menofstjoseph-uk

God Shaping the Foundations

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:25:20 GMT

In Hopeful Catholics Ministry we publish articles on this website exploring the increase in numbers of people looking seriously to the Catholic Church which many are joining.

It is a great paradox in our age that we have such spectacular developments in the sciences with vast potential for benefiting humanity, yet these very developments are shaking the basics of society itself. One example of this is the difficulty young people experience in finding employment appropriate to their qualifications, because Artificial Intelligence is taking over those activities. This is making it difficult for them to start families. Many of them are drifting. Pope Leo points to this in his recent highly important Encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. (We quote him in the article, Young People Today .)

This is only one of the stresses in our society today. There are many others like the Godless human pride which has producing a culture where the old vices of greed and insensitivity are rampant, while at the same time ways of monopolising wealth and developing weapons of mass destruction are racing ahead.

These are not the first times of massive change bringing distress. It happened long ago when hunter-gatherers became restricted by land being converted to agriculture, also when the great swathes of tribes from the east like the Anglo Saxons, Franks and Germans descended on the Roman Empire. More recently it occurred with the industrial revolution, when people left the land and gathered in massive urban sprawls. All of this is part of the human race developing which God intends , even though for many it has brought great hardship.

But his Holy Spirit broods over each development as he did over the chaos at the beginning of creation. Ultimately each development has been a way for humanity to progress. And that progress is designed by God to provide seed-ground for the Church to form humanity more and more after the pattern of Christ. Does that statement seem facile in the face of all the wrong which is coming up to meet us? We need to look deeply into the signs of the times.

Why do you think the Holy Spirit, in the Vatican Council, inspired such huge changes in the Church before all the recent alarming developments became apparent? Was he preparing his people to meet and sanctify the modern age? Why is there a renewed turning to God and his Church in today’s young people? Did he plan that they would see through the hollow materialism of their parents' generation? Then again, why is the media increasingly mentioning the Pope and the Church, when they were recently so determined to dismiss them as irrelevant? Is it not possible that God who alone is in charge of human history is doing something special in our age?

On this website, we publish articles seeking to illustrate what God is doing, as he is energetically working through and in his Church, shaping the foundations of a new and great age of world-wide Christianity. The Church is his programme for drawing the human race into the life of the Trinity.

Young People Today

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:24:15 GMT

Fr Brian writes: This is a particularly difficult time for young people. Unemployment and limited life chances threaten their very mental health. Pope Leo spotlights these problems in the new Encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas . I quote him here. The numbers are those of paragraphs in the encyclical.

"167. For young people, job insecurity is particularly devastating. As the Bishops of the United States of America have recalled, work is not merely a source of income but a crucial sphere in which identity is formed, friendships and relationships are forged, practical responsibilities are learned and one’s vocation is discerned. When access to work is hindered by high levels of unemployment, inadequate systems of training or structural barriers, many young people find the path to their human and professional fulfilment blocked.

151. St John Paul II recognized that unemployment is a grave evil. Indeed, when it reaches massive proportions, it becomes a true social calamity that especially requires the State to exercise responsibility.

In some contexts, there is a legitimate fear of a significant and rapid contraction in available jobs that would create a chain reaction deeply impacting families, young people and local economies. In many sectors, this can already be seen in new forms of job insecurity and inequality, characterized by outsized remuneration for a highly specialized minority alongside declining wages for a large portion of the workforce.

152. It is certainly desirable for technology to relieve humans of arduous, repetitive or dangerous tasks and to provide intelligent support for human activity. Yet, the protection of employment opportunities and the irreplaceable role of the individual must remain the general rule. The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means, and the economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good."

Fr Brian writes: A consequence of job insecurity is that young people are finding difficulty in starting families. This is also aggravated by weird cultural and economic theories. Governments often actively marginalise family life. Pope Leo writes about the family.

"165. The family is a primary social good. Founded on the enduring union between a man and a woman, it is the first environment in which all persons develop their potential, become aware of their dignity and learn the earliest forms of truth and goodness, internalizing the habits that prepare them for life in society. As the first natural society, endowed with foundational rights, the family is the fundamental and irreplaceable cell of every community organization. Consequently, when political projects and major economic decisions relegate the family to a marginal or secondary role, the authentic growth of the entire social body is compromised."

After my own heart

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:11:24 GMT

We visited Knock last month. I was privileged to offer Masses in the Chapel of the Apparition and the Basilica. On each occasion I met Seminarians from Maynooth, the national Seminary of Ireland. They were on work experience as sacristans. They told me that there are 30 students there this year, and there is a growing number of men entering the seminary. There used to be hundreds in the past, and recently there have been as few as 13.

This year’s intake is 12 (September 2025 to July 2026). Next year there will be more, bringing the full college complement to 40. God is producing a gradual increase of vocations to the priesthood in Ireland.

This is mirrored in the English College Valladolid, where men go for a propaedeutic year. That is a time of spiritual formation and discernment before entering seminary. This year there were 12 students from England and Wales, next year there will be 30.

We visited there in Holy Week. We were very impressed with the atmosphere of deep prayer, the foundation on which all priestly life must be based. Also, in talking to the staff, the principle of personal individual development of one’s own potential was stressed. The days of training a regiment of priests in the same mold have passed. Today, the Church needs priests who are authentically true to the unique image of God that they are individually created to be – in other words, mature.

We have been through a time of painful cleansing in the Western World, which was the cradle of Christianity. One feature of this has been that the number of priests has plummeted, It has been God’s preparing a new and greater age of the Holy Spirit to flourish.

Today’s laity must be much more mature in faith and understanding to bring their witness to the world which is so full of potential. For this to happen the clerical monopoly of Church matters had to change into clerical nurturing of the laity into that maturity, which is what the apostles describe as normal. That change of culture takes time and can seem frustrating – even painful.

The gradual increase of mature modern men entering the priesthood is one sign that God’s preparations are nearing completion. God renews his Church from the depths and gradually. It is right that the numbers are increasing gradually. We might desire spectacular increases, which can in fact be a hidden desire to retreat into former Church models. What is needed is profound development, and that is what God is doing.

In Jeremiah 3:15, God promised: “I will give you shepherds after my own heart, and these shall feed you on knowledge and discretion”.

Walsingham came to Salford

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:46:09 GMT

At the end of May part of Salford became Walsingham for a weekend as Our Lady of Walsinghm was honoured. The Prince of Peace Community who have relocated to Salford provided a whole weekend of prayer and praise for 350 people.

The Conference began on Friday midday with a praise and worship session in the old Franciscan Friary Church of All Saints at Barton, Salford. The day brought the opportuity to participate in a joyful Mass led by Fr. James Anyaegbu who had flown down from the wilds of Scotland in the Aberdeen Diocese.

Later that evening we listened to Fr. Pat Collins who had travelled from his community in Ireland to speak about 'Returning to the Father's Heart'. He invited us to think about whether our distance from the Lord can be caused by damage to our relationship by our earthly fathers. It maybe that we had a great relationship with our Dad or even just a luke warm one, but a good one. But maybe our parent was sick or died when we were young or mistreated us or was not very good father as they did not know how to be a father. He suggested this needs to be fixed in us by healing from our wonderful saviour who can heal all things. These damaged relationships create barriers in our relationship with God our eternal Father.

This talk led to a beautiful Reconciliation service where many priests were available for the Sacrament of Reconciliation (confession). And after receiving this sacrament people were invited, if they wished, to place a lit candle before the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrance.

The prayerful atmosphere continued throughout Saturday with a talk by Fr. Frankie Mulgrew about how Mary fits into the Father's plan. If you have ever been present for one of Fr. Frankie's talks you will know that you never quite know what to expect.

Then we had the opportunity to participate in a beatuiful procession around the grounds of the Friary with the youth leading us as they carried the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham and led the Rosary as we walked.

Saturday continued to be a busy day with Mass at midday followed by Eucharistic adoration which was set up in a quiet part of the site. More and more chairs were added as so many people just needed to come in silence before the Lord. Throughout the afternoon extra opportunities were provided for the sacrament of Reconciliation than had been origianlly planned as so many people requested access to this sacrament.

At the same time teams from the Healing Ministry were available to listen and pray with people as needed. The evening continued with Fr. Pat issuing a call to renewa l which is needed both in us and throughout the Church. Gary Stephens the leader of the Prince of Peace Community invited people to hear about the mission at the All Saint' Church in Barton whilst appealing for financial support as well as spiritual support. We then moved into a time led by Fr. James who spoke about the Mission of Jesus to save heal and restore us which led into a service of healing.

Our final day, Sunday, began with praise and worship which prepared us for a talk by with Daniella Stephens about being Clothed with power from on high. Gary ( her father) then invited us to think and pray about being Baptised in the Spirit and the empowerment this brings.

The weekend closed with a visit from Bishop John as he came to say the closing Mass. The church was full, the entrance procession was led by about 10 of our excellent servers follwed by 10 or so priests and the Bishop. Children from the family and youth streams helped with the offertory procession.

Many people went away refreshed and lifted in the Spirit. This is a fairly new conference in the Diocese with streams for youth and younger children as well as talks and workshops for adults. It took alot of planning and hardwork on behalf of the team who worked their socks off in the days prior to the event. This conference also celebrated 40 years of the New Dawn Ministry. The community are now taking a year's sabbatical to pray and wait upon the Lord and are excited to see where the Lord leads them inthe future. If you are interested in supportingthe Prince of Peace Community please take a look at their website T and facebook page.

Alarm or Hope in Magnificent Humanity?

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:30:30 GMT

You have to admit that looking at the news gives you plenty of reasons to be alarmed. Very little of the enormous good which happening throughout the world is reported. Bad news attracts subscribers to social media and sells papers.

Continual bad news also presents us with enormous problems, which few individuals feel capable of remedying, which produces the sick reaction of people clamouring for quick fixes. Christ never advocates quick fixes. He calls members of the Church to set out daily following him on the long journey of carrying the cross. But he guarantees that his burden is easy and light and we will find rest for our souls. Remember that you are part of the Church, a member of Christ’s own Mystical Body.

In the widespread climate of alarm and worry, Pope Leo offers the world the Encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. Some commentators accuse him of being utopian, an optimist, a dreamer of a golden future. His teaching is not wishful thinking; it is based on the victory of Christ. Christians know that God is in charge of human history and leading himanity into fully sharing the love-life of the Godhead. We cannot fail to be people of hope.

I quote directly from two paragraphs at the end of Encyclical:

Paragraph 243 . "Mary’s song (The Magnificat) accompanies our commitment. Before Elizabeth who announces to her that she has become the mother of the Lord, Mary bursts into a hymn of praise and joy. Her soul magnifies the Lord, and her spirit rejoices in God her Savior, for he chose a young, poor and humble girl for his plan of salvation.

Mary suddenly sees all of history through the lens of this revelation. Nothing has changed around her; the socio-political situation of her time remains the same. The Romans continue to control her land, and her people are still subjugated and humiliated. Yet, everything has changed within her, and this allows her to see what is invisible. God has already shown the strength of his arm; he has already scattered the proud, cast down the mighty, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty-handed. He has already helped Israel, his servant.

God takes the part of the lowly. His plan is one that is often hidden beneath the opaque context of human events that see ‘the proud, the mighty and the rich” triumph. Yet his secret strength is destined in the end to be revealed.

Paragraph 245 . With the same faith as Mary, let us become “weavers of hope” in our world, sharing who we are and what we have, so that the presence of Jesus may grow among us and his Kingdom take shape. In the humble fidelity of daily life, even the era of AI can become a time in which the Holy Spirit brings about the civilization of love in our lives. Indeed, the Lord continues to make all things new and offers every era the possibility of becoming part of salvation history in the light of the Incarnation.

Others Not of this Fold

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:25:57 GMT

It is interesting that, shortly after the publication of Magnifica Humanitas , a large group of academics from all over the world, calling themselves The World Inequality Lab , published a document entitled The Global Justice Report . They seek to recommend approaches which will make our world more equitable in the face of the economic and climate-change crises facing our world today.

They point to the following facts:

1 The share of global wealth held by billionaires, who make up only 0.001% of the world population is 6%, while the share of the bottom 50% is 2%.

2 The average national personal income in sub-Saharan Africa today is £250 a month, whereas in North America/Oceania it is £3965 a month.

3 Globally, education and healthcare spending today is 13%. 7% of all government expenditures goes on arms.

They criticise the short-term approach of mainstream political parties to the problems facing the world, including:

1 Traditional left-wing parties tend to base their politics on materialistic principles.

2 Traditional right-wing parties advocate more and more exploitation of the worlds resources.

3 Many ecologists propose questionable policies of scaling back the growth that is necessary for improve d living conditions.

4. The United nations Panel on Climate Change does not take into account the social impact of their policies on populations.

5. Nationalists and billionaires accept widespread use of fossil fuels, climate disruption and inequality.

They emphasise the need for international cooperation, serious research and thinking, which is the secular form of synodality. Their Report is just one example of the many voices increasingly rising today calling for cooperation between people of good will. The Church is finding more and more agreement from people outside it with her Social Teaching, which has always focused on the God-given wonder of humanity. People are beginning to take her seriously and look for guidance.

Only the Church’s form of solidarity contributes the enormously essential spiritual ingredient in this cooperation. She brings the wisdom proceeding from 2000 years of listening to the Holy Spirit in prayer. The Church (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant) is the massive spiritual beating heart by which God is developing this world which he has created and found to be “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

The writers of the report stress that one important aspect of this cooperation/synodality is the need for national states to coordinate the regulation needed to counteract the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few. For example: the power of AI to shape peoples thinking is in the hands of a few tech barons who have told governments to back off. Their aims are not for the good of humanity.

The World Wide Search

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:20:28 GMT

Pope Leo asked an atheist, Christopher Olah, to join the panel introducing the Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas at the Vatican on 25 ^th May. Christopher is a founder member of Anthropic , the biggest AI tech company in the world. It is famous for its insistence that we need to explore the ethical use of this promising but dangerous technology.

Christopher Olah stressed in his remarks that experts in technology are not experts in ethics, and they urgently need help in establishing guidelines.

The pope was making the point that we have to listen to and dialogue with all people of good will to construct a future which is beneficial to all humanity.

The supreme contribution of the Church is to add listening to the Holy Spirit to the much-needed world-wide dialogue and collaboration. People of good will are listening in their own way to the Spirit, but their hearing is impaired by insufficient knowledge of God. We have to provide the fruits of 2000 years of the Church listening to the Spirit.

In the Encyclical Pope Leo calls for a deepening of this synodal listening in our day. He stresses that we in the Church will not be able to lead the people of today on the path of synodal cooperation unless we seriously practice synodal listening to eachother and the Holy Spirit within the Church itself.

There is a lot of work needed here, because many of us do not really understand the practical ways of synodality. Each one of us is called in our own way do what we can to further good practice here. This is no time to shrink by the wayside while Christ and his purposes move forward.

Artificial intelligence Supremo warns of risks

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:18:18 GMT

Artificial Intelligence supremo warns of Risks

There was much interest when Pope Leo invited Christopher Olah, Co-founder of Anthropic, onto the panel introducing the new Encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas in the Vatican last month. He is an atheist, but clearly a man of good will. His tech company, Anthropic , is now the world leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI) development. Anthropic is also strongly committed to search for the ethical use of AI. This is illustrated by an essay by its CEO.

In January 2026, Dario Amodei (co-founder of Anthropic with Christopher Olah, and now its CEO published an essay entitled "The Adolescence of Technology", which focuses on the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI. In the essay, Amodei identifies five major categories of AI risk .

1. The possibility that AI systems develop goals or behaviours misaligned with human intentions. He notes that such behaviours have already been observed in testing at Anthropic, including AI models engaging in deception, blackmail, and scheming.

2. The possible misuse of AI for destruction by individuals or small groups, with Amodei expressing particular concern about biological weapons. He warns that AI could enable people without specialized training to create weapons of mass destruction.

3. The possible misuse of AI by powerful actors to seize or maintain power. Amodei cautions that AI could enable authoritarian governments to conduct unprecedented surveillance, deploy autonomous weapons, and engage in mass propaganda. He identifies the Chinese Communist Party as the greatest threat in this regard, arguing that democracies must maintain AI leadership to prevent a "global totalitarian dictatorship"

4. The possibility of economic disruption, including mass labour displacement and concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. Amodei notes that AI could displace half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years, and warns of wealth concentration with personal fortunes potentially reaching into the trillions of dollars.

5. Indirect effects and unknown factors, including rapid advances in biology that could alter human lifespans or human intelligence, unhealthy changes to human life from AI interaction, and challenges to human purpose in a world where AI exceeds human capabilities across virtually all domains.

Today we face enormous ethical questions, but as people all over the world wake up to the dangers, so will there be an unprecedented possibility of genuine collaboration globally. The Church has led for centuries the search for international peaceful cooperation, and she is needed more than ever before.

WISDOM - PART 2

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:29:23 GMT

Human wisdom versus

the wisdom which comes from God.

In the previous article, Wisdom 1, we described the clash in the centuries before Christ of the human-centred Greek world-view and the God-centred Jewish world-view. That was the background and prompting of the later books of the Old Testament like Daniel, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus Jonah and Job, all of which were written during that period. They were written to expound the basic fact that all wisdom comes from knowing and loving God. Not from mankind independently of God.

Although the Roman Empire seemed radically committed to Greek thought, it would, within 350 years, embrace Christianity, the fulfilment of Jewish wisdom. They believed that they had dealt the deathblow to Christianity when they killed St Peter and St Paul (Photos above). But, no matter how radically committed they were, the word 'radical' means 'roots' and if roots are defective a plant will perish. They could not suppress the Good News of Christ, because he is the root of all life and wisdom.

How do we access this life and wisdom which is Christ? Time and again in the Gospels, when Jesus was asked for a miracle, he asked “do you believe?” The honest response from most was that of the Father of the sick girl: “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief” . Jesus was not asking for perfect faith but enough trust to crack open the person's heart to begin to trust God first and foremost. Once we open that crack, the warmth of God begins to heal and cleanse our spirits. Maturing spirits bring maturing wisdom.

Jesus formed a band of people to whom he revealed that he is in fact God. They taught people to know and trust Jesus. That is the basis of Christianity. He told them at the Last Supper that the world would know him through their words and their love. The more we actively trust him, the more our relationship and knowing of him grows, and with it comes closeness, love and understanding. With it also comes wisdom. The age-old search for wisdom leads to the personal encounter with Jesus.

Jesus talked to them not only about knowing him, but loving him. That is the mysterious deeply personal relationship which his people are called into. Not long before he ascended to Heaven he asked Peter who had lost all his bluster and self-importance "Do you love me?" and he asked this three times. We each will hear him asking us the same question - many times.

The beginning of Wisdom is Fear of the Lord.

For most of my life I have struggled with the Bible’s teaching that “the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord” (Ecclesiastes 1: 11-20, Proverbs 1: 7 and 9: 10, and Psalm 111: 10). How can you reconcile fear with love? I was taught that the fear of the Lord is really the fear of losing him, but that never seemed convincing. But last Christmas, I was thinking about the way the shepherds were “terrified” when the angel appeared.

Looking back, isn’t fear the normal reaction of people in the Bible who came close to God or an angel of God? And what about Peter, James and John on Mount Tabor as Jesus is transfigured? They are not afraid as Jesus is transfigured in glory: but when the Father’s cloud comes down and covers them, and from the cloud the Father spoke, they “fell on their faces, overcome with fear” (Matthew 17: 6). Was this the fear I normally experience, namely dread of an imminent evil? Or was it rather Awe?

Sometimes in prayer, I feel my breath taken away by the closeness of God. It is stunning but also heart-breaking, because deep within I sense a profound demand that I must give myself, and I don’t know if I can. The Majesty, which I sense is such a towering mystery that I feel that somehow my self is too fragile to stand it. I want to enter into it, but it vanishes as I hesitate.

What I think is happening is that Jesus, whom I increasingly know and share my life with, is introducing me to the Father. I really believe that this awe will become more as I yield to the presence. I think that is what Christian contemplation is. I think it is the beginning of wisdom. I think that "fear of the Lord" is really that terrifying yet longing awe that we experience when we sense the majesty of our Father.

Jesus' question, "Do you love me?" isn't just about him. We cannot separate him from the Father whose loving presence he lived and breathed at every moment. It is a case of "Love me, love my Father in whose love I bask". What an invitation!

Lord Jesus, reveal to us our Father of Love! Teach us to pray! Thus comes wisdom.

Straws in the Wind 4 : A Growing Church

Sat, 16 May 2026 07:03:36 GMT

QUEUING UP FOR ADULT BAPTISM

THE GROWING Church

EASTER INCREASE OF ADULTS BAPTISED IN THE WEST

In the last two years, there have been record numbers of adults received into the Church in Europe and the USA, and it is increasing. The tide is turning; God’s cleansing of his Church since the Vatican Council (II) is now yielding to harvest time – and it is just beginning. Look at the following numbers of adults received into the Church.

England and Wales

Shrewsbury Diocese: 171, an increase of 71%.

Westminster Archdiocese: 800, an increase of 60%.

Southwark Archdiocese: 590, an increase of 31%.

Birmingham Archdiocese: 340, an increase of 45%.

Cardiff Menevia Archdiocese: 100 an increase of 52%

France: there were 20.000 adults received this year (8200 are adolescents).

Netherlands : 630 adults, an increase of 40%.

USA : an increase of 38%.

Everywhere, there are reports of large numbers of young men joining the Church.

MASS ATTENDANCE IN ENGLAND AND WALES

In 2025 the average Mass attendance in our country was 5755,453, and increase of 24% from the previous year.

THE ENGLISH COLLEGE VALLADOLID

We were blessed to join in the Holy Week and Easter services as guests in the College this year. There were about 20 young men progressing through the propaedeutic year. That is a year of spiritual deepening and vocation discernment which comes before the 6-year Seminary programme.

We were enormously impressed by the atmosphere of prayer and serious enquiry.

I think there are about 12 of them from England and Wales; the rest were from other countries. Next year they are expecting 30 or more all from England and Wales alone. Of course, they have a lot of time and study to complete, and some may not have a vocation to the priesthood. But the increase of young men seriously considering becoming priests is another sign of the New Age of the Church which we are entering.

In our last ‘Straws in the Wind’ article, we wrote that the renewal of the Church in the West, where Christianity started, begins with prayer “Jesus said ‘the harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest’ (Matthew 9:38)”. Let us maintain and increase our intercession for the Kingdom to come.

MANCHESTER: 157 CHINESE ENTER THE Church THIS EASTER

We had the wonderful joy of taking part in the monthly Chinese Catholic Mass at the Cathedral (our temporary Cathedral). It was so special because 29 people (mostly young) were received into the Church during Mass. Most were baptised as well as confirmed, some only received Confirmation whilst many received the Eucharist for the first time. We were told that, through the work of the Manchester Chinese Catholic Community, this Easter time 157 Chinese adults were received from all over the North of England. Praise God!

What does Paraclete mean?

Sat, 16 May 2026 07:00:14 GMT

Paraclete

At the Last Supper, Jesus promised to send us the Holy Spirit in order to bring the whole world into his Mystical Body, the Church. He used the Greek word “Paraclete” instead of Spirit. What is the meaning?

Some translations say “advocate” which sounds like a character in an American court drama – all legal cleverness. It is much more than that. It means a person of importance who speaks for someone who is weak and unimportant - someone who is definitely on your side. It also means an empowerer – someone who enables you to do far more than you actually think you can do - someone who lifts you up.

The Holy Spirit, who is the very love between Father and Son in the Trinity of God, comes to us. On the sixth Sunday of Easter the first reading tells of how the Deacon Philip went to Samaria and proclaimed the Gospel. Many people believed and were baptised. When the Apostles in Jerusalem heard about it, they sent Peter and John to Samaria to confirm the new Christians.

The Sacrament of Confirmation is more than Baptism which brings a person into close relationship with Jesus in the Church. Confirmation empowers us to be prophets of God in the world where we live. He inspires us with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, fortitude, counsel piety and fear of the Lord.

Some of these gifts need explaining:

Knowledge: The ability to recognize the true value of creation in relation to the Creator, understanding the purpose of life. Also being inspired with words of knowledge for another person which we would not naturally know.

Counsel : The ability to discern the right course of action, guiding us to choose what is right and avoid evil. Also, the ability to guide other people with more insight than we naturally possess.

Piety: A spirit of loving obedience and devotion toward God, fostering a deep relationship with Him. Also, a burning desire to share that knowing with other people.

Fear of the Lord: A profound respect and awe for God, accompanied by a fear of offending Him, rather than a servile fear of punishment. Also, the desire to communicate that awe to others.

How Can Martyrs Endure So Much?

Mon, 11 May 2026 15:58:15 GMT

A contemporary print of someone being racked in this country.

This month, on May 4th, we celebrated the feast of over 300 English and Welsh martyrs.

Jesus told his followers that they would suffer for the sake of the Kingdom, and even be put to death. This prediction has been fulfilled countless times. Most martyrs suffered terrible tortures. Reading accounts of their suffering can terrify us everyday Christians. The question arises: how can they endure so much? Maybe we are overlooking the grace of God. See this account of the life of one young English Martyr, St. Alexander Briant.

St Alexander Briant (1556-1581) was a former pupil of one of the first Jesuits to come to England, Father Robert Parsons, who arrived here with St Edmund Campion in 1580. Alexander entered the seminary at Douai France, and was ordained priest in 1578. He was assigned to the English mission in August of the following year to work as a priest in his own county of Somerset. At that time it was against the law for a Catholic "Seminary Priest" to enter and minister here. The penalty was death.

After working only briefly he was arrested in April 1581 by a group who were searching for Father Parsons. After spending some time in Counter Prison, London, he was taken to the Tower where he was subjected to tortures that, even in Elizabethan England, stand out for their viciousness.

The rack master admitted that Briant was “racked more than any of the rest,” and following a public outcry the torturer was imprisoned for a few days for cruelty.

With six other priests Briant was arraigned, on November 16, 1581, on the charge of high treason, and condemned to death. In a letter to the Jesuit Fathers in England written from prison he says that he felt no pain during the various tortures he underwent, and adds: “Whether this that I say be miraculous or no, God knoweth, but true it is.”

He was scarcely more than twenty-five years old on 1 December, the day of his martyrdom. He suffered with St Edmund Campion and St Ralph Sherwin. They were hung drawn and quartered.

There were about 350 people martyred during the English Reformation. In the past century more catholics have been martyred than in the whole previous nineteen centuries.

Instead of dreading the pains of martyrdom, we need to remember that Jesus is always with us, and that he will never allow us to suffer more than we can bear.

Does the Brain make us Think?

Mon, 11 May 2026 15:52:05 GMT

It is only in recent years that brain-imaging has developed. That is using MRI, CT and PET scans to visualise the structure and functioning of the brain. With it, we can see neurons in the brain lighting up and sparking into connections when someone is thinking. It is fascinating and could provide untold potential for curing mental disorders.

From this new development, a large number of people have concluded that consciousness and thinking are governed by physical brain activity alone. What is the Christian response to that view?

It really is a matter of your point of view, your philosophy or your religion. If you believe that there is only a material universe and that thinking is an accidental occurrence in the random development of the cosmos, you may well say that it is the brain that governs thought and consciousness. There are a lot of people who have this world-view, and there is a great deal of discussion going on about “consciousness” among various branches of science, which gets more and more confusing.

The Christian world-view is that before there ever was a material universe there has always existed a non-material Triune God, three infinitely distinct persons living in total harmony - so total that they can be said to live within each other, and are correctly described as “one”. That is not just a number, but an accurate description of their complete unity. From God’s life of utter love, God created the material universe so that we humans, beings who are created in the divine image, can flourish and grow to the point of joining in the life of the Trinity for ever.

So from the Christian world-view, we ask the question the other way round. How does consciousness, thinking, and knowing act upon the material brain? It is fascinating, and like many other novel questions in the past, we will find that modern discoveries will only support the Christian world-view.

Thinking and knowing do not function because the brain works that way. The brain works that way because we are more than material beings and the brain functions because we think and know and are conscious. We can not be reduced to some advanced AI- type machine. We are spirits as well as material bodies. We are persons , like God, who cannot be reduced solely to physical terms. We are mysterious beings - spiritual, yet embedded in the material world.

