Welcome to St Joan of Arc Parish Haberfield Parish Priest: Fr Phillip Zadro Presbytery Office: 97 Dalhousie St Haberfield NSW 2045 P: 02 9798 6657 E: [email protected] W: www.stjoanofarc.org.au Parish Secretary: Tuesday – Wednesday 9.30am—2.30pm 3rd September, 2017 YEAR A 22ND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME A reading from the prophet Jeremiah 20:79 You have seduced me, Lord, and I have let myself be seduced; you have overpowered me: you were the stronger. I am a daily laughing-stock, everybody's butt. Each time I speak the word, I have to howl and proclaim: 'Violence and ruin!' The word of the Lord has meant for me insult, derision, all day long. I used to say, 'I will not think about him, I will not speak in his name any more.' Then there seemed to be a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones. The effort to restrain it wearied me, I could not bear it. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Responsorial Psalm 62:2-6. 8-9 R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God. O God, you are my God, for you I long; for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water. R. So I gaze on you in the sanctuary to see your strength and your glory. For your love is better than life, my lips will speak your praise. R. So I will bless you all my life, in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul shall be filled as with a banquet, my mouth shall praise you with joy. R. For you have been my help; in the shadow of your wings I rejoice. My soul clings to you; your right hand holds me fast. R. A reading from the letter of St Paul to the Romans 12:1-2 Think of God's mercy, my brothers, and worship him, I beg you, in a way that is worthy of thinking beings, by offering your living bodies as a holy sacrifice, truly pleasing to God. Do not model yourselves on the behaviour of the world around you, but let your behaviour change, modelled by your new mind. This is the only way to discover the will of God and know what is good, what it is that God wants, what is the perfect thing to do. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Gospel Acclamation Ephesians 1:17. 18 Alleluia, alleluia! May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ enlighten the eyes of our heart, that we might see how great is the hope to which we are called. Alleluia! A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew 16:21-27 Jesus began to make it clear to his disciples that he was destined to go to Jerusalem and suffer grievously at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, to be put to death and to be raised up on the third day. Then, taking him aside, Peter started to remonstrate with him. 'Heaven preserve you, Lord,' he said. 'This must not happen to you.' But he turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God's way but man's.' Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it. What, then, will a man gain if he wins the whole world and ruins his life? Or what has a man to offer in exchange for his life? 'For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and, when he does, he will reward each one according to his behaviour.' The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. © LabOra Worship Liturgy Brisbane 2017 YEAR A 22ND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Page 4 Reflection “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him… take up his cross and follow me.” Thinking people have always wondered what a truly good person would be like and how everyone else would interact with such a person. Usually the prognosis is not a good one. In one famous example from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, the future for a truly moral person is said to hold: “flogging, torture on the rack, imprisonment in chains, having his eyes burnt out, and every ordeal in the book, up to and including being impaled on a stake. Then at last he’ll realise that one’s goal should be not actual morality, but the appearance of morality.” So even the religious thinkers before the time of Jesus thought that a truly good person would be turned upon by the rest of humanity. The Old Testament echoes this thinking. In the Wisdom of Solomon, when considering the life of a righteous man, the unjust say about him: “the very sight of him is a burden to us… let us test him with insult and torture… let us condemn him to a shameful death”. So, far from being an escapist view of the world, or a sort of emotional security blanket, the religious concept of living always had a realistic, unflinching view of fallen humanity. The pride, dislocation and envy described is a true portrait of people at their worst. However, we also believe that, despite the Fall, humanity is still basically good. We also believe that God still loves us and thinks our humanity worth redeeming. Even if we have given up on humanity, God has not. Jesus is that righteous and truly good man dreamed of by Plato and foretold by the Old Testament. Joined to his divinity, his humanity is entirely untouched by defect or evil. It was his goal in life to heal and restore our fallen humanity. This, he knew, would cost him his life. It was through his priestly offering of himself that this would be accomplished. Jesus is saviour, priest and victim. All the sacrifices of the Old Testament pointed towards the one definitive sacrifice of Calvary. The priesthood of the Old Testament was a foreshadowing of the high priesthood of Christ when at last he came. John the Baptist spoke for them all when he said of Jesus: “He must increase, I must decrease.” Pride and its consequences, dislocation and violence, are at the heart of humanity’s rebellion against God. Pride, dislocation and violence have become the inherited spiritual traits of the human race. Only God has the power to heal such a disaster, and only someone fully human could do it meaningfully. It was to heal us from the inside, as it were, that Jesus took on our humanity and suffered such a terrible death. God could have restored and healed everything by a simple act of will, but out of love for us, what can be termed solidarity, God became one of us and lived out the consequences to the full. We might hesitate to consider the application of all this to our own lives. However, Jesus makes it clear in his teaching what the application is: “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Left to ourselves, this would be daunting, even impossible, task. However, through the help of grace we can respond generously to this challenge. The sacrament of baptism conforms us spiritually to the cross and death of Christ, so we already have a disposition to follow him. The Eucharist makes present his sacrificial death on Calvary, so that we can be strengthened by the power of Christ himself. Through his victory over suffering and death, we are given the strength to bear our own cross. When we fail in this calling, the sacrament of reconciliation is there to heal us and restore us. Does this mean we should seek out suffering and sorrow? Surely not. We are here to flourish, but in doing so suffering will inevitably come our way. It is how we react to it that is crucial. We can accept and integrate it as part of our vocation to be fully human, or we can try to avoid it and resent it. In trying to become a fully good person we will come up against many difficulties. Some will be rooted in our own sins, others will be external temptations and difficulties. However, it is to this great vocation that Jesus is summoning us today. The Living Word The Archbishop of Sydney in his commitment to ensuring the safety of children, young people and vulnerable adults in our community established, in November 2015, the Safeguarding and Ministerial Integrity Office (Safeguarding Office). The role of the Safeguarding Office is to communicate the child protection policy and raise awareness regarding our collective responsibility to protect the safety and well being of children and the vulnerable. The policy applies to all of us, within the Archdiocese, who may be expected to have contact with children in the course of our respective ministry. That includes myself as Parish Priest, our Parish Secretary and all volunteers. Therefore, together we all need to know and understand how integral our roll is in safeguarding children and those that find themselves in a vulnerable situation. The Safeguarding Office recommends that all volunteers attend an induction session on the child protection policy and sign a code of conduct for working with children. EUCHARISTIC FAST. Those who receive holy communion are to abstain for one hour beforehand from all food and drink with the exception of water and medicine. This does not apply to the elderly, the sick and those who care for them, or to priests celebrating a second or third Mass on a given day. It most strongly recommended that the faithful receive holy communion in the course of a Eucharistic celebration. CCL 918-919 Do you know what this is?