Caritas Australia’s Project Compassion 2017Reflections for Lent

  ASH WEDNESDAY – 1 March  The Prophet Joel and the Gospel of Matthew today call us to repentance, reconciliation, fasting, prayer and almsgiving. This call takes us to the heart of the penitential season of Lent: a conversion of heart that comes from a renewed and revitalised relationship with our God who is gracious and merciful and bestows abundant life on all.  As Christians we know that we are called to live life to the full. During Lent,  this ‘joyful season’, we are called to give expression to the ‘greatest commandment of the law’, the love of God and the love of one’s neighbour which is at the heart of Project Compassion.   This Lent, after the ash is washed away and we move through this journey to Easter, let us hold in our prayers the oppressed, the hungry, the broken-hearted, the captive, the prisoner. Can we fast so that others may have more of the world’s resources? In a time ‘when the divide between the mega-rich and the forgotten poor is ever widening’, may we bring the good news to those most deeply affected by the inequities in our world — let us take home a Project Compassion box or envelope set and give generously to some of our neighbours who are amongst the poorest and most vulnerable people in our world.   FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT – 4-5 March  Today’s readings bring us face to face with temptation, and a call to surrender ultimately to the graciousness of God’s love. What a mixture of emotions and thoughts to encounter as we enter more fully into the Lenten season.   Pope Francis tells us that a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity – as offered to Jesus in today’s Gospel – leads to both the misuse of available resources and the exclusion of the vulnerable and disadvantaged.  In the Gospel, the same Spirit who baptised Jesus in the Jordan led him out into the wilderness, where he encountered self-doubt and was tempted to accept power over ‘all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour’. Through prayer, Jesus was strengthened for ministry and service to go and ‘be’ the good news of God’s mercy and love.   During Lent, the Church, through today’s Gospel and the words of Pope Francis, invites us to take up the call to fast, pray and give alms. Project Compassion enables us to pray so that we will be strengthened to fast and give (alms). In this way we can help neighbours like Dinia in the Philippines to find healing and peace, and to know herself as a valued member of her community with a role in creating a brighter future for her children.  A retreat into our own ‘wilderness’ leads us to a place deep within ourselves where we encounter this servant, Jesus, inviting us to take seriously this Lenten call. 

 

Caritas Australia’s Project Compassion 2017Reflections for Lent

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT – 11-12 March  During these early weeks of Lent we hear of Spirit, wilderness, temptation, wild beasts, angels, and, in this week in particular, of promise and transfiguration. What do these words tell us about how we are asked to spend the Lenten season? 

 We hear of the loving promise made between God and Abraham. On Mount Tabor, God speaks of Jesus as ‘beloved’ son and urges Peter, James and John to “Listen to him”. He urges them to listen to what Jesus has been saying about the direction his ministry will now take — Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and his death and eventual resurrection, a journey on which we, as people of a loving Covenant, are invited.   This journey is intended to help us discern what really matters, and to recognise that our responsibility for others goes beyond our immediate community. Project Compassion urges us to recognise Martina from Timor-Leste as a neighbour, full of dignity and grace. She has taken the long journey to transform her life, make important links with a supportive community and create a better future for herself and her children.  Our God on Mount Tabor who sends the Son ‘not to be served but to serve’ invites us on this journey to transform the world through the sacrifices of our daily life.   THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT – 18-19 March  The ‘woman at the well’ is one of the best known of the Gospel stories, a story extremely rich in offering us insights into our own daily life. In fact, we have to be careful not to be so overwhelmed by the length and depth of the story that we do not receive its messages.  At this well, Jesus speaks, heaven forbid, to a Samaritan, and a woman at that — double trouble! In their encounter, she teases him and he engages her in ‘imaginative dialogue’ that takes her to a new depth of understanding about herself. This offers her a way out of the cycle of emotional abuse in which she has been caught. His greatest gift is to treat her with respect for her personal dignity. Through this encounter she is transformed.   This week we are challenged by the story of some of our First Australians. The survivors of Kinchela Boys Home (KBH) are men stolen as children from their families, their country and their communities. Pope Francis tells us, “Every life is sacred, every human person is endowed with an inalienable dignity.”    Just as the Samaritan woman, encouraged by her encounter with Jesus, moved back into her community, Uncle Richard and the men of KBH walk together with renewed confidence, learning from each other and, with the support of Caritas Australia, sharing the painful stories of their journey of healing. Let us commit ourselves to the good of our First Australian brothers and sisters and promote reconciliation across our land.  