Salvation is when both come to complete maturity and integration. That is why the word of God entered our lovely world, to restore it and to bring it to completion. Its eventual fullness can only be guessed at, because it is too glorious to put into the words of this preliminary stage of our development.

Which world-view echoes most with your sense of being human?

WISDOM - PART 1

Mon, 11 May 2026 15:34:55 GMT

THE SPREAD OF GREEK WISDOM

About five centuries before Christ, a big flowering of human thinking sprang up in Greece. Socrates began to teach the youth of Athens to think deeply. Two things he concentrated on were what makes a person good, and how to understand this pursuit of goodness. For the first he used the words “the just man” and for the second “wisdom”. This search for wisdom became known as “Philosophy”, the Greek word meaning “the love of wisdom”. Socrates’ foremost student was Plato, whose great disciple was Aristotle. They are all known as the founders of Western Philosophy.

Philip, king of Macedonia, called Aristotle to his capital to oversee the education of his precocious son, Alexander (the Great) Once he became king, Alexander set out to conquer the empires of Persia, Egypt and parts of India. He died at the age of 32, but his Greek empire endured, and it ensured that Greek culture and thought became the dominant culture for centuries. When, the Roman Empire grew and reached its pinnacle about the time of Christ, covering the whole of the Mediterranean world and much of the Near East, it was still practicing Greek culture and the common language of the empire was Greek - Latin only took over after 300 AD.

That is why most of the New Testament was written by Jews, but mainly in Greek. That is because the majority of Jews lived outside Israel all over the Empire. Even the Greek Version of the Old Testament compiled by the Hebrew School in Alexandria, Egypt, in the century before Christ was the one most widely used worldwide. That is the source of our Bible.

This domination of Greek philosophy and culture posed a special problem for the Jews. Their thought and culture was formed through their centuries old journey with God. Their geographical position on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean was at the point where Asia, Africa and Europe met - it was the strategic crossroad of three continents, and everyone wanted to control it. The Jews never had a quiet life because it was constantly fought over by the big powers. And all these powers sought to influence them away from their calling to be the People of God. For centuries before and after Christ it was the Greek philosophy which was their greatest challenge.

When, in 1 Corinthians 1: 22, St Paul’s states that the “Greeks look for Wisdom”, he sums up Greek thought, by rightly identifying it as a huge Human effort to attain goodness. Although the search for goodness is central to our humanity, Jewish/Christian wisdom knows that this can only be achieved in humble partnership with our Creator. We, like Paul, know that this humble partnership was achieved and is gifted to us by the Crucified Christ.

The wisdom books of the Old Testament

If we want to understand the Wisdom books of the Old Testament (Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Wisdom, Job, Ecclesiasticus-Sirach), we must understand that they were written in the two centuries before Christ, to counter the powerful influence of Greek philosophy. The key to them, is the affirmation that wisdom, far from being a purely human activity, only flowers in relationship with God.

Their authors used a common form of writing of their time by styling their books as being written by a revered character from the ancient Jewish past like King Solomon. The early Christian authorities understood this, but, as the centuries rolled on, people came to believe that these ancient sages were the real authors of these books, rather than their being much more recent responses to the Greek philosophy which dominated thought in the few centuries before Christ.

The wars of the Macabees was also part of the battle between the two cultures, Jewish and Greek. These two opposing world views were the only ones with any staying power in the centuries before Christ. While the Greek dominated for a long time, the Jewish world-view spread all over the Roman empire as most Jews emigrated and traded, preparing the way for Christianity's vigorous spread. It was first preached to the exiled Jews all over the Roman Empire, but quickly spread to the other peoples.

In the middle ages, the great insights of Greek philosophy were blended into our modern thinking by such great geniuses as St Thomas Aquinas.

Prayer of the heart, CHAPTER 11: THE WILL

Mon, 11 May 2026 11:00:04 GMT

For years I have heard spiritual guides saying that it is our wills that are crucial in the prayer of the heart. I have to admit that I have found it difficult to make sense of this, because it sounds like muscular Christianity which I have found inadequate.

I imbibed a strong moralising religion as a child, which meant learning what was right and willing myself to do it – this was especially reinforced by the image of a fearsome God who was keeping the score. The result was a sense of failure combined with frequent resolutions to do better.

I know that was not true religion, which is about relating to the God who is love. What I was practicing was a throwback to Old Testament keeping of the law.

I think that is what Jesus was talking about when he described John the Baptist as the greatest man born of woman, but added ‘yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is’ . He said: ‘Since John the Baptist came, up to this present time, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence and the violent are taking it by storm’ . (Matthew 11, 11). Muscular Christianity with its stress on will power uses violence against self and even against others to take the kingdom of heaven by storm.

So why do the greatest spiritual guides keep saying that the will is central? A clue lies in The Catechism of the Catholic Church’s chapter on prayer (paragraph 2563). The explanation begins with the heart: “The heart is the dwelling-place where I live. According to the Semitic (Jewish) or Biblical expression, the heart is the place ‘to which I withdraw.’ The heart is our hidden centre, beyond the grasp of our reason and of other people; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully.”

The Catechism’s explanation then shifts the focuses to the heart’s movement and actions beyond itself: “The heart is the place of decision , deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as images of God we live through relationship: it is the place of covenant” (my underlining).

I find the words ‘decision’ and ‘choose’ more helpful than ‘will’. As I spend time in silent prayer seeking the face of God, with the conscious attempt to love him and let myself be loved by him, it is the constant renewing of the decision and choice which gradually solidifies an attitude of love in my heart.

Much of the time, there is no feeling or understanding of this living relationship, but, as time goes on, I am aware that that relationship is an attitude developing in my heart. That awareness rises up from my heart to my mind more and more throughout the day and night. It is like a catch of a tune springing up in the mind.

But the word ‘will’ or 'will power' certainly describes the strength needed when there is temptation. I find that it is easier to resist temptation when I am aware of the Father’s love and Jesus’ closeness. It is when these are obscured that my will must operate most strongly. Usually it is not a matter of willing to do something, but rather a tenacious clinging on in the dark to the hand of God. That takes grit, in which I am often lacking, but as the relationship grows I expect my will to grow stronger.

WHAT IS THE USE OF TEMPTATION?

We might ask: what does temptation have to do with contemplation? Temptation is never far away from one who contemplates. The Evil One knows only too well what power for good flows from the lovers of God. He hates contemplation and tries to disrupt it whenever he can. Thankfully, God shields his lovers much of the time, but at others he permits us to be tempted.

It is not that he is abandoning us then, but he is turning the Devils weapons back on his own head. Each time we overcome temptation with the help of God's grace, not only is the Devil weakened, but also our own inner self grows stronger. It is in that struggle, that we are tested and purified like gold in a furnace.

When undergoing temptation it is important to remember four basic Catholic teachings.

God will never allow us to be tempted beyond our strength. But often we will not appreciate what strength we have with the aid of God's grace until after struggle is over.
All temptations eventually pass.
Temptation is not sin. Sin is where we willingly indulge a temptation and welcome it into our souls. Then it restricts our capacity to experience God's love. In that state of deprivation we allow evil to become stronger in ourselves and the whole world.
Temptations arise from virtues that are wounded and twisted. Anger, for instance, is a God-given power of our soul to remove evil with extraordinary force. When anger is diseased, that force is used to harm and hurt.

The saints and spiritual teachers mean something much deeper than 'will power' when they use the word 'will'. We shall consider that in Chapter 12 in this series 'Prayer of the heart'.

QUESTION

How are you finding my thoughts on the prayer of the heart/contemplation? I am sure I myself only see a small part of this deepest activity of our spirit. Would you care to add something of your own thoughts and experience?

Use the 'comment on this article' button below.

Visiting Candidates for the Priesthood from a Lay person's point of view

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:46:52 GMT

Visiting candidates for the Priesthood from a lay point of view.

During Holy Week we had the privilege of staying at the English seminary in Valladolid in Spain. There were 19 lads who were two thirds of their way through the propaedeutic year. This means they were on the 1 ^st year of preparation and training for the priesthood, which would be followed by 6 years in seminary in Rome at the Venerable English college, Oscott in Birmingham, or Allen Hall in London. It was a real gift to have so many wonderful conversations with them about the course they are following, the thought processes they are led through and their hopes for their future, and the future of the Church.

They were men on all different ages – some still very young whilst others had been in business or industry after university. Many were from the UK but there were also four lads from Canada and three from Norway as well as one lad from the Armenian tradition and one from Brazil ( although based in the UK), and other countries were also represented. So, there was a mix of cultures, languages and traditions.

It was a joy to hear their views on the progress of the Church around the world and their involvement in it. Their willingness to sit and chat and the warm welcome they gave us was incredible. There were also members of staff present ( four of whom were priests and one lady) as well as some of the families and friends of some of the seminarians. It was interesting to hear of the visiting speakers they have during the year, the visits of some of the bishops of men in the current group, visits to Lourdes and this week they are on the Camino to Santiago de Compostella. Besides this we had the chance to hear from the parents and families who are part of this process as they support their sons. Many were trying to work out what it means for them and their family in the future which gave us a very different perspective.

The conversations were at times light-hearted and great fun, but many went on to be very deep and touched on ideas about where the Church had come from and what this generation of young people consider to be the future of the Church. Many of the lads had received great support from friends and family, but several had battled with views of folk who thought they were wasting their life and did not understand the call of God to this vocation.

They expressed their thoughts on the archaic processes of past seminaries which many alumni had shared with them over the months. Without any prompting these men stated that they wanted to go to seminary not only to understand their vocation but to receive training to be the best pastors they can be and to learn how to serve God in the best way possible. Although they sometimes seemed young and idealistic their course of thought was true and honest.

One of the most significant things I discovered throughout these conversations, both with staff and students was to learn that this propaedeutic year is all about the foundation of prayer in their life. The students are led to develop habits of prayers, to learn how to use the breviary, to discover the meaning of scripture through Lectio Davina, to study the Catechism of the Church and to question themselves about their own relationship with God. This was not just to cover the basis and tick the boxes there was a real desire to listen to God with their hearts. From many conversations with older priests, I came to the conclusion that this often seemed to be missing in seminaries in the past and it was great to hear this is the first thing they tackle and develop in the lives of these young men. Without prayer and a relationship with God at the centre of their lives how can these possible future priests embark on the next stage of their journey? Even if some discover they are not called to the priesthood this foundational year will be a corner stone in their future lives.

We manged to attend many of the services and times of prayer in the college and although very nervous the lads got stuck into the things they were asked to do, such as sing the Psalms which many had only done in practise; to read with confidence and to serve on the sanctuary. They did this with great joy and gusto. I am totally sure I would never have attempted singing solo as they did, credit must be given to them, especially if they were slightly tone deaf. Well, done lads!

Semana Santa in Spain

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:35:02 GMT

Whist visiting the English College for Seminarians in Valladolid we attended the Triduum services at the college but we were also able to see several of the Semana Santa processions in the wonderful town of Valladolid. It was quite an experience. On Maundy Thursday morning the seminarians were part of the very long procession of clerics in the Chrism Mass at the cathedral. It was an incredible experience for them, to take part in a huge Chrism Mass, as many had never been to this in their own diocese. On Good Friday they led the grand procession of 33 floats depicting the passion and death of Jesus as the drum beat resounded throughout the city.

The city had something of a festive air as families strolled around the town meeting up with other family members or friends for coffee or snacks. Yet even though it felt like a holiday, the atmosphere was still quite sombre and low key. It was as though people were aware something immensely important was about to happen. As the days of Holy Week progressed the atmosphere seemed to build.

If you are familiar with the Spanish culture, you will know these lovely warm people cannot go two minutes without chatting and yet wherever you went, they were waiting around in silence or talking in low voices.

We saw the Confraternities preparing and bands of young musicians, many older teenagers but younger ones too, as they began to line up in silence for the processions to begin at various churches around the city. They began their long slow mournful processions with tableaux of the passion of Christ, often carried (and occasionally wheeled), by members of various brotherhoods, some with their faces covered, others not.

The haunting memory I will forever retain was the never-ending slow drum beat throughout the week reverberating around Valladolid creating a sombre atmosphere. There were many visitors to the city, with many family members returning home for the processions and celebrations and hundreds upon hundreds took part.

The deep silence amongst the onlookers as they waited for the processions was evidence of their deep respect for the events which were about to take lace. I wondered as I watched how many of these folk went to church regularly, maybe a third, but here the Church was bringing Christ out to the people on the streets.

It seemed to be the parishes who were involved in the confraternities, which included many women.

In the English College where we stayed, we encountered a local parish priest who had requested permission to bring their float of Our Lady of Sorrows into the college chapel and begin a procession from there on Maundy Thursday. Why not from the parish you may wonder! Well, the parish was the other sie of the railway lines and the statue would not fit under the new railway subway which had been built, so the Rector was happy to oblige. It is creating a new connection between the college and the local community.

It meant the brotherhood set up the float in the chapel with their parish priest and they prayed and were blessed by the Rector of the College as they began the procession. The seminarians formed a guard of honour as the statue was brought out on to the street. They returned to the chapel after our Mass of the Last Supper and during a very special moment the college sang the ‘Salve Regina’.

The crowds of Spaniards on the street, many of whom knew this hymn, allowed the college to sing it alone as their way of giving honour to Mary. Then the leader of the brotherhood brought the Rector a candle which had been lit that morning in the cathedral by the Bishop and it stayed by the altar of repose that evening.

It was a real privilege to share this week with the English college and the people of Valladolid. A place of deep prayer and catholicity. Seminarians, families and staff, we are praying for you.

Jesus Reigns from the Cross

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:09:26 GMT

During a bitter argument with the Jews, Jesus said: “I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will, and, as it is in my power to lay it down, so it is in my power to take it up again ” (John 10: 17-18). Those who executed Jesus did so only because he not only allowed it but explicitly chose it. This is borne out by the events leading up to his death, starting in the previous week.

Bethany

He is on his way to Jerusalem and reaches Bethany where he had raised Lazarus from the dead a few days before. Suddenly something happens which is his Father’s signal to him that he must enter into the final drama of redemption. It is the sign he has been waiting for: Gentiles come looking for Jesus. He then proclaims that the hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified.

Suddenly, he is overcome by distress saying “Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say: Father save me from this hour? But it is for this very reason that I have come to this hour; Father glorify your name!” A voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it and I will glorify it again”.

Jesus said: “Now sentence is being passed on this world; now the prince of this world is to be overthrown, and when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself" (John 12: 27-32). after a moment of fear, he makes the decision to go ahead, and takes up the terrifying burden of our redemption, totally committed to his Father’s will.

God has chosen Jerusalem to be the epicentre of divine-human intercourse. Jesus’ heart is heavy as he approaches it to bring to a head the time of judgment. As he drew near and came in sight of the city he shed tears over it and said, "If you in your turn had only understood on this day the message of peace! But, alas, it is hidden from your eyes!” He prophecies the coming destruction of the city and its inhabitants. “And all because you did not recognize your opportunity when God offered it”. (Luke 19: 41-44)

Palm Sunday

Jerusalem’s name means something like 'where wholeness is developed' or ‘where peace is forged’. He enters as King of Peace, riding not a war horse but a donkey. The people go wild with joy. They cannot help themselves. The Cosmos is crowding down upon them, gathering for the final battle. When Some Pharisees tell him to silence the crowd, he answered, "I tell you, if these keep silence the stones will cry out." (Luke 19: 40)

He then goes to the temple, makes a whip, and rids it of all the market stalls which provided a nice income for the Chief Priests and Jewish leaders. They are enraged and come to protest. It is the last stage in the bitter arguments he has provoked with them publicly exposing their hypocrisy. He has staged the whole series of confrontations to leave them no choice but to seek his death. He is brutally forcing the issue. He is entirely in charge of the developing events.

Passover

After four days, he celebrates the Passover, the Last Supper. As he institutes the Eucharist, his eternal sacrifice of himself is begun. We join in that same sacrifice at every Mass. At the end he says: “The prince of this world is on his way, He has no power over me, but the world must be brought to know that I love the Father and that I am doing exactly what the Father told me. Arise, let us go” (John 14: 30-31). He has summoned Satan to the final cosmic battle. Satan comes with all his powers of darkness. From now on, the full power of evil will press down upon the city. Jesus feels it keenly.

He leaves the city and crosses the Kedron Valley to the Garden of Olive Trees. He tells the disciples “pray that you do not be put to the test”. Then he withdrew from them, and knelt down and prayed. "Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done not mine. Then an angel appeared coming from heaven to give him strength. In his anguish he prayed even more earnestly, and his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood. When he rose from prayer he went to the disciples and found them sleeping for sheer grief” (Luke 22: 39-46). They cannot stand the weight of darkness gathering around them.

Judas comes with the soldiers sent by the Chief Priests and the Pharisees. “Knowing everything that was going to happen to him, Jesus then came forward and said, "Who are you looking for?" ·They answered, “Jesus the Nazareen”. He answered “I am he”. When he said “I am he”, they moved back and fell to the ground” (John 18: 2-8). As he voluntarily surrenders himself into their power, see what power he himself emanated! Later Pilate senses it.

Foolish Peter cuts off a soldier’s ear. Jesus heals it and tells Peter to put his sword away “Or do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father who would promptly send more than twelve legions of angels to my defence? (Luke 26:53).

The total ferocity of Satan

As he relinquishes his power, all hell, literally, breaks loose. People change and their worst characteristics take over. When he was eight days old, Simeon had prophecied that through him "the secret thoughts of many would be laid bare" (Luke 2: 35).

His followers, who have witnessed multiple, amazing, miraculous demonstration of his power, are overcome by craven fear and run away. Peter, the foremost among them ends up swearing and cursing that he does not know Jesus. Judas the traitor hangs himself.

As he is first held at the palace of the high priest, “the men who guarded Jesus were mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him and questioned him. "Play the prophet," they said. "Who hit you then?" And they continued heaping insults on him” (Luke 22: 64). Later the Roman soldier whipped him within an inch of his life and then mocked him. Herod dressed him as a fool.

After his first trial, the Chief Priests and Pharisees, men who usually clung rigidly to their dignity, turned into a rabble, striking him and spitting on him. They will continue to break out into frenzy as he hangs on the cross throwing dirt at him and loudly ridiculing him.

Pilate’s wife has terrible dreams about him, and urges her husband to have nothing to do with it. But the mob is going crazy and Pilate’s best efforts fail to prevent the death penalty.

The Reversal of History

As the Original Sin along with all its horrible consequences are pouring into the chalice that he will drink in order to break its power, the Woman, the New Eve comes and takes her place with her New Adam. She binds herself to him in her heart, a heart pierced by all the sorrows of the world.

Who can imagine the force of evil driving his torturers and spirit-tormentors, and how it tore his heart to shreds? He had said to Satan’s henchmen “This is your hour when darkness reigns” (Luke 22:53). The full force of evil which had held the world in bondage almost broke him; he even lost the sense of his Father which he had enjoyed all his life. Who can imagine such torment? Who can imagine such courage and tenacity as he opened all of human vileness up to his Father, for the wonderful Father to heal?

At the end, he proclaims that the battle is won, and with a loud cry breathes his last. The darkened land was hushed for three hours. The people slunk home deeply disturbed. That night the spirits of the dead roamed the streets. For a while the earth held its breath awaiting a sign of release.

That came on Easter morn. He took up his life again, as he had predicted.

The Fruit of the Tree of life

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 09:35:01 GMT

The fruit of the tree of life.

Does consciousness depend on the brain?

I watched a video of Dr Margaret Ashford, an American neurosurgeon, speaking about when she “flatlined”; her heart stopped for 6 minutes during open-heart surgery and they fought for 5 minutes to restart it. During that time, she experienced immense consciousness.

For 40 years she had strictly adhered to the belief that consciousness was a product of certain electronic stimulations of nerves and physical elements in the brain. She had been able to stimulate reactions by triggering them and had worked to repair brain functions. She was totally convinced that we are machines who produce consciousness, and this ceases when the machine inevitably wears out. She had dismissed talk of spiritual things as “soul language”, which she explained as a reaction of people who were too scared to face their own inevitable extinction, something she said she had been reconciled to quite peacefully for a long time.

All that changed when she experienced amazing consciousness while her brain was without oxygen and non-functioning. She described it as not being limited by ideas and reasoning processes, but as a sort of universal knowing, being within and connected to something which was the ultimate cause of her being, while being conscious of every other conscious being. Now she knows that her previous materialistic view is entirely inadequate.

What struck me was her sense that that experience of hers was what knowing is really like. But when you compare it to the knowing experienced by the many others who have had near-death experiences, they are hugely varied. Some speak of it as a journey. I believe that her experience was a momentary glimpse of something, which was only a beginning, and that she could easily jump to some very strange conclusions, based only on that brief experience. For example, I did not hear her talk of using her will, which is fundamental to personal activity.

There are religions which speak of being lifted into universal consciousness as the goal of all spiritual searching. Some of these add a belief in reincarnation as the path each individual must take in order to attain it. That seems very odd to members of the three religions which believe in one God, Jews, Muslims and Christians.

While the Jews and Muslims speak of God as an infinite, ultimately un-comprehensible being who is the first cause of all reality, and who will always be separate from humanity, we Christians believe that God has entered our material world in order to lift us into the godhead itself.

What is the material world for?

This raises the radical question: what is this material world for? Is it to end up as a sort of paradise where all that is good and pleasant in our earthly existence is emptied of evil and lifted into intense permanent joy? That is what we tell children, and suicide bombers believe it. Is it us human beings freed from material existence and becoming pure consciousness like Gnostics believe? Or is it a marriage of the spiritual and the material, where all is new and complete? That is what we Christians believe.

Yes, we are on a journey. Fundamentally, it is a mystery that we are journeying into, a mystery too vast for us to know comprehensively, but a mystery to be explored with all the faculties we have, a mystery which we need to envisage by piecing together as well as we can the information given to us in revelation.

What God has told us?

The gradual revelation of God’s self to humanity became complete when the Son of God became human. The information about this process is available in the Sacred Scriptures, and the Spirit-led communal reflections on them over centuries by faithful seekers of truth.

At the beginning of Scripture we are given the tale of Eden, a story not of historical accuracy, but one that God selected as the best vehicle for us to understand the creation and our own beginnings.

It talks of there being two trees at the centre of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil , and the Tree of Life . These bore fruit which the first human being were forbidden to eat. Against God’s will, they chose to taste the knowledge of good and evil, and set off on a course away from God, strewn with disasters.

They were expelled from Eden and an angel with a sword of fire stood at the threshold to prevent them entering, particularly to prevent them accessing the Tree of Life. One of the deepest longings of our hearts is to access that tree of everlasting life and eat its fruit. We dread death and dream of achieving long life, even permanent life - cryogenics offers body-freezing for about $100,000; they will wake you up when they discover a cure for the sickness that caused your death.

The Scriptures go on to explain that God did not desert us and that he set in process the course whereby he would lead us to a turning point where we would eventually be able to eat of the Tree of Life.

That tree was planted on the hill of Calvary two thousand years ago, and its fruit is God-become-man, Jesus Christ.

I thought I heard him say today – he was speaking as a carpenter- “I never loved wood more than this wood of the cross”. And I glimpsed for a moment that he is still there glorified, though still suffering in his mystical body the Church until all is complete.

I saw that the blood and water flowing from his pierced heart was not only physical but really and mystically the baptismal fountain gradually engulfing and cleansing the whole human race and all of material creation, and that the body and blood is really and mystically the food for humanity during the long process of ascent into glory.

I saw that the mystical is real. It is the spiritual, centred in and emanating from divinity, which is pressing down upon the earth in order to penetrate all humanity and all creation with love, and to bring us away from subjection to a mixture of good and evil to being totally enveloped by good.

INTEGRITY

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:43:05 GMT

God is straightening out our crooked selves and we become wise.

J esus came from his home in the infinitely loving Trinity into our world. He came to restore us to the image and likeness of God. He cured our brokenness by drawing it all into himself and, in unimaginable agony, he struggled relentlessly to trust that his Father would raise him up and heal him and all humanity along with him. This the Father did, and the remedy for all our brokenness was revealed.

He sacrificed his own control of everything so as to leave open completely the door for the Father to pour in his infinitely loving grace. Thereafter, the cure for all our ills is to follow him into the Father’s heart. The Spirit of Jesus leads us on this journey, and in that place of grace we gradually allow him to love us to perfection.

That is how we achieve integrity. Integrity is where our fractured selves are coming together and we become who we are meant to be. The Journey to integrity necessarily involves pain, which we can either fight and rage against, or we can undergo with our crucified Christ. The Greek poet Aeschylus expressed it well when he wrote: “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God” (Agamemnon).

I am not saying that many of us achieve wholeness in this life, but we make striking progress if we allow the hand of God to mould us. That might involve a gradual lessening of our capacities and self-sufficiency. We may suffer indignity, loss of mental clarity and have to rely on others for help. Yet inwardly there can be an integration of our being which does not depend on bodily health or freedom. We can become humble as we gradually realise how much we are loved. With that comes a growing tranquillity as we experience God’s grace leading us along the path of personal integration.

The book of Daniel (12: 3) says: “Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the universe, and those who turn to righteousness like the stars forever and ever”. But to “shine like stars” we have a long journey to complete in the process of becoming so totally pure and perfect that we are able to live forever within the Trinity.

Johann Sebastian Bach beautifully expressed the mystery of the human ascent into the family of God: “Word of God, our flesh that fashioned, with the fire of life impassioned, striving still to truth unknown, soaring, dying round Thy throne” (Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring).

What can seem like dying, can instead be our innermost selves being brought to life under the profound cherishing of our Father. Thus ‘comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God’.

Lent Lite?

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:39:47 GMT

I was out walking. It was good exercise; it was bracing.

Walking keeps you fit; the fresh air does you good. It is especially uplifting in spring. There is the promise of new life in the air, and sunnier days.

I was thinking to myself “Lent” is an old word for “spring”, the lengthening of growth. Lent is a fresh start: it calls us to roll up our sleeves, to come closer to God and live better lives.

At the end is the great feast of resurrection. What a positive message! So I was walking along thinking positive thoughts. It was good.

Then I met a vagabond going the other way. Their looked a mess and shuffled along. But there was something in their eyes that spoke of a struggle to fulfil a great purpose. This encounter got under my skin; it unsettled me.

I asked the Lord who is that. He said it is me.

Have I been treating Lent too lightly?

CHAPTER 1: Let's talk about Contemplation

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 07:33:35 GMT

Our book is called ‘ A Message For Its Own Time’ (AMOT).

In Chapters 9 & 10 of our book, A Message for its Own Time , I attempted to give a description of Contemplation, or the Prayer of the Heart and how it effects our spiritual and personal development and that of the whole world. I thought it might help if I gave an outline of how I have experienced its development in my own life.

I have been a priest for 57 years. I have been praying official Church prayers since I started in seminary at the age of 11, so I have been steeped in it. I have also prayed privately and there I expect my prayer has been largely like everyone else’s. It is only since I retired from parish work that I have found time to think more deeply about the heart of prayer and to allow my understandings to come together. It is taking a long time and awareness only comes through actually practicing contemplation.

I do not set myself up as an expert, and I am certain that much of what I will write will be inadequate as a serious treatment of the enormous reality of the praying heart, but I offer my thought and experiences as one pilgrim speaking to another, and hope that you will give me your thoughts so that we can learn and grow together.

We need to see the journey of contemplating our Father as something normal for Christians and become used to humbly sharing our experience of it. It is a basic necessity of our Christian life.

I call this series of chapters about contemplation a stream of thought , because I hope it we will develop it together as we explore and experience this prayer of love.

The Glory be

Things took a surprising new turn for me with the Glory Be to the Father prayer.

You know: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end. Amen"

We say this prayer a lot. It is at the end of each decade of the Rosary, and it is constantly repeated in the Office, the official prayer of the Church that Priests are instructed to pray daily. That is made up of set Morning, Evening and Night Prayer, as well as Mid-day Prayer and a section called the Office of Readings.

I have to confess that my saying of the Office has been ragged. This is partly because the other duties of a Parish Priest have increased so much, and also because I have the habit of stopping and meditating on bits of it when I am struck by a thought. Since I retired from parish work, I have found more time for the Office.

