I arrived in the Guests Wing of Downside Abbey for an Oblates weekend and by chance picked up a sheet about the life of a missionary – Bishop Alain Marie de Boismenu. A remarkable man, one the last things he said was:

I am a cripple and nothing works any more but my heart, which now has the time to love deeply. It is good to be able to say that one is able to love more and more, and that one day we will receive the gift of being able to love fully.

By chance, this comment was also in a newsletter from the Abbaye Saint Joseph de Clairval at Flavigny. Suddenly, on this damp November afternoon in Somerset, with the golden leaves falling in the blustery wind, I remembered a warm evening in Burgundy this Summer, and the monks trooping into Compline by candlelight.

Later, the afternoon light in the darkening Abbey was so heavy and mysterious that one could almost hold it. I set a candle in front of a statue of Christ and received in return one of those moments when one knows it is all true.

After that, walking in the grounds, it struck me that maybe the reason one has these feelings is because it is true!