What do you know about Scrooge McDuck?   A few things, I’m sure, come immediately to mind: He’s the uncle of Donald Duck and the great uncle of Huey, Dewey and Louie. He’s named for the classic Dickens’ character, Ebenezer Scrooge, which naturally evokes characteristics of greed and general miserliness. As a result, you can guess that he’s been cast more than once in various Disney retellings of “A Christmas Carol” for the role that is his namesake. And you might be able to deduce that he is Scottish-born, and while he now lives in Duckburg, Scrooge McDuck — the richest duck in the world — has retained his native-born accent.   For reasons that are beyond the scope of this reflection, I’ve had cause to return to the classic Disney animated television series “DuckTales.” (Not the new one; the one that aired from 1987 – 1990.) And in making this trek back into my childhood, I’ve come to a startling realization: I barely know Scrooge McDuck at all!   “He’s like the Indiana Jones of the Disney universe!” a buddy said to me not long ago — a direct quote that has stayed with me for weeks. (Because what else would two 30-somethings be discussing?)   And by now I expect I’ve used up just about all of your patience in my musing about a random cartoon duck and need to quickly make a useful point.   Here it is: Scrooge McDuck walks among us every day of the week. And by that I mean, we’ve failed or forgotten to see people fully for all that they are, the good and the bad and the indifferent. We allow generalizations and assumptions and whatever our rather poor memories can retain to inform how we encounter and love God’s beloved creatures — ducks, humans, the whole of creation.   The stakes are quite low when it comes to how I remember a cartoon duck. But I was genuinely excited to learn that old Uncle Scrooge didn’t simply sit atop his piles of money but left Duckburg to go on adventures with his nephews. I’d forgotten or simply never knew this part of the character. And while he probably could stand to give a bit more to charity, the drive to explore and learn and be challenged added a new layer to a character that I’ve known all my life.   And of course, the message is obvious for us in our day, right? We need to allow one another to be the full human being we each in fact are. We must not limit or reduce one another to our worst days, our biggest errors or even our most outrageous successes. We must not trap one another in a past moment but rather permit the ongoing growth and development and conversion that is necessary and inherent to every single one of our lives.   But here’s why — and I think this is essential. Again and again in my own prayer, I return to the 15th Annotation of the Spiritual Exercises in which St. Ignatius reminds spiritual directors to get out of the way of our God who desires to deal directly with us, God’s beloved creatures. And while this might sound obvious, what this means is quite remarkable:   God is still dealing with us. God still desires to enter intimately and directly into the very fabric of our stories. The Holy Spirit is working right now within us — and our vocation continues to unfold.   Uncle Scrooge is a miser. The guy owns a money bin — that’s some Standard of the Enemy-level stuff if ever I’ve seen it. But that duck also loves adventure, and he loves his family. He’s more than just a character that cautions us against greed.   And so are we — more than a single thing, I mean. So take time to wander back into your past, to develop a disposition of curiosity and wonder and awe toward yourself and others. Because the Spirit is still at work; we are all still growing deeper into God’s dream for us and for our world.   Let’s not end the story before we get to the good part.

 

 

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https://jesuitmedialab.org/

 

A Case for Ignatian Spirituality Memes

https://jesuitmedialab.org/a-case-for-ignatian-spirituality-memes/ 

 

Prayers and reflections to use when praying for peace in Israel and Palestine

Stations of the Cross in a time of war in Israel

Joyful-Mysteries-of-the-Rosary-for-World-Peace

Peace Service 2023

Among the Rubble

Compassionate God,

In our minds, we pray among the rubble,

the unholy mess of demolitions

in the land we call Holy.

In our hearts we hold

families who have lost their homes,

children who have seen their schools destroyed,

communities which no longer have a clinic.

We pray for them as they weep for all that is lost.

We pray that they will not lose hope.

And we pray, too, for

the men who drive the bulldozers,

soldiers who beat back protestors,

politicians who sign the orders –

aware that such actions destroy their humanity.

Bless those who campaign against injustice;

bless the patient rebuilders;

bless those who hope against hope

that peace with justice will prevail

in the land that we call Holy.

Amen

©Jan Sutch Pickard,  UK

Reflections

13/4/2024

God, I come to you as I am.
It is all I have, really.
And the next one I’m conscious of
will be the same.
I can feel the way I move,
moment to moment,
without the comfort of “solutions.”

It seems wild to me now how I imagined
any once-and-for-all cure for this,
or a master plan to ensure things
will work out.
But, truth be told, that’s always been
my secret hope.

So, Lord, let’s try again.
I’m begging for a new plan.
I want a plan that is an “unplan.”
I must keep moving and planning,
trying and changing,
knitting my days together even as
they unravel.
So can we do this together?

Remind me to pray: come Lord
and quiet the worry.
I step, and you steady me.
I give, and you keep my hands open.
I act, and you fortify me with courage
to try and try and try again.

This life is uncertain, Lord,
but your love is not.
You tell the story of my life
regardless of how little I know
about how it ends, except to say,
you were there since the beginning
and you appear on every page.

Reflection Prompt
Now that we know that we don’t know, let’s enjoy that thought for a moment. Isn’t it delicious that the God who flung stars into space also knows every beginning and end? So let’s settle in for a moment and let ourselves not know in the presence of the God who already knows.  Kate Bowler 

12/3/2024

If the tumultuous world has not stopped being beautiful, neither has love stopped being love: “Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy.”  If we choose joy over despair and love over hate, it’s because Earth offers love and joy daily. Robin Wall Kimmerer

28/2/2024

Opening ourselves to God when we’re in need says that we trust God and want God to accompany us, support us, and befriend us in every way.

We trust those we love most with our deepest fears, doubts, emptiness, and disillusionment. So we love God when we share those vulnerable aspects of our lives with God. Just as a little child in the middle of a temper tantrum can shout “I hate you, Mommy!” only because he knows his outburst will not end their relationship, we can express to God our deep doubts, anger, or frustrations only because we possess an even deeper trust in God’s love…. The fact that we share this pain with God rather than withhold it turns out to be an expression of love. Brian McClaren

28/1/2024

If our framing story tells us that we are free and responsible creatures in a creation made by a good, wise, and loving God, and that our Creator wants us to pursue virtue, collaboration, peace, and mutual care for one another and all living creatures, and that our lives can have profound meaning … then our society will take a radically different direction, and our world will become a very different place.

When we believe in a deep way that life is good, God is good, and humanity is good, we do exciting and imaginative things because we are confident that we are part of a storyline that is going somewhere good. As Christians, we have the opportunity to live the story given to us at the very beginning (Genesis 1), that creation is “good,” even “very good,” and that it is our vocation to nurture and grow such goodness wherever we can. Richard Rohr

24/1/2024

In life there are moments of darkness. There are periods of discouragement. There are times when we lose sight of the beauty of the sky for all the clouds. You may have to bear severe sickness, or deal with tremendous pain, or you may be disappointed in this or that. But remember, whatever difficulty you have to face, it will not last. It is only a cloud. For God has made each of us with a purpose. ALICE VON HILDEBRAND

24/1/2024

In his book New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton observed that a tree gives glory to God by being a tree.  I often recite this phrase like a mantra in my head as a reminder that my only job is to be my most authentic self. I’ve discovered that the more I embrace the person God made me, the more I’m able to love God. And, really, that’s the only thing I can offer to God and to the world. Richard Rohr

16/11/2023

In his book New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton observed that a tree gives glory to God by being a tree.  I often recite this phrase like a mantra in my head as a reminder that my only job is to be my most authentic self. I’ve discovered that the more I embrace the person God made me, the more I’m able to love God. And, really, that’s the only thing I can offer to God and to the world.

22/10/2023

The beguine mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1207–c. 1282) wrote about her experience of God’s passionate love and desire. She records a dialogue between her soul and God:

The soul begins: 

Ah, Lord, love me passionately, love me often, love me long. For the more continuously You love me, the purer I will be; the more fervently You love me, the more beautiful I will be; the longer You love me, the holier I will become here on earth.

God responds: 

Because I Myself am Love, I will love you continuously.
Because I long to be loved passionately, My desire is to love you fervently.
Because I am everlasting and eternal, I will love you long…. [4]

When I shine, you will reflect my radiance,
When I flow, you will flow swiftly,
When you breathe, you draw into yourself My Divine Heart.
When you cry for Me, I take you into My arms.
When you love Me, we are united as one.
Nothing can separate us, for we abide together joyfully.

11/8/2023

Do not fear then, that your past faithlessness must make you unworthy of God’s mercy. Nothing is so worthy of mercy as utter weakness. He came from heaven to earth to seek sinners, not the righteous; to seek that which was lost – as indeed all were lost if it were not for him. The physician seeks the sick, not the healthy. Oh, how God loves those who come boldly to him in their foul, ragged garments and ask, as of a father, for some garment worthy of him! FRANÇOIS FÉNELON

10/8/2023

I found myself unable to will, or pray, my way out of the dark. Then, on one particularly grim day, my husband, Chris, said, “Just write down one thing. Write down one thing that you are thankful for.” I did. I still remember what it was. “The way the sunlight falls on my morning coffee.” If you feel an eye roll coming on, I totally get it – but understand that for right then, those words and what they represented were enough. Finding that one simple thing to give thanks for, and writing it down, started a chain reaction. I found another, and another.  NORANN VOLL

10/8/2023

Sometimes the faces of the people I detest flash across my mind and heart…. How can they possibly be holy children of God? Howard Thurman answers this question in the final chapter of Jesus and the Disinherited. Pointing to the centrality of the love ethic in Jesus’s teachings, he observes the types of people Jesus befriended who, by all accounts, should have been absolute enemies. Thurman points to the necessity of extinguishing bitterness within the heart in order to recognize adversaries as holy children of God. 

Thurman emphasizes Jesus’ teaching to love our enemies as a radical challenge to love as if everyone belongs: 

Jesus, however, approaches life from the point of view of God. The serious problem for him had to be: Is the Roman a child of God? Is my enemy God’s child? If he is, I must work upon myself until I am willing to bring him back into the family.… If God loves them, that binds me. Can it be that God does not know how terrible my enemy is? No, God knows them as well as he knows himself and much better than I know them. It must be true, then, that there is something in every human that remains intact, inviolate, regardless of what he [or she] does. I wonder! Is this true? Is there an integrity of the person, so intrinsic in its value and significance that no deed, however evil, can ultimately undermine this given thing? If a person is of infinite worth in the sight of God, whether they are saint or sinner, whether they are a good person or a bad person, evil or not, if that is true, then I am never relieved of my responsibility for trying to make contact with this worthy thing in them.  Richard Rohr

6/7/2023

It’s not always your business to pay attention to every controversy or news story. We’re not called to always be in this state of anxiety and to be all worked up. If I’m constantly reading my phone or watching YouTube or whatever I’m missing the real world, I’m missing what is actually out there, and I am being that distracted, I’m not focusing on what the actual call of my life is. If you’re all in a frenzy, you can’t shoot straight. Jesus said, ‘let not your heart be troubled,’ and I take that seriously. If the news is troubling you in this unproductive way, turn it off! BRYCE LUNGREN

7/5/2023

To forgive the incessant provocations of daily life – to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son – how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night, “Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what he says. C. S. LEWIS

29/4/2023

We love the soil because God’s spirit spoke and created the earth, and because he called it out of its uncultivated natural state so that it might be cultivated by the communal work of human beings. We love physical work – the work of muscle and hand – and we love the craftsman’s art, in which the spirit guides the hand. In the way spirit and hand work together and through each other, we see the mystery of community. God – the creative Spirit – has formed nature, and he has entrusted the earth to us, his sons and daughters, as an inheritance but also as a task: our garden must become his garden, and our work must further his kingdom. EBERHARD ARNOLD

13/3/2023

The ultimate purpose of the sacred marriage [or union with God] is to give birth to good works in the world  Teresa of Avila

28/2/2023

For courage when you thought things would be different by now
God, I thought I would feel different by now, 
but new pressures just keep mounting. 
I have been struggling for too long
to meet each new challenge, 
to scrape up resources, 
to find small comforts, 
to change strategies, 
to dig deep into our reserves,
to stay positive,
but I need relief 
and fresh hope
and a minute to just say,
I really wish things were easier.

“We do not know what to do,
but our eyes are on you.”
            —2 Chronicles 20:12, New International Version

Just when we thought we could almost be done with this,
another shoe drops. There are no finish lines. 
We long for the simple joys of times past,
those everyday pleasures we can barely remember, but still hunger for.
A great night’s sleep. 
Less financial stress. 
The ease of making future plans. 
The wish that our faith would give us an exemption 
from all that is too painful. 

Blessed are we who look to you, God,
in the midst of troubles that are too great for us, 
that have gone on far too long.
Who dare to say, 
now would be a good time for help to come,
for this to be over, once and for all.
God, send us help.
Bring solutions for the desperate, 
protection for the vulnerable, 
comfort for the suffering, 
strength to the caregivers, 
wisdom to those in charge. 

Infuse us with the courage to suffer with hope. 
That our suffering doesn’t go unnoticed by you. 

Sustain us and orient us to the reality in which we now live.
Help us pace ourselves. Keep us awake
to what might be done, right now.

“I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
—Isaiah 41:10, New International Version   Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie 

5/10/2022

What does it mean when we’re told we should love Godwith our whole heart, with our whole soul, with our whole mind, and with our whole strength? The first commandment is that we should love God more than anything else. The only way I know how to love God is to love what God loves; only then do we love with divine love and allow it to flow through us.  Richard Rohr

29/9/2022

When we can let go of what other people think and own our story, we gain access to our worthiness—the feeling that we are enough just as we are and that we are worthy of love and belonging. When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don’t fit with who we think we’re supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving. . . . Brené Brown

17/9/2022

God knows what each child is intended to become. It is the task of the parents, the church, and the educators to help this child become just what he or she should be, in accordance with the original thought of God. Through a religious sensitivity, we must attain a vision of this thought of God, which is still apparently hidden, and must learn to understand it more clearly from moment to moment, from day to day, from year to year. Then the forming of the child will not be something we undertake ourselves; rather, our role will consist solely in assisting in the formation intended by God.    EBERHARD ARNOLD

14/9/2022

We come to God not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong. And yet the great forgiveness is to forgive ourselves for doing it wrong. That’s probably the hardest forgiveness of all: that I’m not perfect, that I’m not unwounded, I’m not innocent. “One always learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.”  Richard Rohr

13/9/2022

Have the patience and courage to begin again anew each day, and trust in God’s help; his mercy is new every morning. Then you will understand that life is always a matter of becoming or growing, and that you must always look forward to the greater things. Even though you stand in battle with dark powers, the victory will be yours, since in Christ every evil is overcome.  EBERHARD ARNOLD

11/9/2022

Faith is an attitude of trust in the presence of God. Faith is openness to what God will reveal, do, and invite. It should be obvious that, in dealing with the infinite, all-powerful God, we are never in control. 

One of the most fundamental statements of faith is this: your life is not about you. You’re not in control. This is not your project. Rather, you are part of God’s great design. To believe this in your bones and act accordingly is to have faith. When we operate out of this transformed vision, amazing things can happen, for we have surrendered to “a power already at work in us that can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” Even a tiny bit of faith makes an extraordinary difference. Robert Barron

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When all is said and done, the gospel comes down to forgiveness. I’d say it’s the whole gospel. It’s the beginning, the middle, and the end. People who know how to forgive have known how good it feels to be forgiven, not when they deserved it, but precisely when they didn’t deserve it. 

If we’re Christian, we’ve probably said the “Our Father” ten thousand times. The words just slip off our tongues: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” By saying this prayer, we’ve asked and prayed for forgiveness. Notice the full correlation between how we give and how we receive: “Forgive us as we forgive.” They’re the same movement. We need to know that we need mercy, we need understanding, and then we also need to know how to give it. Each flows with the energy of the other.    Richard Rohr

7/9/2022

Now, I can see that one loving gesture is practically divine. We have to do small things and believe a big difference is coming. It’s like the miraculous drops of water that seep through mountain limestone. They gather themselves into springs that flow into creeks that merge into rivers that find their way to oceans. Our work is to envision the drops as oceans. We do our small parts and know a powerful ocean of love and compassion is downstream. Each small gesture can lead to liberation. The bravest thing we can do in this world is not cling to old ideas or fear of judgment, but step out and just do something for love’s sake.  Rev Becca Stevens

5/9/2022

The reason any of us woke up this morning had very little to do with us and everything to do with God. All twenty-four hours today are total gift. And so, the only real prayer is to say “Thank you!” and to keep saying it. When our prayer is constantly “Thank you,” and we know we deserve nothing, and that everything is a gift, we stop counting. Only when we stop counting and figuring out what we deserve, will we move from the world of merit into the wonderful world of grace. And in the world of grace, everything is free.  Richard Rohr

26/7/2022

Lover of All
Lord, lover of life, lover of these lives, 
Lord, lover of our souls, lover of our bodies, lover of all that exists . . .  
In fact, it is your love that keeps it all alive . . . 
May we live in this love. 
May we never doubt this love. 
May we know that we are love, 
That we were created for love, 
That we are a reflection of you, 
That you love yourself in us and therefore we are perfectly lovable.  
May we never doubt this deep and abiding and perfect goodness  
That we are because you are.   Richard Rohr

 19/7/2022

It matters not what my abilities may be then, provided that I possess you, Lord. Do what you will with this insignificant creature. Whether it be that I should work, or become inspired, or be the recipient of your impressions, it is all the same. Everything is yours, everything is from you and for you.…It is for you, Lord, to regulate everything: direction, humiliations, sanctification, perfection, and salvation – all are your business.  Jean-Pierre de Caussade

8/7/2022

The Creator’s call to care for our common home has never been more urgent, and requires a range of faithful responses, from individual and grassroots efforts to major policy and legislative changes. Through gardening and food production, the church is offering demonstration plots of abundant life: sites where even in the margins, we tend the earth and one another. What is needed is the cultivation of community where ecological conversion is possible; and of communities where neighbors can work together and live abundantly.  Sam Ewell

3/7/2022

What so many people today fail to realize is that forgiveness is a door to peace and happiness. Forgiving is not ignoring wrongdoing, but overcoming the evil inside us and in our world with love. To forgive is not just a command of Christ but the key to reconciling all that is broken in our lives and relationships. We get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity.  Johann Christoph Arnold

The Trinity is just another way of saying that God is love. But this has to imply that there is a play, within the unity of God, of lover, beloved, and shared love. This is precisely what we mean when we speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Robert Barron

Thank God for mothers! Mothers provide the most powerful influence on a child’s life, and are the most important role models for positive change in our society. When people are in trouble, or know that they are dying, the first person they think of is their mother. When children start going wrong ways a mother’s prayer is powerful. Mothers remind us that there is a loving God above us who will take good care of everyone, especially children. Whenever a tragedy occurs – no matter where in the world this happens – you will always find mothers both weeping for the dead and bringing comfort and security to the living. Johann Christoph Arnold

2/7/2022

When you awake in the morning 
immediately remember 
that the blessed Creator has acted toward you with 
     goodness and kindness,  
for He has returned the soul to you (Berakhot 2a);  
the soul that fills your whole body. . . . 

Before opening your eyes,  
draw the Creator to you— 
likewise with your ears, mouth, and mind.  

If you follow this practice,  
all your deeds will be holy that day,  
as it is written, “I foretell the end from the beginning” 
(Isaiah 46:10). [2] 

Hayim Heikel of Amdur, Hayim V’Hesed, #1, in God in All Moments, 3.

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The marks life leaves on everything it touches transform perfection into wholeness. Older, wiser cultures choose to claim this wholeness in the things that they create. In Japan, Zen gardeners purposefully leave a fat dandelion in the midst of the exquisite, ritually precise patterns of the meditation garden. In Iran, even the most skilled of rug weavers includes an intentional error, the “Persian Flaw,” in the magnificence of a Tabriz or Qashqai carpet…and Native Americans wove a broken bead, the “spirit bead,” into every beaded masterpiece. Nothing that has a soul is perfect. When life weaves a spirit bead into your very fabric, you may stumble upon a wholeness greater than you had dreamed possible before.  Rachel Naomi Remen

7/5/2022

The great agitation in the world of today makes it more and more urgent to gain inner strength in those quiet encounters with Christ that make it possible for us to remain under his rule and authority. Situated as we are in the midst of a world that is so terribly unpeaceful, we need constant nourishment for our inner life. In short, if we want to avoid suffering inward shipwreck in the storm of public opinion and chaos, then our hidden inner being needs daily the quiet haven of communion with God. Eberhard Arnold

5/5/2022

I’m prone to distractions , God.
I find it hard
To keep my thoughts on you.,”
God looked down
And sighed.