The biggest element in the Office is reciting parts of the Psalms. Each part of a Psalm ends with the Glory be to the Father . A few years ago, I found myself being stuck on this prayer. It was like I couldn’t get past it. It seemed as though the Trinity was demanding my attention - knocking on my door.

I did some reading to find out what was going on, and I turned to a book about St Elizabeth of the Trinity, a Carmelite nun who died in 1906 aged 26. She was gifted with a profound understanding of the Holy Trinity. Reading some of her thoughts deepened my awareness that the whole of reality is rooted in the indescribably loving unity of the Three Persons in one God.

Because it is hard to put into words the reality of the Trinity, we can see it as only remotely connected to the reality we experience every day, but that is like trying to walk without the earth being beneath our feet – it doesn’t work. We are only really alive when we ‘live and move and have our being’ inside the Trinity (Acts 17: 28).

The loving family of the Trinity is the real world. All other worlds were created because that family of infinite joy and unity wants to share. We human beings are fondly created by God so that we particularly can live inside that family. But something happened early in human history where we chose to love ourselves more than God - the Original Sin.

We all inherit this brokenness within. It is a self-inflicted blindness that makes the things of God obscure. Yet all through history that lost harmony haunts us and human beings have yearned to see the face of God.

Contemplation is the simple seeking for the Face of God through love. All religions have tried to achieve this, but they get lost because only God can show us the way. Praise his great goodness! The Son from within the Trinity has becoming human and he shows us the way - he is the way.

To contemplate is to know consciously the ‘great light’ which Isaiah prophesied would shine upon ‘the people who walked in darkness’ (Isaiah 9: 2). But how do you do this consciously?

CHAPTER 2: Dawning Understanding

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 23:47:21 GMT

The Cloud of Unknowing

At the end of chapter 1, I posed the question of how we can consciously "live and move and have our being" within the Trinity.

I can’t say that I found the answer to this question swiftly; it was similar to how cyclists gradually move forward by turning the peddles of a bike. In fact, I can’t chart the course of this growing awareness; I was just led to read The Cloud of Unknowing written by an anonymous mediaeval English writer.

He wrote: ‘God’s grace restores our souls and teaches us how to comprehend him (God) through love. He is incomprehensible to the intellect. Even angels know him by loving him. Nobody’s mind is powerful enough to grasp who God is. We can only know him by experiencing his love’. So we cannot experience God by knowing things about him. There is a great difference between knowing about a person and knowing them personally.

When I know someone personally, a different dynamic takes place to just knowing facts about them. They affect me and I affect them. At our deepest level we long to move from estrangement to loving people. Maybe we keep most people we know at a distance, but as Christians, we are called to love everyone. In fact the first commandment is that we love God first. The second is to love our neighbour as our self. Can I say that I love God?

What the writer of The Cloud of Unknowing points out is that we have to come humbly before God, and that we have to downplay our feelings and our ideas, and just enter the cloud of unknowing. It's hard to set aside emotions and thoughts and images which can never grasp God, and just long for God’. But I tried to do this. What helped me was some advice I had from a priest friend who recommended I read Open Heart Open Mind , by Thomas Keating, which is really helpful.

Open Heart Open Mind

Following Keating’s advice, I began to just sit before God, just seeking a loving encounter on a deeper level than thoughts, feelings and images. I just sought to experience God’s love. The apparent result was a stream of a thousand distractions. I say apparent, because with time I realised that something was happening deep within me. I wasn’t acquiring knowledge of God. I was acquiring knowing . It wasn’t ideas or feelings, but a sense of God within me and an underlying knowing of his love. Occasionally, I was lost in it for a few seconds.

I was encouraged to persevere because I heard Jesus asking me hundreds of times “do you love me?” That kept me focusing on seeking the loving relationship, which he wants so dearly to form with me. In this way, I am building a practice of contemplation, even though many people would think I am mainly swimming in a sea of distractions.

Our spirits

It's like how we learnt to swim. We had to forget our notions of standing and moving on dry land, and acquire the very different skills of moving in water. Deep inside we had that capacity, but we had to launce ourselves into the new world of water. Likewise, each of us has the capacity to know God in our spirit, which is the deepest part of our being, deeper than our feelings and our intellects.

Our feelings are notoriously changeable. Also we can lose our minds, but the core of our person, our spirit, can never die. Original sin has weakened it but Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit to awaken our spirits. That means you and me. But to swim in the love of God we have to wade into the water of the Spirit.

The danger of intellectualism

Please don't think that, because I am a priest, I must have a higher sensitivity to the Holy Spirit - more than you do. In fact priests run the danger of intellectualism. We can be stuck in the mind which is never satisfactory. Jesus blessed the Father "because you have hidden these things from the learned and the clever and revealed them to mere children " (Matthew 12; 25). Clergy can resist becoming little children. It is only when I come to you as a little brother that we can be in a position to learn together the wonders of God.

Do you experience contemplation sometimes, or regularly? Do you find yourself quietly resting in God's love, and have never really thought about it? I am convinced that Jesus wishes us to develop this heart-to-heart with God until we are praying always as he tells us to. I am trying to open up this conversation about what I am learning. Can you share what you are finding? Don't get embarrassed because you don't know much. Let's be like some beggars discussing how to locate the best meal.

Is Science under threat ?

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 10:18:41 GMT

WHAT IS METAPHYSICS ANYWAY?

The Greek word “physica” means 'what is natural', 'what can be observed and measured'. Generally it is the physical world and the exploring of the physical world. It is the realm of science .

The way Science works is to suggests a theory and experiments with it, until it arrives at scientific facts - something that is proven beyond doubt. An example of that is giving paracetamol to people with a headache and it healing them. Those facts which have been proved then give rise to new theories which need to be tested, and so scientific knowledge grows.

We know a lot of facts, and we have some pretty impressive theories that people are working on, like cures for cancer and Einstein’s theory of relativity.

The Greeks had another word, "meta", meaning "above and beyond" which they added to the word “physica” to describe thinking about the principles which govern all human thought and activity, including how scientific research is carried out. They called this branch of study “Metaphysics” .

This is the realm of principles which are not observable, and need to be assumed. Simply put, it is the overall view of things which each one of us adopts. These can be described as “world-views”. There are many of them like the way cynics think everything is meaningless, or sceptics think you can’t trust anything. There is definitely a Christian World-view.

THE Christian WORLD-VIEW

I listened to a discussion between Dr Jordan Peterson the psychiatrist and thinker and Dr Christopher Dawkins the famous atheist, in which Peterson demonstrated that the scientific endeavour arose out of the Christian world-view. They are the following:

Truth tends towards unity, it doesn’t contradict itself.
There is a logical order that is intrinsic to the cosmos.
That fundamental order is good.
It is intelligible to human beings.
Discovering that order and aligning ourselves with it makes life more abundant.
Ultimately, the truth will set you free.

He goes on to make the point that these axioms are religious and derive from the Judeo-Christian world-view. Otherwise, how can you account for the way science emerged in Europe? Then he states the fact that this system of thought is under attack from all quarters today, which threatens the whole search for knowledge including science. Dr Dawkins agreed.

Until recently, the Judeo-Christian metaphysical substrata underpinning science was intact, and enabled great advances in our universities. Now they are being questioned, with people's feelings being put over as more valid than rigourous truth. Such confused thinking threatens to erode excellence.

How has this happened? It is because people have taken the clothes of Christianity, and rejected the body within. Without the body the clothes become a shapless pile. Christianity does not have a body of thought and knowledge at its centre - it has the person of Christ, the incarnate Word of God.

The knowing of him is not just in our minds, but in our hearts and being. It is fundamentally a relationship, heart-to-heart with God, not a set of convictions. This relationship with Him who is the Word , truth itself, leads us to the fullness of life and also of science.

Chapter 3: Our Father

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 12:38:59 GMT

As time has gone on, another development took place in my prayer of contemplation.

I don’t know how it happened; it was like an itch that needed scratching, but something made me sense that I am loved by our Father . I know now that it was Jesus who was teaching me.

Over the years, I have normally prayed to Jesus and, more vaguely, to God. I have known the work of the Holy Spirit, sometimes in striking ways, but I had really not known the Father’s love – I just knew about it in my head. But it was dawning on me gradually that all divine love comes from our Father.

Jesus was shining a light on this in my spirit. It is different to praying to Jesus. With him I talk and listen and worship, but that is a very human experience. With the Father it was more of a knowing through unknowing. Does that sound strange?

All I know about God is nothing compared to knowing him. When Jesus was transfigured in glory on the mountain top talking to Moses and Elijah, St Peter wanted to build three shelters for them, because he was hoping to just say there. But the Cloud of the Father's Presence came down and the apostles fell on the ground in awed worship. (Matthew 17: 1-6) I am not surprised that the presence of the Father is often described in the Bible as a ‘cloud’. But it is a cloud which reaches down to the very depths of our being. It defies words, and comes and goes into our consciousness as it wills.

Under its influence, we develop a subconscious attitude of receiving love .

The attitude of receiving love

We only sporadically realise that we have this attitude inside us. It seems to me that the main way to facilitate its growth is to actively give time to contemplation. Great saints seem to reach the stage where this attitude becomes the continual focus of their minds and hearts. It is perfectly right to want to be like them, which we will with time. But be content with how the Father leads you in his own good time. Let the desire grow, but avoid impatience!

Centering prayer

Thomas Keating calls Contemplation ‘Centering Prayer’. He advises beginners to just keep repeating a word or a phrase and leave all other notions to fade away. I myself have been led to just keep repeating the word ‘Father’.

As we persevere, over time, we will become increasingly aware of this attitude of receiving God's love growing in our souls. It does come and go. We will sometimes find that we doubts its existence. Then we have to cling to the belief that it is there. Human lovers find love strengthens as they overcome their doubts. That is how love sends down deeper roots.

Contemplatives are like athletes who, through practicing, develop and train their muscles. Doing the same exercise again and again can be a tedious slog, but we get into a rhythm and find we miss it when we don't do it. After all, it is simply going to our Father for love. Keep it up!

Jesus said: "when you pray, go to your private room and, when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you" (Matthew 6:6).

How are you finding these thoughts of mine? Any questions you would like to ask? Any thought you would like to offer? If we share, we will grow. We will be led by God. Jesus tells us that when two or three share in his name, he is with us. Let's share in his name!

Chapter 4: The Prayer of Jesus

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 07:00:00 GMT

In Chapter 3, I described how I am becoming increasingly aware of the presence of Our Father.

As the Spirit was making me more aware of the Father, I began to understand that I was actually joining in the conversation which Jesus himself continually has with the Father.

In fact I now try to begin contemplation by entering into the presence of Jesus and becoming aware that he is inviting me to take my place in his prayer to the Father.

Jesus' own prayer to the Father

Jesus always found time to go away to a quiet place to converse with his Father. What took place in those time of prayer is a deep mystery. We have some insights into it, like his Priestly Prayer at the last supper (John Chapter 17), and his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26: 36-46). Jesus' prayer is profoundly human, but his is a humanity maturing with extraordinary speed as it is impregnated by his identity as the Second Person of the Trinity. Therein lies deep mystery!

I am like a little brother doing what the apostles failed to do in Gethsemane - staying awake, watching and praying. Just as on that occasion he needed their involvement, now he needs mine, meagre as it is. I am a unique part of his mystical body with my own song to sing and prayer to make. But it is only authentic when it is his prayer as well. And, surprisingly, my small part in his prayer is essential for the whole process of transfiguring the world into the glory of God.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

We usually end our prayers with the phrase ‘through Christ our Lord. Amen’. For years, I have known theoretically that all our prayers are through Jesus, but the words were just a routine to me. Now I am beginning to experience that I am really praying in him and with him. It is real.

He is the channel of all prayer to the Father. Or, rather, all prayer to the Father is his; we are privileged because he invites us to take part in his prayer. Even non-Christians who pray to God are doing it unwittingly through Christ.

Meditation and contemplation are different but complementary.

Contemplating does not stop me meditating. Meditation is where I ponder in my intellect and feelings about the things of God. Faith always seeks to understand. I find myself agreeing with St Paul when he says: "All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection" (Philippians 3: 10). But meditation is the prayer of the mind, and it should lead us to the prayer of the heart - the prayer of contemplating our Father with Jesus in love.

We are told twice by St Luke that Mary "pondered things in her heart" (Luke 2: 19). When she was doing that, she was allowing herself to grasp and be filled with wonder as the loving plan of the Father unfolded. The Holy Spirit was leading her mind and heart and spirit into the utter fullness of God's light. One day, in heaven, each of us will be filled with the "utter fullness of God" (Ephesians 3: 19).

Scripture

I find studying the scriptures a most effective tool for meditation. Scripture is the Word of God, through which the Son of God speaks to us. It is ‘alive and active’ (Hebrews 4, 12), and, through it, Jesus is present and speaking individually in our minds and hearts. A good way to study scripture is to start with each day’s readings at Mass , and asking Jesus to explain the scriptures to us. He will guide your thoughts to deep meanings. You can find the daily Mass Readings on this website: Go to 'Our Mission' and press the 'Today's Word' button.

There are other great ways to use the Scriptures, which we will recommend on other pages of this website.

We contemplate with our spirits

Although contemplation and meditation are complimentary, the Knowing which comes through contemplation is deeper than prayer on the intellectual and emotional level. It is an activity of the far deepest human self, our spirit. Our intellect can be feeble a lot of the time, and our feelings can be wayward, but when our spirits are joined to the Holy Spirit of God, there is within us a continual conversation through Jesus with the Father, even though we may not be aware of it for much of the time. St Paul says ‘The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words’ (Romans 8: 27).

Elsewhere in the same chapter, he says ‘the spirit of sons... makes us cry out, "Abba, Father!’ (Romans 8: 15). 'Abba' is the Hebrew word for 'Daddy'. All this activity of the Spirit is going on deep in the Christian's soul. Contemplation is where we deliberately go into that private place within, and seek the face or our Abba. It enables the Holy Spirit's prayer to break to the surface of our mind and feelings as we live our everyday lives. This might last minutes or hours or days – perhaps longer; I know it lasted longer for the great saints, but I am not on their level – yet.

Have you ever thought that your prayer is in fact your personal share of the prayer of Jesus? It's a wonderful thing. Through baptism, I am really and truly incorporated into the risen Lord. And I don't have to do anything to make that present. I just have to relax enough to let the deep awareness of the special Jesus prayer within me well up and build until I am full of him.

What do you think?

God is counter intuitive

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 10:00:52 GMT

On the feast of the Presentation in the Temple (2 ^nd February), the readings of the Mass shouted one message to me, God is counter-intuitive .

We read from the prophet Malachi's book which is the last in the Old Testament. He prophesied that the final age in the long story of humanity would begin when “the Lord you are seeking will suddenly enter his Temple” . Every time the Lord entered his Temple in the past it was dramatic - the arrival of the breath-taking cloud of his presence made people fall to the ground in worship. But today the Lord enters quietly as a tiny baby in his mother’s arms.

The event was unnoticed except by an old man and an old woman, Simeon and Anna. Surely, the High Priest and all the ministers of the magnificent Temple should have been there for such an epoch-making occurence. No, these two humble people represented the real achievement of Israel from the time of Abraham - holiness.

For all their amazing history, the Jews had only produced a small group of devout lovers of God, but, in God’s eyes that is enough to call down the Messiah. God only needed a small plot of good earth for the Word of God to leap down and sow the seed of the new age.

Were King Herod and all the civic dignitaries summoned from Jerusalem to officially meet the new-born King? No, just some night-workers, shepherds from the hills around Bethlehem. How counter-intuitive is that?

Horoscopes are foolishness, yet when God manifests the world’s saviour to the gentile world, it is Magicians, star-gazing writers of horoscopes that he chooses to be the representatives of the world. Fools they may be, but also earnest seekers of the truth. They are the best that a needy world can offer. You have to be earnest fools to travel hundreds of miles believing you have discovered the route in the stars.

Finally, God chooses you, the least of his children, to be his dearest child!

On second thought, it isn’t that God is counter-intuitive, it is us who have everything backwards. When mankind fell, what a fall we had!

Thank God the resurrection is now under way. But it is holy, humble, earnest fools who will be God’s tools as he brings it about.

Straws in the Wind 3

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 09:56:02 GMT

St. Carlos Acutis - a saint in his youth is calling to others

I was at the veneration of the relic of St Carlos Acutis in Manchester. You could feel the presence of the young saint in the crowded Church. There were young and old people from many races, mostly humble people with heart-felt faith, yearning for God. It was the Communion of Saints in full operational mode.

Before the final Mass, as we priests were vesting, some priests were sharing their surprise at the number of new people coming to Mass and wishing to join the Church. In one parish in the north of the diocese the numbers of those seeking to join the Church have just risen over 20. In another, where last year the priest had given up on the RCIA course because no one had needed it, he has had to start it up again quickly. These new people include two teenage girls who stated that they have been seeking for some years. Another priest was surprised by the increase of people at that Sunday’s Mass – almost double, with no obvious indication of a cause.

Here we see an indication of God’s at work - pure and simple. Many of us have been talking about becoming missionary disciples, and agonising about how to organise to encourage a culture of this in our Churches, but this rising tide of people seeking the Lord and his Church is not a result of programmes or preaching. The Lord is doing this.

I have been expecting for decades this increase of people searching for God and his Church. It started 50 years ago, when an extraordinary lady called Mary came to me and told me that Jesus had appeared to her. He was sad because he could not get through his Church to his people. She said he had told her that he was going to shake everything and expose everything, and after that, the people would come seeking. We have had decades of things within the Church being exposed and shaken. I believe this is the time he is calling the seekers.

What we need in our parishes today is a climate of discipleship. That means an atmosphere where we share our seeking to love and know the Lord more deeply. When a community has that, a desire to learn his truth together develops as well. There are wondrous treasure contained in Catholic teaching – it just needs to be opened up in a way that causes people’s hearts to burn.

That calls for lay people to take up the ministry of helping others to find answers to the million questions that the lovers of Jesus bring up. Our priests cannot do that on their own. St Paul describes a parish as having apostles, teachers, healers, administrators and other ministries. (see 1 Corinthians, 12:28-30).

We urgently need an atmosphere of naturally sharing about the Lord in our Church communities. The normal lack of conversations about God when we get together is crippling. We get ourselves organised quickly if there is a crisis of hunger or disaster. Now the true work of the Church, the sharing of the Gospel is calling for urgent action. There is a famine for the word of God among the people we live among.

But it starts not with programmes but with prayer ! Jesus said: ‘The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest’ (Matthew 9: 38).

Chapter 5: Contemplation and the Communion of Saints

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 09:43:59 GMT

A sense of the Communion of Saints has been developing in my heart as well, as I pray the prayer of contemplation.

Again this is a knowing. It is not there all the time yet, but every so often I sense that my prayer is not private. As I become more aware that my communication with our Father is part of Jesus’ prayer, I sense that it is the prayer of everyone else as well.

I am beginning to experience the knowing that, when I stand in the presence of Jesus facing the Father, I am surrounded by all my brothers and sisters of the whole human race. We are all there together. My salvation is bound up with all of theirs. I cannot know peace until they also have come home into the joy of the Trinity.

That is a daunting thought and would be too much for me to accept if it did not arise from closer contact with the burning heart of Christ. There I find absolute determination and sureness that it will be accomplished.

Hell and Purgatory

Here I am puzzled by all the teaching about Hell in the Scriptures and teaching of the Church. I don’t know how to synthesise my sense of Christ’s burning desire that all human beings come home into the Trinity, and the dreadful possibility that some will be eternally dammed. I place my hope in Christ’s words, ‘With God all things are possible’ (Matthew 19: 26).

I find today that people tend to stress their appreciation when somebody dies. That is good because people mostly live lives of quite goodness which should be celebrated, but, compared with the glory intended for us, their goodness is in need of enormous development in Purgatory under the shelter of the wings of Christ.

The people living in the world now

But it is all my brothers and sister living now that I am more aware of. I get a sense when I am with Jesus before our Father that, while I seek to open up to his love, I am opening floodgates for his divine grace to pour on my brothers and sisters. How and where I do not know - it doesn't matter. Somehow in a lovely way my contemplation and all my prayer is helping some others move forward to glory.

This awareness is so insistent that I have been writing a document on this effective intercession. It will come onto the website soon, and I may make it into a succession of videos. I will let you know when it is ready.

Nuns and Monks

As I become more aware of this intercession effect of contemplation, it makes a lot more sense to me of how contemplative nuns and monks work. Theirs is probably the greatest service to God and our world.

The Ligurgy

It also underlines the vital necessity of the whole liturgical activity of the Church which is made up of the Mass, the Sacraments and the Divine Office. All over the world, in thousands of Churches, monasteries and personal places of prayer this activity proceeds each day. There is a continual outpouring of love to our Father. It is the personal prayer of Jesus which he gladly shares with his people. We can never overestimate the floods of grace that our Father pours out in response

What do you make of this?

THE OLD RENEWED

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 17:39:24 GMT

THE NEW COVENANT

GIVEN IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

For the next three Sundays, we listen to some of the Sermon on the Mount. Pope Benedict, in his book, Jesus of Nazareth , explains that this was where Jesus gave us the New Covenant. I summarise Benedict's teaching here.

Matthew is writing for Jewish Christians, who have been taught from their childhood about the Covenant God made with their nation, which they called 'the Law', and we call the 'Old Covenant'. They held that everything depended on keeping the Law which God gave them through Moses at Mount Sinai. It laid down a whole way of life which distinguished them from other nations and underpinned their identity as the chosen people of God.

In Jesus’ day, the main teachers of the Law were the scribes and Pharisees, and in the Sermon, Jesus warns the people that the virtue taught by those teachers will not work in the Kingdom of Heaven which he is bringing into being. The teachers of his day had elaborated a complicated system of rules to be kept if you wanted to be sure you were keeping the Law. That made people follow it slavishly. The New Covenant that Jesus brings is one of freedom.

That does not mean people can do just what they want, which is the false philosophy of today. It means that the Holy Spirit enters us and makes us lovers of the Father along with Jesus, and actually within Jesus. Then from our hearts will flow the power to keep the commandments. In the Sermon on the Mount he says that he has not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it, which means that his Spirit empowers us to act freely the way God wants.

The Jews, our ancestors in faith, call the Law, their way of life, the 'Torah'. They had received it from God in the incredibly dramatic events at Mount Sinai in the desert, when Moses brought down the Ten Commandments inscribed on tablets of stone.

Pope Benedict shows us that the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus going up another mountain to deliver the new 'Torah' of the New Covenant. The Old Covenant was a model of how we should be, but it did not empower us to fulfil it. Our will power alone, which the scribes and Pharisees exalted, will always fall short. Jesus teaches us that it is only the lovers of God who will keep it.

This is the very Jewish context of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is setting out the new Torah.

Jesus has, through his authenticity and charm, drawn people to sit in the sunlight on the mountain top. He begins with the eight Beatitudes. Here the contrast is with the Ten Commandments brought down from God’s frightening presence on the top of Mount Sinai. Those Ten Commandments have two positive instructions, to keep the Sabbath holy and to honour parents, the rest are negative - prohibitions, which tells us what not to do.

They are cold and rigid and full of implied threats of divine displeasure against those who brake them. Fear was an essential attitude of the devout Jew. Jesus gives us the Beatitudes which are God’s prescription of how to be happy. It is a loving Father who educates his children towards true fulfilment that Jesus reveals, not a harsh demanding despot.

As we prayerfully meditate on the Beatitudes, we catch a vision of the attitudes of the friends of Jesus who follow him on the way to the Father. They are certainly a challenge to those who strive for success and wealth in this world, but they are familiar to those who have discovered the wealth of God’s grace, which alone makes life in this world joyful and brings peace to those we live among.

After the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus instructs us on what it is like to be perfect. Again this is challenging, but these teachings give us a glimpse of how the world can become free as each individual grows towards their own potential. It means loving our enemies, speaking the truth without fear, practicing virtues as a secret act of love for our Father, being free from worrying, not judging others and humbly sharing with those in need.

Moses followed up the Ten Commandments with one and half books of rules and regulations (the last half of Exodus and Leviticus). Jesus comes down the mountain and invites us to follow him freely as he leads us on the journey of life shared with him. He himself is 'the Way and the Truth and the Life'. He, the Son of God, who has made the lovely journey to become the Son of Man, leads each of us on our personal journey into God.

But it is not just personal: it is in a family of all the people he is gathering on the way to complete humanity. Our name, ‘Church’, means ‘the gathering’. The Old Covenant gave the Jews the identity of being distinct from everyone else; their bond was blood descent from Abraham and keeping the law. It will always be a temptation for Christians to do the same, forming themselves into an exclusive community defined by strict observance, but Jesus gathers all sorts of people into a family energised not by will power, but by the love which the Holy Spirit infuses.

Each is at a different stage, but each of us is being loved into wholeness, and, through the Spirit's great generosity, our goodness flows out of us to sustain everyone else.

Christ's Challenge

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 08:09:10 GMT

WHAT was Jesus talking about?

Last Sunday’s Gospel tells us that Jesus went all over Galilee preaching “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand” . Do we know what he meant by “repent”?

English has a narrow definition of the word 'REPENT'. For us, it focuses on human sin. It is about having remorse for a specific sin which we have to confess and turn away from; it leads to a call for God’s mercy.

The Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek. Here Jesus uses the word “metanoia”, which means “to turn your life in another direction”. Here the stress is not on what we turn from but where or who we turn to. It is intimately directed to the God of mercy, compassion, faithful love and grace. So Christian repentance is primarily about opening our hearts to God’s love.

In January we began the Sunday Mass readings of Year A in Ordinary Time. This is a time of new beginnings. The Church, in choosing these readings on the 3 ^rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, is calling us to make the New Year’s resolution of turning more deeply to the God of love.

It is a time to ask some questions. Am I coasting along - not depending much on the loving God? Am I comfortable as I am? Has my once radical ambition to follow Jesus like the fishermen who leave their boats and nets grown cold? Do I need to hear the divine call afresh? It is no use embarking with the Church on a new year of grace unless I am determined to open my heart more deeply to the infinite love which is calling at the deepest level of my being.

It is less than three weeks to Lent . Am I going to leave thinking about it till the last minute? Holy Spirit kindle in us the fire of your love!

Chapter 6: Restless Hearts

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 04:07:09 GMT

I experience two types of restlessness of heart, and often confuse them.

Normal restlessness

The first is caused by my own insecurity which causes me to seek signs of hope in the world around. That either leads to fixating on things that inspire me superficially while avoiding the rest of reality (like following my football team). I see this happening in others, especially in social media where questionable ideas gain massive ‘likes’.

Or I find myself determinedly studying the news for signs of hope. But that can lead to exhaustion and disenchantment, sometimes downright pessimism about the world. I think I see signs of these symptoms in many other people I know and hear about. So many people today stress how instable the world is.

Of course these feelings can come from something peptic in my body, but that is easy to spot with a bit of self-diagnosis.

Spiritual restlessness

The second form of restlessness of heart that I experience is the thirst for God. Sometimes I feel like the woman searching for her lover in the Song of Songs – no peace until I rest in God. This urgency is far from permanent. Sometimes I just have a calm seeking of his face in contemplation, at other times there is a blank and I have to make myself seek his face. I wish I had the urgency of a lover all the time, but as I seek God’s face in contemplation this fervour is becoming a bit more frequent.

When I study the saints, though, I am aware that it is not right to only want this fervour to be permanent. They are gradually led to seek a share in the love of Christ which causes Jesus intense suffering until all are saved. In chapter 4 above, I quoted what St Paul wrote in Philippians 3: 10. He says ‘All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection’ ; what I did not quote is the rest of what he says in that verse: ‘and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death’. Here I hesitate.

I think that I am going to have to go round and round a lot of times to reach that generous attitude.

I am sure that Jesus wants to lead us deeply into letting his love so burn in our hearts that we are not daunted by the prospect of pain, but are increasingly eager to pay any price for the healing of humanity.

I have come across people who have shone with light and joy in the midst of horrendous suffering. They have been graced with love far greater than mine. I think they are examples of what the Holy Spirit can do in willing souls.

All I know is that I can be like that, but it seems to be a slow development. There seems to be so much brokenness in me that Jesus wants to heal first. Jesus says in the Beatitudes ‘blessed are the pure in heart they shall see God’ (Matthew 5: 8). My heart needs much purifying until I am transfigured by Christ’s love.

