Pope advises religious: Don't give in to pessimism over lack of vocations

Source: Vatican News

Pope Francis has advised religious not to give in to pessimism over a lack of vocations and to pray with him to "deliver us from the presumption of self-sufficiency and the spirit of worldly criticism."

Addressing representatives from the Claretian Institute of the Theology of Consecrated Life on the occasion of its 50th anniversary at the Vatican on Monday, the Pope asked the religious to pray with him: "You who feed us with tenderness, deliver us from self-referentiality, from the diabolical deception of polarizations, from 'isms.'"

Pope Francis warned that consecrated life today should not be discouraged by a "lack of vocations or by aging."

"Those who allow themselves to be caught up in pessimism set aside their faith," he continued.

"It is the Lord of history who sustains us and invites us to faithfulness and fruitfulness. He cares for his 'remnant,' looks with mercy and benevolence upon his work, and continues to send his Holy Spirit."

Departing from his prepared text according to Vatican News, Pope Francis praised the Claretians for having "humanized so, so much of consecrated life" and for their desire to implement what their founder "valued so much."

Pope Francis said religious life would find hope through the Word of God and the history and creativity of its founders.

"Religious life is understood only by what the Spirit does in each of the people called. There are those who focus too much on the external - the structures, the activities - and lose sight of the superabundance of grace in people and communities."

"Do not tire of going to the frontiers, even to the frontiers of thought; of opening paths, of accompanying, rooted in the Lord to be bold in mission," Pope Francis said.

"The Gospel teaches that there is a poverty that humbles and kills and another poverty, that of Jesus, which liberates and makes happy. As consecrated people, you have received the immense gift of participating in Jesus' poverty. Do not forget, either in your lives or in your work at the university, those who live the other poverty."

Statement from the Conference of Religious of England and Wales on the publication of the final report by the Panel of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse:

The Conference of Religious of England and Wales (CoR) would like to thank IICSA for bringing to light the acute suffering that has been inflicted over many years, and for giving victims and survivors the chance to recount their experience and to share the impact that abuse has had on their lives. We are wholeheartedly committed to learning lessons from this Inquiry and making every effort to ensure that such abuse can never happen again.  

We would like to express profound sadness and sorrow to all individuals who have been the victims and survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy, men and women in Religious congregations and those in positions of responsibility within Roman Catholic institutions.  

We are hopeful of the new structure that is now in place – the Religious Life Safeguarding Service – which has been created to replace the previous alignment arrangements with dioceses.  The RLSS is an independent team of safeguarding professionals, offering safeguarding services to the Religious of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.  

For the last twelve months, we have nominated a ‘Religious Safeguarding Lead’ – in response to IICSA’s recommendation for there to be a lead Bishop and a lead Religious for safeguarding within the Catholic Church. 

As Christians we approach safeguarding with a determination to protect people from harm - especially when they are particularly vulnerable. We acknowledge that in the past the needs of the vulnerable have not been paramount and we wholeheartedly embrace the renewed  approach to safeguarding within the Church – and continue to pray for all those who have suffered.  

FCJ Bicentenary celebrated with scholarship fund at Durham University

CCS Scholarships Students on Palace Green, Durham.

Source: CCS

The Centre for Catholic Studies (CCS) at Durham University has launched a £400,000 postgraduate scholarship fund in partnership with the Faithful Companions of Jesus (FCJ) to mark the 200th anniversary of the founding of the FCJ Society.

Funded over the next four years, the Sisters want to enhance their apostolic outreach and to support ministries which are aligned with the FCJ charism, ethos and the calls of their 2019 General Chapter.

The partnership with the CCS continues the Sisters' dedication to education and chimes with one of the CCS's stated aims, to form outstanding theologians and scholars of Catholicism who will shape the future from the richness of Catholic tradition in the church, academy, and public life.

Sr Brid Liston FCJ

Sr Bríd Liston FCJ, Area Leader, commented: "it is good to be able to support the development of students in the CCS, Durham University, given the commitment of the FCJ Society to education in the North East of England, particularly in Middlesbrough and Hartlepool, for over one hundred and fifty years."

Scholarship applications are open to all (subject to usual Durham University eligibility criteria), and encouraged among those hoping to pursue postgraduate research across broad themes aligned to the FCJ Chapter calls: 'Compassionate Action', and 'Care for Our Common Home'. Applications are particularly encouraged from among women in the North East of England.

