Prayer events from the Cathedral

Christian Meditation 

Where and When?

We now meet Monday online between 7.00 and 8.00 - 

Please email catechist.cathedral@lrcd.org.uk for a link. 
We gather together

• Listen to a piece of music 

• A short talk and reflection from the World Community of Christian Meditation

• A time of silent meditation

• Finishing with praying the Glory Be

• Then a final short reflection, poem 

• And final piece of music.

For more resources and talks produced by the World Community of Christian Meditation (WCCM Website)

Gospel Share

We meet online between 7.30 and 8.30 on Thursday evening. 

If you would like to attend please email Ann-Marie on catechist.cathedral@lrcd.org.uk 

We use Lectio Divina - sacred reading of scripture to help us prepare for the Sunday Gospel and readings. 

No experience is needed just a willingness to come and listen and if you want to share your ideas and questions.

Our format includes:

A welcome

• We listen to our first reading

• A musical version of the psalm

• We listen to our 2nd Reading

• Our Gospel - we listen to the Gospel three times - 

• The first time we simply listen to the words

• The second time we read the reading for ourselves and then listen whilst someone reads the reading

• We then call out a word of phrase that strikes us

• The third time we listen to the Gospel for a third time

• After this we share our response - which might be a question, something that has struck us, something we've heard in a homily in the past, something we've read about.  We also share how we might respond to our Gospel reading in the coming week.

• To help us we sometimes look at sacred art, or a short video guide 

• We close with a piece of music linked to the Gospel and pray the Glory Be, 

Boarbank events

https://boarbankhall.org.uk/whats-on/

Two Wings and Some Prayers 9th-14/16th May 2026.
Prayer, walks and birdwatching, with a focus on learning birdsong.

Our Lady in Latin 10th-12th/13th July 2026.
Learn about the Latin and the music of our best known hymns to Our Lady. Beginners welcome.

Thinking Faith: Mary, Mother of God 1st-8th August 2026.
Time out for working Catholics.

St Augustine on the Psalms 22nd-26th/28th August 2026.
All welcome.

Re-Creation! 1st-6th/8th October 2026.
Re-energise your commitment to living your faith in hope in a world of ecological challenges. Talks,
fun, conversations, art, liturgy, gardening, walks. All welcome.

Credo! 23rd-25/26th October 2026.
Follow up to Our Lady in Latin, on the Creed and the Mass.

Hope in Health 4th-6/7th December 2026.
For all who support or care for anyone who is sick, professionals and others.

We will also include our Thinking Faith Lent and Advent Zoom retreats. Dates to be confirmed.

Jesuit events you might be interested in!

Events and Resources from the Jesuit Institute

Thank you for participating in this online School of Prayer! The Jesuit Institute offers lots of online events (from guided prayer, to retreat days and courses) and digital resources (alongside Pray As You Go) which you might find helpful. Here are a few suggestions:

Join Stephen Hoyland and special guests as we lead a free guided prayer session every first Wednesday of the month at 8pm via Zoom, available later on Vimeo and Youtube.

Dates for Imagine - https://www.jesuitinstitute.org/events?type=Online+Prayer

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81534467879?pwd=c1FzYnd0RHoxdE5FYkp1MXdZUTBnUT09

An online retreat day for makers

Do you enjoy paper-crafting, sewing, knitting, crochet, scrapbooking, painting, drawing, origami, pottery, woodcarving, photography or other ways to make things? Do you want to spend time in these creative activities with a deeper sense of God’s presence?
This is an online retreat day especially for you to set aside time with God while making. You will find your own quiet space to be at work and use your own materials of choice. There will be suggestions for prayer and opportunities to share your prayer.

Let there be ... An Online Retreat Day - Retreats

‍Check out other online events including retreats here: https://www.jesuitinstitute.org/events

 Sign up to our weekly newsletter to get reflections on scripture, weekly short prayers to try, all our latest events and news. http://eepurl.com/gnPwAb

 There are lots of free audio resources as well as daily prayer based on scripture available on the Pray As You Go app and website: https://prayasyougo.org/

 Sarah Young is offering some walking prayer workshops in the Eden Valley, Cumbria. Find the list of dates and book on the link below:

https://forms.office.com/e/jWBqgJB9As

Blog from Ursula, diocesan spirituality rep

The Great Gift of the Eucharist

The last thing Jesus does before his Passion is to give Himself totally to us. He sits with His friends at the last Passover Supper and taking the bread He says “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Then taking the wine after the supper he says, “This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Then He shows us just how much He does love us by giving Himself willingly to the chief priests and scribes. He endures His passion and death.  