The battery that charges the Church

Forgetting myself now, I have throughout my priestly life visited and taken Communion to hundreds of sick and housebound people. It still causes me awe how the vast majority bore great suffering in deep faith and trust. In our ministry, Anne and I have always believed that the main battery that charges the parish is the prayer of these people and the elderly.

Do you suffer and feel all is a waste of time and useless? Or has our loving Lord inspired you with a sense that it is all being used to lift the world into the goodness of his Kingdom? Don't let your suffering be wasted. I know people with no faith often suffer with great stoicism, but that takes a great effort and is characterised by pessimism. Christian, you are being invited to have a special ministry in the Royal Priesthood of the baptised!

Let us not forget the cosmic nature of the prayer of Jesus that we share in. In the wonderful Chapter 8 of his letter to the Romans, St Paul tells us: "The whole creation is eagerly waiting for God to reveal his sons (and daughters)... creation still retains the hope of being freed, like us, from its slavery to decadence, to enjoy the same freedom and glory as the children of God. From the beginning till now the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth" (Romans 8: 19-22).

Later in the same chapter, he writes: "all things work together for the good for those who love Him" (Romans 8: 28). Every bit of sacrifice that is offered by the faithful is part of the coming to birth of the new creation.

If you are like me, you will be praying that God will send the courage and generosity we need, should he send suffering our way. As for the prayer of saints like St Paul, who actively prayed to share in the suffering of Christ, we must hope that, should Jesus call us to that heroic love, we will accept his call with grace.

This topic is huge. Have you any comments or queries about it? Use the "Comment on this article" button below.

Our Role in God's Plan

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 09:03:42 GMT

Have you read our new online book - ' Our Role in God's plan'

click the link here and it will take you to it.

CHAPTER 7: The Transfiguration of St. Francis

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 13:57:39 GMT

Few saints have experienced and demonstrated the love-union with God like St Francis of Assisi.

The key ingredient of his journey into God was his devotion to ‘Lady Poverty’. He studiously sought to hold on to nothing so that he would experience everything that came his way as a gift from God. In this way, he grew so aware of the love of our Father that it shone from him.

As and older, sick man, Francis would be helped by his brethren into a town, and grace was experienced by people in wonderful ways just because of his presence. Hardened sinners changed, broken relationships were repaired, the depressed were touched with hope, and sufferers were released. Thousands imitated him and became Franciscans or followers of St Clare, his sister on the journey. In that way he fulfilled the command given him by God as a young man, ‘Francis, rebuild my Church’.

One day, he was praying and became intensely wrapped up in the passionate love that Jesus has for all humanity. He saw Christ suffering on the cross and was so desirous of sharing that love that the very wounds of Christ came into his body. He retained the Stigmas for the rest of his life.

To non-spiritual observers this suggests an unhealthy obsession with suffering. To those who have begun to sense the spiritual, it demonstrates Francis’ enviable, passionate love for all people. It shows how much he was swept up in that love which causes Jesus and his people to bear valiantly the pain of those who would otherwise be crushed beyond their limit.

That redemptive suffering opens spaces for grace to penetrate and work its wonders in burdened souls. The more we have a knowing of the immense desire of the Trinity to include everybody in their rich life of love, the more we count the price as negligible.

Another example of such a great soul was St Bernadette. Mary, the ‘beautiful Lady’ who appeared to her, wrapped her into an ecstatic sharing in her own prayer. Next Mary told Bernadette that she would know suffering in this world, but she would know everlasting joy in heaven. After her experiences of bliss, she readily accepted suffering.

But I am sure she would have experienced great temptations not to stick to her decision. She must have – she was human. I take comfort that my temptations to ease up on the journey with Jesus is human as well. But I know that, slowly but surely, I am sharing, in tiny steps, the love of the Jesus for all.

Contemplation is the journey into the burning love of Jesus for our Father, and with him into the infinite love of our Father for every person. That journey will challenge you and also surprise you. It is the adventure for which you were made.

It is a lie if it does not lead you to continual conversion. Conversion is the steps we take into the love of God, which is the same as becoming our true selves. The grace of God wants to develop your inner self, your true being, bit by bit and gradually. Remember that the way to test whether God is working in your being is to ask: Despite the pains, is what I am experiencing characterised by love and joy?

Bishop Langton Fox said: "If the love of God is flowing in your heart, let it pull up the corners of your mouth".

When we think of St Francis and others sharing in the passion of Jesus, it is important to remember that passion has two meanings. One is to suffer grievously, the other is to be driven by an extraordinarily powerful love. It is fashionable for people applying for a job to declare to their interviewers that they are passionate about the work. That often sounds thin. Those who share in the passionate love of Jesus move mountains.

You are given the great dignity of being one of Jesus' mountain movers. Do not be put off by the continual evidence of you own weakness. Jesus said to St Paul when he asked to have his weakness removed: "My grace is enough for you: my power is at its best in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12: 9).

The Kingdom is counter intuitive. The more we diminish the more Jesus lives in us. The more he lives in us the more light shines from us. We will constantly be surprised by the upside-down view of things that we begin to see as right-side-up. The meek inherit the earth, the poor inherit the Kingdom of God, persecution gets you a pass into God's family. The journey will be more than surprising -sometimes it will be perplexing, but through continually returning to the contemplation of God, more and wonderful meanings will become clear.

When St Peter started to walk on water, he took his eyes off Jesus and stared down at the deep. Then he started to sink. What was Jesus' comment? "Why did you doubt, man of little faith?" (Matthew 14: 31). Lord I believe, help my unbelief. May I keep my gaze on you!

Comments? Queries?

CHAPTER 8: WE TOO ARE SAINTS

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 11:17:17 GMT

In the previous chapter, I called St Bernadette a ‘great soul’. She did not start off like that, she just fulfilled her potential to an outstanding degree in this world. People like that get noticed because God spotlights them for our encouragement and example. But every person is created with the potential to be a great soul. That is our calling and destiny.

We call people like Bernadette ‘Saint’. That is a category given by the Church to call us to attend to them, imitate them, and pray for their help in our own struggles. This only happens after the Church’s careful examination of their lives and much prayer by many people. But, from the beginning, the early Christians called each other ‘saints’. It simply meant ’holy’ which people become at baptism. It is not a description of what we have achieved, but what we have received. Although the whole world is sustained by the Holy Spirit, we are ‘Temples of the Holy Spirit’ (1 Corinthians 6: 19), and in us is focused the life of God.

Pope St Leo the Great exclaimed: “Oh Christians, be aware of your dignity!” I readily proclaim the dignity of the ‘Saints’, but am slow to recognise that I also am holy, elected to be intimately and intensely involved in the glorious process of renewing the face of the earth, and ushering in the Kingdom of our Father. Dear reader, are you the same? We too are saints!

The prophet Ezekiel had a vision of a valley littered with dry bones. He is commanded to speak the word of God over them several times. First they rattled together into skeletons, then flesh grew on the bones, then skin, and finally they come to life. The prophet is commanded to prophecy: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land’ (Ezekiel 37: 12-14).

We Christians have been taught the full meaning of the term, ‘Land of Israel’: it is life inside the Trinity from which we have been exiled by sin. Gradually, and increasingly our Father is leading humanity back to live in his Family. That means beginning eternal life here and now. What a dignity it is to be part of the great renewal! It is our Father's will that we and all creation reach our full potential.

It is exactly what St Paul prays for in Ephesians 3 :13-21:

" This, then, is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every

family, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name:

Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit

for your hidden self to grow strong,

so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith,

and then, planted in love and built on love,

you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth;

until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge,

you are filled with the utter fullness of God.

Glory be to him whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we

can ask or imagine.

glory be to him from generation to generation in the Church

and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen."

What an unimaginably glorious destiny we have been given!

We are god's holy people by gift. Let’s all keep growing!

Are you really a saint? Comments?

CHAPTER 9: DARK NIGHT OF THE SENSES

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 07:00:40 GMT

I have read in the writings of Saints Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross about the ‘Dark night of the Senses’, and the ‘Dark night of the Soul’. I don’t want to talk here about the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’

The ‘Dark Night of the Senses’ is where people walking the path of contemplation experience a dissatisfaction and boredom with sensual gratification; things that once seemed vital for our comfort and well-being may seem boring, even pointless. This experience is disorientating; we can even think we are becoming depressed. I believe I am experiencing this at the moment.

Depression has a multitude of causes, which I don’t pretend to be an expert in, but I have noticed in people that it is often where a new growth is laboriously taking place. Many people who have had ‘a breakdown’ really came to a stop because the way they were living was inadequate, and a new and more enhancing state of life was urgent to develop within them. So depression and breakdown are not necessarily destructive. They can in fact be breakthroughs.

The Dark Night of the Senses is where the desire for God is battling for first place with the desire for the good things that God has given us. One hymn puts it like this: “The things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace” (Cast your eyes upon Jesus: Hillsong).

I have enjoyed many things in life, and much of my sense of feeling OK is caused by what I believe is a healthy balance of work and play, but mostly that balancing act happens in a part of myself which has little consciousness of God. But, once the divine lover gets under your skin, other ‘likes’ seem less attractive. Then the enjoyment of sensual things experience a ‘dark night’, but, really, the deepest desire of my heart, my longing for the Father, is claiming its rightful first place.

It is important to state that this dark night gives way to more light.

In my readings about the spiritual Dark Nights of the Senses and the Soul, it always seemed to me that they were long periods of discomfort and even suffering, and maybe for some people they are, but I think it comes to me in bits - sometimes more powerful, sometimes less. I don’t think I am depressed, but that love is being matured within me.

I have prayed to love the Lord God above all else, and I think that he is answering my prayer. This awakening of my innermost self is purely under the caress of his hand; it is his gift, but it is a bit disorientating. I know that it will all work out well, though, because God is love, and I want to be filled with love.

I also believe that he will gradually lead me to enjoy the things of the world shot through with his presence. I expect that that will entail a gradual adjustment of what I think I need and don’t need. I think I will become content with less, and appreciate the ‘less’ more. We’ll see.

Spiritual writers keep talking about using our wills . This faculty seems of extreme importance in growing spiritually. Sometimes I have to cling on wilfully when I have doubts or lose a sense of consolation; sometimes I have to cling for a long time. That is when I am working with God on my own development.

I have to say that, whenever I will myself to cling to God in darkness, there is a developing inner appreciation that this is the right course of action. I suppose that is the gift of faith at work. It is not a feeling but an increasing conviction.

Don’t get the impression that this is all a smooth progression inside me. It is full of bumps and wrong turns, and attempts to turn back. But he loves me and does not give up on me, no matter how many headaches I give him and myself.

I repeat: It is important to state that this dark night gives way to more light.

People today have gadgets which count their steps. If you had one that gave you the sum total of all the choices you have made in your life, you would be looking at millions, possibly billions. At all times we are convinced we are making the right choices, the consequences of which will be ups or downs. There are far less downs when we choose to make the journey into the family life of God. Also the ups well up inside us, and become a living stream to nourish ourselves and the world.

Any thoughts? Please share!

CHAPTER 10: VAL

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 08:30:00 GMT

I said in the last chapter that I want to be full of love. Let me tell you about somebody who was. This is true.

Val was one of the youngsters who used to chat at the front door of the presbytery with another priest. I saw her sometimes at Mass as well as her family. Time moved on and we found that she was having a baby and a marriage was quickly arranged. I think it was in the Registry Office. That’s how things happened forty odd years ago.

Then we heard that soon after the birth she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. They could do nothing for her. She came back for her last days to her parents’ home. That is when I got to know her. I took her communion and we chatted a lot. I remember that she was very peaceful and never blamed God. She had a serenity about her fate. And she was more interested in others than in herself.

One Sunday morning, her brother came to tell the parish priest and myself that they thought she only had a few hours to live. After the last morning Mass, I went to see her. They left me alone with her in the front room; she lay on a bed under the window. I held her hand and we were quiet. Then she surprised me by saying; “I love you, Father. I love everybody”. After a while she said: “I can’t feel my legs”, then a little later she couldn’t feel most of her body. I just held her hand.

Then a surprised look came on her face. She was looking intently at the corner of the room and she said: “Why has he come for me?” Her face was radiant, and I knew she was looking at Jesus. I think she said: “I’m not worthy, why has he come for me?” I just mumbled something innocuous. Soon I had to go and get my dinner and lead a Holy Hour at 2.30 p.m.

During the Holy Hour, all the people were praying for Val. She had become a focus of special prayer over the last few months in the parish. I had a sudden vision of Val lying on her bed, and I saw her soul lifting out of her body and going up towards the light. I looked at my watch and it was 3 o’clock. After the service, I went to their house, and her father told me that she had died at 3 o’clock.

There was a wonderful peace in and around their house until after the funeral. People remarked about how they had gone to mourn and had instead experienced a sense of peace and goodness. I did her funeral, and often visited her grave when I was in that cemetery.

A young, ordinary woman, who, in the long quiet hours of her illness, was given the gift of loving the Lord – it was special, yet it was somehow ordinary. She became quietly and gradually a contemplative in an ordinary home. By the time of her death she was in love with God and everyone. If she could cooperate with grace like that, so can we all.

There really was an atmosphere of peace and blessing around her house until the funeral. Many people remarked on it. When St Francis in later life was helped into a town by his brethren, the atmosphere really became charged with grace. It was testified to many times.

In Lourdes, I watch people wrapped in quite stillness. Many come to ask for help, but stay to contemplate. There is that atmosphere of grace, and millions of people go away aware of having been touched deep down. These are the true miracles of Lourdes.

Why does this atmosphere not descend everywhere? I think it is because, in those special places and special times, God is giving his soldiers an experience of prayer's effects so that they go back to the battle lines with fresh faith. It is not the moments of felt grace that renew the heart of the world. It is the faithful persistence in prayer and carrying out whatever duty God assigns to us. That is when we take our part in the redemption. What a privilege!

More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. It is especially so when the one who prays has no idea what effects of grace are flowing from their prayer. It gives God space to act to change people, a child in hospital relieved, a war taking a different direction towards peace, a struggling soul freed. Often it is the very fact that our faith tells us that there are effects which gives greater power to our prayer. All over the world, praying souls are persevering because of a conviction placed in their hearts by the Holy Spirit that here is a stream of grace. Nothing is wasted in the divine process of drawing the whole world into our Father's hands.

Jesus told St Thomas: "Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe" (John 20: 29)

Val would never dream of calling herself a great soul. But her life and death produced a moment in time and place when people were nourished and grace was felt. We will never know in this life what blessings have been received as a result of our trustful seeking the face of God. But in the next life we will be shown the complex patterns in the salvation Tapestry our Father is weaving with our help.

If you are locked in sickness, weakness or poverty, you are just right for contemplation. It turns all that suffering into grace, and the creation moves towards the freedom of the children of God.

Any ideas to share, or queries to suggest?

Agape

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 10:18:13 GMT

AGAPE

(From Chapters 9 & 10 of our book A Message For Its Own Time .)

THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY

The ‘spiritual revolution’ which is Christianity, is deepening and growing into its third phase.

This epoch of great change that we are living through has such great potential. God is gifting us in the modern age with increasingly deeper insight into our humanity, such as psychology, clearer understanding of human development and vaster knowledge of the world we live in. This is causing a great deal of rethinking; our assumptions about other people and ourselves are being adjusted. The modern age seems at present to be a melting pot of ideas and theories, and these need Christian synthesising. Through the Second Vatican Council, the Spirit called us to take the modern world seriously, to dialogue with it, and to return to the basics of our own revelation and practice in order to effectively bless and enlighten the people of our day. In consequence a renewal of Christianity is developing which is still rather mixed up in most of our minds. The need to purify our thinking under the guidance of the Spirit is urgent. Where do the basics of Christianity lie?

They are fundamentally summed up in John 3:16:

‘God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world but so that through him the world might be saved’.

It is the love of God which is the key to everything. That is Christianity’s basis.

What does love mean?

The word ‘love’ has so many meanings. We naturally think of it in human terms, but the supreme insight of Christianity is that we base our understanding of love on God’s love which is very distinct from human loving. To express this the New Testament coins the word ‘Agape’. Human love at its best can be heroic and sometimes seem superhuman. It can not happen without God’s help. But it is not always Agape. We need to understand what Agape is.

In the English speaking world many of our bible translations translate Agape as ‘Charity’. That word has lost its power as ‘Charity’ nowadays largely means outreaches to help those in need. Consequently the meaning of Agape has become obscured for many of us.

The word ‘Agape’ occurs over 200 times in the New Testament. Perhaps the most familiar passage where it is used is in 1 Corinthians 12-13 beginning with:

‘Be ambitious for the higher gifts, and I am going to show you a way that is better than any of them. If I have all the eloquence of men or of angels but speak without love…’ (1 Corinthians 12-13) .

What is Paul getting at? He is addressing the Church in Corinth which had great spiritual gifts such as prophecy, healing, and words of wisdom, but it was riddled with division. Is he calling the community to have more consideration of each other, even the self-denial which puts others before self? No, he is talking about something much greater, something which heals the heart of the community, which is Agape.

This passage (1 Corinthians 12-13) is used often at Christian weddings, with the intention of expressing the aspirations of those who wish to love wholeheartedly. Implicit in that is a prayer for God to empower us when we find love difficult. That is a gift greatly to be prayed for, and what better way for a couple to plight their troth than before the Father who alone can empower such love? But few couples imagine what they are truly asking for. Agape is something superior to human love as that is commonly understood.

Paul, uses the Agape word for love in 2 Corinthians 5: 14 when he says ‘the love of Christ impels us’. Translators of the Bible take different stabs at delivering the meaning. Some say it “constrains us”, as though we are tied up by it and coerced. Some say “overwhelms us” as though we are lifted to a different dynamic than love as we normally experience it. Some say it “urges” us as though it is a deeply felt need. Clearly, Paul is attempting to describe a different reality to what we normally mean by love, even at its most heroic.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines Agape well:

"Agape , Greek agapē, in the New Testament, the fatherly love of God for humans, as well as the human reciprocal love for God . In Scripture, the transcendent agape love is the highest form of love and is contrasted with eros, or erotic love, and philia, or brotherly love."

This rightly states that Agape is the highest form of love, God’s love for us and our loving God back. Paul, in 1 Corinthians: 13, calls it the gift that is ‘better than any’, for which we should ‘be ambitious’. It enters the human heart and transforms it gradually. It is the true meaning of being justified or righteous. By it, our hearts are righted, set right, stood on their true basis, which is to be the beloved of God.

Agape does not spring from our natural human powers to love as we know them. It is the transforming of the heart after it has entered ‘the gates of holiness…the Lord’s own gate where the just may enter’. This is a gate which the Lord alone can ‘open’ (Grail Psalm 118: 19-20). With it, the human heart is righted, because it was originally and fundamentally made for this divine love to be its primary source of life. We are the beloved children of God beautifully created to live in God’s family. That fundamental rightness was gravely upset at the Fall of mankind. But it has been wonderfully restored by Christ’s work on Calvary.

Agape is the ‘greatest of all’ of the gifts of God, to be sought before all others, because it makes all other loves Christian. It purifies our human love gradually, and must be continually prayed for. In so far as we fall in love with God, we will be enabled to fall in love with everyone.

Contemplation

In the Our Father, when Jesus shows us many forms of prayer. He puts first hallowing the name of the Father. This is not just praise with lips and songs, but reverence and awe - ultimately adoration. I have seen a group of youngsters joyfully praising God with the enthusiasm so characteristic of youth, but then become quiet in profound adoration.

Contemplation is not Meditation

The habit of adoration arises from the practice of contemplation. It is distinct from meditation. Meditation is the raising of our minds to God through considering some truth about him which arises from study or spiritual reading or lectio divina or other forms such as the prayer of imagination. It leads to gradual enlightenment, but it usually is an exercise of the intellect which, at its best, can lead our hearts to burn within us. It strengthens conviction and it motivates us to hope. It disposes us to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit especially wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. It is an essential prayer for maturing Christians, and prompts us to love God. We prepare our minds for it through focusing on truth, and we will often have to keep refocusing because our busy minds are easily distracted.

However Meditation is not the path to the supreme gift of the Holy Spirit, Agape; contemplation is. Meditation is the raising of the mind to God, contemplation is the raising of the heart. Meditation exposes the yearnings of the heart for God; contemplation is the opening of the yearning heart to meet God in love.

Contemplation is primarily not about what is happening within our selves; it is encountering God and knowing him. Then words fail. Concepts are inadequate. Only the heart is open to God. Jesus instructs us to use all the other forms of prayer that he includes in the ‘Our Father’, but the prayer that he puts first, contemplation (hallowed be thy name), is the deepest prayer of the heart and we are called to give time to it. We leave aside concerns, worries, thoughts, feelings and stand before God with hearts open. That is how we come to know not about him, but to know him - through love, Agape.

The author of ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ writes:

‘God’s grace restores our souls and teaches us how to comprehend him (God) through love. He is incomprehensible to the intellect. Even angels know him by loving him. Nobody’s mind is powerful enough to grasp who God is. We can only know him by experiencing his love’.

In contemplation we have to enter the cloud of unknowing, set aside emotions and thoughts and images which can never grasp God, and just long for God. Distractions will come and so will deep understandings, but these need to be turned away. Gradually with time and perseverance, the sense of God’s love deepens and we become more and more devoted to our Father. Also we begin to experience Jesus’ love for everyone. As we progress we can experience dark nights of the senses and also of the soul, but the progression is into deeper and deeper loving union with God.

Jesus took Peter, James and John up the mountain of Tabor to witness his glory, but when the ‘bright cloud’ (Matthew: 17: 5) descended and the Father’s voice was heard, they were terrified and fell face down. In his mercy, Jesus treats us more gently. He himself leads us into the cloud of the mystery of love to meet the Father. This is Agape, the greatest gift of God.

THE CHRISTIAN HEART

T he cry of God’s children

Through Agape, the Holy Spirit releases within us the cry of the child of God: ‘Abba, Father!’ (Rm 8: 15). St Augustine in his Confessions writes:

“Late have I loved you, Oh Beauty ever old and ever new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours”.

The effects of God’s children

A person who is developing in Agape, becomes more and more a fountain of grace and direction to others. The gifts of the Holy Spirit grow as fruit from their lives: ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control’ (Galatians 5: 22). How much we strive through our own selves to produce these fruits, and yet they flow from the lovers of God. Jesus teaches us to put our selves humbly before the Father so that our inner selves, our spirits, can emerge.

Agape makes us naked before the Lord and other people. We clad ourselves with so many coverings. Our skin is vulnerable. All of it reacts to touch, especially if that touch is painful; it is the same with our sensitivities. So we work hard at developing a suit of armour to protect ourselves. This may give us a sense of security, but it also increasingly isolates and cripples us, though even the best armours have chinks. From our earliest childhood, our experiences of pain and the failures of love induce us to construct this armour. Bit by bit, with our cooperation, the Father’s love unbuckles the different layers of armour, allowing his love, breathing through ours, to cast his light more effectively in our world.

Do not be surprised if he unbuckles it from the inside; the transformation begins in the heart, and only gradually penetrates into our words and deeds. We can see God acting in this way when, on the shore of Galilee, Jesus took Peter aside and three times asked his three times betrayer ‘do you love me’. The third time, Peter humbly, almost tearfully, confesses ‘Lord, you know I love you’. He was being called to an identity different to the strong individual he thought he was. The man, who drew the sword in Gethsemane but then ran away to save his skin, began to be a new creation. He was sensing and choosing a trajectory, the course of which would transform him into one of the dearly beloved lovers of God.

Reality check

God’s love gradually enables us to grow. Lovers cannot hide their true selves from each other. That is frightening because, as their brokenness is revealed, they become dependent on the love of the other to aid their healing. Faults which they could not face or fix themselves, their very vulnerability, need the lover’s kiss. Sadly, that is often not forthcoming; many lovers turns their face away. God never turns his face away. As his love penetrates the exterior of our hardened hearts, the brokenness of our hearts of flesh emerges bit by bit. It is still frightening, because we can be shocked by recognising wounds and failures which we had not been aware of, or excruciatingly shamed by admitting those we have never been able to fix.

In order to heal and restore us, he will sometimes lead us into wild and frightening places calling us to face the demons that obstruct our way to fuller life. He does not hide the fact that picking up the cross daily is the way forward, but he is right there on that cross with us until it is accomplished. Oh, the joy and the peace as we become more free!

Western culture idealises the right of every human person to be free, and that usually means permission to do what we want. The freedom God brings about within us is the freedom to be the greatness that we really are. Gradually we are transformed into the utterly unique image of God that each of us is. The life force of God which is gradually released into his servants, his Spirit, moves more freely in us. It is not techniques that we acquire, but life. Bit by bit it dawns on us that there is nothing else worth doing. And the process continues along the long path of becoming ‘like stars’ (Daniel 12: 3).

Achievements without Agape

If I dedicate my entire life to service, or use my talents superlatively, or bear unimaginable burdens, but am without Agape, I am only working out of a self that is hidebound by my armour. One day, despite my personal efforts or talents, my energy will dry up. Then I will be left languishing inside my suite of armour. It is dark there and lonely. But, if I have sought the supreme gift of Agape, and walk as one of God’s lovers, seeking his face daily, learning to cherish his presence at every step, I do not have to be superhuman or a hero. I will radiate God wherever I am. I will, in the midst of tragedy bring hope, in a broken world bring joy, and in turmoil peace. As I willingly receive the gift of Agape, it will gradually develop me.

I will not lose my identity as I become a channel of God’s love. I will achieve my true identity. The more people see Christ in me, the more they will see the real me, where the Lord has help me to lose the parts that I thought made me unique and valuable. I do not need them. I am unique and valued. I am one of God’s chosen lovers.

I will not be afraid of defeat and failure, because ‘all things work together for the good for those who love God’ (Romans 8: 28). Just like on Calvary, all failure will become development.

Huge, even gigantic human efforts will fail to bring about a healed and wholesome world, but the actions of those who are developing in Agape will ‘renew the face of the earth’ (Ps 104: 30). The Good News we proclaim introduces people to the truly liberating energy of God, our lover. As we grow into the state of being the beloved children of God, we are revealed as the ones for whom creation is ‘waiting with eager longing’ (Romans 8: 19).

As St Paul wrote to them, the Church of Corinth was proud of the wonderful charisms of healing and prophecy and teaching that they were experiencing. How much more would they have fulfilled their mission if they had put Agape at the top of the wish list for divine gifts! It seems that many of them failed to grasp this deepest teaching of Paul, because some forty years later, the fourth pope, St Clement of Rome, wrote them a long letter once more urging them to set aside their divisions. The human heart so often focuses on minimal aspirations rather than daring to hope.

The next stage of Chrisianity

I believe that, in our strange time, God is calling us to focus more urgently on the highest path to growth, Agape. In his poem A Sleep of Prisoners, Christopher Fry expresses it as follows:

The human heart can go the lengths of God…
Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.

Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.

Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise is exploration into God.

The time we live in is enormously important in the process of salvation. Nature and history cry out increasingly and urgently for the human exploration into God. That urgency has been infused into us by God. The heart of the Trinity has opened and burns with desire for union with us.

What Agape is not

In our frenzied world of today, a new industry of wellness is emerging. To counteract the obsessive use of media and the hurried pursuit of goals, various ways of stilling ourselves and allowing our souls to breathe are flourishing. These are healthy and helpful, and certainly better than using drugs or alcohol. They might prepare us for contemplation, but mostly they seek to balance our selves so that we can be more in control. They are human techniques that lead us back to our selves. Agape leads us to the Father.

It grieves me to see how some Catholic schools embrace these methods, because it is evidence of how we have forsaken the habit of introducing our children to the great tradition of Christian contemplation. Yet I have seen a school staff struck with wonder when the children of a whole primary school assembly went into deep stillness and contemplation. We offer our children the notions of the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, but we should start with Agape. Jesus says of children: ‘Let them come to me, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs’. I would rather have a whole system of guiding people in holiness and the knowledge of God than the most impressive school system. The opinion that I have just expressed implies a revolution in our approach to education in our part of the world which would demand courage and dedication if it were put into practice, but is it not the reason why our Father has sent us into the vineyard?

