Praying the Sunday Mass Readings with St Beuno’s Outreach

St Beuno’s Outreach is based in St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Centre in the hills of North Wales, in the Diocese of Wrexham. The Outreach began in 1989, with the idea of helping people develop and maintain a personal relationship with God through Christ by praying the Word of God in the Sunday liturgy. From a prayerful awareness of the Spirit working in and through us will come a sense of mission, a desire to join Christ in his mission.

How to pray with Scripture - from St Beuno's Outreach
It is usually most helpful when entering into a formal period of prayer to spend some time quietening down and centring on God. The following indications, known as “Anchor Points” have been found to provide a good framework for your prayer. Particularly important after coming to some inner quiet is the slow entry and slow exit from prayer.

FOUR ANCHOR POINTS

  1. PREPARATION

Choose your place of prayer. Make yourself comfortable, you may like to light a candle. Get in touch with your feelings: What is my frame of mind? What do I want to say to the Lord; what do I desire?

  1. ENTRY INTO PRAYER

Become quiet and still. Relax. Try to put aside any distractions. Choose a passage of scripture. Make the sign of the cross, visibly or in your heart. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide your prayer. Read your chosen text slowly several times. Notice what comforts or disturbs you.

  1. SLOW EXIT FROM PRAYER

Speak to the Lord in your own words about this time of prayer, what has it meant to you. Perhaps finish with the Glory be to the Father or a favourite prayer of your own. Make a sign of the cross, internal or external. Leave your place of prayer, thanking God for the time he has spent with you.

  1. REFLECTION AFTER PRAYER

Ask for whatever grace you need to respond to our Lord, “with my whole heart, my whole soul, my whole mind”. If possible, do this in a different place. Recall the prayer period: Was it good to be at prayer?  Did you learn something; maybe feel that the Lord was asking something of you? Notice how you are feeling now. You may find it helpful to jot down your thoughts in a notebook.

Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A, 11th June 2023 (Europe)

‘What I want is love, not sacrifice’

This week’s readings all focus on the  fact that love and mercy are more important to God than sacrifice.

In the First Reading, God, through the Prophet Hosea, reproaches his people for their lack of faithfulness to him. Holocausts cannot replace love and knowledge of the Lord.

In the Psalm, we again find God rejecting sacrifices for their own sake. They are only acceptable in a spirit of thanksgiving. Only pagan gods require sacrifice to appease their hunger.

When Paul writes to the Romans (Second Reading), he uses the example of their ancestor Abraham. It was his faith in the promises God had made to him which enabled him to persevere in a seemingly impossible situation and it is a model for all believers, for us.

In the Gospel passage we pray this week, Matthew recounts an incident which took place after he answered Jesus’s call. The Pharisees who are present at the meal object to tax collectors eating with them. Here too the Lord makes it plain that what is important is mercy and supporting those who are in need. ‘I did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners’.

This week, we might want to focus our prayer on those who need help, and ask the Lord to give us a sincere faith and greater belief in the promises he made. We also keep in our prayer the people affected by war, wherever they may  be.

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