During the month of May, you are invited to pray the Rosary with the parish.

Since Monday 6th May, the invitation has been each weekday to pray one decade of the Rosary.

Opening Prayers

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love.
Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and they shall be created.
And you shall renew the face of the earth.

God our Father, pour out the gifts of your Holy Spirit on the world.
You sent the Spirit on your Church to begin the teaching of the Gospel:
now let the Spirit continue to work in the world through the hearts of all who believe.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Lord, open our lips, and our mouths shall proclaim your praise.
O God, come to our aid. O Lord, make haste to help us.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit
as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Concluding Prayers

Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, hail, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve,
to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.
Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us;
and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus,
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.
Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

O God, whose only-begotten Son, by His life, death, and resurrection,
has purchased for us the rewards of eternal salvation;
grant we beseech Thee, that meditating upon these mysteries
of the most holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
we may imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise.
Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

Each day the prayers ‘prayed on the beads’ are accompanied by a mostly abstract image to illustrate the Mystery of the Day.

Today’s image represents the Ascension of Jesus. The Ascension is a Mystery which is predicated on an apparent ‘leaving’ of this world and his disciples by Jesus, the Crucified and Risen Lord. And it is true that Jesus is not physically in this world as he was formerly.

Yet he is still in the world through his Body, the Church, and to the Church in the word proclaimed and the Sacraments celebrated. THe Lord’s is an active presence through which he participates in our lives and we in his. Real absence is met by Real Presence.

Image and text (c) 2024, Allen Morris.