It is, incredibly, 40 years since my father entered eternal life. When he died my youngest brother and sister were in their infancy. They barely knew him but for the stories they were told. Even so, I was only 22. But what a privilege it has been to have known my dad, to have been loved by him and so well prepared for life. Of course, all my siblings had their struggles, but we have been all the more stronger because our father did what good fathers do. He taught us to look to the future, to make the best of our education and the opportunities that were available to us, to respect and love our family, and to dream about what is possible. He taught us about hope. He took the words of St Paul to heart:
Everything that was written long ago in the scriptures was meant to teach us something about hope from the examples scripture gives of how many people who did not give up were helped by God. (Romans 15:4)
When Paul wrote to the Romans he expressly understood that God’s action in the world, his ‘help’ is a result of the hope they possessed. It is not a passive hope, such as when we can, with some affectation say, ‘I hope everything will go well’. It is a hope that requires our active participation: I will love you, care for you, feed you and clothe you, visit you and be your companion. That is what hope is. Hope is demanding, we must know what it asks of us.
And so John Baptist’s voice in wilderness heralds the coming of the Messiah (Matthew 3:1 – 12), Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. It is our responsibility to ensure that we ourselves are ready, and we have prepared what is necessary for the arrival of the Lord. We become ready by familiarising ourselves with the message, being willing and able participants, being alert and aware, using all of our wits. And there are things that must be organised: the community, the reception, the welcome, the acknowledgement, the celebration, the anticipated mission, the difficulties and trials ahead, the promise and fulfilment. There is no naked hope, it is, like all enterprises, planned.
The story of salvation is not of a flailing humanity before an imperious God. From the moment of our first parents’ fall, a plan that brought God and man to the one table to negotiate, to plead and to bargain for redemption was hammered out. God required that active and lived out hope in order for the plan to come to fruition. As Christians it is our belief that Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary of Nazareth enfleshed that hope and thus fulfilled the plan promised by God.
The voice that comes from the wilderness calls us to account for our preparation We too are invited and called to enflesh that hope in our daily lives, and no more so than in our marriages and in our families. Be present to your family, share your hope and live life to the full.
Next Sunday is the 2nd Sunday of Advent. Prepare the way of the Lord!
Peter Douglas
HEAD OF SCHOOL SERVICES, NORTH
NEW GRANNY TRACIE WELCOMES YOUNG MAX CLYNE
AFTER PRE-DINNER DRINKS WITH PETER AND TONI AT THEIR HOME 'MARYVILLE' IN DEVONPORT
TAKING OUR RIGHTFUL PLACE WITH
THE SCHEME OF THINGS
By Ron Rolheiser
What do we need to achieve to make us happy? What brings us peace and meaning?
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once wrote this about his own life: “Some sort of essential instinct makes me guess at the joy, as the only worthwhile joy, of co-operating as one individual atom in the final establishment of a world; and ultimately nothing else can mean anything to me. To release some infinitesimal quantity of the absolute, to free one fragment of being, forever – everything else is but intolerable futility.”
For him, at the end of the day, there is only one worthwhile joy, the feeling you get from cooperating rightfully within the big picture of things, from taking your place within the great cosmic jigsaw puzzle. Joy and meaning come from being one tiny piece within the overall progress of the universe, nothing more and nothing less.
At first glance this might all seem a bit abstract, idiosyncratic, and applicable only to the spiritually elite, but what Teilhard says here is really true for everyone. We all feel this, deep down, though perhaps we are not as aware of it as he was. What he says is universally true. There is only one thing that can bring real meaning, only one joy that doesn’t bring as much anxiety as peace, and that joy is had only when we fill-in with our own lives that particular space within the universe that has been uniquely allotted to us and when we take no more space and no less space than is truly ours.
But how is this true? When and how do we feel these things?
We experience these things all the time in our everyday lives. Why do we feel good when we succeed at anything? Is it because we are admired for it, our ego gets stroked, or because we enjoy the satisfaction of doing something well? Yes, for all of these reasons, though none is the deepest one. Ultimately, though we aren’t generally aware of it, we feel good because, deep down, we have contributed our little piece to the big picture, filled in a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that only we can provide, been one necessary atom in the final establishment of things. That is why we feel good whenever we build something, help someone, give birth to something, help raise someone, teach something, complete something, nurse someone, perform a successful surgery, score a goal, clean a bathroom, cook a meal, do the dishes, or simply do anything properly. The satisfaction we feel at these times has a deep root. We have just filled in our little piece in the big picture, helped free up one fragment of being.
Conversely, why do we feel badly whenever we fail at something, betray someone, or realize that we have wasted some of our potential? Is this simply a feeling of wounded pride, frustration, shame? Yes, all of these things, but, again, it is more. Ultimately we feel a certain intolerable futility because we have not taken our rightful place in the cosmos, not filled in our proper piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
It can be helpful to recognize this more consciously, especially so as not to misread our own restlessness. Why do I say this?
Because we are born so restless, so incurably driven by the sense that we are special and meant to achieve something of significance. Nobody wants to live and not leave some mark in the world. “Have child, plant a tree, write a book!” says a popular axiom. Translated that means: “Make sure you do something to guarantee, a little at least, your own immortality.” We often lack the self-knowledge or honesty to admit this, but something inside us (the part that fuels our restlessness) understands exactly what that means. We want and need to leave a permanent mark somewhere. We are born for that reason.
But generally we misread this restless and what it is asking of us. The logic runs this way: We know that we need to leave a permanent mark somewhere. But we think we can only do this by becoming famous in some way, a person known to the world, a household word, someone with his or her name in lights, on the cover of TIME magazine. That is why we are always trying to achieve something of significance, something that will stand out, something that will last. Most often though our lives do not seem to measure up. We feel ourselves small-town, ordinary, unimportant, and so our restlessness begins to eat us up.
Our everyday satisfactions and disappointments though can teach us something. We need to listen closely to what makes us feel good or bad. Our lives can seem small, but we do not especially enlarge them through fame and recognition. You don’t get immortality – nor restfulness – for being a superstar. You get these for filling in that little piece of the big picture, that one wee atom, that is uniquely yours.
Peter's Whereabouts for the next two weeks:
Upcoming Events:
From Larmenier - St Leonards:
From St Thomas More's - Newstead:
From St Anthony's - Riverside:
From Sacred Heart - Ulverstone:
From St Patrick's College - Prospect:
Z
From Stella Maris - Burnie:
From Marist Regional College - Burnie:
From St Patrick's - Latrobe:
From St Joseph's - Roseberry:
From Our Lady of Mercy - Deloraine:
From St Brigid's - Wynyard:
From St Brendan Shaw College - Devonport:
From Sacred Heart - Launceston:
