Our Lady’s Birthday, 8th September 2021 There is a love that transcends our own. There has to be because our love is so imperfect: love, that is, for ourselves, for one another, and for God. And, because our love is always less than this love, we live in hope rather …
Saint Bernard Tolomei, 19th August 2021 Many years ago we were having issues over our gas bill because we kept getting estimated readings instead of readings confirmed by the meter reader who was still faithfully recording them but, because of the site’s chequered past, was not able to assign them …
The Assumption of Our Lady, 15th August 2021 Within the great counter-narrative of Christ is the counter-narrative of Mary and, within both, one might say, is the great counter-narrative of us as human beings destined for God, made for God, that is, made for God by God, stamped with God’s …
Solemnity of Saint Benedict, 11th July 2021 We are always people of our time. It’s not possible to exist in any other. And time changes us and we change time. This thought was prompted by a page from the Daily Mail discovered recently in the house of a neighbour, Dawn …
Saints Peter and Paul, 29th June 2021 In a rare moment of self-indulgence (ahem!), I recently watched a film on D-Day from a French perspective: the Americans and Canadians and the French themselves, and even the Germans, came out of it rather well, but the British, or more particularly the …
Birthday of Saint John the Baptist, 24th June 2021 We heard last night of Jeremiah’s call to be a prophet and today we hear of this call to Isaiah and, albeit briefly, to David and, principally of course, to John the Baptist, even in the womb. The Oxford Dictionary of …
The Sacred Heart of Jesus, 11th June 2021 It was a wonderful treeFull of childrenSo they cut it down This is Jesus: immensely attractive to children, to his people, to all created in God’s image. I have in mind two further images: one of a child yesterday, gazing in wonder …
Corpus Christi, 3rd June 2021 We are part of a body which is on the move. And, to quote Russell Hulsey, a contributor to a book celebrating Thomas Merton’s 100th anniversary, Life has never been, nor will it ever be about ‘figuring it all out’ it is more concisely, about …
Trinity Sunday, 30th May 2021 We live in a rural community but the ‘newcomers’ among us are not really part of it. It’s a world and mentality which has carried on for generations, working the land and looking at the land quite differently from us. We could be and, indeed, …
Pentecost Sunday, 23rd May 2021 At the risk of importing an analogy which has no place here but is simply an enthusiasm of mine, I’d like to say a little more about that marvellous area of scrub a few miles to the north of us which is heaving with birds, …
