catholicweekly.com.au 17 29, March, 2020 E ditorial & letters Dorin’s World Send your letters to:
[email protected] By the post: The Editor, Level 13, 133 Liverpool St, Sydney NSW 2000 AUSTRALIA Put self-isolation to good spiritual use! I have been in self isolation for 10 days. In this time I have: 1. Prayed Morning and Evening Prayer with an Anglican Priest and 15 other people - Fr Mathew Crane has been reading these prayers on Facebook Live. You can follow the prayers on the Daily Prayer app 2. Attended Mass on Youtube and Zoom 3. Prayed morning and evening Prayer on musicalbreviary.com 4. Need to maintain body, mind and soul - schedule at least 5 ‘social’ events that you can do remotely from home: on- line coffee dates; if you live alone contact another friend who lives alone and have a facetime dinner together 5. Go outside and enjoy some sun- shine and fresh air. Good luck! Clara Geoghegan Co-Director, Siena Institute Australia Remember, Mass has been on TV since 1971 W ith Catholics unable to cur- rently attend Mass physically because of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, we hear a lot about being able to watch Mass online (e.g. Masses from St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney on its website). However, some Catholics ( especial- ly a lot of elderly Catholics ) do not have access to the internet. It is therefore im- portant to get the message out about “Mass For You At Home” which is broad- cast on Channel 10 on Sunday mornings at 6am. Thank you to Channel 10 which has broadcast “Mass For You At Home” since 1971 ( one of the longest running television programs on Australian televi- sion, if not the longest). Let us pray that God will give us strength during these challenging times and let us pray for the souls of those people who have died fromCOVID-19 and their families. Joe Alvaro Zetland NSW England will once again become the dowry of Mary I n a sermon preached in 1912, Ronald Knox bemoaned the separation of the Anglican Church from its “mother”: “Sorrowing, she calls like a Mother of old, who sought her Son and could not find Him as he sat refuting the doctors in the Temple … England will once again become the dowry of Mary and the Church of England will once again be builded on the rock she was hewn from, and find a place, although it be a place of penitence and tears, in the eternal purposes of God.” Mary Walsh Vaucluse NSW Things forgotten about the abortion debate I na Kite ( Catholic Weekly 15 March) refers to “anecdotal” arguments by pro-lifers in raising public aware- ness. She adds “that protesting against the laws and legislation is not going to put a stop to unlawful termination of pregnancy”. I remind her of the recent proposed abortion legislation that was foisted on the NSW parliament. The three main appalling prospective laws in its original formwere: 1. There was no limit to when an abortion could be performed 2. There was no inhibition in respect of sex selec- tion. Ina Kite would be quite aware that this practice invariably results in the ter- mination of female babies. 3. If a wom- an were to approach a doctor requesting an abortion and that doctor was pro-life, then he/she would have been bound by law to have referred that woman to an abortionist. That doctor would have been forced by law to be complicit in the procedure. Because of pro-life protesters, those prospective barbaric laws were reviewed. John Maguire Grose Vale NSW Without Mass spiritual Communion still possible T his prayer which I found on the in- ternet may be helpful for many of us who are now unable to attend Holy Mass: Spiritual Communion O, Holy Angel at my side, Go to church for me, And kneel in my place at Holy Mass Where I desire to be. At offertory, in my stead, Take all I am and own And offer it as a sacrifice Upon the altar-throne. At Holy Consecration’s bell, Adore, with Seraph’s love, My Jesus, hidden in the host, Come down fromHeaven above. Then pray for those I dearly love, And those who cause me grief, That Jesus’ blood may cleanse all hearts And suffering souls relieve. And when the priest Communion takes, O, bring my Lord to me, That His sweet Heart may rest on mine, And I, His altar be! Pray that this Sacrifice Divine May mankind‘s sins efface. Then bring my Jesus’ blessings home, The pledge of every grace. Amen. Paul Lucas Sydney NSW Time to have courage and live a new faith T his is a Lent none of us will ever forget. It feels, it seems, that we are somehow being sifted. As an in- visible virus has wreaked utter havoc on a global scale we feel as if we are witnessing and experienc- ing something that we have