NEWSLETTER INSERTS

‘I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: "Go down again - I dwell among the people.”’

St John Henry Newman

‘Good is never accomplished except at the cost of those who do it, truth never breaks through except through the sacrifice of those who spread it.’

St John Henry Newman

‘There are many forms of poverty: the poverty of those who lack material means of subsistence, the poverty of those who are socially marginalized and lack the means to give voice to their dignity and abilities, moral and spiritual poverty, cultural poverty, the poverty of those who find themselves in a condition of personal or social weakness or fragility, the poverty of those who have no rights, no space, no freedom’.

Pope Leo XIV, I Have Loved You, 9.

‘From the beginning of Scripture, God’s love is vividly demonstrated by his protection of the weak and the poor, to the extent that he can be said to have a particular fondness for them. “God’s heart has a special place for the poor... The entire history of our redemption is marked by the presence of the poor’.

Pope Leo XIV, I Have Loved You, 17.

‘Each person should ask the Lord for a motherly affection for their neighbour so that we may serve them with all charity, both in soul and body, because we desire, with the grace of God, to serve all the sick with the affection that a loving mother has for her only sick child.’

St Camillus de Lellis, Rule of the Order of Ministers of the Sick, 27:

‘The prayer of the tax-collector in today’s Gospel “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner” is continued in the great tradition called the ‘Jesus Prayer’ with the slight variation: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners." According to the Catechism: ‘The invocation of the holy name of Jesus is the simplest way of praying always. When the holy name is repeated often by a humbly attentive heart, the prayer is not lost by heaping up empty phrases, but holds fast to the word and brings forth fruit with patience. This prayer is possible at all times because it is not one occupation among others but the only occupation: that of loving God, which animates and transfigures every action in Christ Jesus’ (CCC, 2668).

Fr Billy Swan