Caritas Australia’s Project Compassion 2017Reflections for Lent

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT- 25-26 March  Today we take a breath and celebrate Laetare Sunday — a day of hope, when Easter is at last within sight. We pause to look back on our Lenten journey and to refocus on the road ahead. It seems appropriate that John’s story of the man born blind is the reading for this Sunday. This move from blindness (darkness) to sight (light) is the metaphor for the transformation of character that happens as a result of commitment to Christ. Are our eyes still on Easter?  This reading is a strong and powerful message for our times where so many of our neighbours have experienced circumstances not of their making and are in need of a helping hand. In our Project Compassion story this week, we meet Nguyet from Vietnam, a young woman with a severe disability. As is the case in many countries, people like Nguyet and her family are often ‘out of sight’ when it comes to receiving the support and care needed to participate in the life of the community.   As Jesus turned his gaze to the man born blind, may we refuse to avert our gaze from those who most need acceptance, love and support. Together with Caritas Australia’s partner agency Catholic Relief Services, may we be ignited by the promise of enlivened hope for Nguyet and her community.      FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT – 1-2 April  Jesus is getting near to Jerusalem — it’s just over the hill. He has left the relative safety of his home in the Galilee to be with family and friends. He is late, they tell him. They ask him, why did you take so long? You could have saved Lazarus from dying!   Jesus, though, has another lesson for his disciples and followers. We are all ‘Lazarus’ and each of us is the one ‘whom Jesus loved’. He comes to us and stands at the doorway of our lives and helps us to see that we need to be freed from the dark places in which we sometimes lose ourselves.  Jesus calls the friends of Lazarus to unbind him and set him free. Jesus calls on us to unbind those around us. We all need to be freed from the ties that bind us. We are at all times invited to give and receive the light and life of Christ’s healing help and forgiveness.  This week Project Compassion calls us to help ‘unbind’ the issues for communities living in informal settlements around Fiji. Semiti, National Director of Caritas Australia’s partner People’s Community Network, addresses the sense of hopelessness in many of his people. He journeys with them as together they create new possibilities for better lives. Through our prayer, fasting and almsgiving, we can support this network of communities as they work in solidarity and grow in resilience and hope.   

Caritas Australia’s Project Compassion 2017Reflections for Lent

PALM SUNDAY OF THE PASSION OF THE LORD – 8-9 April  Today we process into the Church accompanied by shouts of ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’, only to hear, in the second Gospel of the day: ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ What do we do with this? How can we go forward and not be manipulated by the crowd that shouts ‘Hosanna’ one moment, and a week later calls for Jesus’ death?  Perhaps the best way to travel this last week — the only week in the Church’s year that we call Holy — is to do so in the company of the poor and the broken, the marginalised, the innocent, the abused. If we are to stand at the foot of the cross with Mary and John and hear Jesus make us all his brothers and sisters,  and hear him say, ‘Behold this is your mother, this is your son,’ then let us, like Jesus, empty ourselves. And let us follow him.  Just eight hours flying time from Australia live our neighbours on the islands of the Philippines. Here extreme weather has caused extraordinary devastation. Aloma and her small children have already journeyed from tragedy to triumph through her work with Caritas Australia’s local partner, Socio Pastoral Action Center Foundation Inc. Now there is fresh hope of a more secure future for her family, and her whole community.   “Humanity,” says Pope Francis, “has the ability to work together in building our common home.”   As we leave the church, we do so in silence in order to reflect on this most important task during this Holy Week.  EASTER SUNDAY – 16 April This is the day that the Lord has made! Let us be glad and rejoice in it! This day is the day of Resurrection. This is the day death has been conquered. This is the day when women, faithful women who stood at the foot of the cross, witnessed the resurrection and spread the good news. This is the day we remember light, water, oil, life, death, resurrection and the bread and wine of the Eucharist. This is the day when we rest from our fasting and almsgiving, and this is the day we celebrate with our community, our family and our friends. This is the day when we feast and we also continue to stand with the poor and most vulnerable of the world; and this is the day that we realise we need one another and we have a shared responsibility for all our neighbours, those near and those far away.  But a final question remains:  To what must we die in order to rise transformed? Pope Francis answers this question when he said in 2013 that the Church and the papacy must be reformed as the Church seeks out the poor and the oppressed: “I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.”   Caritas Australia, as the Catholic agency for aid and development, joins the wider Church in building a world where all human beings can live in dignity, and communities are empowered to be the architects of their own development.   We thank you for helping to empower our neighbours, through the support you so generously give each year during Project Compassion.