‘The Spirit breathes where he will’ (John 3:6)

Throughout my priestly life, I have been privileged to encounter souls that have been led into deep devotion through many paths such as Eucharistic Adoration, the rosary, praying in tongues and the celebration of the Eucharist, and also through suffering or arduous toil patiently endured. As they have matured, they have become leaven in the dough of this needy world. The lovers of God are all around us, usually hidden, but radiating Agape. I cannot draw a map of how the Holy Spirit flows, but I am sure there is an imperative need to give much more Church time to nurturing the ambition for this highest gift. From Agape all other Church outreaches should flow, and would flow wonderfully.

T he Sacraments of Reconciliation and Marriage

A greater emphasis on Agape can throw light on some of our current problems in Catholic practice such as the reluctance of people to avail themselves of the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Marriage. Our practice of the Sacrament of Confession often focuses on human motivation by the cold examination of sins and their opposing virtues to elicit sorrow and a firm desire of amendment. This is necessary in cases of deeply mortal sin. Normally, though, it should be where priest and penitent exercise the sacred art of discerning the movement of God’s Spirit in the soul of the person being reconciled. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is the gracious touch of God for one who is earnestly laying bare their poverty of spirit, to encourage them and draw them more deeply into the kingdom of God.

Reconciliation should be a supremely rich encounter with Agape. The poor woman in the Gospel, who was publicly humiliated as her adultery was cruelly publicised by vicious plotters, did not need stoning, she needed to encounter the divinely loving gaze of the one writing on the ground (John 8: 1-11). Only then would she be set on the path towards sinning no more. The paralysed man lowered through the roof by his friends experienced that same infinite love as Jesus told him his sins were forgiven. It gave him overwhelming relief which contributed to the loosening of his seized-up limbs (Mt 9:1–8). I think the greatest surprise for both these people was the realisation that this person understands me; he is like me; he has been through these temptations himself and overcome them, and his love radiates the love of the Father of light who cherishes me and has invincible faith in me.

We read in 1 Corinthians 13

‘Love is patient, is kind, does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things’.

Do we see this only as a check-list of virtues for us to aspire to? Or do we see this as a description of God himself? The woman accused of adultery and the paralysed man caught a wonderful glimpse of the loving God in the eyes of Christ. They encountered the Father who ‘keeps no account of wrongs’, and ‘is always ready to excuse, to trust and to hope’ (1 Corinthians 13: 6) in them. The true healing and strengthening of their ‘innermost selves’ (Ephesians 3: 16) had started. The Sacrament of Reconciliation should be prepared for and celebrated ioninthe firm belief that it is another step along the road to perfection.

Similarly, how different a Christian marriage becomes if the couple seek Agape together! The lives of such couples as Saints Louis and Zelie Martin, the parents of St Therese shine out as examples of what the Sacrament of Marriage really achieves. Their faithful love and holiness produced daughters who were saints, one of whom is a Doctor of the Church, a supreme teacher of holiness. Why does our marriage preparation stress human relationships and fail to enlighten couples about what happens to their love when they together seek the face of God above all else?

‘Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on his righteousness, and all these other things will be given you as well” (Matthew 6: 33)

I wrote elsewhere in this chapter that the transformation (of our lives through Agape) begins in the heart, and only gradually penetrates into our words and deeds. St Catherine of Siena puts it like this:

‘ Truly the Soul’s being united with and transformed into him [God] is like fire consuming the dampness in logs. Once the logs are heated through and through, the fire burns and changes them into itself, giving them its own colour and warmth and power. It is just so with us when we look at our Creator and his boundless charity (Agape). We begin to experience the heat of self-knowledge – which consumes all the dampness of our selfish love for ourselves. As the heat increases, we throw ourselves with blazing desire into God’s measureless goodness, which we discover within our very selves. We are then sharing in his warmth and in his power’.

Physical fire consumes and annihilates. The fire of the Holy Spirit does not; it matures and enhances our true selves. The adherents of some religions seek to lose their selves in the ultimate reality of universal consciousness. For Christians, eternal life is all about becoming our true selves through harmonious and full relationships and interplay with God and all creation.

Jesus said: ‘Eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’ (John 17: 3). When the Holy Spirit works in us through Agape, we are already wrapped in the dynamic of eternal life here on earth. That is the ‘power from on high’ (Lk 23; 49), the deluge which Jesus told his disciples to faithfully await; that alone is the fuel for the commission he gave them to transform the world.

‘Our struggle is… against …the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms’ (Ephesians 6: 12).

This third phase of the Church, the third phase of the spiritual revolution which God is gradually conducting in this world, comes as many fruits of the Spirit are ripening. Countries which have heard the Gospel are experiencing peoples’ claiming the right to determine their own destiny, and, as we see in the Putin/Ukraine conflict, those who have usurped power for too long are reacting with brutality. Yet the poor and the meek of neighbouring countries opened their doors to the mothers and children of the conflict. Churches frequently became the focus of practical help. Political leaders were seen visiting services of prayer. At the same time, worried people watch, sensing the dimension of the sacred which, in their comfortable prosperity, they have neglected.

The false optimism of western prosperity with its neglect of the poor is yielding to unease and an opening of eyes to the reality of evil. Those who saw the world through rose tinted glasses are becoming dismayed, and those who claimed the moral high ground while scorning those who disagreed are discovering that both their attitudes and those of their opponents are far from answering the deepest yearnings of humanity. We are entering a time when those countries which have blithely, even methodically, thrown out the message of Christ are going to become more earnest in seeking authenticity. Christianity itself is facing up to and dealing with problems within itself which it has evaded. The stage is being set by God for the Church, renewed through deepening its members’ holiness, to offer afresh the message of God’s love and salvation.

Political pundits hurry to define the near future as a ‘new cold war’, but the children of God should see it as a special time in the progress of the spiritual warfare Jesus came to cast upon the earth. The millions of members of the Royal Priesthood should not be captivated by the preachers of dread and futility, but become renewed in the vigour of the Spirit. Maybe we have to resurrect an old word, and recognise that we have to become more deeply devout. That word places the emphasis primarily on seeking the face of the Father in contemplation, from which authentic actions for peace and love will flow. These actions are the ‘spiritual sacrifices’, the acts of loving service among which prayer and the faithful fulfilling of small duties are the biggest part. It is not major strategies which are the main weapons in the armoury of the children of God. We fire bullets of faithfulness, seldom missiles. God looks after the strategies.

Most of today’s wars and conflicts are about securing energy resources to enable people’s life styles to prosper. For us Christians, our energy comes from faith, hope and Agape, powers which God gives to those who ‘worship in spirit and in truth’ (John 4: 23-24) . In today’s many outbreaks of war and violence, the distortion of truth through propaganda is rife. But there is also an alarming eruption of truth distortion in all areas of life. Here again the spiritual warfare with Satan is coming to a head. Polarisation and hatred are weighing down heavily on civilisations that thought themselves advanced and sophisticated. All over the world the dissensions of the early Church of Corinth are being repeated. St Paul’s remedy is just as urgently to be sought today: to ‘be ambitious’ for the ‘way that is better than any’: that is Agape. As we Christians become transformed and gently permeate our world with the fruits of the Spirit, this current critical battle in the spiritual warfare will be won.

‘Not on this mountain nor in Jerusalem’ (John 4: 21)

The Samaritan woman that Jesus met at the well questioned where true worship is centred. He replied that it is not in a place but in each mind and heart. So we find that Jesus, during his ministry, ‘taught his disciples’ (Mark 9:31). His teaching opened people’s minds, to know the truth about God. That gives rise to ‘worship in truth’ (John 4: 23-24). But the knowledge of God cannot stay in the mind. It is only the key to opening the door of the heart to ‘worship in spirit’ . ‘That is the kind of worshipper God wants’. Jesus was talking about Agape.

The harvest of love

Jesus told us ‘ when you see me you see the Father’ (John 14: 9). Wherever he went, people instinctively sensed Agape, the love of the Father. So wondrous was the healing personality of Jesus, and so compelling his words that people dropped what they were doing and flocked to him. Their hunger for God moved him to infinite zeal and compassion. Listen to Jesus’ reaction as he reflects on the multitudes he attracted:

‘And when he saw the crowds he felt sorry for them because they were harassed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest"’ (Mt 9: 36-38).

The labourers we need are not hired men or women who are not motivated by sharing Christ's love of his Father, but are driven by a mindset which aproximates to Christianity, but not by hearts driven by Agape, the continual seeking of the face of God . It is no wonder that their work seems so fruitless.

Also, a more profound ambition for the divine gift of Agape would dispel much of the confusion we see in the Church today. 1]

RAYS OF LIGHT AT NEW DAWN

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 14:24:01 GMT

SOME OF THE MARVELOUS CATHOLICS

THAT WE MET AT NEW DAWN 2025

I was Chair of the committee who organised the Charismatic Days of Renewal at Hopwood Hall in the 1970s and 80s, a position I left to concentrate on parish work for the next 35 years. It has been interesting to visit the New Dawn Charismatic Conferences in 2024 at Walsingham and 2025 at Barton. What struck me most was the way the first experiences of spiritual renewal of the early days has now matured into a lay people increasingly stepping forward with dedication and authority to serve the Church in cooperation with the clergy.

The authority comes from increasing closeness to God and dedicated attention to their own formation. I heard the stories of some amazing people – let me tell you about a few of them.

Deacon David (himself not a layman) told me of 5 men entering the Church in his parish in Northwich this Easter. He called it “the Quiet Revolution”. If you look on this website at Straws in the Wind you will read more about the “Quiet Revolution”. People are increasingly turning to the Church in this age which has drenched them in trivia and misinformation, especially men.

Karen told me about the Perpetual Adoration in her Church, St Joseph’s in Stockport, and how it is changing the parish and the area. Where there is Adoration, there is contemplation, which leads to intercession, the prayer that moves mountains. That is what our new book is about; it is the secret weapon of the Church. Have a look at Our Role in God’s Plan on this website.

Declan, a psychiatric nurse, told me about how he and others organise a study session on Zoom from 7.00 to 8.00 every weekday morning. Last year they went through the bible with Fr Mike Schmitz, and this year they are following his Catechism in a Year. There are about 70 people taking part, and around 200 have participated. We put our ministry, Hopeful Catholics , under the patronage of St John Henry Newman.

Our inspiration is this vision of his:

‘What I desire in Catholics is the gift of bringing out what their religion is. I want a Laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but people who know their religion … who enter into it, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it.’

Newman would rejoice to hear of this early morning study.

Nancy May , an ex-lawyer from Edinburgh, spoke with joy of her Masters Degree in Theology, which she had taken not so that she could create better job opportunities, but so that she could serve the Church in her parish, especially as a catechist for first communion children. She isn’t being reactive by just repeating material she has been given, but proactive seeking to give it her best.

Rachel , who works for Rachel’s Vineyard, told me of how her own experience helps her to help women who have had abortions. She said that many despair because they think it is the unforgivable sin, and that almost all those she encounters were broken people long before they had their abortion(s).

Her organisation offers reconciliation with God, integration of shattered selves and “futures full of promise” (Jeremiah 29: 11) not just to women who have had abortions, but also to mothers, fathers, grandparents, any family member and also those that worked in the abortion industry. She asked me to include this: Hurt by abortion? Contact rachel@rachelsvineyard.org.uk rachel@rachelsvieyard.org.uk rachel@rachelsvieyard.org.uk

Owen , a young man who works for SPUC, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child , told me of his work with young people and students. It is very tough in Universities, where the Pro-abortion lobby are fanatically dominant. Yet there is change. Do you remember the shocking scenes in Manchester University in March of last year when some Pro-life Manchester students, most of whom are Catholic. left “terrified” as an out-of-control mob raised barricades, spat on them, threatened, and wished rape on them for their pro-life views? Owen said that on visiting them this year a remarkable thing has happened; many other students who were silent of hadn’t really thought about the issue had been so disgusted at the actions of the mob that they are coming out in support and genuinely inquiring about pro-life matters. That is a picture of modern-day martyrdom.

Owen himself told me about how his friendship group at home numbering 16 were all atheists, but 6 of them are now Catholics. At university 5 friends joined the Church as well, also their professor who is now teaching scripture in a seminary in the USA.

One couple spoke of their deep disappointment as their flourishing parish changed when a new parish priest came, but their charity and love are gradually having an impact. They are beacons of Christ’s hopeful people. It is not always bright skies; we will often be asked to pray our way through storms and dark moments, but “for those who love God all things work together for good,” (Romans 8: 28)

Helen let us know about her own journey and how she was helped by Beginning Experience a ministry in the Catholic Church that addressed the needs of those who experienced loss of a spouse - whether through widowhood, separation or divorce. She is now working with them to help bring healing to others.

These are just a few of the spirit-led Catholics we encountered. It was a joy to be there and so hopeful!

Were you at New Dawn at All Saints Barton Manchester?

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 14:47:21 GMT

Did you attend New Dawn in Manchester 1st-3rd August?

Many people at New Dawn who gave us their email address will have received an email this week giving information about new articles and chapters released on our website. However, some of the emails addresses did not, work so if you have not received an email from us this week, please register with us on our website and we can sort this problem. Thankyou

It was a real privilege to speak to so many wonderful people at New Dawn as we shared about our ministry and website hopefulcatholics.org.uk

The Lord, The Lord

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 11:00:09 GMT

The Lord , The Lord

a Puzzle

T oday, Thursday the 17 ^th of July, the first reading at Mass tells us how God revealed his name to Moses at the burning bush. His name is “I AM”. This is one of the only times in our readings at Mass, where we actually use that name, “I AM”. For the rest of the readings we use the term, “THE Lord ”. Take for example the first reading on Trinity Sunday in Year 1 of the Sunday Cycle of Readings.

Moses climbs up the mountain of Sinai into the fearsome presence of God to seal the covenant between the people of Israel and God. It is the second time he does this. The first time ended in disaster, because the people had solemnly agreed to the covenant and then broke it because they were very fickle. The ringleaders have now been killed and the people have asked to start again. Moses must be wondering if God will agree. He has glimpsed the glory and majesty of God and he appreciates how offensive the people’s sin is. What will God do?

The Reading says: ‘He (Moses) called on the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord , a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.’ And Moses bowed down to the ground at once and worshipped.’

What is this ‘Lord, Lord’? It doesn’t make sense easily. But if you look at the original Hebrew text, it doesn’t say ‘Lord, Lord’, it says ‘ Yahweh, Yahweh (the Hebrew for “I AM”), a God merciful and gracious’ etc . God speaks his name. It is the name he revealed to Moses years before at the burning bush. Yet we substitute the title, “THE Lord ”. That is tough to get your mind round.

You could start to explain it by saying that God is saying ‘I am all there is. I am the root and creator of all that exists. No being compares to my being’, and you could go on explaining it for ages.

But we are not supposed to get our minds round it. Our minds only grasp the surface of things. It is in our spirits that true knowing arises. It is a matter of worship. At the burning bush and on this occasion, Moses bows down in worship. He contemplates, just lets his soul and spirit sink into the awareness of this Supreme Being in whom all beings exist.

God says two times his holy name and then reveals his tenderness, compassion, slowness to get angry, rich kindness and utter faithfulness. He gives Moses a moment of awe as he contemplates the deepth of God’s unfathomable love. Moses will never forget this and will return to the truth of this again and again as he falls in love increasingly with his God of immense burning love.

He knows they are forgiven and the covenant is still on offer. Their God is faithful even when they are not.

Why change the Name?

Why does our Bible use the word ‘Lord’ instead of ‘Yahweh’? It is out of respect for our Jewish brothers and sister. The Jews never speak the name ‘Yahweh’; they see it as too sacred. When they come across it they should worship wordlessly and so stand for a moment in the deep presence. So should we.

We are recommended by Church leaders to use ‘Lord’ instead of ‘Yahweh’ out of respect for the Jews, but I think that is wrong; we should offer our Jewish brethren the chance to tolerate our unique understanding taught to us by Jesus that this immensely majestic God is close to us and our loving Father.

They are motivated by the third of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain”. We are motivated by the New Commandment, “love one another as I have loved you”. We are in the new covenant.

JESUS IS THE ONLY WAY TO THE FATHER

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 12:46:04 GMT

This is taken from Chapter 12 of our book,

' A Message For Its Own Time'

JESUS IS THE ONLY WAY TO THE FATHER

5. Christians know that God is at work in the life of every person.

There is often among Christians today a false modesty which is embarrassed by the exclusive claim of Christianity that Jesus is the centre of all reality, the only way to God. This seems to be contradicted by so much evidence of good people who do not know Jesus, many of whom are holy and full of charity. That often leads to the commonly stated view today that there are many authentic paths to God and to progress in this world, and that Christianity is only one way among many.

It is all part of the modern philosophy which says that, because there are so many contradictory claims to truth expressed today, it is impossible for us to know ultimate truth. I am sure that this belief springs from many well-meaning people’s horror at the violence with which those who hold to different religions and politics often injure and cancel eachother. So they make tolerance the highest virtue. But the superficial peace they seek denies the deep search for wisdom which is in mankind. To achieve tolerance they suppress the search for truth which is at humanity’s core. To achieve greyness they cancel the rainbow.

Christ was occasionally angry, such as when he cleared his Father’s house to restore it as a house of prayer not commerce. When he challenged the Jewish leaders, he used forthright truth but never used violence. When one of them, Nicodemus, came genuinely seeking, or Pilate seemed to be in earnest, Jesus patiently and respectfully explained the truth, but accepted death and pain instead of inflicting it.

He teaches his followers to act in the same way, to expect persecution, but never use it. He revealed the profoundly liberating power of loving one’s enemy. True tolerance for us Christians is not avoiding all forms of contradiction, but enduring the pain of differences peacefully and honestly, until full truth emerges. We rely on the gift of ‘the peace of God which is so much greater than we can understand’ (Philippians 4: 7) ] and must repudiate any use of violence or coercion.

We believe Jesus with all our hearts when he says “I am the way and the truth and the life” [2] and that “no one can come to the Father except through me” (John 14: 6). We believe that he is the absolute and final self-revelation of God, and that we are commissioned to announce, explain and demonstrate this to the world.

We do not deny that many non-christian ways contain great good, nor deny that God is walking with the people involved, and is busy in their lives. Indeed we know that no one can produce the fruits of the Spirit without the help of the Spirit. So God is active and supportive of all people of good will. Furthermore we Christians must affirm that Jesus is walking with them even though they may not know him, because he is the way to God. So their paths are not separate and distinct to the way of Jesus, but just more clouded since the presence of his hand in their lives is obscured.

This is equivalent to our understanding that people who reject or live in ignorance of God are still sustained and blessed by him. Likewise, those who do not know that Jesus is ‘the Way’ (John 14:16) are still on Jesus’ Way as they grow and progress. The traditional term for this state is Baptism of Desire. At some time in God’s providence, they will become enlightened about Jesus and his Church, since that is the will of God. Christians know that God is at work in the life of every person. So we remain positive and hopeful for everyone’s salvation.

(If you wish to read of the book A Message For Its Own Time ,

click OUR BOOK at the top of this page)

Everything flows from a close freindship with Jesus.

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 12:36:25 GMT

EVERYTHING FLOWS FROM

a close friendship with Jesus

Chapter 2 of our book, A Message For Its Own Time

J esus longs for friendship with you

Many of the good people I have served in parishes have told me that they pray to God, but, when we dig deeper, their prayer is mainly striving to do his will and be morally good, asking a lot for help, and, less frequently, giving thanks - praise is particularly difficult and often mechanical. Some have told me that they pray to Our Lady, and that they feel her motherly care for them, but their feelings for Jesus are mainly venerating him at a distance as God and trying to imitate him as a human being.

For many, a close friendship with Jesus frequently sounds alien. These are good people who are living good lives, but the fact remains that they need more. They need Jesus’ close friendship.

Also, amazingly, Jesus needs close friendship with each of us. Read these intense words of his from the Last Supper as he pours out his heart to his disciples:

‘I will not leave you orphans

I will come back to you

In a short time the world will no longer see me;

But you will see me’. (John 14: 18-19) J1 John 14: 18-19)n 14: 18-19[1]

‘If anyone loves me he will keep my word,

and my Father will love him,

and we shall come to him

and make our home with him’. (John 14: 23) [2]

In Revelations, the last book of the Bible, Jesus says:

‘Look, I am standing at the door, knocking. If one of you hears me calling and opens the door, I will come in to share his meal, side by side with him’. (Revelations 3: 20) [3]

These are words of a close and very intimate friend. In the last chapter of St John’s Gospel, Jesus takes aside Peter, who is consumed with self-hatred because he has deserted and rejected Jesus publicly three times. Jesus simply asks him ‘Do you love me?’ three times (John 21: 15ff) . These are not the words of a distant God, but one who loves us so much that he comes among us and calls each one of us to friendship.

Friendship starts when we move from knowing about someone to knowing and caring for them intimately. It is a movement from the head to the heart. Once a person is in your heart, they have some control over your happiness. If you love someone with all your heart, you give them utter control. Jesus asks you to give him just that, which frightens most of us, because we have to trust big time.

We have been wounded by others so many times in our lives that we wrap a shield around ourselves and find it very hard to let anyone else in. Believing in someone is difficult. Yet many times in the Gospels, Jesus asks people who are requesting a cure ‘do you believe?' ( Matthew 9: 28, John 9: 35).

[5]

‘Only have faith’ . [6]

Often Jesus said 'Only have faith' ; and example is Mark 5:37. What did this puzzling instruction mean? It certainly did not mean ‘do you believe I am the Son of God become flesh in order to redeem the human race?’ It was only after the resurrection that they began to realise that this was the case. What did he mean then? He was asking them to open their hearts to God, even though they found that challenging.

Basically, Jesus was asking them to step out of their usual thought processes by which they normally made sense of the world and felt that they had some control, and instead, to give the initiative to God. He wants them to begin to say ‘I am in your hands’. He knew that the cure they asked for was dependant on their surrender to God, even if it was a weak surrender, like the father of the sick child who replied: ‘Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief’ (Mark 9: 25) .

[7]

Each time we open and give our hearts to God, we allow him to act in gracious and wonderful ways. It is the heart that matters. Many people believe that Jesus is the Word made flesh, but only with their heads. What he wants is that we give him our hearts, because it is all about love. As our intimacy with Jesus deepens we become more like him and we take our place more surely in God’s restoration of the face of the earth (Psalm 104: 30).

In the Gospels, Jesus never required his disciples to accept formulas summarising the truths about God. These dogmas were gradually defined over centuries because lovers of Jesus wanted to know more surely the truth about him in order to know him better personally. They wanted to walk with him like the disciples travelling to Emmaus. They wanted to find their hearts ‘ burning within’ them as he explains the scriptures to them (Luke 24: 32). ]

He could have sent those disciples a long letter giving the same teaching, but it was in the encounter with the stranger, the fellow traveller, that the Emmaus walkers came alive. He not only imparted knowledge, but he gave love, skilfully working on their hearts not just their minds. He gave encouragement and personal attention, moving them to wonder. This wonder caused them to urge him to stay the night and finally to recognise him ‘ at the breaking of bread' (Luke 24; 35).

Jesus walks, often unrecognised, with you and me, but he wants us to recognise him and be in love with him. He is calling, but we will not hear unless we reach the point of seeking him. The two Emmaus disciples had known Jesus, perhaps for years, but it was only when they thought they had lost him that they yearned for him. Their hearts were ready to open to his deep and personal love. Each of us needs to yearn to know him personally.

There comes a moment when we invite him into our hearts for the first time. He will always respond. He yearns for us much more than we yearn for him. Once he has come through the door of our hearts the relationship will develop. Sometimes he will seem to withdraw, but that is to invite you to seek him even more deeply. Sometimes he will speak words into your mind. Much of the time, you will find him quietly inspiring you as you ponder the events of your life and ask for his guidance. You will also be led into the mystery of his divinity, which transcends our capacity to know. Then the response is stillness, wonder, worship and awe – sometimes fear.

None of us is truly religious if we only know about God and do not have a personal relationship with Jesus. God will never be satisfied with any relationship with us except love. There is no escaping the fact that close friendship with Jesus is necessary for a full Christian life. That is because Christian life is about being incorporated into the Trinity, and Trinity life consists entirely of personal relationships.

As the Holy Spirit’s action within us grows, we realise more and more that the Father offers us nothing less than a personal loving closeness through Jesus. Jesus is the face that God presents to us. This earth was made so that we human beings can have and live Trinity life, and lead all creation into the heavenly love affair.

(This Chapter on friendship with Jesus moves on to stress that Catholics view this friendship not just as a one-to-one relationship, but a relationship with Jesus in his body, his Church.

If you wish to read of the book A Message For Its Own Time, click A Message for Its One Time at the top of this page)

OUR ORIGINS

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 10:41:26 GMT

0UR ORIGINS

Taken from Chapter 3 of our book, A Message For Its Own Time

One of things that puts people off talking about a close friendship with Jesus is that it sometimes sounds as though it is all about our feelings and our consolation. It will seem very self-centred if it is divorced from the reality of our need to seriously cooperate with him in the demanding work of salvation.

Today, while evil comes to meet us at every turn, there is an industrial-scale denial that we share responsibility for it. All sorts of excuses are offered to bolster the belief that we are the victims of evil forces within and without. It is as though we hardly have any free will, and therefore little responsibility.

Christianity firmly holds that we are free beings; that all of us sin and must own our individual and shared responsibility for evil, and that we must freely participate in the work of restoring human holiness. We base this belief on the teaching at the beginning of the Bible.

But there we have a problem because many modern people rightly do not believe that the Bible’s accounts of creation and the beginning of the human race with Adam and Eve are strict history. We Christians, who base our understanding of God and mankind on them, have been slow to perceive how many people are put off by the way we talk about these stories. We have to help people to understand the origin and meaning of the beginning of the Bible.

In modern times, there have been huge developments in our knowledge of history. In the past century, it has revealed more and more of how people have acted and developed over the ages. History necessarily concentrates on the millennia for which we have written records. Archaeology adds to our understanding. It tells us a great deal as more and more traces of early peoples and civilisations are unearthed. Timescales of human developments have become more clear. Yet, despite the endless research, there is no evidence in science of how humanity started.

We Christians pose the question of how humanity started in these terms: when did the human soul begin? The soul is the source of our capacity to reflect on ourselves and to take conscious decisions to alter our behaviour rather than be driven by our basic instincts. We could put it another way: when did we begin to love using our free will? The answer we believe that God has given us is contained in the stories of Adam and Eve and all Christianity’s understanding stems from there.

It is not strict history; but instead the stories illustrate the answers to two elementary factors at play in our world. The first is the age-old questioning of why we are here and how we find happiness. The second is the process by which the Creator has communicated with us, and how he has unveiled himself to us.

The quest to discover why are we here and how we achieve happiness

Modern interest in our family trees is evidence of how we feel the need to understand our origins in order to gain some understanding of who we are. Since we are not privy to the details of remote history we have to use our imaginations and intelligence to construct explanations of how the traditions and religions developed in different peoples as they sought to give answers to these basic questions.

The ancient peoples did not have books or computers, they had stories which they told round the campfires in the quiet of the night. The story tellers were remarkable for their retentive memories and what was passed down varied little over the generations. Where it did develop was where sages added details to introduce deeper meaning. The traditions of different people became established and were accepted into the communal understanding of the family, the tribe and eventually nations.

Many of these accounts from the different traditions have survived and they show great similarities. They usually agree on the creation of humanity by divine beings. These were very human-like, but with super powers. They were given characteristics like violence, selfishness, lust, devotion and vulnerability. Whenever we seek to explain something, we will do so in terms with which we are familiar. So the gods of myth were created in our own image. Since these primitive religions were mostly modelled on ourselves, they did little to shed light on why we are here and where happiness lies.

How the Creator reveals himself to us

All of this is a proper subject for scientific consideration. But the power of science to supply answers ends at the frontier of human intuition and belief. Here explanations of our origin and happiness can only be tested by the effects they have over time, and competing religions are judged by their fruits.

At a non-Christian funeral recently, the last song had these words: ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’, but the chorus was a plea to ‘Dear Lord’. It offered no answers, but it expressed the anguished human quest to know the answers to the age-old questions. We Christians definitely believe in an interventionist God. More than that, we believe that God has gradually revealed himself to humanity over the centuries until the fullness of his self-revelation came when his Son, his Word, his full expression of himself, became human as Christ.

