Prayer Group
The prayer group meets once a month, normally on the second Wednesday, except during Lent when there is usually a Lent Group meeting each Wednesday. The normal meeting place is a beautiful little chapel in the monastery of Saint-Joseph de Mont-Rouge at Puimisson. New members are always welcome.
The address is: Centre Spirituel Saint-Joseph de Mont-Rouge. 20, rue du château d’eau. 34480 Puimisson.
The group was formed, long before our Chaplaincy came into being, by Linda, wife of the then priest, Val Littman. The idea was to practise meditative prayer and ideas for doing this were expounded. Meditative prayer is still at the heart of the group sessions.
There is a leader for each session, a volunteer from the group: not everybody feels moved to take on this role and that's fine. The leader prepares all the material for the session around a theme of their choice. The typical routine is to start by sharing our concerns for the world situation, the sick and the troubled. Then the leader says prayers, rather like the intercessions in church, which include what they want to say and also whatever has just been talked about. There is a Bible reading and a short presentation on the theme, usually something that they have found in a book or on-line. We then move on to a time of silent contemplative prayer, for up to half an hour. This may seem daunting at first but many find silent prayer in a group to be very helpful. After the silence we usually sing a hymn or a song and finish with the Lord’s prayer and a closing prayer.
The prayer group members keep in touch with each other by e-mail and share any needs for prayer. We undertake to include these in our own daily prayers and invite anybody to let us know of needs. Please do this by contacting All Saints by e-mail ([email protected]), by contacting Jenny Morgan (Prayer Group organiser) on [email protected], or by contacting any prayer group member.