PERMANENT DEACON TALKING
Permanent Deacon Talking is a compilation sort of podcast of spiritual thoughts , prayers and homilies for Sundays. It started with inspiration from Fr Dan Crosby OFM.Cap. Each HOMILY POD is based on the Sunday Mass readings and the purpose is to provide an opportunity to sound out reflections on these, wherever they come from. Each week the scriptures offer a new place to invite the Holy Spirit once more into our lives to explain the Word of God in our hearts and minds. The music is for reflection, to give thanks and sometimes just pure joy. It might be helpful to spend a minute or two with the Sunday readings before listening in order to let anything there touch your heart and speak to you personally, deep in your soul. Sound clips are used with permission of Learn25, The Thomas Merton Centre, and The Merton Legacy Trust. Learn25 are also the original copyright holders of many recordings made by Fr Dan Crosby and Fr Donald Goergen. These can be heard at Learn25.com. Thank you Mike Anderson , in particular, for Tongues of Fire music ministry, which has never been far from my thoughts when it comes to perfect music for Mass.
PERMANENT DEACON TALKING
WEEK 18 - YEAR A - RHYTHM OF LOVE
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St. Anthony was appointed - at the age of 32 - superior of the Franciscan fraternities of northern Italy. He visited the many houses under his jurisdiction, and opened new ones. Meanwhile, he continued to preach and attract large crowds. He would spend several hours in the confessional, and reserve moments to retire in solitude. He chose to reside in Padua, in the small Franciscan community of the church of Mater Domini, and quickly established a strong bond with the city, working for the poor and against injustice. - Vatican News
Music - With great thanks to the Franciscan Missionaries of Mercy, Brixton
"Dancing to the Rhythm of Love "-© Sr. Roisin FMM, (2026).
Isaiah 55 1-3
Romans 8: 35,37-39
Gospel -Matt 14 : 13 -21
Deacon Tom Copyright © 2022 -2026
I sincerly hope that no copyright has been infringed. Pardon is sought and apology made if the contrary is true, and a correction will be made in any future Hompods.
Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Now, when Jesus heard of the death of John the Baptist, he withdrew from there in a boat to a lonely place apart. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. As he went ashore, he saw a great throng, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, This is a lonely place, and the day is now over. Send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves. Jesus said, They need not go away. You give them something to eat. They said to him, We have only five loaves here and two fish. And he said, Bring them here to me. Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke, and gave the loaves to the disciples. And the disciples gave them to the crowds, and they all ate and were satisfied, and they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over, and those who ate were over five thousand people. The Gospel of the Lord. It's a task that requires three things. First, there has to be a kind of hunger or thirst that hopes that our prayers will be answered with unceasing kindness from God. We're asking to be rescued through the intercession of Saint Anthony of Padua. There's a faith requirement to trust in a Lord of compassion who knows we come to buy without money and still delights in the chance to demonstrate an unconditional love. And thirdly, there's a willingness to accept that, despite our hopes and our efforts, we may not bring exactly what we ask. Yet we shall hold to the trust being like St. Paul's, in that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. So we come with prayer, acceptance, trust and hope. And that is the path of the novena. In today's gospel, Jesus is in mourning for John the Baptist and had withdrawn to a calm place, alone, in the centre of a lake. His grief would be real and his response would be like that in the Garden of Gethsemane, which was to pray earnlessly to his Father in heaven, in silence and solitude, and to accept trust and hope on the Father's love. The townsfolk had also heard the sad news, but their answer was to find Jesus, to hear what he had to say. They had deep trust and a hunger to be satisfied by the Lord, by his word, and their journey, or Novena, took them on foot to find Jesus, in whom they had all their hopes. They had faith that he would have compassion on them and answer their requests, particularly for healing. They had a willingness to accept as evening drew on that despite the lateness of the day, lack of food, they'd still see the love of God through the actions of Jesus. The next path of this story concerns the five loaves and two fish, and we all know this very well. We also have a deep understanding of how this reflects the Last Supper and is repeated in every Mass. And as we go to that Mass, we continually offer our prayers to the Lord. We ask for His rescue. We believe in the power of that rescue. And we continually pray with an acceptance in that trust and hope that will bring us out of whatever it is that ails us. The disciples also need to be rescued. They're all together in a desolate place full of needs and expectations, no money to buy, but seeing a promise of something when they hear Jesus say, Bring them to me. They just told him all they had was five loaves and a couple of fish. But he'd asked them to feed them himself. There is a belief from them in a Lord of compassion who delights in a chance to demonstrate the unconditional and limitless love of God as Jesus blesses and breaks the laws and gives it to the disciples who then gave them to the seated crowd. The disciples prayer was a wish if you like was that they wanted to send the crowds away into the villages so they could buy food for themselves. But their answer from Jesus was completely different from what they asked for, but still full of love. So how must they have felt when Jesus said to them, they are not to go away. You give them something to eat. Let's see if all this reflects the needs of someone inspired to make a novena of Tuesdays to Saint Anthony. So getting back to this devotion of the nine Tuesdays, the aim, as in most novenas, is to point to the graces freely given rather than earned. The consistency of the devotion enables our trust and hope in the love of God to deepen. Encouraged by the promises of assistance in our need to be rescued, and the hope to experience the powerful help of the Lord through the intercessory aid of Saint Anthony. Remembering that the will of God has to be implemented as in the trust shown by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. At the end of every such novena entered into with the right spirit, I'm sure we'll see a tangible outcome which demonstrates the love of God and the granting of such graces as conducive to our requests for help and our need to be rescued. Just like the people who were hungry and thirsty and sat down in a crowd of five thousand.
SPEAKER_01Slowly respond to the heartbeat of the creatures, lifting my songs to the richness of love, folding against us landscape with you, touching the source of life so constant and truth move towards well command the mystery of time growing in strength within love, gentle signs, challenged of grace from taste to taste, led by the spirit finding my hearts unstretched with love, embracing my feet. Sometimes this leads me to the cross of my sales with oldness of light. Again I dance to the rings of games to hustle landscape is huge, touching the source of life so constant and true move towards coming The mystery of time Growing in strength with things of love gentle sight.