Prayer and Deepest Sympathy

Prayer

Yesterday was ‘All Souls Day’. 

Joan Chittister explores, in part the significance of what is being celebrated and remembered on this day of reflection.

“All across the world, plants and flowers, trees and flags, mementoes and framed photographs stand on quiet graves to mark that communion of life that one generation feels with another. Our souls stretch always forward, yes, but our hearts stretch always back. The chain of life never breaks, the shape of soul never strains beyond what formed us, what filled us with life in the first place.

We are bound to one another, each generation a link in the chain, each generation a standard for one to come. The people over whose graves we weep are not simply people we have known or who, though strangers, have had the decency to disappear from an earth already overcrowded. No, we cry tears of loss only for those whose lives touched our own and made them better. We cry both for parents and for politicians, for friends and for public figures, for anyone who has lived out “the communion of saints,” the Eucharist of humankind, the Christening of life and made it real in our own time, in our own neighbourhoods, in our own world. We weep for those whose faith has formed our own.

When we visit the graves and say the memorial prayers and tell the family stories over the bodies of the dead, we tell of the Christ we saw in them. We remember how it looked in them. We know in them what it is like to be driven by the consuming power of God, to be totally oriented toward God. The communion of saints stands before us, stark witness to the holiness of God, reminding us always to leave behind us for those yet to come a searing memory of the same.”

Chittister, J (2006) In Search of Belief  Liguori Publications: Missouri 

Invitation to Prayer

For Those Who Walked With Us

For those who walked with us, this is a prayer. 

For those who have gone ahead, 

this is a blessing. For those who touched and tended us, 

who lingered with us while they lived, this is a thanksgiving. 

For those who journey still with us in the shadows of awareness, 

In the crevices of memory, In the landscape of our dreams, 

This is a benediction.  Amen

Deepest Sympathy

We offer our prayerful support to the Moore family on the recent passing of John Moore, grandfather of Emily, Year 10 and Matilda, Year 7. Our thoughts and prayers are with you all at this time.