I Am the Vine you are the branches : Prayer & the Sacraments.

These words were delivered by the Lord to His apostles at the Last Supper. St. John has recorded many of Jesus words at that event, to our great benefit. During the course of that evening, Our Lord instituted the sacraments of the priesthood and the Holy Eucharist, gave the Commandment to love as He Himself loves, showed how service leads to glory, promised the guidance of the Holy Spirit, indeed, union with Himself, and by implication, union with the Father and the Holy Spirit too. What would a reader of these words conclude? Surely they would conclude that a new type of existence, of living as a human being, was being inaugurated. And so it was the old way of living a human life was being superseded and something new, never before experienced, was about to commence, once the price of our Redemption had been paid. Western culture, such as it is, suffers from a carbon monoxide type of poisoning of the mind and soul. Because it was once Christian, it thinks it knows all about Christianity and it is bored to tears by the subject. It thinks it has heard it all before, and is singularly unimpressed. Perhaps this is because the adherents of Christianity have themselves forgotten the newness of it all, its freshness, its teachings which are nothing less than shocking. Consider for a moment these precepts and teachings of Christ which are a hallmark of our religion: Love your enemies, and do good to those who persecute you. If anyone wants to be first among you, he must make himself last of all and servant of all. Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you will not have life in you. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. If a man looks at a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain be uprooted and thrown in to the sea and it would obey you. Now imagine how these teachings would have sounded to a first century AD Jew, or Roman or Greek. They are astonishing, radical, almost absurd, counter-cultural just as they are now. Living them is the way we follow the Lord. It is therefore how we find our true happiness, and how the gospel of Christ spreads and transforms entire civilisations from within. In order to live like this, we must be joined to the Lord: As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. And the reason Our Lord is telling them this? - that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. Considering still this question of living the Christian life, let us call to mind three different scenarios: Firstly, the living of Christianity in the Roman Empire before its legalisation in 312 AD. For all its glamour, artistic and engineering achievement, it was a society built on slavery and conquest. Human life had respect only in certain classes and only then if you had wealth or status, not because of any intrinsic value. Women had no equal dignity as people, divorce and infidelity were commonplace, power and status were allimportant. It was a cruel, violent society and Christians had to live in it. And they did they believed in the

Risen Lord; His power working in them took away their fear of loss and of death and they bore witness and Rome started to convert. Secondly present day Pakistan. An overwhelmingly religious, Islamic state here Christians are severely oppressed and persecuted, yet tenaciously cling to their faith in Christ. Through them, the Holy Spirit has brought about many conversions, though you will not hear of this on the news. Thirdly our own society. What does it have to offer? Low-grade hopelessness, weariness of life, material comfort, spiritual emptiness. The point is, Christianity has been around for 2,000 years and each age of its history has brought its own challenges to the followers of Christ. Even ancient Rome had some form of spirituality; yet Cardinal Newman pointed out that in Western culture at least, the Church has never had to deal, until now, with plain unbelief where a sizeable portion of the people believe in nothing at all and have no spirituality whatsoever. This is our challenge, our task. It just is not an option that we let secular materialism have its own way and we stand by and watch. That could never be the will of Christ His teachings are meant to go out from us to the world. How are we going to do that then? I think this is where our being joined to the life-giving Vine which is Jesus Christ comes in. I think this is where we see the urgent necessity of prayer and the sacraments. I also think this stage is where people start to feel afraid: the idea of spreading the gospel in a hostile or indifferent environment. Fear fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of humiliation, fear of death all these fears are overcome by faith: faith that Jesus Christ is alive and therefore is with us, that we can meet Him in prayer and the sacraments, that He will work through us, giving us what we need. What else holds us back from living the Christian life fearlessly and fruitfully? A few weeks ago, I came across part of something that a very great Pope Leo XIII wrote in 1893, as part of an encyclical on the Holy Rosary [Laetitiae Sanctae]. He had identified three areas which, in his analysis, had lead to a decline or downward movement of society. Problem 1 The distaste for a simple and laborious life - We deplore .the growing contempt of those homely duties and virtues which make up the beauty of a humble life. One of the truths that sets us free is to simply realize and come to accept that life is hard. It involves trials, arduous work, and setbacks, along with some of the progress we can and do experience. It would seem that our ancestors who lived even as recently as 150 years ago had a different outlook. They looked for happiness certainly, but largely expected to find that in heaven. Many of the old Catholic prayers bespeak a vision that this world was a place of travail, of exile, a valley of tears, where we sighed and longed to be with God. To the first error Pope Leo commends to our attention the Joyful mysteries and particularly a meditation on the implicit lessons of the home at Nazareth: where, he says, are precious examples of goodness, of modesty, of humility, of hard-working endurance, of kindness to others, of diligence in the small duties of daily life, and of other virtues .. Then will each one begin to feel his work to be no longer lowly and irksome, but grateful and lightsome, and clothed with a certain joyousness by his sense of duty in discharging it conscientiously.

