Greg Finn, an educator from Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Primary Academy, has launched "The Redeemed", a weekly video project designed to encourage stillness, prayer and spiritual reflection among Catholic secondary school students.

Aiming to engage the "Nones"

Finn's initiative targets a growing trend of young people identifying as nones - those who profess no religious affiliation.

He aims to provide teenagers with a fresh way to connect with their faith.

"The Redeemed is here to help teenagers encounter Jesus in a life-changing way" Finn said.

"It is a new way for young people to enter the presence of God, a weekly video series to help a new generation experience the Gospel."

The videos, each about 10 minutes long, feature reflections on spiritual themes that resonate with teenagers.

Finn explained that the series aims to prioritise an experience of God's presence over traditional intellectual formation.

Follows success of Lockdown Project

The Redeemed is not Finn's first foray into digital ministry.

During the COVID-19 lockdown he created the "Mark 10 Mission", a video series that helped children engage with Catholic teaching when they could not attend Mass.

The project was widely adopted by schools across England, creating 86 videos in 2023 alone.

Drawing on the success of Mark 10 Mission, Finn hopes his latest venture will have a similar impact on older students.

New voice for a new generation

Georgia Clarke (pictured), director of youth ministry at St Elizabeth of Portugal church in Surrey, plays a key role in "The Redeemed".

Clarke believes the series will appeal to young people by offering authenticity.

"We introduce some pretty big themes through the videos" Clarke said.

"The fact that they'll be hearing our authentic voice is something that makes it stand out."

She added that today's youth are more open to spiritual exploration but seek leaders who are genuine.

"What I see from our young people is that they are super-open, but they want to see openness from those who are trying to lead them—otherwise they build up walls."

Sources

• The Redeemed
• The Tablet

"Colours of day dawn into the mind,

The sun has come up, the night is behind,

Go down in the city, into the street,

And let's give the message to the people we meet."

There is almost something post-COVID in that opening verse: the sun has come up, and the night is behind.

In contrast to its gray-toned absence, color is returning to brighten our days, the arrival of expectant hope. Later in the hymn, we are encouraged to:

"Go through the park, on into the town,

The sun still shines on, it never goes down,

The Light of the world is risen again,

The people of darkness are needing a friend."

After a journey through darkness the light of the world has risen again.

Life as a jigsaw

Our lives resemble, in many ways, a jigsaw or the art form known as collage: many small pieces arranged together to create a whole.

In the early '90s, I spent some time working on paper collages, one of which is reproduced in this article.

They were constructed from colored paper taken from magazine illustrations, cut, and arranged in abstract patterns. Some shapes were torn from the original image, leaving a rough, ragged edge before re-assembly.

Similarly, the fragments that form our lives are sometimes shaped by clean-cut lines, at others roughly torn from our experience of the day-to-day bustle of living.

The pieces don't always fit together like a neat jigsaw, each carefully interlocking with another.

No, the rough edges jostle for space, each anxious to assume dominance.

The consequent discomfort is one that we have all experienced as we learn to take the good times and the not-so-good times in equal parts.

Life comes to us multi-shaped, with great joys and small pleasures, enormous hurts, and aggravating niggles. All hit us at one time or another, just as the materials of a collage come together to form one whole design.

We can view the Church as a collage

Many great artists have used the collage technique in their work, creating memorable statements through a simple, tactile form.

The extensive use of this technique by Henri Matisse comes to mind. His spiral arrangement of irregular polygons of colour, entitled The Snail, is well known.

His blue-colored nudes and the rich tones of The Dancers brilliantly demonstrate the artist's skill in this medium.

I had reproductions of both hanging on the wall of my room in school.

The use of found materials, rearranged in a creative manner, can be transformed into something of great simplicity and beauty.

In many ways, we can view the church as a collage, a whole edifice constructed from many fragments, some with neat, clean edges carefully arranged, each in its place.

Others, with roughly torn edges jostling with their neighbor, are anxious for space that their voice might also be heard.

It is often suggested that one of the great difficulties experienced by religious communities is the very fact that a disparate group of men or women live together week after week, putting up with each other's foibles and forgiving each other repeatedly.

In fact, the parish can also be seen as a collage, small pieces of color assembled to form a great whole, each alongside the other, with rough and smooth edges alike.

Prayer

How about our times of prayer? Indeed, there is another example of an aspect of life as a collage.

Our times of prayer are never the same. Sometimes, the edges are smooth, and everything seems to fall into place. On other occasions, the rough edges make for an uncomfortable ride.

We do not choose the time or place; it just happens, and we have to cope with the consequences.

It is just another aspect of life that has to be managed, one step at a time.

If we are sensitive to change, then we can learn from the experience. In making a collage, not every cut or tear or choice of color is right the first time. The rejected pile of materials that grow on the floor around the artist's feet tells the story.

So, too, does the litter pile from our broken attempts at prayer accumulate throughout our lives. The important thing is that we do not become dispirited and that each attempt at prayer is seen as a step on our journey rather than an occasion of failure.

Many books have been written on prayer, offering new insights into well-worn paths. All is well and good, but reading about prayer is no substitute for prayer itself.

In a journal entry in December 1964, Thomas Merton tells us, "In the hermitage, one must pray or go to seed. The pretense of prayer will not suffice. Just sitting will not suffice. It has to be real. Yet, what can one do?

"Solitude puts you with your back to the wall or your face to it, and this is good. So you pray to learn how to pray!"

Honest, direct, and without frills, Merton does not attempt to cover the hardship with well-fashioned phrases or sentiments. He says it as it is and concludes that we might pray to learn how to pray.

Building the collage of prayer is to set out on an arduous journey, one with many points of failure and darkness, occasionally lit with the light of God's presence to encourage our effort.

There is nakedness in our efforts as we struggle to live a life in prayer, as each tentative step brings with it the risk of joy or perceived failure.

And there lies the nub of our problem; what we call failure may not be a failure at all, just as a serious fall does not always follow a small stumble.

So, although our steps falter, the pilgrimage of prayer continues as we return again and again to pick up the pieces, the torn and ragged fragments of the Collage we are trying to form.

Returning to the collage image accompanying these few words, it is formed from many different colored shapes. Moving across the image, there is change, and we respond differently to the dance of its organization and detail.

Dance of prayer

Taken to the edge

we face the emptiness of words

that once had meaning.

There we face the loss of surety

where in the cold stillness

of each dawn hour,

in the breaking light

the echo of words remains

and the dance continues.

Sr. Wendy Beckett wrote in her book Simple Prayer that the essential act of prayer is to stand unprotected before God. What will God do? He will take possession of us.

Have you ever thought to pray for the artist whose work is our inspiration? None are perfect, and despite fine lines and glorious color, each artist has secrets and shame in their hidden lives.

To conclude where we started, the people of darkness need a friend. It is through the prayer collage of our lives that darkness finds light.

• First published in La Croix
• Chris McDonnell is a retired headteacher from England and a regular contributor to La Croix International.

I couldn't help but smile as the scene unfolded: a little girl happily playing in the safety of her own backyard, dinner waiting inside, a warm bed to tuck into just a few hours later.

And then my smile faded as I realised that this idyllic domestic moment is a luxury not afforded to hundreds of thousands of others halfway around the world.

Reports of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel came fast and furious over the weekend, and as the death toll has increased and more details emerge about the horror of October 7, it is hard to look away.

And perhaps we shouldn't look away.

We shouldn't look away from the horrors of that day, or the impending war that will likely not settle generations worth of conflict.

It is only in seeing the tragedy that we can respond to it.

But there's the challenge.

We see tragedy again and again, and we begin to become desensitised to it, and stop responding.

The news cycle is never ending, often grim, this constant barrage of data and descriptions and images and videos, keeping us abreast of a situation.

It isn't called "olds," after all.

It's called "news" because it is new information gained and shared bit by bit.

We consume it constantly, clicking, scrolling, sharing, and commenting, engaging with the new information as it arrives, formulating opinions quickly, seeking to garner more information to create a broader understanding.

There's nothing wrong with consuming the news. If we know when to stop consuming it, or if we know how to consume it.

Asking the Lord to give us a heart to feel

It isn't that we are incapable of handling bad news.

