Prayer during Adoration

Oh my Lord,

How great it is to be in your presence in prayer. Silently listening to you truly is the fountain of all the love that I have. To be in Your presence gives me life & makes me free, free from the chains of sin. For true freedom isn´t the ability to do what I want but the ability to choose You over all things, even those things which attract me the most.

Lord, let me selflessly throw myself at your feet, at your mercy, at the foot of Your most holy cross. Let me look no-where else but only set my eyes towards that battered & bloody man who emptied himself so that the world could know the Father´s love; that no matter how far we turn, no matter how much we hate Him, no matter how far we run from Him that he will still come for us and will break through our sinfulness & break the chains that hold us to all earthly things and bring us back to Him if only we let Him for one moment.

In this world following you can sometimes seem so hard & yet by Your grace we keep going. Oh Good Lord, let me only focus on heaven and have my gaze fixed firmly on it and not on all things which pass. Oh Lord, let me not pass you in this life without giving you my all. Let me see as you see, not as I wish to see. Let me perceive Your goodness in everyone & everything. Let my eyes see even when all is dark. Let my heart rejoice when there is nothing earthly to rejoice about. Let my ears be attentive to your voice, even when it seems I´m surrounded by silence. Let my mind ascend to you when all the world tries to drag it down. Let my body become secondary to your love and all that you have in mind for me.

I thank you Lord for all the gifts in my life, truly you have blessed me. I pray that I may not fall into sin, not by me because truly I am the weakest of all, but because Your love consumes me even with all my sin.

Curious Things About Spain

I’ve been living in Madrid now for around 2 months and I have to say it’s awesome! I’ve noticed a few strange things and it was supposed to be 10 things but it’s a weirder country than I thought..so here are a few things I've learnt during my time here:

1) Spanish students complain all the time about how much they have to study. They all claim to spend at least 3 or 4 hours studying a day although their definition of studying as far as I can tell is sitting in front of the computer watching How I Met Your Mother with their textbook open somewhere near them or doing something called “pasar apuntes” (passing notes) which as far as I can tell is just copying hand written notes onto the computer without ever actually reading them properly.

2) G & T is a real man’s drink. Yes, famous in England for being Pat Butcher’s tipple of choice here it’s about as manly as it gets! Probably not helping the view that Spanish men tend to be a bit girly..

3) Cups of tea don’t exist. It’s basically impossible to buy a cup of tea here. Despite explaining to the bar staff exactly how it’s made i.e. a bit of milk & hot water (not exactly rocket science) you inevitably end up with either hot UHT milk with a tea bag, hot water with a tea bag in, or milk & hot water without a tea bag.

4) People have gotten fat! When I was here in 2009 studying I remember noting that it was the skinniest part of the world I’ve ever been in, I hardly remember meeting anyone overweight and now it seems that more and more people are a bit well, chunky! Apparently it’s because of the financial crisis and people are shopping in worse super markets with lower quality food. Personally I blame it on the fact that at everyone’s house I’ve been to for dinner they seem to eat chocolate, natillas & ice cream for dessert on a daily basis!

5) There are homeless people everyone – in my neighbourhood there are at least 10 or 15 people sleeping rough, and various others begging outside of shops and they’re in every single neighbourhood in Madrid as far as I can tell.

6) Long working hours - apparently the Spanish work an average of 2 hours longer per day than their European counterparts but as far as I can see they’re also the least productive. The working day seem to consist of arriving, getting a cup of coffee, having a chat, working for 30 mins then having a breakfast break, bit of work, smoking break, one more hour then home for over an hour & a half for lunch, followed by an afternoon drinking coffee. And they wonder why their economy is so bad..

7) Football – the Spanish are obsessed with football! They have 4 dedicated national football newspapers including the best selling paper MARCA & in almost every bar you go to their will be someone talking about football & there are kids playing in the street wherever you go. They also play really well in general although they are incapable of dealing with a nice hefty English style long ball..I scored 5 goals last game all in this way!

8) Awful TV – apparently British TV is known all around the world as being pretty bad but it’s nothing compared to the rubbish they put on here. They’re obsessed with Question Time style round table debates but being Spanish they all just end up shouting over each other and there’s no David Dimbleby equivalent to keep the peace! They also have TV shows which last hours discussing reality shows like Big Brother. Imagine Big Brothers Little Brother but lasting the whole evening. Spanish soap operas make Home and Away look like a Spielberg production. Their comedy shows are like our comedy shows except with all the funny bits taken out. Their adverts are like something from the 80's. Their most famous late night TV show is “La Hormiga"(The Ant) which is a puppet conducting interviews & they have women commentating no the football which wouldn't be bad if those women actually knew anything about football, which they don't. I think the only criteria for them getting the job is that they are skinny, attractive & willing to wear very tight clothes.

