Discovering how sharing faith in a 'small community' listening to others, and learning from their experience, can help us grow in knowledge and in the understanding of our own faith.
The Agency for Evangelisation supports and promotes small communities and assists parishes in setting up new communities, and produces seasonal faith-sharing resources in Lent and in the Autumn.
HOW FAITH SHARING IN A SMALL COMMUNITY WORKS
"We Dare To Say"- Faith Sharing Lenten Resource 2024
You can download the PDF here.
The Year of the Council: a Faith-sharing Autumn Resource 2023
These are the details of our newly produced faith-sharing resource for the Autumn, The Year of the Council. This resource is our contribution to the first worldwide preparatory year for ‘Pilgrims of Hope’, the Jubilee Year 2025.
The Year of the Council focuses us on the Four Constitutions of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council – Sacrosanctum Concilium, Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum, and Gaudium et Spes. In words from the Vatican, the Four Constitutions “will continue to provide direction and guidance to God’s holy people, so that it can press forward in its mission of bringing the joy for proclamation of the Gospel to everyone”. Our Autumn resource takes us on a journey of discovery, and at the heart of that journey is a discovery of the joy of mission, of knowing Christ and of making him known. We are indebted to Monsignor Peter Fleetwood, a priest of the Archdiocese of Liverpool, for writing this resource for us.
The resource comprises five sessions, each containing a reflection on Sacred Scripture, on the Constitutions, and on our own experience of being Catholic today. There are questions for faith-sharing and suggested opportunities for putting faith into action. Many parishes choose to run these five sessions in October, and you will know what format for meeting works best for your community.
You can download the PDF here.
Enlarging the Space of Our Tent: A Faith-sharing Lent Resource 2023
Lent 2023 faith-sharing resource, ‘Enlarging the Space of our Tent’, written by Fr Dominic Robinson SJ and Colette Joyce from the Westminster Justice and Peace Commission. The resource will consist of five 60-90 minute sessions, each focusing on a theme covered by Justice and Peace, including poverty and homelessness, racial justice, care of creation, migrants and refugees, and peace. Each session will explore the theme in the light of a piece of Scripture from the coming Sunday (beginning with the Second Sunday of Lent and finishing with Palm Sunday), prayer, a reflection on experience from a local example here in our diocese, and questions to aid group sharing.
A PDF version of "Enlarging the Space of Our Tent", Click here.
The Journey We Share: A Faith-sharing Resource 2022
A faith-sharing resource for parishes and communities by Monsignor Peter Fleetwood
The Agency for Evangelisation is delighted to introduce our latest faith-sharing resource, The Journey We Share. Written for us by Monsignor Peter Fleetwood of the Archdiocese of Liverpool, the author of our Year of Saint Joseph resource With A Father’s Love, this new resource will explore over five sessions some of the emerging themes of our recent Synodal Pathway. It will take us a few steps further along the road of becoming and remaining a Synodal Church. For use in small communities/groups, in gatherings after weekday or weekend Masses, or in larger parish gatherings, this resource will simply help us carry on where we left off.
To Download a PDF version of "The Journey We Share", Click here.
'Encountering the Spirit': a Lent Resource 2022
The Agency are delighted to share with our Lenten resource, which provides material for reflection on the five Lenten Gospels in Year C and thoughts on the recent Synodal Pathway. We hope that it will a source of nourishment and refreshment as we begin our annual Lenten pilgrimage. This resource is designed for use as an individual, in a faith, or sharing group and as a parish community.
Advent and Christmastide 2021 - 'Christmas Voices From the Holy Land'
This book follows on from the successful prayer resource – Holy Week Voices from the Holy Land, Poems and Reflections for Lent and Easter that many of you will have purchased for Lent this year and was used by many prayer groups in parishes and dioceses around the country.
The book is now available at £9.99 including UK p&p from the online bookshop of Friends of the Holy Land
The book is also available as an e-book at a price of £7.99, using Issuu. You can browse the first chapter of the book before you buy.
Once you have bought the book online, this software allows you to open the book and flick through it page by page for ease of reading. It also allows you to download a copy to your pc or device.
This book follows the route of the Holy Family through Advent and Christmas – Nazareth, the place of the Annunciation, Zababdeh, by tradition the place remembered as the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth, Bethlehem and the birth of Jesus, Jerusalem, where Jesus was sanctified in the Temple, Gaza, where the Holy Family rested on their flight to Egypt.
Once again Fr Richard Nesbitt has written poems reflecting on our journey through Advent to the Nativity of Jesus matched with contributions from the Holy Land connecting the experiences of Mary and Joseph with those of the Christian minority still witnessing to Christ today.
These provide their insights of the meaning of Christmas to their families now as well as their hopes for the future. All giving voice to the Christian communities that live in these towns in 2021 – more than two millennia since the birth of Christ.
The website of Friends of the Holy Land will also have a section with popular carols interpreted in picture form and commented upon by the children from local schools in each town.
Autumn 2021- "With A Father's Love
The new faith-sharing resource for the Autumn Season, “With a Father’s Love” has been launched. This has been specially produced for the Year of Saint Joseph, and takes us on a journey of discovery through the Apostolic Letter of Pope Francis, Patris Corde.
We are deeply grateful to Monsignor Peter Fleetwood of the Archdiocese of Liverpool for preparing the resource for us, and I know it will find a deep resonance with many in your own communities.
Please consider how this resource could help you with the rebuilding we are all having to do as we emerge from the worst of the pandemic. Up to now, parish faith-sharing groups have met in October and early November but there is great flexibility in this resource. You will know what works best.
To Download a PDF version of "With A Father's Love", Click here.
Holy Week Voices from the Holy Land
This book brings together 15 poems, written by a parish priest in a Catholic inner-city London parish during the lockdown of Holy Week 2020, with 15 reflections written by modern day Christian voices from the Holy Land. In an imaginative way, the poems follow Jesus on his final days leading to his Passion, Death and Resurrection while the reflections connect his experiences with those of the embattled Christian minority still witnessing to Christ in the Holy Land today.
Order Form:
Order Digital Copies from Issuu
Friends of the Holy Land Lenten Paperback Book
