O gentle touch:

O gentle touch and most gentle,

for Thou touchest me with Thy most simple and pure essence, which being infinate is infinitely gentle;

therefore, it is that this touch

is so subtile, so loving, so deep, so delicious.

Savouring of everlasting life.

(St John of the Cross)

Do not worry about your life:

"Surely life is more than food, the body more than clothing!
Look at the birds of the sky, they do not sow or reap,
or gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not worth more than they...
Think of the lillies of the fields, they never work nor spin,
yet Solomon in all is regalia was never robed like one of these...
Now if that is how God clothes the grass in the fields, which is
there today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow,
will He not much more look after you"...
(Matthew.6.v.26)

I will love them with all my heart:

"I wil love them with all my heart,

for my anger has turned from them.

I will fall like dew on Isreal,

He shall bloom like the lily,

and thrust out roots like the poplar,

his shoots will spread far;

he will have the beauty of the olive

and the fragrance of Lebanon.

They will come back to live in My shade;

they will grow corn that flourishes.

They wil cultivate vines

as renowned as the wine of Helbon.

What has Ephraim to do with idols any more

when it is I who hear his prayers and care for him?

I Am like a cypress ever green,

all your faithfulness comes from me".

(Hosea.14.v.5-9)

The price of love:

"He shall be lifted up, exaulted, rise to great heights.

The crowds were appalled on seeing Him

so disfigured did He look

He seemed nolonger human...

Like a sapling He grew up in front of us,

like a root in arid ground...

Without beauty, without majesty(we saw Him)

no looks to attract our eyes;

a thing dispised and rejected by men

a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering,

a man to make people screen their faces,

He was despised and we took no account of Him.

Yet ours were the sufferings He bore our sorrows He carried.

But we, we thought of Him as someone punished, struck by God

and brought low.......

Yet He was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins...

On Him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through His

wounds we are healed".

(Isaiah 53)

The food of the Poor:

"Oh come to the waters of life...

Pay attention, come to me,

listen, and your soul will live.

(Isaiah.55)

We behold the beauty of God in all of His creation:

May we love you by our very lives:

May we love you in your earth and in every grain of sand

May we love you in your skies and in every ray of light

May we love you in the animals and in everything that breathes

May we love you in your plants and in every leaf that greens

May we love you in your creation and in the symphony of the

whole.

May we love you for yourself, and in your infinite Being.

(Ray Simpson)