The season of LENT which began on Ash Wednesday is 40 days of preparation for the Paschal Mysteries of Easter, which is followed by the 50 days of resurrection celebrations that take us onwards to Pentecost. The days are shortening, and will soon become cooler; as the natural world around undergoes a change of season, we are called to attend to our becoming in Christ… As we experience and encounter the natural rhythms of change, so we may consider our orientation toward change, that movement within ourselves (our community) that leads us through the cross to new life. We prepare for dying in order that we may experience the promise of new life….
In our community we are blessed with com-panions (those with whom we share bread), and in our communion we realise ourselves as the Body of Christ, together we can therefore walk to the cross, and make real the promise of resurrection.
LENT A tradition of liberation.
Prayer , Fasting and Almsgiving are the traditional disciplines that were required for the observance of a “right and proper” LENT. More contemporary liturgical thought has emphasised LENT as a season of preparation.
LENT is not there to make us a better people, nor a pious people, rather it is a time in which we prepare for liberation, for freedom to celebrate the Pascha (Christian passover). In LENT we are brought into the story of our Lord’s dying and rising, and we have the opportunity to set aside our worldly driven-ness, or the pull of worldly gravity, and to free-fall in trust that resurrection is a promise for us all to realise
Sun 25th Feb LENT 1
6.30-7.30pm Reflection on the Sunday Readings
7.30pm LENT FILM 1 in the Hall>
Wed 28th Feb 7.30-9pm Reflections on LENT 1 (Silf)
Sunday 4th March LENT 2
6.30-7.30pm Reflection on the Sunday Readings
8pm HeartSong
Tues 6th Mar 7.30-9pm Reflections (Glasson)(Shared meal)
Thur 8th Mar 8pm Fellowship of Contemplative Prayer
Sunday 11th March LENT 3
6.30-7.30pm Reflection on the Sunday Readings
7.30pm LENT FILM 2 in the Hall
Wed 14th Mar 7.30-9pm Reflections (Habito, Ruben)
Sunday 18th March LENT 4
6.30-7.30pm Reflection on the Sunday Readings
8pm HeartSong
Tue 20th Mar 7.30-9pm Reflections (Nouwen)(Shared meal)
Sunday 25th March LENT 5
6.30-7.30pm Reflection on the Sunday Readings
If you made a chaplet at Nanga you may wish to revisit how you use it in prayer. Once again the chaplet provides a loose structure in which to focus the heart and mind on God. Approach it with joy and willingness, without expectation. The act of making the chaplet was a sacred ritual and the beads can link you to the calm spirit found in times of prayer. They are a tactile reminder of the importance of prayer in your life. Carry them with you so that you can use them when you have a spare moment or they can just be a silent reminder of the deep mystery of God.
We light this candle and acknowledge the presence of the Divine Light
Every moment is the moment of divine creation
Every moment is the moment of Birth and of Death
Before each and every other and in the divine presence,
We place ourselves as an emptiness to be filled with divine fullness
We honour the Christ, We open ourselves to the divine birth, Christ in us, Christ in all.
The contemplative is the seeker who can go down into the self, down the tunnel of emptiness, and, finding nothing but God in the center of life, call that Everything. Most of all, the contemplative is the one who, looking at the world, sees nothing but the presence and activity of God everywhere, in everyone. How can this be possible? Because to be a contemplative, prayer is the key to the dialogue and, eventually, to the Silence that is Everything.
Chittister, Joan (2000) Illuminated Life:Monastic Wisdom for Seekers of Light.
Prayer
Marcus Borg
Practices are how we pay attention to our relationship with God. Practice is the means whereby Christianity moves from being about beliefs to being a way of transformation. Practice changes us. The single most important personal practice is prayer in both of its classic forms: verbal prayer and the prayer of internal silence (commonly called contemplative prayer).
Marcus Borg “An Emerging Christian Way” in Schwartzentruber, M. (ed) (2006) The Emerging Christian Way. Canada:CopperHouse.
Nora Gallagher
Finally, we do what people like us have been doing for thousands of years: we hide in the darkness, in silence, and try to pray. “Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion,” said Auguste Sabatier, a French theologian, in 1897.