Perhaps we were not made to know quite so much of it.

Perhaps the human heart can only hold so much tragedy and horror.

Maybe reading and consuming the news is the entirely wrong approach. Maybe we're meant to "pray the news."

A religious sister friend once said this on social media: "we need to pray the news."

If all we do is read and ingest information, we're filling our minds with horrible images, heavy moments.

We begin to formulate solutions we're far from informed enough to create or powerful enough to enact.

And so the horrible image and the heavy moment begin to feel hopeless, and we feel helpless.

Simply reading the news and becoming informed about a terrible situation is a passive approach to the tragedies of the day.

It can lead to the smile falling off your face when you realise millions of people will have no safety, peace, comfort, or delightful afternoons in their backyard because of terrorist attacks and impending war.

And we should feel deeply the suffering and hurt of others.

We should be informed of the circumstances that have led to violence, death, and destruction.

We can't just look away.

But if we are looking, we should look with the eyes of faith.

We should look with eyes that fill with tears as we cry to heaven.

• Praying the news is not passive, far from it.
• "Praying the news" is responding, with a voice lifted to heaven and a heart turned to the love of God, asking Him to bring peace and comfort to those in need.
• "Praying the news" takes the heavy moment and asks the Lord to carry it with you.
• "Praying the news" is going to our Father in heaven and imploring him to care for his people on earth.
• "Praying the news" is realizing that the most significant thing we can do when we're so far removed from tragedy is asking the Lord to give us a heart to feel, eyes to see, and a mind to understand.

Pope Francis has called us to prayer in light of the tragic attacks on Israel and the unfolding war.

He has asked us to consider war a human tragedy that hurts us all.

Would that we all not just watch, listen to, or retweet the news, but rather, pray through the news in these coming days.

• Katie Prejean McGrady is an author, speaker, and host of The Katie McGrady Show on Sirius XM's The Catholic Channel and a regular contributor to La Croix International. She lives, works, and writes from Lake Charles, Louisiana.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Salvo, the name of this 30-something man who signed up for confession at the prison where I serve as a chaplain, kept on speaking.

I wasn't sure whether he was talking to God or to me. I just nodded.

Moments earlier, my hands were placed over his, which were in handcuffs, before he held them in front of his face to pray, half in English, half in Spanish.

The two of us, he in his orange jumpsuit and me in my black clerical shirt and trousers, sat next to each other at one of the hexagonal metal tables in the middle of the cell block, visible to other inmates in the tiers above and below us.

Some of them peered out of the small plastic windows on their cell doors.

The guard who brought Salvo down from "the Hole" 15 minutes earlier, after shackling his hands and feet with chains, glanced up from his desk about 10 yards away from us as I placed my hands back on the table.

I was aware of how intimate this praying looked. I didn't mind. The tears said it all, to God if not to anyone else.

Today was a day of tears.

Unusual for the men in prison, most of whom have to keep up a tough front. Often, they keep this stance with me too, even when in private, let alone when I meet them on the cell block instead of my office, as I have to meet those who are in protective custody.

I believe if they can find one space to weep and be real with another person and before God, it will lead to their peace of mind and ability to be strong.

I wait for them to pull themselves together before they go back to their cells.

The whole dynamic of hearing confessions in prison is incredible.

Quite a few guys have told me that they believe God got them into prison to save them from heading in the wrong direction.

I use this awesome role of confessor to encourage them to foster this spark of God's love for them, not to waste it.

To ask for forgiveness from Jesus who came for this reason. And most of all, to be determined to continue this prayer relationship with God that they have discovered on the inside of the prison when they get outside.

Usually when I finish a visit with one of them, whether it is a formal confession or not, I say, "Do you want to pray?"

"Yes," they invariably say, as though it is normal for two men to share their souls together.

I open my hands on the table between us, face up. As though they are children, they place their hands in mine.

I have no idea what these hands may have done — robbed? Sold drugs? Abused someone? "Go ahead," I say, waiting for them to start.

"Oh no, you do it," most respond.

"No, you do it," I say.

But I usually have to. They aren't quite ready to launch out into this God territory with a virtual stranger, even one they amazingly trust because I am "Father" to them.

I bow my head, feeling the calloused hands of a tough guy who would ordinarily never be resting his hands in another's so vulnerably. Continue reading

• Paul Morrissey, O.S.A., is a priest in residence at St. Augustine Church in Philadelphia, Penn. He served as a Catholic chaplain at the Philadelphia Prison from 2007 to 2019. This article has been excerpted from his forthcoming memoir Touched by God: Confessions of a Prison Chaplain.

They have both appeared in Court charged with murder - one appeared in person and the other via audio-visual link from a youth residence.

"Don't forget to pray, son!" the mother of the older defendant called out as he left the dock.

About 100 people gathered at Beach Haven Community House yesterday evening to mourn, before moving to the site of the incident for a karakia (prayer).

Residents lined one side of Beach Haven Rd while a small group prayed on the footpath on the other side, where flowers had been left. Read more

• Have I chosen the right place?
• Am I in the right posture?
• How often?
• For how long?

Each becomes part of the criteria for prayer efficacy.

Luke's Gospel (18: 9 - 14), often has the heading, The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.

It's a story remembered by many of us -Pharisee up the front, the tax collector down the back.

The Pharisee begins his prayer as a contest, "God, I thank you I am not like. . . . .", and immediately the Pharisee's prayer is about himself.

Christian prayer is not something we do - an activity.

Rather it is a relationship with another, and for those in a relationship, you will be aware that what happens is a matter of initiative and response, first by one and then the other; and in those moments of exuberant joy, there is a syncopation like only lovers know.

If I am engaged in Christian prayer because I have to, in order to be good and acceptable, then I am not engaged in Christian prayer!

There is a story told about a Jewish farmer who did not get home before sunset one Sabbath and was forced to spend the night in the field, waiting for sunrise the next day before being able to return home.

Upon his return home, he was met by a rather perturbed rabbi who chided him for his carelessness.

"What did you do out there all night in the field?" the rabbi asked him.

"Did you at least pray?"

The farmer answered: "Rabbi, I am not a clever man. I do not know how to pray properly. What I did was to simply recite the alphabet all night and let God form the words for himself."

When we come to celebrate, we bring the alphabet of our lives.

Our psyches go up and down.

Sometimes we feel like singing and dancing.

Sometimes there is a spring in our step.

However, we have other seasons too - cold seasons, bland seasons, seasons of tiredness, pain, illness, and boredom.

If prayer is lifting of heart and mind to God, then clearly, during these times, we ought to be lifting something other than song and dance.

If our hearts and minds are full of warmth, love, enthusiasm, song, and dance, then these are the letters we bring.

If our hearts and minds are full of tiredness, despair, blandness, pain, and boredom, then those are our letters we bring.

Offer them and allow your God to construct them into words!

• Gerard Whiteford is Marist priest; retreat facilitator and spiritual companion for 35 years.

Even though I'd spent the summer reporting, driving the 90 miles back and forth for interviews, protests and church services, I had not yet covered that difficult ground with my own elementary schoolers.

How did that happen?

I knew they would ask, and for that, I had answers: failed locks, failed police, failed systems.

I was more nervous about whether they would ask "why" it happened. I cannot explain that part.

Schools around Texas, most of which had been back in session for weeks, wore maroon T-shirts on Sept. 6 to show their support as kids in Uvalde went back to campuses fortified with more cameras, higher fences and heavy police presence.

My kids asked about "maroon shirt day," and I knew the day we'd been putting off for months had come.

As I prepared, I thought back to the evening of May 24, as my husband and I looked at our sleeping children, ages 5 and 8. "We're going to have to tell them eventually," I said.

At that point we didn't even know yet the full list of victims in the Uvalde massacre.

On May 25 we dropped them off at their San Antonio elementary school, trusting that if the news came up at school, the teachers and staff had been briefed on how to handle it.

We hadn't wanted the kids to start their school day processing the news — news we ourselves had barely digested.

As they slammed the door shut and bounced away from the car, I cursed the air.

It was the only available force, it seemed, to blame.

Gun violence is in the air Americans breathe, and like air, I knew Texas' response to what happened in Uvalde would be neither solid nor substantial.

