always done, if they can, at all times and in all cultures; someone steps into the gap and tries to look after the motherless or fatherless child. Of course such arrangements, as legends and fairy tales tell, do not always work out well. In my case, though much happiness followed, there was also recurring pain. No child, no matter how well loved and looked after, survives the loss of a parent without damage.

Looking back, I can discern some of the particular reasons why Jesse brought me so much happiness. I had always been more involved with him than most aunts; while I was in a settled relationship with the man I was soon to marry, my sister’s life was complicated and Jesse’s father had disappeared from their lives when he was two.

As a successful model – she was a great beauty – she often travelled at short notice, and we had been a second home for Jesse from when he was a few months old. I was besotted with him from the start, and given that by the time Clare died I had been trying and failing to have a baby myself, I remember very well telling myself to be careful not to love him or need him too much, to remember that he was not mine, that I had to give him back, stand back. And then Clare became ill, and during the eight months it took her to die he spent much of the time with us.

And then I did not have to stand back any more. There was a fearful symmetry at work: a child who needed a mother, and a woman who needed a child. Four days after her death, it was Christmas. We went to church, and the lines, “Unto us a son is given”, made us both cry.

The fact was that Jesse, a loving, golden, happy child, gave us as much as we gave him. He was always a charmer, easy to love. He grew up just as handsome as his mother had been beautiful, and, like her, was drawn into the modelling world at the age of eighteen. The glamour, the travel, the money were seductive, and dangerous. There were drugs, a girlfriend with a cocaine habit, temptations he found impossible to resist. He moved into the music business, ran a nightclub, produced a record or two. We swallowed hard and hoped for the best. He was always cheerful and affectionate with us but I suspected he was in trouble. I was afraid.

Then, in his late twenties, he met Alison. Before long they were living together and in 2000 they had a daughter, Tabitha. Later, Alison told me that after Tabitha was born, Jesse promised to stop the cocaine, and for a while he did; but then he slipped back, and she told him he had to leave. There was a spell in rehab; it seemed to do the trick. He went home, went regularly to AA meetings and found a new job working as a sound man for the BBC. By Tabitha’s first birthday, in November 2001, his life was back on track. Tabitha had already became my granddaughter even more simply and naturally than her father had become my son. She was adorable. I felt very lucky.

Early on a frosty January morning the phone rang. Two days before, I had put Jesse on a train back to London after we had been to a family funeral in the country together. He was fine, happy at home and at work and feeling better, he told me, than for a long time. We made plans to meet soon with Tabitha and hugged goodbye. But that morning he had left home early in a colleague’s car to film an interview for a BBC documentary. On a corner somewhere in Lincolnshire in the dank winter mist, their car hit a truck. The driver colleague was unhurt; Jesse died.

From that dark day on, after the shock that for a while left me barely able to walk or eat or sleep, I knew what I had to do. Again, it was not a duty but a compulsion; everything in me was drawn towards Alison and Tabitha and finding ways to look after them. Again, the seed of my own recovery was the existence of a small child who needed me, who like her father was full of sweetness and energy, who was also too young to begin to understand what she had lost until much later. Her uncomplicated love felt like another gift.

Again, I was lucky: there was an insurance settlement, and help with housing from family friends meant that Alison was able to go on living near me in London. She and I became closer, and looked after each other. In due course Tabitha went to good schools, where she shone. As beautiful as her father, she was more academically inclined, so that suggestions of modelling were not followed up, to my unconcealed relief. Instead, she was so good at gymnastics that she took up circus skills and has since been invited to train with the Team GB winter sports squad as a potential international competitor. She has also started studying Psychology and Neuroscience at Cardiff University. She is now twenty; I am eighty. She is the light of my life.

Although the consolation of a specific religious faith has played no part in this story, as I have little or none, my cultural framework is Christian. I have always understood and often needed, especially in times of trouble, the emotional power and beauty of Christian language and imagery.

At such times, I read a lot of George Herbert and John Donne. Not long after my sister died I found myself at a friend’s house in Tuscany, looking at the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century paintings I loved with new eyes. Not all were soothing; my eyes were drawn less to gentle Madonnas holding plump infants than to the terrors of the Massacre of the Innocents, the limp, small bodies chiming with my fears for Jesse’s safety and of my own inadequacies.

Then one night I had a dream, in which my lovely sister, as beautiful as ever, returned to tell me, very clearly and strongly, that I was not to be so worried and fearful. “I’m all right,” she said, “and everything is going to be all right.” My own version, perhaps, of Dame Julian of Norwich: All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. I had never been given to significant dreams: this one was almost too good to be true. Rationally, I knew it to be wishful thinking, not hard to explain away, but the dream gave me strength then, and has never left me.

Anne Chisholm has written biographies of Rumer Godden, Nancy Cunard, Lord Beaverbrook and Frances Partridge, and has edited the letters of Dora Carrington.

 

From The Tablet, 20 February 2021

 

Enter Galilee

 

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

Mark 1:12 - 15

As a principal I had extraordinary opportunities for renewal. Many years ago I attended the ELIM course run by the Parramatta CEO and during which we were privileged to spend a week with Frank Anderson MSC, composer, musician and theologian. Later I completed an intensive Italian language program at the Instituto Galileo Galilei, a theological summer school, the Sedes Sapientiae in Louvain and another summer school in theology at Christ Church College in Oxford. What a joy it was to meet colleagues from across the globe sharing a common interest and passion. My return to work was always preceded by an expectancy and a refocusing of my energy - and a certainty that I would meet the goals I had set myself.