Problem 2 Repugnance to suffering of any kind - A second evil . is to be found in repugnance to suffering and eagerness to escape whatever is hard or painful to endure. The greater number are thus robbed of that peace and freedom of mind which remains the reward of those who do what is right undismayed by the perils or troubles to be met with in doing so .By this passionate and unbridled desire of living a life of pleasure, the minds of men are weakened, and if they do not entirely succumb, they become demoralized and miserably cower and sink under the hardships of the battle of life. (# 7) Yes, today more than ever, there is almost a complete intolerance to any sort of suffering. This has been fuelled by the fact that we have been successful in eliminating a lot of suffering through technology and medical science. We often hold people responsible for things they can do little about. Sometimes economies just have cycles, climates too. Governments, laws and politicians cannot be expected to solve every problem or alleviate every burden. Sometimes accidents just happen. While we can and should undertake to fix unnecessary hazards and seek to ease one another s burdens, life isn t a padded room. Suffering, sorrows, accidents, burdens and difficulties are part of life in this valley of tears. Acceptance of this truth leads to a kind of paradoxical serenity. Rejection of it and indulgence in unrealistic notions that all suffering is unreasonable leads to resentments and further unhappiness. Here too, Pope Leo commends to us the rosary, in particular the sorrowful mysteries: If from our earliest years our minds have been trained to dwell upon the sorrowful mysteries of Our Lord s life we [may] see written in His example all the lessons that He Himself had taught us for the bearing of our burden of labour and sorrow. (# 8 ) Then, if I may paraphrase Pope Leo s Victorian language: whatever difficulties confront us, or griefs afflict the soul, or sicknesses the body: even so, there will be no evil which the envy of man or the rage of devils can invent, nor any calamity over which we shall not triumph by the patience of suffering .But by this patience, We do not mean that empty stoicism in the enduring of pain which was the ideal of some of the philosophers of old, but rather .it is the patience which is obtained by the help of His grace; which does not shirk a trial because it is painful, but which accepts it and regards it as a gain, however hard it may be to undergo. A life lived thus will speak with a powerful eloquence. Yes, indeed, the cross is part of this life. But Christ has made it clear that the cross yields ultimately to glory if we carry it willingly and with faith. In my opinion, the current refusal to carry the Lord s Cross has rendered the lives of many Christians completely sterile. Problem 3- Forgetfulness of the future life - The third evil for which a remedy is needed is one which is chiefly characteristic of the times in which we live. Even the right-thinking portion of the pagan world recognized that this life was not a home but a dwelling-place, not our destination, but a stage in the journey. But men of our day pursue the false goods of this world in such a way that the thought of their true homeland of enduring happiness is not only set aside, but banished and entirely erased from their memory, notwithstanding the warning of St. Paul, We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one which is to come (Heb. xiii., 4). (# 11) It is amazing how little most modern people think of heaven. Even Church-going believers talk little of it. Our main preoccupation seems to be making this world a more comfortable and pleasant place. Almost as though

we were saying, Make this world pleasant enough and I ll just stay here. It is not wrong to pray for better health etc. It is not wrong to work to make this world a better place. But in the end, our home is meant to be heaven and we ought to be solicitous of it and eagerly seek its shores. It should be a frequent meditation, and to be with God forever, the deepest longing of our soul. Here too, our prosperity and creature comforts have misled us into a love of this world that is unhealthy. A friend of the world is an enemy to God (James 4:4). We are distracted and too easily dismiss that this world is passing away. The fact is, we are going to die. Only a proper longing for heaven can correct the absurdity that an obsessional love for this world establishes in our soul. Pope Leo commends the Glorious mysteries of the rosary to our attention as a medicine for this unhealthy attachment to this passing world and our forgetfulness of heaven: These mysteries are the means by which, in the soul of a Christian, a most clear light is shed upon the good things, hidden to sense, but visible to faith, which God has prepared for those who love Him. From them we learn that death is not an annihilation which ends all things, but merely a migration and passage from life to life. By them we are taught that the path to Heaven lies open to all men, and as we behold Christ ascending there, we recall the sweet words of His promise, I go to prepare a place for you. Then, too, shall we feel the comfort of the assurance that the troubles which are soon over, though they