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The Cross And The Covenant
BY FR. JEREMY MILLER, 0. P.
It has always struck me that the most
uninteresting part of the Bible is the
Book of Chronicles. I do not intend any
irreverence to God’s inspired word but
reading through the long lists of tribal
names and cultic classifications is sheer
dogged plowing. But like all desert
experiences, whether of reading or of
life, there comes suddenly and
unexpectedly the oasis.
If you can thumb through your Bible
before coming to Mass this weekend,
take a look at II Chronicles, chap. 36,
from verse 14 on, at the very end of the
Book. For those with older Bibles, it is
called II Paralipomena. What a painful
scene is described! For their sins against
the covenant with God, the Jews are
leveled. The young, the old, men,
women, children, are slain within the
Temple confines itself. Then the Temple
and the city walls are reduced to sheer
rubble by the Chaldeans. It is an “oasis”
only from the dulling lists of names in
Chronicles, but the change of
description to this painful scene is no
place of refreshment.
For seventy years says the Prophet
Jeremiah, my namesake, the survivors
are to languish in numbed exile, without
affirmation, with the sign of God’s
presence to them (the Temple) in dusty
ruins. I think the closest experience we
can imagine to this is the breakdown of
a marriage covenant in divorce. What a
numbing experience this is. How little
we, as Catholics, go out to the divorced
members of our parishes to understand
their pain, their dashed hopes, their
feelings of personal failure when the
recriminations against a spouse are later
turned against self and one struggles for
feelings of self-worth. At the very time
when the divorced most need affirming
support, they are often left in isolation
to ponder the pain of a broken covenant
alone.
The signs of the former covenant lie
in ruins. An empty house. The absence
of father or mother from the day to day
life of the children. Financial security
stretched or threatened. Sexual
affection cut off. A life in exile in a
world so couple oriented. This is the
numbing and painful living - out in
personal life of the “broken covenant”
described in II Chronicles. The Jews as a
community were painfully leveled and
exiled.
Let me extend the broken covenant
story into the other two Sunday
readings and then return to the
expressions in our personal lives. “When
we were dead in sin,” Paul writes in the
second reading this Sunday. How easily
we read over that if we have not had the
experience of deadening broken
covenants, of lonely exile, of aimless
directions. Bo we feel what being cut
off from a covenant partner means? Can
we imagine being exiled from God, not
from His doing but from our stupid
affirmations of self against a
covenanting partner?
Where do we turn to escape our
numbling exile and hear a word of
affirmation and see a sign of the
covenant again, a Temple as it were,
standing there as an enduring
commitment to us? And HE is there,
speaking a word of affirmation out of
His pain to ours. The sign standing there
for us overcomes our numbness
precisely because IT is so numbing. “If
the Son of Man be lifted up ... whoever
believes in Him will not remain dead but
have life (again).” That enigma
challenges us again, the one I have
drawn out week after week in these
(Continued on page 6)
FIFTH IN A SERIES OF SEVEN
What Lent
Means To Me?
BY SISTER MARY KRISTEN, R.S.M.
I see Lent as an invitation - an
invitation given by Christ to love
totally. At the beginning of Lent, we
read in the liturgy, “return to me with
ALL your heart.” Joel 2-12. Christ
invites us each day to turn to him, but
during Lent His message seems more
urgent and requires a greater response -
a response that demands giving up all -
even life itself. “There is no greater love
than this: to lay down one’s life for
one’s friends.” (John 15:13)
During Lent, I hear Christ inviting me
as he did the rich young man - to a
greater degree of love. “There is one
thing more you must do. Go sell what
you have and give to the poor . .. after
that come follow me.” Mark 10. The
rich young man went away sad for he
had many possessions. During Lent I ask
myself what “possessions” I have that
keep me from loving totally. I ask
myself will I refuse Christ’s invitation,
go away sad, be not rich but
impoverished - with nothing to share
with others; or will I respond to Christ’s
z invitation to love and to share that love
o poured out in service to the poor, the v
lonely and the troubled?
