I went by chance to Mass in Westminster Cathedral. I am not normally there on a Saturday. And it was the feast day of Our Lady of Walsingham, 24 September. The Cathedral was packed. It was comforting to be back home with Our Lady.

We were discussing money on Lincoln Cathedral Council. To be honest, I find long presentations on finances by accountants boring and fairly incomprehensible. But of course cathedrals are always short of money, though Lincoln is better run than most. But a thought occurred to me. Here we have the Shrine of Saint Hugh. In the Middle Ages it was a major centre of pilgrimage. People walked to here from all over Europe. Yet not one in a thousand people have ever heard of it. Thirty years ago a tiny trickle of people walked the Route of St James of Compostela in northern Spain. Now it is 300,000 a year. Even in France as we saw this summer every small town on the St Jacques “routes” are marketing themselves. Here nothing. Could we not recreate a pilgrimage route from London to Lincoln? Are there country villages and churches that we speed by on the motorway. Walsingham, destroyed in 1539, reborn again because of the vision of one Anglican priest in the 1920s, Father Hope Patten. Is there hope for Hugh?

It is fairly difficult to run aground in Portsmouth Harbour. After all, mighty aircraft carriers and huge cross-Channel ferries berth there but in a strong breeze of 25mph, struggling to control alone my little old boat, I ran straight aground on a sand bank. As in other crises in life, if you run aground first you don’t know it’s happened. Then because everything is slowing you think something much worse has happened. Then comes anger, despair, and finally resignation because if you’re on a falling tide you’re going to be there upwards of twelve hours in an extremely uncomfortable position and there’s absolutely nothing you can do. You can pray but nature will not relent. That is the beauty of nature, it is not driven by anger or aggression or envy or pride. Nature is driven simply by nature.

Once again I was irritated that some plan or other, something I wanted to do, was thwarted by events. How extraordinary that the most selfish exercise of will can cause us so much angst. Tossing and turning, I recalled Our Lady of Walsingham. She is not just a comforter but she strips away our ego and self-like.

On Sunday I had woken in the middle of the night in Walsingham and the thoughts of the site of Richeldis’s Holy House just round the corner had comforted me.

Now although I woke again and Walsingham was one hundred and fifty miles away, the thought of Our Lady of Walsingham was also a comfort. One does not have to be in the place to derive the benefit.

Gabriel had a job to do so simple, to travel on the tube one way, deliver a letter, and travel back. But instead of sitting quiet, everything irritated him: the noise, the crowds. But above all that he might miss lunch! He ran from the tube and made his lunch. Why worry about lunch. But nothing, even reading the office of readings, nothing helped. His mind dwelt on that lunch. Why can we not rid ourselves of impatience?

I woke in the middle of the night with an almost physical sharp stab of pain with some deep worry or regret. Then I realised how foolish I was. I was lying perhaps 300 yards away from where 950 years before Richeldis had created her Holy House of Nazareth, thousands of pilgrims had come over the centuries. Not in a car taking three hours but many in complete poverty and rags taking weeks or months.

Our Lady cannot perhaps solve the original problems: money, health, whatever. But she can help us, Gabriel, to live with it.

We drove up for a short pilgrimage to Walsingham with the OMV and the Knights of Malta.

We arrived in time for Mass at Binham Priory just two or three miles northeast of Walsingham.

It was founded in the eleventh century by Pierre de Vacognes and his wife Albreda.

Although dissolved in 1539, it is not a complete ruin. The nave has been preserved as a parish church.

The venue was magnificent, the venue lovely, but I spent most of my time worrying if my daughter had arrived safely. She had. Thus do our minds wander and swell in this present world.

I took an exhausted dog, William, who doesn’t like walking at the best of times, to the lido for a swim, from Westminster then back again via Mass at the Brompton Oratory. He dozed gratefully at the back. William would certainly agree with today’s reading if he could understand it.

“We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.” (Tim 6 2:11)

But he doesn’t need to understand it, this is just the life that William lives. All he wants is love, a little food and water, and an occasional walk.

In today’s readings I suppose I could have mentioned this line from St Paul to Timothy in my speech at the prize-giving. Without saying where it came from of course. It’s not possible now in a public, non-religious venue to quote St Paul. People think you are a bore.

“Do not let people disregard you because you are young.” Timothy 4:12-15

I was presenting the prizes at a school and my own remarks were not noteworthy but the Head and Chair of Governors gave great speeches.

One on the theme of “Grief is the price you pay for Love” recalling 9/11 and the other on the theme of “Do not lose your sense of wonder”. Mine was on the theme “Do in life what you really really want to do” and don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do it.

