There have been three themes running through my mind in this fifth week of ordinary time.

The first in the reality of ourselves as individuals.

The second is prayer and its purpose.

The third is what can be gained from Lectio Devina.

We started our week with our priest here in Lincolnshire telling us that we were people of prayer. That the Muslims may pray five times a day but we have to pray all day. That we should pray when we see an ambulance rushing past, or any event.

I find this almost impossible. Once I leave a church, I forget about it. I wonder what the trick is.

Tying a knot in one’s handkerchief, perhaps!

Gabriel had a dream. His mind somehow became separated from his body. He was in a maze, but it was a maze without limit or time. The body wandered off.

Because it no longer had a mind, it was happy. It rushed two and fro, sometimes just the other side of the hedge from mind, sometimes miles away. The mind had no body and could not move for countless ages it sat on the stone bench at the centre of the maze. Because it had no body, it never grew old. It was never hungry of thirsty, nor cold.

But in its body, it had no pleasure. Eventually, Body returned. By now, those legs which had walked so briskly were bent and frail. Its once handsome face old and ugly. And body said to mind ‘come with me again, I have seen all things, been to all continents and have felt every pleasures, whereas you lie alone, unmoving, on your stone bench.’

Because mind could not talk or move, it could only pray. Mind’s whole was just prayer with and about God, who, like mind, was formless. And mind answered with no voice.

‘Leave me, I have no past or future or present; no movement; only stillness. Dead to the world, I am content.’

I was reading this passage which a friend saw. I can’t remember the exact words but it read something like:

The way to happiness is to do the Lords will.

I said to my friend, “All very well, but how do you know the Lord’s will?”

His faith is a lot greater than mine and to him the answer is simple: It is contained in John 13; Acknowledge that Jesus came into the world to save the world and then to follow him is to find happiness.

I wish I had such certainty.

Later today I was talking to a person about the nature of happiness. He came from Africa where many have nothing.

“Some people are happy with nothing,” he said, “some unhappy. Some people are happy with everything, some unhappy.”

Happiness has nothing to do with what we have but what we are.

But at the end of the day we can only take refuge in all of those lessons we learned in today’s Gospel.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in Me. In my Father’s house there are many mansions; otherwise I should have told you. I am going now to prepare a place for you.

There are three saints Theodore. My son’s godfather is making an icon for him with the saint he was named after and decided to put all three on it. But we celebrate the St. Theodore today who, at the ripe old age of 65, was sent over to help convert the Anglo-Saxon English and did a good job of it by all accounts.

I had been feeling ill all week. I had a cough, so I had high hopes of St. Blaise, the patron saint of throat conditions, as the candle was laid on our necks after Mass. Almost immediately after, I coughed again! But the throat feels a little better now.

I learnt Friday that a friend, Martin, who I go swimming with every day has died suddenly. One moment he was swimming. On Saturday he said he felt dizzy. On Sunday he said he was better and on Sunday night he was dead. Little older than me.

He was a night porter by trade, a man of great charm, of noble simplicity and no ambition, without an enemy in the world. Also a well-skilled painter of scenes usually from some imaginary Oriental court. To my great delight, he recently gave me one of his paintings which I shall treasure.

After swimming, I often walked with him along the side of the Serpentine. He walked very slowly, and he used to wave as I turned left. Now I will always see him walking on, into the unknown.

The divide between life and death is so brittle, a gently, wavy, threadbare curtain through which one can pass so easily and quickly.

But as I lay awake at night I was sure that I now have a friend in heaven.

Today’s Gospel is from St. Mark:

And so the Lord Jesus after he has spoken to them was taken up into Heaven.

(Mark 16:15-20)

After the beauties of Rome under a mild utterly blue cloudless white sky to return to the ordinary streets of grey London is a depressing thing.

But to cheer us up as we went to a hearty Candlemas for my son’s school in the Little Oratory. I love the moment after one stands outside the church as the candles are blessed. Then there comes a moment when the candles are lit.

For me the words of old Simeon are some of the most moving in the Gospel.

Now Lord you have kept your word. Let your servant depart in peace.

And the words of the Priest will end in a happy tale.

Forty days ago we celebrated the joyful birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Today we recall the holy day on which he was presented at the Temple.

I set off across town to find the chapel of the nuns in the Piazza Farnesi. Frequently losing my way and going up to grumpy carabinieri: “Scusi, dove e Piazza Farnese per favore?”

Eventually as I rounded the corner of the Piazza I saw the nuns locking the gate after early morning mass. No matter. I found a Mass in Santa Maria dei Maddalena in Roma. It has extraordinary soaring baroque ceilings and a beautiful Madonna della Salute.

These churches are amazing. The day before I turned a corner and went in by chance to S. Luigi dei Francesi and found the most extraordinary Caravaggio. What an amazing life, what extraordinary genius, and then to throw it all away as a hated fugitive from justice.

In a dimly lit side chapel is a plaque on which were written in French these quite nice words about a former French Ambassador to the Holy See.

“His love of the Church was only exceeded by his love of his country.”

A nice epitaph.

