This month (September 2021) sees the launch of a crowdfunding campaign for the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer, to be built in Coleshill.

The piece of public art will be constructed using one million bricks, with each brick featuring an answered prayer.

This Christian landmark will be visible from over six miles away and will be built within our Archdiocese. The project team behind Eternal Wall launch their crowdfunding campaign on Monday 13 September.

The Archdiocese is supportive of the project and Monsignor Timothy Menezes, Dean of St Chad’s Cathedral, is a member of the project’s Council of Reference.

In his September Reflection he takes the opportunity to focus on the importance of prayer.

You know all those prayers you’ve been saying all your life? Would you be able to put into words the answers you have received to at least some of these prayers?

There always has been and always will be the temptation to think that there should be an answer to prayer which comes like a text or email response, by return!

Prayer is more like an ongoing conversation than a question and answer session.

Now, a structure is to be built, in Coleshill in the heart of the Midlands, as a Christian witness to Answered Prayer: The Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer

This wall will be built of one million bricks and will have built in technology so that a mobile phone will be able to be held up to any given brick and to reveal an answer to prayer.

So what does this mean for the Catholic community in the Archdiocese of Birmingham and beyond?

The first is a very simple request to everybody and the chance to be part of this amazing structure and project: can you express in your own words an answer to prayer? This project requires ordinary people like you to send in answers to prayer. Anybody who sends in an answer to prayer will receive a certificate.

As you can imagine, the wall needs funding and so any donations are welcome.
Maybe to send in an answer to prayer (from any time of your life) with a donation makes the Wall of Answered Prayer truly a project of many people.

This wall will be built in 2022 and will be visible from the M6 and M42 motorways. Think about it as a Midlands equivalent of the Angel of the North.

Isn’t it exciting to think of such a public symbol of Christian Prayer in an increasingly secular society?
And the fact that it is answered prayer means that it already accepts that God exists and that prayer is worthwhile.

The gentleman who first had the dream of building this wall, Richard Gamble, has written a book entitled ‘Remember’ and he makes the point that it is important to remember the goodness of God throughout our lives as a motivation to pray now and in the future.

Answers to prayer have already been received from around the UK and across the world.

So don’t be left behind. Be part of history and let us be part of this act of evangelisation for generations to come.

Perhaps one answer to prayer that the Catholic community in the Archdiocese of Birmingham can agree on is the canonisation of Cardinal John Henry Newman, something which people prayed for over decades and which became a reality in 2019.

Mgr Timothy Menezes

Find out more about the Eternal Wall and how you can get involved 

Picture: CGI image of the Eternal Wall to be built