The Presentation Sisters of Queensland invite applications from interested young women to work beside the Presentation Sisters in Thailand for 3 months in 2011; June, July and August.

Successful applicants will need a faith-based approach to working for peoples in underdeveloped countries, qualifications in an appropriate field connected to the work and openness to working in a cross-cultural environment thereby offering a hopeful future for people in an underdeveloped country.

A period of preparation for this work will be conducted prior to departure for Thailand.  Applicants will be subject to the Congregation’s and Legislative screening procedures consistent with the Presentation Sisters’ commitment to child protection policies and procedures.

An application package, including the selection criteria is available by contacting Sr Rosemary Grundy PBVM, phone 07 3262 6324, or email rosegrundy@qld.pbvm.org.au

Applications close 24^th October, 2010.

The unifying topic in today’s readings is humility and poverty of spirit. “Blessed are the poor,” Jesus shockingly said in the Sermon on the Mount, and adds “blessed are the humble” – this must be the most succinct yet challenging manifesto of the Christian revolution. The rest of the world was saying, and still says, “Blessed are the rich and powerful for the whole world belongs to them”. In the light of today’s scriptural readings I beg to differ.

In our first reading the listener is asked to behave humbly because there is no cure for the sickness of pride. It is as deadly as Old Testament leprosy. Secondly, the author of the letter to the Hebrews insists that what the followers of Jesus really hunger for is beyond the senses, intangible, spiritual, most certainly beyond materialistic possessions. That is a form of poverty.

Finally the Gospel parable warns that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, while those who humble themselves will be exalted. Know-alls will end up nowhere.

Unfortunately over the last two thousand years of history too many so-called followers of Christianity resisted such calls to poverty and humility, much to the detriment of the Christian message.

Recent discoveries about the first three centuries of Christianity clarify for us today, some seventeen hundred years later, how early Christianity deteriorated from a movement focused on a new age of freedom, healing and compassion into a religious empire focussed on mandatory/ prescribed doctrines/ creeds, strictly monitored by a powerful priestly hierarchy. The Constantinian Roman Empire became “ Christian” and Christianity that had offered an alternative culture, became Roman and imperial.

What had been a loose network of local congregations with varied forms of leadership and ritual, a movement of faith focussed on the Jesus story, which is essentially about a new age of freedom, healing and compassion coagulated into  a rigid structure of beliefs about Jesus.  One historian estimates that in the two and a half centuries after Constantine, Christian imperial authorities put twenty five thousand to death for their lack of creedal consciousness.

Near the town of Aksaray, in Cappadocia, we came upon a Caravanserai, an enormous stone structure dating from C12 AD. Here travellers found hospitality, could rest their animals, trade, and exchange travellers’ tales. By contrast, our modern hotels are often impersonal and lonely, though I was never lonely with Ingerid as travelling companion. The Magi would have stayed at such a place on their way to Bethlehem, Paul probably sought hospitality in the Caravanserais.

……….and let us remember all those who have gone before us.

We hear this bidding at every Eucharistic celebration.  For Paul they were the Cloud of Witnesses, the men and women of the Old and NT who have gone before us and given testimony to faith. I wonder what cloud of witnesses pass through your mind at that time- family, friends, godparents, teachers, priests or those in religious orders.

Often for me, in the first instance, they are not the important people who have passed through my life and who have left an indelible impression because of how they illumined my spiritual path by the example they set or the awareness they raised or the encouragement they gave.

There is no Death

There is a story about a servant of a rich merchant in ancient Baghdad. The servant is walking down to the marketplace to get some vegetables for the master, and when he gets there he comes face to face with Death. Death looks at the servant with an astonished look on his face and frightens the hell out of him.
The poor servant runs back to his master and says, “Master, quick, quick, I’ve just come face to face with Death in the marketplace, and I fear he’s going to take me. Lens me your fastest horse so I can flee to Samarra and so escape him.” So the master agrees and the servant saddles up the horse, hops on it and flogs it out of the yard and across the countryside towards Samarra.

A couple of hours later the master goes for a stroll and he too meets up with Death. He says, “Hey, listen here Death, what’s the idea of scaring my servant the way you did?” And Death says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare him. It’s just that I got such a surprise at seeing him here in Baghdad, when tonight I’ve an appointment with him in Samarra.