St Augustine of Canterbury, 27th May 2020 We live in an age of anxiety, slowly emerging into a ‘foreign’ land; a land we know not yet how to develop and in which to, once again, find security. Great hopes are being voiced as to this being an age of opportunity; …
Saint Matthias, 14th May 2020 Matthias comes late to the leadership and is both the choice of the disciples and the choice of God, if one accepts choosing by lot as a way of allowing God to have a say. This subtle, or not so subtle, interplay of man proposing …
The English Martyrs, 4th May 2020 Softly this Sunday morningof sunlight and daffodilsThe thought comes to meThat with malign intent somewhereAt this particular momentPrising the sealed edges of integrityMan tortures man. I should like to pretend otherwiseBury my head in the sandof my Sunday complacency(the daffodils sing in my heart)Yet …
Saint Catherine of Siena, 29th April 2020 Catherine of Siena lived at a very turbulent time in a very turbulent setting among people threatened not only with the plague but with the constant warfare between the various Italian city states and with a Church divided between Avignon and Rome. Astutely, …
Saint George, 23rd April 2020 St George is a problematic saint for us on several counts, partly because of the lack of historical detail as to the original St George, and partly because of the legends which have since become attached, not least that of the slaying of the dragon. …
Passing Saint Benedict, 21st March 2020 I have never before been asked to say Mass on my own – even the ‘I’ at the beginning of this seems offensive, and the rebel in me would do otherwise, and there, perhaps, lies a clue to the true nature of priesthood, as …
Saints Cyril and Methodius, 14th February 2020 Disunity within Christendom and, indeed, within Christianity, has always been with us – a reflection, indeed, of the forever tension at the heart of our own constitution as human beings, torn between good and evil. But this is a dynamic tension which always …
Conversion of Saint Paul, 25 January 2020 In a very comprehensive article by Adrian Hastings, published in our ecumenical journal One in Christ almost fifty years ago, there was a table outlining the possible situations in which other Christians could receive communion at Catholic altars and Catholics could receive communion …
Holy Family, 29th December 2019 Overheard in Waterstones in Milton Keynes recently, full of people in a desperate search for presents at the last moment: a father to a young teenage daughter: ‘We are not giving your mother a book entitled How to Think like a Dog. I’ve been married …
Holy Innocents, 28th December 2019 How wise the Church is to follow Christmas Day with the Feast of St. Stephen and the Feast of St. John with the feast of the Holy Innocents. Light and shadow racing across the landscape. No rest here for the good or the wicked. My …
