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The Cross And The Covenant
BY FR. JEREMY MILLER, O.P.
In recent weeks I have been
pondering the experience of “being
covenanted,” a real blessing of
acceptance and affirmation, and the fact
that it is never an unmixed bliss. Some
element of pain, of unfulfillment, ever
lurks. I recall Cardinal Newman writing
that such is “the rule of life here
below.”
Whether it was the subconscious
impress of this pondering or the Bible
readings we will be hearing during the
Sundays of Lent which I just read
through, the experience of Covenant
and Cross will be the thread running
through these meditations. I ought to
begin by saying what these meditations
are not meant to be. They are not to be
analyses of the Sunday readings.
Preachers and Lenten Bible Study
groups can make use of the many fine
commentaries circulating these days.
Nor are they meditations out of thin air.
Instead they will have a gentle
anchoring in each Sunday’s readings and
are directed to your own use, or better
yet, your family’s.
TK&pi. 7t<yel
The Chapel Girl
It cost six pence to get through the
front door of the Cathedral in Dublin
for Sunday Mass. It wasn’t exactly an
admission, but the scalded faced usher
with the vaselined stiff mustache
scowled his best, if the coin did not
appear.
The side doors were much
friendlier. They only cost two pence.
And the ushers were much friendlier.
Penniless kids, side stepping the gaping
box, were
tolerated. It was
less formal on the
side too and best
of all, there were
no other collect
ions. That is - none
till the dinner hour
began back at the
ranch.
Just when
those famous
Sunday smells were
reaching gourmet proportions, her
gentle knock would explode. Everyone
knew it and childish clamors vied to
fulfill the pledge. From the designated
ledge, beside the milk money, the small
coin would be chosen. It quickly
disappeared into the grateful hand and
the fixed smile of our chapel girl.
The chapel girl was as mysterious
to us as the antics of Mandrake. Her
once a week apparition was as punctual
as the Sunday roast. Like an emerging
priestess she would arrive to perform
her service, accept her tith, disappearing
immediately into the plants of the lady
next door.
The next question often arose
between the refusal of the cabbage and
the dispensing of the ice cream. Where
did her bag of coins go? That
imponderable had to be approached
gingerly. The ice cream was at stake if
an anti clerical tone was detected. The
pastor, seemingly, found all kinds of
labor for the minute coin, gleaned from
the chapel girl’s pilgrimage.
And he did. The piece of silver
travelled hard and fast during the week
ahead. With a miraculous touch, he
broke it up touching want and wear
from one end of the parish to the other.
The penny dinners taking beggers
off the streets got some. And so did the
orphans, seen often during their
regimented evening walks. The ever
present painters, who could wear their
caps in Church needed it and the man
who cleaned the burned out candles in
the greasy cassock shared. The broken
notes on the great organ sometimes got
fixed.
There was the chapel-of-ease, long
promised to the back end of the parish
and the free boot fund as winter
approached. The students in the
Seminary got their share, not to
mention the longed for outing that
came once each year to faithful, early
rising altar boys.
Far away places with strange
sounding named mission stations were
remembered and pagan babies would
forever wonder how Irish first names
were bestowed as the living Baptismal
waters flowed.
That Sunday coin was a winner.
And the tradition continues. On Sunday
next we will all once more hear the
chapel girl’s gentle knock. The coin may
be different. The message of expansion
and service is the same.
Charities Drive Day is a Sunday
interruption for us all. It is the call of
Georgia’s chapel girl at our door.
When was the last time you took
an outdoor walk with your young son
or daughter to instruct them in the
things of God from the things of nature
around you? Or whenever did your
parents take such a walk with you?
“Oh,” you say, “Jeremy is going to
describe what Jesus did.” Jesus did
teach in this way, to be sure, but so did
Israelite fathers centuries before.
Whenever a rainbow appeared in
the Palestinian skies, the father would
say to his son or daughter, “back in the
time of Noah, after the wickedness of
many men and women brought a flood
of destruction upon them, God made a
promise that He would never be far
from us. He claimed all the earth and
everyone living on it as His very own.
