Saturday Prayers: join us in prayer - https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86170701532 - for Vikki & Chris, OLOF parishioners who need our prayers, and for your personal intentions this Saturday, 27 June, at 8pm.
Online Mass, 10.30am each Sunday: https://zoom.us/j/828192758
Melchior's Sunday Meditation, 6pm each Sunday: https://youtu.be/56G5mmFmDnc (How to have an effortless meditation)
Catechism Registration for 2020-21 is now open. Please complete the online form on the 'About Us/Catechism Registration' section of the website asap (see link at the bottom of this email) so that we can organise classes and order the books. The 2020-21 schedule can be found on the Catechism section of the home page. If you'd like to register your child/ren please also read the Information Letter by clicking on 'read more' in order to understand our expectations of you, the parents.
Catechism Teaching: we have several vacancies for 2020-21: Infants, Pre-FHC, FHC and possibly one of our older classes. Please consider helping your community in this valuable way and email us to find out more.
Rescheduled FHC Mass: we hope to reschedule the 2020 FHC Mass on Sunday, 6 December 2020 with a rehearsal on Saturday, 5 December - both in Champittet.
First Holy Communion student, Adda Frangajei's reflection on nature from last week:
One of the things I noticed were the flowers. Earlier this year they were just sprouts and now they are white beautiful flowers. Another thing I noticed were the French alps. In winter the French Alps were just boring mountains covered in snow, now you can see so much more like trees, flowers,and animals. I noticed the lake because the water is so calm. The wind was really cold but I liked the cold breeze blowing on me. When I hear the birds I feel like I can hear what they are saying. Sometimes I feel like they are fighting or happy or even mocking other birds. I also met my friends, Shlok, Michael and Michael's friend. In the morning the sun felt so good on me it wasn't too hot or too cold. From my perspective I think the things I saw are a reflection of the beauty of God's creation. Adda
A Communion of Subjects - Richard Rohr
Acknowledging the intrinsic value, beauty, and even soul of creation, elements, plants, and animals is a major paradigm shift for most Western Christians. In fact, many in the past often dismissed such thinking as animism or paganism. We limited God’s love and salvation to our own human species and, then, in this theology of scarcity, we did not even have enough love left to cover all of humanity! To be honest, God ended up looking quite stingy and inept—hardly “victorious,” as our Easter hymns claim.
The word profane comes from the Latin words pro, meaning “in front of,” and fanum, meaning “temple.” We thought we lived “outside the temple.” Without a nature-based spirituality, it was a profane universe, bereft of Spirit. We had to keep building shrines and churches to capture and hold our now domesticated and tamed God. Soon we did not know where to look for the divine, as we made God’s presence so limited. We became like fish swimming around looking for water, and often arguing about who owned the water!
I’m not saying that God is all things or that all things are God (pantheism). I am saying that each living thing reveals some aspect of God. God is greater than the whole of our universe, and as Creator inter-penetrates all created things (panentheism).
When God manifests spirit through matter, then matter becomes a holy thing. The material world is the place where we can comfortably worship God just by walking on it, loving it, and respecting it. Everything visible, without exception, is the outpouring of God. What else could it really be? The incarnation is not only “God becoming Jesus.” It is a much broader event, which is why John’s Gospel first describes God’s presence in the general word “flesh” (John 1:14). This is the ubiquitous Christ that we continue to encounter in other human beings, in a mountain, a blade of grass, a spider web, or a starling.
When we can enjoy all these things as holy, “the world becomes a communion of subjects more than a collection of objects” as the “geologian” Fr. Thomas Berry (1914–2009) said so wisely. [1]
When we love something, we grant it soul, we see its soul, and we let its soul touch ours. We must love something deeply to know its soul (anima). Before the resonance of love, we are largely blind to the meaning, value, and power of ordinary things to “save” us and help us live in union with the source of all being. In fact, until we can appreciate and even delight in the soul of other things, even trees and animals, we probably haven’t discovered our own souls either. Soul knows soul through love, which is why it’s the great commandment (Matthew 22:36).
Gateway to Action & Contemplation:
What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do?
Prayer for Our Community:
O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God. Amen.