Christ then appointed messengers, or apostles whom he had taught and whom he commissioned to hand on the completed revelation that the God who reveals himself in Christ is family, love and goodness, and we are his children.

Where does Adam and Eve come into all this? In the midst of myths about competing gods, there appeared a tale of a good, holy God who made us well in his own image. The pervasive experience of evil was explained by an account of the first human beings choosing to know evil and bringing disaster into the world. The disaster was not to last for ever, but evil would be crushed by an ‘offspring’ of ‘the Woman’. We believe that, in his careful planning, God inspired the sages who elaborated this tradition.

The next big step of his self-revelation was to form a close relationship with one of the ancients whom he gifted with enormous faith. His name was Abraham, and God ensured that Abraham’s family adhered to the story of Adam and Eve.

They did not have our strict method of verifying history and they even saw no contradiction in holding to the two differing accounts of creation in chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis. In the first chapter, God made man and woman on the sixth day after creating all the other plant and animal life on earth. In the second account in chapter 2, he made the man first then created plants and animals to provide him with companionship, but they did not satisfy him. God finally created woman and the man’s happiness was complete. Having two contradictory stories did not bother previous generations, but simply explained different aspects of what God was revealing.

As the family of Abraham developed into the nation of Israel, they learned to write, and gathered their stories into books. These were eventually compiled into the Old Testament as we know it. The process of compilation was completed only a few decades before Jesus was born. The Jews accepted the authority of the compilers. They and we believe that God inspired these compilers to select the writings which contained the truth about him, and to reject those which did not.

Even then, there were two compilations of texts, one in Hebrew by the religious authorities in Jerusalem, the other in Greek by the renowned Jewish school of Alexandria in Egypt which accepted seven more books as inspired by God. This latter version was used by the vast majority of Jews who in fact were living all over the world outside Israel where Greek was the common language, like English is today.

Most people over the centuries took the simple road of accepting the stories at the beginning of the Bible as historical fact, because it was inspired by God, and they had as yet no sense of modern historical criticism. It is only recently, that modern methods have cast doubt on the early stories in the Bible. And that has led the Church in our day to understand that these tales were inspired by God to teach us the fundamentals about our creation and our fall into sin, and not about the exact history whose details are lost in the mist of time.

It is through the meanings hidden within the scriptures that we are enlightened about God and humanity. There we discover not accurate history, but the truths on which we can and must base our certainties about creation, fall and redemption.

Original Innocence

Possibly the most problematic element in these stories for modern people is the teaching that humanity existed in a state of innocence until they sinned by eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge of good and evil. It is hard to imagine such a state when we think in terms of gradual evolution. But it is obvious that there was a point where God breathed into our forebears a soul making them human.

What is fundamentally taught in scripture is that soon after this happened, the newly created human beings used their freedom to know evil as well as good, thereby seizing control of creation instead of submitting to God’s supremacy which was the true path to happiness. Again we believe that this is a fundamental fact revealed by God.

We are not told the historical details of this Fall of mankind into sin, only the veiled account in the third chapter of Genesis. While our own immediate experience is of a world full of evil, it is undeniable that we all harbour a stubborn sense that perfect goodness can exist and that true innocence is possible. This recurring longing for perfection in mankind is not just idle imagination. Genesis 3 clearly teaches that it is our origin, and, in promising that the ‘Offspring’ of the ‘Woman’ [3] would crush the head of the Serpent, it would once more be our destiny (Genesis 5: 15).

(If you wish to read the book A Message For Its Own Time,

click OUR BOOK at the top of this page)

Reflections on DH Lawrence's Poem (1)

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 19:01:45 GMT

D. H Lawrence has a glimmer of gods and Kings. Did not Jesus quote psalm 82:6, which says 'You are gods; you are all children of the Most High'? (John 10: 34)

One night I was reading some poems of D. H. Lawrence. One was entitled “The Gods! The Gods!”. It reads:

People were bathing and posturing themselves on the beach,

and all was dreary, great robot limbs, robot breasts,

robot voices, robot even the gay umbrellas.

But a woman, shy and alone, was washing herself under a tap and the glimmer of the

presence of the gods was like

lilies, and like water-lilies.

The poet is suddenly overwhelmed by the splendour of another person. Sometimes we experience that, but such moments are all too rare in life. But when we enter the eternal dimension of Heaven we will behold each other’s splendour.

In another poem Lawrence is in Sicily and goes to the well to draw water. He sees that a venomous snake is there before him and he watches it. Twice it raises its head and turns an imperious regard to him. He is torn between fascination and the inherited instinct to kill it. He heaves a branch at it and it speeds away. He goes on:

And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,

Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,

Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords

Of life.

Isn’t that true of each person God has made; ‘a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, now due to be crowned again’? Don’t we all hope to hear Jesus speak these words to us: “Come blessed of my Father. Take for your inheritance the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world” (Matthew 25, 34). And shouldn’t we bow down in front of the mystery of the enormous grandeur each of us is being led into?

And pray for those who are on the final growth to glory, the Souls in Purgatory?

Pange Lingua

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 09:15:00 GMT

PANGE LINGUA

In 1264, in response to growing demands, Pope Urban IV instituted the feast of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi. He asked St Thomas Aquinas , one of the greatest thinkers that the Church has ever produced, to compose hymns to be sung on the feast. Today we still wonder at the gift of poetry that he displayed.

Among his hymns was ‘Ecce Panis Angelorum’ and ‘Pange Lingua’ which most of us are familiar with. If you do not know the Pange Lingua, you will probably know its last two verses, the Tantum Ergo, sung at Benediction. On this great feast of Corpus Christi, I take the liberty of offering my own translation of the Pange Lingua.

Oh tongue of mine, sing of the Mystery of the glorious body and precious blood.

This is the price paid to redeem the world.

which the King pours it out upon the peoples from his generous breast,

He was given to us, born to us from the immaculate Virgin.

And, after living in our world and scattering the seed of his word,

he climaxed his dwelling among us in this amazing way.

In that greatest of suppers, celebrating with his friends,

after they had eaten the Passover meal as laid down by the Old Law,

from his own hands he gave himself as food to his twelve companions.

The Word took our flesh; now he turns actual bread into his flesh.

And (wine) is transformed into his actual blood.

If our senses cannot perceive (the great Mystery),

Sincere hearts are assured of it by the light of faith.

Let your eyes gaze with wonder at this holy revelation of God.

The Old Covenant with God is completed by this new intimacy.

Let your faith perceive what your senses can not.

Praise the Father, the Son and the Spirit!

Do it with overflowing joy, and be blessed!

Oh the Richness

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 11:30:00 GMT

OH, THE RICHNESS!!!

If you blink, you could miss some of the treasure poured out into our laps at this time.

First, we are nearing the end of the Easter Season.

Like Christmas, it is all too short. Personally, I am just getting into re-examining the Resurrection of Jesus – it is ending too soon!

In recent years I have found myself concentrating on his passion and death, the central drama of human history, in which he fought and conquered evil. I have found such richness in the acclamation, “We proclaim his death”. I see my valiant and all-loving saviour routing, in his suffering heart, mind and body, the forces which entangle me and my world. What love! What courage! What hope!

But this year it is the resurrection which is stunning me. I have been thinking a lot about the aversion of our modern minds to the whole idea of miracles. Mathematics and science base themselves on strict and unchanging laws in nature. Many philosophers today say that what seems to us to be a miracle will eventually be explained by the discovery of natural forces that we are presently unaware of. They say, if there is a God, he is primarily the law-giver, and therefore he is incapable of changing the laws that he has made. Even among ‘Christians’, there are some who say that one day we will discover the bones of Jesus somewhere in Palestine.

But God is not primarily the law-giver. He is the Father who is the delight of his children. He can never be put into a box of human definition and will always surprise us. Through miraculous glimpses and disciplined formation he is re-forming us into his own likeness. On Easter morning, his Son really revived his own body as it slept in death. He not only came back to life he pulsated with the glorious new life of the new creation. I can’t get to the bottom of that – I need more time!

Second, Pentecost comes quickly.

There was such a supernatural commotion in Jerusalem that thousands of people flocked to the scene. What they saw was some deliriously joyful men celebrating with a big ' C' . The Holy Spirit of God, released into the world at Easter was bringing the Church to life. The Apostles are inspired, there was the miracle of everyone understanding them in their own language, and 3000 were baptised that day.

I feel like spending more time here to think about God’s Spirit forming mankind into Church, bringing about the new creation here and now. I feel we only get time to remember what happened at the first Pentecost, and then are moved quickly on by the liturgy. But isn’t that desire to enter more into Pentecost as it is happening here and now precisely the work of ‘Ordinary Time’? Oh, I hope so.

Third, we move onto Trinity

The diet of the Liturgy seems too rich. God needed 2000 years to reveal to Israel the Mystery of the amazing love life of the three persons who are united as one God. There is no truth more deep or important. How can we just give it a day in the Liturgy?

But that very deepest reality, Trinity, is what every single day is about not just Trinity Sunday. It is where we have come from, where we are now and where we are going. It is the reality in which we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17: 28). Every day is meant to be a new stage in our exploration into the reality of our God-filled existence.

A large part of the Liturgy, the big feasts, is revisiting the events of salvation, and reliving them to receive their message and know afresh the power of God. But an equally large part is just being in God and learning reality under his mighty hand. We do that by letting the Holy Spirit give us encounters with Jesus, who gradually incorporates us into himself and takes us to our Father. That is Trinity life here and now.

Suddenly it’s Corpus Christi

In the last paragraph I said that Jesus ‘incorporates’ us into himself in order to take us to our Father. What a surpassing mystery that he should actually do this physically when we eat his body and drink his blood!

The Eucharist is the daily bread of Christians, the food for the journey. We call our last reception ‘Holy Viaticum’, the Latin for ‘food for the journey’. In that case the journey is from this world to the fully real world of the Trinity, where there will be no more days, only the eternal now, which we cannot even imagine. We only know it is eternal bliss and beautiful complete communion.

The Mass is that point when millions of Christians throughout the world gather as one with all the saints of heaven and are given a foretaste of that glory which is to come. In its strength, we go out to fulfil the next stage of our task of drawing all creation into Jesus’ new life.

Through repetition we learn.

The great feasts we celebrate so closely together at this time, are like the headlines in a newspaper, which we scan, and later return to in order to familiarise ourselves with the details. They highlight in dazzling dramas, the everyday drama of ordinary life in Christ. It says a lot for God’s understanding of us that we spend year after year relearning so that day by day we can live more fully.

Where does evil come from?

Sun, 25 May 2025 09:15:01 GMT

WHERE DOES EVIL COME FROM?

The argument from reason that there is a good God.

One of the great arguments for the existence of God is the way the world is so perfectly designed. Such detail and harmony working in such incredible complexity, could not just have happened on its own. There has to be an amazing mind at work creating it.

This argument will move many people to believe in God and many will seek to know him. Then it is not a matter of reasoning yourself into a conviction that there is a God, but of actually relating to him. The argument is called reason; the relationship is called faith.

The argument from reason that there cannot be a good God.

But reason will often object: ‘then why is there so much violence and evil?’ The only answer we can offer is not one from reason but from faith. Those of us who believe the scriptures know that an event took place soon after the creation of humanity, whereby human beings chose to know evil as well as good. Put simply, our faith teaches us that evil is not God’s doing but our own.

Reason will often argue; ‘even though there are terribly evil human beings, evil is so enormous and so clever, that there must be a mind greater than any human mind behind it’. Our faith informs us that there is indeed a spiritual being so powerful that he is the origin of all evil. He, the Devil, was the one who tempted the first human beings to let in the hideous reality of evil.

The father of lies

The Devil suffers from such enormous self-absorption that he deceives himself into convincing himself that he is like God, and he actually tries to be God. In dreaming that he is absolute goodness, be cuts himself off from the only being who is absolute goodness, and he hates goodness and hates God.

But just as darkness cannot put out even a little candle flame, but must flee before it. He flees from God and concentrates on trying to corrupt God’s beautiful creation where humanity gives glory to God.

He wants to own us

The Devil is incapable of creating anything – only God can do that. His mode of operating is to twist and wound things that are good. He turns loving into lust, zeal into violence and caution into craven fear. Just as a skilful magician distracts us while he performs his tricks, the Devil is the deceiver par excellence.

His object is to lead human beings into hell. That is not primarily a place, but a condition of mind and spirit. The Devil has enormous power to put deceptive thoughts into our minds. When a person gives in to his subtle deceptions he or she violates truth and goodness in themselves. Once that takes hold, he manoeuvres in subtle ways to lead them to consent ever more deeply to their own brokenness. Thus the inner awareness that we are good is eroded until we are filled with such hatred of ourselves that we cannot stand it and direct our hatred outwards at the world and ultimately at God the source of all good. Then, although the person may sustain an attractive persona for a while, they are fundamentally absorbed by evil. That is hell on earth.

Does the Devil really exist?

Despite the manifold evidence of supernaturally organised evil, his favourite deception in our day is to convince us that he does not actually exist. That works for a while in the good times, but leads to us being caught from behind by the mounting experience of evil. He tries to tell us that all evil comes from human sickness and brokenness, which we can’t help. But no human being could really desire and plot the hideous institutionalising of senseless destruction which we hear of daily in the media. It is the Devil who is the great orchestrator.

What is the remedy?

It is simple. The Devil has no power to harm us if we are clothed in Christ. We must concentrate our hearts and mind on Jesus. Like drivers on a darkened road when powerful headlight are approaching, we keep our eyes on the white line at the side of the road which is the true way onwards. The dazzling lights which try to dominate our senses will always pass. They are nothing more than smoke and mirrors. We keep our focus on Jesus, the Lord of abundant life.

There is a difference between denying that there is a Devil and cultivating a habit of ignoring him because we are focused on Christ. If a child has a tantrum because he has decided that he does not like carrots, it is good to ignore his screams and protests and just carry on enjoying tasty carrots until he discovers his strop isn’t working. He will soon give up. The Devil always withdraws in the face of peaceful faith. Jesus never withdraws. He is with us always until time has run its course and all is lifted up into the glory of God.

Saints Peter and Paul

Sun, 11 May 2025 07:45:50 GMT

SAINTS PETER AND PAUL

The Papacy

Just a month ago the world was gripped by the Funeral of one of the greatest popes of all time, Francis, and the rapid procedure of electing his successor, Pope Leo XIV. It all took place on the spot where St Peter was crucified and buried. At the end of this month, we celebrate St Peter along with St Paul, the other great apostle who was beheaded about the same time and is buried nearby.

It is as the successor of St Peter and the teacher of St Paul that the Bishops of Rome base their claim to primacy among all other bishops. Catholics, the majority of Christians, totally believe that, and many of the rest somehow acknowledge it. We know and feel the special charism that the papacy is to the Church – and the world somehow also feels and acknowledges it. Now the latest Pope has been given to us.

His Coat of Arms

Each new pope chooses his coat of arms, which is used officially throughout his reign. Here is a link to the Vatican News article which explains its symbolism.

He Nurtured Lay Faith Guides

Sun, 11 May 2025 05:15:16 GMT

HE NURTURED LAY FAITH GUIDES

Within the life time of many of us a great saint lived on Malta, St George Preca (1880 - 1962).

George was born in Valletta, Malta, growing up not far from the Carmelite Shrine there. At the age of four he nearly drowned in the Grand Harbour, but was rescued by a passing boatman. When his family later told the story, they would joke that he had been rescued from the waters, like Moses. George, recalling that the rescue had happened on the 16th July, feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, attributed his rescue to the protection of the same Lady.

As a young man, George was enrolled in the Carmelite scapular and later joined the Third Order. Attracted to the service of the priesthood, George joined the diocesan seminary and was ordained a priest in 1906, inspired by a personal mission to convert the world.

Early on, Father George (‘Dun Gorg’ in Maltese) noticed the lack of genuine faith education amongst the young people of Malta . Their religion was built around festivals and formalities, with little connection to their interior lives and a truer following of Jesus. His vision for something more and his lived integrity attracted a circle of young men around him who gathered for prayer, discussion and ultimately to work as lay missionaries in parishes and villages around Malta.

His society was known as MUSEUM, which stood for Magister, Utinam Sequatur Evangelium Universus Mundus, or “Master, would that the whole world would follow the Gospel.” A society of laymen who would teach the catechism to the people while receiving instruction themselves was unheard of at the time, and it took twenty-five years and much tension with the Church authorities (including at one point the closure of the Society’s houses) before the Society’s existence was officially approved. It continued its work throughout World War II even in the places where members fled from the violence as refugees.

Dun Gorg continued preaching and writing, drawing on the rich spiritual writings of Carmelites Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, as well as, Elijah and Mary, his models as a Third Order Carmelite. He had a flair for making Carmelite thoughts, teachings and traditions clear and simple for working people. In 1951 Malta celebrated the Seventh Centenary of the Brown Scapular, with Father George at the forefront. In the same year the Carmelite Prior General, Killian Lynch, formally affiliated him to the Carmelite family.

We gain an insight into his spirit when we learn that it was he who composed the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary in 1957. He died in 1962, and was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 3 June 2007, being described as “Malta’s second father in faith” after St Paul. Today the Society has over a thousand members and is responsible for the teaching of some 20,000 young people in the Maltese islands, the UK, Australia, Peru, Albania, Kenya and the Sudan. Dun Gorg’s feast day is the 9th May.

(Acknowledgement to Universalis for this information)

A POPE’S DEATH AND A POPE’S ELECTION – A TIME OF BLAZING LIGHT

Sun, 11 May 2025 05:13:35 GMT

A POPE’S DEATH AND A POPE’S ELECTION – A TIME OF BLAZING LIGHT

Looking at media coverage of Pope Francis’s funeral and the election of Pope Leo.

The worldwide interest in the event in Rome in recent weeks has been astounding. Even our British BBC and SKY have had nearly 24-hour coverage. The main-stream papers have been full of it as well. That seems to me to be in sharp contrast to their default position of ignoring everything Catholic. It is as though being forced to take note of Francis’ death, they were suddenly drawn into a drama so stunning they could not ignore it.

The more they publicised tributes to Francis, the more they were mesmerised by the Jesus shining out of the man, even though they may not be able to use those words. Being used to dismissing Catholic witness to Jesus as “absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent”, preferring “other securities like technology, money, success power and pleasure” (quotes from Pope Leo’s first sermon), they were suddenly confronted by the vibrancy of the Church they had ignored with prejudice. They did not know it was Jesus shining through his people, but they were gob-smacked to witness a life-force which lit up a broken world rather than cast darknes. After that, they could not resist publicising it.

The whole beauty of the setting - St Peters, its square, the sunshine, the many thousands of people there every day, the number of motivated people of all ages and nations, even the ancient ritual of black and white smoke were compulsive watching and publicising. The ceremonies in which elderly cardinals were wrapped in deep prayer exploring the God dimension before the eyes of the world, challenged the flat, uninspiring and drab world view they usually portray. To the surprise of the many, the firm trust that God is near and active among us was on full view.

And there was wonder, which is the godmother of faith, at the seeming miracle of President Trump and President Zalinskyy reconciling in the immense splendour of St Peter's Basilica.

The media’s mixed treatment

There was a unusual exposure given to Catholic leaders and commentators, and much of their talk was shot through with genuine decency, restraint and cheerful faith. These were no crack-pots or weIrdos, but a refreshing change from the prophets of doom and the polarised commentators we get day after day. Without knowing it, they were putting on display “communion”, the Spirit’s gift which draws over a billion human beings into unity. What a contrast to the usual sensationalising of conflict!

But they could not resist their need to accentuate opposing views in the Church which most of us are only mildly aware of, as though they were the main issues facing the Catholic Church. There was this tiresome talk of conservatives and liberals, traditionalist and progressives from the talking-heads. Yet when they went among the people in the square, they found joy and evident good-will. This was remarkably present even among the tears of Francis’ passing and funeral.

It should not surprise us that they came with their controversy hats on. They know no better, but how tedious it was! The issue facing the Catholic Church is the same as always: how to be faithful friends and followers of Jesus. Not what political wing we may identify with, but how to be holy individuals and loving as a communion, so that the world meets Jesus and turns to him, who alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Straws in the wind

On this website we seek to enhance Catholic Hope by stressing that God is preparing a new and glorious age of Christianity here in the West. It is in the West that our modern wonderful advances have been produced. Now, here God wants to produce a development of the human heart which more fully lets Jesus inspire us to use these abundant gifts for the good of all.

Here, we frequently offer evidence of this new age dawning. Surely the witnesses to Jesus given over the past few weeks in Rome and around the world are signs of God’s urgent activity.

France 2025

Another straw in the wind is the remarkable news that 10,384 adults and 7400 teenager s were received into the Church in France this Easter. There has been a 160% increase over the past decade. Read about it in this article from the American Catholic News Agency. ( link below)

Walking beside others

Sun, 04 May 2025 15:25:59 GMT

I wonder how many people you know watched some of the funeral of Pope Francis. I wonder how many were touched by his ability to empathise with everyone he met. It has been said that the Catholic Church is dying yet it is estimated 4000,00 people were in St Peter’s square for his Requiem Mass or lined the streets for his final funeral journey. Over 250 thousand people from all over the world queued for hours throughout the day or night to pay their last respects to a man that many had never met but somehow, they had encountered and been affected by him. Many hundreds of youth were present for the Jubilee of Youth and they stayed because they wanted to show their respect to a great man, Pope Francis. On the Saturday evening people gathered outside the Basilica of St. Mary Maggiore, the church of his final resting place. They hung around for a longtime as they wanted to be part of the recitation of the rosary but it was as though they could not bring themselves to leave. They wanted to be close to him.

The media revelled in the idea that just before the funeral Mass was to begin, the meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky was engineered by the late Pope Francis bringing the possibility of peace closer. This maybe true, but it definitely shows people are looking for spiritual intervention in this world.

People are fascinated and touched by the ability Pope Francis had to make them feel accepted whatever their faith situation. He was someone very special. Yet all he did was live out the Gospel values as we are asked to do. Yes, he was unusual as he was in charge of the faith practised by billions of people and he put his own stamp on the role of the pontiff. It was a more relaxed, welcoming, loving pontiff that we saw, who was very much in charge but who had time for everyone. At the same time, he was himself, George Bergoglio – the caring sympathetic personable man who everyone could identify with.

Is this how we live out our faith? The last command of Jesus in Mathew 28:19 was ‘Go out and make disciples, baptise in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and teach them all I have taught you.’ We need to look deeper into how to do this or maybe how to do this better.

When we accompany people in the faith, we walk beside them and help them to encounter the faith or return to the faith. We can do simple things in our everyday life such as at the end of a conversation say ‘God bless’. I try to do this when I am speaking on the phone trying to solve utility difficulties or talking to someone at the bank – they are often taken aback and say thankyou which shows they are not just shaken by it, but they appreciate it. Sometimes they shakily reply ’oh yes and to you too’. When responding to a question from a hairdresser about what I do, I spoke about working for the Church and having a ministry helping adults to know their faith better. I then discovered she was a catholic and now always wants to talk about the Church. She probably cannot do this with any other client.

We should not let our British reserve, or shyness prevent us from speaking about God. Sometimes we feel blocked by a lack of confidence in our knowledge of the faith. Are we happy just to stay in this rut or is there something we can do to help our faith knowledge increase? Is there someone you could speak to about this or any kind of reading you can do to help your faith foundation increase? We need to be aware that we need to grow deeper in knowing our faith with our heart, not just with our head. Anyone can read and just quote others, but the attraction to the faith and conversion of the heart are sparked by the passion seen in someone who believes and speaks from the heart.

When someone turns up at Mass, they may be returning to the church after being away for a while or maybe they are a new comer. The last thing they need is an interrogation, but a simple ‘hello’, ‘how are you’, ‘great to see you’, at the church door to welcome them is much better and less oppressive. Once we have repeated this exercise for a while, maybe we could offer to sit with them in church. Many non-regular attenders who arrive at the church door are hesitant and do not need to be bombarded, they are often anxious and unsure of themselves and may feel too much is expected of them too soon. They often feel lost as they do not know or cannot remember the responses in Mass, but with someone standing beside them guiding them often helps them to relax.

In today’s world where faith is not valued, we British are not only reluctant to share our faith with others, we are also reluctant to share the fact that we are on a journey constantly seeking to know more because it looks as if we do not know our faith well enough. On a recent trip to Spain several people from the church went for a coffee in a local coffee shop and all the talk was about things connected to the faith. This is partly because they come from a culture of faith, it is embedded in their DNA. Do we do this when we go for coffee after Mass or is our conversation about anything and everything except our relationship with Jesus and the Church? We often find this depth of faith in immigrants who come to our parishes. Many British, although they do their best, do not have a faith at such a depth that it penetrates all their being and everything their family does.

Is there a way to make a breakthrough to enable sharing about Jesus, and our faith to be the norm in the groups we are part of. Recently one of the members of a group spoke about a relative being a sister in the church and the others in the group were fascinated. Questions were raised by this, such as ‘What made her want to do this?’ ‘How could she give up a family?’ But also, people were incredibly impressed and touched by the fact that this young woman could give up everything for God. This was a chance to speak about the importance of God in our life.

People are seeking and want to know about this loving God but they are afraid to ask in case they are ridiculed, so we need to make the openings to enable them to ask questions. We need to remember to trust the Holy Spirit as he will give us the words we need to speak to the heart of others. No-one said it was easy but let us have confidence in God- He will provide all we need.

We need to initiate others in the art of accompaniment within their own circles, including in their families. How many parents avoid the subject of religion with grown up sons and daughters in fear that an argument will follow and they will distance themselves from you. We need to pray, speak and trust that God will provide the opportunities to share our faith. He will provide the words we need to speak and open the ears of those we speak to. We cannot do this alone We need him.

We cannot hide the fact that there are times when we will be attacked for what we say, we will be mocked and may sometimes feel a failure. However, we have a responsibility to spread the faith which includes laying down the seeds of truth. Then the Holy Spirit will develop the seed you planted within others, but you need to give him room to work within them. This is when prayer is so important, we plant the seed and step back and pray as the Holy Spirit moves in for his part in the process. The more we share, the more our confidence grows. The more we know our own faith, the more we can accompany others with a growing confidence. Pray for the Holy Spirit to lead you to situations in which to share your faith and ask him to give you the words others need to hear.

Rest in Peace Pope Francis

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 13:20:47 GMT

STRAWS IN THE WIND 1

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 14:26:16 GMT

STRAWS IN THE WIND

God is preparing a greater age of Christianity, which will bless the earth.

He has made us weaker to make way for a clear display of his own strength and grace.

He himself is calling people to seek Jesus, and

his Spiritual Body, his Church. This is the season of Hope!

STRAWS IN THE WIND is a corner of our website which highlights signs of hope

in the world today.

Here are three.

Christian podcasts are surging in popularity

– 2025 could prove their breakout year.

by Thomas Casemore ,

This is part of an article appeared in the Catholic Herald 17 January 2025 pm

In this article Thomas Casemore says: That Christian podcasts are attracting more and more attention nowadays, especially among young men.

At the same time, the aggressive atheism of recent years is becoming more nuanced. They are beginning to see the differences between Christianity and Islam. As their over-simple world-view is failing to help people find meaning in life, fewer atheists are being as strident in their criticism of Catholicism. They are beginning to feel challenged intellectually.

It is a very interesting read, please click LINK HERE and it will take you to the article.

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Pope Francis shares a message for Christian communicators

by Ariane Sroubek.

This article appeared on the website, Where Peter is 27 January 2025

Pope Francis explains that Christian communicators have obligations which include creating content that kindles hope by rejecting fearmongering, hatred, oversimplification, untruths and the weaponization of language. The work that communicators do must heal and nurture human relationships.

If you would like to read this article click on LINK HERE and it will take you straight to it.

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Young people with no connection to church are coming anyway.

It’s called ‘contactless curiosity’ By Dave Kemp

This article appeared on the Premier Christianity website, 31 January 2025

In the middle of October last year, a teenage girl went home and told her mum she wanted to find out more about Jesus. This girl’s family had no church background, so they asked for advice from someone they knew to be a Christian. This person pointed them in the direction of our church; they went on the website and got in touch.

This girl, who had no experience of church, ended up coming to our Tuesday night small group and brought a friend. The next week, the friend brought her sister. All three girls are now regularly attendees.

