SUNDAY

The psalm today, Psalm 32, is beautiful:

“May your love be upon us, O Lord, as we place all our hope in you.”

MONDAY – St Jean Brebeuf

I am always moved by the deaths of these saints clubbed to death and tortured in North America. Imagine their loneliness and courage in this vast foreboding wilderness.

My day today was more ordinary: a meeting with the Comptroller and Auditor General to plan my next five years as Chairman of the Public Accounts Commission, and then I met with the Leader of the House to discuss English Votes for English Laws. He agrees to a sort of compromise by which the Barnett formula consequentials will be reviewed after a year. Thus small steps are made.

Today’s Gospel always makes a strong impression on me:

“I will say to my soul: my soul you have plenty of good things land by for many years to come; take things easy, eat, drink, have a good time, but God said to him ‘Fool!’ This very night the demand will be made of your soul and this hoard of yours, whose will it be then? So it is when a man stores up treasure for himself in place of making himself rich in the sight of God.” (Luke 12:13-21)

Note that the man talks to his soul. This is his innermost being which is most connected to the good things of life. But at least he speaks to his soul. So far have we fallen from a religious view of society that then even rich men talked to their soul. Now they don’t even bother to do that.

TUESDAY

“Here I am, Lord. I come to do your will. You do not ask for sacrifice and offerings but an open ear.” (Psalm 39)

“An open ear…” How often do we do this?

WEDNESDAY

The reading from Luke 12:39-48 today emphasises the necessity of living in the absolute present.

“You may be quite sure of this, that if the householder had known at what hour the burglar would come, he would not have let anyone break through the wall of his house.”

As a victim of burglary, I know this well enough. Yet still spiritually we are not waiting.

THURSDAY – St John Paul II

We debate EVEL on the floor of the House. I gave my four-minute speech with three minutes to spare before chairing the Trade Union Bill.

Strange to think that I went to the funeral mass of today’s saint. It took some doing but I managed it. The then-ambassador to the Holy See said it was all impossible but the dignitaries in the Piazza Farnese helped me get in. A memorable experience to see Cardinal Ratzinger take the Mass and the simple coffin on the floor. Strange I remember this even over ten years ago very well but forget what I said in the EVEL debate a couple of weeks ago.

“Happy the man who placed his trust in the Lord.” (Psalm 1)

FRIDAY

Saint Ethelfleda was the daughter of Aethelwold of Wessex. I am reading Bernard Cornwall’s Saxon Tales. His hero Uhtred is a noted anti-Christian so would not have approved of this lady. We would probably find her impossibly remote to understand. We are told only that as Abbess of Romney she practiced an austere life.

Perhaps she would have read this passage from today’s Paul to the Romans: “I know of nothing good in me – living, that is, in my unspiritual self.”

SATURDAY

“The unspiritual are interested only in what is unspiritual, but the spiritual are interested in spiritual things. It is death to limit oneself to what is unspiritual. Life and peace can only come with concern for the spiritual.” (Romans 8:1-11)