Praying the Holy Rosary every day...

Living Rosary Group

Part of the Beacon Project is Our Lady of Fatima Living Rosary Group. This group of 20 people, from parishes within the Diocese, pray the entire Holy Rosary each day and would welcome the opportunity to pray for your intentions.

Please use the contact form below with your intentions and our group will pray for these as part of our daily prayer offerings. If you would like to join this group then also contact us for more details.

Resources: Here’s a link to listen to Bishop Egan’s MP3 series about The Holy Rosary >
Group Contact: Paul Vacher

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DAILY MEDITATION:Thursday of the 11th Week of Ordinary TimeMemorial of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, ReligiousJune 21, 2018Today’s Prayer:Thank You, Father, because whenever I raise my prayer to You, You're already listening to what my heart says. May Your Holy Spirit help me to grow more and more in my intimacy with You. Amen.Today's Readings:Sirach 48:1-14Ps 97:(12a)1-7Matthew 6:7-15Prayer that's powerfulTrue Christian living is quite a challenge! It's not for wimps. We cannot succeed as true followers of Christ unless we have a good prayer life -- a real prayer life, not a babbly one.In today's Gospel reading, Jesus contrasts babble-prayer with holy prayer, and wordy prayer with a heart-felt "Our Father" prayer. Some people think that the Rosary is babble-prayer, simply because it's a repetitious, formula prayer. And it can be. But it's babble only for those who don't use it for meditation within an intimate, loving communication with God.Some Catholics mistakenly use the Rosary as a bribe, thinking that by doing a novena (nine days) of Rosaries they can bribe God into giving them whatever they're requesting. A holy novena is a personal commitment of obedience. But a babbly novena is, quite honestly, manipulative and assumes that God can be forced to obey us -- as if he needs to be forced to do good!Our Father knows what we need before we begin the novena or any other prayer, even before we know that we should pray. The Rosary is powerful, as is our commitment to making a novena of Rosaries, but only if we surrender ourselves, our desires, and our ideas about how God should respond to our requests.Prayer is powerful when we give God our trust and accept that the outcome -- whatever it is -- is a blessing from God, since he knows the best way to deal with every situation far better than we do.Think of the prayer that Jesus gave us when he taught us how to pray to our Father. How do you use this prayer? Is it quickly babbled? I dare say that it's sometimes babbled during Mass and at the start of church meetings. Rote prayers often come from the head and bypass the heart.Each line of this prayer is rich in meaning and very powerful for daily conversion, healing, and growth. Too often, we rush through it without paying attention to what we're saying. It's meant to be an intimate conversation with our very dear, huggable Father. It's the ideal prayer, because it covers everything, the whole range of our needs, even unknown needs.In your personal quiet time with the Lord, take at least five minutes to make this a real prayer, expanding upon every phrase as you converse with your Divine Daddy. If you do this, you'll notice that the quick recitations of it at Mass and on other occasions will become meaningful, heart-felt experiences of God's love.#dailymeditations www.stswithuns.org.uk/event/dr-21062018 ... See MoreSee Less

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DAILY MEDITATION;Wednesday of the 11th Week of Ordinary TimeJune 20, 2018Today’s Prayer:Jesus, help me to take risks in Your love. Help me to understand that Your generosity and Your love for me goes far beyond what I can imagine. Amen.Today's Readings:2 Kings 2:1, 6-14Ps 31:(25)20-21,24Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18Three keys to holy livingIn today's Gospel reading, Jesus gives us three keys to holy living: almsgiving, praying and fasting. But the keys don't work unless we use them in the right door, i.e., the right attitude.The first key is almsgiving. The right attitude, which opens the door to God's generous love, is a spirit of giving. To pick up the key and use it without hesitation or fear, we first must have an attitude of trusting God, because it's when we believe in his generosity (even before we see it) that we can safely be generous toward others.God promises (see Malachi 3:10) that if we bring him the whole tithe (10% of our income), he will replace it abundantly. Why? Is it because of his generous love toward us? Yes and so that we can share even more with others. Likewise, if we are generous with love, giving it freely and abundantly whether the person deserves it or not, we open the door of our own hearts, making us capable of receiving more of God's love.The wrong attitude is a spirit of giving in order to get, which is an attempt to reward ourselves, like the hypocrites who "blow their own horns." This is only briefly satisfying. The recompense given to us when our generosity is based on love, however, keeps us closely united to God. Those who love others are friends of God, and friends share freely with each other.The second key is prayer. Jesus points out that there's a right way to pray and a wrong way, a right attitude and a wrong attitude. The right attitude is a sacrificial spirit; we pray because we're surrendering our own ideas of how God should help while choosing to trust in his plans. This key opens the door to God's better ideas. The wrong attitude is bargaining with God to force him to grant our request, or reciting formula prayers in order to seem prayerful while not living out the words.The third key is fasting. The right attitude is a humble spirit that seeks purification and discipline. Fasting originated in Judaism as a personal sacrifice on the Day of Atonement (the Hebrew community's annual event for the forgiveness of sins); its purpose was to increase personal humility and repentance. This should also be our motive as we fast to acquire "mastery over our instincts and freedom of heart" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph #2043). By disciplining our free will, we open the door to the Holy Spirit's strength for resisting temptation.With holy attitudes, our reward is a close, fulfilling, totally satisfying relationship with God.#dailymeditations www.stswithuns.org.uk/event/dr-20062018 ... See MoreSee Less

