Christ the King, 22nd November, 2020 . . . we meet (the) God of transcendence, (the) God of mystery, only in the earthiness of things. We have no other way of finding God, and we also have no way of escaping God’s presence. (p.5 Gerard W. Hughes: God where are …
Dedication of the Oratory of Our Lady of Peace, Turvey Abbey We live in the midst of an extraordinary welter of uncertainties, highlighted today, by an, as yet, unresolved American election and the beginning here of another Covid 19 lockdown with Brexit still looming and the issue of climate change, …
All Saints, 1st November 2020 Most people cast in their lot with the visible world; but true Christians with saints and angels. (John Henry Newman: Parochial & Plain Sermons IV, 234) Be prepared, then, to be misunderstood: Because the world refused to acknowledge him.therefore it does not acknowledge us. It’s …
Birthday of Our Lady, 8 September 2020 Genealogies are ordinarily expected to give information about ancestry. We trace our family trees to find out how various bloodlines intermingle and have finally come to reside in oneself – or whoever. But this is not the prime purpose, perhaps, of either Matthew’s …
St Bernard Tolomei, 19 August 2020 We can get a taste of St. Bernard Tolomei’s self-effacing and generous nature in the letter we heard read last night. He’s giving advice to a fellow monk on how best to pursue his vocation and it’s advice applicable to us all: Every action …
Assumption of Our Lady, 15th August 2020 We are in a time of trial – have we ever not been ? – caught between heaven and earth. It will be a long time yet before we can fully process what has been happening to us – both individually and collectively …
Saint Benedict, 11th July 2020 First a quote from the Abbot General of the Cistercian order, Fr.Mauro-Guiseppe Lepori, musing on the Lenten character of the present pandemic, and a reminder of St.Benedict’s words that for a monk every day should have something of this Lenten character (RB49). ‘To stop oneself …
Saints Peter and Paul, 29th June 2020 Each day, we live within our limitations but, each day, we are also asked to live in a world without limitation. Each day, we face death and, each day, we are invited to live as if death no longer matters, as if death …
Birthday of Saint John the Baptist, 24th June 2020 One warm summer’s night I stood outside my observatory in a glade in a forest in North America looking up to a display of the Northern Lights. Tall pillars and fiery glows of red and green marched and shot across the …
Sacred Heart, 19th June 2020 This time needs poetry, so heavy is it with meaning. John’s first letter is written with something of this ‘heaviness’ in view and yet with a poetic lightness that brings God close, or better, introduces us gently into the furnace of God’s love – the …