Dear Mr. Gable
She was about 12, when she took her
famous position. MGM had made her a
star in “The Wizard of Oz” and now
they were ready for her reentry.
Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta
The picture was on her desk, clearly
displaying that- heart-wounding smile.
Clark Gable had smiled that smile for all
his leading ladies. Scarlett was his best
known. There was Hepburn and
Stanwick, Myrna Loy and beauties
exceeding Hollywood’s extended list.
For other countless, tearfilled millions,
snugly dreaming of
his merest
attention, he was
the perfect beau.
Now, his captive
was the blossom
ing, 12 year old,
Judy Garland. Into
her prized, beloved
bedside picture she
strongly and
memorably sang
her allegience,
“Dear Mr. Gable .. . you made me love
you.”
It’s a memory out of the past. Each
year WSB radio wistfully recalls those
memories on a special day, the station’s
birthday - March 16, the Vigil of St.
Patrick. They combine those golden
discs producing a day long extravaganza
of voices and times we’ll never again
capture.
Remember, Bing Crosby’s croon for
his swoonaholic fans “Where the Blue of
the Night?” You don’t? What about
Jimmy Durante’s nasal, impatient
command to that rascal Bill Bailey
“Won’t You Please Come Home?” Sure
you do.
And for the sweet talken’ Andy, the
Kingfish would double the trouble.
Amos would then pay the price. The
insulting Charlie McCarthy never
received his long overdue spanking from
Bergan. But some innocent fiddle-loven
bystander would invariably pay the
price for pitifully mean Jack Benny.
You hear them over again.
Where were you, when the drone of
Japanese planes became a roar, creating
a new world war? It was a quiet
Sunday afternoon in the WSB
newsroom. Shoes askew, emerging
reporter Elmo Ellis was dozing at his
paper drenched desk. The sudden
chatter of the tickertape ended his
dreams and a nightmare vigil began. He
recalls it all and-we chillingly remember.
But the music is best. Do you recall
when Fred Astaire was “putting on my
top hat?” How about the all too
tragically lost Nat King Cole, when he
serenaded his “Mona Lisa?” There Was
the smooth exbarber Perry Como with
his sinfully threatening “Temptation,”
and the big band nightingale Helen
O’Connell as she talked her way through
“Green Eyes.”
They were all the golden chorus of
radio’s royal regatta. Television was
simply a dream, a tinkering technician’s
hobby, never to find survival.
“Dear Mr. Gable” sighed the
wide-eyed Judy and her frustration
recalls simpler days and the imaginative
challenge of that livingroom squawk
box.
Oh Radio - you know you made us
love you ...
Vol. 17 No. 12
Thursday, March 22,1979
$5 Per Year
New Encyclical Opposes Arms Race
SIGNS FIRST ENCYCLICAL -- Pope John Paul II signs his first encyclical, “Redemptor Hominis,” in his
Vatican office.
TELEVISION
Mass Goes Nationwide
“Super 17”, they call it. The crowded
television station on West Peachtree
Street has already been discarded by a
local competitor. Programming is
simple. You see your old favorite
gunslinger, black and white
remembrances of Saturday afternoon of
yester-years.
But WTCG is still super. It belongs to
Atlanta’s Super Ted who hit on a super
idea and has made it superbly
successful.
Focusing his beam on the powerful
satellite, Mr. Turner has made Channel
17 into a navigating network. Not only
are his reruns and major league sports
A Pope’s First Letter
Beginning in this issue, the
Georgia Bulletin will publish
Pope John Paul II’s first
encyclical letter “Redemptor
Hominis.”
The letter begins today on
page 7.
seen in Georgia, thej? enter into homes
far and wide throughout the nation.
The latest figures show that Super 17
is seen in four million homes
nationwide, Alaska r Hawaii and 45
states in the U.S. The list grows every
day and the green with envy look is
beamed on Turner Communications
from local stations throughout the land.
Now Mr. Turner will air Atlanta’s
Catholic Mass once each month on the
Second Sunday at 5:30 a.m. The first
Mass will be seen in April.
