Hopes Rising ...

We seem to be entering a week with some optimism that we have turned a corner in controlling the coronavirus in Australia. Restrictions are starting to be loosened in selected areas. But I find myself still deeply aware that some people, both here and especially around the world, are continuing to enter the darkness and unknown that this health crisis brings. So, in my prayers a feeling of overwhelming burden for the world often presses in. I mostly just sit in silence, holding it all before God. I am comforted by the wisdom of a modern English anchoress writing about her solitary life of prayer:
 
People often speak of ‘private prayer’,
but really there is no such thing,
because we pray as the Church.
However hidden or apparently hidden such prayer may be,
it is still the whole Church praying.
(Wind on the Sand: The hidden life of an anchoress, p72.)
 
When we are in isolation, alone, silently holding before God the suffering of our world, we are the Church praying.
 
May God’s loving presence be with us all this coming week, both here and around the world.
 
Brian Holliday