Reflection

 The way we live and the way we pray are closely related. We might even say that the way we pray is the way we live and the way we live is the way we pray. In prayer we engage our own thoughts and desires and feelings. There is so much of ourselves that we put into prayer and the more of ourselves that we put into prayer, the more complete and life-giving our prayer turns out to be.

Hot Cross Buns, Easter Eggs and Carmel

I spent six years in our inner city London parish, Walworth. One of the joys there was the school Mass. There was normally a school mass every Friday. Often the age range would be from five to eleven. For the reflection after the Gospel I asked as many questions as possible in order to gain the children's interest. One year, after Easter, I asked the children what had they to eat on Good Friday.

REFLECTION

When Jesus had died on the Cross his dark night came to an end. When did his dark night began is hard to say. Certainly, it was apparent at the Garden of Gethsemene. There was his betrayal by Judas; but even before then Jesus was persecuted by his own after he healed the man who could not make it to the pool because others got in front of him (Jn 5:1-16 ).

The modern mind is no longer the Greek or medieval mind; it is inductive in its approach to things and its starting point is the actual world about us. It is also dynamic, geared to change and bent on finding the stuff of its thinking in the existential order of things. In practice, this means that if the spiritual life is to be relevant today, it must be a dimension of real life. The earthly path is the one to heaven and one must find God in the works of his hands, especially in persons.

Seventy years ago, on 26 July 1942, Fr Titus Brandsma was killed in Dachau. This is the Dutch Carmelite who was elevated in 1985 to the honour of the altars and proclaimed, along with St Francis de Sales, co-patron of journalists. Already in the 1930s he denounced the anti-Christian component of Nazism,  and continued to do so – with the support of the bishop – even after the Germans invaded the Netherlands.