While the time alloted is not very
beneficial to Atlanta Catholics and
shut-ins, it will be most helpful to
shut-ins in other areas. It is also the first
time that Mass will be viewed
nationwide on a regular basis.
The Catholic Mass Program began in
Atlanta almost three years ago on WSB,
Channel 2. It can now be seen twice
each month, on the first and third
Sundays, at 10:30 a.m. “A great and
welcome response is constantly being
received as we air these services,” said
Msgr. Noel C. Burtenshaw, Director of
Communications. “This new
opportunity is an extension, of great
importance, to our efforts for Catholic
communications.”
A newsletter and monthly missalette
is sent to 400 homes in Georgia in
connection with the Catholic Mass
Program. Responses and enquiries from
non-Catholics is a regular occurrence
also.
News of the additional Mass to be
televised on Channel 17 comes at a time
of new emphasis on Catholic
Communications. A national collection
for communications will take place in
every parish in May. The funds raised
will be used for national and local
programming.
“We are most grateful to WSB,” said
Msgr. Burtenshaw, for pioneering this
service so generously for the past three
years. “Now we are indebted to WTCG
who gives Catholics across the nation
the opportunity to participate in their
own service, even if only on a monthly
basis.”
Along with Msgr. Burtenshaw, other
priests of the Archdiocese of Atlanta
offer Mass each month for shut-ins and
others unable to attend their parishes.
Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan offers
the Television Mass on Christmas Day.
BY NC NEWS SERVICE
Pope John Paul II strongly
condemned the arms race and asked for
sweeping changes in the world’s social,
political and economic life in his first
encyclical.
Titled “Redemptor Hominis”
(Redeemer of Man), the encyclical also
criticized “consumer civilization” and
totalitarian regimes restricting religious
freedom. It strongly defended human
rights, asking states to pay more
attention to applying human rights
rather than talking about them.
“Do not kill! Do not prepare
destruction and extermination for
men!” said the encyclical.
Money used to develop and purchase
arms should be diverted to increase food
production and provide other services
needed by people, said the pope.
“We all know well that the areas of
misery and hunger on our globe could
have been made fertile in a short time, if
z the gigantic investments for armaments
at the service of war and destruction
had been changed into investments for
food at the service of life,” said the
encyclical.
It criticized developed countries for
providing arms “in abundance” to
newly independent states “instead of
bread and cultural aid.”
Pope John Paul’s encyclical said
church stands on social issues are based
on Christ’s redemption which makes the
church the guardian of the human
dignity of each person.
Each individual “precisely on account
of the redemption is entrusted to the
solicitude of the church,” it said. “We
are dealing with ‘each’ man, for each
one is included in the mystery of
redemption.”
speak to the specific problems of each
concrete human being, said the
encyclical.
The encyclical is dated March 4, but
the Vatican scheduled the release date
for March 15. The encyclical also
discusses internal church issues, stressing
the need for unity based on the
teachings of Vatican II.
This unity “springs” from
collegiality, said the encyclical, which
praised efforts to increase collegiality
through new organizations of bishops,
priests and laymen.
Regarding restrictions on religious
freedom, the encyclical alludes to
communist governments, but does not
mention them by name. It defends
religious freedom as being essential to
the dignity of man.
“It is therefore difficult, even from a
‘purely human’ point of view, to accept
a position that gives only atheism the
right of citizenship in public and social
life, while believers are, as though by
principle, barely tolerated or are treated
as second class citizens or are even - and
this has already happened - entirely
deprived of the rights of citizenship,”
said the encyclical of the first pope to
come from a country under communist
rule.
The encyclical also critized the
consumer society for fostering
materialism and causing a lot of the
sharp contrasts in the world between
the rich and the poor.
“Indeed everyone is familiar with the
picture of the consumer civilization,
which consists in a surplus of goods
necessary for man and for entire
societies - and we are dealing precisely
with the rich highly developed societies
- while the remaining societies - at least
broad sectors of them - are suffering
(Continued on page 6)
Because of this, the church must
Atlanta Television Mass
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