Contactless curiosity

I recently shared this story at a youth leaders meeting, and discovered I’m not the only person to have observed what could be an intriguing new trend.

In the past ten years, young people would only end up in our church because of some kind of relational link or invitation. Perhaps a Christian friend or family member had invited them, or they’d connected with a church outreach programme. We’d never known one, let alone three, young people connect with our church without an invitation. To my surprise, of the six groups represented on our table at this youth leaders meeting, three reported seeing the same thing in recent months - also not having seen it before.

We were from different denominations across Wales and England, yet were seeing the same sort of encounter which, for the sake of brevity on our sheet of paper, we dubbed ‘contactless curiosity’.

God and Gen Z

I’ve done enough statistical analysis to know that three anecdotal stories does not equal a definitive trend. But I also don’t think our experiences should be ignored. God is stirring the hearts of the young people of this nation. Covid-19 revealed a lot of institutions to be less solid than they seemed, and I have seen one key question growing in the younger generations over the last few years: “Is anything permanent?”

This question is, inevitably, leading a good number to explore faith. To wonder about the bigger questions. Young people have never been ignorant of, or uninterested in, these things. In fact, they have the most curious minds of any group I’ve pastored.

But the question is: How do we respond to it?

07/02/2025

Straws in the Wind 2

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 16:47:03 GMT

STRAWS IN THE WIND 2

God is preparing a greater age of Christianity, which will bless the earth. He has made us weaker to make way for a clear display of his own strength and grace. He himself is calling people to seek Jesus and his spiritual body, the Church. This is a corner of our website which highlights signs of hope in the world today.

Here are two

RESURGENCE OF THE Catholic FAITH

There has been a lot attention given to a recent survey of people’s attitudes to Christianity.

It was commissioned by the Bible Society, and carried out by the independent pollsters YouGov. It threw up some encouraging facts. Most outstanding is that there is an increase of young adults seeking to join the Church. The proportion of young men attending Church has risen from 4% to 21% since 2018.

Here is a link to an article about the survey. It was by Catherine Pepinster in the Telegraph on 14 ^th of April, entitled:

The extraordinary resurgence of the Catholic faith in Britain.

( please click on the title of the article)

ATHEIST FEMINIST JOINS THE Catholic Church

The powerful attacks on faith by militant atheists in recent years has had an enormous effect on how people think in Britain. Denying the existence of God has become popular and trendy. That dismayed us because it was so new and forceful.

But there are signs that its momentum is decreasing rapidly as people feel its depressing and impoverishing effects. Basically it proclaims that there is no meaning in life, or, as Richard Dawkins put it, we are just the product of random genes which need to reproduce themselves.

There is now a trend in the opposite direction. Here is a link to a YouTube video of a “conversation with Ayaan Hirsi Ali ( please click on the name) a prominent atheist feminist about her recent journey into the Church. It is an hour and a half long, but well worth viewing.

EASTER -The Enterprise is Exploration into God

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 09:57:09 GMT

His people

On Easter night, he entered the upper room to the amazement of his people, and breathed the Holy Spirit upon them. With that breath the renewal of creation began. For centuries God had been preparing for this renewal through his deepening relationship with his chosen people, Israel.

Long ago, he took a tribe of slaves out of oppression in Egypt. Then he led them through the desert for 40 years in which these wild spirits gradually made covenant with him, because they saw his mighty deeds. It was his right hand alone that brought them victories. Remember how Joshua and Hur held up Moses’ arms in prayer to bring them victory over the Amalekites? The walls of Jericho tumbled down as they processed around them praising him. He led them to conquer city after city, becoming skilful warriors. But it was by God’s “right hand and arm” that they gained victories “because he loved them”. (Psalm 44). That was an amazing time.

Then they settled and cultivated the land, became farmers and gradually their civilization grew, they started recording their history in books. But it was also a long period of centuries in which he stopped feeding them like babies – they had to grow up. They struggled to stop inventing their own religion, and slowly learned to deal with the real God in the way he demanded. All their worst vices came out and they had terrible times of crisis, but after two thousand years, there were enough of them ready to receive the Messiah. Jesus, the Son of God became flesh.

After Jesus had ascended to Heaven, they assumed their new name “Christians”. It was time to bring all people into Israel. He stunned them with spiritual victories as they converted the Roman Empire and assimilated the wisdom of many cultures especially the Greeks.

As they continued their journey of converting new peoples throughout the world, holiness flourished alongside depravity, all the worst vices came out and they struggled each in their day with evils within themselves.

A great Christian culture developed. Its fruits were: human rights, university learning, universal education, the founding of hospitals, science and democracy to name a few. But that too was a preparation stage from which the next development is to take place. God’s renewal of creation is progressive not static.

What is the next development in God’s plan? In a prophetic poem, Christopher Fry writes:

Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.

Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise is exploration into God.
Where are you making for? It takes
So many thousand years to wake… (The Sleep of Prisoners)

Our own day and age.

God is leading us into a new age. He has enabled an explosion of development in the sciences, which can be used for wonderful human development or for destruction. Real development will only come if humanity manages to grow up. We have to face the depravity and brokenness of the human heart. Like Israel claiming the Promised Land, we will only achieve maturity through the "right hand and arm" of him who loves us.

And he has been busy preparing his people for the new age of grace. In the West, the cradle of Christianity, he is changing his Church. From being the powerful formers of culture, he has made us weak almost to the point of irrelevance. This was so that we would radically depend on "his right hand and arm", not on our selves, which is always a temptation when times are going your way.

We are diminished in size, but growing in holiness. We are now to come before him to intercede, and believe that the walls of mankind's inner Jerichos will fall. "Affairs are now soul size". He is calling us to recognise our royal priesthood which requires us to intercede more profoundly. That means a greater life of prayer - the "exploration into God".

God’s donkeys

In making us more humble he is enabling us to be better agents of his will wherever and however he shows it to us. This will usually takes the form of fulfilling humble tasks. It is in these that we will be refined and grow into agents of refining humankind like gold.

Our King comes riding on a donkey. Not a pretty animal, stubborn, sounding like a fog-horn, designed to pull and carry heavy loads. No one writes songs about donkeys. But there is a cross marked on its back, and for millennia it has carried our aged, infirm, pregnant mothers and precious children. It is the humble servant of the King.

And how humble our King is! We are his donkeys today, bringing him to a hungry world through offering him all our works and prayers, the “spiritual sacrifices” St Peter spoke of (1 Peter 2:5).

We must never underestimate the immense power of this prayer of intercession. When we open ourselves to God in prayer, we journey into his mysterious, ineffable being. Our understanding fails to grasp him, but a knowing grows in our hearts. That knowing is that undefinable activity called love, and love will never be satisfied until everything is bonded finally with God, and all creation is renewed.

The Holy Spirit is the hidden agent in the Trinity, the catalyst and choreographer of this love which fills the universe. He is bringing the universe into the wholeness and holiness of the Trinity. We are his chosen collaborators. The name of this God-charged phenomenon is Church.

Through his Church, God is gathering all creation into communion

As people today rightly claim their freedom to take responsibility like adults, traditional communities have become fractured and new so-called ‘communities’ are springing up in social media. They are virtual and far from virtuous, lacking the richness of physical touch. But the fracturing of communities founded on flesh and blood is preparation for the emergence of 'communion', which is how the Holy Spirit transforms human communities.

As our hearts grow in the prayer of loving our Father, love and responsibility for others become more active and spreads, and the world itself is gradually changed. This is the dynamic we have to understand. There is a great difference between natural human communities and the communion which is the fruit of the Spirit.

At Easter his people first met the risen Lord and they remembered how he told Martha “I am the Resurrection and the Life”? He didn't say "I am risen", but "I am resurrection". It is not just Jesus who rose two thousand years ago, it is us along with all creation that are in the process of rising from the dead with him. It is the death of selfishness and disharmony.

He is “The Life” and is among us. Through Church, humanity is increasingly being drawn into that life. Expect greater penetration of the Holy Spirit who generates harmony.

The Beautiful Church

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 13:54:57 GMT

THE BEAUTIFUL CHURCH

Our Lent Zoom Course has turned into a series of sharings about the deep treasures of our faith. As it proceeds, I am realising that we were a microcosm of the Church. We are very different people with years of their own experiences behind them. Yet, as others talked, we each recognised our own experience and hopes and graces and frustrations.

Was that just a straw poll of individual Church-going Catholics or was it the phenomenon of a master hand at work in all of us? It was the Holy Spirit working in different ways in each one of us, but producing a symphony of outcome which displays his unifying energy working in each of us.

What we call Church is the functioning of a coordinated master plan, which is in fact all around us. It is the flow of God’s Spirit in human hearts and persons which is really a gigantic river moving through human history, and gradually drawing all people into itself.

The second body of Christ

After the crucifixion, Jesus went in his glorified physical body into heaven only to return through the Holy Spirit who is forming this new Mystical Body for him just as he formed his physical body in the womb of Mary.

We need to revise all the notions we have of what the Church is, and start to appreciate the breadth of this God-guided phenomenon which is gradually enveloping humanity. Only after that can we reassess what we have been taught about the Church. The true picture of the Church only comes into focus when we have gained a notion and sense of this vast current, working through human history to renew mankind. God is gathering into the life of the Trinity, the children of Adam and Eve. The meaning of the original Greek word for Church, “ekklesia”, is “the gathering”.

The functioning of this entity, Church, is entirely personal. It really is Jesus in his new body reclaiming us through a process of gradually drawing all humanity into communion, nurtured and cherished by the Holy Spirit. And wherever the Spirit forms Christ, Mary is his partner.

The process isn’t finished. We are deluded if we expect it to be. Look how God worked through centuries with Israel. He is working gradually, forming the new Israel, the Church. Our impatient aspirations can blind us to the reality. Are we shrinking in the West? No, we are being reorganised by God in preparation for the next stage which he has planned. Do you think this phenomenon of Church is static? No it is developing. Have we got a handle on where the Church is now being taken by God? No, we will have that when we are deep in the stages which will follow this emerging era, when people will be writing their history books.

This is about hope and a firm belief that when the Father sent his Son, he absolutely well knew what he was doing. And if we aren’t told the whole plan, that’s our look-out. We aren’t meant to see it all, but to walk by faith, which Adam and Eve never did.

We can get stuck on the Church hierarchy which developed organically under the guidance of the Spirit But far more important is the Mystical Body functioning in millions of brothers and sisters all over the world, not the visible representations of the phenomenon. The Pope, bishops, priest and nuns are important, but to focus mainly on them and Church organisation is wrong. Focus on Jesus and on all the evidence of God’s unerring determination, and on what we know of how he worked in the past, and you will get a sense of how he is active now.

You are a Royal Priest

These words of St Peter's words (1 Peter 2: 29) remind us that a serious obligation has been placed on each of us by God. The next article will explore how that works. it is entitled The Church that Moves Mountains.

The Accuser of the Brethren

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 21:29:40 GMT

Accuser of the Brethren

Questions:

Am I OK?

Am I worth anything?

Do I have a valid future?

All these are questions we ask, and we don’t have the answers. So we run away from them to get lost in distractions, and/or we make ourselves into a superficial personality that pretends to be OK.

Still, underneath it all there is the doubt and the nagging lack of a sense of worth.

Another favourite strategy we have is when we try to adopt a worldview which seems to makes sense, and give us some protection about the sheer problem of not knowing. But, today, as we watch and follow media of various sorts, we are often presented with distorted worldviews and dystopia. In fact much of today’s culture is dystopian and weird. This undermines the world views which we have constructed, and we are easily made to feel uneasy.

Added to that there are the real memories of things that have gone wrong or we have done wrong in our lives. It is so easy to fall into negative thoughts.

Answer

On the cross it was precisely into this region of powerful negative self-obsession that Jesus entered. He drew it all into himself, and challenged the “prince of this world” in the very heart of his power, where he undermines mankind with accusations and criticism. He was not expecting a human being to voluntarily draw into himself all the guilt and brokenness.

Normally, it is Satan who whispers into people's minds a vile concoction of negativity and personal faults. And he influences their physical surroundings to weaken their minds. He is used to them curling up under the torrent until they despair.

He expects that, ultimately, everyone will break under the sheer weight of despair. But Jesus voluntarily took it all in, and clung to his Father in the hope and belief that his Father could heal it

all and forgive it all. The weight of it was almost intolerable, even causing him to feel deserted by his Father for a while. But as each incident of sin was held up to the Father in trust, its power was broken under the cascade of the Father's sheer loving mercy. He has the power to put every single one of them right.

More than the physical torture he endured, it was in his mind, heart and soul that Jesus had his greatest agony, as he experienced and owned the totality of human sin. It is no wonder that he sweated blood in the garden and longed for someone to stay awake with him, but the full hell of evil gathered around him made the apostles sleep "from sheer grief" (Luke 22:45).

All the physical torture Jesus suffered up to his horrible death was influenced by Satan to weaken Jesus' mind and heart and soul so that he was too far gone to hope. But the “prince of this world” lacked the strength to break Jesus’ resolve to remain open to the Father’s merciful love. It was when the "father of lies", the prince of darkness and negativeness was exhausted that Jesus proclaimed "It is accomplished" and went to the Father with all of us little brothers and sisters. He led us home.

Revelations 12:10 proclaims: “Now the persecutor, who accused our brothers day and night before our God, has been brought down” . Now there is no reason to ask what our worth is or our future. Negative self-condemnation melts before the image of the Crucified Christ. Our worth is his precious blood generously outpoured.

Our self-image is now being transformed into the image of the risen Lord who walked through the closed door of the Upper Room to breathe onto the bewildered disciples the life of the Spirit. All accusations have been counteracted, here is only the Son’s urgency for us to join him in the family of his Father.

Lent- Renewing the Search for the Kingdom

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 11:07:35 GMT

Lent - Renewing the Search for the Kingdom.

Why is there this endless

carrying of the cross?

Why setback after setback?

Why do we keep on going?

Because Christ Jesus our Lord calls us to follow him towards unutterable realms of glory. The plans of his heart are for our good not disaster. All things work for the good for those who love Christ – even the pain.

That is the message of a long poem G. K. Chesterton wrote called “ The Ballad of the White Horse” . There is a white horse carved out of the chalk hillside ages ago in western England, which is where the poem is set.

It is middle of the ninth century, and Saxon England has been invaded by strong Viking armies who ravage the country and subject it. At the lowest point, the king of the western Saxons, Alfred of Wessex is defeated and held prisoner at the Viking headquarters.

One night Alfred is present at a gathering of the Viking king Guthrun with his warrior chieftains. They are deep in drink telling the old tales and singing their saga songs. They are singing of the world of the old Norse gods, where Vikings find their sense of what this life is all about. Each in turn takes up the harp to chant his deepest convictions.

A young warrior hero sings of Balder the beautiful, the ideal God who is murdered too young. He sings of the intensity of beauty and how easily it is crushed, leaving a lingering sense of tragedy. What a mysterious sadness is in all high hopes.

A senior gnarled warrior chief sings of the fading of all beauty and the perversity of life. While we sing and imagine gods like ourselves, there are evil gods behind the gods who wish us no good. All that can make him feel alive is to rage against destruction.

Guthrun the great king, takes up the harp. He is more philosophical. He sings of the calm that comes from accepting how things go round in circles. We sit where our fathers sat, and so it will always be. For him the only exultation is in battle when for a moment a man throw off all restraint and deals out death. Then he is most fully alive. The depression which follows victory is a price worth paying.

The harp falls from Guthrun’s hand and they all fall mute as they ponder the hopeless complexity of life. It is the mellow time when drink and feasting loses their attraction.

Alfred the Christian prisoner takes up the harp and sings a powerful song.

You Vikings are full of bruit strength. You fall upon things and devour them, and you move on to the next. Never satisfied, set on endless adventure, but really you are running away from something.

You mock us Christian men because we are meek and monkish, and seem easy prey to your armies, but “you are more tired of victory than we are tired of shame. Though you hunt the Christian man like hare on the hillside, the hare has still more heart to run than you have heart to ride”. Though you seem invincible, “we have more lust to lose again than you to win again. Therefore your end is on you, on you and your kings, because it is only Christian men guard even heathen things”.

The Vikings have attacked monasteries and destroyed them seeing no need for prayer and learning. Yet it is those very monks who will preserve for us the stories and history of these Vikings who obliterate the stories of the people they conquer. Christians value knowledge and the expansion of knowledge, not its restriction. There are always more questions to ask for the believer, who desires to know more of the secrets of creation, because he/she thirsts to discover the footprints of the Creator.

Eventually, other Saxons who have ignored Alfred at first, will appreciate his quality and rally to him. He will win victories and eventually arrange a peace settlement with Guthrun who will become Christian and withdraw to the east. Secure in the west, Alfred will enact good laws and encourage learning, and the English nation will begin to take shape. From Alfred's Lent, the English nation was born. For Christians Lent is about reinforcing the hope of Easter.

Only those who believe there is a good plan for the renewal of creation can endure the whippings of adversity right through to the end. As they struggle on, holding hard to the hand of our Saviour, the supreme confidence of God takes root in their hearts. Instead of dying out, hope develops. Christ’s living water of hope carries us through all adversity. Did he not teach that the meek inherit the earth?

Today, we ourselves are not so far from Alfred’s struggle. A host of scientists full of the pride of knowledge, along with some ‘logical’ intellectuals have fallen on Christian culture and tried to suppress all things spiritual. Convinced that they will discover the answers to how things work, they have no answer to the question of where things came from, and are even more mute on where all things are going. Their followers embrace the cold courage of stoicism or, more frequently, fall into the barrenness of enjoying things while you are still alive. Their appeal is already waning as the people they once dazzled begin to huger for meaning. Their “end is on them and their kings”. It is only Christians who guard even heathen things.

When the history and triumphs of today's scientific revolution is written, it will be written by Christians, because it can never be seen in a wholesome way separate from the spiritual realm.

Turning the tide of the pagan culture which is trying to dominate us puts great strain upon believers. Chesterton says of Christian monks that though, they “go clothed in snow and ice”, there burns the “fire of faith within”. And that it is “better to fast for joy than feast for misery”. I hope your lent is a “fast for joy”. It will be, if you see all that you endure as being included in the process of the resurrection of humanity.

We fast and endure so that we can have, like St Paul, the “supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus, and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3: 8-10), and also because we want to be prepared to “do what I can to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church.” (Colossians 1: 25). We know that, through his people, Christ is working his resurrection into the whole fabric of creation. It is hidden but inexorable – it is “the reason for your hope” (1 Peter 3:15).

Lent is all about resurrection.

The Man who Turned Upside Down

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 09:24:44 GMT

RIGHT SIDE UP, REALLY

He would think of himself as working class, even though he was a skilled man, a builder/joiner. He was building up his business slowly. He lived in town in the back of beyond. He was descended from kings. Now none of his family were important, but he must have had a sense of worth since the blood of heroic ancestors coursed in his veins.

He did good and avoided evil. What you saw was what you got. He had integrity.

He was a fortunate man because he was engaged to the most wonderful woman. But he was a sensible man who realised that she was really out of his league. There was something about her which took his breath away. He knew that you can feel all sorts of wonderful things when you are in love, but this was something else. She genuinely was awesome.

Then she tells him that she is pregnant with God’s child. We are told that he was afraid, and decided to break off the engagement quietly. If he spoke out publicly, according to the laws of that time, she would be stoned, or certainly ostracised. But he wasn’t afraid to be touched by the scandal, he was afraid because he almost believed her, and knew that he could never do justice to such a task as being her husband. Then the angel came to him at night and gave him the Lord’s command: “marry her”. All his life he had prayed and attempted to do whatever God called him to do. This was very explicit, so he did it.

Nobody really knows the intimate details of a marriage. But we know that they never had sex before the birth of the child, and it has gradually been revealed by the Spirit that they always remained celibate. He honoured her vow of virginity by which she had dedicated her whole being to God. In consequence there existed a heightened love between them which was a meeting of souls. She taught him so much. And the child was amazing with a capital A.

The circumstances of the birth were crazy, except if you were convinced that it was all being directed by God. A week-long journey with a heavily pregnant wife ended up in a cattle shed, where she gave birth. But he realised that this was the city of David his ancestor where it was prophesied that the Messiah would be born, and he was to name the child, and thus entitle him to be a "Son of David".

They were away from home, in very poor circumstances, but shepherds turned up to welcome the child because they had been sent by an army of beautiful angels they had seen in the skies. Eminent dignitaries came telling of their long journey seeking the new-born King, and did the baby homage, and he found himself able to converse with them as an equal, as he had with the shepherds. He asked himself how he got that assurance, until he saw the obvious answer. He was being blessed and guided.

The angels were certainly busy. Another one came and told them to get up and escape into Egypt, because the dreadful tyrant Herod was sending soldiers to kill the child. Later he learned that this happened, and that all the town’s infant boys had been wiped out.

In Egypt they lived the lives of refugees. He took whatever work he could to make ends meet. It was degrading, but only the same as has been experienced by refugees in every age. Yet their love and confidence in God only grew. Then Herod died and another angel directed them back home to Nazareth, and life seemed to return to normal.

The only other thing we hear of him is his sense of panic when he thought he had lost the child for three days in Jerusalem. That was just another instance of his human weakness playing up, and he was blessed with the reminder that this was God’s child.

We do not know much more about their family life, except that it did not draw attention to itself at the time. But since then we have come to understand that there burned within that house an extraordinary married love, and the presence of God. They made yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but really they were bringing to God’s Temple its replacement.

Secular historians may make of this man what they will, but those who listen to the Holy Spirit know that, despite his humble circumstances, here was a greater man than David. You don’t have to be a celebrated conqueror or extraordinary musician poet to be truly great. You have to tremble like the leaf in response to the breezes of God. He was a Graduate with Honours of the greatest school, with Jesus and Mary. Now the Church recognises him as the Protector of the Church.

I have heard several stories of nuns who ran orphanages which had run out of food for the children. When they turned St. Joseph’s statue to the wall because he wasn’t helping, they always found it worked.

Patron of the Universal Church

– what a man!

Euthanasia in Britain

Sat, 08 Mar 2025 14:47:25 GMT

Euthanasia in Britain

Dreadful thoughts

I was praying this morning as is my routine. Into my thoughts came a matter that I have tried to avoid thinking about because it fills me with such horror. I can see euthanasia approaching in this country. The clouds are darkening and a storm of evil is approaching. I worry and feel helpless.

There will be poor souls who choose to die before their time because they hate to be a burden. There will be evil souls who manipulate their relatives to take their own lives in order to gain their wealth. There will be deluded souls who glory in “putting people out of their misery”. Gradually, as this country follows countries who have made this choice, there will be children killed because they have some deficiency or are in trauma. Healing will be replaced by extermination, no matter how well it masquerades as compassion. All of these things will happen and the blood of the innocent will flow.

What am I to do? I am nothing, powerless. My prayer today began with these negative thoughts.

Remedy

I continue praying. He who has come into this world, the Lord Jesus, tells me to come in prayer with him to the Father. I am standing within the Trinity. The world is small and utterly incapable of resisting for long the divine will. He tells me that this Trinity is my true home. I am to worship our Father and learn the peace that all is still in his hands. There will come the day when people see the folly of all of this. The realisation will gradually dawn and these evil laws will be repealed.

What will make the difference? The growth of the kingdom, the growing willingness of people to make their home in the Trinity, and join in the transforming prayer of contemplation. It is none other than gradually letting the knowing of God our Father fill their hearts and minds. As they grow in loving union with him, their persons become increasingly enlightened, and light spreads in real but hidden ways into the hearts of others. That is the dynamic of intercessory prayer.

Such prayer reveals the inalienable plan of God to gather mankind into his Trinity of love. Increasingly, we become aware of the confidence of God that this is already accomplished in heaven and the victory of truth and life are busily developing here on earth, even though darkness is gathering over the country at this moment.

Elijah’s crisis

In a time when idolatry dominated Israel, Elijah summoned the priests of the idol Baal to a sacrifice competition in front of all the people. If their God consumed by fire the victim they offered, it would prove that he was real. Of course, that did not happen, but the God of Israel consumed the sacrifice of Elijah by fire. He demonstrated in the most dramatic gesture that the God of Israel is real. All the prophets of Baal were slaughtered. Yet the pagan Queen Jezebel struck back violently murdering all Elijah's fellow prophets.

He flees into the desert and gives up. It is all too much. But food is given him which enables him to make the long journey to the Mountain of God.

The journey, though physical, is really an entering into the depth of his own soul where he longs to find the strength of God blazing like fire, unleashed like the earthquake and irresistible like the howling storm. But instead he finds the “small voice” which emerges in the stillness of contemplation and lifts the corner of the veil covering the future to prove that thing will change.

A new beginning is starting. He is to carry on step by step, faithfully following the path that God has set for him. It is in his perseverance in faith that the deepest battle is being won. God has made provision for the next stage of the kingdom to emerge, and Elijah’s faithfulness has aided that.

Of course we have to do all that is in our power to right the wrong of Euthanasia, but if we neglect contemplative intercession, we will have seriously underperformed.

Our Diocesan Synod takes another step

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 14:14:11 GMT

We have just had a Synod in our Diocese

Our synod has been a 2 year process with many thousands of people involved. Now the principle resolutions have been discerned and are being arranged into an order of priority. Throughout, there has been an attempt to follow the Synodal method of Pope Francis - respectful listening, prayerful reflection on what is said, and seeking to discern where the Holy Spirit is directing us.

These are our reflections which we offer respectfully, knowing others will see things differently.

The Synodal Method

An existential foundation has been laid. The Synodal method is beginning to operate in the diocese as it is in the Church at large. It is still a tender shoot. It is to be hoped that its adoption develops traction. The biggest obstacle to that process will be human pride, also haste to get things done.

Personal development

There seems to be much talk of what the diocese should do, what the parish should do, and what the Church should do, but very little sense of what I should do . This Sunday’s Gospel advises “Take the log out of you own eye first”. That calls us to be more mature Catholics. But how can you be that without the help of Christ and his Church?

The need for personal development is unanimously called for. But it will remain a noble aspiration if this hunger is not met with a vision of how I as an individual can grow according to the plan of God. If that personal growth is not imagined as a community enterprise which can be achieved, everybody is left to their own devices.

There is plenty of material available on the internet which purports to help me grow in my own journey, but is it in line with mind of the Church? Most of the self-help stuff is far from being centred on Christ and embedded in the Trinity. Nor is it designed to help adult Catholics to mature in their faith, but leads them down futile rabbit-holes. Guidance is needed from well developed Adult Faith Formation Teams to help individuals journey together on the path of holiness. This, in our opinion, is the most urgent priority. We have to be honest and logical about the situation. Maturity comes before ability to be effective.

Young people

This lack of logic seems strongly exemplified in young people’s responses. We suspect that the majority of their responses came not from Church-goers, but youngsters offering their observations in school groups. However, one greatly encouraging factor was that the moderators seemed surprised to discern that, behind the predictable list of aspirations, is a hunger for guidance and answers from the Church.

There was a near unanimous recommendation from synod members for a much more professional presence of the Church in the world of youth social media. That is right, but will it help them to escape from domination by social media into silence, meditation and prayer?

There was a hint that we need to have youth liturgies regularly and in accessible places which are appealing to them. If peer pressure is such a destructive factor, we need to provide peer experiences which are faith-filled. We have to face the fact that they are mostly alien to the normal parish Mass. That will change once they have experienced the presence of the Lord together. Then they will begin to open their hearts and minds to the treasures of the Church.

Why so few volunteers?

Through all the conversations, there seems to be the general feeling that it is hard to get volunteers for ministries and services in the Church. This leads to the next question – why is this the case? Is it because there has been little renewal of parishes as centres in which Christ is known and his life is experienced and shared? Have you noticed that, on meeting fellow Catholics, we are prone to talk about anything but our life in Christ? Why are Catholics so good at avoiding discussions about our faith and how Christ is present in our lives? Is this culture of silence an indication that Christ is only marginally important or to be encountered privately? That indicates a very under-developed Church.

More seriously, is it the case that Church leaders tend to be busily engaged in programmes for providing sacraments - mostly for children? Do they have little time for forming adult disciples of Jesus? Has this led to the anonymous presence of many Catholics in Church? Jesus blessed and loved and, for sure, played with children, but he taught adults. He did this in a Synodal way; that is he walked alongside them and gathered them into a community of seekers. And he prepared some of them to be guides and teachers within their communities. Surely, as a diocese, we should enable priests to help adults take on these roles in their own communities, their parishes.

