Tuesday in Holy Week, 7th April l2020
At the risk of censure, this period of isolation contains great benefits – at last we can discover the kernel of our monastic calling. I walk within the boundaries of the walled garden (what luxury!) and discover something new at every step. I sit in the greenhouse doorway (what luxury!) and see a distant gull approaching which morphs into an Osprey and then, closer still, into a Honey Buzzard, but then into an Osprey once more, on its way north from exotic climes. It’s a tantalising glimpse of ‘ordinary’ life still in motion; the natural world still operating within its boundaries – the call to move, to mate and nest, to raise a family and then disperse. My boundaried life within these walls here in Turvey is but a microcosm of mortality; life in ordinary, slowed down and immeasurably enriched.
Judas, too, operates within the boundaries of weakness and imperfect vision. He could be me or any one of us. What seemed to him, at first, a saviour, is now an all too limited human being and morphs, indeed, into an enemy. But Judas, within the limitations of his weakness, cannot stop the journey of this ‘fallen’ saviour – indeed, he unwittingly facilitates it, bringing Jesus to a death and resurrection which is hopefully, unwittingly, his death and resurrection too. And so life continues and what we took to be loss is nothing but gain.