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 …
Monday in Holy Week, 6th April 2020 Let beauty emerge. What Mary does here is a beautiful action significant of death. It’s not that we spend our lives preparing for death, as if death were our ultimate and final end, but that death is a marker for who we were …
Pam Sunday, 5th April 2020 A few weeks ago, just before the Sunday Mass here, a mighty branch suddenly detached itself from the Yew tree opposite my bedroom window, falling vertically into the nuns’ car park: this was a stunning and disturbing sight – one moment there, and the next …
Lent Sunday 5A, 29th March 2020 The sky is empty of all but lightAnd we have returned to our dwellingsLike the ancient IsraelitesEach to his own homeTo await the Passing OverOf the Angel of Death I do not fear him. A powerful verse from Sarah de Nordwall’s poem, ‘Time begins …
The Annunciation of the Lord, 25th March 2020 Brother Herbert’s mother once typed for Wittgenstein and once said to him that she didn’t understand what she was typing; to which he replied, ‘I don’t want you to understand, I want you to type’ – or words to that effect. Now, …
Lent Sunday 4A, 22nd March 2020 To have new sight is needed by us all. The blind man in today’s gospel story (Jn. 9:1-41) has a healthy humility born, perhaps, of his need to rely on others and to tread carefully. He cannot then deny his new sight and how …
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 …
Saint Joseph, 19 March 2020 And so we wait. Many years ago we took our garden scythe to the blacksmiths in Stagsden to be mended. He offered to bring it back, never having visited Turvey Abbey before and intrigued by the thought of visiting a working monastery. Unfortunately, he came …
Lent Sunday 3A, 15th March 2020 The Dominican theologian Brian Davies wrote an interesting article some years ago based on a lecture in which he argues that Thomas Aquinas can be deservedly described as an academic. I suspect most of us would not have thought otherwise. But he bases his …
Saint Frances of Rome, 9th March 2020 In these several accounts of widowhood we pass from prayer to activity to prayer again in a ceaseless manner. Each widow has a character formed by prayer and this character forms and informs whatever they do. Each is true, not only to their …