There is nothing like being invigorated by the experience of a retreat, a thrilling and imaginative conference, travel or adventure, of a significant gathering of your family and friends. There is also the sense of relief that comes after a period of fasting or anticipation. Whatever that enlivening episode might be, we emerge from the chrysalis of that experience with a desire, often a compelling desire, to share it with others. Indeed we have colleagues who have attended the Ecce Homo Institute in Jerusalem or the LA Religious Education Congress and who have returned with renewed vigour.

Following a somewhat lengthy 40 days in the desert (the number 40 in scripture often goes hand in hand with lengthy periods of testing, for example, Moses, Jonah, Ezekiel and Elijah, and, from the Resurrection to the Ascension), Jesus returns to Galilee, proclaiming the Gospel. The renewal that Jesus experiences in the wilderness is a provocation to his ministry. Jesus emerges with a clarity of purpose, with courage and determination. Sustaining that energy into his ministry was his relationship to his Father in prayer (see Mark 1:32f, 6:31, 9:29).

While the extraordinary opportunities are very rich in experience, they also stand side by side with the ordinary, life-giving, transformative moments that occur by happenstance or planning: birthday celebrations, expeditions to (Tasmania's) East Coast, walking the beach with our dogs here in Penguin, a day's reflection with a school staff, planning with our team, eating marvellous food, cracking a bottle of Janz - just because, getting messages from old friends, the birth of a new grandchild.

One more ordinary opportunity that can strike home is this liturgical season of Lent. In the northern hemisphere from which it originates, Lent signals the lengthening (hence 'lent') of days as spring begins. The daily readings provided in the lectionary are a deeply rich source of encouragement, self-reflection and focus. Now is the time to set our goals, to let go of the parts of our lives that no longer give us life, ready to leave the 'wilderness' and to enter the 'Galilee' of everyday life. The five weeks of Lent lead us to the Cross, and ultimately, to the Risen Christ.

 

Peter Douglas

 

An extract from Cardinal Pell’s Prison Journal, Volume 1

 

The author describes how solitary confinement during Holy Week was helped by phoning friends, the BBC’s Songs of Praise and praying for his fellow prisoners

 

SUNDAY, 3 March 2019 THIS IS THE FIRST Sunday for many decades, apart from illness, that I have not attended or celebrated Sunday Mass – probably for more than seventy years. I wasn’t even able to receive Communion.

The first reading in the breviary today has Job’s troubles just beginning. It all lies ahead for him… I took some consolation from Job, because his good fortune was restored in this life, unlike the good Lord’s, and I still believe that the only just verdict for the judges is to quash the convictions. …..Muslim chants floating into my cell. I wonder who he is….I am not sure what religion he follows as he claims to be god or a messiah. A bit noisier tonight with at least one fellow shouting out in distress.

Fidelity to Christ and his teaching remains indispensable for any fruitful Catholicism, any religious revival. This is why the “approved” Argentinian and Maltese interpretations of Amoris Laetitia are so dangerous. They go against the teaching of the Lord on adultery and the teachings of St Paul on the necessary dispositions to receive Holy Communion properly.

Called unexpectedly for a medical check this morning. All was well, although my blood pressure (standing 120/80) was low, as I suspected, because I was feeling a little lethargic.

God our Father, I pray for all my fellow prisoners, especially those who have written to me. Help them all to see their true selves; indeed, help me, too, to do this better myself. Bring all of them some peace of mind, especially those who most certainly do not possess it. EASTER SUNDAY, 21 April 2019 I CANNOT REMEMBER the last time I did not celebrate Easter with a community or in a church. This has probably been my invariable practice since before I reached the age of reason. I have celebrated the Easter ceremonies as a priest for nearly fiftythree years. But not this year. When phoning friends and family during my exercise spells outside (the only permitted time to phone), I was asked a number of times whether I was able to attend Mass, receive Communion during the Triduum, or even participate in an ecumenical service. My answer was no.

I was not able to prepare the Easter candle outside the cathedral affirming that all time, all ages, all glory and power belong to the (risen) Christ.

I was not able to turn in the sanctuary to face the congregation and see the light from the newly lit candles spread slowly but surely in fits and starts through the dark vault of the cathedral… I renewed my baptismal promises quietly to myself, not with the newly baptised and the cathedral congregation. And, of course, I could not consecrate the bread and the wine or receive Communion. EASTER MONDAY, 22 April 2019 WHILE I COULD FIND very little religious television on Good Friday, this was not the situation on Easter Sunday, and I watched every program as a religious substitute for the real thing…The English program Songs of Praise was a beautiful Easter service celebrated in St Mary’s [Anglican] Church, Portsmouth, UK, many hymns, with a couple from Handel, including “My Redeemer Liveth”… The news clip of the Holy Father’s Easter Sunday Mass in St Peter’s Square showed an immense congregation filling even the Via della Conciliazione. It is strange that Christian programs at Easter don’t address the central message.

I have spent a good part of the last three days opening letters of support and Easter greetings. They nearly always promise prayers, which is consoling, and often contain good advice, prayers, poems, or holy cards.

I found today something of an anticlimax after yesterday’s feast, so when one message urged me to remember that each day passed meant that one less remained, I was heartened.

 

Extract from The Catholic Herald (January/February 2021) p. 26