I wish I could say
The same about you,
I can’t get you out of my mind.          Patrick Purcell SJ

1/5/2022

Remember. Remember that Creator is the wind on my face, the rain in my hair, the sun that warms me. Creator is the trees, rocks, grasses, the majesty of the sky and the intense mystery of the universe. Creator is the infant who giggles at me in the grocery line, the beggar who reminds me how rich I really am, the idea that fires my most brilliant moment, the feeling that fuels my most loving act and the part of me that yearns for that feeling again and again. Whatever ceremony, ritual, meditation, song, thought or action it takes to reconnect to that feeling is what I need to do today. . . Remember.  Richard Wagamese

30/4/2022

“They have taken the Lord out of his tomb and we do not know where they have laid him,” Mary Magdalene said, and we can say this with her in times of doubt and questioning. Then there’s that last glorious chapter of Saint Luke, where Jesus says, “Why are you so perturbed? Why do questions arise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see.” Yes, sometimes it is most surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ, especially in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow, and the joy of our calling assures us we are on the right path. Most certainly, it is easier to believe now that the sun warms us, and we know that buds will appear on the sycamore trees in the wasteland across the street, that life will spring out of the dull clods of that littered park. There are wars and rumours of war, poverty and plague, hunger and pain. Still, the sap is rising, again there is the resurrection of spring, God’s continuing promise to us that he is with us always, with his comfort and joy, if we will only ask. Dorothy Day

The true God does not sanction a community created through violence; rather, he sanctions what Jesus called the kingdom of God, a society grounded in forgiveness, love, and identification with the victim. Robert Barron

28/4/2022

The duties and cares of the day crowd about us when we awake each day – if they have not already dispelled our night’s rest. How can everything be accommodated in one day? When will I do this, when that? How will it all be accomplished? Thus agitated, we are tempted to run and rush. And so we must take the reins in hand and remind ourselves, “Let go of your plans. The first hour of your morning belongs to God. Tackle the day’s work that he charges you with, and he will give you the power to accomplish it.”  Edith Stein

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. How does a lamp burn? Through the continuous input of small drops of oil. If the drops of oil run out, the light of the lamp will cease, and the bridegroom will say, “I do not know you” (Matt. 25:12). What are these drops of oil in our lamps? They are the small things of daily life: faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought for others, our way of being silent, of looking, of speaking, and of acting. These are the true drops of love that keep your religious life burning like a living flame. Mother Teresa

24/4/2022

The distribution of land, work, and goods should be in harmony with the justice of God, who lets the sun shine and the rain fall on the just and the unjust. Jesus says simply: what you want people to do for you, do for them. Make sure that all others have what you think you need yourself.  Eberhard Arnold

7/4/2022

Being patient is difficult. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control: the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a conflict. Patience is not waiting passively until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient, we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later, and somewhere else. Be patient and trust that the treasure you are looking for is hidden in the ground on which you stand.  Henri J. M. Nouwen

6/3/2022

Jesus says, “Forgive, and you will also be forgiven” (Matt. 6:14). That is to say, forgiveness is forgiveness. Your forgiveness of another is your own forgiveness; the forgiveness you give is the forgiveness you receive. If you wholeheartedly forgive your enemy, you may dare hope for your own forgiveness, for it is one and the same. Søren Kierkegaard

I don’t gather that God wants us to pretend our fear doesn’t exist, to deny it, or eviscerate it. Fear is a reminder that we are creatures – fragile, vulnerable, totally dependent on God. But fear shouldn’t dominate or control or define us. Rather, it should submit to faith and love. Otherwise, fear can make us unbelieving, slavish, and inhuman. I have seen that struggle: containing my fear, rejecting its rule, recognizing that it saw only appearances, while faith and love saw substance, saw reality, saw God’s bailiwick, so to speak: “Take courage, it is I. Do not be afraid!” Philip Berrigan

13/2/2022

Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a life stance. It’s a way of living in the Presence, living in awareness of the Presence, and even of enjoying the Presence. Fully contemplative people are more than aware of Divine Presence; they trust, allow, and delight in it. They “stand” on it. 

For Jesus, prayer seems to be a matter of waiting in love. Returning to love. Trusting that love is the deepest stream of reality. That’s why prayer isn’t primarily words; it’s primarily an attitude, a stance, a modus operandi. That’s why Paul could say, “Pray always.” “Pray unceasingly.” If we read that as requiring words, it is surely impossible. We’ve got a lot of other things to do. We can pray unceasingly, however, if we find the stream and know how to wade in its waters. The stream will flow through us, and all we have to do is keep choosing to stay there.   Richard Rohr

If we don’t know how to love what’s right in front of us, then we don’t know how to see what is. So we must start with a stone! We move from the stone to the plant world and learn how to appreciate growing things and see God in them. In all of the natural world, we see the vestigia Dei, which means the fingerprints or footprints of God.  Richard Rohr

10/2/2022

If God’s peace is in our hearts, we carry it with us, and it can be given to those around us, not by our own will or virtue, but by the Holy Spirit working through us. We cannot give what we do not have, but if the Spirit blows through the dark clouds and enters our hearts, we can be used as vehicles of peace, and our own peace will be thereby deepened. The more peace we give away, the more we have.  Madeleine L’Engle

7/2/2022
There is no scarcity. There is no shortage. No lack of love, of compassion, of joy in the world. There is enough. There is more than enough. Only fear and greed make us think otherwise. No one need starve. There is enough land and enough food. No one need die of thirst. There is enough water. No one need live without mercy. There is no end to grace. And we are all instruments of grace. The more we give it, the more we share it, the more we use it, the more God makes. There is no scarcity of love. There is plenty. And always more.   Rosemarie Freeney Harding7/2/2022

4/2/2022

Friendship is contingent on love—real love: compassion, empathy, reaching out, going beyond what we imagine is possible. That is the command: love. And if we reach out in love, friendship is the result, even friendship with God. Friendship is mutual, a hand extended and another reaching back. . . . Friendship is an eternal circle, the ceaseless reaching toward one another that strengthens us and gives us joy.  Diane Butler Bass

31/1/2022

The Gospel compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed that “once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants.” It seems to be a law of the spiritual life that God wants good things to start small and grow over time.

We’re tempted to say, “You’re God. Just get on with it. Do it!” But why would God work the way he does? We might attempt a few explanations. It is a commonplace of the Bible that God rejoices in our cooperation. He wants to involve us, through freedom, intelligence, and creativity, in what he is doing. And so he plants seeds, and he wants us to cultivate them.

Consider what God said to St. Francis: “Francis, rebuild my Church.” God could have rebuilt his Church without Francis, but he wanted him to get involved. 

When things start small, they can fly under the radar while they gain strength and heft and seriousness. Also, those involved can be tested and tried. Suppose you want to do something great in the life of the Church and you pray and God gives you massively what you want. You might not be ready, and your project will peter out. So be patient and embrace the small invitations.  Robert Barron

30/1/2022

26/1/2022

Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation.  Martin Luther King Jr.

23/1/2022

21/1/2022

Wine, in the Scriptures, is a symbol of the exuberance and intoxication of the divine life. When God is in us, we are lifted up, rendered joyful, transfigured. Therefore, when Mary says, “They have no wine,” she is speaking of all of Israel and indeed all of the human race. They have run out of the exuberance and joyfulness that comes from union with God.  Bishop Robert Barron

18/1/2022

It’s hard to remember a deeper, comforting truth: we are built on a foundation not our own. We were born because two other people created a combination of biological matter. We went to schools where dozens and dozens of people crafted ideas and activities to construct categories in our minds. We learned skills honed by generations of craftspeople. We pray and worship with spiritual ideas refined by centuries of tradition. Almost nothing about us is original. Thank God.  

It reminds me of the account of creation in Genesis. . . . God breathes oxygen into lungs in an instance of divine CPR. I love picturing that God, the only One who can create out of nothing—ex nihilo. God, who set the cornerstone of our lives and our faith, laid the first brick. The Master Builder whose carefully poured foundation is what we build on top of now. It certainly feels like a template for the rest of our experience. 

Whether it is our parents, our teachers, mentors, friends, churches, or neighbours, people have been pouring into us. We are standing on a foundation. It should come as an incredible relief. Our only job is to build on what we’ve been given, and, even then, even our gifts we can trace back to the creativity, generosity, and foresight of others. Thank God we are a group project.

Kate Bowler

13/1/2022

To say “I believe in God” means that there is Someone who surrounds me, embraces me everywhere, and loves me, Someone who knows me better than I do myself, deep down in my heart, where not even my beloved can reach, Someone who knows the secret of all mysteries and where all roads lead. I am not alone in this open universe with all my questions for which no one offers me a satisfactory answer. That Someone is with me, and exists for me, and I exist for that Someone and in that Someone’s presence. Believing in God means saying: there exists an ultimate tenderness, an ultimate bosom, an infinite womb, in which I can take refuge and finally have peace in the serenity of love. If that is so, believing in God is worthwhile; it makes us more ourselves and empowers our humanity.  Leonardo Boff 

9/1/2022

We are all capable of good and evil. We are not born bad; everybody has something good inside. Some hide it, some neglect it, but it is there. God created us to love and to be loved, so it is our test from God to choose one path or the other.  Mother Teresa

8/1/2022

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also
The bow that is stable.     Kahlil Gibran

3/1/2022

God has created each person for a purpose. He has his plan of love for you, for me, for everyone. The problem is that we make our own plans. We want them to be realized in a certain way and at a particular time. Then we get resentful when our plans don’t materialize. Yet, you have to come to a place in your life where you can say, “You, O Lord, you choose for me.”   Alice von Hildebrand

1/1/2022

God puts us in a world of passing things where everything changes and nothing remains the same. The only thing that doesn’t change is change itself. It’s a hard lesson to learn. It helps us appreciate that everything is a gift. We didn’t create it. We don’t deserve it. It will not last, but while we breathe it in, we can enjoy it, and know that it is another moment of God, another moment of life. People who take this moment seriously take every moment seriously, and those are the people who are ready for heaven. Richard Rohr

What was true for Revelation’s original audience is true for us today. Whatever madman is in power, whatever chaos is breaking out, whatever danger threatens, the river of life is flowing now. The Tree of Life is bearing fruit now. True aliveness is available now. That’s why Revelation ends with the sound of a single word echoing through the universe. That word is not Wait! Nor is it Not Yet! or Someday! It is a word of invitation, welcome, reception, hospitality, and possibility. It is a word not of ending, but of new beginning. That one word is Come! The Spirit says it to us. We echo it back. Together with the Spirit, we say it to everyone who is willing. Come!        Brian D. McLaren

27/12/2021

The mysterious men from the Orient followed the star and discovered the place where the secret of love lay in the helplessness of a human baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes in the feeding trough of an animal. They discovered the place where God’s love came down. That is the most important thing for all people, to discover individually, in their own time and at their own hour, the place where God’s love has broken through, and then to follow the star that has risen for them and to remain true to the light that has fallen into their hearts. Eberhard Arnold

A star shone forth in heaven brighter than all the stars; its light was indescribable and its strangeness caused amazement. All the rest of the constellations, together with the sun and moon, formed a chorus around the star, yet the star itself far outshone them all, and there was perplexity about the origin of this strange phenomenon, which was so unlike the others.

Consequently all magic and every kind of spell were dissolved, the ignorance so characteristic of wickedness vanished, and the ancient kingdom was abolished when God appeared in human form to bring the newness of eternal life; and what had been prepared by God began to take effect.  Ignatius of Antioch

17/12/2021

It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts. But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks; with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ.  Dorothy Day

The Christmas Star in the night sky, the shining of the Christmas light in the night – all this is the sign that light breaks into the darkness. Though we see about us the darkness of unrest, of family discord, of class struggle, of competitive jealousy and of national hatred, the light shall shine and drive it out.…Wherever the Christmas Child is born in a heart, wherever Jesus begins his earthly life anew – that is where the life of God’s love and of God’s peace dawns again. Emmy Arnold

We humans contribute to the world’s gloom, like dark shadows on a dark landscape.…But now this man from Nazareth comes to us and invites us to mirror God’s image, and shows us how. He says: you too can become light, as God is light. What is all around you is not hell, but rather a world waiting to be filled with hope and faith. This world is your home as surely as the God who created and wrought it is love. You may not believe it, but you can love this world. It is a place of God. It has a purpose. Its beauty is not a delusion. You can lead a meaningful life in it.   Jörg Zink

29/11/2021

The Lord Jesus gives us a task on earth: “Watch! – Watch for my coming!” (Matt. 24:42). This is a most important assignment. If we fulfill this task – to watch for Christ’s coming – we will find it becoming reality now. When we keep watch, our whole being is directed toward this future. We see it before our eyes, we feel it in our whole life. We cannot be swallowed up by the present, for we are linked to the future; we experience this future already. Our life is renewed again and again and something new develops, something that points the way for us to go: each time it is a glimpse into Jesus Christ’s future.   Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

From the beginning, writers of the Christmas story have been bothered by the inn, with the stable and manger close at hand. That is where we find ourselves: not by the shepherds, whose poverty and simplicity we lack; and not by the wise men, whose watchfulness and decisiveness we lack. We are, at best, guests at the inn. We sleep, we follow our own plans and dreams. Can we be awakened by the angels’ news? That is the question. Rudolf Otto Wiemer

Eternity is not about unending life as we know it; what we know here will soon be over. Eternity is a new life, free of death’s destructive powers, a fullness of life where love reigns supreme. The promise of everlasting life has less to do with duration of time and more to do with a certain kind of life – one of peace, fellowship, and abundance – and such a life can begin now.  Johann Christoph Arnold

Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife, which may at any moment become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself, “What else is the world interested in?” What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships? God is love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love.   Dorothy Day

Soul is the blueprint inside of every living thing that tells it what it is and what it can still become. When we meet anything at that level, we will respect, protect, and love it.   Richard Rohr

The guarantee of one’s prayer is not in saying a lot of words. The guarantee of one’s petition is very easy to know: How do I treat the poor? The degree to which you approach them, and the love with which you approach them, or the scorn with which you approach them – that is how you approach your God. What you do to them, you do to God. The way you look at them is the way you look at God.

Oscar Romero

13/11/2021

I often feel more like a member of the clergy than of the medical profession, and it makes me realize how much the two professions have in common… I have seen fellow physicians retiring years earlier than they had planned after succumbing to compassion fatigue, the medical equivalent of battle fatigue known to veterans of armed conflict… When I feel stressed, I climb a mountain or get in my carbon-fiber canoe, and head for one of the thousands of ponds, lakes, and streams in the Adirondacks to reconnect with nature. Personal crises seem much less important when I am standing on a mountain summit or floating across a tranquil pond, surrounded by wilderness in every direction. There I can fill my brain (and my camera) with images of the heavenly landscape.

Daniel Way

5/11/2021

Jesus came to make people free. He wanted us to choose goodness freely. He did not crave the base worship of the slave. But free choice can exist only where there is doubt. Where there is certainty, there is nothing to choose; as soon as we understand a proof in Euclidian geometry, for instance, we simply accept it. Faith exists only where there is uncertainty. And so Jesus did not offer proofs. With only his image as our guide, we must choose goodness freely in the face of doubt.

Gary Saul Morson

The mystery of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.
Dorothy Day

27/10/2021

If I did not believe, if I did not make what is called an act of faith (and each act of faith increases our faith, and our capacity for faith), if I did not have faith that the works of mercy do lighten the sum total of suffering in the world, so that those who are suffering…somehow mysteriously find their pain lifted and some balm of consolation poured on their wounds, if I did not believe these things, the problem of evil would indeed be overwhelming.

Dorothy Day

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Nothing is small for our good God, for he is great and we are small. That is why he lowers himself and cares to do small things, in order to offer us an opportunity to show him our love. Since he does them, they are great things, they are infinite. Nothing he does can be small. Again: practice fidelity even in the least things, not for their own sake, but for the sake of what is great – that is, the will of God.

Mother Teresa

24/10/2021

21/10/2021

Prudence is a feel for the moral situation, something like the feel that a quarterback has for the playing field. Justice is a wonderful virtue, but without prudence, it is blind and finally useless. One can be as just as possible, but without a feel for the present situation, his justice will do him no good.
Wisdom, unlike prudence, is a sense of the big picture. It is the view from the hilltop. Most of us look at our lives from the standpoint of our own self-interest. But wisdom is the capacity to survey reality from the vantage point of God. Without wisdom, even the most prudent judgment will be erroneous, short-sighted, inadequate.
The combination, therefore, of prudence and wisdom is especially powerful. Someone who is both wise and prudent will have both a sense of the bigger picture and a feel for the particular situation.
Robert Barron

11/10/2021

Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more. Be happy now, and if you show through your actions that you love others – including those who are poorer than you – you’ll give them happiness, too. It doesn’t take much; it can be just giving a smile. The world would be a much better place if everyone smiled more. So smile, be cheerful, and be joyous that God loves you.

Mother Teresa

6/10/2021

Every one of us is written in the heart of God from all eternity, born into the stars, born, you might say, into the galaxies, born on this earth in small forms, developing and coming to explicit form in our lives, given a name. It’s a fantastic mystery of love.

Ilia Delio

Don’t let yourself forget that God’s grace rewards not only those who never slip, but also those who bend and fall. So sing! The song of rejoicing softens hard hearts. It makes tears of godly sorrow flow from them. Singing summons the Holy Spirit. Happy praises offered in simplicity and love lead the faithful to complete harmony, without discord. Don’t stop singing.

Hildegard of Bingen

Children cannot become mature human beings by themselves. They experience our love and warmth as a cocoon that protects them from harm. They need us to set appropriate boundaries and guidelines, yet give them as much freedom to explore as they can handle. They need us to be both strong and compassionate, people who understand the importance of living a life that is good and beautiful and true. And they need our faith in their ability to find their own way in life, so they can fulfill their own unique purpose. In short, they need us to strive to become full human beings, so we can help them do the same.

Joan Almon

4/10/2021

1/10/2021

Henri J. M. Nouwen There is no such thing as the right place, the right job, the right calling or ministry. I can be happy or unhappy in all situations. I am sure of it, because I have been. I have felt distraught and joyful in situations of abundance as well as poverty, in situations of popularity and anonymity, in situations of success and failure. The difference was never based on the situation itself, but always on my state of mind and heart. When I knew I was walking with God, I always felt happy and at peace. When I was entangled in my own complaints and emotional needs, I always felt restless and divided.

25/9/2021

2/9/2021

Today’s Gospel (Luke 5:1-11) gives us the story of the miraculous draught of fishes. In many ways, the whole of the spiritual life can be read off of this piece.
Without being invited, Jesus simply gets into the fisherman’s boat. This is to insinuate himself in the most direct way into Simon’s life. And without further ado, he begins to give orders, first asking Simon to put out from the shore and then to go out into the deep. This represents the invasion of grace. The single most important decision that you will ever make is this: Will you cooperate with Jesus once he decides to get into your boat?   

Robert Barron

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hardheartedness, all indifference, and all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet. Hermann Hesse

27/8/2021

25/8/2021

To be loved by Jesus enlarges our heart capacity. To be loved by the Christ enlarges our mental capacity. We need both a Jesus and a Christ, in my opinion, to get the full picture. A truly transformative God—for both the individual and history—needs to be experienced as both personal and universal. Nothing less will fully work.
Richard Rohr

When Christ calls himself the “Light of the World” (John 8:12), he is not telling us to look just at him, but to look out at life with his all-merciful eyes. We see him so we can see like him, and with the same infinite compassion.
Richard Rohr

8/8/2021 Our God who shows that he is totally love and who wants us in relation to him, to eat and drink him in, is the God who wants us to be like him. As he is food and drink for the world, so we must be food and drink for the world. As he gave himself away utterly, so we must give ourselves away utterly, without clinging to the goods, honours, or values of the world—all those things that aggrandise the ego.
The personal God, the incarnate God, the God of the gift. How compelling. How deeply challenging
Robert Barron

6/8/2021  Prayer is not a technique for getting things, a pious exercise that somehow makes God happy, or a requirement for entry into heaven. It is much more like practicing heaven now by leaping into communion with what is right in front of us.
Richard Rohr 

3/8/2021   I don’t see how you could get through what I’ve had to deal with without some kind of faith – without turning to Jesus and relying on him to give you peace, or the courage to get up and go through another day. Plus, I think chronic pain makes you more aware of what is important, and less easily bothered by the petty stuff of life. And that, I think, is a blessing. Because I don’t think I’d naturally be like that.

I’ve never said, “Thank you, God, for sending me this.” But I do find comfort in knowing that Jesus knows what suffering is. 

Brenda Hindley

1/8/2021  What God has wanted from the beginning is to sit down with his creatures in a fellowship banquet, sharing life and laughter, giving and receiving and giving back again. This is the loop of grace. The more we receive the divine life, the more we should give it away and thereby get more of it.
Robert Barron

31/7/2021   The prophet Joel once promised: “Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men will have visions” (3:1). The future of the world depends on this covenant between young and old. Who, if not the young, can take the dreams of the elderly and make them come true? Yet for this to happen, it is necessary that we continue to dream. Our dreams of justice, of peace, of solidarity, can make it possible for our young people to have new visions; in this way, together, we can build the future.    Pope Francis

21/7/2021  In Haiti, we have a concept called konbit: a gathering with a shared goal. Members of a community come together to accomplish something that benefits the entire community, or a single person in need. Konbits initially began in agriculture. “Today I work your field, tomorrow you work mine,” the Haitian novelist Jacques Roumain wrote of konbits. . . . How do we define community in a time of crisis, which is in many ways what community is for? We don’t need our neighbours as much when we are healthy and wealthy and can pay for all the assistance we require.              Edwidge Danticat

20/7/2021   Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is not about preserving the status quo! It’s about living here on earth as if the Reign of God has already begun (see Luke 17:21). In this Reign, the Sermon tells us, the poor are blessed, the hungry are filled, the grieving are filled with joy, and enemies are loved.
Richard Rohr

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Meeting the Lord in Imaginative Prayer  Richard Rohr

We often teach the transforming effects of silence and unknowing. It has been my personal practice for years. At the same time, one of the great gifts of Jesuit spirituality is to teach us how to draw closer to God through images, words, verbal prayer, our imaginations, and the Bible itself. Here is how writer and retreat leader Margaret Silf invites people into the riches of Ignatian contemplation:
The call to friendship with God invites us to allow our lives, with everything we most truly are, to become more closely linked to the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord and to everything he truly is. . . . One way to allow this closer linking to happen is to enter imaginatively into scenes from the earthly life of Jesus, in what is called imaginative meditation [or contemplation].
Choose a passage that seems to speak to you in some way—a favorite Gospel scene perhaps, or one of the healing miracles. If you don’t know which passage to choose, just rest, relax, and ask God to guide you; then wait to see whether any particular scene or event comes to mind. . . .
When you have chosen a passage, read it several times until it is familiar and you feel at home with it.
Now imagine that the event is happening here and now and that you are an active participant in it. Don’t worry if you don’t find it easy to imagine it vividly. . . . And don’t worry about getting the facts right. You may well find that your scene doesn’t take place in first century Palestine, but in Chicago rush-hour traffic, or that the desert tracts of the Good Samaritan story turn into the sidewalks in your neighborhood.
Ask God for what you desire—perhaps to meet God more closely or to feel God’s touch upon your life.
Fill out the scene as much as you can by, for example, becoming aware of who is there, the surroundings, the sights, the smells, the tastes, the weather, and the feel of the place (peaceful or threatening). What role do you find yourself taking in the scene—for example, are you one of the disciples, a bystander, or the person being healed? Listen inwardly to what God is showing you through your role in the scene. . . .
Talk with the characters in the scene, especially to Jesus. Speak from your heart simply and honestly. Tell him what you fear, what you hope for, what troubles you. . . . Don’t worry if your attention wanders. If you realize that this is happening, just bring yourself gently back to the scene for as long as you feel drawn to stay there.
There are two absolute rules:
Never moralize or judge yourself.
Always respond from your heart and not from your head. . . .
Our purpose in prayer is not to defend or condemn ourselves or to come up with any kind of analysis or sermon, but simply to respond, from our inmost depths, to what God is sharing with us of God’s own self

 

Meditation – a simple guide

There is no single way to meditate. There are, however, certain acts and attitudes inherently endowed with the capacity to awaken sustained states of meditative awareness. . . . With respect to the body: Sit still. Sit straight. Place your hands in a comfortable or meaningful position in your lap. Close your eyes or lower them toward the ground. Breathe slowly and naturally. With respect to your mind, be present, open, and awake, neither clinging to nor rejecting anything. And with respect to attitude, maintain nonjudgmental compassion toward yourself as you discover yourself clinging to and rejecting everything, and nonjudgmental compassion toward others. . . . Keep in mind that these guidelines are but suggestions for you to explore as part of your ongoing process of finding the ways to meditate that are most natural and effective for you. What matters is not which method of meditation you use, but the self-transforming process by which meditation leads you into more . . . openness to God. . . . Go to your place of meditation. . . . You might say a brief and simple prayer expressing your gratitude to God for having been led to the path of meditation and asking for the wisdom, courage, and strength to be faithful to it. . . . [Then] let go of all that is preoccupying you at the moment. Choose to be present in the immediacy of the present moment by simply relaxing into being right where you are, just as you are. Settle into the intimate, felt sense of your bodily stillness. Settle into being aware of your breathing and whatever degree of fatigue or wakefulness you may be feeling in your body at the moment. Be aware of whatever sadness, inner peace, or other emotion may be present. Be aware of the light and the temperature in the room where you are sitting. In short, simply be present, just as you are, in the moment, just as it is. Cling to nothing. Reject nothing. Rest in this moment. . . . Relax. Give yourself a break. Simply sit in a “Here I am, Lord” stance. . . . Know and trust that God is already perfectly present in your simply being alive and real in the present moment just as it is. . . . Be humbled and grateful in knowing that you are learning to awaken to your true nature in learning to be like God. . . . Jesus said, “Judge not and you shall not be judged” (Matthew 7:1). Sitting in meditation, we put this teaching of Christ into practice in remaining present, open, and awake to ourselves just as we are, without judging, without evaluating, without clinging to or rejecting the way we simply are. James Finley, Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence

13/5/2021

Pentecost Novena – Creation

18/11/2020

The Quarantine Quatrains  click to reveal

6/11/2020

Living Life in Full in Lock-Down

3/10/2020

The Spirituality Committee of the Bishops’ Conference has been reflecting on how best to support and sustain a person’s prayer life at this challenging time – particularly those who may not have easy access to the internet or streaming services. The Committee has looked to the psalms as the inspiration for its new resource.

