SUNDAY – Third Sunday in Lent

We spend a quiet day in Lincolnshire and go to Mass at Market Rasen. I run around the block – i.e. a three mile run through and around Stainton le Vale.

“I have seen the miserable state of my people in Egypt. I have heard their appeal to be free of their slave drivers. Yes I am well aware of their sufferings. I mean to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians.” (Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15)

Thus early “migrants” were helped. Who helps them now? But I suppose God had an easier task. Their numbers were finite.

MONDAY

We drive back for a lunch at Speaker’s House for the President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies. She lectures us about migrants but how many are staying in Italy? She admits that because of the close business and family structure that there are few jobs. I ask the Secretary of State for Defence on a scale of 1 to 10 to rate and compare what is more important to our national security: NATO or the EU?

Late, I make the 5:30 Mass. Good old Naaman.

“Naaman was indignant. ‘Here was I thinking he would be sure to move his hand over the spot and cure the leprous part. Surely Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus are better than any water in Israel?’”

We all think that our waters are better than theirs, but are they?

We have an urgent question on Eurosceptic ministers not being able to access civil service briefs. I ask a question. I am amused by the Times sketch the next day. I am refered to as a “stately home”. My question was light-hearted. Say for the moment I am the fisheries minister – young, ambitious, good-looking…

TUESDAY

I ask the Foreign Secretary (who is not there) about Syria and the West’s responsibility for Iraq, Libya, and Syria and our obsession with overthrowing authoritarian leaders and thereby creating an opening for totalitarian movements.

“We have at this time no leader, no prophet, no prince, no oblation, no incense, no place where we can offer up the first fruits.” (Daniel 3)

WEDNESDAY

Archbishop Gallagher, the foreign minister of the Vatican, says our evening Mass and I host a reception for him in Speaker’s House. Perhaps it is the first ever visit to the House of Commons by the Pope’s foreign minister. At supper we debate the migrant dilemma. The good Catholic side of me tells me we should let more in, the prudent conservative side of me warns against.

“Jesus said to his disciples, do not imagine that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets: I have come not to abolish the, but complete them.” (Matthew 5:17-19)

THURSDAY

My Lenten fast starts to fray at the edges. I have kept off wine for the best part of a month. Now I am in a quandary. We go to see Leo di Caprio in The Revenant. I keep my eyes shut for most of the first half hour.

“Oh that today you would listen to his voice, harden not your hearts.” (Ps 77)

FRIDAY

I travel down to Downside for an oblates’ weekend after talking for forty-five minutes on illegal immigration in the Commons.

As I arrive immediately the atmosphere of the monastery seeps in. I sit in the choir for vespers and compline. Later, alone in the great abbey, the pillars rising into the dark like the columns of Moria. I gaze at the Basano painting and yet again for an instant, a few seconds of grace, I believe. This is God, and alone in the quiet I light a candle.

SATURDAY

Father Alexander at our oblates meeting asks us to read John 9 quietly to ourselves before he talks on it.

I read it several times in modern translation and in the King James Bible. How easy it is to miss its many meetings. All are blind, the disciples who ask the silly question. Is it his fault he is blind? The Pharisees who refuse to accept his cure, his parents who want to conform and therefore dodge his sight. Only the blind man grows in sight, and eventually recognises Jesus as God.

Late after Vigils I am alone in the abbey church. At nine, the lights go off. Although I am halfway down the great church, perhaps 100 yards away, my small candle I have lit in front of the statue of Christ burns and casts an extraordinarily bright glow in the pending gloom.

Light and sight grow in steps, not from reason but experience. I see the light, the ground shifts, and for a moment I believe.