I am in Mass drenched and late to hear the last words of the sermon.

“He died exhausted from his work in 404.”

Who was he, I wondered. He was St John Chrysostom, a noted preacher and bishop of Constantinople. But who was he?

His writings, we are told, “reveal the brilliance of his intellect and his strength of faith”.

But many have strength of faith and brilliance of mind. Not I in either case sadly. But who was he? How did these men achieve such strength of faith and how does it elude me?

What I remember of the 10.30 Mass in the Cathedral is not the readings. Although the readings are memorable, including Jesus’ visit to the town of Naim, but the fact that at this 10.30 Latin Mass the priest was Italian. Immediately the beauty of the words was apparent. What a lovely language Latin is if spoken with an Italian accent (which I imagine is like the one used by the Romans). Why did we ever give up Latin for the bits of the Mass that never change? The Confiteor, Gloria, Kyrie, Pater Noster, Agnus Dei. Why not have just the Eucharistic Prayer in English but the Latin at the supreme moment. “HIC EST ENIM CORPUS MEUM” is far more powerful than “This is My Body”.

We went to Mass. The reading was about forgiveness.

“Lord, how often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me? As often as seven times. Jesus answered, not seven I tell you but seventy-seven times.” (Matthew 18:21-35)

I thought of the few nasty things people have done to me compared to some of the very nasty things done to others and our small capacity for letting go.

I always love today’s psalm, Psalm 61.

“In God is my safety and glory.”

I thought on today’s reading:

“You are God’s chosen race, His saints. He loves you.” (Colossians 3:12-17)

If only we had real confidence in these words, wouldn’t life, Gabriel, be full of confidence?

Today was the great debate on abortion. As usual we lost and lost heavily but we can only try. My argument was that those who financially benefit from providing abortions should not be the people expected to give independent advice.

Today we took another son to his new school. Quite a stressful day too. I walked and ran along a country stream. It was strangely moving.

This is always a stressful week. The children going back to school.

We took one to his new school for the first time today. New beginnings…

Later I sat in the Church. It was some comfort.

Strange that the psalm today is all about not having a hard heart, and having no debts save love and George Herbert’s poem is about a hard heart melting before an altar.

I visited the church of Bremerton near Salisbury where George Herbert (1593-1663) was the vicar for a time.

How wonderful in such a tiny church to find out about a man who left such wonderful hymns and poetry.

I was still worrying in the night about bills and lack of any political influence when by chance I happened on the funeral mass in Westminster Cathedral of Father Alan James Fudge, the parish priest of the Catholic Church on Ogle Street. To be honest, I did not know him but he was obviously a marvellous man. The Cathedral was packed with two-thousand people.

Here was a simple parish priest. He had no money, no “power”, no influence, except on the many, many people he went and helped. A true Curé d’Ars. Apparently he was a marvellous preacher, but also a much loved confessor who, like the Curé d’Ars, spent hours listening to and advising people, so for him he avoided all debt save love.

I walked back home over the Wolds in the twilight evening about ten – a vast sky over my head was alive with stars. The North Star reaching from the plough. The last afternoon I did the same walk down over the edge of the Wolds to the station. This time a great expanse of lands for twenty or thirty miles opened up before me. The train journey was horribly delayed, taking seven hours to get to London! But I took the opportunity of an enforced stay in Lincoln to attend as much of Evensong as I could. What an experience to enter that great cathedral in the midst of a long journey and hear the psalm being sung and then the Magnificat and Nunc Dimmitis.

To me, the journey explains much. If ever the problems of the world encumber us we need to look up to the stars – billions upon billions of them – and sooth our troubled perspectives. If ever the problems of our life overwhelm us we should look to acknowledge and calm our disordered perspective.

And overwhelmed, all we need to remember and seek to believe. Whatever our place in the journey, the source of it all, the beginning and the ending.

All this walking and thinking on the insignificance of our worries against the wonder of the stars and nature stood me in good stead, or should have done, in a meeting with the bank manager to manage debts. No matter what, bills have to be paid.

In today’s reading, Jesus helps a possessed man in the synagogue at Capernaum. Apparently the foundation stones of the original synagogue that Jesus taught in are still there. Two thousand years later. A remarkable exhibition of the staying power of stones.

We were trying to enter harbour against wind and tide and unsteady for twenty minutes our boat made no progress at all. In that time I suppose a score of yachts and large motor boats passed us. Not one of them offered any help. Finally the friendly harbour patrol rescued us.