Founded in 2007, the CCS at Durham University represents a creative partnership between academy and church: a centre within the pluralist, public academy for critically constructive Catholic studies of the highest academic standing. The CCS offers a wide-range of scholarships and bursaries funded by a number of partner congregations, organisations and individuals.

Rejoicing in the rich heritage of Religious Orders in education

By Sr Brenda Wallace fcj:

Sr Brenda at the launch of ROE

Religious Orders in Education, (ROE) is a collaborative endeavour launched in 2019 whose main purpose is to enrich Catholic education in England and Wales by supporting Religious Orders in their mission as trustees or founders of schools and colleges. To this end we celebrate and build on the rich heritage of Religious Orders in education and support them in continuing to articulate and develop their particular charisms.

Soon after the foundation of our Association, a working party was established to explore the formation of a Collaborative Trust with the aim of providing a service for those Religious Congregations that wish to transfer their responsibilities of educational trusteeship.

The Collaborative Trust has been given the name Gaudete, a name that proclaims that as a new community of schools we rejoice in the good news of the Gospel, we rejoice in the Holy Spirit who is enabling us to create something new and is teaching us what true collaboration means, and we rejoice in the rich heritage of Religious Orders in education. 

The Gaudete Trust will exercise, fully or in part, according to need, those legal, financial, and inspirational responsibilities of educational trusteeship that were formerly carried out by these individual congregations. The Bishops’ Conference formally approved the establishment of the Gaudete Trust as a PJP in Spring 2022 and approved the appointment of the first Foundation charity Trustees at the end of May. Membership is open to any Religious Order but there are five founding congregations: 

• Christian Brothers

• The Sisters of Charity of St Paul the Apostle

• De La Mennais Brothers

• The Faithful Companions of Jesus

• La Sainte Union

As members of the Gaudete Trust, these Religious Orders will be able to remain engaged and involved with their schools.

The Gaudete Trust Vision and Guiding Principles for Education are available here.

New Abbot at Douai

Douai Abbey, Berkshire

The monks of Douai Abbey in Berkshire have celebrated the blessing of Father Paul Gunter OSB as their new abbot.

@douaiabbey

Abbot Paul received the abbatial blessing from Bishop Egan of Portsmouth, accompanied by 12 bishops and archbishops, together with the Abbot President of the English Benedictine Congregation and 13 abbots, on Thursday September 8. The Deputy Lord Lieutenant of the Royal County of Berkshire attended and ecumenical guests included the Anglican Bishop of Reading.

In his homily, Bishop Marcus Stock of Leeds highlighted the Rule of Saint Benedict as the immediate "spiritual foundation" for guiding the brethren; the ring as a sign of constancy in loving kindness; and the pastoral staff for the sacrificial love required of any shepherd of a Christian flock. In a similar vein, the new abbot has taken as his motto convertat ut benignitas, 'may he convert by kindness'.

In his words at the end of Mass, Abbot Paul spoke of the rich array of saints named in the Litany sung before the blessing. They were, he said "outward-facing ministers of the Gospel, of every time and state of life." Included in the Litany were the martyrs of China and Ukraine. They give us courage "to be missionary; that is, effective witnesses in our time to the person and saving work of Jesus Christ."

Abbot Paul Gunter, 56, is a native of Wolverhampton and entered Douai Abbey in 1985. After serving for some years on some of the monastery's parishes he was sent to Rome in 2002 for higher studies in liturgy at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute (PIL), where he was awarded a doctorate in 2006. He served ten years on the faculty of the PIL before returning to become parish priest of Alcester in Warwickshire.

In 2012 he was appointed Secretary to the Department of Christian Life and Worship of the English and Welsh bishops' conference, in which role he continues to serve. He was elected the eleventh abbot of Douai on 11 May 2022, succeeding Abbot Geoffrey Scott who retired after 24 years as abbot.

Douai Abbey, whose patron is Saint Edmund, King and Martyr, was founded in Paris in 1615. Dispersed by the French Revolution the community of English Benedictines was re-housed in Douai, northern France in 1818 before returning to England in 1903, settling at Woolhampton in Berkshire. Douai School, which also moved from Douai to Woolhampton, closed in 1999. The constant work of the monks of the community has been service on the mission in England and Wales, though its monks have served as far afield as Mauritius and Australia. Today the community has 21 monks, some of whom serve in parishes in the dioceses of Portsmouth, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Menevia.

