De La Mennais Brothers: Making Jesus Christ better known and loved by young people

Over the past few months I have become much more aware of the beauty of the Grail translation of the Psalms that we use in Morning and Evening Prayer (Divine Office) - I will write more about this in the near future - and I am also finding that this has rubbed off on my attitude to the other prayers in the Office. For example, the following hymn that we prayed just over a week ago. The words struck me as if I was discovering them anew, and this after having prayed (or simply recited?) them at least once a month for about 25 years.  The optimism of the imagery struck me most forcefully and I love the idea of God hearing our prayer "before we call", i.e. as the paslmist says elsewhere "before ever a word was on my lips... you knew me through and through" (I paraphrase). See what you think yourselves... Morning Prayer of Sunday, week 3 Transcendent God in whom we live, The Resurrection and the Light, We sing for you a morning hymn To end the si

This was voted "Album Of The Year" on a US website that I am subscribed to (http://bit.ly/y6c4aT). It is a wonderful album and I thoroughly recommend it. To cap it all, you can download it legally for free from noisetrade.com or from his own website!! http://joshgarrels.bandcamp.com/ See here for a lovely video for the first song from the album, "White Owl":

Here's a quote that came to me via Facebook (in the original French) from one of my favourite spiritual writers, the Swiss priest Fr. Maurice Zundel (1887-1975). He was a good friend of Pope Paul VI and was invited by him to preach retreats at the Vatican. His books "Je est un autre" and "Je parlerai à ton coeur" have been a big influence on me and the expression of my own faith. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Zundel "If I could sum up my faith, I would do so as follows: I believe in the life of this "other" in me, I believe in the infinite risk taken by God, I believe in the fragility of God because, if there is indeed nothing stronger than love, there is also nothing more fragile." - a (translated) quote from one of my favourite spiritual writers, Fr. Maurice Zundel The original text: "Si je pouvais résumer toute ma foi, elle est vraiment là : je crois à cette vie d'un autre en moi, je crois au risque infini de Dieu, je c

I have just read this from the Protestant  Desiring God website and I think it raises a very interesting issue which I might summarise as follows: the danger of a disconnect in the matter of faith and discipleship between the head and the heart, i.e. the danger that the knowledge (biblical, theological, philosophical…) one might accrue in one's studies becomes an end in itself and a source of pride, preventing one from having "eyes that see and ears that hear" the presence of Christ in one's life. It is an attitude which results in an insensitivity to the action of the Holy Spirit, the source of all true enlightenment for the mind and heart. Knowledge is very important but it can only take us so far. We might know about Jesus, but do we truly know him in the sense of having had a deep personal encounter with him?     The Irony of the Epiphany :   January 6 has long been the date the Western church has observed the feast of the Epiphany. From the Greek for “a

My sister wrote the below on one of her blogs. If the Mayans are right, how should we live our last year? :   What if this were the last New year? How would you plan to live your last year? There are those who believe the Mayan prediction. It will be interesting to see how it impacts their living, if at all? St Paul believed he lived in the end times two thousand years ago. His advice was to make no major life changes – if you are married stay married , if single stay single. Instead, he suggested, focus on what’s more immediately important. And what was that – to Paul and to you? And me? This deserves some reflection.    (Via  Catholic in 21st Century - Mo )   It reminded me of something I said during a round table after giving a personal testimony/talk (about my experience of evangelising through teaching and pastoral work with young people) during our annual 2-day Study Session at our Mother House in Ploërmel, Brittany. A fellow Brother asked me what aspect of our F