Many parishes are stuck in what seems to be an endless, and fruitless, cycle of sacramental preparation for children; First Penance, First Holy Communion and Confirmation.

It doesn't seem to make any difference whether in a diocese First Holy Communion comes before Confirmation, or vice versa. Even delaying Confirmation until the teenage years makes no difference.

Lots of parish resources are poured into the sacramental preparation of children, and then we don't see those children and their families again.

Because they don't know how else to do it parishes feel stuck, and all parishes seem to be doing much the same kind of preparation.

However a few parishes have begun experimenting with different models for the sacramental preparation of children, and the initial fruit is good even though the different models require significantly more man-power and teamwork.

If you don't mind reading through cathartic layers of grief and pain explaining why the current models don't work as a lead in to a description of these experimental models, then these 9 pages are for you. P.S. There's a bit of ranting included too.

But our human grief and pain is only a drop in the ocean compared to the grief and pain of God at this situation. The desire of His Heart is for life-long relationships of deep intimacy with these youngsters, not for the precious sacramental gifts won by His Passion and Death on the Cross to be disdained so thoroughly.

If we desire to please Him, then we must whole-heartedly seek fruitful alternatives to replace our currently fruitless models of sacramental preparation of children.

Dear God, please send Your Holy Spirit to help us pioneer effective new ways of bringing children into the fulness of the sacramental life which You long for them to experience. Amen. 

Lord Jesus, grant us a holy dis-satisfaction with the way things are, and sufficient holy frustration to do whatever it takes to find and implement the new sacramental preparation pathways You have for us. Amen.  

A few days ago this word was released by Heidi Bryden via His Kingdom Prophecy:
https://www.hiskingdomprophecy.com/the-great-outpouring-is-beginning/

While there is far more to it, these few lines from it alone are worth holding close to your heart as 2022 begins. They are worth looking at again and again:

I saw an open portal in the midst of the clouds like a circle, and a stream of water poured down out of Heaven onto the earth.
This was surrounded by the great Cloud of Witnesses as they peered down through the portal into the earth. They were excited, watching where the water was falling.
Upon the earth a few people danced in the stream of water that poured from Heaven, rejoicing that Revival had come.
The long-awaited outpouring of The Spirit had begun!

And indeed there are parts of the world where this has already begun to happen:
https://www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word.html?ID=26590
An excerpt:
A holy fear and awe of the Lord swept through that place as we watched the Holy Spirit, night after night, heal people, deliver people of demons, draw many to Jesus, and fill little children with the Holy Spirit. I've never seen so many people delivered of demonic spirits in my twenty years of ministry. I've never seen the power of God move on this level. I've never seen so many young people become radically changed by one touch from Jesus. Redemption and restoration flooded through that tent and has continued to spread through families and states all across America, as people who visited the revival have gone home to see everything change!
Jennifer Martin, Nashville, Tennessee, USA  20 Dec 2021
 
We have a choice.
We can focus on all the horrible things happening in our world today, and the depths of the swamp.
OR we can focus on what God is doing.

We can choose to fill our hearts with bad news or with good news.

One will fill us with fear, the other will fill us with faith and expectancy and hope.
 
For many of us it is time to turn from alerting others that the swamp is real
and to watch for what the Holy Spirit is doing, and to align with that.

Others are doing a great job with swamp alerts eg
https://www.theblogmire.com/reflections-on-another-year-of-covidian-lies-and-how-the-truth-will-ultimately-prevail/
 
Consider this: St John the Baptist leaping and dancing in his mother's womb, welcoming Jesus on behalf of all Israel, and that it was only after this leaping and dancing 'a la King David', that the Holy Spirit hit St Elizabeth.
​
Maybe it is time to practice a bit of extravagance in worship.
 
My son took the imagery given to Heidi Bryden and put in on paper.
​
May it help you to keep this promise of God close to your heart.
May it help you to bring to nothing all the attacks of fear.
May it help you to focus on what God is up to in 2022.

(www.CavanaghArt.com or at Instagram @cavanaghcreative
 
Of course, sometimes it is the extravagance in worship that calls forth the Holy Spirit, and sometimes it is the active presence of the Holy Spirit that starts the leaping and dancing, and sometimes each builds on the other in a glorious holy spiral towards more of God.

​Come Holy Spirit!

... then you need to find sources of news other than the traditional sources of news media.

Here are some you might like to investigate:

richards-watch.org/
Is a very good compendium of both news media and input from tested prophetic sources

themarshallreport.wordpress.com/
Is another blog worth reading with good reports on the USA electoral chaos

www.thegatewaypundit.com/
This is a very clunky website, with a lot of annoying pop-ups, but it is normally first with any breaking investigative news. It does sometimes drift into conspiracy theories, but you should be able to spot the few and filter them out.

But God has also been speaking to His prophets, and there are some who have been earning increasing respect from me.

www.facebook.com/veroinka.west.3
Outstanding among them is Veronica West, although it is a pity that it gets broadcast over Facebook, and often gets censored.

wandaalger.me/
​Is next on that list.

mariomurilloministries.wordpress.com/ 
Has also been giving valuable reflections upon the electoral situation

So next, if you read any of them, you will want to pray.
Unified prayer is more powerful than personal prayer, so these two intercessors are worth following on a regular basis:

www.givehim15.com/
With Dutch Sheets setting out daily reasons for prayer, and starter prayers, is very good

www.youtube.com/channel/UCdeznInNtlfNVLqkN48B_fw
Is the YouTube link for Lou Engle's channel. He is praying through this time of electoral chaos with an eye firmly fixed on overturning Roe v Wade. His calls to prayer are usually short, 7-10 mins, and help keep the fire going.