Responding to the Psalms is a simple initiative that takes a Sunday’s Responsorial Psalm – an integral part of the Liturgy of the Word – and invites and encourages further reflection on each verse.

Short questions are provided to encourage deeper thought on the verse for a few days or so before the focus moves on to the psalm’s next verse. Once each verse has been considered, we arrive at the next Sunday’s Responsorial Psalm.

The aim is that this will sustain people throughout the week.

Responding to the Psalms is intended to be used by individuals and small groups. Click below for the psalms and questions.

Resp-to-Psalms-October-2020

22/6/2020

Information about what is available to support your faith and prayer life around the Diocese

Resourcing the Lockdown

17/6/2020

How to pray and re-connect with the church as places of worship re-open for private prayer

2/6/2020 Blessings – a meditative few moments

https://gratefulness.org/blessings/

29/5/2020 Vigil prayer

The Ignatian Family in a Worldwide Prayer Vigil

On Sunday 31^st of May the universal Church will celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit not only transforms the lives of the disciples into apostles, it brings the Church to birth and sends it out to all nations, overcoming divisions of language, race, class. The Spirit gathers us, whatever our state or condition, into the new community of Christ. Our lives and our world are restored and renewed.

In these past months we all have experienced the devastation of COVID-19. It has shown how vulnerable we are, how precarious our systems and limited our resources. We have also seen the great generosity and courage that can fill the human heart as so many risk their own life care and save the lives of others. Even in the small acts of kindness, generosity and thoughtfulness we glimpse something greater than we had thought possible. These moments are the ‘epiphanies of the Spirit’; the candles of love that light up the darkness and guide us into hope.

What better way to seek the gift and power of the Holy Spirit than as a world-wide community of prayer? Click button below for details of how to access.

Click for Worldwide prayer vigil

29/5/2020 Preparing for Pentecost

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‘Rise Within Us – The Coming Of The Spirit’ is an uplifting song for Pentecost performed by the Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir. It’s a ‘Sung Scripture’, which uses a well-known song as a basis, and ad lib singing of the relevant scripture in the gaps.

Performers are being creative in lockdown, as we’ve seen over the past eight weeks, and this high quality arrangement was put together using material from 25 performers singing separately into smartphones at home.

The song is dedicated to the prisoners and staff at HMP Wandsworth.

Listen https://soundcloud.com/catholicchurch/rise-within-us-the-coming-of-the-spirit

‘Rise Within Us’ lyrics and music by Aaron Lindsay and Israel Houghton, from 2004 live album “Live From Another Level”, Israel & New Breed; additional lyrics by Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir, based on Acts 2, sung ad lib.

23/5/2020

As the important Solemnity of Pentecost approaches, the Cardinal assures you that he holds you  in his prayer. He has sent us a message. In it, he reflects on the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, particularly in the context of the circumstances in which we are living at the moment.

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Thy Kingdom Come 2020 – Ascension to Pentecost

“God is not in lockdown” said Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby at the live launch of Thy Kingdom Come 2020 celebrated in prayer with Archbishop Sentamu and Cardinal Vincent this morning. The video is available to view athttps://tkc.new/livelink.

Cardinal Vincent spoke of the richness of these days; a time of waiting, trusting and not-knowing that resonates with the experience of many people in these strange and difficult times. He stressed the importance of the gifts of gratitude, joy and service that hold Christians of all denominations together and prayed for the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to see the gifts we are given and to use them in the field of our world.

The Archbishops spoke of the importance of praying together, as families, as church communities and as inter-denominational communities. There are many excellent resources available at www.thykingdomcome.global

In Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire the Thy Kingdom Come Ecumenical Planning Group has put together a programme starting with a launch event this evening and including daily prayers from Regional Church Leaders, including our own Bishop Paul on Wednesday. There are family prayers and resources and daily evening reflections. There will be a Beacon celebration posted on Pentecost Sunday. A full programme, with YouTube links, is available at www.stalbans.anglican.org/faith/thy-kingdom-come/

‘The Prayer and Care: ideas for families’ can be found atwww.stalbans.anglican.org/wp-content/uploads/Prayer_and_Care_Family_TKC2020.pdf

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20/5/2020

Jesuit prayer support for Ascension and Pentecost

 We keep in prayer all those working to fight the pandemic and all those grieving the loss of loved ones. We also pray for the families you serve, as they learn new ways of living as the domestic church.

Ascension and Pentecost

Ascension and Pentecost are the two great feasts that signal the end of the Easter season. Celebrate using these ideas from Loyola Press.

Click for prayers and activities for Ascension and Pentecost

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15/5/2020

Fr Stephen Wang is live streaming each day at the ‘Pause for Faith’ YouTube channel, where you can
also see a library of recent videos. It’s an informal look at different aspects of our Catholic faith.
Themes include how to pray, the lives of the saints, faith formation, coping with lockdown, and a
new series of talks about ‘What Christians believe in 100 objects’. Please share the link below with
anyone who might be looking for some inspiration and spiritual support during the lockdown.
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/PauseforFaith
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: @pauseforfaith

13/5/2020

Please include these prayer intentions from the Churches together in Hitchin in your prayers at the appropriate times.

February to April 20 PrayerLink 97-2003

1/5/2020

A letter sent to cloistered nuns which as Cardinal Vincent says ‘…. is reflective, sensitive, with a true ‘interiority’ in its themes. I found that it touched me quite deeply. It is simply an offering at a difficult time.’

A letter from the desert

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24/4/2020

Emmaus Road reflection by Reverend Charmaine Sabey-Corkindale

A reflection with art. Click below

emmausroadreflection csc

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24/4/2020

Pray as You Stay https://pray-as-you-go.org/

Mental Health audio prayer guides: https://pray-as-you-go.org/retreat/mental-health-awareness

Pray As You Stay mini series: https://pray-as-you-go.org/retreat/pray-as-you-stay

Kids Examen during lockdown: https://pray-as-you-go.org/player/prayer%20tools/aspecialexamenforchildren

Family Examen during lockdown: https://pray-as-you-go.org/player/prayer%20tools/anexamenforthefamily

PAYG Rosary Reflections: https://pray-as-you-go.org/article/rosary-reflections

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18/4/2020

Extract from message from Cardinal Vincent to the Priests of the Diocese

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Easter Sunday

Pope Francis: ‘Urbi et Orbi’ Easter Message 2020

Prayer materials for Holy week

From the Jesuits in Britain

Palm Sunday  Palm Sunday Yr A r1

Holy Week prayer with the 5 senses Holy Week 2020 Praying with our 5 senses

From Ten:Ten for children on Thursday – Mass of the Last supper gospel click below picture

https://www.tentenresources.co.uk/primary-subscription/prayers-for-home/homeprayer-2020-04-06/the-last-supper-public/

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Accessing live stream Masses

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Resources to support your prayer life at this time

28/3/2020

Prayers in response to the Coronavirus pandemic… Are you reeling at the moment from the impact of coronavirus? Are you wondering how you’re going to cope with months of isolation or social distancing? Are you worried about work, money or how the country is ever going to recover from the impact of this pandemic? And are you looking for some kind of spiritual solace, but struggling to find words to pray. Then this little book could be just the thing for you. It contains 52 prayers written in response to the crisis, asking for strength, encouragement and support, as well as help for loved ones and the wider world. Honest, down-to-earth and heartfelt, it’s a resource written to help you articulate what you are feeling and bring you hope in these dark and difficult days.

Grab your FREE eBook here

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8/4/2020

From St Mark’s church – ideas for craft activities for Easter

Messy St Marks DIY Easter Activities

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28/3/2020

From TenTen  

Ten Ten has decided to make freely available our Collective Worship resources to all schools and their families. We have created a new series of resources called Prayers for Home, which include:
Sunday Liturgy for Families

Daily Prayers for Home

We will continue to create original resources for families throughout the Easter holidays and beyond during this uncertain time for teachers, children and their families. Click below the picture for the Last Supper.

https://www.tentenresources.co.uk/primary-subscription/prayers-for-home/homeprayer-2020-04-06/the-last-supper-public/

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From the Diocese

https://rcdow.org.uk/faith/catechesis/resources-now/

Resources: https://rcdow.org.uk/news/resources-during-mass-suspension/

Pope Francis Urbi et Orbi Blessing

“Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” Lord, you are calling to us, calling us to faith. Which is not so much believing that you exist, but coming to you and trusting in you. This Lent your call reverberates urgently: “Be converted!”, “Return to me with all your heart” (Joel 2:12). You are calling on us to seize this time of trial as a time of choosing. It is not the time of your judgement, but of our judgement: a time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not. It is a time to get our lives back on track with regard to you, Lord, and to others. We can look to so many exemplary companions for the journey, who, even though fearful, have reacted by giving their lives. This is the force of the Spirit poured out and fashioned in courageous and generous self-denial. It is the life in the Spirit that can redeem, value and demonstrate how our lives are woven together and sustained by ordinary people – often forgotten people – who do not appear in newspaper and magazine headlines nor on the grand catwalks of the latest show, but who without any doubt are in these very days writing the decisive events of our time: doctors, nurses, supermarket employees, cleaners, caregivers, providers of transport, law and order forces, volunteers, priests, religious men and women and so very many others who have understood that no one reaches salvation by themselves. In the face of so much suffering, where the authentic development of our peoples is assessed, we experience the priestly prayer of Jesus: “That they may all be one” (Jn 17:21). How many people every day are exercising patience and offering hope, taking care to sow not panic but a shared responsibility. How many fathers, mothers, grandparents and teachers are showing our children, in small everyday gestures, how to face up to and navigate a crisis by adjusting their routines, lifting their gaze and fostering prayer. How many are praying, offering and interceding for the good of all. Prayer and quiet service: these are our victorious weapons.

8/7/2022

The Creator’s call to care for our common home has never been more urgent, and requires a range of faithful responses, from individual and grassroots efforts to major policy and legislative changes. Through gardening and food production, the church is offering demonstration plots of abundant life: sites where even in the margins, we tend the earth and one another. What is needed is the cultivation of community where ecological conversion is possible; and of communities where neighbors can work together and live abundantly.  Sam Ewell

3/7/2022

What so many people today fail to realize is that forgiveness is a door to peace and happiness. Forgiving is not ignoring wrongdoing, but overcoming the evil inside us and in our world with love. To forgive is not just a command of Christ but the key to reconciling all that is broken in our lives and relationships. We get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity.  Johann Christoph Arnold

The Trinity is just another way of saying that God is love. But this has to imply that there is a play, within the unity of God, of lover, beloved, and shared love. This is precisely what we mean when we speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Robert Barron

Thank God for mothers! Mothers provide the most powerful influence on a child’s life, and are the most important role models for positive change in our society. When people are in trouble, or know that they are dying, the first person they think of is their mother. When children start going wrong ways a mother’s prayer is powerful. Mothers remind us that there is a loving God above us who will take good care of everyone, especially children. Whenever a tragedy occurs – no matter where in the world this happens – you will always find mothers both weeping for the dead and bringing comfort and security to the living. Johann Christoph Arnold

2/7/2022

When you awake in the morning 
immediately remember 
that the blessed Creator has acted toward you with 
     goodness and kindness,  
for He has returned the soul to you (Berakhot 2a);  
the soul that fills your whole body. . . . 

Before opening your eyes,  
draw the Creator to you— 
likewise with your ears, mouth, and mind.  

If you follow this practice,  
all your deeds will be holy that day,  
as it is written, “I foretell the end from the beginning” 
(Isaiah 46:10). [2] 

Hayim Heikel of Amdur, Hayim V’Hesed, #1, in God in All Moments, 3.

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The marks life leaves on everything it touches transform perfection into wholeness. Older, wiser cultures choose to claim this wholeness in the things that they create. In Japan, Zen gardeners purposefully leave a fat dandelion in the midst of the exquisite, ritually precise patterns of the meditation garden. In Iran, even the most skilled of rug weavers includes an intentional error, the “Persian Flaw,” in the magnificence of a Tabriz or Qashqai carpet…and Native Americans wove a broken bead, the “spirit bead,” into every beaded masterpiece. Nothing that has a soul is perfect. When life weaves a spirit bead into your very fabric, you may stumble upon a wholeness greater than you had dreamed possible before.  Rachel Naomi Remen

7/5/2022

The great agitation in the world of today makes it more and more urgent to gain inner strength in those quiet encounters with Christ that make it possible for us to remain under his rule and authority. Situated as we are in the midst of a world that is so terribly unpeaceful, we need constant nourishment for our inner life. In short, if we want to avoid suffering inward shipwreck in the storm of public opinion and chaos, then our hidden inner being needs daily the quiet haven of communion with God. Eberhard Arnold

5/5/2022

I’m prone to distractions , God.
I find it hard
To keep my thoughts on you.,”
God looked down
And sighed.

I wish I could say
The same about you,
I can’t get you out of my mind.          Patrick Purcell SJ

1/5/2022

Remember. Remember that Creator is the wind on my face, the rain in my hair, the sun that warms me. Creator is the trees, rocks, grasses, the majesty of the sky and the intense mystery of the universe. Creator is the infant who giggles at me in the grocery line, the beggar who reminds me how rich I really am, the idea that fires my most brilliant moment, the feeling that fuels my most loving act and the part of me that yearns for that feeling again and again. Whatever ceremony, ritual, meditation, song, thought or action it takes to reconnect to that feeling is what I need to do today. . . Remember.  Richard Wagamese

30/4/2022

“They have taken the Lord out of his tomb and we do not know where they have laid him,” Mary Magdalene said, and we can say this with her in times of doubt and questioning. Then there’s that last glorious chapter of Saint Luke, where Jesus says, “Why are you so perturbed? Why do questions arise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see.” Yes, sometimes it is most surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ, especially in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow, and the joy of our calling assures us we are on the right path. Most certainly, it is easier to believe now that the sun warms us, and we know that buds will appear on the sycamore trees in the wasteland across the street, that life will spring out of the dull clods of that littered park. There are wars and rumours of war, poverty and plague, hunger and pain. Still, the sap is rising, again there is the resurrection of spring, God’s continuing promise to us that he is with us always, with his comfort and joy, if we will only ask. Dorothy Day

The true God does not sanction a community created through violence; rather, he sanctions what Jesus called the kingdom of God, a society grounded in forgiveness, love, and identification with the victim. Robert Barron

28/4/2022

The duties and cares of the day crowd about us when we awake each day – if they have not already dispelled our night’s rest. How can everything be accommodated in one day? When will I do this, when that? How will it all be accomplished? Thus agitated, we are tempted to run and rush. And so we must take the reins in hand and remind ourselves, “Let go of your plans. The first hour of your morning belongs to God. Tackle the day’s work that he charges you with, and he will give you the power to accomplish it.”  Edith Stein

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. How does a lamp burn? Through the continuous input of small drops of oil. If the drops of oil run out, the light of the lamp will cease, and the bridegroom will say, “I do not know you” (Matt. 25:12). What are these drops of oil in our lamps? They are the small things of daily life: faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought for others, our way of being silent, of looking, of speaking, and of acting. These are the true drops of love that keep your religious life burning like a living flame. Mother Teresa

24/4/2022

The distribution of land, work, and goods should be in harmony with the justice of God, who lets the sun shine and the rain fall on the just and the unjust. Jesus says simply: what you want people to do for you, do for them. Make sure that all others have what you think you need yourself.  Eberhard Arnold

7/4/2022

Being patient is difficult. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control: the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a conflict. Patience is not waiting passively until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient, we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later, and somewhere else. Be patient and trust that the treasure you are looking for is hidden in the ground on which you stand.  Henri J. M. Nouwen

6/3/2022

Jesus says, “Forgive, and you will also be forgiven” (Matt. 6:14). That is to say, forgiveness is forgiveness. Your forgiveness of another is your own forgiveness; the forgiveness you give is the forgiveness you receive. If you wholeheartedly forgive your enemy, you may dare hope for your own forgiveness, for it is one and the same. Søren Kierkegaard

I don’t gather that God wants us to pretend our fear doesn’t exist, to deny it, or eviscerate it. Fear is a reminder that we are creatures – fragile, vulnerable, totally dependent on God. But fear shouldn’t dominate or control or define us. Rather, it should submit to faith and love. Otherwise, fear can make us unbelieving, slavish, and inhuman. I have seen that struggle: containing my fear, rejecting its rule, recognizing that it saw only appearances, while faith and love saw substance, saw reality, saw God’s bailiwick, so to speak: “Take courage, it is I. Do not be afraid!” Philip Berrigan

13/2/2022

Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a life stance. It’s a way of living in the Presence, living in awareness of the Presence, and even of enjoying the Presence. Fully contemplative people are more than aware of Divine Presence; they trust, allow, and delight in it. They “stand” on it. 

For Jesus, prayer seems to be a matter of waiting in love. Returning to love. Trusting that love is the deepest stream of reality. That’s why prayer isn’t primarily words; it’s primarily an attitude, a stance, a modus operandi. That’s why Paul could say, “Pray always.” “Pray unceasingly.” If we read that as requiring words, it is surely impossible. We’ve got a lot of other things to do. We can pray unceasingly, however, if we find the stream and know how to wade in its waters. The stream will flow through us, and all we have to do is keep choosing to stay there.   Richard Rohr

If we don’t know how to love what’s right in front of us, then we don’t know how to see what is. So we must start with a stone! We move from the stone to the plant world and learn how to appreciate growing things and see God in them. In all of the natural world, we see the vestigia Dei, which means the fingerprints or footprints of God.  Richard Rohr

10/2/2022

If God’s peace is in our hearts, we carry it with us, and it can be given to those around us, not by our own will or virtue, but by the Holy Spirit working through us. We cannot give what we do not have, but if the Spirit blows through the dark clouds and enters our hearts, we can be used as vehicles of peace, and our own peace will be thereby deepened. The more peace we give away, the more we have.  Madeleine L’Engle

7/2/2022
There is no scarcity. There is no shortage. No lack of love, of compassion, of joy in the world. There is enough. There is more than enough. Only fear and greed make us think otherwise. No one need starve. There is enough land and enough food. No one need die of thirst. There is enough water. No one need live without mercy. There is no end to grace. And we are all instruments of grace. The more we give it, the more we share it, the more we use it, the more God makes. There is no scarcity of love. There is plenty. And always more.   Rosemarie Freeney Harding7/2/2022

4/2/2022

Friendship is contingent on love—real love: compassion, empathy, reaching out, going beyond what we imagine is possible. That is the command: love. And if we reach out in love, friendship is the result, even friendship with God. Friendship is mutual, a hand extended and another reaching back. . . . Friendship is an eternal circle, the ceaseless reaching toward one another that strengthens us and gives us joy.  Diane Butler Bass

31/1/2022

The Gospel compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed that “once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants.” It seems to be a law of the spiritual life that God wants good things to start small and grow over time.

We’re tempted to say, “You’re God. Just get on with it. Do it!” But why would God work the way he does? We might attempt a few explanations. It is a commonplace of the Bible that God rejoices in our cooperation. He wants to involve us, through freedom, intelligence, and creativity, in what he is doing. And so he plants seeds, and he wants us to cultivate them.

Consider what God said to St. Francis: “Francis, rebuild my Church.” God could have rebuilt his Church without Francis, but he wanted him to get involved. 

When things start small, they can fly under the radar while they gain strength and heft and seriousness. Also, those involved can be tested and tried. Suppose you want to do something great in the life of the Church and you pray and God gives you massively what you want. You might not be ready, and your project will peter out. So be patient and embrace the small invitations.  Robert Barron

30/1/2022

26/1/2022

Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation.  Martin Luther King Jr.

