22.05.2018
Ecumenical Bible Week 2018 Now Underway
Ecumenical Bible Week 2018 is now underway with events taking place all over Dublin and the surrounding areas throughout this week, concluding on Trinity Sunday (May 27). EBW 2018 was launched on the Feast of Pentecost, (Sunday May 20) in St Catherine’s Church on Meath Street.
The main speaker at the opening event was Fr Dermot Lane who reflected on ‘Praying the new Cosmology’. He suggested that for some, there was a conflict or a tension between religion and science and a cultural conflict or cognitive dissonance between prayer and the new cosmology.
“Is it possible to integrate our prayer life with the new cosmology? How might we pray within the new cosmology? Is the gap between religion and science too big when we pray?” he asked. Fr Lane said that most people’s prayers were prayed from the old cosmology yet in our lives we are surrounded by evidence of the new cosmology and the advances of science.
“Contemporary science offers far more reasons for a life of prayer,” he contended adding that the beauty, symmetry and order of the universe opens us up to praise, gratitude and awe which form the basis of prayer.
Looking at the materiality of the universe that is dynamic with energy, Fr Lane said that it is the Holy Spirit that spins the globe, powers the unfolding of the cosmos, enables evolution, inspires the emergence of humans and who makes the new and it is the spirit that dances in human beings. “If this is the case we can pray and worship in a new key giving thanks for all that has come and all that will come in the power of the Holy Spirit,” he stated.
Key events this week include the Pentecost Schools Project in St Laurence’s Church, Chapelizod, tomorrow (Wednesday May 23). The annual symposium takes place in the Holy Cross Diocesan Centre, Clonliffe Road, on Thursday from 2pm to 5pm and features John Waters, Canon Ginnie Kennerley and Nick Parke. Archbishop Michael Jackson will be on the Thinking Allowed panel on Thursday evening at 7.30pm also in the Holy Cross Diocesan Centre. The discussion will be chaired by Philip McKinley. The Revd Rob Jones will be the speaker at the closing event on Sunday evening at 7.30pm in the Lutherhaus on Adelaide Road. He will speak on the subject: ‘Faith can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards’.
In the meantime there are many local events around Dublin and Wicklow to join. See the programme below or see here for full details.