If you walk out of your hotel in Rome first thing in the morning, you will find within five minutes a glorious Renaissance church of Mary. (Santa Maria in Aquiro). There were only three of us in the side chapel. Before the reading of the liturgy, we are invited to the back of the Church. I understood why because next thing the priest summons all of us forward to do the readings. Luckily I am not in the first row or I would have had to do it. I can just about read and pronounce Italian but the thought of doing it in public can terrify you.

Afterwards the priest gave us a little card in honour of Santa Maria di Lourdes. “Defendi i deboli, conferma gli innocenti, converti i peccatori, risana gli infermi, consola gli affliti.”

The point of course is that St. John Bosco loved children and Mary chose to appear to a child, Bernadette.

Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

(Matthew 18:1-5)

This is a marvellous film about St. Therese of Lisieux.

There is no music at all, just poetic insight into her way of love being found in the smallest things.

What I found most interesting about the film was its simplicity. Nothing was exaggerated or hurried. The heroism and the drama was contained in a placid acceptance and silence. Here is a concerned renunciation not of the world but of reliance on the world.

I am reminded of the words in today’s Gospel.

It is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.

This is a film made in 1950. It starts in a pretty miserable frame of mind and it gets even more miserable. It is black and white and the French sound quickly has deteriorated yet its inextricably moving. A young country priest battles with his unpopularity, doubts, and lack of faith, and finally a dose of stomach cancer.

He ends his last days staying with a friend in one of those depressing 1950s towns which I remember as a boy, when France seemed so backwards. Now it has leapt ahead of us. But at the end of the film, the Cure as he lays dying has a blessing from his old seminarian friend who says he cannot give it he is no longer a priest. The cure replies “all is grace, all is grace”.

Today’s reading from Hebrews 10:32-39 might have been intended for him.

Gabriel once more has this strange disconnect between his physical persona and his soul as if they were quite separate. That the soul could be free, that it could leave the body and be somewhere else. That there was a curtain between reality and spirituality but only a curtain, to be opened at the flick of a hand.

Through the blood of Jesus we have the right to enter the sanctuary by the new and living way which he has opened for us through the veil, that is, his body.

(Hebrews 10:25)

In the Modern Art Museum of Strasbourg is a huge, at least 30-by-20 foot picture by Gustave Dore of Christ leaving the Praetorium.

It is a monumental work of art. Only Christ looks at the viewer. But it is also work of a dark and coming crucifixion, powerful in its grim intensity. Despite its darkness, light seems to leap out like the light Paul saw on the road to Damascus, sudden and determined to illuminate.

These words seemed to come back again and again. Jesus says ‘come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’

In the cathedral chapel the evening before. At early morning mass in the Cathedral today. At early morning mass in the cathedral today and coming across in another church, Eglise St. Pierre.

Three times in less than twenty-four hours I had come across them. They bring great joy and solace in their assurance, a helping Lord. Always on the shoulder, invisible, but more real than apparent reality.

In Strasbourg Cathedral there is a quiet place – The Chapelle St. Laurent. And inside are written these words:

Jesus Spricht: Kommt Zu mir alle, die ihr euch plagt, ich werde euch ruhe verschaffen.’

Jesus dit: ‘Venez à moi, vous tous qui peinez. Je prendrai votre fardeau.’

Jesus says: ‘Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.’

The three languages seem to unite the message in its simplicity, power, and truth.

Walking up the wold,
The scene came from all time.
And from none.
No sound, no telegraph, no house
Marred this view
Only a flock of sheep
Unchanging, wandering silently
Great valley, stretched away
High hills, all in wintry light
This scene could have been one hundred
One thousand, two thousand years ago.
A Viking raider, a Saxon serf.
A civil war crusader, a Ninteenth Century Landowner.
All could come passing down this path.
And on this hill, without time
And my mind took a sudden shift in realisation
That I am not just in this moment of time
This reality; there is another and another
Unknown, seek it and cannot place it
Present reality’s bands are too strong
And for a moment, I am back here.

Gabriel was travelling and he saw a great industrial land before him. Mighty power stations were belching forth plumes of smoke, the sun setting behind the chimneys, enveloping everything in a pink, fiery, glow.

The curious thing was that even the mighty smokestacks were made beautiful – just by this light. Then he wondered whether the beauty arose from this light, or from a state of mind. Was beauty tangible or intangible, relative or absolute? Or was it, perhaps, directed from afar?

His help is near for those who fear him and his glory will dwell in our land.

Psalm 89

I walked across Rome to St. Peter’s. The sun was setting and a small crowd was gathered around the enormous life-size crib in the square. It was late afternoon and the queues were gone. I hurried into the great empty space and as is the way in St. Peter’s immediately found a Mass and it was being taken by a cardinal.

I struggled with the Italian a bit – which I am trying to learn – but it didn’t matter. Latin is so close to Italian that if you give your responses in Latin while the rest of the congregation give theirs in Italian the words don’t jar and scrape as in English or even French, they just merge into each other.

