The Living Flame of Love

O living flame of love
that tenderly wounds my soul
in its deepest centre! Since
now you are not oppressive,
now consummate! if it be your will:
tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!

O sweet cautery,
O delightful wound!
O gentle hand! O delicate touch
that tastes of eternal life
and pays every debt!
in killing you changed death to life.

O lamps of fire!
in whose splendours 
the deep caverns of feeling,
once obscure and blind,
now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely,
both warmth and light to their Beloved.

How gently and lovingly
you wake in my heart,
where in secret you dwell alone;
and in your sweet breathing,
filled with good and glory,
how tenderly you swell my heart with love.

John of the Cross

Fire in the Earth

A Service of Silence & Beholding -

an unhurried time in which to dwell at the heart of the Eucharist

8a.m.

Sunday 24^th November

St. Mary’s Church

Sullington

West Sussex

RH20 4AE

It is done.

Once again the Fire has penetrated the earth.

Without earthquake, or thunderclap: 

the flame has lit up the whole world from within.

All things individually and collectively are penetrated and flooded by it, from the inmost core of the tiniest atom to the mighty sweep of the most universal laws of being: so naturally has it flooded every element, every energy, every connecting-link in the unity of our cosmos; that one might suppose the cosmos to have burst spontaneously into flame.

Teilhard de Chardin

Peace be with you