Celebrates Women's Ordination:
From the House of Fear to the House of Love
From the House of Fear to the House of Love
APRIL 26TH, 2009 — 3RD SUNDAY OF EASTER AND CELEBRATION OF WOMEN ORDINATION
ACTS 3:13-15, 17-19, OUT OF THE DEPTHS (by Miriam Therese Winter), LUKE 24:35-48
Dear Friends,
Easter Blessings! This Sunday we celebrate the 3rd Sunday of Easter and we are in solidarity with the ordination of two more women, one to the priesthood, Mary Anne McCarthy Schoettly, and one to the diaconate, Chava Redonnet. Jean is representing our community at this ordination in Philadelphia this Sunday April 26. Last Sunday, four American Roman Catholic Women Priests were ordained bishops at a ceremony in California. They are Joan Houk, Andrea Johnson, Bridget Mary Meehan and Regina Nicolosi. The Holy Spirit has creative renewal astir for the Church in these ordinations.
Henri Nouwen uses the image of moving from the House of Fear to the House of Love. This is the Christian conversion that we are all called to. In this Sunday's Gospel, the disciples think Jesus is a ghost and they are afraid. Jesus blesses them with "Peace be with you!" Jesus invites them to give up their fear and move to the loving peace that God dreams for all of us. God calls our Church to this same conversion today. The Church sees that there are fewer male celibate priests coming forward and is afraid. The Church retrenches and commits itself even more graspingly to the familiar, failing path of male, celibate priests, preferring what some have dubbed "the Old Boys Club" to the needs of God's People. God is calling us as a Church to leave this House of Fear behind and move to the House of Love, where others (women and men, married and single) are feeling God's call to priesthood and service. This fearful commitment to "the Old Boys Club" is a repetition of the Bishops transferring pedophile priests from parish to parish, preferring protecting and prolonging "the Old Boys Club" at the expense of the children and the People of God. God is weeping!
God is also weeping that our Church is spending its energy investigating Women's Religious Communities in this country. These gifted women have committed their lives creatively giving birth to God over and over in the lives of the People of God. They are a source of hope for the Church—if only the Church could listen. It is a tragically ironic that life-giving faithful women are being investigated and the bishops and pedophile priests are left to be unaccountable. That is what fear does, focus on someone else. God is inviting us as a Church to move from the House of Fear to the House of Love, from what is familiar and failing to a new way of credibly making God present in our world today. People are feeling unnourished by the Church and stop going and turn away. God is inviting us to create the Church anew in our day so that God's Love is enfleshed again in you and me and God's People feel nourished again.
Miriam Therese Winter has written a prayer-poem based on Psalm 130. The occasion for her writing this is the book she wrote on Ludmila Javorova, a woman who was ordained a Roman Catholic Priest in Communist Czechoslavakia. Her bishop ordained her because he realized she had gifts for ministry, a call from God and could make the sacraments accessible to people that otherwise could not be reached. The book is entitled Out of the Depths: The story of Ludmila Javorova Ordained Roman Catholic Priest. We will use Miriam Therese Winter's Prayer as our second reading at this Sunday's Eucharist:
Out of the depths I cry to You, O Holy One of Blessing. I am here. Hear my Voice.
Out of the depths of doubt, and desire and dogged determination,
Deep calls unto deep trusting Spirit to speak and act always in ways too deep for words.
Out of the depths of persecuted faith, out of the depths of bottomless hope out of the depths of consecrated love
From catacomb and martyrdom and deep underground witnesses come.
Out of the depths of hidden need buried treasure dormant seed
The future is arising
A future so surprising
It is here
I Hear
Your voice.
Out of the depths of doubt, and desire and dogged determination,
Deep calls unto deep trusting Spirit to speak and act always in ways too deep for words.
Out of the depths of persecuted faith, out of the depths of bottomless hope out of the depths of consecrated love
From catacomb and martyrdom and deep underground witnesses come.
Out of the depths of hidden need buried treasure dormant seed
The future is arising
A future so surprising
It is here
I Hear
Your voice.
(Miriam Therese Winter)
If you are seeking a "community of believers" to journey with you in a deeper way; one where every voice is heard, and women and men are unafraid to acknowledge the equality of women and men; and to embrace feminine as well as masculine... and beyond... images of God, we invite you to join us at Spirit of Life. As a community, we try wholeheartedly to "be Christ" to one another, to tend to the needs of one another, and to those in need in our world. Together, we celebrate our belief that we are being transformed by God's grace as we gather together in prayer. We warmly invite you to come and gather with us at our Table, and join in our experience of the "kin-dom" of God. We are an inclusive, open, affirming and interactive community, deeply committed to being a people of "justice and joy."
Wishing you joy in the Risen Christ,
Find more about past weekly reflections and podcasts in our ARCHIVE PAGE.
