I hope no one here is expecting a talk from a great expert on contemplative prayer, because there’s no sense in which I’m that! But in fact, I doubt that the saints who will be our companions this week and next would have considered themselves in this light – and I suspect if we asked Therese, or John of the Cross, to name such an expert, they would have responded that is the wrong sort of question. What do I mean?

On August 23rd Sr. Mary John celebrated her Golden Jubilee.  A beautiful Mass with many priests was held at St Peter's Catholic Church Leicester, after which a splendid buffet was shared by Sr Mary John's many friends, sisters and colleagues, including several guide dogs who sat at the back of the Church and behaved (nearly) impeccably. Sr Mary John works with 'Pets as Therapy' with her companion dog Molly, who works her magic every week in the mentally handicapped wards. 

This is the final talk in our series on the Our Father. We hope to be running another series in the autumn. The words we are looking at this evening, like the whole of the Our Father, are at first sight comforting in their familiarity. But, when we stop to reflect, the ground seems to shift beneath our feet slightly alarmingly.  Deliver us from evil: a quick perusal of the daily news certainly confirms

The words of the Our Father speak to the depths of our need, our need for God, and what we need from God. So far, we have explored the coming Kingdom, the doing of God’s will, the gift of bread for both physical sustenance and - in Jesus as the Bread of life -spiritual life. Today we are going to look at the petition in the Our Father

How am I going to follow that?!  This is probably a fairly common reaction to occupying the slot immediately after Sr Gemma in a lecture series, but in my case this evening, it’s not just that I’m concerned that I might personally be an anticlimax – it’s also that there is a particular and rather obvious kind of challenge involved for anyone in speaking about the Crucifixion after the Resurrection, Good Friday after Easter Day. But maybe the scheduling conflict that has brought about this reversal is providential.