Book: The Father Wants to Heal You: A Retreat with The Lord's Prayer

Fr Nigel Woollen and Mgr Martin Hayes at the book launch

The Father Wants to Heal You: A Retreat with The Lord's Prayer by Nigel Woollen

St Paul's Bookshop, Victoria, in conjunction with Veritas Publishing, held a book launch recently promoting a new book about the Lord's Prayer linking it to the seven Sacraments. The author, Fr Nigel Woollen, a priest in Westminster Diocese, was ordained in France at the shrine of St John Vianney, Ars in 1996. He has a background in retreat ministry in France and Italy and was also chaplain at Knock Shrine in Ireland for 15 years. Currently parish priest at St Joseph's Church, Stevenage he has a quirky sense of humour and is quite a character. The onlookers at St.Paul's were in stitches with his one liners. He would be a big hit in the Clergy Review if that show is revived again post pandemic!

Introducing Fr Woollen, Mgr Martin Hayes, Vicar General for the Diocese of Westminster, enthused about the book, "it radiates the truth about Jesus Christ and his love," drawing on biblical and Patristic sources and the authors' personal insights" he said.

Each chapter is introduced by a Scripture text and a quote from saints ancient and modern. Biblical quotes are liberally scattered throughout. The goal of the book Woollen writes is "to rediscover the Lord's Prayer in a living, dynamic way; if we could only pray this prayer as Jesus wants us to pray it, we would find the healing and peace we crave." He says it is a personal retreat from the point of view of healing derived from the Lord's Prayer which contains "all we need to live to the full the kind of life God wants us to live."

He reinforces this notion by prayerfully connecting each line to the Sacraments and sub titles each chapter creatively .The opening chapter is entitled We are Family: Our Father, who art in heaven and leads the reader to the first sacrament of Baptism, the foundation of our Christian life and journey, both personal and communal as part of the Christian community. He proceeds through to the final sacrament of Anointing bringing healing and strength for the final journey, delivering us from evil and leading us to light and love.

Reciting the Our Father only takes a few seconds but as the author emphasises to get to know the Father we need to spend time with him. It is through silently meditating line by line, immersing ourselves in God's tender love, that healing is abundantly "unleashed". In this way we then become messengers of the good news, fulfilling our baptismal calling.

He constantly reinforces his thoughts with quotes from the Catholic Catechism. His sense of humour shines through too .I love his story about the actor and the farmhand reciting the Lord's Prayer at a harvest festival. Afterwards the actor remarked 'I knew the words - but he knew the author'.

The multi-talented priest is also a musician and has bought out a CD of his original songs playing the guitar in accompaniment. One Day, Songs of Hope and Joy was also on limited sale through St Paul's priced £8.99.

Order through: http://nigelwoollen.com/ It is a shame he does not give us a taster of his captivating music on this website. Amazon and Spotify are other outlets for this inspiring CD.

The Father Wants to Heal You: A Retreat with The Lord's Prayer by Nigel Woollen is published by Veritas - £12.95 and available through all good bookshops.