And this rainbow from the God above is
the sign of our Covenant with God.”
When you hear the Noah story this
Sunday, and its famous rainbow sign,
examine your own role as a parent and
teacher of the things of God. Do my
children learn from me that the earth is
good, that its natural elements are not
to be misused, that every living person
on it belongs in some way to God, that
in the human family covenanted to God
there are no “kikes” or “niggers” or
“micks” or “krauts” or those other
terms with which we pass on prejudices
from generation to generation?
Do they learn from me, from the
way I act and pray and live, that the
rainbowed earth carries the presence
and impress of Noah’s God, a presence
in the simple things of the earth which
so easily gave occasions to most of
Jesus’ teachings. I recall a PEANUTS
strip in which Charlie Brown was
quoting, as he does surprisingly from
time to time, Meister Eckhart (14th
century Dominican mystic) to the
effect, “if you cannot experience God
in a field but only in a Church, you will
really not find Him in a Church building
either.”
But what of the pain, what of the
Cross which seems always part of
Covenant? The Gospel for this Sunday
is Mark’s very brief account of Jesus’
temptation in the wilderness, so brief
that it will have been read through
before we can savor any details. Look at
Mark 1: 12-13 before going to Mass.
Jesus is DRIVEN into the DESERT and
through forty days TEMPTED. Does
Jesus experience a peaceful covenanted
earth?
The earth is God’s and its peoples,
says the Book of Genesis, but it is a
painful place too, the pain from its
peoples, the pain from its harsh
elements. This Lenten message emerges:
being covenanted, being pained. When
(Continued on page 2)
What Lent
Means To Me
BY FATHER JIM KELLY
Lent is a time to pause and
reflect on the meaning of Jesus,
the Risen Lord. Lent, to me, is
not a time by itself but Lent is
lived in relation to the Paschal
Mystery. Lent, as a Liturgical
Season, gives me time and space to
see if my life in the Lord is
growing. Lent gives me time to
look beyond my needs to the
needs of others in the larger
community of the Church, a time
to do more for our brothers and
sisters in the Lord. Lent is a time
for Penance, seeking forgiveness,
for reconciliation. Lent is time for
more prayer and scripture reading.
I find that if I spend Lent
well - the celebrations of Holy
Week and the special celebration
of the Paschal Mystery - Holy
Thursday, Good Friday, Easter -
brings me to a deeper faith in the
Lord Jesus who gave his life for
us, and helps me serve Him better
in my life and ministry.
Buli-St-ilX
Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
Vol. 17 No. 9
Thursday, March 1,1979
$5 Per Year
IRAN
Khomeini Revolution
AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI is pictured
surrounded by supporters upon his arrival in Iran after
years of exile in France. According to Father Charbel
Kassis, a leading Christian spokesman from Lebanon,
his rise to power has injected a dangerous new
ingredient threatening world peace.
The Pope Pleads For Peace
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope
John Paul II pleaded for peace between
China and Vietnam Feb. 25.
Besides lamenting the suffering
and death already taking place in the
conflict, he warned of “repercussions
more vast and terrible.” These
repercusions are “a thought that I
wouldn’t even want to consider.”
Vatican observers took the pope’s
remarks to be a warning against the
danger of nuclear war between world
superpowers if the fighting between
China and Vietnam, supported by the
Soviet Union, escalates further.
The pope spoke before leading the
Sunday noon Angelus in St. Peter’s
Square.
—j Arcktiskop’s Office
756 We*t Peachtree Street, N. W.
Atlanta, Georgia 30308
The Most Reverend Thomas A. Donnellan, Archbishop of Atlanta, has
announced the following changes effective February 27,1979:
As Pastor of the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes, Atlanta, and first
assignment as Pastor - REVEREND FRANK J. GIUSTA, presently Assistant
Pastor of the Church of Corpus Christi, Stone Mountain. He succeeds
REVEREND MONSIGNOR NOEL C. BURTENSHAW, who will give full
time to the position of Director of Communications and Editor of THE
GEORGIA BULLETIN.