Building Hope for People & Planet : JPIC September meeting

Building hope for people and planet

Listening to the voice of creation

Led by Ellen Teague

                Saturday 24th September 2022

      10.00 am – 4.00 pm

Concluding with a Eucharist at 4.00pm

This will be a hybrid conference, on zoom and in person: at FCJ Spirituality Centre, Saint Aloysius Convent, 32 Phoenix Rd, London NW1 1TA

Ellen Teague is a London-based freelance Catholic journalist who writes and campaigns on Justice, Peace and Ecology issues. She has been a member of the JPIC team of the Columban Missionary Society in Britain for three decades and edits their newsletter, Vocation for Justice.

She also writes regularly for The Tablet, Messenger of St. Anthony International Edition and Redemptorist Publications, collaborating closely with organisations involved in the National Justice and Peace Network of England and Wales (NJPN). She is a member of the NJPN Environment Working Group and regularly speaks at diocesan days in England on  Laudato Si’.

Queries: Margaret Healy: margarethealyssl@gmail.com

All are welcome – Please bring family and friends

(Voluntary contribution of £10 (payable at the door)

For those on zoom a donation would be welcome

Tea and coffee provided (please bring your own lunch)

Carrying the torch: Presentation Sisters celebrate decades of service

Sr Susan Richert PBVM reflects on her congregation’s first Assembly since the pandemic:

Recalling the lantern of Foundress, Nano Nagle

As we gathered for our opening ritual, at our Assembly in June, we were invited to “Remember Our Call”.  To listen again to the call to us in the seasons of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter and to get in touch with what was stirring in our hearts as we gathered together as Province for the first time since 2019. These stirrings we shared with those at the table we had gathered with. We then prayed as we looked forward to thinking about our life with Christ, our commitment to life, dedication to ministry and supporting each other. We called each other to enter into ourselves, our experiences, our dreams and questions so that together we shape our future walking our journey and reminding each other that God asks us to act justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with God.

Jubilarians renewed their vows

Morning Prayer was led by different communities and gave us the opportunity to delve deeper and listen more acutely to what God is calling us to…

We celebrated Jubilarians, who renewed their vows at a joyful Mass celebrated by Fr Chris Thomas.

We took time to remember our sisters, family and friends who had died during the past 3 years – we had been unable to gather together to celebrate their lives. We were joined via zoom with those of our Sisters who were unable to be present with us.

Our prayer was one of blessing – for those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith.

As part of our ritual, we were given large paper oak leaves and invited to write the names of anyone we wished to remember  on the back. These were placed around the oak sapling and we picked up forget me not seeds for future planting.

We ended with lines from John O’Donoghue

They will never be forgotten

While there is one of us left to remember

And when there is no one left to remember

We will all be together.

A life lived to the full: Sr Pat Robb CJ

The following was taken from Sr Pat's personal memoirs by Sr Gemma Simmonds:

Pat was born in 1936 in Penang of a Scottish father and an English mother both of whom had served in World War I. Her father died in Malaya when Pat was only two, leaving her mother to move to a family farm in Somerset, where little Pat was soon in her element, riding horses and tractors and learning to love all things green and growing.

Her mother was called up for nursing service in WWII, so Pat was sent off to boarding school aged six. The end of war brought a further move to Cambridge, where an angry, sulking, rebellious young teenager (Pat's own description) was taken on in Paston House (now St Mary's School) by the then headmistress, Sr Christopher Angell, who is still alive and on mission in Zimbabwe aged 106. Sr Christopher saw Pat as a challenge, and she was not the only person to share this view of Pat in her lifetime! Paston House was Pat's eighth school, but she knew at once that a Mary Ward school was different from the 'survival of the fittest' culture she had met elsewhere.

Renouncing her original ambition to become a stable girl to the racing trainer in Royston, she followed her mother and chose nursing at the Middlesex Hospital in London. Pat loved nursing and the independent life of London with its smoke-filled coffee bars, skiffle music and mixed hockey played with young doctors. There were tensions around her interest in Catholicism both with her staunch Anglican mother and with a young farmer boyfriend who asked her to choose between him or becoming a Catholic. But neither mother nor boyfriend persuaded her, and Pat was received into the Catholic Church, making her First Holy Communion in the Cambridge Convent Chapel with Mrs Hawke, mother of Sr Anna and Nonie Hawke, who taught Maths at St Mary's, as her godmother.

