Advent Sunday 4B, 20th December 2020 We are forever attempting to tabernacle God for ourselves; finding a place for God which we can clearly identify and then control, but God is not of this nature at all. Indeed, the very word ‘God’ is a failed attempt at pinning something down …
Advent Sunday 3B, 13th December Now, it would be anachronistic to say that John the Baptist was in the wilderness of Judea in order to save it: no, he’s there in order to call the people from the towns and villages of Judea, especially Jerusalem, in order to save them …
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady We may think we are seeking God but it is really God who is seeking us. We are the ones in hiding and God who asks ‘Where are you?’ but no one, of course, can hide from God. It’s like the child …
Second Sunday in Advent, 6th December 2020 Time is Short and the Water Rises: the title of a book, I think, about the building of the Aswan Dam and the threat it posed to many wild creatures. It was an account of the rescue operation to save the elephants and …
Feast of Saint Andrew, 30th November 2020 History is full of charismatic personalities with ‘instant appeal’ – for good or for bad. Perhaps it is simply a matter of mirror neurons – a deeply ingrained facility in us which encourages imitative behaviour – an ‘inner principle’ which guides us for …
Advent Sunday 1B, 29th November 2020 There is not a moment when Christ is not present. It’s a monk’s role, partly, to know this presence by forever being aware of it, and the best preparation for this awareness is a pure heart and a clean conscience, so you see there’s …
Advent Sunday 4A, 22nd December 2019 There’s a sense of dread around, today, that I’ve never known before. And if you think Brexit is bad and the present series of governments the worst we’ve ever seen, just listen to this: It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness …
Advent Sunday 3A, 15th December 2019 Somebody once observed to the eminent philosopher Wittgenstein how stupid medieval Europeans living before the time of Copernicus must have been that they could have looked at the sky and thought that the sun was circling the earth. Surely a modicum of astronomical good …
The Immaculate Conception, 9th December 2019 Why are the real things, the important things, so easily mislaid underneath the things that hardly matter at all? (Christmas Days: Jeanette Winterson p.25) This is Jeanette Winterson concluding a delightful story of the Christ child on the true and, mostly forgotten, meaning of …
Advent Sunday 2A, 8th December 2019 John the Baptist is a serious prophet – not a person one would like to meet unexpectedly, perhaps; a shock to the system; a challenge to the way we are and yet only a foretaste of what is to come in the person of …
