We have now started Holy Week, the days leading up to Good Friday and more excitingly to Easter. But we are still on the journey and today we remember Jesus falling a third time. The picture shows him on the ground, the crosses are larger and heavier – he is coming close to the time of crucifixion and pain.

So many people are fallen to the ground in the world today. People who have no home, who are slaves and abused by powerful people, people who are close to death, people who have been bereaved. Others have financial worries, worrying how to feed the children, are refugees living far from home in large impersonal camps.

We call our world civilised – and yet we are not able to support the most vulnerable around us in this country or across the world. We can land men on the moon – but we cannot feed our children.

Let us pray today that we will be as lights – reminding the people among whom we live and our MP’s who represent our interests that our care of the most vulnerable among us is a reflection of whether or not we are civilised.