Good afternoon from a bus to Bristol. After mass today Rayne and I felt a call from the Holy Spirit to go somewhere and astonishingly when I opened my phone I found 2 tickets to Bristol for sale for just 90p!!

Anyway we have no accommodation booked and prices don’t seem so cheap..prayers please!!

Why we are going to Bristol I have no idea, God tells us things on a basis of trust rather than curiosity. Maybe he simply wants us to pray for the city, maybe there are some key people there that we will meet or maybe it’s because London will disappear in a flood tonight and we will have escaped!!

The point is that we don’t really need to know why we are going, we just need to be obedient to the one who’s sending us.

This of course flies in the face of the modern way of doing things! Why this and why that and why the other. God doesn’t like so much these questions….after all He is God, the supreme intelligence so if He asks something of us then He’ll surely have good reason.

A man who understood this very well was St. Joseph. He was remarkably obedient to the Holy Spirit and to the will of God without paralyzing himself with ‘whys’.

He seemed more to take the healthier attitude of “it is what it is and now get on with it”.

How much we could please God by doing similarly at times. Our Lady and Jesus cry out for prayer in today’s world and how many write books on ‘why’ rather than just praying obediently.

God of course isn’t against explaining things to us but He does like us to make acts of obedience and faith and then He explains things on the journey.

He does this to grow our faith and to teach us how to live in the spirit rather than in the flesh. We don’t need to understand all that much if we simply trust!

Tomorrow evening at St. Mary of the Angels we will have our second prayer evening in honour of St. Joseph. As Fr. Keith is away, the organiser (Brenda) has got a replacement priest from the friars of the renewal. I’m sure that it will be a great evening.

Anyway you might not live in London and be able to join us but never to worry, St. Joseph can bless you and your families anyway.

This year has been dedicated especially to him by the church and so we should take full advantage of this heavenly treasure.

Let us pray that we can be like Joseph; simple, loving and prayerful; hardworking, honest and truthful and that we too can say “yes” to whatever Jesus is asking of us without killing ourselves with ‘whys”.

In the meantime we’ll be praying to Joseph to find us some accommodation in Bristol tonight.

Joseph, teach us to know, love and trust God with our hearts and to live our lives accordingly for the glory of God and as a witness to the world.

Bless,

Michael