23/1/2022

21/1/2022

Wine, in the Scriptures, is a symbol of the exuberance and intoxication of the divine life. When God is in us, we are lifted up, rendered joyful, transfigured. Therefore, when Mary says, “They have no wine,” she is speaking of all of Israel and indeed all of the human race. They have run out of the exuberance and joyfulness that comes from union with God.  Bishop Robert Barron

18/1/2022

It’s hard to remember a deeper, comforting truth: we are built on a foundation not our own. We were born because two other people created a combination of biological matter. We went to schools where dozens and dozens of people crafted ideas and activities to construct categories in our minds. We learned skills honed by generations of craftspeople. We pray and worship with spiritual ideas refined by centuries of tradition. Almost nothing about us is original. Thank God.  

It reminds me of the account of creation in Genesis. . . . God breathes oxygen into lungs in an instance of divine CPR. I love picturing that God, the only One who can create out of nothing—ex nihilo. God, who set the cornerstone of our lives and our faith, laid the first brick. The Master Builder whose carefully poured foundation is what we build on top of now. It certainly feels like a template for the rest of our experience. 

Whether it is our parents, our teachers, mentors, friends, churches, or neighbours, people have been pouring into us. We are standing on a foundation. It should come as an incredible relief. Our only job is to build on what we’ve been given, and, even then, even our gifts we can trace back to the creativity, generosity, and foresight of others. Thank God we are a group project.

Kate Bowler

13/1/2022

To say “I believe in God” means that there is Someone who surrounds me, embraces me everywhere, and loves me, Someone who knows me better than I do myself, deep down in my heart, where not even my beloved can reach, Someone who knows the secret of all mysteries and where all roads lead. I am not alone in this open universe with all my questions for which no one offers me a satisfactory answer. That Someone is with me, and exists for me, and I exist for that Someone and in that Someone’s presence. Believing in God means saying: there exists an ultimate tenderness, an ultimate bosom, an infinite womb, in which I can take refuge and finally have peace in the serenity of love. If that is so, believing in God is worthwhile; it makes us more ourselves and empowers our humanity.  Leonardo Boff 

9/1/2022

We are all capable of good and evil. We are not born bad; everybody has something good inside. Some hide it, some neglect it, but it is there. God created us to love and to be loved, so it is our test from God to choose one path or the other.  Mother Teresa

8/1/2022

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also
The bow that is stable.     Kahlil Gibran

3/1/2022

God has created each person for a purpose. He has his plan of love for you, for me, for everyone. The problem is that we make our own plans. We want them to be realized in a certain way and at a particular time. Then we get resentful when our plans don’t materialize. Yet, you have to come to a place in your life where you can say, “You, O Lord, you choose for me.”   Alice von Hildebrand

1/1/2022

God puts us in a world of passing things where everything changes and nothing remains the same. The only thing that doesn’t change is change itself. It’s a hard lesson to learn. It helps us appreciate that everything is a gift. We didn’t create it. We don’t deserve it. It will not last, but while we breathe it in, we can enjoy it, and know that it is another moment of God, another moment of life. People who take this moment seriously take every moment seriously, and those are the people who are ready for heaven. Richard Rohr

What was true for Revelation’s original audience is true for us today. Whatever madman is in power, whatever chaos is breaking out, whatever danger threatens, the river of life is flowing now. The Tree of Life is bearing fruit now. True aliveness is available now. That’s why Revelation ends with the sound of a single word echoing through the universe. That word is not Wait! Nor is it Not Yet! or Someday! It is a word of invitation, welcome, reception, hospitality, and possibility. It is a word not of ending, but of new beginning. That one word is Come! The Spirit says it to us. We echo it back. Together with the Spirit, we say it to everyone who is willing. Come!        Brian D. McLaren

27/12/2021

The mysterious men from the Orient followed the star and discovered the place where the secret of love lay in the helplessness of a human baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes in the feeding trough of an animal. They discovered the place where God’s love came down. That is the most important thing for all people, to discover individually, in their own time and at their own hour, the place where God’s love has broken through, and then to follow the star that has risen for them and to remain true to the light that has fallen into their hearts. Eberhard Arnold

A star shone forth in heaven brighter than all the stars; its light was indescribable and its strangeness caused amazement. All the rest of the constellations, together with the sun and moon, formed a chorus around the star, yet the star itself far outshone them all, and there was perplexity about the origin of this strange phenomenon, which was so unlike the others.

Consequently all magic and every kind of spell were dissolved, the ignorance so characteristic of wickedness vanished, and the ancient kingdom was abolished when God appeared in human form to bring the newness of eternal life; and what had been prepared by God began to take effect.  Ignatius of Antioch

17/12/2021

It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts. But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks; with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ.  Dorothy Day

The Christmas Star in the night sky, the shining of the Christmas light in the night – all this is the sign that light breaks into the darkness. Though we see about us the darkness of unrest, of family discord, of class struggle, of competitive jealousy and of national hatred, the light shall shine and drive it out.…Wherever the Christmas Child is born in a heart, wherever Jesus begins his earthly life anew – that is where the life of God’s love and of God’s peace dawns again. Emmy Arnold

We humans contribute to the world’s gloom, like dark shadows on a dark landscape.…But now this man from Nazareth comes to us and invites us to mirror God’s image, and shows us how. He says: you too can become light, as God is light. What is all around you is not hell, but rather a world waiting to be filled with hope and faith. This world is your home as surely as the God who created and wrought it is love. You may not believe it, but you can love this world. It is a place of God. It has a purpose. Its beauty is not a delusion. You can lead a meaningful life in it.   Jörg Zink

29/11/2021

The Lord Jesus gives us a task on earth: “Watch! – Watch for my coming!” (Matt. 24:42). This is a most important assignment. If we fulfill this task – to watch for Christ’s coming – we will find it becoming reality now. When we keep watch, our whole being is directed toward this future. We see it before our eyes, we feel it in our whole life. We cannot be swallowed up by the present, for we are linked to the future; we experience this future already. Our life is renewed again and again and something new develops, something that points the way for us to go: each time it is a glimpse into Jesus Christ’s future.   Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

From the beginning, writers of the Christmas story have been bothered by the inn, with the stable and manger close at hand. That is where we find ourselves: not by the shepherds, whose poverty and simplicity we lack; and not by the wise men, whose watchfulness and decisiveness we lack. We are, at best, guests at the inn. We sleep, we follow our own plans and dreams. Can we be awakened by the angels’ news? That is the question. Rudolf Otto Wiemer

Eternity is not about unending life as we know it; what we know here will soon be over. Eternity is a new life, free of death’s destructive powers, a fullness of life where love reigns supreme. The promise of everlasting life has less to do with duration of time and more to do with a certain kind of life – one of peace, fellowship, and abundance – and such a life can begin now.  Johann Christoph Arnold

Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife, which may at any moment become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself, “What else is the world interested in?” What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships? God is love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love.   Dorothy Day

Soul is the blueprint inside of every living thing that tells it what it is and what it can still become. When we meet anything at that level, we will respect, protect, and love it.   Richard Rohr

The guarantee of one’s prayer is not in saying a lot of words. The guarantee of one’s petition is very easy to know: How do I treat the poor? The degree to which you approach them, and the love with which you approach them, or the scorn with which you approach them – that is how you approach your God. What you do to them, you do to God. The way you look at them is the way you look at God.

Oscar Romero

13/11/2021

I often feel more like a member of the clergy than of the medical profession, and it makes me realize how much the two professions have in common… I have seen fellow physicians retiring years earlier than they had planned after succumbing to compassion fatigue, the medical equivalent of battle fatigue known to veterans of armed conflict… When I feel stressed, I climb a mountain or get in my carbon-fiber canoe, and head for one of the thousands of ponds, lakes, and streams in the Adirondacks to reconnect with nature. Personal crises seem much less important when I am standing on a mountain summit or floating across a tranquil pond, surrounded by wilderness in every direction. There I can fill my brain (and my camera) with images of the heavenly landscape.

Daniel Way

5/11/2021

Jesus came to make people free. He wanted us to choose goodness freely. He did not crave the base worship of the slave. But free choice can exist only where there is doubt. Where there is certainty, there is nothing to choose; as soon as we understand a proof in Euclidian geometry, for instance, we simply accept it. Faith exists only where there is uncertainty. And so Jesus did not offer proofs. With only his image as our guide, we must choose goodness freely in the face of doubt.

Gary Saul Morson

The mystery of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.
Dorothy Day

27/10/2021

If I did not believe, if I did not make what is called an act of faith (and each act of faith increases our faith, and our capacity for faith), if I did not have faith that the works of mercy do lighten the sum total of suffering in the world, so that those who are suffering…somehow mysteriously find their pain lifted and some balm of consolation poured on their wounds, if I did not believe these things, the problem of evil would indeed be overwhelming.

Dorothy Day

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Nothing is small for our good God, for he is great and we are small. That is why he lowers himself and cares to do small things, in order to offer us an opportunity to show him our love. Since he does them, they are great things, they are infinite. Nothing he does can be small. Again: practice fidelity even in the least things, not for their own sake, but for the sake of what is great – that is, the will of God.

Mother Teresa

24/10/2021

21/10/2021

Prudence is a feel for the moral situation, something like the feel that a quarterback has for the playing field. Justice is a wonderful virtue, but without prudence, it is blind and finally useless. One can be as just as possible, but without a feel for the present situation, his justice will do him no good.
Wisdom, unlike prudence, is a sense of the big picture. It is the view from the hilltop. Most of us look at our lives from the standpoint of our own self-interest. But wisdom is the capacity to survey reality from the vantage point of God. Without wisdom, even the most prudent judgment will be erroneous, short-sighted, inadequate.
The combination, therefore, of prudence and wisdom is especially powerful. Someone who is both wise and prudent will have both a sense of the bigger picture and a feel for the particular situation.
Robert Barron

11/10/2021

Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more. Be happy now, and if you show through your actions that you love others – including those who are poorer than you – you’ll give them happiness, too. It doesn’t take much; it can be just giving a smile. The world would be a much better place if everyone smiled more. So smile, be cheerful, and be joyous that God loves you.

Mother Teresa

6/10/2021

Every one of us is written in the heart of God from all eternity, born into the stars, born, you might say, into the galaxies, born on this earth in small forms, developing and coming to explicit form in our lives, given a name. It’s a fantastic mystery of love.

Ilia Delio

Don’t let yourself forget that God’s grace rewards not only those who never slip, but also those who bend and fall. So sing! The song of rejoicing softens hard hearts. It makes tears of godly sorrow flow from them. Singing summons the Holy Spirit. Happy praises offered in simplicity and love lead the faithful to complete harmony, without discord. Don’t stop singing.

Hildegard of Bingen

Children cannot become mature human beings by themselves. They experience our love and warmth as a cocoon that protects them from harm. They need us to set appropriate boundaries and guidelines, yet give them as much freedom to explore as they can handle. They need us to be both strong and compassionate, people who understand the importance of living a life that is good and beautiful and true. And they need our faith in their ability to find their own way in life, so they can fulfill their own unique purpose. In short, they need us to strive to become full human beings, so we can help them do the same.

Joan Almon

4/10/2021

1/10/2021

Henri J. M. Nouwen There is no such thing as the right place, the right job, the right calling or ministry. I can be happy or unhappy in all situations. I am sure of it, because I have been. I have felt distraught and joyful in situations of abundance as well as poverty, in situations of popularity and anonymity, in situations of success and failure. The difference was never based on the situation itself, but always on my state of mind and heart. When I knew I was walking with God, I always felt happy and at peace. When I was entangled in my own complaints and emotional needs, I always felt restless and divided.

25/9/2021

2/9/2021

Today’s Gospel (Luke 5:1-11) gives us the story of the miraculous draught of fishes. In many ways, the whole of the spiritual life can be read off of this piece.
Without being invited, Jesus simply gets into the fisherman’s boat. This is to insinuate himself in the most direct way into Simon’s life. And without further ado, he begins to give orders, first asking Simon to put out from the shore and then to go out into the deep. This represents the invasion of grace. The single most important decision that you will ever make is this: Will you cooperate with Jesus once he decides to get into your boat?   

Robert Barron

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hardheartedness, all indifference, and all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet. Hermann Hesse

27/8/2021

25/8/2021

To be loved by Jesus enlarges our heart capacity. To be loved by the Christ enlarges our mental capacity. We need both a Jesus and a Christ, in my opinion, to get the full picture. A truly transformative God—for both the individual and history—needs to be experienced as both personal and universal. Nothing less will fully work.
Richard Rohr

When Christ calls himself the “Light of the World” (John 8:12), he is not telling us to look just at him, but to look out at life with his all-merciful eyes. We see him so we can see like him, and with the same infinite compassion.
Richard Rohr

8/8/2021 Our God who shows that he is totally love and who wants us in relation to him, to eat and drink him in, is the God who wants us to be like him. As he is food and drink for the world, so we must be food and drink for the world. As he gave himself away utterly, so we must give ourselves away utterly, without clinging to the goods, honours, or values of the world—all those things that aggrandise the ego.
The personal God, the incarnate God, the God of the gift. How compelling. How deeply challenging
Robert Barron

6/8/2021  Prayer is not a technique for getting things, a pious exercise that somehow makes God happy, or a requirement for entry into heaven. It is much more like practicing heaven now by leaping into communion with what is right in front of us.
Richard Rohr 

3/8/2021   I don’t see how you could get through what I’ve had to deal with without some kind of faith – without turning to Jesus and relying on him to give you peace, or the courage to get up and go through another day. Plus, I think chronic pain makes you more aware of what is important, and less easily bothered by the petty stuff of life. And that, I think, is a blessing. Because I don’t think I’d naturally be like that.

I’ve never said, “Thank you, God, for sending me this.” But I do find comfort in knowing that Jesus knows what suffering is. 

Brenda Hindley

1/8/2021  What God has wanted from the beginning is to sit down with his creatures in a fellowship banquet, sharing life and laughter, giving and receiving and giving back again. This is the loop of grace. The more we receive the divine life, the more we should give it away and thereby get more of it.
Robert Barron

31/7/2021   The prophet Joel once promised: “Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men will have visions” (3:1). The future of the world depends on this covenant between young and old. Who, if not the young, can take the dreams of the elderly and make them come true? Yet for this to happen, it is necessary that we continue to dream. Our dreams of justice, of peace, of solidarity, can make it possible for our young people to have new visions; in this way, together, we can build the future.    Pope Francis

21/7/2021  In Haiti, we have a concept called konbit: a gathering with a shared goal. Members of a community come together to accomplish something that benefits the entire community, or a single person in need. Konbits initially began in agriculture. “Today I work your field, tomorrow you work mine,” the Haitian novelist Jacques Roumain wrote of konbits. . . . How do we define community in a time of crisis, which is in many ways what community is for? We don’t need our neighbours as much when we are healthy and wealthy and can pay for all the assistance we require.              Edwidge Danticat

20/7/2021   Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is not about preserving the status quo! It’s about living here on earth as if the Reign of God has already begun (see Luke 17:21). In this Reign, the Sermon tells us, the poor are blessed, the hungry are filled, the grieving are filled with joy, and enemies are loved.
Richard Rohr

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Meeting the Lord in Imaginative Prayer  Richard Rohr

We often teach the transforming effects of silence and unknowing. It has been my personal practice for years. At the same time, one of the great gifts of Jesuit spirituality is to teach us how to draw closer to God through images, words, verbal prayer, our imaginations, and the Bible itself. Here is how writer and retreat leader Margaret Silf invites people into the riches of Ignatian contemplation:
The call to friendship with God invites us to allow our lives, with everything we most truly are, to become more closely linked to the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord and to everything he truly is. . . . One way to allow this closer linking to happen is to enter imaginatively into scenes from the earthly life of Jesus, in what is called imaginative meditation [or contemplation].
Choose a passage that seems to speak to you in some way—a favorite Gospel scene perhaps, or one of the healing miracles. If you don’t know which passage to choose, just rest, relax, and ask God to guide you; then wait to see whether any particular scene or event comes to mind. . . .
When you have chosen a passage, read it several times until it is familiar and you feel at home with it.
Now imagine that the event is happening here and now and that you are an active participant in it. Don’t worry if you don’t find it easy to imagine it vividly. . . . And don’t worry about getting the facts right. You may well find that your scene doesn’t take place in first century Palestine, but in Chicago rush-hour traffic, or that the desert tracts of the Good Samaritan story turn into the sidewalks in your neighborhood.
Ask God for what you desire—perhaps to meet God more closely or to feel God’s touch upon your life.
Fill out the scene as much as you can by, for example, becoming aware of who is there, the surroundings, the sights, the smells, the tastes, the weather, and the feel of the place (peaceful or threatening). What role do you find yourself taking in the scene—for example, are you one of the disciples, a bystander, or the person being healed? Listen inwardly to what God is showing you through your role in the scene. . . .
Talk with the characters in the scene, especially to Jesus. Speak from your heart simply and honestly. Tell him what you fear, what you hope for, what troubles you. . . . Don’t worry if your attention wanders. If you realize that this is happening, just bring yourself gently back to the scene for as long as you feel drawn to stay there.
There are two absolute rules:
Never moralize or judge yourself.
Always respond from your heart and not from your head. . . .
Our purpose in prayer is not to defend or condemn ourselves or to come up with any kind of analysis or sermon, but simply to respond, from our inmost depths, to what God is sharing with us of God’s own self

 

Meditation – a simple guide

There is no single way to meditate. There are, however, certain acts and attitudes inherently endowed with the capacity to awaken sustained states of meditative awareness. . . . With respect to the body: Sit still. Sit straight. Place your hands in a comfortable or meaningful position in your lap. Close your eyes or lower them toward the ground. Breathe slowly and naturally. With respect to your mind, be present, open, and awake, neither clinging to nor rejecting anything. And with respect to attitude, maintain nonjudgmental compassion toward yourself as you discover yourself clinging to and rejecting everything, and nonjudgmental compassion toward others. . . . Keep in mind that these guidelines are but suggestions for you to explore as part of your ongoing process of finding the ways to meditate that are most natural and effective for you. What matters is not which method of meditation you use, but the self-transforming process by which meditation leads you into more . . . openness to God. . . . Go to your place of meditation. . . . You might say a brief and simple prayer expressing your gratitude to God for having been led to the path of meditation and asking for the wisdom, courage, and strength to be faithful to it. . . . [Then] let go of all that is preoccupying you at the moment. Choose to be present in the immediacy of the present moment by simply relaxing into being right where you are, just as you are. Settle into the intimate, felt sense of your bodily stillness. Settle into being aware of your breathing and whatever degree of fatigue or wakefulness you may be feeling in your body at the moment. Be aware of whatever sadness, inner peace, or other emotion may be present. Be aware of the light and the temperature in the room where you are sitting. In short, simply be present, just as you are, in the moment, just as it is. Cling to nothing. Reject nothing. Rest in this moment. . . . Relax. Give yourself a break. Simply sit in a “Here I am, Lord” stance. . . . Know and trust that God is already perfectly present in your simply being alive and real in the present moment just as it is. . . . Be humbled and grateful in knowing that you are learning to awaken to your true nature in learning to be like God. . . . Jesus said, “Judge not and you shall not be judged” (Matthew 7:1). Sitting in meditation, we put this teaching of Christ into practice in remaining present, open, and awake to ourselves just as we are, without judging, without evaluating, without clinging to or rejecting the way we simply are. James Finley, Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence

13/5/2021

Pentecost Novena – Creation

18/11/2020

The Quarantine Quatrains  click to reveal

6/11/2020

Living Life in Full in Lock-Down

3/10/2020

The Spirituality Committee of the Bishops’ Conference has been reflecting on how best to support and sustain a person’s prayer life at this challenging time – particularly those who may not have easy access to the internet or streaming services. The Committee has looked to the psalms as the inspiration for its new resource.

Responding to the Psalms is a simple initiative that takes a Sunday’s Responsorial Psalm – an integral part of the Liturgy of the Word – and invites and encourages further reflection on each verse.

Short questions are provided to encourage deeper thought on the verse for a few days or so before the focus moves on to the psalm’s next verse. Once each verse has been considered, we arrive at the next Sunday’s Responsorial Psalm.

The aim is that this will sustain people throughout the week.

Responding to the Psalms is intended to be used by individuals and small groups. Click below for the psalms and questions.

Resp-to-Psalms-October-2020

22/6/2020

Information about what is available to support your faith and prayer life around the Diocese

Resourcing the Lockdown

17/6/2020

How to pray and re-connect with the church as places of worship re-open for private prayer

2/6/2020 Blessings – a meditative few moments

https://gratefulness.org/blessings/

29/5/2020 Vigil prayer

The Ignatian Family in a Worldwide Prayer Vigil

On Sunday 31^st of May the universal Church will celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit not only transforms the lives of the disciples into apostles, it brings the Church to birth and sends it out to all nations, overcoming divisions of language, race, class. The Spirit gathers us, whatever our state or condition, into the new community of Christ. Our lives and our world are restored and renewed.

In these past months we all have experienced the devastation of COVID-19. It has shown how vulnerable we are, how precarious our systems and limited our resources. We have also seen the great generosity and courage that can fill the human heart as so many risk their own life care and save the lives of others. Even in the small acts of kindness, generosity and thoughtfulness we glimpse something greater than we had thought possible. These moments are the ‘epiphanies of the Spirit’; the candles of love that light up the darkness and guide us into hope.

What better way to seek the gift and power of the Holy Spirit than as a world-wide community of prayer? Click button below for details of how to access.

Click for Worldwide prayer vigil

29/5/2020 Preparing for Pentecost

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‘Rise Within Us – The Coming Of The Spirit’ is an uplifting song for Pentecost performed by the Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir. It’s a ‘Sung Scripture’, which uses a well-known song as a basis, and ad lib singing of the relevant scripture in the gaps.

Performers are being creative in lockdown, as we’ve seen over the past eight weeks, and this high quality arrangement was put together using material from 25 performers singing separately into smartphones at home.

The song is dedicated to the prisoners and staff at HMP Wandsworth.

Listen https://soundcloud.com/catholicchurch/rise-within-us-the-coming-of-the-spirit

‘Rise Within Us’ lyrics and music by Aaron Lindsay and Israel Houghton, from 2004 live album “Live From Another Level”, Israel & New Breed; additional lyrics by Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir, based on Acts 2, sung ad lib.

23/5/2020

As the important Solemnity of Pentecost approaches, the Cardinal assures you that he holds you  in his prayer. He has sent us a message. In it, he reflects on the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, particularly in the context of the circumstances in which we are living at the moment.

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Thy Kingdom Come 2020 – Ascension to Pentecost

“God is not in lockdown” said Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby at the live launch of Thy Kingdom Come 2020 celebrated in prayer with Archbishop Sentamu and Cardinal Vincent this morning. The video is available to view athttps://tkc.new/livelink.