“When we carry out this command of the Lord by celebrating the memorial of his sacrifice. In so doing, we offer to the Father what he has himself given us: the gifts of his creation, bread and wine which by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the words of Christ, have become the body and blood of Christ. Christ is thus really and mysteriously made present.” (CCC1357).

Jesus wanted to stay close to us forever but he could not stay physically present as a human being so he gave us himself sacramentally. How much closer could He come to us than by giving us His very self! We eat and drink Him – He becomes a part of us. Our job is to become “what we eat” i.e. Him. We are called to be Christ for one another. We forget sometimes that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit through our Baptism. We find it hard to see beyond the outer appearance whereas God sees the heart of a person. We need to be strengthened and nourished to see as He sees.

We are given the Eucharist as food to nourish us. To nourish our minds through the Word we hear and our hearts by receiving the body and blood of Jesus. We are called to be more like Jesus and by going to Mass we have the very thing we need to help us to become “Jesus” for each other. To see Jesus present in each people in the benches around us. We are fed so we can go out and bring Jesus to all those people we meet during the week.  “Jesus is Love and he has made himself food and drink for us in the Eucharist. The more we nourish ourselves on the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, the more we will be able to love...” Carlos Acutis

Our bodies need food just as our soul needs food. Let me put it another way. I enjoy cycling but in order to be able to cycle I have to eat. My body needs food to give it energy to push the pedals around. If I do not eat enough I end up in a state called “the bonk.” Your body does not slowly stop, it just stops! My legs turn to jelly and I start to shake. I cannot go on until I eat something – my body has nothing left to give. After stopping and eating something (a Mars Bars!) I can carry on to the next café.

This can be likened to our spiritual journey, if we do not feed it, it will stop. We need to nourish ourselves spiritually as well as physically. The Eucharist is the best thing for our spiritual life as the Catechism says, “The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian Life.” (CCC1324). Did you know it is the only Sacrament in which we receive Jesus Himself, in all the others we are given His power. We are given Jesus’ body and blood, his flesh and blood – WOW. It may still look like bread and wine but through the Holy Spirit it changes it into the body and blood of Jesus Himself.

St Thomas Aquinas tells us “What the soul is hungry for, finally, is the person of Jesus, the body and blood of Christ. Without feeding regularly on that food, the soul will atrophy.”

Jesus tells us, Do this is remembrance of me.” I think He knows what is good for us!

Ursula Walker

Spirituality Rep

SpiritualityRep@lrcd.org.uk

07312129900

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A Note on Why we don’t Have Women Priests

Tradition, in the Church, is the way of life based on the Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Apostles, who received the Holy Spirit adopted a way of life that was true to the teaching and person on Jesus. He chose 12 men to represent him as his priests. The fact that Jesus only chose men to represent Him is a historical tradition, an apostolic tradition. We cannot break that tradition.

Vocation – the call to priesthood is a vocation just like marriage or religious/consecrated life. We are all called by our Baptism and “the particular way in which the Spirit is given to each person is for a good purpose.” (1 Cor. 12:4-7)

The priest – a sign and symbol of Christ. A priest is a man is who ordained and in that ordination, he receives a grace, he becomes an extraordinary “representation” of Christs priestly presence to His people. During Mass he re-enacts in a sacramental form the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. When we celebrate the Eucharist we are making present in a sacramental way the death of Jesus on the cross. Jesus took on the physical form of a man (not a women) when he came to earth. When he died on the cross he chose the maleness of priests, to be the sign and cause of His sacrifice on the cross in the sacrament of priestly Holy Orders.

The Catechism tell us “That the priest, by virtue of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, acts in persona Christi Capitis: It is the same priest, Christ Jesus, whose sacred person his minister truly represents. … “(CCC1548).

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Eucharist

I have always found it striking how quickly everything happens after we receive Holy Communion. We are given the very Body of Christ and then, almost immediately, the priest offers a brief prayer, a final blessing, and we are sent out the doors. There is hardly any pause between the gift of the sacred host we receive and the mission we are given. The Church wastes no time because Christ does not want to remain only on our tongues... he wants to be carried into the streets, workplaces, hospitals, schools, into every corner of the world. Mass ends, and we are sent on mission to proclaim. We leave the altar like living tabernacles, Christ burning inside us, called to set hearts alight with the love we have just consumed. Communion is not just for us, it is fuel for the world.

