Parish Prayer Day Tuesday 20th October 2020
Next Tuesday the 20th of October our parish prays for the 24 hours for Marriage & Family Life. This is part of a Movement of Continuous Prayer for Marriage & Family Life as other parishes and groups take on the prayer for the other days of the month. In our Prayers this month we may want to pray for those families where members do not speak to each other and where they are estranged from each other, that they may reach out, love and forgive each other. May all families within our community grow in love and respect for each other. The theme is certainly important for these times – to pray for those who are finding it difficult in their homes and relationships, to stay with it and build one another up in love. Our prayer becomes more and more important as the weeks and months go by.
October
Pope Francis: ‘Patch up family feuds’
Proposed Theme: Mercy and Forgiveness
Some Thoughts:
- ‘Let this be a time to end all family feuds, to forgive each other and let bygones be bygones,’ Pope Francis has said.
- “I think about so many brothers and sisters who are estranged from their families; they don’t speak to each other,” he said during one of his weekly general audiences in St Peter’s Square.
- “This is a good occasion to meet up again, to embrace each other and forgive each other, to leave bad things behind,” he said.
- Catholics are called to recognise their own need for God’s mercy, the greatness of God’s love seen in the death and resurrection of Christ and the obligation to assist others by communicating God’s love and mercy through words and deeds.
- We are called to forgive each other, to harden not our hearts and to not let pride get in the way of reconciliation.
- “God’s mercy transforms human hearts; it enables us, through the experience of a faithful love, to become merciful in turn.”
- “Love alone is the answer to that yearning for infinite happiness,” Pope Francis wrote. It is the only response to the longings “that we think we can satisfy with the idols of knowledge, power and riches.”