Cardinal Vincent spoke of the richness of these days; a time of waiting, trusting and not-knowing that resonates with the experience of many people in these strange and difficult times. He stressed the importance of the gifts of gratitude, joy and service that hold Christians of all denominations together and prayed for the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to see the gifts we are given and to use them in the field of our world.

The Archbishops spoke of the importance of praying together, as families, as church communities and as inter-denominational communities. There are many excellent resources available at www.thykingdomcome.global

In Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire the Thy Kingdom Come Ecumenical Planning Group has put together a programme starting with a launch event this evening and including daily prayers from Regional Church Leaders, including our own Bishop Paul on Wednesday. There are family prayers and resources and daily evening reflections. There will be a Beacon celebration posted on Pentecost Sunday. A full programme, with YouTube links, is available at www.stalbans.anglican.org/faith/thy-kingdom-come/

‘The Prayer and Care: ideas for families’ can be found atwww.stalbans.anglican.org/wp-content/uploads/Prayer_and_Care_Family_TKC2020.pdf

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20/5/2020

Jesuit prayer support for Ascension and Pentecost

 We keep in prayer all those working to fight the pandemic and all those grieving the loss of loved ones. We also pray for the families you serve, as they learn new ways of living as the domestic church.

Ascension and Pentecost

Ascension and Pentecost are the two great feasts that signal the end of the Easter season. Celebrate using these ideas from Loyola Press.

Click for prayers and activities for Ascension and Pentecost

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15/5/2020

Fr Stephen Wang is live streaming each day at the ‘Pause for Faith’ YouTube channel, where you can
also see a library of recent videos. It’s an informal look at different aspects of our Catholic faith.
Themes include how to pray, the lives of the saints, faith formation, coping with lockdown, and a
new series of talks about ‘What Christians believe in 100 objects’. Please share the link below with
anyone who might be looking for some inspiration and spiritual support during the lockdown.
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/PauseforFaith
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: @pauseforfaith

13/5/2020

Please include these prayer intentions from the Churches together in Hitchin in your prayers at the appropriate times.

February to April 20 PrayerLink 97-2003

1/5/2020

A letter sent to cloistered nuns which as Cardinal Vincent says ‘…. is reflective, sensitive, with a true ‘interiority’ in its themes. I found that it touched me quite deeply. It is simply an offering at a difficult time.’

A letter from the desert

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24/4/2020

Emmaus Road reflection by Reverend Charmaine Sabey-Corkindale

A reflection with art. Click below

emmausroadreflection csc

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24/4/2020

Pray as You Stay https://pray-as-you-go.org/

Mental Health audio prayer guides: https://pray-as-you-go.org/retreat/mental-health-awareness

Pray As You Stay mini series: https://pray-as-you-go.org/retreat/pray-as-you-stay

Kids Examen during lockdown: https://pray-as-you-go.org/player/prayer%20tools/aspecialexamenforchildren

Family Examen during lockdown: https://pray-as-you-go.org/player/prayer%20tools/anexamenforthefamily

PAYG Rosary Reflections: https://pray-as-you-go.org/article/rosary-reflections

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18/4/2020

Extract from message from Cardinal Vincent to the Priests of the Diocese

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Easter Sunday

Pope Francis: ‘Urbi et Orbi’ Easter Message 2020

Prayer materials for Holy week

From the Jesuits in Britain

Palm Sunday  Palm Sunday Yr A r1

Holy Week prayer with the 5 senses Holy Week 2020 Praying with our 5 senses

From Ten:Ten for children on Thursday – Mass of the Last supper gospel click below picture

https://www.tentenresources.co.uk/primary-subscription/prayers-for-home/homeprayer-2020-04-06/the-last-supper-public/

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Accessing live stream Masses

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Resources to support your prayer life at this time

28/3/2020

Prayers in response to the Coronavirus pandemic… Are you reeling at the moment from the impact of coronavirus? Are you wondering how you’re going to cope with months of isolation or social distancing? Are you worried about work, money or how the country is ever going to recover from the impact of this pandemic? And are you looking for some kind of spiritual solace, but struggling to find words to pray. Then this little book could be just the thing for you. It contains 52 prayers written in response to the crisis, asking for strength, encouragement and support, as well as help for loved ones and the wider world. Honest, down-to-earth and heartfelt, it’s a resource written to help you articulate what you are feeling and bring you hope in these dark and difficult days.

Grab your FREE eBook here

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8/4/2020

From St Mark’s church – ideas for craft activities for Easter

Messy St Marks DIY Easter Activities

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28/3/2020

From TenTen  

Ten Ten has decided to make freely available our Collective Worship resources to all schools and their families. We have created a new series of resources called Prayers for Home, which include:
Sunday Liturgy for Families

Daily Prayers for Home

We will continue to create original resources for families throughout the Easter holidays and beyond during this uncertain time for teachers, children and their families. Click below the picture for the Last Supper.

https://www.tentenresources.co.uk/primary-subscription/prayers-for-home/homeprayer-2020-04-06/the-last-supper-public/

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From the Diocese

https://rcdow.org.uk/faith/catechesis/resources-now/

Resources: https://rcdow.org.uk/news/resources-during-mass-suspension/

Pope Francis Urbi et Orbi Blessing

“Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” Lord, you are calling to us, calling us to faith. Which is not so much believing that you exist, but coming to you and trusting in you. This Lent your call reverberates urgently: “Be converted!”, “Return to me with all your heart” (Joel 2:12). You are calling on us to seize this time of trial as a time of choosing. It is not the time of your judgement, but of our judgement: a time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not. It is a time to get our lives back on track with regard to you, Lord, and to others. We can look to so many exemplary companions for the journey, who, even though fearful, have reacted by giving their lives. This is the force of the Spirit poured out and fashioned in courageous and generous self-denial. It is the life in the Spirit that can redeem, value and demonstrate how our lives are woven together and sustained by ordinary people – often forgotten people – who do not appear in newspaper and magazine headlines nor on the grand catwalks of the latest show, but who without any doubt are in these very days writing the decisive events of our time: doctors, nurses, supermarket employees, cleaners, caregivers, providers of transport, law and order forces, volunteers, priests, religious men and women and so very many others who have understood that no one reaches salvation by themselves. In the face of so much suffering, where the authentic development of our peoples is assessed, we experience the priestly prayer of Jesus: “That they may all be one” (Jn 17:21). How many people every day are exercising patience and offering hope, taking care to sow not panic but a shared responsibility. How many fathers, mothers, grandparents and teachers are showing our children, in small everyday gestures, how to face up to and navigate a crisis by adjusting their routines, lifting their gaze and fostering prayer. How many are praying, offering and interceding for the good of all. Prayer and quiet service: these are our victorious weapons.

29/9/2022

When we can let go of what other people think and own our story, we gain access to our worthiness—the feeling that we are enough just as we are and that we are worthy of love and belonging. When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don’t fit with who we think we’re supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving. . . . Brené Brown

17/9/2022

God knows what each child is intended to become. It is the task of the parents, the church, and the educators to help this child become just what he or she should be, in accordance with the original thought of God. Through a religious sensitivity, we must attain a vision of this thought of God, which is still apparently hidden, and must learn to understand it more clearly from moment to moment, from day to day, from year to year. Then the forming of the child will not be something we undertake ourselves; rather, our role will consist solely in assisting in the formation intended by God.    EBERHARD ARNOLD

14/9/2022

We come to God not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong. And yet the great forgiveness is to forgive ourselves for doing it wrong. That’s probably the hardest forgiveness of all: that I’m not perfect, that I’m not unwounded, I’m not innocent. “One always learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.”  Richard Rohr

13/9/2022

Have the patience and courage to begin again anew each day, and trust in God’s help; his mercy is new every morning. Then you will understand that life is always a matter of becoming or growing, and that you must always look forward to the greater things. Even though you stand in battle with dark powers, the victory will be yours, since in Christ every evil is overcome.  EBERHARD ARNOLD

11/9/2022

Faith is an attitude of trust in the presence of God. Faith is openness to what God will reveal, do, and invite. It should be obvious that, in dealing with the infinite, all-powerful God, we are never in control. 

One of the most fundamental statements of faith is this: your life is not about you. You’re not in control. This is not your project. Rather, you are part of God’s great design. To believe this in your bones and act accordingly is to have faith. When we operate out of this transformed vision, amazing things can happen, for we have surrendered to “a power already at work in us that can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” Even a tiny bit of faith makes an extraordinary difference. Robert Barron

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When all is said and done, the gospel comes down to forgiveness. I’d say it’s the whole gospel. It’s the beginning, the middle, and the end. People who know how to forgive have known how good it feels to be forgiven, not when they deserved it, but precisely when they didn’t deserve it. 

If we’re Christian, we’ve probably said the “Our Father” ten thousand times. The words just slip off our tongues: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” By saying this prayer, we’ve asked and prayed for forgiveness. Notice the full correlation between how we give and how we receive: “Forgive us as we forgive.” They’re the same movement. We need to know that we need mercy, we need understanding, and then we also need to know how to give it. Each flows with the energy of the other.    Richard Rohr

7/9/2022

Now, I can see that one loving gesture is practically divine. We have to do small things and believe a big difference is coming. It’s like the miraculous drops of water that seep through mountain limestone. They gather themselves into springs that flow into creeks that merge into rivers that find their way to oceans. Our work is to envision the drops as oceans. We do our small parts and know a powerful ocean of love and compassion is downstream. Each small gesture can lead to liberation. The bravest thing we can do in this world is not cling to old ideas or fear of judgment, but step out and just do something for love’s sake.  Rev Becca Stevens

5/9/2022

The reason any of us woke up this morning had very little to do with us and everything to do with God. All twenty-four hours today are total gift. And so, the only real prayer is to say “Thank you!” and to keep saying it. When our prayer is constantly “Thank you,” and we know we deserve nothing, and that everything is a gift, we stop counting. Only when we stop counting and figuring out what we deserve, will we move from the world of merit into the wonderful world of grace. And in the world of grace, everything is free.  Richard Rohr

26/7/2022

Lover of All
Lord, lover of life, lover of these lives, 
Lord, lover of our souls, lover of our bodies, lover of all that exists . . .  
In fact, it is your love that keeps it all alive . . . 
May we live in this love. 
May we never doubt this love. 
May we know that we are love, 
That we were created for love, 
That we are a reflection of you, 
That you love yourself in us and therefore we are perfectly lovable.  
May we never doubt this deep and abiding and perfect goodness  
That we are because you are.   Richard Rohr

 19/7/2022

It matters not what my abilities may be then, provided that I possess you, Lord. Do what you will with this insignificant creature. Whether it be that I should work, or become inspired, or be the recipient of your impressions, it is all the same. Everything is yours, everything is from you and for you.…It is for you, Lord, to regulate everything: direction, humiliations, sanctification, perfection, and salvation – all are your business.  Jean-Pierre de Caussade

8/7/2022

The Creator’s call to care for our common home has never been more urgent, and requires a range of faithful responses, from individual and grassroots efforts to major policy and legislative changes. Through gardening and food production, the church is offering demonstration plots of abundant life: sites where even in the margins, we tend the earth and one another. What is needed is the cultivation of community where ecological conversion is possible; and of communities where neighbors can work together and live abundantly.  Sam Ewell

3/7/2022

What so many people today fail to realize is that forgiveness is a door to peace and happiness. Forgiving is not ignoring wrongdoing, but overcoming the evil inside us and in our world with love. To forgive is not just a command of Christ but the key to reconciling all that is broken in our lives and relationships. We get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity.  Johann Christoph Arnold

The Trinity is just another way of saying that God is love. But this has to imply that there is a play, within the unity of God, of lover, beloved, and shared love. This is precisely what we mean when we speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Robert Barron

Thank God for mothers! Mothers provide the most powerful influence on a child’s life, and are the most important role models for positive change in our society. When people are in trouble, or know that they are dying, the first person they think of is their mother. When children start going wrong ways a mother’s prayer is powerful. Mothers remind us that there is a loving God above us who will take good care of everyone, especially children. Whenever a tragedy occurs – no matter where in the world this happens – you will always find mothers both weeping for the dead and bringing comfort and security to the living. Johann Christoph Arnold

2/7/2022

When you awake in the morning 
immediately remember 
that the blessed Creator has acted toward you with 
     goodness and kindness,  
for He has returned the soul to you (Berakhot 2a);  
the soul that fills your whole body. . . . 

Before opening your eyes,  
draw the Creator to you— 
likewise with your ears, mouth, and mind.  

If you follow this practice,  
all your deeds will be holy that day,  
as it is written, “I foretell the end from the beginning” 
(Isaiah 46:10). [2] 

Hayim Heikel of Amdur, Hayim V’Hesed, #1, in God in All Moments, 3.

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The marks life leaves on everything it touches transform perfection into wholeness. Older, wiser cultures choose to claim this wholeness in the things that they create. In Japan, Zen gardeners purposefully leave a fat dandelion in the midst of the exquisite, ritually precise patterns of the meditation garden. In Iran, even the most skilled of rug weavers includes an intentional error, the “Persian Flaw,” in the magnificence of a Tabriz or Qashqai carpet…and Native Americans wove a broken bead, the “spirit bead,” into every beaded masterpiece. Nothing that has a soul is perfect. When life weaves a spirit bead into your very fabric, you may stumble upon a wholeness greater than you had dreamed possible before.  Rachel Naomi Remen

7/5/2022

The great agitation in the world of today makes it more and more urgent to gain inner strength in those quiet encounters with Christ that make it possible for us to remain under his rule and authority. Situated as we are in the midst of a world that is so terribly unpeaceful, we need constant nourishment for our inner life. In short, if we want to avoid suffering inward shipwreck in the storm of public opinion and chaos, then our hidden inner being needs daily the quiet haven of communion with God. Eberhard Arnold

5/5/2022

I’m prone to distractions , God.
I find it hard
To keep my thoughts on you.,”
God looked down
And sighed.

I wish I could say
The same about you,
I can’t get you out of my mind.          Patrick Purcell SJ

1/5/2022

Remember. Remember that Creator is the wind on my face, the rain in my hair, the sun that warms me. Creator is the trees, rocks, grasses, the majesty of the sky and the intense mystery of the universe. Creator is the infant who giggles at me in the grocery line, the beggar who reminds me how rich I really am, the idea that fires my most brilliant moment, the feeling that fuels my most loving act and the part of me that yearns for that feeling again and again. Whatever ceremony, ritual, meditation, song, thought or action it takes to reconnect to that feeling is what I need to do today. . . Remember.  Richard Wagamese

30/4/2022

“They have taken the Lord out of his tomb and we do not know where they have laid him,” Mary Magdalene said, and we can say this with her in times of doubt and questioning. Then there’s that last glorious chapter of Saint Luke, where Jesus says, “Why are you so perturbed? Why do questions arise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see.” Yes, sometimes it is most surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ, especially in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow, and the joy of our calling assures us we are on the right path. Most certainly, it is easier to believe now that the sun warms us, and we know that buds will appear on the sycamore trees in the wasteland across the street, that life will spring out of the dull clods of that littered park. There are wars and rumours of war, poverty and plague, hunger and pain. Still, the sap is rising, again there is the resurrection of spring, God’s continuing promise to us that he is with us always, with his comfort and joy, if we will only ask. Dorothy Day

The true God does not sanction a community created through violence; rather, he sanctions what Jesus called the kingdom of God, a society grounded in forgiveness, love, and identification with the victim. Robert Barron

28/4/2022

The duties and cares of the day crowd about us when we awake each day – if they have not already dispelled our night’s rest. How can everything be accommodated in one day? When will I do this, when that? How will it all be accomplished? Thus agitated, we are tempted to run and rush. And so we must take the reins in hand and remind ourselves, “Let go of your plans. The first hour of your morning belongs to God. Tackle the day’s work that he charges you with, and he will give you the power to accomplish it.”  Edith Stein

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. How does a lamp burn? Through the continuous input of small drops of oil. If the drops of oil run out, the light of the lamp will cease, and the bridegroom will say, “I do not know you” (Matt. 25:12). What are these drops of oil in our lamps? They are the small things of daily life: faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought for others, our way of being silent, of looking, of speaking, and of acting. These are the true drops of love that keep your religious life burning like a living flame. Mother Teresa

24/4/2022

The distribution of land, work, and goods should be in harmony with the justice of God, who lets the sun shine and the rain fall on the just and the unjust. Jesus says simply: what you want people to do for you, do for them. Make sure that all others have what you think you need yourself.  Eberhard Arnold

7/4/2022

Being patient is difficult. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control: the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a conflict. Patience is not waiting passively until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient, we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later, and somewhere else. Be patient and trust that the treasure you are looking for is hidden in the ground on which you stand.  Henri J. M. Nouwen

6/3/2022

Jesus says, “Forgive, and you will also be forgiven” (Matt. 6:14). That is to say, forgiveness is forgiveness. Your forgiveness of another is your own forgiveness; the forgiveness you give is the forgiveness you receive. If you wholeheartedly forgive your enemy, you may dare hope for your own forgiveness, for it is one and the same. Søren Kierkegaard

I don’t gather that God wants us to pretend our fear doesn’t exist, to deny it, or eviscerate it. Fear is a reminder that we are creatures – fragile, vulnerable, totally dependent on God. But fear shouldn’t dominate or control or define us. Rather, it should submit to faith and love. Otherwise, fear can make us unbelieving, slavish, and inhuman. I have seen that struggle: containing my fear, rejecting its rule, recognizing that it saw only appearances, while faith and love saw substance, saw reality, saw God’s bailiwick, so to speak: “Take courage, it is I. Do not be afraid!” Philip Berrigan

13/2/2022

Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a life stance. It’s a way of living in the Presence, living in awareness of the Presence, and even of enjoying the Presence. Fully contemplative people are more than aware of Divine Presence; they trust, allow, and delight in it. They “stand” on it. 

For Jesus, prayer seems to be a matter of waiting in love. Returning to love. Trusting that love is the deepest stream of reality. That’s why prayer isn’t primarily words; it’s primarily an attitude, a stance, a modus operandi. That’s why Paul could say, “Pray always.” “Pray unceasingly.” If we read that as requiring words, it is surely impossible. We’ve got a lot of other things to do. We can pray unceasingly, however, if we find the stream and know how to wade in its waters. The stream will flow through us, and all we have to do is keep choosing to stay there.   Richard Rohr

If we don’t know how to love what’s right in front of us, then we don’t know how to see what is. So we must start with a stone! We move from the stone to the plant world and learn how to appreciate growing things and see God in them. In all of the natural world, we see the vestigia Dei, which means the fingerprints or footprints of God.  Richard Rohr

10/2/2022

If God’s peace is in our hearts, we carry it with us, and it can be given to those around us, not by our own will or virtue, but by the Holy Spirit working through us. We cannot give what we do not have, but if the Spirit blows through the dark clouds and enters our hearts, we can be used as vehicles of peace, and our own peace will be thereby deepened. The more peace we give away, the more we have.  Madeleine L’Engle

7/2/2022
There is no scarcity. There is no shortage. No lack of love, of compassion, of joy in the world. There is enough. There is more than enough. Only fear and greed make us think otherwise. No one need starve. There is enough land and enough food. No one need die of thirst. There is enough water. No one need live without mercy. There is no end to grace. And we are all instruments of grace. The more we give it, the more we share it, the more we use it, the more God makes. There is no scarcity of love. There is plenty. And always more.   Rosemarie Freeney Harding7/2/2022

4/2/2022

Friendship is contingent on love—real love: compassion, empathy, reaching out, going beyond what we imagine is possible. That is the command: love. And if we reach out in love, friendship is the result, even friendship with God. Friendship is mutual, a hand extended and another reaching back. . . . Friendship is an eternal circle, the ceaseless reaching toward one another that strengthens us and gives us joy.  Diane Butler Bass

31/1/2022

The Gospel compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed that “once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants.” It seems to be a law of the spiritual life that God wants good things to start small and grow over time.

We’re tempted to say, “You’re God. Just get on with it. Do it!” But why would God work the way he does? We might attempt a few explanations. It is a commonplace of the Bible that God rejoices in our cooperation. He wants to involve us, through freedom, intelligence, and creativity, in what he is doing. And so he plants seeds, and he wants us to cultivate them.

Consider what God said to St. Francis: “Francis, rebuild my Church.” God could have rebuilt his Church without Francis, but he wanted him to get involved. 

When things start small, they can fly under the radar while they gain strength and heft and seriousness. Also, those involved can be tested and tried. Suppose you want to do something great in the life of the Church and you pray and God gives you massively what you want. You might not be ready, and your project will peter out. So be patient and embrace the small invitations.  Robert Barron

30/1/2022

26/1/2022

Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation.  Martin Luther King Jr.

23/1/2022

21/1/2022

Wine, in the Scriptures, is a symbol of the exuberance and intoxication of the divine life. When God is in us, we are lifted up, rendered joyful, transfigured. Therefore, when Mary says, “They have no wine,” she is speaking of all of Israel and indeed all of the human race. They have run out of the exuberance and joyfulness that comes from union with God.  Bishop Robert Barron

18/1/2022

It’s hard to remember a deeper, comforting truth: we are built on a foundation not our own. We were born because two other people created a combination of biological matter. We went to schools where dozens and dozens of people crafted ideas and activities to construct categories in our minds. We learned skills honed by generations of craftspeople. We pray and worship with spiritual ideas refined by centuries of tradition. Almost nothing about us is original. Thank God.  

It reminds me of the account of creation in Genesis. . . . God breathes oxygen into lungs in an instance of divine CPR. I love picturing that God, the only One who can create out of nothing—ex nihilo. God, who set the cornerstone of our lives and our faith, laid the first brick. The Master Builder whose carefully poured foundation is what we build on top of now. It certainly feels like a template for the rest of our experience. 

Whether it is our parents, our teachers, mentors, friends, churches, or neighbours, people have been pouring into us. We are standing on a foundation. It should come as an incredible relief. Our only job is to build on what we’ve been given, and, even then, even our gifts we can trace back to the creativity, generosity, and foresight of others. Thank God we are a group project.