Religion is nothing if it be not the vital act by which the entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to the principle from which it draws its life. This act is prayer, by which term I understand no vain exercise of words, no mere representation of sacred formulae, but the very movement itself of the soul, putting itself in a personal relation of contact with the mysterious power of which it feels the presence - it may be even before it has a name by which to call it. Whenever this interior prayer is lacking, there is no religion; wherever, on the other hand, this prayer rises and stirs the soul, even in the absence of forms or doctrines, we have living religion.
A friend calls it “going out on a limb.”
Gallagher, Nora (1999) Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith. New York: Vintage.
Michael Mayne
The Christian gospel is not about producing QED answers to life’s problems, but about encountering mystery. Faith, like hope, is an attitude of the heart, a changed orientation of the spirit. It is to trust that love is at the heart of the Mystery for whom the English name is ‘God’. And to do so in the face of the undeniable confusion, uncertainty and doubt which remain a natural part of all out lives.
Mayne, Michael (2001) Learning to Dance
Reading with God
Seek in reading
And you will find in meditation;
Knock in prayer
And it will be opened to you
In contemplation.
St John of the Cross, 1542-1591
The practice of lectio divina (from the Latin ‘divine reading’ or ‘sacred reading’) whilst being maintained in monasteries for centuries is today being rediscovered as a powerful practice for everyone. It is a way of actively engaging with the Bible and its relevance for us and our stories and journeys. Furthermore it provides us with a rich means of exploring the mystery of our God and our relationship with God. The words are slowly turned over and their meaning sinks into our hearts where they speak in ways particular to us.
There are four phases of lectio divina:
Lectio (reading)
Very slowly read a passage of scripture out loud. Savour each and every word and be open to a word or phrase which holds your attention.
Meditatio (meditation)
Allow yourself to ruminate on the word or phrase, repeating it slowly without analysing it.
Oratio (prayer)
What is your prayerful response to the word or phrase? This phase is about being in relationship with God. It involves intimacy and sharing.
Contemplatio (contemplation)
Sit with the stillness and remain in that intimacy with God but let all striving go. Release all words and images and be.
Avoid the tendency to want to get it right. The phases are fluid and act as a guide only. You may find you move back and forward between them. Lectio divina is a gift not another discipline to master. Allow it to seep into you.
Contemplation
Joan Chittister
There is only one thing wrong with the traditional definition of prayer: it misrepresents God. “Prayer,” the old teaching said, was “the raising of our hearts and minds to God.” As if God were some regal, distant judge outside ourselves. But science - with its new perception that matter and spirit are of a piece, sometimes particles, sometimes energy - suggests that God is not on a cloud somewhere, imperious and suspecting. God is not male humanity writ large. God is the Spirit that leads us and drives us on. God is the voice within us calling us to Life. God is the Reality trying to come to fullness within us, both individually and together. It is to that cosmic God, that personal inner, enkindling God, that we pray.
Prayer is a long, slow process. First, it indicates to us how far we really are from the mind of God. when the ideas are foreign to us, when the process itself is boring or meaningless, when the quiet sitting in the presence of God in the self is a waste of time, then we have not yet begun to pray. But little by little, one gospel, one word, one moment of silence at a time, we come to know ourselves and the barriers we put between ourselves and the God who is trying to consume us.
The contemplative does not pray in order to coax satisfaction out of the universe. God is life, not a vending machine full of trifles to fit the whims of the human race. God is the end of life, the fulfilment of life, the essence of life, the coming of life. The contemplative prays in order to be open to what is, rather than to reshape the world to their own lesser designs.
The contemplative does not pray to appease a divine wrath or flatter a divine ego. The contemplative prays in order, eventually, to fall into the presence of God, to learn to live in the presence of God, to absorb the presence of God within. The contemplative prays until wordlessness takes over and presence is more palpable than words, more filling than ideas. One prayer at a time, the hard heart melts away, the satiated heart comes newly alive, the mind goes blank with enlightenment.
The contemplative is the one among us in whom prayer, deep reflection on the presence and activity of God in the self and the world, has come little by little to extinguish the illusions of autonomy and the enthronement of the self that make little kingdoms of us all. The contemplative goes beyond the self, and all its delusions, to Life itself. One prayer at a time, contemplatives allow the heart of God to beat in the heart they call their own.
Chittister, Joan (2000) Illuminated Life:Monastic Wisdom for Seekers of Light. |