The pope said that his thoughts
were turned “with profound pain to the
conflict that is growing ever more
intense between China and Vietnam.”
“Whoever participates in the love
of Christ for man cannot but grieve and
tremble at the lives sacrificed or in peril
and the sufferings and hardships of the
combatants and the populations,” he
said.
He was thinking especially of “the
children, the aged and the sick,” said
the pope.
“No geographic distance, not even
any ideological difference, can weaken
the feeling of brotherhood that unites
us with every human being who lives in
this world, even if he is not baptized
and especially when one thinks that
among the military and civilians
involved in the war are our brothers in
faith,” the pope said.
The pontiff asked Catholics to
pray for both sides.
“May the Holy Virgin, Christ’s
mother and ours, protect these peoples.
May she obtain for them the aim of
understanding and the disposition to
agree. May she keep the specter of
destruction and death far from
everyone,” added the pope.
NEW YORK (NC) - The sudden
rise to power of the Ayatollah
Khomeini in Iran has injected a
dangerous new ingredient threatening
world peace into the simmering Middle
East cauldron, according to one of
Lebanon’s leading Christian spokesmen.
“I think World War ni has already
begun,” Maronite-Rite Father Charbel
Kassis, a church leader in Lebanon, said
in an interview in New York.
“It’s a war that starts with
subversion, using freedom to its own
benefit,” he said. “In the long run, it
will give the final blow to democracy,
unless the free world takes the necessary
steps now.”
Father Kassis was in New York on
the first stop of a combined
reiigious-poiiticai journey that wiii take
him to a world Maronite Congress in
Mexico and several Maronite convents
and missions in South America.
Father Kassis was a co-founder of
the Lebanese Front, a conservative
group that reflects the views of leading
Lebanese Christians.
“Already,” he said, “there are
signs in the streets of Beirut that say
‘We are with Khomeini.’ A few years
ago, nobody in Lebanon had heard of
him; now they’re rallying behind him.
“Who is this man, capable of
sending a million people into the streets
of Tehran while he was still in Paris?
Who’s behind it all?” he asked.
Father Kassis believes both
international communism and a wave of
Islamic religious nationalism are behind
Khomeini’s rise to power.
“Whether the primary influence is
communistic or Islamic,” he said, “the
Khomeini revolution is going to bring a
time of great turbulence to the Middle
East. It could lead, literally, to a world
war.”
Father Kassis believes Khomeini’s
rise to power will make the situation
worse in Lebanon. After the end of
World War II, Lebanon was a model for
interreligious cooperation in the Middle
East, with Moslems and Christians
sharing power.
But an influx of Palestinian
refugees upset this balance and
Lebanon’s civil war from 1975 to 1977
brought in more outsiders - Syrian
forces who are either peace-keepers or
occupiers, depending on one’s point of
view.
There is no doubt about Father
Kassis’ or the Lebanese Front’s point of
view. “The foreigners have to be
removed from our land,” Father Kassis
said. “That means both the Syrians and
the Palestinians.”
Left to their own devices, he said,
the Lebanese could solve their own
problems with a system that would
insure justice for ail the nation’s people.
Father Kassis said Lebanon needs
aid from the West. Aid, he said, would
be forthcoming if the West really
appreciated the values Lebanon
represents and the need to continue a
Christian presence there.
“The Maronite community has
been in Lebanon since the seventh
century,” he said. “The original settlers
emigrated from Syria to preserve
freedom of thought, freedom of belief
and self-determination.
“Our continued presence in
Lebanon will confirm these values,
which are really not found anywhere
else in the Middle East. If Lebanon falls,
these things will be lost,” he said.
Father Kassis said the Western
world has been taken in because of its
overriding interest in assuring Middle
Eastern oil supplies.
He said the United States and
other Western nations have just as much
leverage with their industrial and
technological expertise.
‘‘That is the West’s
counter-weapon,” he said. “The Third
World desperately needs the West in this
regard; they can’t exist otherwise.”
Charities Drive Sunday — March 4