SUNDAY

I was reading again Thomas Merton’s Elected Silence. This passage struck me:

“This means in practice, there is only one vocation, whether you are all the time in the cloister, or nurse the sick, whether you are a religious or out of it, married or single, no matter who you are or what you are: you are called to the summit of perfection. You are called to interior life, perhaps to mystical prayer, and to pass on the fruits of your contemplation to others.”

This last point seems to me very important.

MONDAY

I flew to Gibraltar for their National Day celebrations. It was strange to walk down such an English High Street in such a hot sun and to come across such a typically Mediterranean Catholic church in such an English city. It was a relief to sit there in the shade.

TUESDAY

The residence of the Governor in Gibraltar is called the Convent, and once, a long time ago, it was. We sat in the Dining Room which is rather like a school refectory with the banners of all the British governors since 1704 on the walls.

WEDNESDAY – Gibraltar National Day

Exciting to stand on the stage with three thousand people in front of you. Baloons, speeches. You keep meeting the Chief Minister wherever you go, even on the beach in the afternoon. In the evening he was there again at the Mass in honour of Our Lady of Europe in the bright evening six o’clock sunlight.

When Gibraltar was captured in 1704, her statue was thrown down the cliff and her head fell off but she seems ok now and as the Host was elevated the sun was in my eyes.

THURSDAY

I was sitting in Gibraltar airport waiting to fly out – the frontier is about a hundred yards off. There are often long queues as Spanish Guardia Civil take an agonisingly long time to check people. If during the last fifty years they had opened up the frontier, Gibraltar would now be like Monaco, indistinguishable from France, or San Marino, indistinguishable from Italy.

“To the man who slaps you on one cheek, present the other cheek too.”

FRIDAY

We were debating international development in the Commons. There were only seven of us who voted against giving 0.7% of our national budget in aid by law. I’m not opposed to aid – quite the opposite – but it seems economic illiteracy to lay down spending requirements by statute.

Sometimes I think we are like something out of today’s parable:

“Can one blind man guide another? Surely both will fall into the pit?” (Luke 6:39-42)

SATURDAY

This is the weekend of the Order of Malta pilgrimage to Walsingham which I enjoy but I was off instead to the 80th birthday party of a relative in Paris.

“There is no sound tree that produces rotten fruit.” (Luke 6:43-49)