Monthly Archives: May 2014

Third Week of Easter

Third Sunday in Easter
Now we are back on the glorious road to Emmaus. And the Sunday Mass echoes its every word. All Gospels are great but is this the greatest.

Monday
On a clear bright summers morning I walked to our local church and looked up the twenty-fifth psalm, Ad te Domine, levavi. Unto thee oh lord will I lift up my soul.

Tuesday
The people ask for a sign from Jesus “What sign will you give us to show that we should believe in you” (John 6:30-35).

We too always ask for a sign and grumble that it is not given to us, but perhaps they are all around us.

Wednesday
After the Mass in the crypt I could not remember any of the readings, just the drawing of the risen Christ on the front of the mass sheet, but perhaps this is instructive. Images, sensations are more important and cleave closer to the brain.

“You can see me and still not believe.” (John 6:35)

Thursday
I went to Mass in the Cathedral and in front of me the missionary fathers were packed in to the choir. In a receding row they looked like angels in heaven. Perhaps some of them in reality were not so angelic?

After, they prayed in the chantry chapel to Cardinal Vaughan who founded the Mill Hill Seminary. I often pray to him in the hope that unlike the Saints, he has got more time to listen, and after all I pass by his tomb most days. St John Southwell is also around but he comes from a more remote, more sure age, whereas Vaughan – a modern in a time of disbelief, educated at Stonyhurst and Downside – seems more likely to understand.

The reading today is all about Philip’s journey to baptise the Ethiopian in his chariot. We are also in our chariot trundling along through life, but perhaps we are not reading Isaiah like the Ethiopian. If we did, we might notice more things.

Friday
I was reading Thomas Merton’s Contemplative Prayer, a marvellous book. He describes the prayer of the early desert mystics as being based on psalmodia, lectionaries, oratio and contemplatio. It is a continuous turning from the World to God. A prayer of watchful listening of the heart. It is a wordless and total surrender of the heart to silence. Early mystics call this prayer of the heart. A prayer that seeks its centre in the ground of our being.

There was stress in in the early monasteries on simple prayer such as Deus in adjutorium meum intende, O god come to my aid. The mystics did not look for extraordinary experiences. They forgot themselves and applied themselves just to love of God. They very much looked to the Psalter as a compendium of the Bible.

Saturday
Full of thoughts of Thomas Merton, I had had a happy sleep. I got up for Vigils in the monastery at twenty to six. I rarely do this. I don’t have the energy. Between Vigils and Lauds I lay down on my bed. I was tired. I had one of those rare moments of real mindfulness, of a grounding in the eternal and a separation from worry.

Second Week of Easter

Monday
At this moment I wish the Gospel stories of the Resurrection continued but they don’t. Why are there so few? Does that give me a tiny dot of doubt? But this week I start to concentrate on the readings from the Acts of the Apostles. Now, against all the odds, they are filled with the Holy Spirit.

Tuesday
There is something inspiring about the way the community is organised, a sort of religious communism. The whole group of believers were united we are told and I am sure it was so but human nature intervened.

Wednesday
We were reminded today of the words of Eleanor Roosevelt. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. This was in the context of the Apostles sticking by their guns and carrying on preaching. It is amazing how lacking in courage we really are most of the time.

Thursday
I went to speak in a school, Stonyhurst and reminded them of Eleanor’s words. Earlier I went to mass in the Sodality chapel. I am always struck there by the plaque put up by grieving parents to the loss in the Great War of their only two sons. As a father I hate all war and I think the enemy would have to be sailing up the Solent for me to vote for it, as of course in 1546 they were!

Friday
After Mass I made a three-hour walk up to the Trig point, high up on the Fell. Here in the sunshine I looked over the great glorious expanse of the Forest of Bowland. As I walked shown the countryside was so glorious I could have been wandering in Ithilien.

Saturday
Back in Lincolnshire I made the short walk to look up the twenty-fourth psalm. Domini est terra, the Earth is the lords, and all that therein is. It seems a complement to the twenty-third. Dominus refit me. The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing. The Lord is my Shepherd.