My warmest and best wishes to you all. I miss you all and I miss our gatherings. Thanks for your calls to ask how I, and others, are doing in the crisis time. It’s so good to see the caring and reaching out, the great help many parishioners are giving for poorer people through donation, prayer or volunteering. Some have spoken about feelings of sadness or depression, or a loss of motivation to do things, or the negative anxious thoughts that have come during the lock-in. I’m sure there will be some of this for most of us. After all we’re mourning the loss of normal life !! Even normal life, of course isn’t all positive. For many it’s fraught with often unnecessary activity, or life pressures or the absence of parent time with children. So it can be good to remember that the Chinese word for crisis also means opportunity. Maybe the opportunity this time offers us to recover a better, fuller humanity ? This is where recourse to prayer is fruitful, ie being present to myself and God in a loving way.
Remember CAFOD’s emergency appeal. The effects of Covid 19 are much more devastating in many parts of the world than they are in the UK. Each us needs to do our small bit. Many are starving. Give at ….www.cafod.org.