Pat became a staff nurse, but further adventures called, and she sold her Lambretta scooter and boarded a ship bound for Australia, where she found a job in the mountains of New South Wales, covering everything from children's ward, A & E, maternity and the operating theatre, treating horrific accidents among men digging roads and dams out of the side of the mountains. She went on to South Africa in 1960, at a time of appalling violence and racial segregation, often finding herself sitting with the black Africans in church being glared at by white people.

Deciding to do a midwifery training in order to work in a bush mission hospital, she boarded a ship home, where she was pestered by two Irish nuns to visit their convent to see 'what it's like to be a nun'. Pat shuddered at the thought and avoided them for the rest of the journey, but to get them off her back, and thinking that a teaching order was a greater sacrifice, she said she was entering the sisters from her old school. True to her upbringing, she then felt she had to keep her word. Mrs Robb was distraught when she broke the news, but the Cambridge community were so good to her that in later years she was to say that she hadn't lost a daughter but had gained several. As anyone who knew her would understand, Pat found novitiate life very constricting, so she was delighted when she was sent to St Mary's School in Shaftesbury after her vows, heading for the open country and the wildlife with alacrity. As Sr Camillus she spent 18 years there as school nurse, starting the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme, running the Scottish reels club with the help of its star dancer, now the abbess of a Benedictine monastery, and being chiefly remembered by the alumnae who have paid tribute to her on Facebook for riding their horses round the hockey pitch, roaring round in a tractor and teaching them to play rugger touch, despite the disapproval of many parents.

But her missionary vocation never left her, and she returned to midwifery in London, finally landing in Zimbabwe, in a hospital with over 200 beds, serving an enormous outlying rural area. Reverting to her baptismal name, Pat moved on to the municipal clinic in the desperate poverty of Amaveni township where her interests in justice and peace were roused by the torture and bullying she witnessed by Robert Mugabe's supporters. A call came from Mozambique, to Chimoio, on the border with Zimbabwe. Built for 25,000 people, Chimoio now held 250,000, mostly refugees from the civil war, squatting on the edge of the town without sewerage or shelter. She concentrated on Mother/Child health but was also dealing with high numbers of mutilated victims of violence and people dying of HIV/AIDS. In one of many stand-offs with authority in her life, she was deported from Mozambique after denouncing corruption within the local charity and government sectors but was asked to go to Angola with the charity CONCERN.

She flew there to find that the CONCERN office had been bombed during the night and all documents had been destroyed. Nothing daunted, she set up some feeding centres with Médecins sans Frontières. 100 people a week were dying of starvation and related diseases there under terrible living conditions and she was very busy, with shelling all night and drunk and drugged soldiers manning the many roadblocks as she and her companions drove through the mine fields. Asked if she would do similar work in the camps surrounding Rwanda, she became the camp administrator in Tanzania in 1993, moving on to Goma in the Congo and on into Rwanda and then Burundi to a camp which they had to evacuate five times in the six months she was there. Years later she and I went to see the film Hotel Rwanda. She was very silent on the way home, later weeping as she spoke of the horrors she had witnessed during the genocide.

Pat moved to yet another war zone in Sierra Leone, organising logistics to turn a disused university into homes for hundreds of people, helped by a Muslim cook called Alfred and a Christian guard called Mohammed. Her career in African war zones ended with brutal suddenness when a bout of cerebral malaria necessitated her repatriation to England. Here she found a volunteering role in the Cardinal Hume Homeless Centre, with one day a week in a legal aid firm involved with Human Rights for the Traveller community. It was the beginning of her life as a tireless campaigner for justice and peace that is acknowledged in Professor Anna Rowlands' recent book on Catholic Social Teaching which carries a dedication to Pat. It says: 'She represented the persistent widow, the virtuous and difficult woman who faithfully believes in a truth beyond mere power and witnesses to it until justice is rendered. She stands for a generation of women, written out of the magisterial pages of the tradition, but who have led and inspired social renewal.'

