The Conversion of Saint Paul, 25th January 2021 Paul is a very determined character in more than one sense. He is determined in the sense of being strong-willed and being able to persevere in whatever tasks he has decided to pursue. And he is determined by God, that is, formed …
Sunday 3B, 24th January, 2021 We would be much better off on our own, surely, without the burden of all these extra laws and extra people? We know who we are as Catholics. Bring the rest on board and we won’t know who we are any more. And France and …
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity We have the privilege of publishing the ecumenical journal One in Christ and have done so now, both monks and nuns, for many years and, more recently, in close collaboration with the monks of Holy Cross Abbey in Rostrevor, Northern Ireland. Editorial meetings now …
Sunday 2B, 17th January, 2021 We each have a facility within us for discerning God’s will but it needs cultivating and protecting. It needs cultivating because, like all senses, it will atrophy without use. It needs protection because there are many other voices seeking to claim its attention. Innocence is …
The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, 10th January 2021 There is a tide in the affairs of men,which taken at the flood leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeis bound in shallows and in miseries. Some very well known words from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, here …
The Epiphany of the Lord, 6th January 2021 Death stalks the land and people are afraid. Can we learn anything from the Christmas story to abate this fear or at least address it? Today, we celebrate the coming of the Magi : three wise men to greet the newly born …
Second Sunday after Christmas, 3rd January 2021 These are tremendous texts: they situate our local ‘coming together’ here in Turvey in a far wider setting – indeed, in the largest setting possible: the beginning and end of all meaning: Through him all things came to be,not one thing had its …
Mary Mother of God, 1st January 2021 It is often said that truth is the first casualty of war. Well, if so, we seem to have been at war for a very long time, if not forever. It’s certainly harder at the moment to discern the true word, with so …
Saint Thomas Becket, 29th December 2020 There is something of the ‘gamekeeper turned poacher’ about Thomas’ dispute with King Henry ll and a world of political and ecclesiastical intrigue which I cannot claim to really understand but which, from our present rural existence here at Turvey, seems distinctly unedifying – …
Feast of the Holy Family, 27th December 2020 Families and How to Survive Them: it’s becoming almost politically incorrect to defend the institution of the family as a ‘good’ in itself, even as ‘best practice’, an ideal we should still honour and respect, and aim for. And I wonder if …
