Monthly Reflections From Fr David Stewart SJ
Fr Stewart reflects on the Pope's prayer intention.
April 2021
FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS. April, this year, is Resurrection Month. Everywhere, all the brothers and sisters of the human family, whether explicitly or not, are longing for new life, desperate for the deadly pandemic to end, for the fullness of life to free us from the terror of illness and death that has hung over us …
The Fundamental Rights
THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS A guest reflection by Cardinal Michael Czerny SJ In April 2021, Pope Francis’s universal intention is for fundamental rights. “We pray for those who risk their lives while fighting for fundamental rights under dictatorships, authoritarian regimes and even in democracies in crisis,” he says. Since Pope John XXIII in the 1960s, human rights …
March 2021
TASTE GOD’S INFINITE MERCY It’s already a full year since Pope Francis prayed for the whole world in that haunting and poignant televised service in a rainy, dark St.Peter’s Square. For many of us watching, whether we were people of explicit faith or not, the simple liturgy revealed a palpable depth; his spoken words were …
February 2021
FEBRUARY – REPENT OF VIOLENCE TO WOMEN, SAYS POPE February brings us Ash Wednesday and begins our Lenten repentance and renewal. It brings us a new Intention from Pope Francis, a prayer from his own heart that he’d like us to take into our hearts and our own prayer. The Pope encourages us to consider, …
January 2021
BEGIN THE YEAR with a PRAYER FOR FULL FELLOWSHIP A greater sense of human solidarity has grown among us, as we ended a dreadful year, yet it wasn’t universal. The longed-for advent of viable vaccines was accompanied by rich nations buying up huge stocks, leaving Majority World nations struggling. Some people appeared to relegate the …
December 2020
As this awful year has unfolded and as the pandemic not only deepened, but a second wave surged across many lands, fears began to grow about our Advent and our Christmas – would we be able to celebrate together or even be together? We have been praying; our Advent prayer has been very intense, with …
November2020
This month, so many of us continue our fervent prayer for all of humanity, as the whole world continues to suffer from the pandemic, yet we keep in our prayer another concern that will affect us all, now and in the generations that follow us. Pope Francis asks us to pray with him “that the …