weigh little, train us for the carrying of a weight of eternal glory which is out of all proportion to them. (2 Cor. iv., 17). Pope Leo s analysis of society in 1893 was typically astute and far-sighted, for these three problems are still with us and have leaked into the Church, into the lives of believers such that many are incapable of seeing any value in the ordinary and the hum-drum, are unwilling to carry the crosses God sends them, and have forgotten the destiny for which they were created. The result: paralysis, minimal evangelisation, demoralisation. To counter this, we simply do the reverse accept that in God s eyes, the ordinary and hum-drum does have value when it is joined to love, accept the daily cross, keep our eyes fixed on heaven where Christ is so that we live as we ought to on earth. Prayer and the sacraments of the Church will enable us to do this, because they will bring us into contact with Jesus Christ, the true Vine. There are two things that help unite oneself with Our Lord and to accomplish one s salvation: prayer and sacraments. St. Jean Marie Vianney Our baptism was what grafted us onto Christ the Vine and made us temples of the Holy Spirit. It bestowed upon us a priesthood which gives us the capacity to offer pleasing sacrifices to God, and to address Him as Our Father in prayer. The sacrament of Confirmation was a further visitation to our soul by the Holy Spirit, giving us spiritual gifts and the capacity to engage in militant spiritual warfare for the sake of Christ, the rightful King of this world. As long as we remain united to Jesus Christ the true Vine, we can, at appropriate times encounter Him in other sacraments too all of which help us to live as true disciples of the Lord: Marriage, Holy Orders, the Anointing of the Sick. We can have a sort of homely familiarity with the 7 sacraments but also we should approach them with awe and reverence because of what they are: an encounter with the Living God. There are two which, by Divine Providence, we can receive much more frequently: the sacraments of Confession and the Holy Eucharist.

Anyone with more than two brain cells will observe that where there is life in the Church, it is centred around three loves: love of the Most Holy Eucharist, love of the Mother of God, love of the Pope. In these three we find encapsulated our identity as Catholics. If our Catholic identity is strong, if we know who we are and what we re about, the world will see that we have something unique to offer it. If as the Church teaches, the Holy Eucharist is Jesus Christ Himself, Living & Glorified, and if our lives are to be built on and centred on the Person of Jesus Christ, then in some manner, our lives must be built on and centred around the Holy Eucharist. This how we encounter Him, and He encounters us, in the most profound way possible on this earth. Thus we are fed, and thus, according to His own words, we have life in us since He is Life. Furthermore, Our Lord is accessible to us in the Tabernacles of our churches and in Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament a manifestation of the Divine Presence in our midst which even a pious Jew would never have dared to imagine was possible; yet is something which God had planned and prepared from eternity. This, so that the creature Man might, like everything else, come into contact with that which he needs to be fulfilled. Good friends find pleasure in one another s company. Let us know pleasure in the company of our best Friend, a Friend who can do everything for us, a friend who loves us beyond measure. Here in the Blessed Sacrament we can talk to him straight from the heart. We can open our souls to him; tell him what we need, beg him for powerful graces. We are perfectly free to approach the King of the universe with full confidence and without fear. St. Alphonsus Liguori Know also that you will probably gain more by praying fifteen minutes before the Blessed Sacrament than by all the other spiritual exercises of the day. True, Our Lord hears our prayers anywhere, for He has made the promise, Ask, and you shall receive, but He has revealed to His servants that those who visit Him in the Blessed Sacrament will obtain a more abundant measure of grace. St. Alphonsus Liguori If our faith in the Holy Eucharist is strong and informed by the Church s teaching, we stand to benefit powerfully from receiving the Lord in Holy Communion. A person s faith can be strengthened or weakened by whatever steps they take or don t take to ensure a reverent reception of the Sacrament. Mind and soul benefit from preparation beforehand and thanksgiving afterwards, as this helps keep the eyes of the soul focussed on Christ and to be conscious of His Presence within us. The attitude of reverence within the soul should be expressed by the body, as this too affects the strength of faith towards Jesus Presence in the Holy Eucharist. When you receive Holy Communion directly on the tongue, you are expressing the truth that you are a dependent being a Greater Being than you is providing for you and you receive Christ s very Self as a Gift, from Him to you. It also conveys the fact that in Holy Communion, we are being fed by the Lord, not feeding ourselves as we do normally: thus highlighting that what we are receiving in not ordinary food; this is Something out of the ordinary. The only times we are fed by another person in our lives are firstly, when we are babies, secondly when we are sick and thirdly by two people who are in love and to whom they grant the intimate privilege of putting food into each other s mouth. The first two speak of human helplessness and need, the third of great love and trust. Before God, we are all very small, yet nonetheless His children; utterly dependent on Him for life. We are also sick and wounded spiritually, and unable to bring about our own cure. And God is the Lover of the human soul, its Saviour & Redeemer who desires intimacy with us and in whom

