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A Collective Conversion
I made the photograph above in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, the oldest part of the Abbey, completed around 1255. Here, the monks would gather and read the Rule of St Benedict. It is also the place where the King’s Great Council first met in 1257, this later becoming what we now know as the British Parliament. It’s strange being in a place where the same faith I profess was being practised more than seven hundred and fifty years ago. It is the same faith, yet it is a different expression of that faith today. The essentials are unchanged, of course, but our understanding of the faith, what it…
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Cherish In Hope
Last night I had the pleasure of watching a live webinar organised by Liturgical Press, which featured Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP as one of the featured speakers. The webinar was about the experience of the Synod on Synodality and what has come from it so far, and thoughts on where it might lead to. The final Synthesis Report of the Synod was released last Saturday night in Italian, although the English-language translation took several more days to appear. The general reception to the Reports seems to have been broadly cool – for some, perhaps because it did not go far enough in what it offered or suggested; and for others,…
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Sanctuary
‘Finding sanctuary’. That’s what they used to call it. People would flee to monasteries and convents, often to escape persecution or danger of some sort, and it was known as finding ‘sanctuary’. Of course, in some places, this still happens – and for much the same reasons now as then. And even today, that central part of a Catholic church continues to be called the sanctuary. Even now, people still take themselves off to monasteries and convents and other religious places, but now it is usually referred to as a ‘retreat’, though the essential meaning remains the same. But a retreat from what? It is time out. It is time…
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A Beautiful Moment
I had a touching experience a few days ago which left an impression upon me. We had a visiting priest, who has ben here for the last few weeks and who is aware that I pray the Divine Office before the morning Mass. This particular morning, he asked me had I already prayed Morning Prayer and I said I had not; he then asked if it would be alright for him to join me in praying it. Of course, I was delighted and said ‘yes’. And so we sat there, before the Tabernacle in a Church which was still empty apart from us, and we prayed that Hour of the…
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A Sign of Contradiction
In his Gospel, Saint Luke gives us the account of the presentation of the baby Jesus in the Temple. The account is probably best remembered for the prophecy of Simeon, which the Church calls the ‘Nunc Dimitis’ and which it includes in the Office of Night Prayer, so that it is prayed every single night. His words are about a promise made by the Lord long ago, and being fulfilled that very day as Simeon takes the Child in his arms. It offers us a beautiful message of hope and of patient trust in the Lord, Who always keeps His word. Here, however, I wanted to focus on something which…
