What do you do in your average day?
An average day is about prayer and taking time to pray, especially in the morning. We'll gather together the first thing in the morning and we'll pray for about 15 minutes to a half an hour. As religious, we have a common prayer to say together, which we call Morning Prayer. It's about reflecting on the Psalms and the Scripture reading, and any intercessions like bidding prayers for different events that are going to take place during the day or during this week. Normally as a community we would eat and then we would be going about our work. Our work will depend on what we're doing, so if you're a parish ministry your work might be about doing parish stuff, which might be about attending to the mail in the morning and getting sorted with things that might be needing to be sorted out in terms of administration. It might be about a funeral that might come in for that day, so it's about attending and getting ready for the funeral. Or it might be that you heard just last night that someone had died, so it's about trying to make space to go and visit the family. One of our priests who lives here in Birmingham is a chaplain to an educational unit, so he will go off and he will be in that educational unit from about nine until about two or until about three o'clock. His work is about working with the children in that unit and working with the staff. You could have someone who's involved in, say for example, for ourselves, we would be out on the streets. We might be just talking to people as they come in and out. We might be just visiting a group who are meeting. Every day is different, but it's all about what are you engaged in, and what are you involved in. Again, you deal with the unexpected. There might be a caller at the door and they want to talk about their father who might have died two years ago, there might be someone who's turned up and who wants a bus fare. There might be someone who rings you up and says, "I need to talk to someone", so you arrange to meet up with them. The day is very different. No one day is the same, but there is a routine in each day, which is prayer, sharing community life together, relaxing together afterwards, spending a couple of hours talking about what the day has been like, or maybe cooking. If it's your turn to cook you'll have to take some time to do a little bit of shopping and do a bit of cooking. It's the ordinary life of any person, except that our work isn't a nine-to-five job. It could be something that's about two hours in the morning, and then someone else comes in and it could mean the whole day is taken up trying to organize a house or a room for someone because they're stuck, so you're contacting different agencies. It might be about leading a day of prayer for a group. There's various things. You have to take time out to prepare for what the reading of the mass is going to be, because there's a mass celebrated during the day, at the church or privately in your own community chapel. You have to take time for that. There's a lot of preparation time taken in just sitting and reflecting on what are you going to say at a funeral. What are you going to say to a couple who are getting married, at their wedding? You have got to know them in a way that is meaningful for everyone who is there. Also, taking time for myself, "where are you, God, in all this?", so that I'm not doing it because I feel great because I'm doing something wonderful, but because I'm saying, "Lord, what are You asking me in this? How am I being present, and how am I being Your presence in what is happening today?" The prayer time allows us to check in like that. We also end Morning Prayer, and we end with Evening Prayer as a community together. For a priest, we have a private time of prayer which is called the Divine Office. Every priest makes a solemn commitment to pray the office every day. Its structure is with Psalms and readings of Scripture, and then a church father, some wisdom figures in the church who have written something. It's only about a page and a half. Normally if you read through it without thinking you could do it in 10 minutes, and I'm sure there are some times when you just do it in 10 minutes because you had to do it. But actually, there's a phrase or something that comes out and that makes it meaningful for the day. Today, the Divine Office was on Joshua, the book of Joshua, and it was about how God was present with his people as he led them through into different lands. We're going through a process at the moment in terms of our community, we're moving out of one parish and we're handing it back. It's quite a very insecure time for the people, and it was just a sense for me. Just reading it reminded me that God is present. I don't see the Ark of the Convenant that the Jewish people took across the lands, but somehow God is present in my heart. He's present in the community and He's present in the Eucharist. And to trust that I'm not doing this alone, because otherwise I can get very dependent on myself and wanting everything controlled. So it's good.
