What Happens

When things Go Wrong?

Ascension Day, St Joseph’s Collingwood, 2007
A talk given to the parish shortly after the loved century old inner city church burnt down

By Val Noone

Val Noone is a writer, editor, academic
and community builder

On this feast of the Ascension of Jesus into heaven, the bible readings from St Luke, both the one from his Acts of the Apostles and the other from his gospel, put before us the great idea that from suffering and death, new life and regeneration can come, in Jesus’ life and in our own. We understand that the bible writers did not know today’s physics and astronomy so they thought of heaven us up there but we can still learn from their stories.

I wish to draw your attention to four points from the scripture and connect them to the situation in our parish after the fire which destroyed the beautiful renovated church.

The four points are, first that Jesus spoke of forgiveness being a big part of his message; second that his message was for all nations; third, the messengers warned us not to stand there looking up to heaven, and those three leave us with a question, which will be my fourth point; in what way does Jesus live on now?

But first a story that I got from John O’Donoghue, the wonderful writer about Celtic spirituality. There was a priest in Connemara in the west of Ireland who was going to build a car-park outside his church. There was a ruined stone house nearby which had been vacated for fifty or sixty years. He went to the man whose family had lived there long ago. He asked the man to give him the stones for the foundation. The man refused. The priest asked why and the man said: What would the souls of my ancestors do then?

The implication was that even in this ruin long since vacated, the souls of those who had once lived there still had a particular  attachment to this place. The life and passion of a person leaves an imprint on the ether of a place. Love does not remain within the heart, it flows out to build secret tabernacles in a landscape. What looks like a ruin over there is indeed, as our service has reminded us, a sacred place.

Tens of thousands of people of mostly working-class people put in their pennies and their sixpences to build it - the west nave in 1861, the central part in 1876 and the west nave in 1891. Those tens of thousands have worshipped and prayed here, been baptised, married or buried from here. Some of the famous ones are Maude O’Connell, trade union organiser for women in the cigarette making factories and later founder of the Grey Sisters; Margaret Oates, mother, grandmother, war widow and known as the angel of Collingwood for her work with St Vincent de Paul society; Ted Regan and Charlie Utting who played football for Collingwood and Kevin Murray who played for Fitzroy.

During the week people mentioned Norm Gallagher, trade union organiser for the builders labourers and there are many others. But for each famous one there are a thousand others. I got a phone call from Ken Haddock of Doncaster yesterday apologising for not being here today but he wanted to tell me that 1941 was an important year for his family and this church: he made his first communion, his younger sister was baptised, his older sister got married and next year they came to pray for the repose of the soul of that sister’s husband who died on the Kokoda trail.

At Stawell, a couple of weeks ago, Pauline Delaney came up to me and said her ancestors, the Miskells, had donated one the stained glass windows, and the family want to pay for it to be restored. And for each of those stories there are a thousand others. We can think also of the priests from the diocese and the religious who have worked in the parish, including the Good Shepherd Sisters, the Christian Brothers, the Sisters of Charity, the Little Sisters of Jesus, the Mercy sisters and the Franciscans.

That is not a ruin but a sacred place inhabited by the spirits of ten of thousands of people.And now the four points from the scripture. Firstly, the apostles were told to preach the forgiveness of sin. This is one of the most distinctive teachings of Jesus, that sin can be forgiven, that people can change and start again, and that we are called to forgive one another, not once, not seven times, but seventy times seven, that is endlessly. St Joseph’s Collingwood has been blessed to have a chain of priests and lay leaders who, within their limits, preached that message.

'Yes, we feel the need to rebuild. But the puzzle at the heart of our faith is that the spirit is more powerful than bricks and mortar. So we can worship in this hall. In repressive regimes in the Philippines or South America or East Germany, Christians found they could go back to small house churches.'

Second, Jesus in the gospel we heard today says that his apostles are to go out to all nations, first to the Jews, then the Greeks and Romans and then to the world. In recent centuries some missionaries have combined their zeal with the trappings of European empires but down the ages the best leaders of the church have preached a world of harmony between all races.

