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Dementia Prayer Week

newsletter,

Bishop David McGough Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham and Lead Bishop to the Bishops of Wales and England Pastoral Care Project writes:

“Dear Friends, I warmly recommend to you Dementia – Prayer Week 12 – 19th March 2015. Dementia is a degenerative disease which tends to isolate both the sufferer and the families that surround them. Confronted with this condition we naturally feel inadequate.

Prayer is one very powerful way of connecting with all concerned. Let us pray for and with those whose lives have been touched by dementia. In this way we unite ourselves with them, forging a link with the Lord that words alone cannot express.

One of my own lasting links with my mother in her final months was to share with her the Hail Mary. Dementia had robbed her of many links with the past, but prayer endured as a living link to the end. Let this Dementia – Prayer Week become your link to the many families struggling with dementia.” www.pastoralcareproject.org.uk

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We use this prayer at Mass this Sunday. You could use it during the week too…

Lord Jesus Christ,
your anger in the face of the abuse of money and trade reminds us of your thirst for justice
and for the dignity of every human being to be recognised.

May the Spirit’s gifts of right judgement and courage enable us to see, and to name, what is wrong with the world and to act in your name
to work for what is right and just.
Amen

The Synod part two

newsletter

In October last year, the Pope and Bishops met in Rome for a Synod on the theme of ‘The Pastoral Challenges to the Family in the Context of Evangelisation.’ A further meeting will take place in October this year, and Pope Francis has invited all Catholics to spend some time reflecting on these themes.
This weekend, material is available to help us reflect on this theme; to think, to pray and discuss among ourselves. Please use this opportunity and read the questions on the card for reflection. Our reflection on and experience of marriage and family life are very important, and will feed into the participation of the bishops representing England and Wales.

We are also invited to take a small card called ‘What We Believe’. The Catholic faith and the teaching of the Church enable us to affirm the truth about marriage and family. You can respond in various ways: complete the online survey at www.surveymonkey.com/s/LaityEW2015 or contact the Archdiocesan Family Life
Commission either by email at flc@rcadc.org or by writing to Family Life Commission, Pastoral Resources Centre, 910 Newport Road, Cardiff, CF3 4LL.

We use this prayer at Mass this Sunday. You could use it during the week too…

Lord Jesus Christ,
you led your disciples up a steep mountainside encouraging them beyond their weariness to follow you. Be with me in my journeying through difficult times.

You revealed yourself in glory as God’s beloved Son. Inspire me to grow in my love for you;
give me glimpses of your heart on fire with love for the whole world and help me to treasure and rest awhile in these moments.

And then you returned with them –
to the ordinary and the everyday.
Help me to listen to you in the ordinary events of everyday life; and give me the grace and confidence
to touch, feed and inspire the lives of others with your love, wherever and whenever the opportunities are laid before me. Amen

Dame Julian and the nut

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When the great English mystic Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) was 30 years old, she contracted a grave illness and came so near to death that she received the last rites. At the end of her illness she had several visions, or “showings”, that she understood to have come from God. She spent the next 20 years reflecting on these visions and writing down what she had learned from them. Perhaps, the most famous of those showings is this one:

“And he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazel nut, that seemed to lie in the palm of my hand. It was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And the answer came, ‘It is everything that is made.’ I wondered how it could last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen into nothing, so little was it. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts, and will for ever, because God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God. In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it…” (1st Revelation)

Seeing the fragile thing in the palm of her hand, Julian wondered how it could last. She had reason to wonder if the world she knew might fall into nothing. As a child she lived through the Black Death, the plague that decimated Europe from 1348 – 1351. Nearly half of her city of Norwich died in a three-year span, and she herself nearly died from serious illness.

Sometimes our own lives seem so tenuous they might dissolve into nothing. It might be serious illness. It might be job or economic problems. It might be family or relationship difficulties. It might be doubts about faith or uncertainty about love or our competency or our worthiness. Whatever the cause, life can seem uncertain and our hold on it unsure. Our hold on ourselves and on God can seem tenuous and uncertain. Julian of Norwich found her comfort, not in grasping and clinging to the ephemeral littleness of created reality, but in uniting herself to the abiding love and joy of the uncreated God.

Fr Matthew, with acknowledgments to Rev Matt Gunter