2. The Daily Soul
Welcome to the second edition of The Daily Soul, your regular newsletter for support with personal prayer, worship, reflection, pastoral care and wellbeing. Please share this resource with your students and parents.
We turn to Bishop Greg again in this edition with his most recent Sunday Mass and his Pastoral Letter to the Diocese featured. While the prayer focus in Edition One focussed on being grateful, this edition describes another form of prayer - the lamentation, with an explanation from Fr Richard Rohr. And the Student Station makes its debut. Be sure to check it out.
“I … say this to you now, recognise where we are being taken. We are not being taken into death, but, into a new form of life and experience of life. My recommendation, in fact, is what I am doing myself. Every day I’m recognising life. Every day I’m pleased to be alive. Every day I see new things. Every day I delight in the gift that God has given me.
You might be fearful. You might be locked up at home. You might be isolated. But, nevertheless, you can find joy" (Bishop Greg, Fifth Sunday of Lent).
Intelligently responding to the Coronavirus virus demands that we access resources of physical, emotional and spiritual resilience. One practice Christianity has developed to nurture resilience is lamentation. Prayers of lamentation arise in us when we sit and speak out to God and one another—stunned, sad, and silenced by the tragedy and absurdity of human events. Without this we do not suffer the necessary pain of this world, the necessary sadness of being human.
Walter Brueggemann points out that even though about one third of the Psalms are psalms of “lament,” these have been the least used by Catholic and Protestant liturgies. We think they make us appear weak, helpless, and vulnerable, or show a lack of faith. So we quickly resort to praise and thanksgiving. We forget that Jesus called weeping a “blessed” state (Matthew 5:5) and that only one book of the Bible is named after an emotion: Jeremiah’s book of “Lamentation.”
In this practice we reflect on the elements found in prayers of lament. I hope that you will find in his words and in the text of Psalm 22 a way to voice your own complaints, requests, and trust in God, who is always waiting to hear.
We need to be reminded that our cries (complaints) are not too much for God. God laments with us. In fact, God wants us to come to the Divine Presence in our anger, in our fear, in our loneliness, in our hurt, and in our confusion. Laments end with an expression of trust.
"Hold onto Love" by Jesse Manibusan
Singer-songwriter Jesse Manibusan, from San Francisco, has worked with staff and students across the Lismore Diocese over the last two years. He was scheduled to return and work with us in 2020 but has instead sent us this message from across the seas.
Jesse is currently posting daily messages of encouragement on his Facebook page during the Pandemic crisis. His first offering takes us back to the Proclaim Lismore Staff Days of 2019 with this reminder that
“When terror and fear overwhelm us. Hold on to Love.
Courage and Faith will sustain us. Hold on to Love”
The Student Station aims to highlight resources and activities that teachers can use in their online classes or pass on to their students in the course of their ongoing communication.
Praying the Examen
A prayer that helps us to become more aware of God's presence in our day.
At all times and in all places, Christians are people of hope, living our lives in the light of the Risen Lord. How might this translate into our day to day approaches during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic?
Click the image above to submit your prayer intentions.
Stay in touch through social media.
Proclaim Lismore Staff
