MONDAY

When we got back to England there was a programme on about English Cathedrals. How they had to move with the times, etc. I thought how empty they were, a few worshippers certainly but mainly museum pieces. Then I thought back to the day before, to the great Sikh temple in Delhi, the thousands of pilgrims and worshippers moving forward slowly. Has the Sikh religion felt it necessary to “move with the times”.

TUESDAY

The readings this week are from the Book of Macabees. How Eleazar and others suffered torment and death rather than compromise their religion. I wouldn’t hesitate to compromise. Would they be now more than half of one quarter of one per cent in our society who wouldn’t compromise? Yet however many resisted in the tumult of the sixteenth century.

I often wonder what would Zaccheus have done if Jesus hadn’t looked up and called him.

WEDNESDAY

I have never understood “To everyone who has will be given more; but from the man who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” (Luke 19:11-28)

It all seems rather harsh.

THURSDAY

When the Gospel was being read about the prophesy of the Fall of Jerusaelm my mind wandered. Started thinking of my visits there, fascinating and moving yes but the centre of the universe? Where the creator of all these billions of stars manifested himself, on which I wondered. Wonder in all senses of the word.

But it took Lord Brennan at the AGM of the Catholic Union to remind me of the true importance of the last phrase which I had missed.

“… and all because you ddi not recognise your opportunity when God offered it.” (Luke 19:41)

What opportunities are we missing.

FRIDAY

The day of the Referendum Bill in Parliament. I made several interventions about our beliefs. That we want once again to control our own borders, our own fishing grounds, our own courts, and regulation on our own businesses.

I cannot match the eloquence of today’s reading from Macabees; I had run off early to Mass and heard it: “Judas and his brothers said: Now that our enemies have been defeated, let us go up to purify the sanctuary and dedicate it. So they marshalled the whole army and went up to Mount Zion.”

SATURDAY

Sometimes we feel we have failed in our campaigns and we are like King Antiochus who “threw himself on his bed and fell into lethargy from acute disappointment, because things had not turned out for him as he had planned. And there he remained for many days, subject to deep and recurrent fits of melancholy.”

But at least we haven’t done what he did: “But now I remember the wrong I did in Jerusalem.” (Macabees 6:1-13)