The Lectures Have Begun ...

We have just finished our first week of lectures, much quicker than we thought it would be!  This week the topic that our lectures were focused on was prayer.  We have had a number of different lecturers in talking to us about the different types of prayer that there is and which we will encounter in our daily life in SPES.  It has been nice to at last meet some of our lecturers and to put a face to the name.  

So what have we been learning about and what is the prayer life in SPES like??  In SPES our whole timetable is made around the different times of prayer that we have.  Prayer is at the centre of everything we do.  Each day we pray Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and Night Prayer from the Divine Office, which is the official prayer of the Church.  Fr Alex spoke to us about the Divine Office this week.  Although we have been praying it from the day we arrived it was nice to learn more about it so that we may understand it better.  We have been singing some of the Psalms from the Office and look forward to learning to sing more of it in the coming weeks.  Together each day we also pray the Rosary.  We had a beautiful talk about Our Lady and the Rosary on the feast day of Our Lady of the Rosary, how very special and it was also our first lecture.  That evening we had Mass in the SOS Prayerline Chapel for the restarting of the SOS Prayerline after their short break.  It was nice to have Mass in the small Chapel and on Friday we were back in the Chapel again for a hands on explanation of the Mass by Fr John Farrell OP.  It was amazing and really helped us to understand more about the Mass.

Our SPES timetable has some time in morning dedicated to Spiritual Reading so we were blessed to have a full day session with Sr Margarida and Anne-Marie from the Verbum Dei Community.  They spoke to us and explained Lectio Divina and we had some time to put what we had heard in to practice.  Each day we have the opportunity for an hour of silent Adoration together as a community, which can sound and feel a little scary to begin with.  What are we supposed to do for an hour everyday in front of the Blessed Sacrament!  Well thankfully Fr Alan came along and talked to us about what Adoration is and gave us some helpful tips as to how to spend our time in Adoration and how it will not always be easy.  Friday afternoon gave us an opportunity to learn what Spiritual Direction is and to meet our Spiritual Director as a group.  In a couple of weeks we will begin to meet with him individually.

It really has been quite a packed week with all the lectures and trying to get into our new routine of early starts and long days, but we are enjoying it and looking forward to all that we will experience in the next nine months!  Please keep praying for us.

Our Day with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal!

We recently spent a day in Canning Town with the Grey Friars.  When we arrived we immediately began by helping with the preparations for the soup kitchen which they run for the poor and homeless.  This involved opening plenty of cans, chopping potatoes, getting stuff ready for tea and coffee and then serving the soup and toast to the people that came along to the Friary.  We had the opportunity to have a chat with many of the people that came along; both the helpers and the homeless and we were really able to see how God is working with and through this mission.


After getting some soup for ourselves we were given a lecture from Fr. Emmanuel on Community Living.  He made no secret that the next few months are going to come with many challenges and hardships, but, he also let us know that from these 9 months will come great graces and so much joy; this, everyone found very beneficial and we look forward to putting much of what he said into practice.  After a bit of free time, along with some basketball, we settled down for Evening Prayer and an hour of Eucharistic Adoration.





The whole day was rounded up with a lovely chicken dinner prepared by Fr. Emmanuel and some good social time with Br John Bosco, Br Angelo and Fr. Emmanuel.  We are all looking forward to any other opportunity that may come to meet up with the Franciscans again!