we are invited to place all our trust. And to prevent even this manner of receiving from becoming mechanical or perfunctory, it is extremely important to be conscious of Who it is you are approaching the altar to receive. I am not able to think of any equivalent meaningful symbolism regarding receiving Holy Communion in the hand. Some suggest that you are making a throne with your hands, in which the Lord is placed. But then you straight away remove Him from the throne which seems an unfortunate symbolism. It is permitted by the Church, but I think that given its lack of symbolism [truth is conveyed to us through symbolism all the time in human life] you would have to work much harder to avoid a creeping over-familiarity with the Immensity of the Gift, not to mention the greater potential for accidents. The matter is of immense importance to individual souls and to the whole body of the Church: we benefit from what fosters reverence and awe towards God, yet paradoxically over-familiarity makes us more remote from Christ. And if He becomes remote, we have no life, and if we have no life the Church is ineffective and the Gospel is not spread. The references in the New Testament to the fidelity of the first Christians to the prayers, the teaching of the Apostles and the breaking of bread says to us that the breaking of bread, the Mass, the Holy Eucharist is intended to be central to the new life of a regenerated humanity. Some serious intellectual effort to study what the Mass is all about, and living and expressing our faith that the Holy Eucharist is Jesus will surely lead to a recovery of awareness of its centrality to authentic Christian life. The other sacrament Christ has given to us which we can receive on a frequent basis is Confession. It is beautiful to think that we have a sacrament which heals the wounds of our souls, said St. John Vianney. When one is going to confession, one should understand what one is going to do. One can say that you are going to take out the nails from Our Lord. And a third quote from the saint of the confessional: The Good God at the moment of absolution throws our sins behind His shoulders; in other words, he forgets them; He destroys them; they will never reappear again. One shall no longer speak of sins which are forgiven. They have been washed away, they no longer exist. This is not the talk to present a long apologetic for the practice of going to a priest to have your sins forgiven. To those who argue that it s not necessary I would ask: So you think that when you get to heaven, Christ is going to say: You know all that stuff that the priests kept telling you about having to go to Confession to have your sins forgiven well, that was all hogwash, I never meant for that to happen, they just made it up because they were bored. Unfortunately, there is this rather inconvenient passage in the Gospels: He breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit; for those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven. For those whose sins you retain, they are retained. Seems pretty clear to me. Why did Jesus Christ create this sacrament? So that people could still approach Him personally and ask Him to forgive their sins, just as people did when He walked among them. People commit offences against God, they do evil. These offences must be forgiven and the damage they have done to us must be healed. Confession is another meeting with Our Lord expressly for this purpose. What s to be afraid of? You re meeting the Lord and He s freeing you from the chains that enslave you and weigh you down! Here, He does not feed you as in the Holy Eucharist; here He pours out His mercy and love over you. Now, a really diligent priest would encourage you to go to confession as often as, say, you would wash your car. No one would dream of allowing their car to go for a year without washing it, allowing all the muck to

