| February 2009 |
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Intention of Pope Benedict XVI FEBRUARY General: That the Pastors of the Church may always be docile to the action of the Holy Spirit in their teaching and in their service to God's people. Mission: That the Church in Africa may find adequate ways and means to promote reconciliation, justice and peace efficaciously, according to the indications of the Synod of the Bishops' Special Assembly for Africa. Some Feasts in February
Other Dates in February
In March
Collection The Sunday Offertory Collection for the month of November was 49,461 Baht & in December was 40,201 Baht. We thank you for your very generous support of the mission & outreach of The Seven Fountains Spirituality Centre. Everyday prayer in a Person's Busy Day, or the Examen of Consciousness By Fr.David My day is the place where I meet God moment to moment. My day is also the place where I fail to meet God moment to moment. My God is continually revealing himself to me in the places, events and people of my day. So it would seem rather important to look at this day in which my commitment to God finds, or fails to find, its expression. My day is the place where I respond, or don't, to the moment to moment calls to love and service of those around me. My day is where God is moment to moment exercising his loving providence over me. My day is where I allow, or don't, God to work his will for me. How can I grow in an awareness of and sensitivity to God working in my own life? The simple way is to look back over the day at some time when I have leisure to do so. Not just to look back in general terms, but to look back seeking to find where God has been active for me in my life today. Prayerful reflection is an important aspect of Ignatian spirituality. St.Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, was especially keen on this prayer of reflection on the day. Fro the Jesuits he founded, he insists on two 15-minute periods of such prayer each day. This prayer has variously been called the Examen, the Examination of Conscience, and, more recently, the Examen of Consciousness, or the Review of the Day. It is almost as if Ignatius were saying. "How can you say you are living a Christian life if you never reflect on it? How can you say you are doing God's will if you never look to see what you are really doing? You want to serve Christ and live a more Chrislike life, well then, reflect on how your day has been, and let the experience of the day teach you what it will." Most Christians believe God is working through his Spirit in their lives - unfortunately few reflect on this crucial fact of their lives. The Examen is a short prayer exercise which can help develop in me a greater awareness and sensitivity to the concrete ways God has been working in my day for me. This greater sense of God with me leads to a more accurate and spontaneous response to the initiatives of his presence. Traditionally there are five aspects or moments to the prayer of Examen, and on any one occasion perhaps one or more aspects will predominate. So these five aspects are not a syllabus to be got through. I give any one of these aspects the time I desire and need. The First aspect is the fostering of an attitude of thanksgiving or gratitude. There is nothing that has not been given me. I am always on the receiving end of gift. I myself am God's greatest gift to me - I am the gift by which I can know every other gift. I am the gift in which I can know my own giftedness. So I spend what time I need to become aware of my need to be grateful, to see the giftedness of my own life and living. As this gratitude touches me I express it how I will to Father, So and Spirit. The Second aspect is to ask for light. I beg the Spirit to enlighten me to see what the Spirit wants me to see. In other words, it is not my analysis of the day which is important. Nor is it my judgement of waht is fine or fitting that is central. Nor has this enlightenment anything to do with my own leanings towards a morbid introspection. I ask the Spirit to show me in the everday events and people of my life where and how God was present and working for me. I am seeking to find God. The Examen is positive. Without this prayer for light I could all too easily poke around within myself in such a way that scabs are knocked off wounds that would heal very well if only I left them well alone.
The Third aspect of the Examen automatically flows into the Fourth aspect, which is the deepening of the gifts of sorrow and gratitude. I beg the Lord to deepen my awareness of not allowing him to work for me in his gifts, or of not allowing him to work through me for another, or through another for me. I praise the Lord ofr those times I did let him work for me, when I co-operated with his gifts. On any one occasion of praying the Examen I may just wish to take one gift of the Spirit, for example joy. I see where I noticed joy in my day, and give thanks; the places where I entered into the joy of another, or allowed another to enter into my joy; the times joy was shared. These were the concrete moments when God was acting and working in his gift of joy for me and for others. Conversely, I become aware of the times and places when I prevented God acting for me in his gift of joy; when I would not enter into the joy of another, or when I was kill-joy. I see this now and express my sorrow. And so similarly with the other gifts of the Spirit which are being continuously poured out on my life moment to moment. The Fifth, and final aspect of the Examen is to take look ahead and to ask for what help and guidance I will need. I can fresee fairly clearyly the next day, or half-day; what places will i be in? what people will be with me? what occupations will i take on? or be involved in? With this person I will need the gift of patience; in this place, prseverance; with this occupation, the gift of gentleness, if someone is not to be unduly hurt, etc. I ask for what I see I need very simply and humbly with trust in the loving providence of Father, Son and Spirit - God - with - me. The practice of the Examen will help foster a growing sensitivity to God, the Trinity, moment to moment at work with me and for me, and through me for others, and through others for me, and through me for others, and through others for me. My life becomes one of greater ease in 'seeking and finding God in all things', as St.Ignatius would put it. can be found on this Polish website in both Polish & English: www.myhabitsontarget.com/examen
An online Retreat A 34 week retreat for everyday Lfie - A Ministry of the Collaborative Ministry Office at Creighton University. http://www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/cmo-retreat.html Thoughts
I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed. The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. -Nathaniel Hawthorne, novelist and short-story writer (1804-1864)
Fr.David is continuing the series of New Testament talks 'Living Christ's Life in the World'. These will continue on 16th December & every Tuesday evening Fr.David is at Seven Fountains.