Kate Bowler

13/1/2022

To say “I believe in God” means that there is Someone who surrounds me, embraces me everywhere, and loves me, Someone who knows me better than I do myself, deep down in my heart, where not even my beloved can reach, Someone who knows the secret of all mysteries and where all roads lead. I am not alone in this open universe with all my questions for which no one offers me a satisfactory answer. That Someone is with me, and exists for me, and I exist for that Someone and in that Someone’s presence. Believing in God means saying: there exists an ultimate tenderness, an ultimate bosom, an infinite womb, in which I can take refuge and finally have peace in the serenity of love. If that is so, believing in God is worthwhile; it makes us more ourselves and empowers our humanity.  Leonardo Boff 

9/1/2022

We are all capable of good and evil. We are not born bad; everybody has something good inside. Some hide it, some neglect it, but it is there. God created us to love and to be loved, so it is our test from God to choose one path or the other.  Mother Teresa

8/1/2022

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also
The bow that is stable.     Kahlil Gibran

3/1/2022

God has created each person for a purpose. He has his plan of love for you, for me, for everyone. The problem is that we make our own plans. We want them to be realized in a certain way and at a particular time. Then we get resentful when our plans don’t materialize. Yet, you have to come to a place in your life where you can say, “You, O Lord, you choose for me.”   Alice von Hildebrand

1/1/2022

God puts us in a world of passing things where everything changes and nothing remains the same. The only thing that doesn’t change is change itself. It’s a hard lesson to learn. It helps us appreciate that everything is a gift. We didn’t create it. We don’t deserve it. It will not last, but while we breathe it in, we can enjoy it, and know that it is another moment of God, another moment of life. People who take this moment seriously take every moment seriously, and those are the people who are ready for heaven. Richard Rohr

What was true for Revelation’s original audience is true for us today. Whatever madman is in power, whatever chaos is breaking out, whatever danger threatens, the river of life is flowing now. The Tree of Life is bearing fruit now. True aliveness is available now. That’s why Revelation ends with the sound of a single word echoing through the universe. That word is not Wait! Nor is it Not Yet! or Someday! It is a word of invitation, welcome, reception, hospitality, and possibility. It is a word not of ending, but of new beginning. That one word is Come! The Spirit says it to us. We echo it back. Together with the Spirit, we say it to everyone who is willing. Come!        Brian D. McLaren

27/12/2021

The mysterious men from the Orient followed the star and discovered the place where the secret of love lay in the helplessness of a human baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes in the feeding trough of an animal. They discovered the place where God’s love came down. That is the most important thing for all people, to discover individually, in their own time and at their own hour, the place where God’s love has broken through, and then to follow the star that has risen for them and to remain true to the light that has fallen into their hearts. Eberhard Arnold

A star shone forth in heaven brighter than all the stars; its light was indescribable and its strangeness caused amazement. All the rest of the constellations, together with the sun and moon, formed a chorus around the star, yet the star itself far outshone them all, and there was perplexity about the origin of this strange phenomenon, which was so unlike the others.

Consequently all magic and every kind of spell were dissolved, the ignorance so characteristic of wickedness vanished, and the ancient kingdom was abolished when God appeared in human form to bring the newness of eternal life; and what had been prepared by God began to take effect.  Ignatius of Antioch

17/12/2021

It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts. But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks; with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ.  Dorothy Day

The Christmas Star in the night sky, the shining of the Christmas light in the night – all this is the sign that light breaks into the darkness. Though we see about us the darkness of unrest, of family discord, of class struggle, of competitive jealousy and of national hatred, the light shall shine and drive it out.…Wherever the Christmas Child is born in a heart, wherever Jesus begins his earthly life anew – that is where the life of God’s love and of God’s peace dawns again. Emmy Arnold

We humans contribute to the world’s gloom, like dark shadows on a dark landscape.…But now this man from Nazareth comes to us and invites us to mirror God’s image, and shows us how. He says: you too can become light, as God is light. What is all around you is not hell, but rather a world waiting to be filled with hope and faith. This world is your home as surely as the God who created and wrought it is love. You may not believe it, but you can love this world. It is a place of God. It has a purpose. Its beauty is not a delusion. You can lead a meaningful life in it.   Jörg Zink

29/11/2021

The Lord Jesus gives us a task on earth: “Watch! – Watch for my coming!” (Matt. 24:42). This is a most important assignment. If we fulfill this task – to watch for Christ’s coming – we will find it becoming reality now. When we keep watch, our whole being is directed toward this future. We see it before our eyes, we feel it in our whole life. We cannot be swallowed up by the present, for we are linked to the future; we experience this future already. Our life is renewed again and again and something new develops, something that points the way for us to go: each time it is a glimpse into Jesus Christ’s future.   Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

From the beginning, writers of the Christmas story have been bothered by the inn, with the stable and manger close at hand. That is where we find ourselves: not by the shepherds, whose poverty and simplicity we lack; and not by the wise men, whose watchfulness and decisiveness we lack. We are, at best, guests at the inn. We sleep, we follow our own plans and dreams. Can we be awakened by the angels’ news? That is the question. Rudolf Otto Wiemer

Eternity is not about unending life as we know it; what we know here will soon be over. Eternity is a new life, free of death’s destructive powers, a fullness of life where love reigns supreme. The promise of everlasting life has less to do with duration of time and more to do with a certain kind of life – one of peace, fellowship, and abundance – and such a life can begin now.  Johann Christoph Arnold

Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife, which may at any moment become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself, “What else is the world interested in?” What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships? God is love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love.   Dorothy Day

Soul is the blueprint inside of every living thing that tells it what it is and what it can still become. When we meet anything at that level, we will respect, protect, and love it.   Richard Rohr

The guarantee of one’s prayer is not in saying a lot of words. The guarantee of one’s petition is very easy to know: How do I treat the poor? The degree to which you approach them, and the love with which you approach them, or the scorn with which you approach them – that is how you approach your God. What you do to them, you do to God. The way you look at them is the way you look at God.

Oscar Romero

13/11/2021

I often feel more like a member of the clergy than of the medical profession, and it makes me realize how much the two professions have in common… I have seen fellow physicians retiring years earlier than they had planned after succumbing to compassion fatigue, the medical equivalent of battle fatigue known to veterans of armed conflict… When I feel stressed, I climb a mountain or get in my carbon-fiber canoe, and head for one of the thousands of ponds, lakes, and streams in the Adirondacks to reconnect with nature. Personal crises seem much less important when I am standing on a mountain summit or floating across a tranquil pond, surrounded by wilderness in every direction. There I can fill my brain (and my camera) with images of the heavenly landscape.

Daniel Way

5/11/2021

Jesus came to make people free. He wanted us to choose goodness freely. He did not crave the base worship of the slave. But free choice can exist only where there is doubt. Where there is certainty, there is nothing to choose; as soon as we understand a proof in Euclidian geometry, for instance, we simply accept it. Faith exists only where there is uncertainty. And so Jesus did not offer proofs. With only his image as our guide, we must choose goodness freely in the face of doubt.

Gary Saul Morson

The mystery of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.
Dorothy Day

27/10/2021

If I did not believe, if I did not make what is called an act of faith (and each act of faith increases our faith, and our capacity for faith), if I did not have faith that the works of mercy do lighten the sum total of suffering in the world, so that those who are suffering…somehow mysteriously find their pain lifted and some balm of consolation poured on their wounds, if I did not believe these things, the problem of evil would indeed be overwhelming.

Dorothy Day

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Nothing is small for our good God, for he is great and we are small. That is why he lowers himself and cares to do small things, in order to offer us an opportunity to show him our love. Since he does them, they are great things, they are infinite. Nothing he does can be small. Again: practice fidelity even in the least things, not for their own sake, but for the sake of what is great – that is, the will of God.

Mother Teresa

24/10/2021

21/10/2021

Prudence is a feel for the moral situation, something like the feel that a quarterback has for the playing field. Justice is a wonderful virtue, but without prudence, it is blind and finally useless. One can be as just as possible, but without a feel for the present situation, his justice will do him no good.
Wisdom, unlike prudence, is a sense of the big picture. It is the view from the hilltop. Most of us look at our lives from the standpoint of our own self-interest. But wisdom is the capacity to survey reality from the vantage point of God. Without wisdom, even the most prudent judgment will be erroneous, short-sighted, inadequate.
The combination, therefore, of prudence and wisdom is especially powerful. Someone who is both wise and prudent will have both a sense of the bigger picture and a feel for the particular situation.
Robert Barron

11/10/2021

Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more. Be happy now, and if you show through your actions that you love others – including those who are poorer than you – you’ll give them happiness, too. It doesn’t take much; it can be just giving a smile. The world would be a much better place if everyone smiled more. So smile, be cheerful, and be joyous that God loves you.

Mother Teresa

6/10/2021

Every one of us is written in the heart of God from all eternity, born into the stars, born, you might say, into the galaxies, born on this earth in small forms, developing and coming to explicit form in our lives, given a name. It’s a fantastic mystery of love.

Ilia Delio

Don’t let yourself forget that God’s grace rewards not only those who never slip, but also those who bend and fall. So sing! The song of rejoicing softens hard hearts. It makes tears of godly sorrow flow from them. Singing summons the Holy Spirit. Happy praises offered in simplicity and love lead the faithful to complete harmony, without discord. Don’t stop singing.

Hildegard of Bingen

Children cannot become mature human beings by themselves. They experience our love and warmth as a cocoon that protects them from harm. They need us to set appropriate boundaries and guidelines, yet give them as much freedom to explore as they can handle. They need us to be both strong and compassionate, people who understand the importance of living a life that is good and beautiful and true. And they need our faith in their ability to find their own way in life, so they can fulfill their own unique purpose. In short, they need us to strive to become full human beings, so we can help them do the same.

Joan Almon

4/10/2021

1/10/2021

Henri J. M. Nouwen There is no such thing as the right place, the right job, the right calling or ministry. I can be happy or unhappy in all situations. I am sure of it, because I have been. I have felt distraught and joyful in situations of abundance as well as poverty, in situations of popularity and anonymity, in situations of success and failure. The difference was never based on the situation itself, but always on my state of mind and heart. When I knew I was walking with God, I always felt happy and at peace. When I was entangled in my own complaints and emotional needs, I always felt restless and divided.

25/9/2021

2/9/2021

Today’s Gospel (Luke 5:1-11) gives us the story of the miraculous draught of fishes. In many ways, the whole of the spiritual life can be read off of this piece.
Without being invited, Jesus simply gets into the fisherman’s boat. This is to insinuate himself in the most direct way into Simon’s life. And without further ado, he begins to give orders, first asking Simon to put out from the shore and then to go out into the deep. This represents the invasion of grace. The single most important decision that you will ever make is this: Will you cooperate with Jesus once he decides to get into your boat?   

Robert Barron

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hardheartedness, all indifference, and all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet. Hermann Hesse

27/8/2021

25/8/2021

To be loved by Jesus enlarges our heart capacity. To be loved by the Christ enlarges our mental capacity. We need both a Jesus and a Christ, in my opinion, to get the full picture. A truly transformative God—for both the individual and history—needs to be experienced as both personal and universal. Nothing less will fully work.
Richard Rohr

When Christ calls himself the “Light of the World” (John 8:12), he is not telling us to look just at him, but to look out at life with his all-merciful eyes. We see him so we can see like him, and with the same infinite compassion.
Richard Rohr

8/8/2021 Our God who shows that he is totally love and who wants us in relation to him, to eat and drink him in, is the God who wants us to be like him. As he is food and drink for the world, so we must be food and drink for the world. As he gave himself away utterly, so we must give ourselves away utterly, without clinging to the goods, honours, or values of the world—all those things that aggrandise the ego.
The personal God, the incarnate God, the God of the gift. How compelling. How deeply challenging
Robert Barron

6/8/2021  Prayer is not a technique for getting things, a pious exercise that somehow makes God happy, or a requirement for entry into heaven. It is much more like practicing heaven now by leaping into communion with what is right in front of us.
Richard Rohr 

3/8/2021   I don’t see how you could get through what I’ve had to deal with without some kind of faith – without turning to Jesus and relying on him to give you peace, or the courage to get up and go through another day. Plus, I think chronic pain makes you more aware of what is important, and less easily bothered by the petty stuff of life. And that, I think, is a blessing. Because I don’t think I’d naturally be like that.

I’ve never said, “Thank you, God, for sending me this.” But I do find comfort in knowing that Jesus knows what suffering is. 

Brenda Hindley

1/8/2021  What God has wanted from the beginning is to sit down with his creatures in a fellowship banquet, sharing life and laughter, giving and receiving and giving back again. This is the loop of grace. The more we receive the divine life, the more we should give it away and thereby get more of it.
Robert Barron

31/7/2021   The prophet Joel once promised: “Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men will have visions” (3:1). The future of the world depends on this covenant between young and old. Who, if not the young, can take the dreams of the elderly and make them come true? Yet for this to happen, it is necessary that we continue to dream. Our dreams of justice, of peace, of solidarity, can make it possible for our young people to have new visions; in this way, together, we can build the future.    Pope Francis

21/7/2021  In Haiti, we have a concept called konbit: a gathering with a shared goal. Members of a community come together to accomplish something that benefits the entire community, or a single person in need. Konbits initially began in agriculture. “Today I work your field, tomorrow you work mine,” the Haitian novelist Jacques Roumain wrote of konbits. . . . How do we define community in a time of crisis, which is in many ways what community is for? We don’t need our neighbours as much when we are healthy and wealthy and can pay for all the assistance we require.              Edwidge Danticat

20/7/2021   Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is not about preserving the status quo! It’s about living here on earth as if the Reign of God has already begun (see Luke 17:21). In this Reign, the Sermon tells us, the poor are blessed, the hungry are filled, the grieving are filled with joy, and enemies are loved.
Richard Rohr

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Meeting the Lord in Imaginative Prayer  Richard Rohr

We often teach the transforming effects of silence and unknowing. It has been my personal practice for years. At the same time, one of the great gifts of Jesuit spirituality is to teach us how to draw closer to God through images, words, verbal prayer, our imaginations, and the Bible itself. Here is how writer and retreat leader Margaret Silf invites people into the riches of Ignatian contemplation:
The call to friendship with God invites us to allow our lives, with everything we most truly are, to become more closely linked to the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord and to everything he truly is. . . . One way to allow this closer linking to happen is to enter imaginatively into scenes from the earthly life of Jesus, in what is called imaginative meditation [or contemplation].
Choose a passage that seems to speak to you in some way—a favorite Gospel scene perhaps, or one of the healing miracles. If you don’t know which passage to choose, just rest, relax, and ask God to guide you; then wait to see whether any particular scene or event comes to mind. . . .
When you have chosen a passage, read it several times until it is familiar and you feel at home with it.
Now imagine that the event is happening here and now and that you are an active participant in it. Don’t worry if you don’t find it easy to imagine it vividly. . . . And don’t worry about getting the facts right. You may well find that your scene doesn’t take place in first century Palestine, but in Chicago rush-hour traffic, or that the desert tracts of the Good Samaritan story turn into the sidewalks in your neighborhood.
Ask God for what you desire—perhaps to meet God more closely or to feel God’s touch upon your life.
Fill out the scene as much as you can by, for example, becoming aware of who is there, the surroundings, the sights, the smells, the tastes, the weather, and the feel of the place (peaceful or threatening). What role do you find yourself taking in the scene—for example, are you one of the disciples, a bystander, or the person being healed? Listen inwardly to what God is showing you through your role in the scene. . . .
Talk with the characters in the scene, especially to Jesus. Speak from your heart simply and honestly. Tell him what you fear, what you hope for, what troubles you. . . . Don’t worry if your attention wanders. If you realize that this is happening, just bring yourself gently back to the scene for as long as you feel drawn to stay there.
There are two absolute rules:
Never moralize or judge yourself.
Always respond from your heart and not from your head. . . .
Our purpose in prayer is not to defend or condemn ourselves or to come up with any kind of analysis or sermon, but simply to respond, from our inmost depths, to what God is sharing with us of God’s own self

 

Meditation – a simple guide

There is no single way to meditate. There are, however, certain acts and attitudes inherently endowed with the capacity to awaken sustained states of meditative awareness. . . . With respect to the body: Sit still. Sit straight. Place your hands in a comfortable or meaningful position in your lap. Close your eyes or lower them toward the ground. Breathe slowly and naturally. With respect to your mind, be present, open, and awake, neither clinging to nor rejecting anything. And with respect to attitude, maintain nonjudgmental compassion toward yourself as you discover yourself clinging to and rejecting everything, and nonjudgmental compassion toward others. . . . Keep in mind that these guidelines are but suggestions for you to explore as part of your ongoing process of finding the ways to meditate that are most natural and effective for you. What matters is not which method of meditation you use, but the self-transforming process by which meditation leads you into more . . . openness to God. . . . Go to your place of meditation. . . . You might say a brief and simple prayer expressing your gratitude to God for having been led to the path of meditation and asking for the wisdom, courage, and strength to be faithful to it. . . . [Then] let go of all that is preoccupying you at the moment. Choose to be present in the immediacy of the present moment by simply relaxing into being right where you are, just as you are. Settle into the intimate, felt sense of your bodily stillness. Settle into being aware of your breathing and whatever degree of fatigue or wakefulness you may be feeling in your body at the moment. Be aware of whatever sadness, inner peace, or other emotion may be present. Be aware of the light and the temperature in the room where you are sitting. In short, simply be present, just as you are, in the moment, just as it is. Cling to nothing. Reject nothing. Rest in this moment. . . . Relax. Give yourself a break. Simply sit in a “Here I am, Lord” stance. . . . Know and trust that God is already perfectly present in your simply being alive and real in the present moment just as it is. . . . Be humbled and grateful in knowing that you are learning to awaken to your true nature in learning to be like God. . . . Jesus said, “Judge not and you shall not be judged” (Matthew 7:1). Sitting in meditation, we put this teaching of Christ into practice in remaining present, open, and awake to ourselves just as we are, without judging, without evaluating, without clinging to or rejecting the way we simply are. James Finley, Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence

13/5/2021

Pentecost Novena – Creation

18/11/2020

The Quarantine Quatrains  click to reveal

6/11/2020

Living Life in Full in Lock-Down

3/10/2020

The Spirituality Committee of the Bishops’ Conference has been reflecting on how best to support and sustain a person’s prayer life at this challenging time – particularly those who may not have easy access to the internet or streaming services. The Committee has looked to the psalms as the inspiration for its new resource.

Responding to the Psalms is a simple initiative that takes a Sunday’s Responsorial Psalm – an integral part of the Liturgy of the Word – and invites and encourages further reflection on each verse.

Short questions are provided to encourage deeper thought on the verse for a few days or so before the focus moves on to the psalm’s next verse. Once each verse has been considered, we arrive at the next Sunday’s Responsorial Psalm.

The aim is that this will sustain people throughout the week.

Responding to the Psalms is intended to be used by individuals and small groups. Click below for the psalms and questions.

Resp-to-Psalms-October-2020

22/6/2020

Information about what is available to support your faith and prayer life around the Diocese

Resourcing the Lockdown

17/6/2020

How to pray and re-connect with the church as places of worship re-open for private prayer

2/6/2020 Blessings – a meditative few moments

https://gratefulness.org/blessings/

29/5/2020 Vigil prayer

The Ignatian Family in a Worldwide Prayer Vigil

On Sunday 31^st of May the universal Church will celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit not only transforms the lives of the disciples into apostles, it brings the Church to birth and sends it out to all nations, overcoming divisions of language, race, class. The Spirit gathers us, whatever our state or condition, into the new community of Christ. Our lives and our world are restored and renewed.

In these past months we all have experienced the devastation of COVID-19. It has shown how vulnerable we are, how precarious our systems and limited our resources. We have also seen the great generosity and courage that can fill the human heart as so many risk their own life care and save the lives of others. Even in the small acts of kindness, generosity and thoughtfulness we glimpse something greater than we had thought possible. These moments are the ‘epiphanies of the Spirit’; the candles of love that light up the darkness and guide us into hope.

What better way to seek the gift and power of the Holy Spirit than as a world-wide community of prayer? Click button below for details of how to access.

Click for Worldwide prayer vigil

29/5/2020 Preparing for Pentecost

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‘Rise Within Us – The Coming Of The Spirit’ is an uplifting song for Pentecost performed by the Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir. It’s a ‘Sung Scripture’, which uses a well-known song as a basis, and ad lib singing of the relevant scripture in the gaps.

Performers are being creative in lockdown, as we’ve seen over the past eight weeks, and this high quality arrangement was put together using material from 25 performers singing separately into smartphones at home.

The song is dedicated to the prisoners and staff at HMP Wandsworth.

Listen https://soundcloud.com/catholicchurch/rise-within-us-the-coming-of-the-spirit

‘Rise Within Us’ lyrics and music by Aaron Lindsay and Israel Houghton, from 2004 live album “Live From Another Level”, Israel & New Breed; additional lyrics by Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir, based on Acts 2, sung ad lib.

23/5/2020

As the important Solemnity of Pentecost approaches, the Cardinal assures you that he holds you  in his prayer. He has sent us a message. In it, he reflects on the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, particularly in the context of the circumstances in which we are living at the moment.

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Thy Kingdom Come 2020 – Ascension to Pentecost

“God is not in lockdown” said Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby at the live launch of Thy Kingdom Come 2020 celebrated in prayer with Archbishop Sentamu and Cardinal Vincent this morning. The video is available to view athttps://tkc.new/livelink.

Cardinal Vincent spoke of the richness of these days; a time of waiting, trusting and not-knowing that resonates with the experience of many people in these strange and difficult times. He stressed the importance of the gifts of gratitude, joy and service that hold Christians of all denominations together and prayed for the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to see the gifts we are given and to use them in the field of our world.

The Archbishops spoke of the importance of praying together, as families, as church communities and as inter-denominational communities. There are many excellent resources available at www.thykingdomcome.global

In Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire the Thy Kingdom Come Ecumenical Planning Group has put together a programme starting with a launch event this evening and including daily prayers from Regional Church Leaders, including our own Bishop Paul on Wednesday. There are family prayers and resources and daily evening reflections. There will be a Beacon celebration posted on Pentecost Sunday. A full programme, with YouTube links, is available at www.stalbans.anglican.org/faith/thy-kingdom-come/

‘The Prayer and Care: ideas for families’ can be found atwww.stalbans.anglican.org/wp-content/uploads/Prayer_and_Care_Family_TKC2020.pdf

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20/5/2020

Jesuit prayer support for Ascension and Pentecost

 We keep in prayer all those working to fight the pandemic and all those grieving the loss of loved ones. We also pray for the families you serve, as they learn new ways of living as the domestic church.