Father Patrick van der Vorst

Prayer link

If you are joining us tonight for the "Teach us to Pray" online event. This is the Zoom link you can simply click on the following link at the start of each prayer meeting:

[https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81344722466...]

Meeting ID: 813 4472 2466 Passcode: 702592

Teach us to Pray

Lord, Teach us to pray

A Week of Retreat and a School of Prayer.

March 9-13 (7-8.30pm) plus day retreat (10am-3pm) on Saturday 14th March.

If you feel you need help with prayer, you are in good company; so did the first disciples.

During this week in mid-lent we will introduce a variety of ways of praying each evening, and do the same again on Saturday.

Come to any or all of the online evening meetings or the Saturday.  If you want a double dose, come to both!

The week is being led by members of the Jesuit Institute for anyone in Lancaster Diocese, with Bishop Paul’s blessing. 

The Diocese is covering the entire cost which makes it free.  All the sessions are online.

No need to register.  To receive the zoom link, and a reminder that it’s happening nearer the time, email Ursula, our Diocesan Spirituality Rep.

uwalker@uwclub.net

Alternatively you can simply click on the following link at the start of each prayer meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81344722466?pwd=Rm5UVGpXemw4NTE2VEloU21tMVpodz09

Meeting ID: 813 4472 2466    Passcode: 702592

Bishop Paul hopes to join us at some point to give that blessing to everyone taking part.  He hopes that the week can build on the momentum of the Jubilee Year of Hope that we had in 2025.  God is always inviting us into hope, joy, deeper faith and love.  Prayer helps us to receive and deepen these gifts of God.

If you’re in a parish group of some kind, might you arrange to engage altogether in one of your homes, or the parish hall?  You’d be online with the rest of the diocese, and also in person with members of your parish at the same time.

Retreat reflection by Maureen Ryan Craig

Lent Retreat Our Lady of Hyning Monastery

“Do Not Be Afraid”

On the first weekend of Lent, ten of us gathered at Hyning for our Lent Retreat, meeting old and new friends over supper. After supper we gathered for a “brainstorming” exercise, with FR Anthony Keefe (chaplain at Hyning). The theme of the brainstorming was words for Lent and what these could mean e.g. desert, prayer, giving up, making new habits, preparation. Fr Anthony advised us not to be in a rush to get to Holy Week, but to focus on the weeks leading up to it.

Saturday morning started with Mass, after that our first talk of the day with Sister Mary Stella “ Do Not Be Afraid or Anxious” We looked at the woman taken in adultery (with one of us taking the role of the woman, and the rest of us as Pharisees with stones in our hands) Jesus changed the situation by the response to the woman. What did we learn from this? We all read passages about courage, and not being afraid. How can we change our way of thinking and acting? After a break we went to the chapel for Adoration and confession.

After lunch there was free time for a couple of hours, some of us had quiet time, some braved the rain and went out for a walk, some knitted, some had a cup of tea and a chat. We all gathered at 4.00pm for tea and cake before vespers.

After Vespers we had our second talk of the day with Sister Michaela “Do Not Be Afraid” - Lent through Narnia!

This was a session on how the books of Narnia have the themes of learning to live with our fears, overcoming them and breaking through them. Fear is cast out by love. We saw through the lives of the characters how they were transformed through their fears and experiences. We did an exercise by recalling a time when we were afraid, we imagined our safe spaces. We held onto a heart and imagined someone we had hurt, standing in front of us and saying, “I forgive you” We also had a handout giving us a selection of biblical passages with “Do Not Be Afraid” in them.

Sunday morning started with Mass followed by our second talk by Sister Michaela “Take Courage” Lent through Narnia part 2”.  Again, we encountered different characters and how their lives changed through their courage. We took part in two activities with post stick pads and pieces of Lego! We watched a reflection on bravery to beautiful music. I was personally moved by the quote from Nelson Mandela: -

          “I learned that courage isn’t the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”

Maureen Ryan-Craig 23/02/2026

New events and pages

We are hoping that events from across the diocese or just people sharing their experience might appear on here. It’s not a substitute for other sites such as the official Diocesan page or a record of events like The Voice. It’s just an informal blog to see if we can connect in the Diocese. If there is anything you’d like to share. please email Sr. Michaela srmichaelabsc@yahoo.co.uk

New Spirituality page for the diocese

We are in the process of setting up a new blog for the diocese. More details to follow!