In our last reflection we considered how essential it is for us to be open to God in order to receive the gift of contemplative prayer. Another essential ingredient is silence.

Blessed Mother Theresa once said, "In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence."

There are two types of silence: outward silence and inner silence. External silence is easy. Internal silence is hard to maintain.

Gaining interior silence is not any easy task. It requires great discipline and a lot of patience. During the day, if your mind is flooded with racing thoughts, go back to the sacred word that you use during your time of centering prayer. Repeat the sacred word once.

I believe that the healing of the division between the two sister churches will unleash a profound renewal of the entire Church - at the dawn of what I believe is a new missionary age. I also believe that the gifts found in the whole Church will enrich both East and West, assisting us in the mission which we must face together in our One Lord.

Big Brother is finding new and inventive ways to keep track of you these days, thanks to an explosion in technology, and that now includes the healthcare industry, once considered a bastion of privacy.

According to Wired magazine, a new "smart" asthma inhaler, which is designed to work in conjunction with a computer suite, allows health professions to track when a patient is having an asthma attack - including tracking the location of the patient when the attack is occurring.

The suite, called Asthmapolis and which is being sold to consumers as a safety feature (sound familiar?), is supposed to help both patients and healthcare providers alike "better monitor the behavior of asthma," Wired reported.

The key to the system is a Bluetooth-enabled sensor that patients attach to their inhaler. Every time the inhaler is used, the sensor records both the time and the patient's location. "Using a smartphone or base station, that information is in turn transferred to Asthmapolis' servers where the data can be used by individuals to track their response to treatments or by public health officials to spot and map patterns and outbreaks," reports Wired.

Asthmapolis is designed to close the data gap by making collection of information part of taking the medicine. The puffer sensor is installed on top of the device; when the patient presses down to inhale the medicine, the sensor detects that and a GPS system and clock record the event, documenting time and place. Worse, this kind of insta-data approach is a developing trend in healthcare, industry insiders say. Asthmapolis joins other firms like Massive Health that use what they call "indirect surveillance" and data collection to get patient information.

In Greek mythology, the Phoenician princess Europa was abducted and raped by the king of the gods, Zeus. But her image will from next year replace pictures of windows and doors on euro banknotes as a security and deocrative feature.

"Portraits have long been used in banknotes around the world and research has shown that people tend to remember faces. Is there any better figure than Europa to serve as the new face of the euro?" the chief of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, said on Thursday (8 November) according to Bloomberg.

She will first appear on the 5 euro note in May, with other notes introduced in ascending order in the next few years.

Europa's face will be shown as a watermark and as a hologram. Until now, euro notes carried pictures of windows and doors in various architectural styles in a symbol of openness designed not to offend national sensibilities. The new notes will also carry an emerald-coloured number.

The first series of banknotes will circulate alongside the old ones. But the old notes, first introduced 10 years ago, will eventually cease to be legal tender.

Earlier, a Hamas rocket killed three Israelis north of the Gaza Strip, drawing the first blood from Israel as the Palestinian death toll rose to 19, six of them children.

Israeli warplanes bombed targets in and around Gaza city for a second day, shaking tall buildings. In a sign of possible escalation, the armed forces spokesman said the military had received the green light to call in up to 30,000 reserve troops.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Palestinian militants would pay a price for firing the missiles.

Speaking at the same time in Gaza, Hamas leader Haniyeh urged Egypt to do more to help the Palestinians. "We call upon the brothers in Egypt to take the measures that will deter this enemy," the Hamas prime minister said.