FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
As I listen to the readings, I look out of the window in the small upper room chapel to the line of the Wolds in the distance.
“A prophet is only despised in his own country.” (Mark 6:1-6)
MONDAY
I went to the memorial service in the Abbey for Srebrenica victims.
“Your right hand is filled with saving justice.” (Entrance Antiphon)
TUESDAY
We had our APPG for France and then for Italy annual general meetings. We are now fully established. Again everyone is an officer.
“The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord to send labourers to his harvest.” (Matthew 9:32-37)
WEDNESDAY
I spent a most pleasant afternoon at the dentist – surely a contradiction in terms. Yet he is an amateur filmmaker and he showed me his latest shortie – a taxi driving around London. Soothing…
It makes a change from being locked in negotiation with the Government on EVEL (English Votes for English Laws) and Barnet consequentials. For me, the preservation of the Union is much more important than English nationalism.
“You shall bring me your youngest brother; this way your words will be proved true.” (Genesis 41:55)
THURSDAY
I was in my small boat when a ferry suddenly turned right. I tacked, was held in stays, and stalled.
At that moment the leader of the house rang me on my mobile with a compromise suggestion for an amendment to his EVEL standing orders. I was easily convinced.
“Joseph said to his brothers come closer to me.” (Genesis 44:18-21)
FRIDAY
I went to Margate to look at the new(ish) Turner Gallery. Having seen the film I was interested in visiting the town, something I had never done before.
In spite of one bit of brutalist architecture in a block of flats – apparently in the 1960s they wanted to flatten the whole town – there is still in the remaining Georgian homes a feeling of the old town.
Psalm 36: “The salvation of the just comes from God.”
SATURDAY – St Benedict, Abbot
I get up early to swim the 2,000-yard Bridge-to-Bridge in the Serpentine. It takes me 45 minutes and I come last. Afterwards, Latin sung mass in the Cathedral before driving to Lincolnshire for the village hog roast. A good day.
Something strikes me as important in the homily on St Benedict but I only stay for the Mass by chance. One is St Benedict lived in a time of disaffection, of old values and old empires with everything changing so that in that respect he is still relevant for us. I remember Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. The second was Benedict was not just talking to monks in a monastic community, because we all live in a community – so the “Rule” is relevant to us too.
“There was a man of venerable life, Benedict, blessed by grace and by name, who leaving home and patrimony and desiring to please God alone, sought out the habit of holy living.” (Entrance Antiphon)