I was in the Abbey in the same place I had been some weeks before. And once again I lit a candle before the wonderful statue of Christ in the dark church. I have been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Jerusalem: the Biography. It is vaguely depressing to see the life of Christ dissected by an academic author, reduced to footnotes. Did He have brothers and sisters? Did Mary re-marry? In fact, the attraction of Christ is a supernatural quality that cannot be grasped.

That night, re-reading my notes, I saw that in front of this same image I had been gripped by both a spiritual sense and a rational one that this was not just illusion – a mere wooden statue. This time as the candle flickered in the gloom. I felt no conflicting emotions at all, only a sense, however temporary, of acceptance.