Prayer for the Day

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Prayer for the Day: 20/02/2020

20/02/2020

BBC Radio 4 - Prayer for the Day, 20/02/2020

A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with writer Catherine Fox.

Good morning.  I’ve been talking this week about my love of hymns, and how they sustain me on dark mornings, and in moments of crisis.  

Growing up  in a chapel-going home, means my hymn repertoire has a distinctly Nonconformist flavour.  But recently, I’ve started to worship at a church in the catholic tradition, where I’ve encountered a new set of hymns.  New to me, that is.  Everyone else in the congregation knows them of old.  ‘Sweet Sacrament divine’, for example.  How could I not know that?  I’d  moved house and had to start over again in a new city.  The words spoke reassurance.  ‘Dear home for every heart/where restless yearnings cease/and sorrows all depart.’  

At the moment,  things are in turmoil, we face climate challenges on a scale like never before, and today’s UN World Day of Social Justice reminds us of the challenges of inequality and injustice. I find myself returning to the Gospel account of the disciples in a small boat in a vast storm.  There comes a point when we’ve broken our backs rowing, we’ve bailed as furiously as we know how, and we are about to go down.  We can’t fix this.  So we call out to the one who can.

Sweet Sacrament of rest,
ark from the ocean's roar,
within thy shelter blest
soon may we reach the shore;
save us, for still the tempest raves,
save, lest we sink beneath the waves:
sweet Sacrament of rest. Amen.

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