2 days ago

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DAILY MEDITATION:Tuesday of the 11th Week in Ordinary TimeJune 19, 2018Today’s Prayer:Holy Spirit: Empower me to be merciful to those who are difficult to love. May I be able to make sacrifices for them, praying to our Father for their needs and worries, and serving them with concrete works of love. Amen.Today's Readings:1 Kings 21:17-29Ps 51:3-6ab,11,16Matthew 5:43-48Loving our enemies perfects usToday's Gospel reading is the key to understanding God's mercy. If we do what Jesus is telling us here, then we will begin to understand more deeply that God loves us no matter what, even when we behave like enemies instead of his friends.He says: "Love your enemies." Who is your enemy? An enemy is anyone whose will, desires, or agenda is conflicting with yours.It's easy to love those who are not in conflict with us, but when we have to deal with someone who's causing a problem, the genuineness of our love is tested: Are we really concerned about them -- or only about ourselves?The more costly the conflict, the harder it is to love our opponents. But love is a choice more than a feeling. We choose to love, not because our enemies deserve our love, but because Jesus loves them so much that he died for them. If we don't respond to our enemies with love (compassion and forgiveness), we are choosing to turn away from Jesus, because God is love.Loving unconditionally means to "be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." Perfection in the Bible does not mean committing no sins and making no mistakes. Spiritual perfection means to love whole-heartedly, under all conditions."Under all conditions" does not mean putting up with evil. Healthy boundaries are also a part of unconditional love. People who cross the line by sinning against us need to experience consequences that will give them an opportunity to learn and grow. They might think that we're unloving, but we know our motives, we know how much we love them, and God surely knows.We don't have to like everyone, but to be united to Jesus we do have to love everyone. We should not unite ourselves to abusers by remaining with them, nor should we ignore a situation that needs to be corrected, but we are called to do good to all, just as our Father gives rain to the just and the unjust.If we trust God to make good come from the bad that happens as we deal with our enemies, we are living in his love. If we do good instead of retaliating or perpetuating the bad, we are remaining in his love. If we deal with others the way Jesus taught by example, we are united to his love.Our enemies help us discover the limits of our love. When we react to their sins in unChrist-like ways, we learn of our own need to seek forgiveness. We realize that we have to rely on the Holy Spirit for supernatural love. We're perfected. Praise God for our enemies!#dailymeditations www.stswithuns.org.uk/event/dr-19062018 ... See MoreSee Less

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How come these Meditations are always so appropriate??❤️

DAILY MEDITATION:Monday of the 11th Week in Ordinary TimeJune 18, 2018Today’s Prayer:Father: Forgive me for my pride and self-sufficiency when judging others and myself. I ask You to help me be always aware of your forgiveness for my unfaithfulness in learning how to be as merciful as You are. Amen.Today's Readings:1 Kings 21:1-16Ps 5:2-7Matthew 5:38-42Mercy succeeds where love failsThe Sermon on the Mount can seem too challenging to take seriously unless we're truly interested in growing stronger in holiness. In chapters five, six and seven of Matthew, Jesus gets down to the nitty-gritty details of how to be holy, and nearly every verse challenges us to examine how much we really do want to learn from him.Today's Gospel reading is a good example of this. We don't really want to turn the other cheek when someone hurts us. We don't want to lose the court battle when we're sued, let alone give away more than what's been demanded from us. We don't want to give our money to those who didn't earn it. We don't want to increase our donation to the Church, because we might need that extra money to buy more clothes or a newer car, a bigger house, or a fantasy vacation. And how quickly we reduce the amount when the pastor or bishop or someone else in the Church does something wrong!The extreme generosity that's necessary for holiness becomes easier when we understand why Jesus wants us to be holy. The reason is mercy. Think of love as the front door to people's hearts. When they close it, mercy is the love that sneaks in through the back door. Mercy succeeds where love fails.When Jesus preached this Sermon, he raised us above the Old Testament's "eye for an eye" spirituality, which gets so easily warped into revenge-seeking. Basically, he said: When others hurt you, be merciful and love them (forgive them, do good to them, pray for them, etc.). This is how we stay united to God, who is Divine Mercy itself. In this unity, he turns our problems into blessings and produces a greater good.People hurt us without understanding that they're actually hurting themselves. By sinning, they close the door to God's love. But if we love them, we give God to them; he reaches them through us (we become the back door to their hearts). If we refuse to give them mercy, we are refusing to give them God, and we are also closing our own doors to God and to his love.If someone strikes out at you verbally, don't strike back; give love. If someone tries to steal from you, you can't stop his sin of greed but you can stop him from sinning against you by freely giving to him what he's taking. If an irresponsible coworker demands that you do his work for him, prevent it from being a sin by volunteering to do even more. This is mercy.Does this sound like we're enabling sin? Well, mercy is only the first step. With good and humble discernment from the Holy Spirit, the next step is to invite the other person to grow in holiness. But even in this, mercy is key, because we must draw the line against ongoing sin -- motivated by love, not revenge or resentment.Being merciful isn't always fun. However, think of a time when you didn't deserve God's love or act of kindness. What did it feel like when you realized that he cared about you anyway? How did it change you? This is what your mercy can do for those who sin against you.#dailymeditations www.stswithuns.org.uk/event/dr-18062018 ... See MoreSee Less