Ascension and Pentecost

Ascension and Pentecost are the two great feasts that signal the end of the Easter season. Celebrate using these ideas from Loyola Press.

Click for prayers and activities for Ascension and Pentecost

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15/5/2020

Fr Stephen Wang is live streaming each day at the ‘Pause for Faith’ YouTube channel, where you can
also see a library of recent videos. It’s an informal look at different aspects of our Catholic faith.
Themes include how to pray, the lives of the saints, faith formation, coping with lockdown, and a
new series of talks about ‘What Christians believe in 100 objects’. Please share the link below with
anyone who might be looking for some inspiration and spiritual support during the lockdown.
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/PauseforFaith
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: @pauseforfaith

13/5/2020

Please include these prayer intentions from the Churches together in Hitchin in your prayers at the appropriate times.

February to April 20 PrayerLink 97-2003

1/5/2020

A letter sent to cloistered nuns which as Cardinal Vincent says ‘…. is reflective, sensitive, with a true ‘interiority’ in its themes. I found that it touched me quite deeply. It is simply an offering at a difficult time.’

A letter from the desert

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24/4/2020

Emmaus Road reflection by Reverend Charmaine Sabey-Corkindale

A reflection with art. Click below

emmausroadreflection csc

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24/4/2020

Pray as You Stay https://pray-as-you-go.org/

Mental Health audio prayer guides: https://pray-as-you-go.org/retreat/mental-health-awareness

Pray As You Stay mini series: https://pray-as-you-go.org/retreat/pray-as-you-stay

Kids Examen during lockdown: https://pray-as-you-go.org/player/prayer%20tools/aspecialexamenforchildren

Family Examen during lockdown: https://pray-as-you-go.org/player/prayer%20tools/anexamenforthefamily

PAYG Rosary Reflections: https://pray-as-you-go.org/article/rosary-reflections

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18/4/2020

Extract from message from Cardinal Vincent to the Priests of the Diocese

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Easter Sunday

Pope Francis: ‘Urbi et Orbi’ Easter Message 2020

Prayer materials for Holy week

From the Jesuits in Britain

Palm Sunday  Palm Sunday Yr A r1

Holy Week prayer with the 5 senses Holy Week 2020 Praying with our 5 senses

From Ten:Ten for children on Thursday – Mass of the Last supper gospel click below picture

https://www.tentenresources.co.uk/primary-subscription/prayers-for-home/homeprayer-2020-04-06/the-last-supper-public/

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Accessing live stream Masses

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Resources to support your prayer life at this time

28/3/2020

Prayers in response to the Coronavirus pandemic… Are you reeling at the moment from the impact of coronavirus? Are you wondering how you’re going to cope with months of isolation or social distancing? Are you worried about work, money or how the country is ever going to recover from the impact of this pandemic? And are you looking for some kind of spiritual solace, but struggling to find words to pray. Then this little book could be just the thing for you. It contains 52 prayers written in response to the crisis, asking for strength, encouragement and support, as well as help for loved ones and the wider world. Honest, down-to-earth and heartfelt, it’s a resource written to help you articulate what you are feeling and bring you hope in these dark and difficult days.

Grab your FREE eBook here

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8/4/2020

From St Mark’s church – ideas for craft activities for Easter

Messy St Marks DIY Easter Activities

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28/3/2020

From TenTen  

Ten Ten has decided to make freely available our Collective Worship resources to all schools and their families. We have created a new series of resources called Prayers for Home, which include:
Sunday Liturgy for Families

Daily Prayers for Home

We will continue to create original resources for families throughout the Easter holidays and beyond during this uncertain time for teachers, children and their families. Click below the picture for the Last Supper.

https://www.tentenresources.co.uk/primary-subscription/prayers-for-home/homeprayer-2020-04-06/the-last-supper-public/

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From the Diocese

https://rcdow.org.uk/faith/catechesis/resources-now/

Resources: https://rcdow.org.uk/news/resources-during-mass-suspension/

Pope Francis Urbi et Orbi Blessing

“Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” Lord, you are calling to us, calling us to faith. Which is not so much believing that you exist, but coming to you and trusting in you. This Lent your call reverberates urgently: “Be converted!”, “Return to me with all your heart” (Joel 2:12). You are calling on us to seize this time of trial as a time of choosing. It is not the time of your judgement, but of our judgement: a time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not. It is a time to get our lives back on track with regard to you, Lord, and to others. We can look to so many exemplary companions for the journey, who, even though fearful, have reacted by giving their lives. This is the force of the Spirit poured out and fashioned in courageous and generous self-denial. It is the life in the Spirit that can redeem, value and demonstrate how our lives are woven together and sustained by ordinary people – often forgotten people – who do not appear in newspaper and magazine headlines nor on the grand catwalks of the latest show, but who without any doubt are in these very days writing the decisive events of our time: doctors, nurses, supermarket employees, cleaners, caregivers, providers of transport, law and order forces, volunteers, priests, religious men and women and so very many others who have understood that no one reaches salvation by themselves. In the face of so much suffering, where the authentic development of our peoples is assessed, we experience the priestly prayer of Jesus: “That they may all be one” (Jn 17:21). How many people every day are exercising patience and offering hope, taking care to sow not panic but a shared responsibility. How many fathers, mothers, grandparents and teachers are showing our children, in small everyday gestures, how to face up to and navigate a crisis by adjusting their routines, lifting their gaze and fostering prayer. How many are praying, offering and interceding for the good of all. Prayer and quiet service: these are our victorious weapons.

8/7/2022

The Creator’s call to care for our common home has never been more urgent, and requires a range of faithful responses, from individual and grassroots efforts to major policy and legislative changes. Through gardening and food production, the church is offering demonstration plots of abundant life: sites where even in the margins, we tend the earth and one another. What is needed is the cultivation of community where ecological conversion is possible; and of communities where neighbors can work together and live abundantly.  Sam Ewell

3/7/2022

What so many people today fail to realize is that forgiveness is a door to peace and happiness. Forgiving is not ignoring wrongdoing, but overcoming the evil inside us and in our world with love. To forgive is not just a command of Christ but the key to reconciling all that is broken in our lives and relationships. We get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity.  Johann Christoph Arnold

The Trinity is just another way of saying that God is love. But this has to imply that there is a play, within the unity of God, of lover, beloved, and shared love. This is precisely what we mean when we speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Robert Barron

Thank God for mothers! Mothers provide the most powerful influence on a child’s life, and are the most important role models for positive change in our society. When people are in trouble, or know that they are dying, the first person they think of is their mother. When children start going wrong ways a mother’s prayer is powerful. Mothers remind us that there is a loving God above us who will take good care of everyone, especially children. Whenever a tragedy occurs – no matter where in the world this happens – you will always find mothers both weeping for the dead and bringing comfort and security to the living. Johann Christoph Arnold

2/7/2022

When you awake in the morning 
immediately remember 
that the blessed Creator has acted toward you with 
     goodness and kindness,  
for He has returned the soul to you (Berakhot 2a);  
the soul that fills your whole body. . . . 

Before opening your eyes,  
draw the Creator to you— 
likewise with your ears, mouth, and mind.  

If you follow this practice,  
all your deeds will be holy that day,  
as it is written, “I foretell the end from the beginning” 
(Isaiah 46:10). [2] 

Hayim Heikel of Amdur, Hayim V’Hesed, #1, in God in All Moments, 3.

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The marks life leaves on everything it touches transform perfection into wholeness. Older, wiser cultures choose to claim this wholeness in the things that they create. In Japan, Zen gardeners purposefully leave a fat dandelion in the midst of the exquisite, ritually precise patterns of the meditation garden. In Iran, even the most skilled of rug weavers includes an intentional error, the “Persian Flaw,” in the magnificence of a Tabriz or Qashqai carpet…and Native Americans wove a broken bead, the “spirit bead,” into every beaded masterpiece. Nothing that has a soul is perfect. When life weaves a spirit bead into your very fabric, you may stumble upon a wholeness greater than you had dreamed possible before.  Rachel Naomi Remen

7/5/2022

The great agitation in the world of today makes it more and more urgent to gain inner strength in those quiet encounters with Christ that make it possible for us to remain under his rule and authority. Situated as we are in the midst of a world that is so terribly unpeaceful, we need constant nourishment for our inner life. In short, if we want to avoid suffering inward shipwreck in the storm of public opinion and chaos, then our hidden inner being needs daily the quiet haven of communion with God. Eberhard Arnold

5/5/2022

I’m prone to distractions , God.
I find it hard
To keep my thoughts on you.,”
God looked down
And sighed.

I wish I could say
The same about you,
I can’t get you out of my mind.          Patrick Purcell SJ

1/5/2022

Remember. Remember that Creator is the wind on my face, the rain in my hair, the sun that warms me. Creator is the trees, rocks, grasses, the majesty of the sky and the intense mystery of the universe. Creator is the infant who giggles at me in the grocery line, the beggar who reminds me how rich I really am, the idea that fires my most brilliant moment, the feeling that fuels my most loving act and the part of me that yearns for that feeling again and again. Whatever ceremony, ritual, meditation, song, thought or action it takes to reconnect to that feeling is what I need to do today. . . Remember.  Richard Wagamese

30/4/2022

“They have taken the Lord out of his tomb and we do not know where they have laid him,” Mary Magdalene said, and we can say this with her in times of doubt and questioning. Then there’s that last glorious chapter of Saint Luke, where Jesus says, “Why are you so perturbed? Why do questions arise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see.” Yes, sometimes it is most surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ, especially in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow, and the joy of our calling assures us we are on the right path. Most certainly, it is easier to believe now that the sun warms us, and we know that buds will appear on the sycamore trees in the wasteland across the street, that life will spring out of the dull clods of that littered park. There are wars and rumours of war, poverty and plague, hunger and pain. Still, the sap is rising, again there is the resurrection of spring, God’s continuing promise to us that he is with us always, with his comfort and joy, if we will only ask. Dorothy Day

The true God does not sanction a community created through violence; rather, he sanctions what Jesus called the kingdom of God, a society grounded in forgiveness, love, and identification with the victim. Robert Barron

28/4/2022

The duties and cares of the day crowd about us when we awake each day – if they have not already dispelled our night’s rest. How can everything be accommodated in one day? When will I do this, when that? How will it all be accomplished? Thus agitated, we are tempted to run and rush. And so we must take the reins in hand and remind ourselves, “Let go of your plans. The first hour of your morning belongs to God. Tackle the day’s work that he charges you with, and he will give you the power to accomplish it.”  Edith Stein

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. How does a lamp burn? Through the continuous input of small drops of oil. If the drops of oil run out, the light of the lamp will cease, and the bridegroom will say, “I do not know you” (Matt. 25:12). What are these drops of oil in our lamps? They are the small things of daily life: faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought for others, our way of being silent, of looking, of speaking, and of acting. These are the true drops of love that keep your religious life burning like a living flame. Mother Teresa

24/4/2022

The distribution of land, work, and goods should be in harmony with the justice of God, who lets the sun shine and the rain fall on the just and the unjust. Jesus says simply: what you want people to do for you, do for them. Make sure that all others have what you think you need yourself.  Eberhard Arnold

7/4/2022

Being patient is difficult. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control: the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a conflict. Patience is not waiting passively until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient, we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later, and somewhere else. Be patient and trust that the treasure you are looking for is hidden in the ground on which you stand.  Henri J. M. Nouwen

6/3/2022

Jesus says, “Forgive, and you will also be forgiven” (Matt. 6:14). That is to say, forgiveness is forgiveness. Your forgiveness of another is your own forgiveness; the forgiveness you give is the forgiveness you receive. If you wholeheartedly forgive your enemy, you may dare hope for your own forgiveness, for it is one and the same. Søren Kierkegaard

I don’t gather that God wants us to pretend our fear doesn’t exist, to deny it, or eviscerate it. Fear is a reminder that we are creatures – fragile, vulnerable, totally dependent on God. But fear shouldn’t dominate or control or define us. Rather, it should submit to faith and love. Otherwise, fear can make us unbelieving, slavish, and inhuman. I have seen that struggle: containing my fear, rejecting its rule, recognizing that it saw only appearances, while faith and love saw substance, saw reality, saw God’s bailiwick, so to speak: “Take courage, it is I. Do not be afraid!” Philip Berrigan

13/2/2022

Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a life stance. It’s a way of living in the Presence, living in awareness of the Presence, and even of enjoying the Presence. Fully contemplative people are more than aware of Divine Presence; they trust, allow, and delight in it. They “stand” on it. 

For Jesus, prayer seems to be a matter of waiting in love. Returning to love. Trusting that love is the deepest stream of reality. That’s why prayer isn’t primarily words; it’s primarily an attitude, a stance, a modus operandi. That’s why Paul could say, “Pray always.” “Pray unceasingly.” If we read that as requiring words, it is surely impossible. We’ve got a lot of other things to do. We can pray unceasingly, however, if we find the stream and know how to wade in its waters. The stream will flow through us, and all we have to do is keep choosing to stay there.   Richard Rohr

If we don’t know how to love what’s right in front of us, then we don’t know how to see what is. So we must start with a stone! We move from the stone to the plant world and learn how to appreciate growing things and see God in them. In all of the natural world, we see the vestigia Dei, which means the fingerprints or footprints of God.  Richard Rohr

10/2/2022

If God’s peace is in our hearts, we carry it with us, and it can be given to those around us, not by our own will or virtue, but by the Holy Spirit working through us. We cannot give what we do not have, but if the Spirit blows through the dark clouds and enters our hearts, we can be used as vehicles of peace, and our own peace will be thereby deepened. The more peace we give away, the more we have.  Madeleine L’Engle

7/2/2022
There is no scarcity. There is no shortage. No lack of love, of compassion, of joy in the world. There is enough. There is more than enough. Only fear and greed make us think otherwise. No one need starve. There is enough land and enough food. No one need die of thirst. There is enough water. No one need live without mercy. There is no end to grace. And we are all instruments of grace. The more we give it, the more we share it, the more we use it, the more God makes. There is no scarcity of love. There is plenty. And always more.   Rosemarie Freeney Harding7/2/2022

4/2/2022

Friendship is contingent on love—real love: compassion, empathy, reaching out, going beyond what we imagine is possible. That is the command: love. And if we reach out in love, friendship is the result, even friendship with God. Friendship is mutual, a hand extended and another reaching back. . . . Friendship is an eternal circle, the ceaseless reaching toward one another that strengthens us and gives us joy.  Diane Butler Bass

31/1/2022

The Gospel compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed that “once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants.” It seems to be a law of the spiritual life that God wants good things to start small and grow over time.

We’re tempted to say, “You’re God. Just get on with it. Do it!” But why would God work the way he does? We might attempt a few explanations. It is a commonplace of the Bible that God rejoices in our cooperation. He wants to involve us, through freedom, intelligence, and creativity, in what he is doing. And so he plants seeds, and he wants us to cultivate them.

Consider what God said to St. Francis: “Francis, rebuild my Church.” God could have rebuilt his Church without Francis, but he wanted him to get involved. 

When things start small, they can fly under the radar while they gain strength and heft and seriousness. Also, those involved can be tested and tried. Suppose you want to do something great in the life of the Church and you pray and God gives you massively what you want. You might not be ready, and your project will peter out. So be patient and embrace the small invitations.  Robert Barron

30/1/2022

26/1/2022

Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation.  Martin Luther King Jr.

23/1/2022

21/1/2022

Wine, in the Scriptures, is a symbol of the exuberance and intoxication of the divine life. When God is in us, we are lifted up, rendered joyful, transfigured. Therefore, when Mary says, “They have no wine,” she is speaking of all of Israel and indeed all of the human race. They have run out of the exuberance and joyfulness that comes from union with God.  Bishop Robert Barron

18/1/2022

It’s hard to remember a deeper, comforting truth: we are built on a foundation not our own. We were born because two other people created a combination of biological matter. We went to schools where dozens and dozens of people crafted ideas and activities to construct categories in our minds. We learned skills honed by generations of craftspeople. We pray and worship with spiritual ideas refined by centuries of tradition. Almost nothing about us is original. Thank God.  

It reminds me of the account of creation in Genesis. . . . God breathes oxygen into lungs in an instance of divine CPR. I love picturing that God, the only One who can create out of nothing—ex nihilo. God, who set the cornerstone of our lives and our faith, laid the first brick. The Master Builder whose carefully poured foundation is what we build on top of now. It certainly feels like a template for the rest of our experience. 

Whether it is our parents, our teachers, mentors, friends, churches, or neighbours, people have been pouring into us. We are standing on a foundation. It should come as an incredible relief. Our only job is to build on what we’ve been given, and, even then, even our gifts we can trace back to the creativity, generosity, and foresight of others. Thank God we are a group project.

Kate Bowler

13/1/2022

To say “I believe in God” means that there is Someone who surrounds me, embraces me everywhere, and loves me, Someone who knows me better than I do myself, deep down in my heart, where not even my beloved can reach, Someone who knows the secret of all mysteries and where all roads lead. I am not alone in this open universe with all my questions for which no one offers me a satisfactory answer. That Someone is with me, and exists for me, and I exist for that Someone and in that Someone’s presence. Believing in God means saying: there exists an ultimate tenderness, an ultimate bosom, an infinite womb, in which I can take refuge and finally have peace in the serenity of love. If that is so, believing in God is worthwhile; it makes us more ourselves and empowers our humanity.  Leonardo Boff 

9/1/2022

We are all capable of good and evil. We are not born bad; everybody has something good inside. Some hide it, some neglect it, but it is there. God created us to love and to be loved, so it is our test from God to choose one path or the other.  Mother Teresa

8/1/2022

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also
The bow that is stable.     Kahlil Gibran

3/1/2022

God has created each person for a purpose. He has his plan of love for you, for me, for everyone. The problem is that we make our own plans. We want them to be realized in a certain way and at a particular time. Then we get resentful when our plans don’t materialize. Yet, you have to come to a place in your life where you can say, “You, O Lord, you choose for me.”   Alice von Hildebrand

1/1/2022

God puts us in a world of passing things where everything changes and nothing remains the same. The only thing that doesn’t change is change itself. It’s a hard lesson to learn. It helps us appreciate that everything is a gift. We didn’t create it. We don’t deserve it. It will not last, but while we breathe it in, we can enjoy it, and know that it is another moment of God, another moment of life. People who take this moment seriously take every moment seriously, and those are the people who are ready for heaven. Richard Rohr

What was true for Revelation’s original audience is true for us today. Whatever madman is in power, whatever chaos is breaking out, whatever danger threatens, the river of life is flowing now. The Tree of Life is bearing fruit now. True aliveness is available now. That’s why Revelation ends with the sound of a single word echoing through the universe. That word is not Wait! Nor is it Not Yet! or Someday! It is a word of invitation, welcome, reception, hospitality, and possibility. It is a word not of ending, but of new beginning. That one word is Come! The Spirit says it to us. We echo it back. Together with the Spirit, we say it to everyone who is willing. Come!        Brian D. McLaren

27/12/2021

The mysterious men from the Orient followed the star and discovered the place where the secret of love lay in the helplessness of a human baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes in the feeding trough of an animal. They discovered the place where God’s love came down. That is the most important thing for all people, to discover individually, in their own time and at their own hour, the place where God’s love has broken through, and then to follow the star that has risen for them and to remain true to the light that has fallen into their hearts. Eberhard Arnold

A star shone forth in heaven brighter than all the stars; its light was indescribable and its strangeness caused amazement. All the rest of the constellations, together with the sun and moon, formed a chorus around the star, yet the star itself far outshone them all, and there was perplexity about the origin of this strange phenomenon, which was so unlike the others.

Consequently all magic and every kind of spell were dissolved, the ignorance so characteristic of wickedness vanished, and the ancient kingdom was abolished when God appeared in human form to bring the newness of eternal life; and what had been prepared by God began to take effect.  Ignatius of Antioch

17/12/2021

It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts. But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks; with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ.  Dorothy Day

The Christmas Star in the night sky, the shining of the Christmas light in the night – all this is the sign that light breaks into the darkness. Though we see about us the darkness of unrest, of family discord, of class struggle, of competitive jealousy and of national hatred, the light shall shine and drive it out.…Wherever the Christmas Child is born in a heart, wherever Jesus begins his earthly life anew – that is where the life of God’s love and of God’s peace dawns again. Emmy Arnold

We humans contribute to the world’s gloom, like dark shadows on a dark landscape.…But now this man from Nazareth comes to us and invites us to mirror God’s image, and shows us how. He says: you too can become light, as God is light. What is all around you is not hell, but rather a world waiting to be filled with hope and faith. This world is your home as surely as the God who created and wrought it is love. You may not believe it, but you can love this world. It is a place of God. It has a purpose. Its beauty is not a delusion. You can lead a meaningful life in it.   Jörg Zink

29/11/2021

The Lord Jesus gives us a task on earth: “Watch! – Watch for my coming!” (Matt. 24:42). This is a most important assignment. If we fulfill this task – to watch for Christ’s coming – we will find it becoming reality now. When we keep watch, our whole being is directed toward this future. We see it before our eyes, we feel it in our whole life. We cannot be swallowed up by the present, for we are linked to the future; we experience this future already. Our life is renewed again and again and something new develops, something that points the way for us to go: each time it is a glimpse into Jesus Christ’s future.   Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

From the beginning, writers of the Christmas story have been bothered by the inn, with the stable and manger close at hand. That is where we find ourselves: not by the shepherds, whose poverty and simplicity we lack; and not by the wise men, whose watchfulness and decisiveness we lack. We are, at best, guests at the inn. We sleep, we follow our own plans and dreams. Can we be awakened by the angels’ news? That is the question. Rudolf Otto Wiemer

Eternity is not about unending life as we know it; what we know here will soon be over. Eternity is a new life, free of death’s destructive powers, a fullness of life where love reigns supreme. The promise of everlasting life has less to do with duration of time and more to do with a certain kind of life – one of peace, fellowship, and abundance – and such a life can begin now.  Johann Christoph Arnold

Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife, which may at any moment become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself, “What else is the world interested in?” What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships? God is love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love.   Dorothy Day

Soul is the blueprint inside of every living thing that tells it what it is and what it can still become. When we meet anything at that level, we will respect, protect, and love it.   Richard Rohr

The guarantee of one’s prayer is not in saying a lot of words. The guarantee of one’s petition is very easy to know: How do I treat the poor? The degree to which you approach them, and the love with which you approach them, or the scorn with which you approach them – that is how you approach your God. What you do to them, you do to God. The way you look at them is the way you look at God.