Pater noster qui es in coelis / Padre nostro che sei nei cieli

After Communion, I stood at the side of the nave and looked up and down this soaring space. It is a stunning experience to walk past the high altar and look into the grave of Peter who started and completed his life so modestly and ended up under all this. I thought of the previous day’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

Peter sent them all out of the room and knelt down and prayed. Then he turned to the dead woman and said ‘Tabitha, stand up!’ She opened her eyes, looked at Peter, and sat up, and Peter helped her to her feet.

(Acts of the Apostles 9:31-42)

Gabriel was lying awake. His thoughts gathered like waves and in his mind’s eye until, at last, he seemed to kneel before his Guardian Angel.

‘Help me!’ he pleaded, but no answer came, so he persevered. Eventually, one word came from the figure:

Pray!

So he prayed, and the decades of the Rosay came and went – Joy, Sorrow, Light and Resurrection. And then sleep closed in, but one point of light appeared. He felt the presence of the Virgin Mary, who consoled him and seemed to tell him to accept.

Gabriel was wandering what directed his consciousness. Could it just be a chemical impulse in the brain? That might explain how he might lift his right hand, but what was it that made him know that he was? It came from nowhere and in his consciousness he met Melchizadek, who had also come from nowhere.

Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually.

Hebrews, 7:1-3

So his awareness of self came from nothing being. It came, perhaps, from something in the depths of his soul. Consciousness cannot be seen or measured. There seems no first mover in this metaphysical world. It just exists.

You are a priest for ever. A priest like Melchizadek of old.

Psalm 100

And this sentence rang like a mantra in Gabriel’s mind, striking something deep on his being.

Professor Richard Dawkins seems perplexed by the same idea.

Gabriel was thinking on today’s Psalm. ‘The Lord keeps his covenant ever in mind.’

He thought that maybe there were different levels of insight. At the first level, we exist and stay alone. At the second, we are tested intellectually by day to day problems of life. At the third, we begin to think spiritually and enlarge our outlook away from ourselves to our soul and to the eternal. At quiet times, he tries to push his way of thinking to the third level.

Gabriel was watching a programme on the BBC, Horizon, on the different conceptions of reality.

Apparently reality is not as certain as it seems. Advances, particularly in the field of quantum physics, point to inexplicable phenomena which don’t follow the rules of conventional science. Perfectly respectable physicists argue for parallel universes and strange links between time and space, further complicated by curious physical effects of observation. The straightforward, textbook physics I was familiar with no longer seems to hold the entire truth.

Perhaps we are moving toward a realisation that the architecture of the universe, including ourselves, stems from a will of a single, powerful entity. These curious advances at the edge of knowledge seem hugely more mesmerising than the questions of daily life.

Gabriel woke in the middle of the night. Some mean or ugly thought had passed through his head – but it had done some good, because at that moment, as clear as the strongest daylight, he seemed to know something for certain.

What was clear was that he must love those closest to him and show his love. The thought was absolutely clear. It was as if there was a right battling against a wrong.

I was hoping to go to Mass. Instead, I had a chore to do. I went on a Boris Bike through the pouring rain to collect the car from a service station. When I arrived, I couldn’t find a docking port for the bike anywhere nearby. I was forced to walk for what seemed like miles through South London in the pouring rain, only to find the garage closed. I took a bus home and arrived wet and cold.

At home, I leafed through the National Geographic news section. One of the photographs was of a monastery in Bhutan. It was twilight, and only the monastery was lit up by the dying sun. The rest of the hills were dark blue grey with a thick mist enveloping them. The caption mentioned that the Guru Rinpoche flew into the Himalayas on a tiger to dispel evil.

Looking at this monastery, bright in the landscape on a distant hill, embattled yet enduring, was reassuring.

There was some row at home about nothing and I went for a walk to the cathedral and the liturgy was over and only the evensong Rosary group was left.

The Rosary at first sight seems either pointless or a mere mantra, but the repetition is deeply soothing precisely for that reason. It was coming to the end of a sorrowful mysteries. They rolled by – the compelling and violent story: The agony in the garden, the Trial, the flogging, the crowning with thorns, the carrying of the cross and the crucifixion. Each reached its inevitable conclusion, interspersed with the quiet decade of five Hail Marys – a gentle counterpoint to the struggle of defeat and of life.

Gabriel glanced up at the clock and the strange time and date. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the first month of the eleventh year. He wondered if he could ever just be truly happy in the present.

He remembered the words of the priest on Sunday and the advice that the first thought of the day should be:

‘Lord, let me dedicate this day to you. Let me live it as you would wish.’ And he thought of today’s psalm, No. 104:

Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people.

Would he have the courage to do it?

Gabriel was half asleep during the night, thinking about today’s reading:

And Jesus said to them: Follow me and I will make you into fishers of men.

(Mark 1:14-20)

He saw in his minds eye himself now walking along a river at home. He saw himself fishing as a boy and a young man and a friend of his, Mark, was fishing with him.

And Mark’s thoughts seemed to penetrate into his own.

‘If we follow him we can become fishers of men.’ And the call strangely seemed insistent. It kept coming back to him – try as he could to avoid it.