Signposts along the way

Today’s Feast Day of St Martin de Porres (1579-1639) takes me back to a time before I became a Catholic, when I was an Anglican curate in a part of London where a great number of folk from the Caribbean had settled.  The church I was serving in was St Martin’s – named in honour of the Bishop of Tours of Roman times (d. 397).  That was when I first heard about St Martin de Porres, who intrigued me because he was mixed-race.  Surrounded as I was by West Indians, I felt he was a gift to us.  That the Catholic Church should have canonised him (in 1962, although he was Beatified long before in 1837) encouraged me to think seriously about the Catholic faith.  At the time other things were speaking to me about the Church, especially my encounter with The Ascent of Mount Carmel by John of the Cross which I read at that time.  I only understood half of it, but that was enough to show me that I was in the presence of someone who understood our journey to God and the pitfalls along the way much better than myself.  Above all I learnt from him that hard times in my life were in no way a sign that God had abandoned me, a delusion that I had somehow absorbed along with many others.  It is darkness all around that teaches me the necessity of trusting the Good Lord implicitly, a message that John’s pupil Therese reinforced.           

Intercessions:

Cancer: Brian Davis, Bernard (and wife Angela caring for him), Jacqui, Theresa K, Fr Jon B, Catherine

Siena, Elara – sick children

Wojtek – massive heart attack leaving him incapacitated

David OCDS – housebound

Sophia – blind infant

Joy Smith OCDS – in hospital

Grace – troubling ailments, job difficulties, family (deceased mother and health of father)

Lucia – Overwhelmed by weariness

 Mark – brain infection

Joy Smith – in hospital

Defence of the unborn and the elderly

 RIP Martin Gilham, Sue Burton, little Matthew (six years old, died of cancer)