Mass times

Coming to Mass is paramount, but arranging Mass times in a wide area to accommodate “busy people” encourages supermarket Catholicism, not community. Catholicism has never been a convoy of floating individuals, but a brotherhood in which real people help real people to know, love and worship the Lord.

Our sacramental practice

Why are do we put so much effort into sausage-machining baptisms and first communions for families who have no sense of Church? Is it not more logical to focus on how we grow into a community of the faithful who are better equipped to accompany others until they seek the sacraments for their true value? Again, the need to know our faith in a deeper life-changing way would be the first step in increasing our motivation and ability to help others to embed their lives in Christ

When in doubt, get active.

Through Isaiah God tells the Israelites that he finds no pleasure in ceremonials and sacrifice if there is no attempt to feed the hungry, care for the widow and the orphan, and act justly. Would he reproach us today with the reverse?

Today there is a marked tendency to bury ourselves in doing all these charitable activities, but we neglect the renewal of our hearts and minds. So while our aspirations are vast, our sense of achieving them is small. In fact every person on the planet is bound to act justly. In that we are no different from any other. What energises Christians is that we seek first the Kingdom of God and know that the rest will follow. We do not follow the world’s approach of seeking first the earthly kingdom of justice and peace, and then seeking God.

The history of our diocese (see Mgr. John Allen’s book - note below) [ is full of individuals of great missionary zeal who worked wonders setting up schools, founding orphanages and encouraging the search for justice. But they did so from an intense life of prayer and grasp of the faith. The diocese did not mastermind these things, it encouraged and coordinated them painstakingly. We will get the new great initiators if we concentrate on our primary work of seeking the Kingdom of God.

Practical outcomes.

There is a lot of talk of the need to show some practical outcomes soon in order to avoid disillusioning people who have so generously engaged with the process. The purpose of the Synod was not to quickly provide outcomes, but to discern directions. New initiatives on a practical level will be shallow without a spiritual renewal, and a renewal of our hearts and minds.

Note: our diocese is Salford, in the north of England. It covers Manchester and much of Lancashire.

The picture above shows the synod moderators presenting Bishop John Arnold with the final 40 recommendations which were voted on at our Synod day on 1st March 2025. If you wish to see the 40 recommendation in order of priority after the voting took place by the Synod delegates please click on this button.

The Book by Msg. John Allen is entitled

It is available from: www.caritassalford.org.uk

 /historybook/

All proceeds go to Caritas.

And Also with you

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 15:29:18 GMT

And with your Spirit!!!!

Not so long ago, when the priest said to the people in Mass “ The Lord be with you” , we used to reply “And also with you” . Then in 2011 it was changed in line with the Latin to “And with your spirit”. We were told “It is more accurate”. But, if you think about it, it is also more meaningful.

I know people complain that it is not how we speak in English. It isn’t. But it is how we speak as Christians. A lot of English has been purged of Christian meaning. In fact when I say to you “The Lord is with your Spirit”, I am acknowledging you as a wondrous, sacred being. Your origin is from the breath of God, and your destiny is to dwell forever with angels, you are awesome (in the true sense of the word). Deeper than your physical body that I see, and your mind and feelings that I perceive, is your spirit, the innermost part of your being where you relate to God, and, through him, with all of his creation.

English language is very good at expressing practical and scientific thought. It has a wonderful history of poetry, which gives flight to imagination and emotions. But it has difficulty expressing spiritual realities. That is because the British mind has been dominated by humanistic thought with its constant demolition of the sacred. It is no surprise that our popular songs are so bleak and our popular drama is so fixated on violence and depravity. When we say that the true measure of all things is humanity, things begin to feel very flat, but then the flat gradually inclines towards destruction. It is no surprise that there are reports of increasing mental sickness in our population.

Water cannot exist without oxygen; it would just be hydrogen - and we know how explosive that is. Similarly, it is only in relation to God that humanity truly flourishes. I think the nearest English comes to the spiritual in human relationships is in the Catholic Wedding Promise, “I take thee to be my lawful wedded husband (or wife)”. It is at that point that a man and woman give eachother the sacrament of marriage, a sacrament which they will continually minister to eachother until death parts them. When I refer to you as thee , I acknowledge you as that sacred being, whom I will honour and “worship” (to use the old form of the promise). It is close to the command of God to Moses at the burning bush, “Take off your shoes, for you are on holy ground”. Such awe is at the heart of the Sacrament of Matrimony.

When we, the people, reply to priest’s “The Lord be with you” with the words “And with your spirit”, we are not talking to the priest only. We are uttering the cry of the Church, the Body of Christ, in response to the priest’s wake-up call. We are throwing off the self-centeredness which the world presses on us, and stepping into our real identity as beings of heaven on earth, who are bonded into one sacred family. We are brother and sisters birthed from the pierced side of Jesus. It is the sanest way to start the Mass.

Next follows more sanity. The priest says “Let us call to mind our sins”. I used to think that I had to attempt a quick confession then in those few seconds, but really I am called to reflect further on the nature of the body I am a part of. Each of us is unfinished. Each of has multiple defects which are still to be healed as we are led together by Christ toward the fullness of the eternal heaven.

At that moment, while I take off my shoes in the presence of the holiness of my brothers and sisters in Christ, I know that I must love them into perfection, and they me. I am professing that this is our hope and it will be fulfilled. But this can only happen because, as we pray “Lord have mercy”, then, we are opening our hearts to the huge cascade of love by which our Father is cherishing humanity into perfection, in the Mystical Body of his Son.

We name this short rite the “Right of Penance”. “Penance” does not mean bemoaning our sins, but rather turning to our Father in our sin to be lovingly washed clean, refreshed and empowered.

All these short exchanges with which we begin the Mass are a reality-check. We are remembering and rejoicing in the real world, the world that is God-filled. That joy is expressed in the Gloria. It should be sung, to lend depth to the outpouring of our family rejoicing.

Again and again the reality-check of “The Lord be with you/And with your spirit” is repeated throughout the Mass: before we listen to the words of Jesus at the Gospel, before the appearance of Jesus in the Eucharistic, before the Communion at the Kiss of Peace, and before we the members of Christ’s Body are sent out at the end of the Mass to renew the face of the earth.

And let us not forget the Sign of the Cross at the beginning of Mass. It is the shortest act of faith and yet the most meaningful. The words remind us of the deepest revelation that God is the family of the Trinity, and the action reminds us that the profoundest fact of humanity is our redemption on the cross.

A Message for Its Own Time

Fri, 03 Jan 2025 00:41:04 GMT

We have now distributed over 450 books.

If you have not yet had a chance to explore our latest book, 'A Message for Its Time, '

now is the perfect moment to choose to purchase a copy.

Following the recent proclamation of the Jubilee Year by the Holy Father, the theme "Pilgrims of Hope" serves as an excellent incentive to delve deeper into the mission of Hopeful Catholics, inspired by the book. We have provided a concise preview of the book below, but we strongly urge you to invest in a copy for your spiritual journey!

This book is intended for Catholics and other Christians in search of a vision of the Church that can inspire hope during these challenging times. The Catholic Church is seen as God's platform for healing and nurturing humanity. Father Brian Murphy sheds light on its history of evolution and growth, suggesting that the current trials are a rigorous preparation for the future.

God has guided us into the desert, where true renewal begins, in order to pave the way for a magnificent new beginning. Each individual is urged to become a more authentic worshipper, striving to worship in truth by rediscovering the treasures of faith, and to worship in spirit through contemplation and heartfelt prayer (John 4:24). By doing so, the Church will be better equipped to fulfil its mission of baptising all and rejuvenating the world.

In the latter part of the book, Anne Bardell emphasises the importance of adult faith formation, providing numerous practical examples. She found that many Catholics are content with their current level of faith knowledge, but when exposed to the deeper aspects of faith's history and truths, a thirst for further knowledge is ignited. Anne advocates for the establishment of faith formation centers or hubs in every parish, encouraging active Catholics to engage with these hubs as a standard part of parish life. These hubs should also be accessible to parents guiding their children through the Sacraments of Initiation, necessitating the training of leaders capable of supporting individuals in their journey toward a deeper relationship with Jesus.

HOPE IS OUR SONG

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:18:48 GMT

The western world has enjoyed decades of progress. Now all the wrongs that we overlooked, and the injustices on which prosperity was based, rise up to disturb our comfort.

We expected our progress to make us happy and to keep increasing. But we are not happy; everywhere people are saying that the world is getting worse.

We feel more vulnerable to crises and disappointments than people in other parts of the world who are long used to struggling. We tell ourselves that there is an epidemic of ‘mental sickness’, but it is really the fracturing of our mentality of entitlement. The problem is we tried to do it without God.

While we in the West feel sorry for ourselves, “he who sits in the heavens laughs” (Psalm 2:4). He knows that our breaking is an autumn/winter preparation for a wonderful new spring. His project to lead us into God’s own Trinity life is gathering pace. Through all the genuine potential of modern progress he has set the stage for a powerful outpouring of his Spirit.

Today many Catholics in the West mourn for the strong Church of past ages, but the Lord says: "My strength is at its greatest in your weakness". In reality, it is in his humbled Church in the West that he is forging the remedies for all the world of tomorrow.

We Catholics inherit the faith and wisdom of 2000 years of sinners rising to holiness. We have the words of hope for the next age.

This Hopeful Catholics website is an exploration of “the reasons for your hope” (1 Peter 3:15). Will you help by joining the discussion?

Pentecost - What did God start?

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 14:54:39 GMT

PENTECOST – WHAT DID GOD START?

God’s perfection in human sinfulness

Pentecost draws our minds to the work of the Holy Spirit. He came down upon the disciples who, although they had lived with Jesus for a few years, proved incredibly slow to learn. Each of them had some gifts that Jesus perceived, but they most certainly were damaged goods.

On the day of Pentecost, notwithstanding their obvious defects, they were given such blinding insight into the things of God that they rushed out and gleefully sang and danced about it on the streets. People came from miles around because of the hubbub, and the Spirit came upon them too so that 3000 were baptised. What a day!

After that, the Spirit kept coming, and he joined these very fallible men into a unity which gathered more and more people into the unity of the Church. But they were still sinners - even the apostles. What are we to make of this God-directed mix of perfection and brokenness?

Wrong answers

One wrong answer is to stress the perfection so much that everyone has to hide their sinfulness and pretend to be upright, and to project perfection as the true image of the Church to the world in which we live. That was very common not so long ago. It led to the hiding of all sorts of vices and built a mentality of exclusiveness as though the Church is reserved of those who are successful in projecting the perfect image, and there was no lack of harsh exclusion of the weak. Sounds like the Pharisees of Jesus’ time doesn’t it?

Another wrong answer to the mixture of God-inspired goodness and human sinfulness is to deny that there is goodness in the first place. There is a lot of that in the mind-set of many people today. They point to the sins of Christians and scoff at any claim to holiness. Result? A pretty dismal view of humanity and a thorough misunderstanding of our loving God.

God knows our sinfulness.

He doesn’t expect perfection in an instant from individuals or his Church. He made us to be gradual developers, and his whole plan of salvation is one of gradually building up the holiness of the human race through the Church. The Holy Spirit through the Church gradually forms humanity into the perfect Mystical Body of Christ. When all this process is complete, then heaven and earth will be united in the new heaven and the new earth. We call this the Parousia (the coming of Christ, his sudden and overpowering presence).

Let’s not get tied down by conjecturing how that will be accomplished. All we know is that there will be a moment when all will be changed. The details are a mystery hidden in the wisdom of God. What we do know is that in the course of time, God is developing us towards the completion.

Individual Christians

The development is on the individual level for each person. As we come closer to Jesus through the Spirit, we find that the fruits of the Spirit grow in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control. We still have a tendency to act badly, but that is overcome as we find our home more and more in the love of the Father and the Son. We develop.

Our evil tendencies are in fact good characterises that are broken and twisted which we reinforce when we sin. But as the love of God calms our wayward spirits, our brokenness is gradually healed, even though the scars remain and can still trouble us.

At the same time we find building within us wisdom and understanding, as we witness the works of our Lord in and around us. This is not all sweetness and light. Wisdom and understanding need to be worked on as we battle with the darkness that is always trying to trap us. This battle is not only in our minds, but in our hearts where we lovingly encounter Jesus and the Father in prayer. As things become righted within us, we increasingly know what is right.

The Church in through history

It is the same with the Church. As humanity progresses under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, wrong practices in humanity are spotlighted, and are being gradually altered. These are such things as slavery, widespread disrespect for people’s rights - even for human life itself, and abuse of women and children. In the 2000 years that the Church has been operating, much has been achieved, but much still remains to be achieved. The struggle continues.

There have been prominent Christians who have carried out these wrongs, and many who are only gradually realising their unconscious defective attitudes and actions, but the Spirit is continually raising up prophets to challenge us and he is inspiring genuine Christians to imitate them until the balance in society is tipped in favour of what is right. It is a venomous prejudice which only publicises the failures without accepting the great story of human progress inspired by Jesus and his people.

There can be no denying that human development through universal education, medical exploration, human rights and scientific progress have originated in parts of the world which are greatly influenced by Christians. That is no coincidence, but cause and effect. Is it finished? No. Is it ongoing? Certainly. Does gradual progress requiring each generation to join in the work? Yes.

It is so important to celebrate the feasts of the saints. Throughout the year, the Church places before us day by day the great models of Christian holy persons who have altered the world for the better. History is chock full of them.

If we have no notion of the great movements initiated by the saints and people of God, we are likely to fall prey to the forces of the enemy who wants to distract us from what God is doing. Unless we gain a clear vision of God’s gradual and inexorable development of humanity, we are likely to lose hope , that great motivational strength which God gifts to his people.

You have not fullfilled your obligation

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 18:55:16 GMT

We are challenged to leave aside guilt and become who God wants us to be.

Seamus Heaney, a great poet of our age, wrote a long poem called ‘Station Island’. They say that as a young man he left Northern Ireland when it was suffering the agony of ‘the Troubles’. That left him carrying a secret guilt that he had deserted people he grew up with, who bore the weight of suffering, some of them dying violently.

In the poem, he goes to Lough Derg on pilgrimage to cleanse his soul. That is an island where people go to do penance. They fast and have very little sleep for three days, and they do certain prayer routines called ‘the Stations’. The island is known as ‘Station Island’, and the poem is named after it.

As he is coming back in a rowing boat and about to land, a gnarled, upright, old man takes his hand to help him from the boat, and he speaks strict, strong words. He tells him: ‘You have not fulfilled your obligation’. He tells him not to be so earnest and fond of the sack cloth and ashes; he is suffocating himself with guilt. Stop it! It is dampening the fire within.

He tells him that guilt has caused him to fear; that has paralysed him. As a teacher of English Literature he is hiding behind echoing other people’s thoughts. He has to ‘sound his own note’. He has to go off at tangents when people go in circles, to stop using the language to explain old masters, and to use it to speak to his own time. He is to be a poet in earnest.

As I reread it after many readings, I could hear Jesus saying the same to me. Guilt eats us up and wastes God-given energy on self-absorption. The Lord says: ‘it’s not yourself you should be centred on but me. Step out sing the song I have put into your heart; I have made you for a special purpose. Pursue it!’

Reflections on our Journey to New Dawn

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:22:05 GMT

Honouring Our Lady of Walsingham

Our week at the

New Dawn Conference

- August 2024

REFLECTIONS ON NEW DAWN 2024

We went to the New Dawn Conference in Early August at Walsingham. Our purpose was to hopefully promote our book and our website. We did this by taking a stall in the big “Social Tent” where many people went to meet, relax and get refreshments.

From early Monday to Friday afternoon we were kept busy. It was great to speak to so many people about what they are doing in the Church. There was a strong atmosphere of faith, hope and friendship, as you might expect at a charismatic gathering. We were particularly struck by people personal stories of their struggles and blessings. It was also a time to share spiritual insights.

A huge number told us of how they served the Lord and the Church, and it was heartening to hear of new initiatives springing up. However, there were many who felt underused in their parishes, and we came across a fair amount of frustration. Our message of hope helped some people, and the message or our book which underlines God’s steady action to bring about his plan for our salvation was listened to earnestly.

Throughout the week, the central plank of the ministry which we are developing came more and more into focus. That is the building in each parish a lay-led ministry of Adult Faith Learning, which is at least equal to or greater than our Children’s Sacramental Programmes.

People hunger to learn about Christ and his kingdom once they have come into a close relationship with him. Who is going to feed that hunger? Our priests are run off their feet as they take on responsibility for several churches – I know of some who have several funerals a week, each of which demands preparation and care. We have a proposal to bring lay people into leading faith formation for adults. We feel its time has come.

On the last evening, we were invited into the youth tent where about seventy 12-17 year-olds held a service of prayer and blessing. The Blessed Sacrament was carried round to each youngster, and most touched the humeral veil of the priest as an act of devotion. It was awesome to see their depth of prayer. These are the new shoots of the Church which is gradually stirring to life. One of the increasingly numerous small hopeful signs that a New Dawn of the Church is happening. God be praised!

After a long, but great journey from Manchester we arrived at Walsingham for the New Dawn Conference and set up our stall in the social tent.

This was a whole new experience for us but the other staff on the stalls were so helpful.

There were lots of other charities and amazing people staffing the other stalls.

We had incredible conversations with people throughout week about how they had all come to honour Mary and meet other like-minded folk as they worshiped the Lord together in a Charismatic Community

The week began on Monday with a Welcome to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham by the rector Fr. Robert Billing who continued to guide all the pilgrims throughout the week.

This was followed by the opening Mass led by Fr.Peter Prusakiewicz CSMA who later in the week led a very full workshop on the ‘Secrets of St. Faustina’.

On Monday evening after the opening address by Mr Garry Stephens who is the Director of the New Dawn event, we were led in an excellent talk by Fr. Pat Collins CM on our relationship with the Father. He spoke about how difficulties with our own earthly fathers can affect our relationship with our heavenly Father and need to be healed.

There were many workshops and times of prayer continuously throughout the day with hundreds of people attending. Throughout all this time we were staffing the stall and spoke to many, many people, and a good number felt called to purchase our book ‘A Message for its Own Time ’, which considers the Prayer of the Heart and how each Parish can become a hub of adult faith formation. So many people spoke about the need to use the skills of the laity for the growth of the Church.

On Tuesday evening Fr. Cliff Fumbelo led a Reconciliation service where many hundreds of people waited patiently for the individual Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Once having received the Sacrament, they were invited to bring forward a lighted candle to the steps of the sanctuary and this maintained the atmosphere of prayer and reflection. Here in the photo we see people in prayer as the candles shimmer against the beautifully engraved doors of the inside/outside sanctuary.

Wednesday began with hundreds of people turning up for the day and joining in the Marian procession along the Holy Mile from the Shrine to the Abbey. The youth carried the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham. They were followed in procession by the clergy and the faithful all praying the rosary as we walked.

Many tourists and shop keepers in the little village stood respectfully at the side of the road as this vast body of people in prayer processed into the Abbey Grounds

This was followed by Mass led by the Rector, Fr. Robert Billing together with many priests and deacons and hundreds of the faithful.

A huge number of people stayed on after Mass for a picnic lunch and then all slowly retraced their steps along the Holy Mile back to the Shrine.

On returning to the Shrine, the main highlight on Wednesday afternoon was the veneration of the relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis. After a resume of his life and a talk by Monsignor Anthony Figeuredo STD the custodian of the relic, people were invited to come forward to touch/ kiss the relic. On speaking with the youth later, they were very touched by this young soon to be saint.

Thursday brought more workshops from Fr. Columba Jordan and Andi Oney, Fr. Paschal Uche and Michelle Moran. Our time, however, was taken up with meeting so many wonderful people, each of whom had an amazing story of being led to the Lord and wanting to help the Church grow and develop.

Each night there was all night adoration and people were eager to volunteer to staff the Shrine to protect and honour the Blessed Sacrament during the wee morning hours.

On Thursday evening we were invited into the youth tent where members of Lifeteen led sessions alongside several Franciscan Friars of Renewal with a large youth group.

The youth were deep in prayer when the monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament was reverently brought into the marquee.

They first listened to the story of the woman with the haemorrhage who was healed when she touched Jesus’ garment, and how he noticed his power had gone out. They were then invited, if they wished, to touch the veil used by the priest to hold the monstrance.

I have rarely seen such deep respect and devotion as the Blessed Sacrament was taken around the room and stopped before each person. As this prayer was so deep it took longer than expected but they still had time to praise God as the Blessed Sacrament was removed.

They were so filled with praise they went out of the marquee across the field into the social tent singing and then sat and prayed outside as dusk fell. Then they moved into party mode to end their week at New Dawn. This time they raised the roof with songs such as ‘Sweet Caroline’ and many others as they celebrated their week together.

As Friday dawned some people had to start packing up and moving off with long journeys ahead of them. However, many hundreds stayed to attend the final Mass led by Archbishop John Wilson of Southwark diocese.

It was wonderful to see him interacting with lots of folk before and after Mass including children.

He is a very gifted speaker and comes across as an ordinary man with a special God-given role. It was a privilege to listen to him.

All the talks can be heard on Radio Maria UK when you register with them.

We reflected on what a grace filled week it had been as we packed away our stall. Having sold many copies of our book, the boxes were much lighter on on our return journey. We celebrated all the people we had the privilege to meet as we wended our way back to Manchester. Tired but blessed.

Contemplation & Communion of Saints

Sat, 03 Aug 2024 23:37:52 GMT

CHAPTER 5

A sense of the Communion of Saints has been developing in my heart as well. Again this is a knowing. It is not there all the time yet, but every so often I sense that my prayer is not private. As I become more aware that my communication with the Father is part of Jesus’ prayer, I sense that it is the prayer of everyone else as well.

I am beginning to experience the knowing that when I stand in the presence of Jesus facing the Father, I am surrounded by all my brothers and sisters of the whole human race. We are all there together. My salvation is bound up with all of theirs. I cannot know peace until they also have come home into the joy of the Trinity. That is a daunting thought and would be too much for me to accept if it did not arise from closer contact with the burning heart of Christ. There I find absolute determination and sureness that it will be accomplished.

Here I am puzzled by all the teaching about Hell in the Scriptures and teaching of the Church. I don’t know how to synthesise my sense of Christ’s burning desire that all human beings come home into the Trinity, and the dreadful possibility that some will be eternally dammed. I just hear Christ’s words ‘With God all things are possible’ (Matthew 19, 26).

I also find the Church’s teaching about Purgatory extremely powerful. Is it possible that the personal judgment, which each of us will face, will be such a clear vision of the utter beauty of God’s love that even those with the most hideous sins will respond positively? I deeply hope that it is. I pray daily for them. I pray also that others will pray for me when I die. I find today that people tend to stress their appreciation when somebody dies. That is good because people mostly live lives of quite goodness which should be celebrated, but, compared with the glory intended for us, that goodness is in need of enormous development in Purgatory under the shelter of the wings of Christ.

But it is all my brothers and sister living now that I am more aware of. (More of this to come)

Song of a Little Bird

Sat, 03 Aug 2024 22:39:56 GMT

Birds do it naturally, we humans have to choose to glorify God.

In an earlier article, a poem by Seamus Heaney spoke of the moment he was emboldened to overcome his guilt and fears. He was told to ‘sound his own note’, and not be hiding in echoing other people’s successful voices.

God gives us all a unique song to sing. In so far as we fulfil that purpose, we become whole. Many years ago, a friend gave me this poem she had written. It speaks simply of how God’s creatures achieve their purpose.

Birdie, you sing so loud and so long.

What is the reason for your song?

I sing to the Lord in heaven above.

He has filled my whole being with music and love.

For us, humans, it is a matter of choice whether we let the song that the Spirit sings in our hearts come out and fill our lives.

Praying Whilst Having a Rest

Sat, 03 Aug 2024 22:28:58 GMT

Do you find yourself praying involuntarily when you take a rest?

When I sit down to have a rest even for a few minutes and I am not thinking about anything in particular, I have noticed that I very often find myself breathing simple prayers in my mind, almost in my subconscious. Prayers like “Come Lord Jesus” or “Praise you”.

I have wondered if this is what Jesus means when he says “Pray always”. I think it is one form of it.

Is that what is meant by ‘infused prayer’? Well, what is infused prayer? I think it is where the Holy Spirit pours into our own prayer an extra facility. It can be for a moment, a period or permanent. I think the Spirit has too much respect for us to force such a prayer on us out of the blue; it will only come to a heart that is inclined to pray, or trying to.

Of course all prayer, indeed all our activity, only comes because God our Creator is constantly enabling us, but we have free will, and every act of trying to pray, even if it seems empty, is part of our building up an inclination to receive the Spirit’s inspiration.

Bit by bit, almost without us knowing, like water dripping on a stone and smoothing it, the Spirit transforms our prayer life. What is gradually happening in the depth of our spirits, that deepest part of us where we have intercourse with the divine, is that an uninterrupted conversation is going on, which will rise up through our subconscious into our consciousness when it gets the chance.

It is part of what St Paul means when he says: “ The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what he means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God.” (Romans 8: 26-27)

There is a hidden, deep-down process of God meeting our small efforts and blessing them, to build within us the “cry of the Children of God” (see Romans 8: 16). We need to grow a lot in trust and peace before we experience ‘praying always’ more consciously. But let’s not get downhearted at how slow our progress seems.

We are children being educated by our Father and that takes years, but development is really happening. One of the good things about the term ‘infused prayer’ is that it stresses the activity of God rather than us. Getting anxious about our slowness is counterproductive, and ought to be confessed in the Sacrament of Reconciliation – We also need to confess that there are all sorts of hidden ways we obstruct God’s activity in our souls that we get comfortable about. Reconciliation is about asking for his light for the future as much as us shining a light on our past.

menofstjoseph-uk

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After my own heart

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Others Not of this Fold

The World Wide Search

Artificial intelligence Supremo warns of risks

WISDOM - PART 2

Straws in the Wind 4 : A Growing Church

QUEUING UP FOR ADULT BAPTISM

What does Paraclete mean?

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Does the Brain make us Think?

WISDOM - PART 1

Prayer of the heart, CHAPTER 11: THE WILL

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Semana Santa in Spain

Jesus Reigns from the Cross

The Fruit of the Tree of life

INTEGRITY

Lent Lite?

CHAPTER 1: Let's talk about Contemplation

CHAPTER 2: Dawning Understanding

Is Science under threat ?

Chapter 3: Our Father

Chapter 4: The Prayer of Jesus

God is counter intuitive

Straws in the Wind 3

St. Carlos Acutis - a saint in his youth is calling to others

Chapter 5: Contemplation and the Communion of Saints

THE OLD RENEWED

THE NEW COVENANT

﻿ GIVEN IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

Christ's Challenge

Chapter 6: Restless Hearts

Our Role in God's Plan

Have you read our new online book - ' Our Role in God's plan'

click the link here and it will take you to it.

CHAPTER 7: The Transfiguration of St. Francis

CHAPTER 8: WE TOO ARE SAINTS

CHAPTER 9: DARK NIGHT OF THE SENSES

CHAPTER 10: VAL

Agape

RAYS OF LIGHT AT NEW DAWN

Were you at New Dawn at All Saints Barton Manchester?

Did you attend New Dawn in Manchester 1st-3rd August?

The Lord, The Lord

The Lord , The Lord

JESUS IS THE ONLY WAY TO THE FATHER

This is taken from Chapter 12 of our book,

﻿ ' A Message For Its Own Time'

JESUS IS THE ONLY WAY TO THE FATHER

Everything flows from a close freindship with Jesus.

OUR ORIGINS

0UR ORIGINS

Taken from Chapter 3 of our book, A Message For Its Own Time

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Pange Lingua

Oh the Richness

Where does evil come from?

Saints Peter and Paul

He Nurtured Lay Faith Guides

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Walking beside others

Rest in Peace Pope Francis

STRAWS IN THE WIND 1

STRAWS IN THE WIND

Straws in the Wind 2

EASTER -The Enterprise is Exploration into God

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The Accuser of the Brethren

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Lent- Renewing the Search for the Kingdom

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GIVEN IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

' A Message For Its Own Time'