9) Rubbish collection – rubbish is collected on a daily basis..sound good, right? Not when they do it 1am in the morning..who ever came up with that bright idea deserves to be shot..which wouldn't surprise me seeing the amount of extremists there are here.

10) It stinks – Madrid is the worst smelling city I’ve ever been in. The drains smell, there’s dog poo everywhere, and the wheely bins on every street stink. Everyone told me it was because of the rain, then it rained, and it still smelt. Conclusion: the Spanish smell.

11) Public Transport is AWESOME. Cheap, clean, on time and an extensive network of trains & buses (which never break down) and a great metro system which costs around 80p a journey if you buy a 10 pass ticket. England should really use it as an example.

12) Spanish people have the curious ability to be able to speak for a long time, without actually saying anything at all. The first minute of a story can go something like “oye, pues a ver, es que, sabes lo que pasa? Joe tronk, ya ves..me refiero..lo que quiero decirte es queeeee joe sabes tia, a ver. Pues nada ya te digo..yo que se..” all they’ve really said is "I’m going to tell you something" yet they spend a minute telling you that.

13) And finally if you don’t speak Spanish don’t go to parties here! You just end up getting left with the guy that speaks English on the basis that well, he can speak English! He also tends to be the weird guy at the party that no-one else wants to speak to hence why they’re happy to leave him with you, and he can only speak English because he spends his time alone in his room studying English leaving you with the English language as the only topic of conversation..

Note: I actually love living in this country!!!!

Thought of the Day

Here´s my quick thought on "Atheism & Free Will" and whether an atheist can logically criticise a religious person on the basis of being irrational/stupid/mistaken etc. based on their own world view...it'll be a little confused as I'm thinking about it whilst writing!

Okay, so atheists only believe in the material world that can be studied by science. Humans are part of that material world & consist of cells which are matter. Matter is governed by the laws of physics and reacts in a specific way according to the information going into it (much like if you drop a ball on our planet is can only fall due to gravity acting on it) so too our brain cells can only act in a certain way in any situation. Therefore any "decision" that we make is simply a process of chemical reactions in our brain which, since each reaction is governed by the laws of physics, couldn´t have been any other way. Any notion of "thought", "choice" & "free will" are therefore simply by-products & illusions created by a collection of reactions of each cell which could only have reacted in the way it did.

Therefore for an atheist to call any religious person "stupid" or "irrational" for believing in God is actually itself "stupid" and "irrational" as according to their own world view those that believe in God really couldn´t have believed anything else given their cells which are totally governed by physics, and neither could the person who that "rejected" God have done anything else but that. Neither have chosen to follow or reject anything, it´s the only thing that they could have done given the laws of physics acting on the individual cells in their brains. More or less, seeing as there is nothing separating us from our genes, and that those genes are controlled by the laws of nature which can only behave in a certain way, there's no free will and therefore you can't criticise or praise anyone's actions as they are behaving in the only way they can..as a ball falling would.

So if you believe in God, next time you get insulted for believing in God simply say that according to their atheistic world view you really couldn´t have done anything else and any illusion of a choice is simply the by product of reactions in our brains that couldn´t have been any other way and therefore your "decision" to follow God is equally as rational as theirs to reject God and is as rational as a ball falling to the earth when dropped due to the gravity acting on it; it´s the only way things could have been given your cells & the information going into them.

Protests to Pope's Visit to World Youth Day

World Youth Day is a Catholic event for young people between the ages of 18 and 30. Over one million young people have arrived in Madrid, Spain to celebrate their faith and to grow in their love of Jesus Christ together as a community. Over the next 3 days there will be plenty of news coverage on what is a great event for all Catholics, and a great spectacle whether religious or not.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14568707

Some of the peaceful events of WYD have however been marred by some ugly protests centered around Plaza del Sol in the centre of Madrid. There have been reports of violence, intimidation and threats.

First of all, if people want to protest whatever they want they're perfectly entitled to although it should be done peacefully always. The main reason for the protests has been the reported burden on the public finances which are being used to cover the trip with the message being that in a time of economic cut backs public money should not be used to finance such an event. As some of the media coverage has been incredibly one sided, I wanted to share some information you may not have heard which shows that maybe the reasons for the protest aren't in the cause of public finances:

1) In Spain you can choose NOT to have your taxes given to Church on your ballot paper. If you don't want any of your tax money to go towards these activities, you don't have to, it's completely your choice so if any public money is being used for this trip, it has been raised through people voluntarily donating their tax money.