St Joseph’s has been home first to the Irish (both my grandfathers and several of their brothers and sisters who were baptised here were children of Irish migrants), English and Scots migrants of the 1800s, then the Italians and other post-1945 migrants, and then to the Vietnamese and now to Tongans and Africans and so on. It is our mission to be universal in our love.

The third point is the punch line of today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles: “Why are you standing there looking up to heaven?” Which means get on with it. And so what happens next about the church building and parish life depends on us. Sure, we are weak and need help from the archdiocese and general community. We rely especially on the lively and talented Vietnamese community of Joan. But what happens next to this church depends on each and everyone of us.

So there you have a story about spirits living in ruins, the points from scripture about forgiveness, universal love of all nations, and don’t stand there looking up. I wish to conclude with a comment on the question posed by the Ascension story, in what way does Jesus live on now. There are several answers and one is given in a saying of Jesus himself: “Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Yes, we feel the need to rebuild. But the puzzle at the heart of our faith is that the spirit is more powerful than bricks and mortar. So we can worship in this hall. In repressive regimes in the Philippines or South America or East Germany, Christians found they could go back to small house churches. In this parish, YCW groups, Legion of Mary groups, bible study groups, have found the same thing.

Jesus has gone from this earth to a divine life but wherever two or three are gathered together in his name, he is in the midst of us.

Worshiping Life in the

West End *

Linda Walter is a counsellor
and spiritual director who lives and works in inner Melbourne. She worships in an inner city Anglican church 'Right now, in our church building, nothing is as it should be. Does God mind?'

What a time we've had discovering just how many sacred cows exist in our eucharistic worship!

Right now, in our church building, nothing is as it should be. Does God mind?

Pulitzer Prize writer, Annie Dillard, says that nothing convinces her of the mercy of God more than the fact that our various denominational liturgical circuses each Sunday have not yet been blasted off the face of the earth. After 2000 years of trying you would think we'd have got it right. “Week after week, she writes, we witness the same miracle: that God, for reasons unfathomable, refrains from blowing our dancing bear act to smithereens. Week after week, Christ washes the disciples' dirty feet, handles their very toes, and repeats, It is all right, believe it or not, to be people.”*

Week after week in our own congregation, led by Cecilia our patient, liturgically unfazed priest, supported by Beverley our versatile director of music, we have faithfully worshiped amidst dust, scaffolding, the wrong chairs, a small altar, no thurible, spindly wooden candlesticks, no pulpit, no communion rail, no organ, choir without robes gathered around a piano. And we are down the back of the church, facing the wrong way with no chance for latecomers to slip in without the everyone noticing.!

"And yet, after all this, what are we to say? Who (or what) shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No. In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loves us." [Romans 8]

In our Studies, this Lent, we have been confronted with firsthand accounts of the appalling sufferings of men and women and children in the Middle East, the Land that three different faiths call Holy. It would be obscene to suggest that our deprivations are in any way comparable. And yet, how good it is for us as a congregation to be discovering that, at this most important of Christian seasons, we ,can, come and make eucharist together without so many of our customary supports of beauty and order, and still experience God amongst us, utterly present.

Which is not to say that it won't be wonderful when the restoration work is finished.

*[from 'An Expedition to the Pole ', in 'The Annie Dillard Reader', Harper Perrenial, NY 1994]

Crossing the Desert:
Learning to Let Go, See Clearly and Live Simply

ISBN : 9781933495088
Author(s): Wicks, Robert

Noted psychologist and popular author Robert Wicks provides an insightful guide on how the wisdom of the ancient desert monks can help contemporary readers grow in personal freedom and authenticity.
He offers a new perspective on the ancient tradition of the desert monks. While some books have compiled the wisdom of the monks, others have offered contemporary spirituality based on their teachings. But this is the first book to offer a psychological perspective on this early Christian monastic movement. Wicks’ insights on the dynamics of letting go and living freely draw directly on the sayings and their spiritual interpreters, but offer a fresh perspective as well.