I drove into Uvalde a week later as a reporter, as a mother and as a person of wavering faith.

I've given up on theodicy — trying to explain how God could let bad things happen — and instead tried to communicate God's love and justice to a hurting world.

I don't know why bad things happen, but I know it's our job, as people who claim to follow Jesus, to pursue shalom, to try to make things right.

Part of responding to bad things is making sure we prevent them from happening again.

We want to both alleviate pain and prevent it when we can.

On the drive, I would lament the world we've created, the suffering left unaddressed, and wonder how I'd eventually explain it to my children.

Ironically, sitting on my shelf was a preview copy of my book, "Bringing Up Kids When Church Lets You Down: A Guide for Parents Questioning Their Faith."

I was supposed to be good at these conversations.

White evangelicals' idolatry of guns is exactly the kind of betrayal that led many of the people featured in the book to leave the churches they'd grown up in, deconstruct their faith and question everything they thought they knew about how to raise moral people.

Yet, I am holding onto the possibility of a good God in the midst of hypocrisy, violence and power hunger.

But that book is also about giving our kids love when we don't have answers, when we cannot reconcile our spirit to the God we thought we knew, much less to a church lusting after power.

School shootings put us in that place without answers, and they fill our children with questions.

Mass shootings have brought the problem of evil to our doorstep.

Why would God allow kids to be killed at school?

We all pray for our children's safety … so why do some kids not come home?

Are mass shooters uniquely evil, or do they have a religion of anger and supremacy cheering them on?

While we wrestle with the fruitlessness of such theodicy, we are cut off, often in God's name, from any kind of solace, any kind of reassurance that if not God, then at least our neighbours are doing anything to keep our kids from harm or to comfort those who grieve.

The parents who lost children and the children who lost parents on May 24 are begging for gun reform; they are demanding responses from lawmakers — we've heard it directly from their mouths over and over.

Those who oppose them, politicians mostly, are the same who are quick to quote Scripture, court big-name pastors and tout a brand of Christianity that baptizes their various agendas.

That was weighing on my mind as I prepared for the conversation with my kids, but as the actual conversation unfolded, they were not struggling to reconcile anything.

My kids were quick to reassure themselves that their safety plan was in place.

They asked practical questions about locks and procedures, trying to figure out what went wrong at Robb Elementary. And then, after assessing the situation, they talked about how sad they were for the kids and their families, tears welling and receding.

The lockdown generation knows school shootings are possible, and young men bursting into schools to shoot indiscriminately is just something that happens sometimes.

They know how to hide quietly in closets and desks.

Their doors stay locked; their windows stay covered.

In some ways, they've never known a world without that looming presence.

But to hear that it can all fail, and fail so spectacularly, is as jarring for them as it is for me, and there's real compassion for the slain.

While they are aghast at the malfunctioning of a fortress because that is what their schools have become, I am aghast at the dysfunction of a nation.

My kids never asked why, at least not in the grand sense.

They weren't in disbelief or existential crisis over their loss of innocence.

If the lockdown generation is going to believe in God, it will always be a God who coexists with both the gunman and the ones who put the gun in his hands.

Prayer, for them, will carry the stench of inaction — both parents' prayers unanswered and the "thoughts and prayers" of nonresponsive politicians.

It's difficult to know what hope looks like in this scenario and what goodness and shalom might mean, but I am determined to figure out what it means to be the people of God when it feels like God is gone and all we have left is air.

• Bekah McNeel is an author at Religion News Service.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

Of course, that doesn't mean people always agree with what he says or that those who do actually take significant actions or change their behaviour.

It's enough to think of the pope's incessant appeals for peace. One must admit that they have not brought an end to many wars if any.

And what has been the result of his repeated exhortations to show greater respect and reverence towards all of creation — human beings, animal and plant life, and all the elements in the environment?

Most people — even in the Vatican — don't seem to know or be much interested in the fact that we're currently in the "Season of Creation", a five-week-long ecumenical initiative to find ways to protect "our common home". Yet, this is also something Francis has strongly endorsed.

Still, these issues get decent press mostly because even those in the mainstream secular media recognize that the pope has a certain moral authority, even if he is not an expert on environmental issues or international diplomacy and peacemaking.

A teacher of prayer

Francis is a Christian priest and bishop and, as such, he is fundamentally a "spiritual" leader. That means his expertise or specialization is in spiritual matters. And one of most important of all is prayer.

Most people probably don't know that he spent almost an entire year using his Wednesday general audiences to teach about prayer.

"Prayer is the breath of faith; it is its most proper expression. Like a cry that issues from the heart of those who believe and entrust themselves to God," he said on May 6, 2020, when he started the weekly catechetical series.

The pope continued lecturing on prayer for the next two months before briefly suspending the lessons in order to speak to the public about the urgency of "healing the world" in light of the deep social ills the coronavirus pandemic had brought to the fore.

But he resumed the teaching cycle on prayer in early October 2020 and continued the weekly lessons right up until June 2021. In all, Francis gave 38 talks on the subject. But most of these went largely unreported even; I regret to say, by La Croix International.

A topic too embarrassing or just too intimate?

Perhaps we Catholics are not comfortable talking about the issue publicly because we're afraid we'll be seen as "preachy" or "churchy".

Many Catholics — perhaps most, actually — seem to be as embarrassed to talk to others about their "prayer life" as they are to talk to them about their sex life! Is it because they don't have one? Or do they find it is too private and intimate to speak about openly?

When I say "they", of course, I mean "we" — all of us.

I suspect one of the issues is that most Catholics have not been taught much about prayer beyond reciting texts such as like the Hail Mary, keeping personal devotions and going to Mass.

We saw this during our awkward attempts to fill the void left by suspended public liturgies during the various pandemic lockdowns. It seems that as spiritual leaders and companions, we Catholics have not done very well — in general — in giving people the tools to help them build an interior life.

Prayer is more than just going to church on Sunday

Even some six decades since the end of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the Church continues to convey the message that the "litmus test" for being a Roman Catholic consists in faithfully observing the "obligation" to attend Mass on Sundays and a fixed number of Holy Days.

Certainly, there have been major efforts to promote spirituality in the post-Vatican II Church, such as meditation, Lectio Divina, centring prayer, etc. But group recitation of the rosary before Mass or Eucharist adoration afterwards, as well as other "devotions", continue to hold pride of place.

All spirituality, in a certain sense, is Eucharistic since the celebration of the Eucharist is the "source and summit" of the Church's faith and life. But we continue to perpetuate the medieval obsession with the Eucharistic elements.

And we tend to reduce prayer to the exercise of asking God for help (for ourselves or others) or giving God thanks for our blessings, which is all well and good.

With few exceptions, our Catholic bishops and presbyters have not helped people explore the Church's tradition of contemplative prayer. And that may be because many of them have not been taught how to do so.

The contemplative approach to navigating a world in dramatic upheaval

It is not essential to be a monk or nun to engage in contemplation, to just sit with God in silent stillness. But some form of contemplation is essential to being a believer, even one who identifies as Catholic.

I'm no prophet, but it seems clear to me that we are only at the beginning of probably the biggest upheaval and most dramatic transformation in human history.

The cacophony of information (and misinformation) that is being spread today at such dizzying speed has alone begun to destabilize the communities and institutions that were once our points of sure reference.

How long this disruption will continue and what sort of casualties it will leave in its wake is anyone's guess. The Church, because it is part of this world, will not be spared.

The only way to navigate this huge transformation, it seems to me, is through a contemplative approach. That does not mean running away from reality and navel-gazing.

Overcoming a dualism that is not Christian

Contemplation and action are not opposed. One cannot healthily exist without the other.

"In Jesus Christ, in his person and in the Gospel, there is no opposition between contemplation and action," the pope said at his general audience on May 5, 2021.

"No. In the Gospel and in Jesus, there is no contradiction. This may have come from the influence of some Neoplatonic philosopher, but it surely has to do with a dualism that is not part of the Christian message," the pope said.

The Franciscan spiritual teacher Richard Rohr says contemplation is precisely nondual thinking. Here he also uses the example of how Jesus in the Gospels deals "contemplatively" with the reality of good and evil:

Jesus does not hesitate to dualistically name good and evil and to show that evil is a serious matter. However, he does not stop there. He often speaks in dualistic images, especially in regard to issues of wealth and power: "You cannot serve God and mammon" (Matthew 6:24).