Conventional community life was not for Pat after her long years under fire and in May 1999 she moved to a flat in Cambridge, working first at Whitemoor High Security Prison and then in chaplaincy at the Oakington Immigration Detention Centre until its closure in 2010. Well into advanced old age she involved herself with Justice and Peace work through CAFOD and other NGOs, campaigning on behalf of refugees, several of whom became part of her extended family, as well as keeping up the care of her beloved allotment.

At the end of her memoirs Pat writes, "God has been VERY good to me". She, in her turn, fought the good fight on behalf of so many in need of a doughty champion. We can imagine her welcome in Heaven, "Well done, good and faithful servant - there are horses, motorbikes and gardens galore, just waiting for you to enjoy them…" May she rest in peace at last after her extraordinary life and rise in glory.

Ears to Listen: Response of Religious to synodal consultation

By Sr Margaret Donovan HC

The three webinars on Communion, Participation and Mission were well attended  (between 200-300 each time).

Each started with a time of prayer and a reflection, given by a speaker on the theme.  Then there were break out groups to discuss the following:

a)      The reflections and thoughts of Religious with respect to their experience of Communion/Participation/Mission in the life of the church in England and Wales.

b)     Things Religious identify as the church needing to let go of in England and Wales to allow new or deeper experiences of Communion/Participation/Mission to come.

c)      Things Religious identify as the church needing to develop or learn to do in England and Wales, to allow new or deeper experiences of Communion/Participation/Mission to come.

After the session there was an opportunity for Religious to submit further reflections on each of the questions.  Overall there was an enormous response, for which we are very grateful. The feedback has been submitted to CICLSAL.

Thank you to everyone who took contributed in any way to the Religious Synodal process.  We hope for a positive outcome.

Looking for signs of hope in a troubled world

A new book by Sr Teresa White fcj, ‘Hope and the Nearness of God’ has been published by Bloomsbury as their 2022 Lent Book.

Sr Rachel, fcJ writes:

“Hope and the Nearness of God” by Teresa White fcJ is offered as a companion on the journey of Lent in this year of 2022.  When Teresa was asked by the publishers if she had any suggestion for marketing her book, the fcJ website came to mind, whereupon they asked if she would find someone to write a book review. I was glad to accept the task, attracted by the title and the anticipation of the inspiration awaiting me.

It feels like a book that could only have been written by someone rich in years, someone who has read widely in literature and life, reflecting prayerfully the while and companioning with many amidst life’s joys and sorrows.  I recall the disciple of the kingdom of heaven Jesus speaks of in Matthew 13:52, who brings out of his storeroom things both new and old. And what a storeroom, indeed, is here opened before us, with its feast of stories, poems, reflections and experiences, showing how the energy of hope has blessed, empowered and transformed so many people.

I love that the book has been designed to bring people together in small, informal shared-reading groups. If anything, these have proliferated since the covid pandemic drove us to Zoom, and in my experience have been powerful in deepening bonds of friendship and faith. Each chapter offers some suggestions to help us continue the conversation which each chapter has opened up. The book almost cries out to be used in this way. I look forward to using it with a weekly group, and will not be surprised if we continue to explore its riches through the six weeks of Easter as well as Lent.  Even to share the journey of reading the book with just one or two other people would be immensely rewarding.

How appropriate it is to focus on hope at this time when it is so needed! In her Introduction, Teresa shares one of her favourite lines from Blaise Pascal: “In difficult times, carry something beautiful in your heart”. Writing as she did in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, it became clear to Teresa that this “something beautiful” could be hope, the hope we saw being longed for in the many rainbows that children coloured and placed in their windows. Yet, one of the strong points of the book is the unflinching and realistic admission that it is not hope but bad news that so often predominates, and with reason enough: “a threatened environment and deeply troubled human communities – a world where an existential anguish seems to float in the air we breathe.”  Church and world are in such disarray:

We find ourselves questioning not just the Church but our faith in God …… Against this background, an injection of hope is surely needed.

Teresa White fcJ

The message of the book is that hope is a gift, but not a passive one, as we strive with God’s help to face life’s problems and do what we can to obtain the things we hope for, but in the context of hope, for hope brings transformation. The opening prayer which ends the Introduction gives us the ground plan of the whole book. We pray, “Oh God, remind us of your nearness, teach us to discern signs of hope in the reality of today. Open our eyes to see bridges of hope … open our ears to hear the melody of hope … Open our hearts to the energy of your Spirit, that we may begin each day confident of your care for us and for the whole of creation. Lord, be with us, in your love”.

