Saint Benedict, 11th July 2020 First a quote from the Abbot General of the Cistercian order, Fr.Mauro-Guiseppe Lepori, musing on the Lenten character of the present pandemic, and a reminder of St.Benedict’s words that for a monk every day should have something of this Lenten character (RB49). ‘To stop oneself …
Saints Peter and Paul, 29th June 2020 Each day, we live within our limitations but, each day, we are also asked to live in a world without limitation. Each day, we face death and, each day, we are invited to live as if death no longer matters, as if death …
Birthday of Saint John the Baptist, 24th June 2020 One warm summer’s night I stood outside my observatory in a glade in a forest in North America looking up to a display of the Northern Lights. Tall pillars and fiery glows of red and green marched and shot across the …
Sacred Heart, 19th June 2020 This time needs poetry, so heavy is it with meaning. John’s first letter is written with something of this ‘heaviness’ in view and yet with a poetic lightness that brings God close, or better, introduces us gently into the furnace of God’s love – the …
Corpus Christi, 11th June 2020 It’s almost three months now since our last reception of the body and blood of Christ – or, at least, for most of us. The priests have continued to say Mass on behalf of everyone else and to offer and receive the eucharistic elements – …
Trinity Sunday, 7th June 2020 We may think we are standing outside the ‘physics’ of God, outside the theoretical construct of the Trinity. We may think that in this privileged position of objective observation we can discern the workings of God from afar and sum it up in some neat …
Pentecost, 31st May, 2020 Perhaps the deepest irony, or mystery, of our faith is that when it is fulfilled God disappears from sight. The danger then becomes that we fill this ‘space’ with the imagery of faith rather than the fact of it, with the things of God, rather than …
Ascension Day, 21st May 2020 Can we see Christ’s life as a commentary on our own? A recent commentator on the seismic shift which Covid 19 has had on our society highlights the inadequacy of the present capitalist way of doing things and the realisation that the huge kindnesses and …
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. …
The Easter Vigil, 12th April 2020 The house we live in has a long memory. This is not the first time that prayers have been said here behind locked doors and in fear of ones life. The Penal Code and the Covid-19 virus are very different, but the ramifications, spiritual …