Yet Jesus goes on to overcome these dualisms by the contemplative, nondual mind.

We can and should be honest about evil, even at the risk of making some people uncomfortable, but we must not become hateful, nor do we need to punish the "goats" in our life. We keep going deeper until we can also love them and seek their healing and transformation.

External behaviour needs spiritual guidance

Rohr, who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation, insists there can be no opposition between effective action and authentic contemplation.

"The most important word in our Center's name is not Action nor is it Contemplation; it's the word and. We need both compassionate action and contemplative practice for the spiritual journey," he says.

"Without action, our spirituality becomes lifeless and bears no authentic fruit. Without contemplation, all our doing comes from the ego, even if it looks selfless, and it can cause more harm than good. External behaviour must be connected to and supported by spiritual guidance," Rohr concludes.

Go back and look more carefully at Laudato si' (On Care for our Common Home - 2015) and Fratelli tutti ( On Fraternity and Social Friendship - 2020), and you'll see that in these two encyclicals, Pope Francis draws the same conclusion.

Of course, if you meditate a bit more prayerfully on the Gospels, you'll discover that so does Jesus.

• Robert Mickens is LCI Editor in Chief.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

When the Kremlin-initiated military operation began in February, I was looking at several television networks (BBC, Al Jazeera, DW) in horror at what was happening over the following weeks through March and April.

I found myself in tears, shocked and aghast at how people could inflict such devastation on their brothers and sisters with such blatant disregard.

Given the sense of helplessness we probably all feel, I have been watching my prayer during this time, tracing its changes over the period when the media we have access to, no doubt biased in its own way, reveals what are visually horrific and unbridled acts of violence.

My prayer is changing.

In the first few weeks it was something like this:

Lord, couldn't you organise an assassination for the fellow? Look at what he's doing to his own people!

It would then change as I contemplated the Lenten and then the Easter gospels with a shift:

Lord, God of might, all powerful and yet all loving, soften his hard heart and comfort those suffering.

More often now, than at the beginning when I could not even let the Word sink into me, it goes something like this:

Jesus, you graciously call me brother; make me aware of my own hardness of heart, my own blatant disregard of others, or my judgment and dismissal of them, and in turn, of my own self. In that awareness, may I become your instrument of peace in all my relationships.

I would like to think that the third prayer is how I pray all the time, but the truth is that I probably alternate from one to the other depending on my mood or whether or not I have lived a particular day more or less aware of the world around me.

Wouldn't it be great if life were as simple as I wished it to be, or that I'd be a saint sooner than yesterday!

But neither is that the truth. Such a wish belongs to the world of pious fantasy.

Nevertheless, I take heart because the prayers Jesus prayed are simply human and fully so. Psalm 139, a favourite of many, lists the wonders God has done, how faithful and loving is this creator God of ours whose hand is upon us and who is so close, knitting us together as we are being formed, with us to the end (vv. 1-18). But, or better: and then comes the invective against the psalmist's enemies:

O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
those who speak of you maliciously,
and lift themselves up against you for evil!
Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with perfect hatred;
I count them my enemies. (NRSV 19-22)

However, there is a shift in the remaining verses when the prayer realigns the thoughts and worldview of the psalmist who prays to be more self-aware, putting trust in the God who knows the heart (vv. 23-24).

This refocus brings about a greater humility and a prayer to be aware of the wicked ways we each of us have within our own hearts.

Such a realignment returns us to our creatureliness; we can no longer judge or dismiss others or think ourselves self-righteous in relation to Putin and his generals, or Hitler, or the present-day leadership of Israel.

In Ps 22, the psalm some scholars attribute to Jesus' last prayer on the cross, the metaphors change.

The enemies are turned into jackals and roaring lions or the horns of oxen from which a saving God will rescue the psalmist, because of the confidence and trust placed in the relationship the one praying has in the God whose face is not hidden from those who love and are loved by such a covenantal God. It is a psalm full of trust in and praise of our God.

The psalms, it seems to me, give us the freedom to pray as we are: human beings constantly in need of being brought up short, challenged to remember that we are not the creators of our destiny.

If the astrophysicists are right, then every movement we make, every empowering thought, wish or prayer can and does affect the universe, earthing us as human (humus) yet, creatures that we are, also co-creators but only with the God of peace and mercy.

• Dr Kevin Dobbyn FMS is Coordinator, Te Ahi Ka o Matauranga - a community of young adults whose main ministry is hosting other young adults, students and young Christian workers and professionals.

A good Jesuit, Francis is applying the maxim "Pray as if everything depended on God, work as if everything depended on you," a Vatican official told La Croix's Loup Besmond de Senneville.

In the Vatican, prayer is also closely linked to the diplomatic efforts undertaken since the beginning of the conflict.

"You don't put diplomacy in one box and spiritual activity in another," said a Holy See diplomat.

"If we are conducting this diplomacy, it is because we are Catholic," he said.

"There are different levels of action," said a Roman Curia official close to the pope, pointing out that these include prayer, diplomacy and solidarity.

"It's as if these dimensions were somehow the floors of the same building.

"When it comes to prayer, the pope is trying to play a different card with a much more spiritual aspect.

"It is a card that only the Vatican can play," said the diplomat.

Friday's act of consecration is linked to the Marian apparitions that are said to have taken place at Fatima in 1917 and is intimately linked to petitions for peace.

"Free us from war, protect our world from the menace of nuclear weapons," Francis prayed.

During the ceremony, Francis pointed out that the consecration is not a "magic formula".

Calling it a "spiritual act," Francis said the consecration is "an act of complete trust".

He said it comes from children who, "amid the tribulation of this cruel and senseless war that threatens our world, turn to their Mother, reposing all their fears and pain in her heart and abandoning themselves to her."

The prayer service is Francis' latest effort to rally prayers for an end to the war.

"We are on the verge of the third world war: for Francis, it is urgent to mobilise all spiritual forces," a close friend of Francis told.

"Francis' gesture may raise some eyebrows. But it is, in fact, profoundly realistic", writes Dominique Greiner, La Croix's senior editor.

Consecrating Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary reminds us that the roots of war are always in the human heart: we, therefore, need spiritual remedies to put an end to it.

Greiner goes further, calling the consecration "prophetic"; the defenceless voices of prayer denouncing the deployment of increasingly sophisticated weapons that sow death and desolation.

Francis praying like this Greiner calls a sign of hope, a sign that peace is possible.

On Sunday, the Holy Father followed up his Friday prayer for peace by telling thousands gathered in St Peter's Square that the threat of a global conflict spawned by Russia's invasion of Ukraine should convince everyone that the time has come for humanity to abolish war before it abolishes humanity.

"More than a month has passed since the invasion of Ukraine, since the start of this cruel and senseless war which, like every war, is a defeat for everyone, for all of us," he said to thousands of people in St Peter's Square for his Sunday blessing.

"We must repudiate war, a place of death where fathers and mothers bury their children, where men kill their brothers without even seeing them, where the powerful decide and the poor die," Francis said.

"I beg every politician involved to reflect on this, to make a commitment and, looking at martyred Ukraine, to understand that every day of war worsens the situation for everyone," he said.

"Abolish war now, before war erases humanity from history."

"Enough! Stop! Let the weapons fall silent. Negotiate seriously for peace," he said.

Sources

• La Croix International
• La Croix International
• Associated Press
• Reuters

Given Morrison has placed his faith front and centre of his public persona, it is helpful to try to understand how he perceives his faith and how it might intersect with his job as prime minister.

For me, Morrison's recent comments about faith and prayer reveal a pattern of human passivity, dependence on divine intervention, and potential abnegation of power.

For example, in his 60 Minutes interview, Morrison's response to a question about his empathy was:

I've worn out the carpet on the side of my bed […] on my knees, praying and praying […] praying for those who are losing loved ones, praying for those who couldn't go to family funerals, praying for those who are exhausted […]

To be fair to Morrison, it would be odd for a person of any faith not to include prayer as part of their expression of concern for those who suffer or struggle. Such an approach has a long tradition. But we might expect more than just prayer from a devout Christian who also happens to be the prime minister.