Throughout the book, the challenge of holding to faith and hope is never downplayed. In the chapter on the providence of God we read: “It is sometimes said that in today’s world God is missing but not missed – and there is some truth in this. In this atmosphere, the gift of hope has an important role to play. Hope does miss God, seek God, long for God. Indeed that is the very essence of hope: to feel the lack, the absence, the distance, and in spite of these things, to place our confidence in God.” Story upon story shows how people like us embody hope, and forgiveness too, in the hardest of situations, demonstrating that love is stronger than evil, which is the heart of the good news of Jesus. The devotion of the Stations of the Cross is sensitively presented, with an extended reflection on the experience of Julian of Norwich, who through her contemplation of the Passion of Jesus came to know that God does not abandon us in suffering but shares it with us in solidarity, though like us Julian constantly questions why suffering should be permitted at all in a universe loved by God. Her 14th century was every bit as challenging as ours, with the Hundred Years’ War still going on and the Black Death sweeping through Norwich three times in her lifetime, and no vaccinations back then!

The chapter on Hope and Courage offers us as companions – among others – Anne Frank, Therese of Lisieux, Rowan Williams, poetry from Charles Peguy, the sad story of one of Teresa’s own young pupils who died tragically, and a moving reflection on the devotion of daily Mass as a desire to feel the touch of God, and of prayer as that which enables us to pass on the touch of God to others.

The chapter on signs and symbols shares surprising signs – surprising given the apparently faithless times in which we live – of a sense of the nearness of God: stories heard, words and actions witnessed, giving expression to hope and courage, and showing the kingdom of God already present in anticipatory and partial ways in our world. For example, the solidarity in caring for others which emerged during the pandemic, or the observed greater readiness to greet strangers and so become living signs of God’s presence.  The ancient symbols of the cross and the anchor are featured, and the heaven-pointing spire of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, destroyed by fire yet within days promised to be restored. And the sobering reminder that hope is not the optimism that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

The chapter on Discerning Hope gives a beautiful account of spiritual discernment – taking on God’s perspective, seeing with God’s heart, and from within God’s heart. As the previous chapter said, most of us will be unable to do this if we are always busy, without some inwardness and stillness. Discernment leads us to see that the darkness of God may not signify absence but unseen and unknowable activity. There are no simple answers to suffering and the radical and disturbing mystery of death. Yet those who have hope can find the spiritual energy to face it without being totally crushed and embittered. Many real-life stories witnessing to this hope are shared.

After signs and symbols of hope we also have bridges to hope, such as music and poetry, walking, prayer, love and laughter.  And the final chapter presents the Holy Spirit – God’s Indwelling Nearness – as the source of hope, for it is through the Spirit within us that we feel God’s solidarity when we are groping in the dark. All our “concrete petitions – for good weather, for security and employment, for healing, for basic necessities, for peace and reconciliation, for the homeless and the hungry – are simply our way of expressing our confidence in God’s nearness, and our expectation of his providential care for us.” The Spirit can be the force in the straining muscles of an arm, or the film of sweat between pressed cheeks; it can disturb and challenge as well as comfort; and truly comes to us yet does not linger. The Spirit does not work by stepping in to solve disasters, but by opening our wellsprings of compassion to bring hope in times of devastating suffering.

It is good news that Hope and the Nearness of God will be used in the Pray-As-You-Go app to lead many along our Lenten journey in its ten-minutes-a-day of music, reflection and prayer. This kind of step-by-step presentation seems ideal, for Hope and the Nearness of God is not a book to gallop through. At times, it feels like reading poetry: one must take it slowly and give it time to settle. Teresa says on page 1 that hope is one of those sacred words like gentleness and kindness, love and joy that “seem to draw us into the domain of God. Such words are in the truest sense poetic in that they communicate even before they are fully understood or analysed; indeed they lift human communication to a new level. They are a proof if we need one that though we live in time we are constantly being prompted to contemplate eternal realities.” I have no doubt that this book – born out of faith, hope and love – will give great glory to God by the encouragement it will bring to many, opening our hearts to joyful recognition of the Spirit who is ever with us in the energy of hope.