You might legitimately ask me, 'where are the Catholic voices?', to which I must answer, I don't know, but wish I did.

I do know that it is getting a lot nastier on social media.
Prayer is all important, but we do also need to do our bit to help the alternative news sources get heard, and to let a chink of light in, that God can do a lot with. So, please, stay online, pray, and like and share anything useful that comes across your screens.

The issues at hand in America are much, much, much bigger than anyone realises, involving a gigantic clash between the forces of good and evil for the soul of America (and therefore for the soul of the world). If America doesn't take this opportunity to cleanse its electoral system of all fraud and corruption, then democracy itself is at stake, and with it any hope of being able to live religious and reverent lives in peace and quiet.

This isn't to discount the massive internal clean ups needed through out the world at diocesan level and Catholic education facilities, which likewise need assiduous prayer, but perhaps the American domino of grace needs to fall first before the others can receive the infilling of grace.

O God, arise 
Let Your enemies be scattered
Let those who hate You flee before You
As smoke is driven, so drive them away
As wax melts before the fire.
                                    Psalm 67(68):1-2a

All American Saints and Angels, please intercede that God's complete will is fulfilled at this time in American History. Amen.

Write Non Fiction In November : #WNFIN Day 6

It looks like we are going on a ramble again – yet another opportunity to trust that God will lead, and a hope that I'll be happier with today's efforts than yesterday's efforts.

I've been meaning to do a list of signs of hope that there are the better days ahead that we have been promised. So here it is, shrouded a bit to protect the protagonists.

A long-awaited publishing contract for someone I've been following online.
A little more traction on social media for someone close to me, including access to a previously closed Facebook group and some regular likes from an industry body.
The possibility of a romance that might lead somewhere for a daughter of a friend who has been praying for a long time.
News of a close-to-miracle pregnancy in an extended family that has been through many tough times recently.
Examples of God's providence with car purchase and tree damage.
News of a creative risking it all to go back to study and follow a prompting from earlier studies that ignited a passion.

They aren't the dazzling conversion stories we'd love to hear, but they are messages of hope that more of these new beginnings are on the way from the loving hand of God.
​
Other things are more like pinpricks of light that haven't had the dots joined up yet. For example, making acquaintance with associates from lower high school who live nearby, and getting unexpectedly thrown back into teaching a sacramental programme lesson, and so far being able to keep the writing challenge commitment and gaining a few insights along the way.

At the same time there's plenty that's not right, and which sucks me under if I dwell on the cold light of day impossibilities of solving them. When you have done all you can do with the available resources at hand, following what seemed like the right things to do, and they've come to absolute nothing, then it is time to wait and watch for God to act – because everything else apart from that is just further wasted effort. Those absolute nothings only happened because God permitted them. Get enough of them in a row, and that's a cease and desist message.

For this I'll quote God's friend, St Claude de la Colombiere, 'When I see a Christian grief stricken at the trials God sends him I say to myself: Here is a man who is grieved at his own happiness. He is asked God to be delivered from something he ought to be thanking him for. I am quite sure that nothing more advantageous could happen to him than what causes him so much grief. I have a hundred unanswerable reasons for saying so. But if I could read into the future and see the happy outcome of his present misfortune, how greatly strengthened I would be in my judgment! If we could discover the designs of Providence it is certain we would ardently long for the evils that we are now so unwilling to suffer. We would rush forward to accept them with the utmost gratitude if we had a little faith and realised how much God loves us and has our interests at heart.'

Does it make it any easier to face yet another day of seemingly unanswered prayer? Not really, but it takes a bit of the sting out of it.

At the moment what I draw hope from is that if God is showing His hand in some of the 'don't sweat the small temporal stuff', then maybe, just maybe, the resolution of the truly important kingdom of God stuff is in the pipeline, and these are encouragements on the hard road of patience and waiting.

I've just finished reading a difficult book, 'Daughters of Shame' by Jasvinder Sanghera. Not that it was difficult to read, but the subject matter of what happens in cultures where forced marriages and honour killings are the norm is very confronting.

On another level the book chronicles how a volunteer organisation began to help victims of this culture find freedom and how step by gradual step it grew often as a result of pondering a specific situation and seeking solutions or by the right conversation with the right person at the right time.

It is these latter meetings that are often the game changer or the life changer, and reading through a conversion story or a story of someone who achieved at remarkable levels these kinds of 'orchestrated by God' meetings will be found. In many ways myself and my loved ones are waiting for these kinds of meetings to happen in our lives because they are signposts from God that we are on the right path (or will be)

St Raphael the archangel is the patron of such happy meetings. Back almost 26 years ago when things were very dark, it was the novena of prayer to St Raphael that was the last thing needed before breakthrough came.
​
I'll add a PDF below for anyone who would like to know a bit more about St Raphael and seek his powerful aid and intercession: (2 x A4 pages)

May we all be given the grace to recognise these 'orchestrated by God' meetings when they come, and the grace to act on the holy promptings and opportunities that open up as a result of these happy meetings. May they be multiplied in our lives, so that the path ahead that God has prepared may be easier for us to both recognise and to follow. Amen.