Greetings to all from Liturgy Brisbane.
In what has been a very strange year, we begin to cast our gaze forward to preparations for Christmas.
Christmas Masses will look very different in 2020 and there are a number of new considerations which must be incorporated into the planning of liturgical celebrations. The first article in this edition of LitEd offers advice for planning and sets out a range of possibilities for celebrating Christmas Masses within current health guidelines.
As always, Christmas Masses will be an evangelising opportunity to welcome those who may not join in the weekly activities of the parish throughout the year. For some, it may be the first Mass they have attended since the pandemic began. The celebration of the joy and wonder of the Christmas season is a pivotal opportunity for drawing people back into the community. The second article discusses how parishes might look different as they emerge from lockdown.
Hospitality will be a major part of welcoming people back to church - but what exactly does 'welcome' mean?
The third article provides some interesting insights.
Best wishes to all from Tom Elich and Clare Schwantes
In what has been a very strange year, we begin to cast our gaze forward to preparations for Christmas.
Christmas Masses will look very different in 2020 and there are a number of new considerations which must be incorporated into the planning of liturgical celebrations. The first article in this edition of LitEd offers advice for planning and sets out a range of possibilities for celebrating Christmas Masses within current health guidelines.
As always, Christmas Masses will be an evangelising opportunity to welcome those who may not join in the weekly activities of the parish throughout the year. For some, it may be the first Mass they have attended since the pandemic began. The celebration of the joy and wonder of the Christmas season is a pivotal opportunity for drawing people back into the community. The second article discusses how parishes might look different as they emerge from lockdown.
Hospitality will be a major part of welcoming people back to church - but what exactly does 'welcome' mean?
The third article provides some interesting insights.
Best wishes to all from Tom Elich and Clare Schwantes
Articles on Planning for Christmas 2020
Planning Christmas Masses 2020Christmas Masses need careful planning in 2020. Tom Elich sets out some practical considerations to ensure that parishes can accommodate larger numbers at Christmas time.
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Re-emerging with PurposeThis article from the Archdiocese of Melbourne offers some pathways to move people from the online realm back into the church, to move people from 'clicks' to 'bricks'.
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Beyond Welcome: Show, Don't TellInstead of 'welcoming' others to church as though we were the hosts, Alan Hommerding suggests that we behave as guests among guests, fostering a deep sense of inclusion and belonging for all.
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A CHRISTMAS POEM
Francis Webb’s beautiful Christmas poem originated in a grim time, not only in the aftermath of the war, but when this great poet had begun to suffer the mental affliction that would dominate the rest of his life. The young Canadian doctor who was treating him placed his baby son, Christopher John, into the poet’s arms—and this is the poem that resulted.
In the atmosphere of that post-war Christmas, the new-born child symbolises the Child in the cradle of Bethlehem—and the wonder of the Incarnation: the “blown straw” of our earthly condition has received “all the fullness of Heaven”. God has appeared in what is most tiny and vulnerable to “teach our groping eyes” to gaze on true innocence. Beneath the lowering clouds of violence lies this infant, the source of peace for the world.
The poet returns to the child in his arms, in wonder at the “fearless delicacies” of this tiny creature. And yet this little being has the power to launch him “upon sacred seas” of the all-encompassing mystery of creation. The wonder of the incarnation continues to stir. The little child is beyond the poet’s praise, for he sees the divine “maker of days” present even as the infant yawns.
The poet himself experiences a call to conversion from old ways of thinking and acting. The great realities of human experience playing around this moment —the design of nature, love, homecoming, honesty and honour—become a prayer for some ultimate revelation: “Tell me what I hold”.
Something precious, certainly, beyond the usual tokens of the world’s values, but what?
In the tiny, vulnerable reality of this baby, now a symbol of the Babe of Bethlehem and of the Incarnation of the Word, the answer stirs. If our humanity is expressed and understood in this manner, then our fears, and the violence born of them, are put in their place. And “we”—all those who are touched by what Webb has described—are left, no matter what the weather, to kneel in adoration of God and reverence for one another.
In the atmosphere of that post-war Christmas, the new-born child symbolises the Child in the cradle of Bethlehem—and the wonder of the Incarnation: the “blown straw” of our earthly condition has received “all the fullness of Heaven”. God has appeared in what is most tiny and vulnerable to “teach our groping eyes” to gaze on true innocence. Beneath the lowering clouds of violence lies this infant, the source of peace for the world.
