In this video Fr La speaks about the different and challenging times we are living through and extends the invitation to send to Lough Derg your prayer of petition.

Dear friends,

At this time of year, as I walk and pray along the Pilgrim Path out on the mainland shore at Lough Derg I usually need an extra layer of clothing.

Just now as I speak, the bright autumn sunlight is picking up the yellow and orange highlights in the foliage on the beech trees outside my window. 

Here in Ireland at this time we are facing into the predicted ‘Second wave’ of Covid-19 infection.  For now, attendance at public worship is suspended, and people of faith must find support in their family setting or by praying with others in some of the on-line opportunities they can access.

The sunlight lifts our hearts when we have it, but of course it comes and it goes.

In our darker times, Christian hope offers its own gentle, steady radiance.

For St Patrick, his hope was born of his time spent with God in the long years of solitude on the mountain, with only his owner’s livestock for company.

Patrick gradually came to realise that God had watched over him, even before Patrick came to know God.  In later years he would write, “In fact God protected me and comforted me as a father would his son.”

Protection and comfort.  How much we would value these gifts.

Dear friends, whenever for any reason we sense more poignantly the darkness of the times that are upon us, may the light of hope that shone through for St Patrick shine quietly also for us, somewhere deep in our hearts.

If you like, you are welcome to send a prayer of petition here to Lough Derg, and I will be glad to carry it with me along the Pilgrim Path.

And you might remember a prayer sometimes for me and for all our fellow pilgrims on the path of life that lies before us just now.

Slán go fóill.

Fr La Flynn, Prior