build up and up. Actually, I ve done that very thing I m very bad at looking after my car! I can t really use that as an example therefore (!) A much better source of guidance would be the priest I used to go to Confession to in Rome, in St. Peter s. This priest was a good and holy Franciscan, American, who used to hear English confessions. He used to conclude the session, not with some pious exhortation from the ritual, but with the rather unorthodox dismissal: Get your ass back here in two weeks! This approach, with me at any rate, was very effective... Why is it that the less you go to Confession, the less you want to, and the more you go, the more you are content to? We don t have convention or custom to influence us into going often to confession this is not like 40 years ago when many people went to Confession every few weeks, even weekly, because it was the done thing. You did it buoyed up by the encouragement of others doing it. Nowadays, you have to work at it harder. Nowadays, how often you go is more directly linked to your own love of God, the strength of your desire for God. The more you love God, the greater your desire for Him and to be close to Him, the more you will want to avail yourself of Confession, where you meet Him and surrender your soul to Him to experience the tenderness of His merciful love. I feel confident in saying that when more Catholics take their discipleship of the Lord and His call to holiness seriously, and thus return to the practice of frequent confession, then a renewal of the Church will begin in earnest. The advice I used to receive from the Franciscan in St. Peter s was always simple and homely. I don t think I paid much attention to it at the time. We do tend to look for exciting, novel solutions to all our spiritual problems. But I was usually told to be constant in prayer, do my duty according to my state in life [i.e. a student for the priesthood at that time] and accept the Crosses which God sent me. Blindingly simple. Also blindingly effective in a person s soul. But no anything but that, we cry. There must be some task of great glory or special mission or something less humdrum that God wants me to do. It s possible. But it s up to God to reveal that to you. In the meantime, you can t waste the time God gives you you have to get on with life. Even the great missionary St. Francis Xavier, who endured incredible hardships preaching the Good News in Asia, even he spent years working in hospitals tending the sick and dying anonymous, mundane, inglorious work from one perspective. Eventually, most Christians must come to accept that constancy in prayer, doing the duty of the moment according to our state in life, and receiving from God s hands the Crosses He has chosen for us, this is going to be our pattern of life, the path to holiness which God has marked out for us. Our Lord spent three hours redeeming the world from the Cross, three years teaching and ministering, and three decades living an ordinary life under obedience to Mary and Joseph. When we rebels finally lay down our arms and say to God, OK, may it be as You want things, not me, then we find happiness and peace. Now we come to Prayer. So for the next ten minutes, the content of the talk will be pretty much Blah blah blah blah prayer. Blah blah blah good. Blah blah blah should. What more can be said about prayer that we don t already know? a surprising number of people think. By happy co-incidence, the Holy Father has just begun a new topic of instruction in his Wednesday audiences in Rome. The topic is prayer so Pope Benedict at least thinks it s worth talking about, and popes do not choose what they say idly. Perhaps he is thinking that, despite what many think they know, they actually know very little about prayer and this is why so many Christians are asleep on the battlefield and not praying, yielding valuable ground to the enemy. People do not pray because they are not taught to pray, they do not know of the privilege granted to them by God to be able to relate to Him person to Person. I meet students in my university chaplaincy who do not know how to pray apart from an Our Father & a Hail Mary before they go to bed. The irony is, they will leave university with a

degree testifying to an impressive knowledge in engineering, computing or pharmacy. But their knowledge of prayer and of God remains at the level of a five year old. He who does not pray, is like a hen or a turkey that cannot fly in the air. If it flies a little, it falls quickly, and scratching the earth it sinks and seems to take pleasure only in this, wrote St. John Vianney. And The soul which ceases to pray dies of starvation. In his first catechesis on prayer, the Holy Father talks of how religion and prayer has been a universal phenomenon, and shows how it evolved even in the ancient world. The ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Greeks and Romans and of course the Hebrews, all prayed and were conscious of the higher power which they reached out to and whose help and favour they earnestly sought. Less advanced than us technologically, but wiser spiritually. Pope Benedict states a familiar truth that it is in Jesus that we are made capable of approaching God with depth and intimacy. Interestingly, he also observes: We know well, in fact, that prayer cannot be taken for granted: We must learn how to pray, almost as if acquiring this art anew; even those who are very advanced in the spiritual life always feel the need to enter the school of Jesus to learn to pray with authenticity. Some people in our society pretend to be spiritual without belonging to a Christian community. There is a very good chance they will learn the hard way; they will either become discouraged or eccentric. While it can be a burden or a distraction to belong to the external body of the Church, it is a fulfilment of the natural law of religion and the divine law of faith. Spirituality, according to Christ, should not be