Tag: The Kingdom

Sunday Lectionary: Going up?

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In addition to being the Seventh Sunday in Easter, this Sunday is also Ascension Sunday. This has been an insanely busy week – sorry I didn’t get this posted earlier.

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord: 20th May, 2012

This Sunday we hear a glorious mystery! The Second Glorious Mystery to be precise! Yes, this Sunday we celebrate Jesus’ Ascension into Heaven.

In recent weeks, life among the Apostles had been, to put it mildly, a bit rocky (and not “rocky” in the good, “Peter” kind of way). In fact, things had been pretty awful. The Master had been betrayed, beaten and then killed on a cross. Dark times.

But then, something happened… He rose from the dead! For several weeks He had been appearing to His disciples! Life was good again! But then…what?…He left?

Huh? Things were finally starting to look up! Why did He leave? Did the Lord abandon His Church?

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The Kingdom Rosary

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I know I said I wasn’t going to blog any more this month, but I found some time this lunchtime to write down a few thoughts…

Last week at “Theology On Tap” Bernadine Carr gave a talk on the subject of The Beatitudes (“Blessed are the poor in spirit…”). In the run-up to her talk I was reminded of a devotional practice I followed years ago when I was living in Cheltenham…

I found myself drawn to praying with rosary beads, but at that time I didn’t feel comfortable with praying the Marian prayers of the rosary. So what I did was to replace the “Hail Mary”s and “Hail Holy Queen”s with short passages of Scripture and pray with those instead.

An example of this is found below. It is a guide to what could be dubbed the “Kingdom Rosary” or “The Rosary of St. Matthew”.

The Kingdom Rosary (MS Word) | The Kingdom Rosary (PDF)

At the beginning of this month, in preparation for Bernadine’s talk, I began this “Kingdom Rosary” and quickly fell in love with it all over again. It’s really helpful for memorizing Scripture and it’s also much shorter than a traditional Rosary, which is ideal if I’m walking just a couple of blocks to pick up a sandwich for lunch.

If any of you end up doing one of these or have any suggested alterations, please leave a comment below 🙂

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