Hello from Soho (one of London’s gay zones)!

My first stop was the Catholic Church fittingly called St Patrick’s in memory of Patrick, the irish missionary who dedicated his life helping those who had made him a slave!

In Soho one finds slavery of a different kind, slavery to sex for one!

As I strolled about I could feel the heaviness of drugs, depression, addiction, suicide and I kept thinking of the picture of the merciful Jesus I’d seen in the church just moments before!

The contrast is striking between the 2 worlds of light and dark, purity and lust, prayer and addiction.

And yet as I stroll about I feel more than anything God’s mercy for a community so misunderstood for so many years even by the church and Jesus’ desire to bring people out of slavery and into freedom!

For this job Jesus too needs sex-workers, sex-workers of a different kind!! Jesus needs souls to love these hurt and wounded souls and to bring then one by one to a personal encounter with Him!

Jesus needs souls to rise above the sexual into the spiritual where one finds true peace and self-mastery.

So many souls are thirsting for love so badly that they are willing to be like animals, literally, these collars in the photo below are not for dogs!

And yet if these people had an encounter with Jesus, how much love could they put in the world?

We must never judge. If any one of us grew up in different circumstances we may well be living in Soho and worse than anybody here.

So today my prayer is very simple! May more hearts open to bring these people thirsting for love to the true source of love, Jesus Himself!

May our church be a place of welcome, of hope, of healing and more than anything may she offer an alternative way of life and community of love to those caught up in the snares of addiction!

St Patrick, pray for Soho!!