Daily Prayers

Prayer is Love, I want to Love

Fr Johns Weekly:

  • Windsor Framework

    I was disappointed as I listened to Rishi Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen presenting their vision for Northern Ireland: how fortunate the North for having such a privileged economic position, we were told. Northern Ireland is not an economic question, it is an emotional one. The DUP will not accept this offer. They want…

  • Humble Of Heart

    Pope Francis awaits. He is trusting us to pray, think and act with all our heart. Do you throw a few words in God’s direction and call them prayer? That is how the only parish priest saint in the history of the Church accused his people of thoughtless prayer. Are we the same? We know…

  • Abba, Father

    At mass on Sunday 5th February I was overwhelmed. I told the people later. We were saying the first part of the ‘Gloria’ and I knew I was talking to the Father as Jesus told us we could, in the beauty of a child-parent relationship which, we all know, lasts a life-time. I was praying…

  • Acts of Kindness

    Farmer Fleming heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He ran and saw, up to his waist in black muck, a terrified boy, screaming and struggling…

  • Pope Benedict XVI (RIP)

    In his book ‘Light in the Darkness’ Pope Benedict spoke with a journalist he trusted on a range of topics. It is there we read what he said in 2005 at Good Friday Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum in Rome “How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who,…

  • World Cup 2022

    In 1492 Christopher Columbus “discovered” Central and South America. In 1493 Pope Alexander VI gave those territories to the powers of Spain and Portugal and reduced to slavery the native peoples. The beautiful church of St Mary Majors in Rome has a ceiling decorated by gold sent by the Spanish conquerors, so the slaves were…

  • The Good Old Days!

    St Augustine, writing in the 4th century, asked when the “good old days” were that people talked about, and wondered if the people who lived those good old days thought the same. He knew history. There were no periods he could see: Imperial Rome when the city had 900,000 slaves serving 100,000 Roman citizens; the…

  • Church, Mission, Evangelisation & Discipleship

    Jesus said “Love one another as I have loved you” – so where there is hatred we bring love, injury/pardon, despair/hope, sadness/joy, darkness/light, doubt/faith. The original meaning of “church” is a gathering of the people and the name “church” was given to the building where they met. If the walls fell down we would still…

  • Our Bible

    Come. Turn the pages of the Bible with me and wonder at the variety of its many books, styles of writing and glimpses of the people who wrote those books. Book of Genesis:Chapter one is a poem in which the author imagines God’s creating the world’s in a working-man’s week of six days followed by…

  • Yesterday

    Imagine that we meet and I say “Yesterday.” You smile and ask “Calendar or all yesterdays?” We smile. Of course, ‘yesterday’ has two meanings. Now “Tomorrow”, and the same smiles: “Calendar or many tomorrows?” One of us says “Now” and we understand: ‘Now’ holds everything, the love of yesterday and the love of tomorrow. ‘Now’…

  • Alzheimer’s, Dementia, etc.

    “Am I me or not me?” The clarity of her words startled her husband. She did not know who she was, if she was. He had watched her slipping away from him for a while, sudden lucid memories of their life and then a fog that settled over her memory and she did not see…

  • Queen Elizabeth II (RIP)

    Our gracious Queen Elizabeth, the most loved monarch in the history of the world, has died. Weren’t we blessed to have her for seventy years. She loved us. We always knew that. She shared her life with us, her moments of family sadnesses, accepting the responsibilities of her position with dignity, strength and love. That…