2) Whether you agree with it or not, this is officially classified as a state visit and as such the Spanish government is required to meet its security obligation which would be afforded to any other official state visit.

3) Each official Catholic pilgrim is paying over 200euros towards the costs of the visit, which will make up 70% of the total cost, the rest will be made up from donations from large companies such as Banco Santander & Coca Cola.

4) There are estimates of around 1.5million people flooding into the Spanish capital and participating, using services, hotels, restaurants etc. which will outweigh the costs (around 100m Euros some believe).

5) I wonder what these protesters, who are so concerned about their tax money, would think about their tax money going on policing and clean-up of their violent protests?

6) They didn't seem too concerned about the clean-up costs for example of the M-15 protests, Gay Pride etc. I've been in Madrid during Gay Pride and the streets in the centre of Madrid get absolutely ruined. Will they call for these to be cancelled this year? I think not. Maybe these protests aren't really about money?

In conclusion don’t be fooled by the news coverage that these protesters receive, they are not being motivated by concerns over public finances. They are motivated by their hatred towards the Church. The media may focus upon these protests but they are in the tiniest majority, as was the same with Pope Benedict’s visit to the UK for the Beatification of Bless John Henry Newman. Spain is still a very Catholic country and anyone in Madrid at the moment will tell you that the streets of Madrid of full of Catholics, and the protesters are a small minority despite the disproportionate coverage they will receive.

Again if people wish to protest peacefully for any reason they are more than welcome to, we live in a free society! But these protesters are woefully ill informed about the finances of World Youth Day.

Inbetweeners Movie: A Christian Response

The 17^th of August will see the release of the movie version of hit TV show, The Inbetweeners. It follows the lives of four teenage school boys during their sixth form years and has been a large success over its three series stint attracting a wide and mostly young audience. I have watched a couple of episodes of the series and certainly there are some genuinely funny moments, the relationship between Will and Mr Gilbert being one of them, but it is a series mostly based on lude comments, around attempted sexual conquests and general vulgarity.

As said in my previous blog the main objective of a Christian life is to follow Jesus Christ with all our strength, he calls us personally to live a life of love for God and for all. A lack of chastity (selfless love for others according to our specific situation in life) has warped our society’s view of love, and as Christians we find ourselves in a constant battle against society in our quest for purity. If we are to strive to live out true purity of heart we must control what we are exposed to. What goes into us (via the senses) forms our consciences and makes us who we are. Someone who is serious about being an athlete wouldn't spend their time consuming junk food and neither should we as we train to be holy. If you don’t think that watching a movie about a few teenagers trying to have sex will affect you, well imagine the opposite; a culture where the only sex spoken of in the media told of the joy and beauty of waiting for marriage, where having sex before marriage was seen as the “weird” thing to do. Would that shape you? Yes. The same is true the other way around and we must take care of what we watch if we are to live pure and chaste lives.

I’m certain that virtually all of us will know people who will go to see it indeed we may be looking forward to going and seeing it ourselves. However when faced with movies of such content, as Christians we should act with caution. In western society we are surrounded by impurity in all forms of media (adverts, television, internet, magazines, newspapers etc.) and as Christians we should do our best to avoid it however difficult. We don't need to be pedantic about it, for example an hour and a half movie with one sexual scene which can easily be skipped is okay, but this movie is something different. Judging from the series and the trailers it can be deduced that this won’t be a movie with only some sparse references of a vulgar nature; drinking, lust, sex etc. will be the main focus.

St James in his letter said that with a horse, if you control its mouth you control the whole animal and the same is true with our eyes. In a Christian’s journey to chastity we must control what we look at as images are difficult to get out of our mind, and what we look at trains our body. If we hammer such images into our minds, which images and messages will we recall when we are faced with temptation? This is an opportunity for all Christians to be “in the world, but not of it” as John Paul II said and to set an example by not going to see this movie which is part of a wider trend of a normalisation of self gratifying sexual activity where any talk of chastity or waiting until marriage is scoffed at. The question for Christians really is are you willing to give God your eyes, give Him your ears and give Him your tongue? Even if it means missing out on something you were looking forward to? Love takes sacrifice.