Oscar Romero

13/11/2021

I often feel more like a member of the clergy than of the medical profession, and it makes me realize how much the two professions have in common… I have seen fellow physicians retiring years earlier than they had planned after succumbing to compassion fatigue, the medical equivalent of battle fatigue known to veterans of armed conflict… When I feel stressed, I climb a mountain or get in my carbon-fiber canoe, and head for one of the thousands of ponds, lakes, and streams in the Adirondacks to reconnect with nature. Personal crises seem much less important when I am standing on a mountain summit or floating across a tranquil pond, surrounded by wilderness in every direction. There I can fill my brain (and my camera) with images of the heavenly landscape.

Daniel Way

5/11/2021

Jesus came to make people free. He wanted us to choose goodness freely. He did not crave the base worship of the slave. But free choice can exist only where there is doubt. Where there is certainty, there is nothing to choose; as soon as we understand a proof in Euclidian geometry, for instance, we simply accept it. Faith exists only where there is uncertainty. And so Jesus did not offer proofs. With only his image as our guide, we must choose goodness freely in the face of doubt.

Gary Saul Morson

The mystery of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.
Dorothy Day

27/10/2021

If I did not believe, if I did not make what is called an act of faith (and each act of faith increases our faith, and our capacity for faith), if I did not have faith that the works of mercy do lighten the sum total of suffering in the world, so that those who are suffering…somehow mysteriously find their pain lifted and some balm of consolation poured on their wounds, if I did not believe these things, the problem of evil would indeed be overwhelming.

Dorothy Day

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Nothing is small for our good God, for he is great and we are small. That is why he lowers himself and cares to do small things, in order to offer us an opportunity to show him our love. Since he does them, they are great things, they are infinite. Nothing he does can be small. Again: practice fidelity even in the least things, not for their own sake, but for the sake of what is great – that is, the will of God.

Mother Teresa

24/10/2021

21/10/2021

Prudence is a feel for the moral situation, something like the feel that a quarterback has for the playing field. Justice is a wonderful virtue, but without prudence, it is blind and finally useless. One can be as just as possible, but without a feel for the present situation, his justice will do him no good.
Wisdom, unlike prudence, is a sense of the big picture. It is the view from the hilltop. Most of us look at our lives from the standpoint of our own self-interest. But wisdom is the capacity to survey reality from the vantage point of God. Without wisdom, even the most prudent judgment will be erroneous, short-sighted, inadequate.
The combination, therefore, of prudence and wisdom is especially powerful. Someone who is both wise and prudent will have both a sense of the bigger picture and a feel for the particular situation.
Robert Barron

11/10/2021

Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more. Be happy now, and if you show through your actions that you love others – including those who are poorer than you – you’ll give them happiness, too. It doesn’t take much; it can be just giving a smile. The world would be a much better place if everyone smiled more. So smile, be cheerful, and be joyous that God loves you.

Mother Teresa

6/10/2021

Every one of us is written in the heart of God from all eternity, born into the stars, born, you might say, into the galaxies, born on this earth in small forms, developing and coming to explicit form in our lives, given a name. It’s a fantastic mystery of love.

Ilia Delio

Don’t let yourself forget that God’s grace rewards not only those who never slip, but also those who bend and fall. So sing! The song of rejoicing softens hard hearts. It makes tears of godly sorrow flow from them. Singing summons the Holy Spirit. Happy praises offered in simplicity and love lead the faithful to complete harmony, without discord. Don’t stop singing.

Hildegard of Bingen

Children cannot become mature human beings by themselves. They experience our love and warmth as a cocoon that protects them from harm. They need us to set appropriate boundaries and guidelines, yet give them as much freedom to explore as they can handle. They need us to be both strong and compassionate, people who understand the importance of living a life that is good and beautiful and true. And they need our faith in their ability to find their own way in life, so they can fulfill their own unique purpose. In short, they need us to strive to become full human beings, so we can help them do the same.

Joan Almon

4/10/2021

1/10/2021

Henri J. M. Nouwen There is no such thing as the right place, the right job, the right calling or ministry. I can be happy or unhappy in all situations. I am sure of it, because I have been. I have felt distraught and joyful in situations of abundance as well as poverty, in situations of popularity and anonymity, in situations of success and failure. The difference was never based on the situation itself, but always on my state of mind and heart. When I knew I was walking with God, I always felt happy and at peace. When I was entangled in my own complaints and emotional needs, I always felt restless and divided.

25/9/2021

2/9/2021

Today’s Gospel (Luke 5:1-11) gives us the story of the miraculous draught of fishes. In many ways, the whole of the spiritual life can be read off of this piece.
Without being invited, Jesus simply gets into the fisherman’s boat. This is to insinuate himself in the most direct way into Simon’s life. And without further ado, he begins to give orders, first asking Simon to put out from the shore and then to go out into the deep. This represents the invasion of grace. The single most important decision that you will ever make is this: Will you cooperate with Jesus once he decides to get into your boat?   

Robert Barron

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hardheartedness, all indifference, and all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet. Hermann Hesse

27/8/2021

25/8/2021

To be loved by Jesus enlarges our heart capacity. To be loved by the Christ enlarges our mental capacity. We need both a Jesus and a Christ, in my opinion, to get the full picture. A truly transformative God—for both the individual and history—needs to be experienced as both personal and universal. Nothing less will fully work.
Richard Rohr

When Christ calls himself the “Light of the World” (John 8:12), he is not telling us to look just at him, but to look out at life with his all-merciful eyes. We see him so we can see like him, and with the same infinite compassion.
Richard Rohr

8/8/2021 Our God who shows that he is totally love and who wants us in relation to him, to eat and drink him in, is the God who wants us to be like him. As he is food and drink for the world, so we must be food and drink for the world. As he gave himself away utterly, so we must give ourselves away utterly, without clinging to the goods, honours, or values of the world—all those things that aggrandise the ego.
The personal God, the incarnate God, the God of the gift. How compelling. How deeply challenging
Robert Barron

6/8/2021  Prayer is not a technique for getting things, a pious exercise that somehow makes God happy, or a requirement for entry into heaven. It is much more like practicing heaven now by leaping into communion with what is right in front of us.
Richard Rohr 

3/8/2021   I don’t see how you could get through what I’ve had to deal with without some kind of faith – without turning to Jesus and relying on him to give you peace, or the courage to get up and go through another day. Plus, I think chronic pain makes you more aware of what is important, and less easily bothered by the petty stuff of life. And that, I think, is a blessing. Because I don’t think I’d naturally be like that.

I’ve never said, “Thank you, God, for sending me this.” But I do find comfort in knowing that Jesus knows what suffering is. 

Brenda Hindley

1/8/2021  What God has wanted from the beginning is to sit down with his creatures in a fellowship banquet, sharing life and laughter, giving and receiving and giving back again. This is the loop of grace. The more we receive the divine life, the more we should give it away and thereby get more of it.
Robert Barron

31/7/2021   The prophet Joel once promised: “Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men will have visions” (3:1). The future of the world depends on this covenant between young and old. Who, if not the young, can take the dreams of the elderly and make them come true? Yet for this to happen, it is necessary that we continue to dream. Our dreams of justice, of peace, of solidarity, can make it possible for our young people to have new visions; in this way, together, we can build the future.    Pope Francis

21/7/2021  In Haiti, we have a concept called konbit: a gathering with a shared goal. Members of a community come together to accomplish something that benefits the entire community, or a single person in need. Konbits initially began in agriculture. “Today I work your field, tomorrow you work mine,” the Haitian novelist Jacques Roumain wrote of konbits. . . . How do we define community in a time of crisis, which is in many ways what community is for? We don’t need our neighbours as much when we are healthy and wealthy and can pay for all the assistance we require.              Edwidge Danticat

20/7/2021   Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is not about preserving the status quo! It’s about living here on earth as if the Reign of God has already begun (see Luke 17:21). In this Reign, the Sermon tells us, the poor are blessed, the hungry are filled, the grieving are filled with joy, and enemies are loved.
Richard Rohr

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Meeting the Lord in Imaginative Prayer  Richard Rohr

We often teach the transforming effects of silence and unknowing. It has been my personal practice for years. At the same time, one of the great gifts of Jesuit spirituality is to teach us how to draw closer to God through images, words, verbal prayer, our imaginations, and the Bible itself. Here is how writer and retreat leader Margaret Silf invites people into the riches of Ignatian contemplation:
The call to friendship with God invites us to allow our lives, with everything we most truly are, to become more closely linked to the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord and to everything he truly is. . . . One way to allow this closer linking to happen is to enter imaginatively into scenes from the earthly life of Jesus, in what is called imaginative meditation [or contemplation].
Choose a passage that seems to speak to you in some way—a favorite Gospel scene perhaps, or one of the healing miracles. If you don’t know which passage to choose, just rest, relax, and ask God to guide you; then wait to see whether any particular scene or event comes to mind. . . .
When you have chosen a passage, read it several times until it is familiar and you feel at home with it.
Now imagine that the event is happening here and now and that you are an active participant in it. Don’t worry if you don’t find it easy to imagine it vividly. . . . And don’t worry about getting the facts right. You may well find that your scene doesn’t take place in first century Palestine, but in Chicago rush-hour traffic, or that the desert tracts of the Good Samaritan story turn into the sidewalks in your neighborhood.
Ask God for what you desire—perhaps to meet God more closely or to feel God’s touch upon your life.
Fill out the scene as much as you can by, for example, becoming aware of who is there, the surroundings, the sights, the smells, the tastes, the weather, and the feel of the place (peaceful or threatening). What role do you find yourself taking in the scene—for example, are you one of the disciples, a bystander, or the person being healed? Listen inwardly to what God is showing you through your role in the scene. . . .
Talk with the characters in the scene, especially to Jesus. Speak from your heart simply and honestly. Tell him what you fear, what you hope for, what troubles you. . . . Don’t worry if your attention wanders. If you realize that this is happening, just bring yourself gently back to the scene for as long as you feel drawn to stay there.
There are two absolute rules:
Never moralize or judge yourself.
Always respond from your heart and not from your head. . . .
Our purpose in prayer is not to defend or condemn ourselves or to come up with any kind of analysis or sermon, but simply to respond, from our inmost depths, to what God is sharing with us of God’s own self

 

Meditation – a simple guide

There is no single way to meditate. There are, however, certain acts and attitudes inherently endowed with the capacity to awaken sustained states of meditative awareness. . . . With respect to the body: Sit still. Sit straight. Place your hands in a comfortable or meaningful position in your lap. Close your eyes or lower them toward the ground. Breathe slowly and naturally. With respect to your mind, be present, open, and awake, neither clinging to nor rejecting anything. And with respect to attitude, maintain nonjudgmental compassion toward yourself as you discover yourself clinging to and rejecting everything, and nonjudgmental compassion toward others. . . . Keep in mind that these guidelines are but suggestions for you to explore as part of your ongoing process of finding the ways to meditate that are most natural and effective for you. What matters is not which method of meditation you use, but the self-transforming process by which meditation leads you into more . . . openness to God. . . . Go to your place of meditation. . . . You might say a brief and simple prayer expressing your gratitude to God for having been led to the path of meditation and asking for the wisdom, courage, and strength to be faithful to it. . . . [Then] let go of all that is preoccupying you at the moment. Choose to be present in the immediacy of the present moment by simply relaxing into being right where you are, just as you are. Settle into the intimate, felt sense of your bodily stillness. Settle into being aware of your breathing and whatever degree of fatigue or wakefulness you may be feeling in your body at the moment. Be aware of whatever sadness, inner peace, or other emotion may be present. Be aware of the light and the temperature in the room where you are sitting. In short, simply be present, just as you are, in the moment, just as it is. Cling to nothing. Reject nothing. Rest in this moment. . . . Relax. Give yourself a break. Simply sit in a “Here I am, Lord” stance. . . . Know and trust that God is already perfectly present in your simply being alive and real in the present moment just as it is. . . . Be humbled and grateful in knowing that you are learning to awaken to your true nature in learning to be like God. . . . Jesus said, “Judge not and you shall not be judged” (Matthew 7:1). Sitting in meditation, we put this teaching of Christ into practice in remaining present, open, and awake to ourselves just as we are, without judging, without evaluating, without clinging to or rejecting the way we simply are. James Finley, Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence

13/5/2021

Pentecost Novena – Creation

18/11/2020

The Quarantine Quatrains  click to reveal

6/11/2020

Living Life in Full in Lock-Down

3/10/2020

The Spirituality Committee of the Bishops’ Conference has been reflecting on how best to support and sustain a person’s prayer life at this challenging time – particularly those who may not have easy access to the internet or streaming services. The Committee has looked to the psalms as the inspiration for its new resource.

Responding to the Psalms is a simple initiative that takes a Sunday’s Responsorial Psalm – an integral part of the Liturgy of the Word – and invites and encourages further reflection on each verse.

Short questions are provided to encourage deeper thought on the verse for a few days or so before the focus moves on to the psalm’s next verse. Once each verse has been considered, we arrive at the next Sunday’s Responsorial Psalm.

The aim is that this will sustain people throughout the week.

Responding to the Psalms is intended to be used by individuals and small groups. Click below for the psalms and questions.

Resp-to-Psalms-October-2020

22/6/2020

Information about what is available to support your faith and prayer life around the Diocese

Resourcing the Lockdown

17/6/2020

How to pray and re-connect with the church as places of worship re-open for private prayer

2/6/2020 Blessings – a meditative few moments

https://gratefulness.org/blessings/

29/5/2020 Vigil prayer

The Ignatian Family in a Worldwide Prayer Vigil

On Sunday 31^st of May the universal Church will celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit not only transforms the lives of the disciples into apostles, it brings the Church to birth and sends it out to all nations, overcoming divisions of language, race, class. The Spirit gathers us, whatever our state or condition, into the new community of Christ. Our lives and our world are restored and renewed.

In these past months we all have experienced the devastation of COVID-19. It has shown how vulnerable we are, how precarious our systems and limited our resources. We have also seen the great generosity and courage that can fill the human heart as so many risk their own life care and save the lives of others. Even in the small acts of kindness, generosity and thoughtfulness we glimpse something greater than we had thought possible. These moments are the ‘epiphanies of the Spirit’; the candles of love that light up the darkness and guide us into hope.

What better way to seek the gift and power of the Holy Spirit than as a world-wide community of prayer? Click button below for details of how to access.

Click for Worldwide prayer vigil

29/5/2020 Preparing for Pentecost

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‘Rise Within Us – The Coming Of The Spirit’ is an uplifting song for Pentecost performed by the Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir. It’s a ‘Sung Scripture’, which uses a well-known song as a basis, and ad lib singing of the relevant scripture in the gaps.

Performers are being creative in lockdown, as we’ve seen over the past eight weeks, and this high quality arrangement was put together using material from 25 performers singing separately into smartphones at home.

The song is dedicated to the prisoners and staff at HMP Wandsworth.

Listen https://soundcloud.com/catholicchurch/rise-within-us-the-coming-of-the-spirit

‘Rise Within Us’ lyrics and music by Aaron Lindsay and Israel Houghton, from 2004 live album “Live From Another Level”, Israel & New Breed; additional lyrics by Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir, based on Acts 2, sung ad lib.

23/5/2020

As the important Solemnity of Pentecost approaches, the Cardinal assures you that he holds you  in his prayer. He has sent us a message. In it, he reflects on the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, particularly in the context of the circumstances in which we are living at the moment.

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Thy Kingdom Come 2020 – Ascension to Pentecost

“God is not in lockdown” said Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby at the live launch of Thy Kingdom Come 2020 celebrated in prayer with Archbishop Sentamu and Cardinal Vincent this morning. The video is available to view athttps://tkc.new/livelink.

Cardinal Vincent spoke of the richness of these days; a time of waiting, trusting and not-knowing that resonates with the experience of many people in these strange and difficult times. He stressed the importance of the gifts of gratitude, joy and service that hold Christians of all denominations together and prayed for the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to see the gifts we are given and to use them in the field of our world.

The Archbishops spoke of the importance of praying together, as families, as church communities and as inter-denominational communities. There are many excellent resources available at www.thykingdomcome.global

In Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire the Thy Kingdom Come Ecumenical Planning Group has put together a programme starting with a launch event this evening and including daily prayers from Regional Church Leaders, including our own Bishop Paul on Wednesday. There are family prayers and resources and daily evening reflections. There will be a Beacon celebration posted on Pentecost Sunday. A full programme, with YouTube links, is available at www.stalbans.anglican.org/faith/thy-kingdom-come/

‘The Prayer and Care: ideas for families’ can be found atwww.stalbans.anglican.org/wp-content/uploads/Prayer_and_Care_Family_TKC2020.pdf

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20/5/2020

Jesuit prayer support for Ascension and Pentecost

 We keep in prayer all those working to fight the pandemic and all those grieving the loss of loved ones. We also pray for the families you serve, as they learn new ways of living as the domestic church.

Ascension and Pentecost

Ascension and Pentecost are the two great feasts that signal the end of the Easter season. Celebrate using these ideas from Loyola Press.

Click for prayers and activities for Ascension and Pentecost

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15/5/2020

Fr Stephen Wang is live streaming each day at the ‘Pause for Faith’ YouTube channel, where you can
also see a library of recent videos. It’s an informal look at different aspects of our Catholic faith.
Themes include how to pray, the lives of the saints, faith formation, coping with lockdown, and a
new series of talks about ‘What Christians believe in 100 objects’. Please share the link below with
anyone who might be looking for some inspiration and spiritual support during the lockdown.
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/PauseforFaith
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: @pauseforfaith

13/5/2020

Please include these prayer intentions from the Churches together in Hitchin in your prayers at the appropriate times.

February to April 20 PrayerLink 97-2003

1/5/2020

A letter sent to cloistered nuns which as Cardinal Vincent says ‘…. is reflective, sensitive, with a true ‘interiority’ in its themes. I found that it touched me quite deeply. It is simply an offering at a difficult time.’

A letter from the desert

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24/4/2020

Emmaus Road reflection by Reverend Charmaine Sabey-Corkindale

A reflection with art. Click below

emmausroadreflection csc

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24/4/2020

Pray as You Stay https://pray-as-you-go.org/

Mental Health audio prayer guides: https://pray-as-you-go.org/retreat/mental-health-awareness

Pray As You Stay mini series: https://pray-as-you-go.org/retreat/pray-as-you-stay

Kids Examen during lockdown: https://pray-as-you-go.org/player/prayer%20tools/aspecialexamenforchildren

Family Examen during lockdown: https://pray-as-you-go.org/player/prayer%20tools/anexamenforthefamily

PAYG Rosary Reflections: https://pray-as-you-go.org/article/rosary-reflections

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18/4/2020

Extract from message from Cardinal Vincent to the Priests of the Diocese

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Easter Sunday

Pope Francis: ‘Urbi et Orbi’ Easter Message 2020

Prayer materials for Holy week

From the Jesuits in Britain

Palm Sunday  Palm Sunday Yr A r1

Holy Week prayer with the 5 senses Holy Week 2020 Praying with our 5 senses

From Ten:Ten for children on Thursday – Mass of the Last supper gospel click below picture

https://www.tentenresources.co.uk/primary-subscription/prayers-for-home/homeprayer-2020-04-06/the-last-supper-public/

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Accessing live stream Masses

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Resources to support your prayer life at this time

28/3/2020

Prayers in response to the Coronavirus pandemic… Are you reeling at the moment from the impact of coronavirus? Are you wondering how you’re going to cope with months of isolation or social distancing? Are you worried about work, money or how the country is ever going to recover from the impact of this pandemic? And are you looking for some kind of spiritual solace, but struggling to find words to pray. Then this little book could be just the thing for you. It contains 52 prayers written in response to the crisis, asking for strength, encouragement and support, as well as help for loved ones and the wider world. Honest, down-to-earth and heartfelt, it’s a resource written to help you articulate what you are feeling and bring you hope in these dark and difficult days.

Grab your FREE eBook here

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8/4/2020

From St Mark’s church – ideas for craft activities for Easter

Messy St Marks DIY Easter Activities

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28/3/2020

From TenTen  

Ten Ten has decided to make freely available our Collective Worship resources to all schools and their families. We have created a new series of resources called Prayers for Home, which include:
Sunday Liturgy for Families

Daily Prayers for Home

We will continue to create original resources for families throughout the Easter holidays and beyond during this uncertain time for teachers, children and their families. Click below the picture for the Last Supper.

https://www.tentenresources.co.uk/primary-subscription/prayers-for-home/homeprayer-2020-04-06/the-last-supper-public/

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From the Diocese

https://rcdow.org.uk/faith/catechesis/resources-now/

Resources: https://rcdow.org.uk/news/resources-during-mass-suspension/

Pope Francis Urbi et Orbi Blessing

“Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” Lord, you are calling to us, calling us to faith. Which is not so much believing that you exist, but coming to you and trusting in you. This Lent your call reverberates urgently: “Be converted!”, “Return to me with all your heart” (Joel 2:12). You are calling on us to seize this time of trial as a time of choosing. It is not the time of your judgement, but of our judgement: a time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not. It is a time to get our lives back on track with regard to you, Lord, and to others. We can look to so many exemplary companions for the journey, who, even though fearful, have reacted by giving their lives. This is the force of the Spirit poured out and fashioned in courageous and generous self-denial. It is the life in the Spirit that can redeem, value and demonstrate how our lives are woven together and sustained by ordinary people – often forgotten people – who do not appear in newspaper and magazine headlines nor on the grand catwalks of the latest show, but who without any doubt are in these very days writing the decisive events of our time: doctors, nurses, supermarket employees, cleaners, caregivers, providers of transport, law and order forces, volunteers, priests, religious men and women and so very many others who have understood that no one reaches salvation by themselves. In the face of so much suffering, where the authentic development of our peoples is assessed, we experience the priestly prayer of Jesus: “That they may all be one” (Jn 17:21). How many people every day are exercising patience and offering hope, taking care to sow not panic but a shared responsibility. How many fathers, mothers, grandparents and teachers are showing our children, in small everyday gestures, how to face up to and navigate a crisis by adjusting their routines, lifting their gaze and fostering prayer. How many are praying, offering and interceding for the good of all. Prayer and quiet service: these are our victorious weapons.