BERNARD LONGLEY was named the ninth Archbishop of Birmingham on 1 October 2009 and installed on 8 December 2009, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Not long after the announcement of his appointment, Bible Alive, whose offices are situated within the Birmingham see, met with him to discuss his hopes, his aspirations and the challenge before him of leading this large and dynamic archdiocese.
Take & Read is a major new publication from Alive Publishing. The series has been developed as a follow up to the document The Gift of Scripture published by the Bishops of England and Wales and of Scotland. Fr Adrian Graffy, the Editor of Take & Read explains the story behind this innovative, exciting, and dynamic new initiative.
A few months ago I stood by my father’s grave and wiped the tears away as they lowered his coffin into the earth. But my tears weren’t for my father – he had lived a long life, and died a good death. The tears were for the other occupant of the grave, a person whose coffin was lowered into this same earth thirty-seven years ago. She was my sister Clare and, unlike our father, she had neither a long life nor a good death.
It might be the happiest, most family-filled day of the year for most of Britain’s population – but for the 84,000 people who will spend it behind bars, Christmas will instead be an achingly painful twenty-four hours in which the punishment of being in prison was never more keenly felt.
‘The beautiful task of Advent is to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.’ This insight of Archbishop Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, holds out a hope and purpose for our journey of prayer through Advent.
Bishop Thomas McMahon, the Bishop of Brentwood, attended the launch of Take and Read: The Gospels which is an excellent new series designed to help people explore the Bible more deeply.
Richard Frost, a member of staff at Alive Publishing, involved in the administration and day to day management of International Prison Outreach, writes to a prisoner on Death Row through an organisation called LifeLines.
He shares his thoughts and reflections on this important and vital outreach.
The theme for Prisons Week (November 15-21) this year is ‘Holding Fast to Hope’. As the author of the Letter to the Hebrews says: ‘Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another’ (10:23-25).
We receive many letters and much feedback from prisoners and their chaplains about how Bible Alive is a great source of encouragement and hope both to prisoners in serving their sentence and also to the prison chaplains who minister to them.
Among them we received the following remarkable and wonderful testimony from a prisoner who is currently serving his sentence in an English prison.
Alive Publishing has the privilege, as a Publisher to the Holy See, to publish Pope Benedict’s latest social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, which addresses the profound and far-reaching issues of human development.
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