If you do choose to abstain from watching this film due to its vulgar content, it should only be a reflection (or perhaps a start!) of what each of us should be trying to do in our own lives; remove all stains of impurity in thoughts, words and actions. I hope that I don’t come across as speaking down to anyone, I’m simply asking the Christians reading this to pray and reflect on this decision because it’s a battle that I have been deeply in and it is a tough battle which can only be won through a radical and total change in what we watch, how we speak, what we allow ourselves to think, but it's a battle we all must face if we truly aim to give our lives fully to Christ. Ask yourself a simple question: will this movie further or hinder you in your journey to purity and holiness and towards love of God? Reflect and pray about it before going to see the movie.

As Catholics we use the examples of Saints as guides for living out the Christian faith and so I’ll leave you with a couple of quotes from one of the most recent Saints we’ve had in the Church, San Jose Maria Escriva:

“Never talk of impure things or events, not even to deplore them. Look, it’s a subject that sticks more than tar. Change the conversation, or if that’s not possible, continue, but speaking of the need and beauty of holy purity – a virtue of the men who know what their souls are worth.”

“When you decide firmly to lead a clean life, chastity will not be a burden on you: it will be a crown of triumph”

To find out what Christian chastity is, please visit:

http://www.chastity.com

Let us pray that by God’s grace all may come to desire and live out the virtue of chastity.

Paul.

Events in Norway: A Christian Response

A report on how the terrible events unfolded can be found here:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14254705

Anyone who has been following this story will be very confused by these events. What kind of person could do this? Was he mentally ill? Where does the motivation to perform such an act come from? I don’t think we’ll ever know exactly what was happening in this man’s mind but I’m certain that we will hear plenty more over the coming days, weeks and months. Unlike other similar attacks, he did not turn the gun on himself and so perhaps we will be able to get some answers to the questions we all have. Whether Christian, atheist or whatever else, I think we all share in the complete shock that this event has caused. This will be a more difficult time for all those involved than any of us can really imagine and we all hope and pray that they will get through it.

As a Christian however, I feel it necessary to comment on these events as the suspect’s claim to be a Christian has been used in certain (thankfully small) quarters of atheism as another reason to attack religion and as another explicit case as to why religion is bad despite the attack seemingly being politically motivated.

My first reaction on hearing that he was a Christian was simply to deny it; “he can’t be a Christian because Christian’s don’t do this kind of thing.” But the more I’ve thought about this response, the more uncomfortably it sits with; could the same accusation not have been thrown towards Peter when he denied Jesus? How many times in our own life could a similar accusation have been thrown towards us? So if it is wrong to judge this man's faith and relationship to God, how can we react to these claims against Christianity?

First of all, it should be pointed out that the act of a man committing such an heinous act, whether atheist or religious had no bearing on the validity of the thing which he professes to be. If a self-proclaimed atheist or as can seen in recent times Muslim had committed this act of violence, it would be equally absurd to say that because the man was atheist or Muslim that that means that atheism or Islam is wrong or evil. There is no correlation between this man committing such an act and the validity of Christianity. It would be more prudent to discuss what Christianity actually has to say on non-violence rather than what one man who professes to be Christian actually did.

So what does Christianity teach about violence?

As we know Christianity is all about following the life of Jesus and we are called to imitate him in our own lives. One of the core components of Jesus’ message was that of complete non-violence, even in the face of persecution and violence against you. This is why not once in the New Testament can we find any instances of Jesus' disciples killing other people, yet we read much of Christians being persecuted and killed and more importantly not resisting this. Jesus himself walked willingly to the cross (see bottom for details of how brutal the torture was that he endured). He was an innocent man and yet he let this happen to him without fighting back, Jesus did not turn to violence, he simply accepted it with love and prayed for his persecutors.

Jesus’ message was one of non-violence, loving thy neighbour as thyself, even under persecution. Indeed the only case where a disciple of Jesus attempts to fight back in the New Testament is when Peter attempts to stop Jesus being arrested (surely a noble cause to protect the most innocent man who has ever lived?) and yet Jesus rebukes this seemingly "worthy" act of violence!

The simple truth is that the tragedy in Norway wouldn't have happened had this man calling himself a Christian had actually followed Jesus’ message and example of non-violence acceptance of persecution and troubles and of love towards thy neighbour.

Let all those who believe in God pray for all involved including the suspect that they can find peace and healing even in this most difficult time and that all may follow the example of Christ in their lives, Our Lord and Prince of Peace.

(To read just how brutal an act of torture it was, Jesus’ passion can be followed here by clicking through the sections of the link below.)

http://www.frugalsites.net/jesus/gethsemane.htm

Hi everyone,

Thanks for visiting my blog, they'll be plenty of posts coming soon!

God bless!

Paul.