Archbishop Peter Hundt will hold a virtual meeting with priests of the Archdiocese on  Friday, June 19 to discuss the  gradual re-openings of our parish properties.  Please anticipate an update before the end of this month.    

                         
   
★    The farmer was driving to market when a man yells out to him, “What’s in your truck?”
    “Manure,” the farmer called back.  
     “What are you going to do with it?”
    “Put it on my strawberries.”
     “Hah! It seems to me that sugar and cream is a much better option!”

★    “Had trouble with both of my wives,” said an elderly man.
     “What kind of trouble?”
    “First one ran off one me.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry.  And the second?”
    “Didn’t.”
SOURCE:  The Book of Clean Jokes, pages 26-27
                                
                       
Out walking a few days ago in a wooded area near our residence, I was pulled out of my reverie by a loud bird-call. I looked around, and at the top of a tree I noticed a cardinal, because of his gender entitled to splendid ecclesiastical robes, giving full-throated vent to his song.

This awakened me to the fact that over recent decades birds and bird songs, a regular pleasant experience of my youth, had gradually faded away as air quality diminished and billions of birds perished.

Where have the birds gone? I fondly remember grassy expanses where three or four robins were busily hunting for worms and warbling away. They left. But now robins and their friends have become more numerous.

Why is this so?  COVID-19 is a threat to all of us, a source of anxiety especially for the old, but our efforts to protect ourselves have slowed down the pace of our lives, with the result that the air we breathe, together with our feathered friends, is much less polluted.

Most are able to breathe more slowly and deeply. Our lives are more uncluttered, more regular, with more time for personal relations with God and neighbour. We mostly avoid close up conversations, but the internet applications available to us enable us not only to talk, but do so face to face, and be involved in group as well as personal interactions.

We are learning new patterns. Our experience readily tells us that there are no blessings that do not involve burdens, but also let us realize that there are no burdens – in this case those of Covid-19 – that do not involve a blessing.

Some do not experience that blessing: maybe those whose financial resources are dwindling, or those in close contact with the disease as caregivers or victims. But most feel blessed by countless examples of solidarity, responsible behaviour, on the part of the vast majority who in solidarity with others willingly embrace restrictions, and on the part of most political leaders who do their best to deal effectively with this crisis rather than use it as a way to feather their own nest towards re-election.

The bird-call I heard, and the reflection it evoked in me, invites me and all of us to hear an other call, an urgent call to wake up. We have been wrenched out of the normal cycle of our lives and forced to live more simply and more slowly. We see what life could be.

People who live in huge supercities – for example in India – are able at this time to open their lungs and welcome breathable air. The usual rat-race has subsided. Once the pandemic is over, do we want to return to the old normal, or to a new normal?

Do we want an economy moving ever faster in the quest for profits, leaving in the lurch human persons and the earthly home God gives them, or are we ready to take collective steps to change the pace of our lives?

Will selfishness and self-protection take over again, or are we ready to move towards a different and better world?
SOURCE:   Jean Marc Laporte, SJ, igNation, June 3, 2020
                               

   

Loving God, in Jesus you were bullied, beaten, and killed.
You are always on the side of those whose souls or bodies are mistreated.
While I cannot be present with my body at the protests right now,
I stand with all those who stand up for justice.
Uphold them.
Keep them safe.

Grant us the courage to stand beside all who are harmed by the violence of racism
with out bodies and our prayers.
Give us the words to speak out for those whose breath has been taken.

Enkindle in our hearts the fire of your love
that together we might end the scourge of racism
that has infected our nation.
    Source:   Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC
                            
                              

“Stand firm in your struggle and care for each other as brothers and sisters. I pray for you, I pray with you. I want to ask God our Father to bless you, to fill you with his love, and to defend you on this path, giving you the strength that keeps us standing tall and that never disappoints: hope. Please pray for me, because I need it too.”
Pope Francis

                            
Silence means rest, rest of the body and mind in which we become available for him whose heart is greater than ours.  That is very threatening; it is like giving up control over our actions and thoughts, allowing something creative to happen not by us but to us. Is it so amazing that we are so often tired and exhausted, trying to be master’s of ourselves, wanting to grasp the ultimate meaning of our existence, struggling with our identity?  Silence is that moment in which we not only stop the discussion with others but also the inner discussions with ourselves, in which we can breathe in freely and accept our identity as a gift. “Not I live, but He lives in me.”  It is in this silence that the Spirit of God can pray in us and continue his creative work in us… Without silence the Spirit will die in us and the creative energy of our life will float away and leave us alone, cold, and tired. Without silence we will lose our centre and become the victim of the many who constantly demand our attention.
Henri Nouwen, You Are The Beloved, Clear the Path to Your Heart, May 1

                            
In a recent edition of The Catholic Register (May 17, 2020), a letter to the editor spoke of our “domestic churches”.  This concept and practice began with early Christianity when there were no church buildings.  For us today, it refers to families and individuals in their own homes, with their in-home religious devotions, practices, statues, holy pictures, prayers and so forth.
                
During this prolonged absence from Sunday and weekday Mass, have you come to appreciate even more your own family rituals and prayers?  Have you revived prayers and rituals you once knew?  Has your family devised their own new religious ambience?  Children’s drawings of gospel stories or saints?  Thanksgiving family time each day?  A new flower or vegetable garden: co-operating with God’s creativity?  Sharing with children and adolescents stories of deceased relatives and friends: how you were nourished by their faith, hope and charity?  What new insights have arisen?  Hymn singing?  Visual reminders of Jesus and the saints?

The writer concludes his letter by saying, “Then when the pandemic is over, these domestic churches, having been nurtured, fed and valued in their own right, will gather again as Church to worship and give thanks together with their priest and with other families.” It is good to know that our Jewish brothers and sisters have their own in-home rituals and prayers, each Sabbath evening and at key religious celebrations during the year.
Fr. Wayne Bolton, SJ
 
Are we missing something? Surely the fact that more people are online than in church of a Sunday cannot be ignored? When the virus is defeated we cannot go back to where we were. The Holy Spirit, this Pentecost time as in every Pentecost time, calls us to turn tragedy into mission.

The many who go online to hear a word of God must not be switched off or redirected to the church up the road. They have assembled to pray, in anxiety, in fear, in expectation, in hope – who knows? They are in a new place of prayer, certainly new to those of us who dwell in pews.

Prayer is a place as much as an utterance of words. Prayer, the saying and listening of it, creates a chapel of the mind and spirit. When the Holy Spirit nudges us into prayer we are led into the presence of God. The presence of God-in-Jesus is as real in these new online chapels as in any sacrament, as in any church, as in any tabernacle. God does not do real absence. Jesus did not confine himself to Nazareth, or Galilee, or even Jerusalem. The whole point of Ascension is to tell that he is not here; he is everywhere.

In these dark days, the Holy Spirit has brought to our attention a host of chapels where the Lord has gone before us. We have to stop complaining that our churches are closed and start embracing the chapels that are open.

(Dr.) Joseph O’Hanlon
Nottingham, England

SOURCE:   The Tablet,  June 6, 2020,  page