only ever read about in history books and seen portrayed by actors in movies. The differ- ence is that this is no movie, no work of fiction. This is bru- tal reality. This is life. And yet while the blows have hit Catholics in a unique way as our churches have been ordered closed by govern- ment decree, it is increasingly becoming apparent that many Catholics have begun to realise that among the chaos of a pandemic a divine invitation is silently, yet providen- tially, being presented to us. Despite the chaos, the uncer- tainty and the fear, God was – and is – silently and invisibly revealing his divine love for us in a thousand ways, inviting us to enter more deeply into the desert of this moment. The closure of Sydney and Australia’s churches hit home hard. It was not for nothing that Archbishop Anthony Fish- er OP wrote in his updated pastoral of 23 March that it was with “a heavy heart” he was ordering the closure of church- es throughout the archdiocese in accordance with the gov- ernment’s order. Archbishop Fisher had done his best to keep our churches open so that we - a Eucharistic people above all other things - could continue to gather around the Lord, to receive the Risen Christ, to draw closer to Him and to pray to He Who is our Brother, our Saviour, the Son of the Most High. In the end, as it is sometimes said, there were no other options left. Yet it was also not for nothing that Archbishop Fisher wrote that he was certain that faith would shine forth even more brightly. After all, when everything is removed from us, we are confronted by one fundamental question above all others: what are we to do, or, to put it another way, what is to be done? This question is the one which will determine everything as we go forward. It seems that we laity, at least, have temporarily lost our easy access to our most precious possession: Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, Jesus in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, Je- sus Christ in the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Orders and Marriage. Even the Sacrament of the Annointing of the Sick seems difficult to receive in some senses, limited as it is now by official government decree. Yet is it possible that we, too, can begin to enter into the mystery of that truly terrifying and incomprehensible moment when even God appears to be forsaken of God, when those words “Eli! Eli! Lama sabachthani?” (My God, my God, why have you for- saken me?”) are heard gasped out from the Cross? Meanwhile, we also seem to have lost that other most precious possession which is also the distinctive and es- sential hallmarks of the Church which flows directly from the Lord: our communion in Him and with each other. Yet we need to remember that this impression is only a feeling, an emotion (although completely understandable) as the seeming normality and even the quotidian nature we had allowed to seep into our hearts about what we think are our ordinary lives and our faith have all been exploded by the coronavirus hand grenade. But even this is, in a certain way, a good thing. Our com- placency about everything to do with our lives and the world has been completely rocked. Yet this abrupt, disrup- tive break with the reality of ‘normal’ life can, in its own way, be good for us. We are forced by necessity back on prayer – true prayer – that personal, totally honest and intimate con- versation where God wishes to whisper personal words of encouragement and love into every ear, every heart. We should not, therefore, succumb to the temptation (and it is a temptation) of negativity, criticism and – worst of all – despair. Instead, we should open our eyes to who we really are. We can, if we like, remember the Christians of Japan and their martyrs who, for 250 or so years during the Edo period (from 1603 until 1868) under the rule of the Tokugawa Sho- gunate saw their faith banned and persecuted. Yet they pre- served the faith. When Catholic missionaries returned in the 19th Century, they found Japanese Catholics praying the Ro- sary at shrines to the Blessed VirginMary. Now is a time to remember who we are and what we are expected to be. We are sons and daughters of the Church, we are Christians, we are the Church. Now is the time to rediscover the primacy of our faith over everything else in our lives, to unleash its power in both old and new ways for not just ourselves but everyone, everywhere. Doing this, we cannot become the human flotsam and jetsam of the 21st Century, because we have His guarantee. This invisible deadly little virus cannot destroy us. We are people of hope. LETTERS NEWS