God's Creative Presents From The Tablet crucial anniversaries in the story of science and religion occur this year - the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first glimpse of the universe, including the "Galilean" moons of Jupiter, through his famous telescope. The BBC began the year with a Darwin Week, and another such week is planned in Cambridge. In recognition of Galileo's breakthrough, the United Nations has named this the Year of Astronomy. But it is the Englishman's work that has been the focus of more than a century and a half of continuing controversy, mainly surrounding the charge, made by Thomas Huxley at the time and Richard Dawkins now, that Darwinism destroyed the case for believing in God. Galileo's famous dispute with the Catholic Church was in some ways a foretaste of this, although the Church authorities eventually realised their mistake. Resistance to Darwinism persists to the present day, however, notably among fundamentalist Protestants in America. There is another significant contrast between Darwin and Galileo. While evolutionary biology has seemed to point away from God's detailed involvement in making Nature the way it is, cosmology and astronomy have revived interest in first causes, especially through the discovery of the apparent fine-tuning of the universe at its very beginning. But neither cosmology nor biology has any authority on matters of faith; nor, it must be said, does faith have any competence in the realm of science. Back in the middle of the nineteenth century when Darwin's theory exploded forth, things looked a little different. Many clergy dabbled in natural history - it was almost the default hobby for a country parson - and in mainstream Anglicanism at least, the truth of Christianity was seen to rest securely on the truth of the Bible. To show that Genesis was contradicted by scientific evidence was to undermine the one pillar on which, in mid-Victorian England, faith seemed to rely. A longer Christian tradition, going back at least to St Augustine in the fifth century, suggested there could be other ways for God to be creatively present in the natural world than as the master craftsman who put it all together, as in Genesis. Equally Aquinas in the thirteenth century had understood that faith and reason, both being ways to the truth, could not contradict each other. He grappled with the rediscovery of the science of the ancient Greeks, which was at first seen as a challenge to the fundamentals of the faith. But Catholicism did not treat Scripture as the only basis of religious belief, as nineteenth-century Protestantism tended to do. Hence it was relatively untouched by the Darwin controversy, and it is symbolic of that approach that the Pontifical Academy of Science is to hold a conference in the Vatican later this year to mark Darwin's great achievement. A celebration a century and a half after the event might be thought better late than never, but Professor Nicola Cabibbo, the well-known Italian physicist who has headed the Academy since 1993, said recently that the Church was slow to keep up with scientific progress because new theories "represented a conceptual leap" it found difficult to cope with. The Vatican boasts that it thinks in centuries, but thinking in centuries can be infuriatingly slow.
To help deepen your grasp of your Christian faith THE HEYTHROP INSTITUTE FOR RELIGION ETHICS AND PUBLIC LIFEwww.heythrop.ac.uk/HIREPL Thinking Faith http://www.thinkingfaith.org/index.htm Thinking Faith is a free on-line publication of the British Jesuits.
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Thinking about the Council
Ian Linden, author of a new book on Global Catholicism, looks at the history of the Catholic Church in the fifty years since Pope John XXIII’s announcement of the Second Vatican Council. To what extent can the Church be described as a ‘World Church’?
PRAYER GROUP
EACH WEDNESDAY EVENINGS AT 7:30 P.M. IN THE WOODEN CHAPEL
Dignitas Personae: a new Vatican document on bioethics In December 2008, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a new document about the issues surrounding IVF and embryo experimentation. Dr David Jones offers a guide to the principles appealed to and the issues addressed in Dignitas Personae, and asks how this timely teaching applies to recent debates in the UK regarding hybrid embryos and stem cell research. See www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20090115_1.htmTaken from the radio poems of John Betjeman. Broadcast January 1955 The Conversion of St.Paul
The Next Bulletin Would you like to receive this bulletin via email? If so, please contact Pippa who will add you to the contact list. If you have anything you would like to be included in next month’s bulletin please send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it We are looking for contributors. Have you got something you would like the Community at Seven Fountains to know about? A special anniversary or wedding? Just send the notice in, and we will include it. Laus Deo Semper The Seven Fountains Hilltribe Education Sponsorship Programme For the academic year Jul 1, 08 - Jun 30, 09 Fr. Miguel writes: The total amount received so far is 637,992.- Baht. The total amount that we will give out in March-April this year will be at least about 1,150,000.- Baht. Please find the accounts below:- 1) DONATIONS From July 1-Nov 30, 2008
2) Christmas Fundraising Dec 1- Jan 21, 2008 2.1 Christmas Dinner Revenue:
Expenses:
Net Proceeds from Dinner: 275,927.- 2.2 Other Revenue
GRAND TOTAL: 637,992.- Baht
A very big 'thank you' to everyone for making such a terrific effort to ensure that the children who benefit from our programme will be able to stay in full-time education for another year.
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The Third aspect of the Examen is to 
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