The poet returns to the child in his arms, in wonder at the “fearless delicacies” of this tiny creature. And yet this little being has the power to launch him “upon sacred seas” of the all-encompassing mystery of creation. The wonder of the incarnation continues to stir. The little child is beyond the poet’s praise, for he sees the divine “maker of days” present even as the infant yawns.
The poet himself experiences a call to conversion from old ways of thinking and acting. The great realities of human experience playing around this moment —the design of nature, love, homecoming, honesty and honour—become a prayer for some ultimate revelation: “Tell me what I hold”.
Something precious, certainly, beyond the usual tokens of the world’s values, but what?
In the tiny, vulnerable reality of this baby, now a symbol of the Babe of Bethlehem and of the Incarnation of the Word, the answer stirs. If our humanity is expressed and understood in this manner, then our fears, and the violence born of them, are put in their place. And “we”—all those who are touched by what Webb has described—are left, no matter what the weather, to kneel in adoration of God and reverence for one another.
Written by Anthony J. Kelly CSsR
Poem found in Kevin Hart (ed), The Oxford Book of Australian Religious Verse (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994).
FIVE DAYS OLD
(For Christopher John)
Christmas is in the air.
You are given into my hands
Out of quietest, loneliest lands.
My trembling is all my prayer.
To blown straw was given
All the fullness of Heaven.
The tiny, not the immense,
Will teach our groping eyes.
So the absorbed skies
Bleed stars of innocence.
So cloud-voice in war and trouble
Is at last Christ in a stable.
Now wonderingly engrossed
In your fearless delicacies,
I am launched upon sacred seas,
Humbly and utterly lost
In the mystery of creation,
Bells, bells of ocean.
Too pure for my tongue to praise,
That sober exquisite yawn
Or the gradual, generous dawn
At an eyelid, maker of days:
To shrive my thoughts for perfection
I must breathe old tempests of action.
For the snowflake and face of love,
Windfall and word of truth,
Honour close to death.
O eternal truthfulness, Dove,
Tell me what I hold--
Myrrh? Frankincense? Gold?
If this is man, then the danger
And fear are as lights of the inn,
Faint and remote as sin
Out here by the manger.
In the sleeping, weeping weather
We shall all kneel down together.
(For Christopher John)
Christmas is in the air.
You are given into my hands
Out of quietest, loneliest lands.
My trembling is all my prayer.
To blown straw was given
All the fullness of Heaven.
The tiny, not the immense,
Will teach our groping eyes.
So the absorbed skies
Bleed stars of innocence.
So cloud-voice in war and trouble
Is at last Christ in a stable.
Now wonderingly engrossed
In your fearless delicacies,
I am launched upon sacred seas,
Humbly and utterly lost
In the mystery of creation,
Bells, bells of ocean.
Too pure for my tongue to praise,
That sober exquisite yawn
Or the gradual, generous dawn
At an eyelid, maker of days:
To shrive my thoughts for perfection
I must breathe old tempests of action.
For the snowflake and face of love,
Windfall and word of truth,
Honour close to death.
O eternal truthfulness, Dove,
Tell me what I hold--
Myrrh? Frankincense? Gold?
If this is man, then the danger
And fear are as lights of the inn,
Faint and remote as sin
Out here by the manger.
In the sleeping, weeping weather
We shall all kneel down together.
Change to the Collect at Mass
Worshippers will from late November notice a slight change to the words the priest prays just before the Liturgy of the Word, with the amendment supporting a more faithful understanding of the Trinity.
The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments earlier this year wrote to episcopal conferences that use the English translation of the Roman Missal (2010) regarding a change to the conclusion to the collects – or opening prayers – used in the Mass.
A typical conclusion to the collect read as follows: “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.”
The letter indicated that the inclusion of the word “one” before God is problematic in relation to the Latin text “Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum”.
It explained that the inclusion of the word “one” before God “can serve to undermine the statement of the Son’s unique identity within the Trinity which the Latin formulas so strongly convey and, on the other hand, it can also be interpreted as saying that Jesus Christ is ‘one God’”.
The letter, signed by the Congregation’s prefect Cardinal Robert Sarah, said “either or both of these interpretations is injurious to the faith of the Church”.
