Lord, I heard Your celebrant today praying for our brothers and sisters ‘who are absent for good reason’. And they stuck in my mind. I want to find them, to discover them and then send up fervent supplications for them. Who are they, Lord? Who are they who are far away from Your house at the time of the Divine Liturgy? Certainly there are those who are too ill to attend. Those for whom it’s their heart’s desire, but whose body fails them. The soul leaps at being close to You, in the warm embrace of Your church, but the flesh, sick as it is, can’t consent. Then there are their companions, the guardian angels of the patients, who, in the hospital or ...




