In this response, he appears to prioritise prayer over action, which is astonishing given the power he holds due to his position. In the Christian tradition, prayer informs and even motivates action; it does not replace it. Such a response is also, of course, a way of signalling his piety to certain constituents.

It is not an isolated example. Take, for instance, his address to the Australian Christian Churches National Conference in 2021, where he told the crowd:

I can't fix the world, I can't save the world, but we both believe in someone who can.

That someone, of course, is God.

On the one hand, it shows admirable humility to acknowledge that even the prime minister cannot "fix the world". But in alluding to the "someone who can", Morrison appears to be giving over his agency and responsibility to God. Leave it up to God to act.

More recently, in a speech commemorating 14 years since the Rudd government's "sorry" to Indigenous peoples, Morrison shifted the focus to forgiveness, which sparked fury.

Morrison shifting the focus to ‘forgiveness' in a speech commemorating the apology to the Stolen Generations sparked fury this week.

Morrison explicitly stated that forgiveness was an individual, not a "corporate" matter, expressing a hope for the kind of healing that came through forgiveness.

His desire to move from apology to individual forgiveness is entirely consistent with his stated spirituality which emphasises individual and personal faith.

But it is also theologically thin.

Trawloolway man and theologian Garry Deverell was quick to point out the prime minister had missed a step.

In the Christian tradition, no apology can insist on forgiveness, and seeking forgiveness for harm done requires repentance, acts of restitution, and attempts to address injustice.

The spiritual cannot be divorced from the physical, tangible, social, and political dimensions of life.

While acknowledging, rightly, that forgiveness is hard and cannot be earned, Morrison had put the onus on those wounded by systemic justice to do the work of forgiveness, rather than on those with power to do the work of restitution.

Prayer and action go hand in hand

There's a classic story that does the rounds in Christian circles of a guy who gets trapped when his town floods. In a desperate attempt to avoid the rising floodwaters he climbs onto his roof and prays to God to save him.

Soon a rescue crew in a boat come past and invite him into their boat, but he refuses. "God will save me," he says.

Later a helicopter flies by and a man descends on a rope. He is offered a way off the roof by the rescue crew, but again he refuses. "God will save me."

Eventually the man dies and goes to heaven, but he is confused. "Why didn't you save me God?" he asks. "I've been a faithful Christian my whole life."

And God replies: "What do you mean I didn't save you? I sent a boat and a helicopter. You refused them both."

Such parabolic stories demonstrate a Christian theological belief that God works through and with human activity, not despite it. It points to the need to integrate belief, prayer and action.

Theology - how we think and talk about God - matters precisely because of its implications for human activity.

I have no reason to doubt that when Morrison talks about his faith he is sincere, and when he expresses his care for people primarily through prayer he is behaving in a normal way for his faith community. Yet this kind of passivity and trust in divine intervention is not the only or even the fullest expression of Christian faith.

Faith and power should integrate, not separate

The danger of emphasising personal prayer as the primary expression of Christian care is that social responsibility can be abdicated.

Pray and leave it up to God can be a cop-out, particularly for those with power.

It can be a way to ignore systemic injustice by reducing faith to something personal and private.

As Brittany Higgins put it so eloquently in her recent National Press Club address: "I didn't want his sympathy as a father, I wanted him to use his power as prime minister."

Theologians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer offer an alternative expression of Christian faith.

Bonhoeffer lived and wrote during the early 20th-century rise of Nazism in Germany.

In his well-known book The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer writes about "cheap grace", which is the kind of faith that wants forgiveness without actual repentance, and justice or peace without personal cost.

Cheap grace wants the inner spiritual resolution without the outward costly work.

For Bonhoeffer, that outward work included vocal criticism of the Nazi regime and of Christians who were silent bystanders.

Bonhoeffer saw the way of Jesus was one that demanded practical help for victims of injustice and, where necessary, resistance to government.

Arrested for conspiring to rescue Jews, Bonhoeffer was imprisoned before being executed at the Flossenbürg concentration camp in 1945.

Not every Christian needs to become a martyr, but as Garry Deverell writes:

The Christian is called not to separate but to integrate their faith and their public presence, work or office.

This broader view of faith is seen in the call of Tim Costello for the prime minister to act on his faith when it comes to climate change, or in the urging of church leaders for more compassionate action for refugees based on Christian values.

After all, Jesus teaches that whatever one does for the least among us (defined as those who are hungry, poor or imprisoned) one does for Jesus.

Morrison is not the first prime minister to be a person of deep faith, nor will he be the last.

That is not the issue.

All politicians are informed by their value systems and beliefs, regardless of the religious or non-religious traditions that shape them.

Neither am I criticising Morrison for speaking out about his faith.

I am, however, critical of the highly individualistic, spiritualised version of faith Morrison espouses, which allows him to shirk personal responsibility and action when convenient.

There are millions of faithful Christians in this country who also wear out the carpet in prayer every week.

The difference is they do not hold the highest office in the land, nor have Morrison's power to enact change.

• Robyn J. Whitaker Senior Lecturer in New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity
• First published in The Conversation. Republished with permission.

My personal preference is transferred so that I see some things as good and some as not good.

Monarch butterflies are lovely, white butterflies are ugly. I admire a porpoise but not a shark.

In my garden, flowers are good, weeds are bad.

I don't pause to think that the difference between a weed and a flower is a judgement.

Right now, I could fill a page with the goodies and baddies defined by convenience, which is okay, I suppose, as long as I recognise what I am doing.

The judgment belongs with me and not the object.

Sometimes, I find it necessary to go beyond personal convenience, and I am sure we all do this from time to time.

We look at something as it is in itself.

I think of this as a form of prayer because it always brings me to God.

It's all about seeing beauty beyond prejudice, and in that beauty, seeing the Creator.

When we were children, and the world was new, we lived closer to the ground; we found wonder everywhere.

The convolvulus plant was not a weed. We pressed the base of the white flowers, chanting, "Grandfather, grandfather, pop out of bed," and we watched the white flower leap into the air.

We collected bugs and worms in a jar, not because we were callous, but because we thought they were beautiful, and we wanted to possess them.

But then we grew, the earth was no longer close and we lost sight of that original beauty.

The world became something to be used.

But we can recapture the freshness of child vision when we go past judgmental thinking.

The heart is moved by the shining blue on the body of a blowfly, and the gauzy wings that hum in flight. No man-made flying machine has such speed and grace of movement.

In a city street, a dandelion blooms above a crack in the pavement.

The flower is a plate of yellow petals layered on a stem with two strong leaves, all wider than the crack that conceals the roots.

How did a seed get there? Blown by the wind? Guided by something beyond our perception?

The snail in the garden is also a miracle. How does this small boneless body create the fine structure of its shell?

Where and how does it get the knowledge?

Is there some blueprint programmed in it?

Programmed by whom?

When I look closely and without judgement at something in nature, I become lost in the ineffable I call God.

My heart seems to expand and there is a feeling of sweetness that I can't describe.

For a few seconds, I have a sense of connection with everything on earth.

I call this feeling the prayer of the sweet wonder.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

Prayer apps are not new.

Silicon Valley startups popularized mindfulness and meditation apps as early as 2010, although many have criticized those apps for being spiritually shallow.

Hallow's young founders - devout lay Catholic millennials - are among those who felt that mindfulness apps did not meet their religious needs and set out to create their own.

Hallow's accessible language introduces different methods of prayer, along with inspiring talks, guides to spiritual practices and notifications to encourage users to set goals and stay on track.

As a priest, I know that helping people develop healthy prayer habits is important.

But both as a scholar of Christian spirituality and as someone who provides spiritual direction to others, I see limitations in what prayer apps can achieve.

Tech and faith

Churches have long adopted communications technology enthusiastically to spread their message.

The Reformation started by Martin Luther and his followers in 16th-century Germany spread rapidly through the use of Gutenberg's printing press.

Currently, Catholic faith-based media include the Eternal Word Television Network, founded by Catholic nun Mother Angelica, which provides news, radio programming, live-streamed services and web-based religious instruction to an estimated viewership of more than 250,000,000 viewers.