“It is clear from the Latin texts that the doxology emphasises the divinity of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son, who intercedes on our behalf, as the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, to the Father and which prayer is made in the unity of the Holy Spirit,” the cardinal wrote.
“Thus the Son’s role of priestly mediation is made clear. To transfer the Trinitarian relational element in unitate as meaning unus Deus is incorrect.”
The final words of the collects will be changed to read “God, for ever and ever”. The people, as they currently do, will give their assent to the prayer by saying “Amen”.
The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has agreed to implement the change to the prayers from the First Sunday of Advent this year – November 29.
Click here to read more from the Bishops Commission for Liturgy.
NEW!!!
Praying Together With Young People 2021
Introducing a new daily prayer resource designed to help teachers, parents and catechists to lead prayer with a class or family. Also includes an electronic flip-book version of the book for easy display on screens.
The structure of the prayer for each weekday is the same so that prayer time becomes a familiar routine, leading children into a liturgical pattern of responses. Responses to the gospel reading for each day include intercessions, songs, guided meditations, short video clips or silent prayer. Hyperlinks in the electronic version of the resource provide easy access to online reflections.
Sample pages are available to view on the Liturgy Brisbane website. (Click on the image below)
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Sunday Readings and Praying With Children resources are now available by subscription.
Resources are available to parishes, schools and to individual subscribers.
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The Sunday Readings resource is delivered by email each week. It contains a link to the current week's web page and an accompanying PDF which includes the Sunday readings and associated commentaries. Subscribing parishes may share these resources with their parishioners. |
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The Praying with Children resource has been expanded to include music (audio, sheet music and PowerPoint).
It also includes the features you have become familiar with, including a gospel reading, reflection, video, discussion topic and group activity. This resource has been designed for use: 1) at Children’s Liturgy of the Word during Sunday Mass and 2) by parents and children in the home. Subscribers receive an email each week which contains the link to the current week's web page, as well as an accompanying PDF. Parishes who subscribe may forward this email on to parishioners, or they may decide just to send the PDF. |
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Liturgy News is a seasonal periodical from Liturgy Brisbane. A sixteen-page journal, printed in colour, the magazine is sent to subscribers either in hard copy or electronic form at the end of each quarter. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Liturgy News. In 2020, our covers feature four people from Australia and the Pacific who are travelling the path to sainthood. The Autumn cover features Dr Sr Mary Glowrey, a medical doctor who became a religious sister and lived much of her life in India. Each issue features commentary and insight from Australia's leading liturgists. Written for parishes, schools, experts and novices, Liturgy News is an essential tool for anyone working in liturgy! The complete index is searchable on the Liturgy Brisbane website, and back issues from 2001 onwards are available as PDF downloads. ORDER ONLINE at www.liturgybrisbane.net.au Magazine by Mail $30 per year + postage Magazine by Email $25 per year |
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The Wedding by LITURGIA has been designed for couples who are preparing their wedding liturgy. This electronic resource contains all the readings and prayers from the new revised Order of Celebrating Matrimony as well as music suggestions and lyrics of hymns. It runs on all Internet enabled devices: PCs, Macs, Tablets and Phones. Choose from the full range of prayers and readings and prepare the liturgy from start to finish. No need to type in any texts! View music suggestions for each part of the liturgy and insert your chosen hymns, with lyrics, into your liturgy plan. Type in the names of the bride and groom, and the names appear correctly throughout all of the ritual texts. Export your liturgy to Word or PDF and print a booklet, or create a PowerPoint presentation for use on display screens. It also comes with a companion hard-copy book (pictured) which contains all the prayers and texts of the Catholic marriage rite along with other helpful information. Click here to order. |
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The Funeral by LITURGIA is an electronic resource which has been designed for families who are preparing the funeral of a loved one, or for those who may wish to prepare their own funeral.
This electronic resource contains all the readings and prayers from the Order of Christian Funerals as well as music suggestions and lyrics of hymns. It runs on all Internet enabled devices: PCs, Macs, Tablets and Phones. Choose from the full range of prayers and readings and prepare the liturgy from start to finish with no need to type in any texts! Type in the name of the deceased and this name appears correctly throughout all of the ritual texts. Export your liturgy to Word or PDF and print a booklet, or create a PowerPoint presentation for use on display screens. This resource also comes with a companion hard-copy book (pictured) which contains all the prayers and texts of the Catholic funeral rite along with other helpful information. Click here to order |
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