The Sycamore Programme

During this self isolation period, I visit my own parish for streaming of the Sunday Mass.  This is the Church to which I belong and where my heart is.   During the week however I visit the National Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham for Mass at 9.30 then when it is finished my wife and I carry on with our morning Rosary so that our mornings follow the same pattern except we do not have to walk to Church and back.    We then have our breakfast and get on with the chores, my son Kevin and I have our exercise walk, and we often travel quite a distance, and we do some shopping.     We usually return to the Shrine at  3pm for the Divine Mercy Chaplet followed by Benediction and the Rosary.   Recently I have added 4pm to my schedule for the Shrine is showing a wonderful programme called Sycamore.   Like Alpha it is a TV series to promote discussion, but it has far more depth and raises a lot more questions than Alph did.    It discusses the existence of God, and goes on to take about why people pray, then morality in society, should there be such a thing?   It is a Catholic priest who conducts us through the series and it goes on, I am told, to discuss the Church, the Sacraments, and the Catholic Faith.    As one who has watched young people opt out of religion over the past forty years because no answers to their questions were sufficiently explored, I cannot commend this programme highly enough.   It is Catechesis presented in an open way where questions are not dismissed but encouraged.   Every parish should be running Sycamore, so every parish priest should find out if my praise is justified, I have been seldom known  to offer praise in the past.    

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