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 …
Feast of Simon and Jude, 28 October, 2020 We know little of Simon and Jude after Pentecost — even the Oxford Dictionary of Saints seems to misattribute Jude’s emblem of a boat to Simon, or vice versa, and Jude is known as ‘patron of hopeless causes’ because so few people …
Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, Archangels, 29 September 2020 If my understanding of ‘quantum entanglement’ is anywhere near true, then every atom, anywhere, has some connection to every atom anywhere else and, in this sense, everything is alive and affects everything else; but mostly we live entirely discrete …
Saint Matthew, 21st September 2020 As Jesus was walking on he saw a man named Matthew sitting by the customs house and he said to him: ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him. There is a whole world in these few words; so much left unsaid. There is …
Saint Bartholomew, 24th August 2020 Dear Sr. Lucy made her return journey to heaven last night, following the one she loved. It’s such a mystery this coming and going of life – like angels ascending and descending on a ladder between heaven and earth. It’s a ladder we too will …
Saint Lawrence, 10th August 2020 St. Lawrence famously gives away the Church’s possessions for the sake of the poor and when challenged to return this treasure by the civil authorities returns with ‘the destitute, the orphans the blind and the lame’ – the Church’s true treasure. But the sacrifice he …
Saint James, 25th July 2020 The exercise of power carries terrifying responsibility – not least to oneself. When one looks at our present national and international leadership one can see how power in the wrong hands can have devastating effects on others and yet seem to leave the leaders themselves …
Saint Mary Magdalene, 22nd July 2020 In an Easter sermon from 2003, Rowan Williams describes this encounter as one of the most devastatingly moving moments of the whole Bible. And it is – there, at the heart of our own Easter Vigil, when Mother Prioress sings the words to us, …
Feast of Saint Thomas, 3rd July 2020 Resurrection is taking place now, though some may doubt it. I sit at my desk and a seed floats past from a species of willow herb picked yesterday, waiting for me to check it in the book, to find a name for it. …
St John Fisher and St Thomas More, 22nd June, 2020 What is truth? Pilate famously responds to Jesus’ statement at his trial that Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice (Jn.18: 37,38). When John Fisher and Thomas More stand, or sit, before their accusers in the sixteenth …