Apps serve a purpose as well. As several surveys have shown, active membership in a religious community is declining. Religiously unaffiliated people, who are mostly young, make up about a quarter of the American population.

At the same time, many of them yearn for a sense of religious belonging, and these apps appear to help in creating a faith-based community.

The kind of community that technology fosters is an important spiritual question to consider, however.

Evidence suggests that the unstoppable reach of technology into all aspects of our lives is shaping how people think and relate to one another.

Research has shown that while people have far more access to information, their attention span is less. Since prayer involves both the mind and emotions, this has spiritual implications.

Seeing how addicted people have become to their phones and other devices, I sometimes urge them to regain some spiritual freedom by giving up social media during Lent.

Prayer as community

For many religious communities, prayers are part of a collective identity.

Collective identity is baked into many religious traditions, including Islam and Buddhism.

Commitment to the community also runs deep in the Jewish roots of Christianity. Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism give particular emphasis to the communal aspect of prayer.

The praying community gathered together is at the heart of their faith and identity.

An embodied community asks people to show up regularly in real-time and gather together with those they may not know well or even like.

The time-consuming inconvenience and lack of choice are in fact spiritual riches because they involve the needs of others.

This kind of sacrifice is not what prayer apps facilitate.

In the Catholic tradition, prayer is not primarily about finding peace, joy or reducing stress.

Those can be achieved, but they aren't always present or necessary.

Deepening one's prayer is often a slow process that involves passing through periods of being bored, distracted or frustrated.

People with excellent intentions can sometimes end up being confused about what they are experiencing in prayer, especially if it is unfamiliar.

As a priest, I tell people a good rule of thumb is that growth in prayer leads to greater kindness to others, and less focus on oneself.

Many religious traditions, within and outside Christianity, insist that healthy spiritual growth can be aided by the personal guidance of people more experienced in prayer.

The "spiritual father" in monasticism is a teacher of prayer.

Within Catholicism, spiritual directors, who can be laypeople or ordained, listen to people talk about their experiences in prayer, helping them relate their prayer to their everyday lives.

While this tradition of spiritual guidance can help provide guidance, each person's prayer is always unique to them.

Even the best-designed algorithms are unlikely to tend to the human soul adequately.

Measuring impact

Hallow's many enthusiastic reviews insist that this prayer app is a force for good. So do the many users of other apps.

From my perspective, the measure of a prayer app's success is not the number of downloads.

Jesus insists on looking at the fruit of good intentions. If any app helps people to be more patient, humble, just, and attentive to the poor, it's a good thing. But being an active member of a real community is likely needed as well.

• Dorian Llywelyn is President, Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
• First appeared in The Conversation. Republished with permission.

Sometimes that is because we feel we should know the answers and don't wish to appear stupid. In fact, many others also wish to ask the same question but, for similar reasons we all keep our lips tightly closed.

That is a pity, for being inquisitive is the start of a journey in understanding.

In a recent posting on the Irish website of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP), Seamus Ahearne, a parish priest in Dublin, wrote:

But what is prayer?

• It is the taking off of shoes.
• It is the burning bush.
• It is the gentle breeze.
• It is the awareness of nature.
• It is gratitude.
• It is beauty.
• It is wonder.
• It is the poetry of the soul. It is the music of life.
• It is awesomeness.
• It is kindness.
• It is goodness.
• It is gentleness.
• It is the eyes of the heart and imagination open to whisper - "thank you".
• It is the big heart of laughter.
• It is the touch of comfort.
• It is the warmth of love.
• It is the awareness of the uniqueness and mystery of a little life.
• It is finding a Tent of Meeting.
• It is any old mountain that gives a view.

The question he posed is one that we have all grappled with at various times, coming up with a multitude of answers, some of them wide of the mark. Honest attempts maybe.

But limited in their usefulness. In a few words, Seamus Ahearne opens a door and offers a joyful mix of meaning for us to explore.

Prayer is a rich vein that runs through all our lives and finds expression in so many ways.

Too often we have a narrow view, both in the words used and the place chosen.

Yet even in a cursory reading of the ACP excerpt we are offered a breadth of understanding that goes beyond our usual perceptions.

Our posture in prayer says much about our understanding and appreciation at different times. We either sit or kneel or stand, we join our hands together or open our palms in a gesture of reception. We bow low or remain still and motionless.

With others we use words that are a common currency. Alone we may utter only the occasional phrase or just remain silent, in reflective listening.

There is no "one right way", but an "every way" that responds to circumstance of place or mood.

The psalmist asks us to be still and know that God is with us. There is a personal awareness in prayer that we are not alone, that our singularity in space is forever surrounded by the presence of God. Prayer is our response to God who creates us day by day.

"Pray to learn how to pray"

Often during our celebration of the Eucharist, we are offered the invitation, "Let us pray." And we dutifully stand for the public words of prayer.

Yet each of us reflects and responds in a personal, individual way to what follows. Bound in community by our Christian faith, we are none the less singular in our love for God and his love for us.

We often ask each other for prayers, seeking the support of friends in their time of prayer. It reminds us that we are part of a greater whole.

In one of his journals, Thomas Merton writes that we should "pray to learn how to pray". It is a task, a work of the journey that each one of us is undertaking.

"Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer has become impossible and hearts have turned to stone," Merton observed.

In the first Chapter of Mark's Gospel we are told the following: "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed."

That reflection of a solitary place and the dawn of a new day offers an example of prayer at a particular time and in a chosen circumstance.

Each to their own way.

"Most of the time, we are lost in the past or carried away by the future. When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love," notes the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh.

We are not clones reacting in identical ways. Our own struggles with prayer are personal.

Yet we can help each other in so many ways, one of them by just being there.

I still remember my Godmother, Jenny, who often took me to Mass on a Sunday. She taught me so much about prayer, not by telling me the words to use but by showing me how she prayed.

We teach each other by being who we are.

• Chris McDonnell is a former headteacher from England and a regular contributor to La Croix International.
• First published in La Croix International. Republished with permission.

The app's popularity skyrocketed during the pandemic, as anxieties ran high and finding peace and quiet proved harder to do.

Calm provides mindfulness meditations, breathing exercises and bedtime stories to encourage users to take some time to chill out.

My screen-time calculator attests that I could afford to do more of nothing.

At an average of five hours per day, by the end of this year I will have spent 76 days on my screen, and not much of that time has gotten me much closer to God.

When I was tasked with identifying the best Catholic prayer apps, I was grateful for the opportunity to turn my screen time into soul time.

I wondered at first, why not just try Calm's non-religious meditations?

A soft voice from a reflection called "Sitting in silence with God" on the Hallow app I had just downloaded answered that question: "The goal of prayer and of any session in Hallow is never to remain in ourselves but always to lift our hearts and minds up to God to talk with him, to listen to him, and to recognize his presence in us."

I was grateful for the opportunity to turn my screen time into soul time.

With that in mind, here are my picks for the top three Catholic prayer apps.

Pray as You Go

If you are prone to indecision like me, the free app Pray As You Go offers a refuge from information overload. It provides one practical prayer session per day and about one fifth of the content of Hallow and Laudate.

Each prayer session includes introductory music, the day's Gospel reading and a reflection. A ministry of the British Jesuits, the prayers are written by Jesuits and others trained in Ignatian spirituality. The 10 to 13 minute audio sessions encourage you to consider moments throughout the day where you found or could look for God's presence, and they fit easily into a daily walk or commute.

Pray as You Go also offers reflections on specific struggles like loneliness and addiction. You can find audio retreats for married couples, health care workers and people spending time in nature and other groups or situations. These series provide space to step out of day-to-day life and into a deeper prayer experience.

And if you are not sold already, the Pray as You Go reflections are read by men and women with soothing British accents. Continue reading

• Amelia Jarecke is an editorial intern at America.

The social media giant has rolled out a new prayer request feature, a tool embraced by some religious leaders as a cutting-edge way to engage the faithful online.

Others are eyeing it warily as they weigh its usefulness against the privacy and security concerns they have with Facebook.

In Facebook Groups employing the feature, members can use it to rally prayer power for upcoming job interviews, illnesses and other personal challenges big and small.

After they create a post, other users can tap an "I prayed" button, respond with a "like" or other reaction, leave a comment or send a direct message.

