How to live Lent
Practical tips about what to do this Lent; and a few extra thoughts about why it’s not really about doing! A homily by Fr Stephen Wang.
Tags: almsgiving, fasting, Lent, prayer
Featured Posts
Is it right to fear God? What is the difference between a destructive fear and a “holy trepidation”? An Advent homily by Fr Stephen Wang: Look around you at the chapel walls. Look at the […]
How to enter the reality of suffering without losing faith in God
Have you ever been in a situation where, to everyone outside, it looked like everything had fallen to pieces? A failed plan, a project or job fallen through, a serious illness, a financial loss, some […]
Catholics and Our Common Home: Caring for the Planet We Share
At last we are in fashion! Back in 1995 I wrote a CTS pamphlet entitled, Must Catholics be Green? It had seemed obvious to me for a long time that any sane person would want […]
World Mental Health Day: how can the Catholic Church offer pastoral support to those who need it?
Mental Health and the Christian response: personal reflections from a Catholic layperson: World Mental Health Day is coming this Saturday, 10th October. The theme this year is Dignity. Thinking about this from a Catholic perspective, […]
Sharing
Faith
I remember a few years ago coming across a prayer which seemed to speak straight to me. It went something like this; “Lord: don’t look now I have my foot in my mouth again. The […]
The Birth of St John the Baptist
So often today I think many Christians feel they are the lone voice crying out in the wilderness. When all our family members and friends have fallen away from their faith it can be very […]
What an inspiring young man, St Aloysius is. Not for any great deeds is he known, in many ways his was a very ordinary life lived quietly. But his faith led him to turn his […]
Culture
The Gift of Priests and Sisters: a resource from Ten Ten
Primary school children throughout the UK have been learning why certain people chose to follow God’s call to become priests and sisters by engaging in an innovative new project from the Catholic education organisation, Ten […]
Eight Songs for the Easter Octave
Divna Ljubojevic, Christos Anesti x https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqRlJC-ckL4 Normally Orthodox liturgies are considerably more verbose than their Latin equivalents, but the opposite is the case for the Easter proclamation. While the Exsultet lasts ten minutes, the Byzantine […]
John Legend, Self-Gift, and the Last Supper
When a video has 800 million views on YouTube, it’s probably fair to say that it’s tapping into something pretty deep in our common humanity. John Legend’s love song, ‘All of Me’, is one such […]
Lifestyle
How to help your children have a solid and lasting faith
As a parent one of the most important and enduring gifts we can give our children and grandchildren is a faith in Jesus Christ and his saving power. But we should be under no illusion, […]
On the first Monday of the month, Ten Ten send a newsletter to parents who have attended a parent session in a school. The newsletter includes a chapter from the booklet “Being a Parent Today: […]
When everything goes wrong and we are tempted to give up hope
When everything seems to go wrong and you get to the point where you are about to give up and rage and despair and collapse. That’s often the very moment when God wants to step […]
Society
Are you a beleaguered clique or a creative minority?
Catholics are a minority in the UK today. But what do the Scriptures say about the vocation of creative minorities and the responsibility they have to build God’s Kingdom? A homily by Fr Stephen Wang.
Who is Jesus? (And, by the way, how to vote in the EU Referendum…)
A homily by Fr Stephen Wang, about the challenge of proclaiming Jesus Christ, and the political implications of St Paul’s theology of baptismal unity.
Why do you go to work in the morning?
As Christians we are called to loving service, and as adults we spend a third of our waking lives at work. So how do we turn our work into service? One of the deepest modern […]
For me Lent is a great opportunity to evangelise ~ by sharing witness to those in the secular culture around us, who have no or little understanding of the rhythm of this season.
If this means being seen by others to be doing things ~ but in doing so brings others into closer conscious communion with God ~ then I am happy to live that contradiction.
I take great hope from the poem that Mother Teresa kept on her wall.
“If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
(and my favourite line of all)
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.”