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Good Morning -Ìý Today - 42 years ago - Nasa launched the Mariner 10 space mission to Mercury.  If you are a space enthusiast, like I am, you may know that this was the first spacecraft to make use of a gravitational slingshot manoeuvre, using Venus to bend its flight path and bring to the level of Mercury's orbit.  It has always struck me as very wise, that so much effort could be taken out of a journey like that by using what was already there – gravity.  The other big challenge was to protect the space ship from the heat of the Sun as it was passing so close.  A special sunshade and thermal blankets were built into the design to protect it.

We live in a great age of exploration, whether it be outer space or some of the deep hidden trenches in the oceans, there is still a lot we have to learn.  What new lessons will the day ahead hold?  That incessant curiosity that makes us human was a sign of the divine for Pope Benedict.  The fact that we could discover so much about the world and our universe was a sign of intelligibility …. 

One of the simplest ways of praying, in our busy lives, is to ask myself at the end of the day – for what three discoveries I am most grateful?  Maybe even to write them down in a bedside notebook.  Practicing the habit of gratitude makes the heart unfold like a flower…. And when our hearts and minds are open we discover more.  So we pray today to recover that curiosity we had as children, that we may be delighted by unexpected discoveries today – and that this discovery and the sense of wonder it invokes in us may lead us closer to you. Amen