Facebook began testing it in the U.S. in December as part of an ongoing effort to support faith communities, according to a statement attributed to a company spokesperson.

"During the COVID-19 pandemic we've seen many faith and spirituality communities using our services to connect, so we're starting to explore new tools to support them," it said.

The Rev. Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas, a Southern Baptist megachurch, was among the pastors enthusiastically welcoming of the prayer feature.

"Facebook and other social media platforms continue to be tremendous tools to spread the Gospel of Christ and connect believers with one another — especially during this pandemic," he said.

"While any tool can be misused, I support any effort like this that encourages people to turn to the one true God in our time of need."

Adeel Zeb, a Muslim chaplain at The Claremont Colleges in California, also was upbeat.

"As long as these companies initiate proper precautions and protocols to ensure the safety of religiously marginalized communities, people of faith should jump on board supporting this vital initiative," he said.

Under its data policy, Facebook uses the information it gathers in a variety of ways, including to personalize advertisements. But the company says advertisers are not able to use a person's prayer posts to target ads.

The Rev. Bob Stec, pastor of St. Ambrose Catholic Parish in Brunswick, Ohio, said via email that on one hand, he sees the new feature as a positive affirmation of people's need for an "authentic community" of prayer, support and worship.

But "even while this is a ‘good thing,' it is not necessary the deeply authentic community that we need," he said.

"We need to join our voices and hands in prayer. We need to stand shoulder to shoulder with each other and walk through great moments and challenges together."

Stec also worried about privacy concerns surrounding the sharing of deeply personal traumas.

"Is it wise to post everything about everyone for the whole world to see?" he said.

"On a good day we would all be reflective and make wise choices. When we are under stress or distress or in a difficult moment, it's almost too easy to reach out on Facebook to everyone."

However, Jacki King, the minister to women at Second Baptist Conway, a Southern Baptist congregation in Conway, Arkansas, sees a potential benefit for people who are isolated amid the pandemic and struggling with mental health, finances and other issues.

"They're much more likely to get on and make a comment than they are to walk into a church right now," King said. "It opens a line of communication."

Bishop Paul Egensteiner of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Metropolitan New York Synod said he has been dismayed by some aspects of Facebook but welcomes the feature, which bears similarities to a digital prayer request already used by the synod's churches.

"I hope this is a genuine effort from Facebook to help religious organizations advance their mission," Egensteiner said.

"I also pray that Facebook will continue improving its practices to stop misinformation on social media, which is also affecting our religious communities and efforts."

The Rev. Thomas McKenzie, who leads Church of the Redeemer, an Anglican congregation in Nashville, Tennessee, said he wanted to hate the feature — he views Facebook as willing to exploit anything for money, even people's faith.

But he thinks it could be encouraging to those willing to use it: "Facebook's evil motivations might have actually provided a tool that can be for good."

His chief concern with any Internet technology, he added, is that it can encourage people to stay physically apart even when it is unnecessary.

"You cannot participate fully in the body of Christ online. It's not possible," McKenzie said. "But these tools may give people the impression that it's possible."

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union of Reform Judaism, said he understood why some people would view the initiative skeptically.

"But in the moment we're in, I don't know many people who don't have a big part of their prayer life online," he said. "We've all been using the chat function for something like this — sharing who we are praying for."

Crossroads Community Church, a nondenominational congregation in Vancouver, Washington, saw the function go live about 10 weeks ago in its Facebook Group, which has roughly 2,500 members.

About 20 to 30 prayer requests are posted each day, eliciting 30 to 40 responses apiece, according to Gabe Moreno, executive pastor of ministries. Each time someone responds, the initial poster gets a notification.

Deniece Flippen, a moderator for the group, turns off the alerts for her posts, knowing that when she checks back she will be greeted with a flood of support.

Flippen said that unlike with in-person group prayer, she doesn't feel the Holy Spirit or the physical manifestations she calls the "holy goosebumps." But the virtual experience is fulfilling nonetheless.

"It's comforting to see that they're always there for me and we're always there for each other," Flippen said.

Members are asked on Fridays to share which requests got answered, and some get shoutouts in the Sunday morning livestreamed services.

Moreno said he knows Facebook is not acting out of purely selfless motivation — it wants more user engagement with the platform. But his church's approach to it is theologically based, and they are trying to follow Jesus' example.

"We should go where the people are," Moreno said. "The people are on Facebook. So we're going to go there."

AP video journalist Emily Leshner contributed. Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

• Holly Meyer and David Crary are authors of RNS.
• First published by RNS. Republished with permission.

Praying is not easy: many difficulties present themselves in prayer.

It is necessary to know them, recognise them and overcome them.

Distraction

The first problem that emerges to those who pray is distraction (see CCC, 2729).

You start to pray and then your mind wanders, it wanders all over the place; your heart is here, your mind is there… distraction from prayer. Prayer often co-exists with distraction.

Indeed, the human mind finds it hard to dwell for long on a single thought.

We all experience this constant whirlwind of images and illusions in perpetual motion, which accompanies us even during sleep.

And we all know that it is not good to follow this inclination to disorder.

The battle to achieve and maintain concentration does not relate only to prayer.

If one does not attain a sufficient level of concentration one cannot study profitably, nor can one work well.

Athletes are aware that contests are not won solely through physical training, but also with mental discipline: above all, with the capacity to concentrate and to remain focused.

Distractions are not guilty, but they must be fought.

In the heritage of our faith there is a virtue that is often forgotten, but which is so present in the Gospel.

It is called "vigilance". And Jesus said, "Keep vigil. Pray".

The Catechism mentions it explicitly in its instruction on prayer (cf. no. 2730).

Jesus often calls the disciples to the duty of a sober life, guided by the thought that sooner or later He will return, like a bridegroom from a wedding or a master from a journey.

But since we do not know the day and hour of His return, all the minutes of our lives are precious and should not be wasted on distractions.

In a moment that we do not know, the voice of our Lord will resound: on that day, blessed will be those servants whom He will find industrious, still focused on what really matters.

They did not stray in pursuit of every attraction that came before their minds, but tried to walk the right path, doing good and performing their own task.

This is distraction: the imagination wanders, it wanders and wanders… Saint Teresa used to call this imagination that wanders in prayer "the madwoman in the house"; it is like a madwoman that leads you here and there …

We must stop it and cage it, with attention.

Barrenness in prayer

The time of barrenness warrants a different discourse.

The Catechism describes it in this way: "The heart is separated from God, when there is dryness, with no taste for thoughts, memories and feelings, even spiritual ones. This is the moment of sheer faith clinging faithfully to Jesus in his agony and in his tomb" (no. 2731).

Barrenness makes us think of Good Friday, at night, and Holy Saturday, all the day: Jesus is not there, He is in the tomb; Jesus is dead, we are alone. And this is the thought that gives rise to barrenness.

Often we do not know what the reasons for barrenness are: it may depend on ourselves, but also on God, who permits certain situations in the outer or inner life.

Or, at times, it can be a headache or a problem of the liver that stops us from entering into prayer.

Often we do not really know the reason.

Spiritual teachers describe the experience of faith as a continuous alternation of times of consolation and desolation; there are times when everything is easy, while others are marked by great heaviness.

Very often, when we encounter a friend, we say, "How are you?" - "Today I am down".

Very often we are "down", or rather, we don't have feelings, we don't have consolation, we are unable. They are those grey days … and there are so many of them in life!

But the danger is having a grey heart: when this "feeling down" reaches the heart and it sickens… and there are people who live with a grey heart.

This is terrible: one cannot pray, one cannot feel consolation with a grey heart!

Or, one cannot emerge from spiritual barrenness with a grey heart.

The heart must be open and luminous, so that the light of the Lord can enter. And if it does not enter, wait for it, with hope.

But do not close it up in greyness.

Sloth

Then, a different thing is sloth, another flaw, another vice, which is a real temptation against prayer and, more generally, against the Christian life, is a different matter.

Sloth is "a form of depression due to lax ascetical practice, decreasing vigilance, carelessness of heart" , 2733).

It is one of the seven "deadly sins" because fuelled by conceit, it can lead to the death of the soul.

So what can we do in this succession of enthusiasms and discouragements?

One must learn to go forward always.

