Latest Space #28
The Newsletter of SacredSpace.ie

ISSN 2009-2008

    In this issue of Latest Space
 
April 2009

The Great Week that leads us to the Sunday of Sundays is upon us. Even as we anticipate Easter joy, we may recall Saint Ignatius' advice 'to pray for the gift of being able to feel sorrow with Jesus in sorrow, to be anguished with Jesus's anguish, and even to experience tears and deep grief because of all the afflictions which Jesus endures for me.'

Perhaps Sacred Space can guide your steps this Holy Week, reminding you that as you seek to journey with Jesus, you do not do so alone.

Piaras Jackson SJ
Editor, Sacred Space

 

 

Sacred Space in Holy Week and Easter

The Way of the Cross is one way that people like to mark Lent and Holy Week. The Kenyan version that we first made avaialable last year may help to bring the meaning of Jesus journey to Calvary home.is available online

Courtesy of Religious News Network, a selection of Lent, Holy Week and Easter audio is available in our Audio section where you will find new and archived material.

There is still time, of course, avail of the Lent retreat, or to recommend it to a friend who speaks Catalan, German, Hungarian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish or Vietnamese.

http://www.sacredspace.ie/lent
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Sacred Space - 10 years online

MarketPlace
The Jesuit community in Leeson Street marked the birthday with a lunch-time party on Shrove Tuesday - the feast before the fast
S acred Space celebrated 10 years online on Ash Wednesday 2009. That day saw over 900 people come to the site each hour.

Work continues on the site, rebuilding and reshaping the content to make it more manageable and useful. Having begun with the Living Space part of the site last year, we have moved much of the rest of the content into a new system.

A 'victim' of this move has been our Latest Space newlsetter - of which this is a short edition. We hope that its publication will become easier when we are further along on our development path.

Thanks for your encouragement

Support
C ommentators try to find signs of hope in the midst of the recession, hoping for an upturn in the global economy. In this uncertain climate we are all the more grateful to all of you have supported Sacred Space with your donations. Should you ever wonder at the value of such a donation, just have a read through some of the Feedback that the site recieves.

As we often do, we encourage you to see that your friends and your local church sites have links to Sacred Space. You will find ideas about how you might support Sacred Space on our Support page.

http://www.sacredspace.ie/support
 

Be a fan of Sacred Space on Facebook
John McDermott and Patrick Muldoon keep Sacred Space online
We have noticed that hundreds of Sacred Space users have already added Sacred Space to their Facebook pages in recent weeks. You can become a fan of Sacred Space by visiting our Sacred Space Facebook page

http://qurl.com/qywdr
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Book review: So you can't forgive...? Moving towards freedom

book
So you can't forgive...? Moving towards freedom is at once comforting and challenging. In this easy read, Brian Lennon SJ makes the necessary distinction between forgiving and forgiveness. In noting that forgiving is something which can only be done by a victim, whereas forgiveness involves the actions of both victim and perpetrator, the victim is at once empowered and enabled to become a survivor.

Lent, though not always seen as such, is a privileged time in our liturgical calendar where we are afforded the ability to take stock, to reflect and come to a greater understanding of our relationships - with others, the world around us, but also with ourselves.

Very often, these reflections can render us feeling guilty for an inability to be in right-relations with all aspects of our lives. So You Can't Forgive...? is a powerful aid in this regard, as the author consistently points out that feelings such as anger, guilt and revenge, which are often deemed to be taboo by our society, are indeed feelings which are "natural, understandable, and appropriate". In essence, the author affords the reader the ability to acknowledge these feelings and so to move on. Enabled to journey forward, this book provides the reader with practical tools for that journey.

As a Christian, one can very often feel under pressure to forgive, the author does not avoid this issue, but asks the question: "Is the Bible a burden or a help to us when we have been deeply wronged?" In doing so, Lennon provides us with some relevant scripture passages, but also with a variety of interpretations which again are useful aids on this journey.

Forgiving is a topic which doesn't lend itself to humour, and yet the author manages to intertwine good humour into this book, even opening up new perspectives to turning the other cheek!

Specifically of interest to those who have been affected by violence, abuse or family disputes, and also to those working alongside them So You Can't Forgive...? Moving towards Freedom, is a book worth reading.

Review by Mags O'Shea

Brian Lennon SJ. So you can't forgive...? Moving towards freedom. Columba, Dublin, 2009. ISBN: 9781856076371
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For previous issues, go online and click here: Latest Space #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #17, #18, #19, #20, #21, #22, #23, #24, #25, #26, #27 #28