attempted alone. The danger is that we may end up worshipping an image of ourselves rather than the living God. Then we get puzzled and resentful when things happen which suggest we are not in complete control of our destiny. There is a Lenten sermon of Blessed John Henry Newman in which he ponders our approach to the sufferings of the Lord, and how they should affect the life of our soul. We must be very irreligious, he says, if we have not some little gratitude, some little sympathy, some little love, some little awe, some little self-reproach, some little self-abasement, some little repentance, some little desire of amendment, because of what Christ has done and suffered for us. [Christ s Privations, a meditation for Christians. Fifth Sunday in Lent]. Rather, he continues, shouldn t we be overflowing with gratitude, keen sympathy, fervent love, profound awe, bitter selfreproach, earnest repentance, eager desire and longing after a new heart? Isn t this how things should be? So why are they not? Why will the great Easter festivals leave so many just as they were before, no nearer heaven, no nearer Christ in their hearts and lives? Why do people have so little faith, so little of heaven in their hearts? Why do they understand so little of the Gospel of their salvation? For this one reason, Newman says: because you so little MEDITATE. You do not meditate, and therefore it makes no impression on you. Meditating on Christ is to have Him before our minds as One whom we may contemplate, worship, and address when we rise up, when we lie down, when we eat and drink, when we are at home or away, when we are working or walking, or at rest, alone or in company. At first it is difficult, not particularly pleasant, even irksome and the mind gladly slips away to other subjects. But consider if Christ thought your salvation worth the great sacrifice of voluntary sufferings for you, should you not think your own salvation worth the slight sacrifice of learning to meditate on those sufferings, and His whole life? When He has done the work, is it so much to ask that we believe in it and accept it?

Only by slow degrees is meditation able to soften our hard hearts, such that we are really moved by the life of Christ. But quiet steady perseverance provides, little by little, warmth, light, life and love. We do not perceive ourselves changing it is like the unfolding of the leaves in spring. At certain periods, not daily, we are able to see that we are more alive than we were. This life, this practice of prayer or meditation, is an expression of our discipleship. The Lord calls disciples to follow Him that is everyone; for anyone who seeks to follow Christ is seeking to live the life of a disciple. Disciples pray, because they want to know their Master and experience His power in their lives. Prayer is a gift to us from God if ever we find ourselves praying, we should thank God that He has shown us so great a favour. He it is also who teaches us. If someone meditates consistently on God, a complete revolution takes place in their behaviour. If in one meditation they reflect how God became a humble servant of Man, they will not lord it over others during the day. If there were a meditation on Christ s redemption of all humanity, they would cease to be a snob. Since Our Lord took the world s sins upon Himself, the person who dwelt on this truth will seek to take up the burdens of their neighbour, even though they were not of their making for the sins the Lord bore were not of His making either. If the meditation stressed the merciful Saviour who forgave those who crucified Him, so a man will forgive those who injure him, that he may be worthy of forgiveness. These thoughts do not come from ourselves for we are incapable of them nor from the world for they are unworldly thoughts. They come from God alone. It is never true to say that we have no time to meditate; the less one thinks of God, the less time there will always be for Him. The time one has for anything depends on how much he values it. Thinking determines the use of time; time does not rule over thinking. The problem of spirituality is never, then, a question of time; it is a problem of thought. For it does not require much time to make us saints; it requires only much love Fulton Sheen. Prayer and the sacraments are the spiritual eco-system designed for us by God in which to live; uniquely tailored to suit human nature and human needs. The fact that so many Catholics seem not to know this, and have all but abandoned prayer is a circumstance of dire emergency. The salvation of souls is at stake. No one can live the new life Christ has brought us without prayer and the sacraments, without being joined to the Vine which is Christ. But if we do, not only do we assure the salvation of our own soul our primary duty but we also will carry out the work of God assigned to us in building up His Kingdom brick by brick. The words of two saints will end this talk. Firstly: There is nothing the devil fears so much, or so much tries to hinder, as prayer. St. Philip Neri

May prayer and sacrifice be your whole strength; these are invincible arms; they, far better than words, can move hearts, I know it by experience. St. Thrse of Lisieux. [Given at Glasgow University Chaplaincy, May 2011]