True progress in the spiritual life does not consist in multiplying ecstasies, but in being able to persevere in difficult times: walk, walk, walk on… and if you are tired, stop a little and then start walking again. But with perseverance.

Let us remember Saint Francis' parable on perfect joy: it is not in the infinite fortunes rained down from Heaven that the ability of a friar is measured, but in walking steadily, even when one is not recognised, even when one is mistreated, even when everything has lost its initial flavour.

All the saints have passed through this "dark valley", and let us not be scandalised if, reading their diaries, we find accounts of evenings of listless prayer, lived without enthusiasm.

We must learn to say: "Even though You, my God, seem to be doing everything to make me stop believing in You, I still continue to pray to You".

Believers never stop praying!

It may sometimes resemble the prayer of Job, who does not accept that God treats him unjustly, protests and calls him to judgment.

But, very often, even protesting before God is a way of praying or, as that little old lady said, "being angry with God is a way to pray too", because many times a son is angry with his father: it is a way of relating to the father; since he recognises him as "father", he gets angry…

Desolation

And we too, who are far less holy and patient than Job, know that in the end, at the end of this time of desolation, during which we have raised to Heaven silent cries and asked "why?" many times, God will answer us.

Do not forget the prayer that asks "why?".

It is the prayer of children when they begin not to understand things, which psychologists call "the why stage", because the child asks his father, "Daddy, why? Daddy, why? Daddy, why?"

But be careful: he does not listen to his father's answer.

The father starts to reply, but he interrupts with another "Why?".

He simply wants to draw his father's attention to him; and when we get a bit angry with God and start asking why, we are attracting the heart of our Father towards our misery, towards our difficulties, towards our life.

But yes, have the courage to say to God: "But why?".

Because at times, getting a bit angry is good for you, because it reawakens that son-father, daughter-father relationship we must have with God.

And He will accept even our harshest and bitterest expressions with a father's love, and will consider them as an act of faith, as a prayer.

Thank you.

• Pope Francis General Audience, Wednesday 19 May

Prayer, he told the crowd, is not always "a walk in the park."

While it may be easy to "parrot" prayer, "blah, blah, blah," he said, real prayer requires effort.

Prayer "certainly gives great peace, but through inner struggle, at times hard, which can accompany even long periods of life," he said.

Often when a person wants to pray, he said, "we are immediately reminded of many other activities, which at that moment seem more important and more urgent.

"This happens to me, too; ‘I'm going to go pray. But no, I have to do this and that.' We run from prayer; I don't know why, but that's how it is."

But "almost always, after putting off prayer, we realize that those things were not essential at all and that we may have wasted time" on things that were not as important as prayer, he said.

Holding his first live general audience for the first time in more than six months, Pope Francis said he was very pleased to see people "face to face."

"I'll tell you something: it's not nice to talk in front of nothing, just a camera. It's not nice," the pope told about 300 people who attended the May 12 audience in the San Damaso Courtyard of the Apostolic Palace.

Source

• CNS

Prayer, intimidation and breaching the Bill of Rights were all topics considered by the Committee.

Addressing the issue of intimidation, Pro-life organisation, Right to Life provided evidence to the Committee that there had been no complaints of harassment made to the district health boards since 2019.

Spokesman for Right to Life, Philip Creed, told the Committee he had accumulated the evidence through the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act.

"So if there are no complaints, no intimidation or harassment, what justification is there to address a problem that does not exist," questioned Creed.

However, Labour MP Sarah Pallet (Ilam) asked Creed whether prayers were still effective, even if they were from over 150m away.

Creed said they were, but needed to be "in a public place where people can see us."

He agreed that no woman going to an abortion clinic should be harassed and admitted that in the past people had said terrible things.

"I disagree with that totally," Creed said.

However, former St Bede's College Christchurch old boy MP, Matt Doocey (National Waimakariri) who voted in favour of the abortion clinic safe zones, said he did so after being confronted by "misogynistic vitriol" in his office.

Doocey told the Health Committee hearing submissions into the bill that he was scared by the men who approached him in his office urging him to vote against the bill.

"I am a pretty simple guy from north Canterbury, but I recall during the abortion debate, I had a pretty open-door policy," said Doocey, who voted both for the safe spaces bill in March, and Abortion Legislation Bill last year.

"I take the point of the pro-life movement, which I respect but don't necessarily agree with, but ... why I support this was not concern about the pro-life movement but a group of men who would turn up individually to my office."

"Their argument against was just misogynistic vitriol about women not being trusted, not trusted with their bodies, saying they don't know what is right for them, can't make up their mind, and that really blew me away."

"I am a pretty robust guy but that kind of scared me, and I just wonder if this is more about that group of people and the potential risk they pose."

Doocey's comments came in response to several submitters who said the bill impacts seriously on the right to free speech and protest.

Mhairi Everitt of the Otago University Students Association told the Committee that it was well known there were always anti-abortion protesters outside Dunedin Hospital.

"It is a traumatising process, no matter what the outcome."

She said the Students' Association acknowledged the bill would breach the Bill of Rights Act but said protester behaviour was often violent, and that pro-life protesters often used violent images.

Everitt said that even non-violent protest could be felt as violent.

She told the committee that a person's right to free speech should not come before the right for people to seek healthcare.

Source

• NZ Herald

How can you know this? Because you want to pray. And how do I know that? Because you're reading this.

That may sound sarcastic, but it's not.

There's a serious point here: your desire for prayer reveals something about how God created you.

Deep within you is a natural desire to communicate with God, to share yourself with God, to have God hear your voice, or, more basically, to encounter God.

Deep within you is a longing to be in a relationship with God. So you long to pray.

You may doubt many things when it comes to prayer.

You may doubt that you'll be able to pray.

You may doubt that God wants to communicate with you.

You may even doubt God's existence. But you cannot doubt that you feel a desire for prayer. After all, you're reading this. So clearly something within you desires prayer.

Where does the desire for prayer come from?

From God.

The most common way God draws you closer is by placing within you the desire to be closer, the desire that drove you to think about prayer and to read this article.

Strange as it sounds, your reading of these lines at this moment is a sign of God's call.

How else would God draw us closer, other than by planting a longing inside us?

Once I saw a ceramic plaque in a retreat house that summed this up: "That which you seek is causing you to seek."

This insight is helpful to those beginning their journey of prayer because it helps them feel, even before they've started to pray, connected to God. It helps them to know that God has taken the initiative, that God is calling to them, that God desires them. It helps people take the first tentative steps toward God.

Many of us have felt that there is more to life than what we know.

We feel a sense of incompletion. We long to feel complete, to be connected, to be satisfied, to know. Inside us are nagging feelings of longing, restlessness, and incompletion that can be fulfilled only in a relationship with God.

There is a hole in our hearts that only God can fill.

Augustine put it best when he wrote: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord. And our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

Your desire to pray is a sign that God desires you.

It's an indication God is calling you. And that is perhaps the most important reason to pray.

Not simply because you desire it, but because the desire is a sign of something else.

You desire to pray because God desires it.

A second reason for prayer is a slight reframing of this.

We pray because we want to be in relationship to God.

That may sound obvious - of course we pray to be closer to God. But it's important to state that the aim of prayer is not simply physical relaxation, mindfulness, knowledge, or a connection to creation, as important as those things are.

These are goals that many people mention when speaking about meditation.

But the goal of prayer is closer union with God.

More basically, we pray because we love God. William Barry SJ writes: "The primary motive for prayer is love, first the love of God for us and then the arousal of our love for God."

We pray to come to know God as well. "Who is God?" is an important question in the spiritual life. So are "Who is God for me?" and "Who am I before God?"

Prayer reminds us of our need for God.

It reminds us that we are not the centre of the universe and that we are not God.

Sometimes when things are going well, we can grow arrogant and complacent in our self-sufficiency.

Prayer, which places us in the presence of God in an intentional way, reminds us of who is in charge, or rather who is nurturing us. Gerard W. Hughes writes in God of Surprises: "To begin prayer it is sufficient to acknowledge that I am not self-sufficient, that I am not the creator of myself and creation. If I can do this, then I acknowledge that there is some power - I may not know whether it is personal or not and may be in complete ignorance of its nature - greater than I." Continue reading