How can one wake up feeling depressed in the Holy Family Hostel when one is a short walk from the Church of the Nativity? Twice I have found it locked, now an Orthodox priest denies me access to the Crypt but to be here is good enough.

I go then to the Garden Tomb. Here we can really appreciate the atmosphere. The women running up to the open tomb, Peter seeing the linen cloths on the floor, John running in and believing.

“He is not here. He is risen.”

I went with the Director of the Hospital to the Crusader Church in what the Order of Malta in the twelfth century thought was the village of Emmaus. No one knows where it is. The mass, all in French, was beautiful and afterwards we had a silent lunch in the monks’ refectory. To see the French Benedictines makes this, surrounded by palm trees and heat, was to be reminded of the miracle of the French monks in Algeria, are of the most moving I have seen.

The reading was of the catching of the fish in the lake after the Resurrection, sung entirely in French, the accents so hard that I only understood what I was hearing half way through. Embarquement – boarding – was the clue, but the disciples too at first didn’t understand what they were seeing.

Walking round the Old City I was denied access to the Temple Mount by Muslim guards and the Wailing Wall by Israeli guards. I had to content myself with the Garden of Gethsemane. Is it really there, did the ancient trees really witness the Agony? When I reach down in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and found the rock on which Jesus died, I do not know, just as there is much I do not know and doubt but it all happened undoubted by either here or with a hundreds of yards.

I arrived in Jerusalem after an eleven-hour journey. Because it is Shabat, the Israelis have closed the Allenby Bridge. I did a huge roundabout detour to the Northern Crossing where the Israeli guards are surly. Why do they want to know my grandfather’s name? Then a hugely expensive rip-off taxi to Jerusalem: no buses. I looked around and made my way into the crowded streets, found by chance the Via Dolorosa and walked up it.

But how moving to arrive at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. One ducks down into the very chapel in which the Resurrection is said to have taken place and remains as long as one can, or dares. There are long queues waiting.

I am visiting the Order of Malta Hospital of the Holy Family in Bethlehem. How humiliating it is for the Palestinians to cross this large internal frontier. It reminds me most of the Berlin Wall which I crossed thirty years ago. It is thought that most Palestinians are not allowed to cross – this is so troubling. They are prisoners in their own country. I am pro-Israel and its right to exist but not this contentious theft of land. And when you oppress, you in turn become oppressed.

We were in Petra. We climbed long and hard to the Monastery – not a monastery in fact but perhaps used by the Byzantines as a church.

But for me, the most moving moment was to escape from the crowds and sit on the very “edge of the world” with screes and wadis tumbling down to the distant flat Dead Sea plain, all in brilliant sunshine. Birds wheeling below above the great heights.

One feels in the very edge of vast tumbling precipice and feel the cooling wind on one’s face.

I walked around Madaba near Amman with my son. Here in the ancient Christian church you can find superb surviving Christian mosaics.

The greatest dates from the sixth century and is a map of Jerusalem, the holy city. You can see its streets expertly rendered in their proper position.

How moving to stand next to this reminder of Byzantine Holy Land.

I went to the tributes to Mrs Thatcher before flying off to Amman. The important point to make about Mrs T’s life is that she had to compromise of course but she kept a guiding light on the horizon to aim for and that guiding light is freedom, not such a bad guiding light. She was also, and I remember well, personally kind to her staff, wonderful to work for, demanding to work with.

The papers of course are full of Mrs Thatcher’s death.

It is inevitable that people focus on the life, a life well spent in my view. But how puny one’s own efforts and effect seem compared to such a life. I suppose the only way is not to lose heart. To accept our own contributions however minor and get on with them.

Of course in all this there is no comment on what is most important: passage of the soul. Compared to this what are worldly accomplishments or failings.

It’s good to have the Annunciation suddenly appearing in the middle of the Easter period. It’s a boost when one feels depressed that Easter is over and the readings revert to “Ordinary Time”.

The Orthodox Church is right not ever to change the date of the Annunciation even if it falls in Holy Week. What does it matter? The life of Jesus is a important in any event.

Today is the favourite reading of many people. Thomas is not in the room. When Jesus comes, His words so well known, the implication for us so dear that one doesn’t even need to repeat them, except perhaps to oneself.

Happy indeed is the man who believes without seeing. It is a gift. I wish I had it all the time but my advice to you is to take it even fleetingly.

The reading today is a kind of summary of the week. A full stop. A time to reflect. I sat in my garden in Lincolnshire for some time, the first nice day, trying to be quiet.

We travel and walk at too great a pace. It is good to listen to the quietness of the countryside.

“He leadeth me beside the still waters.” (Psalm 25)

Peale mentions a doctor who gave this advice to a patient suffering from stress. Take a two-hour walk every day and spend a half-day a week in the cemetery.

“Because, answered the doctor, I want you to wander around and look at the gravestones of men who are there permanently. I want you to meditate on the fact that many of them are there because they thought even as you do, that the whole world rested on their shoulders. I suggest you sit on one of their tombstones and repeat this statement: A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:4)”

What is the nature of discipleship? When today the Apostles go fishing they take advice from a stranger to throw their net to starboard.

One hundred and fifty three are caught, the number of fish species then thought to exist. So if we take Jesus’ advice even as a stranger we shall catch all Creation, or that is the message. But rather it is the hourly scene on the beach that catches our attention, the gulled fish and bread are more attractive than the whole of creation.

I went to the Barocci exhibition at the National Gallery. He is an exquisite sixteenth-century painter in portraiture and religious scenes. The exhibition was almost empty, the crowds go for the big names. Earlier in the week I went to Pompeii at the British Museum and Manet at the Royal Academy and we couldn’t move.

Barochi worked notoriously slowly taking years on a picture. Doing various studies of form and bodily movement and faces to make the final result.

He hardly ever left Urbino, living quietly and long. Every figure is a dramatic masterpiece.

But sadly there were no pictures of these Easter scenes or they were not here.

“They were still talking about all this when Jesus himself stood among them.” (Luke 24:35-48)

I woke up in the night and imagined myself in these Easter week scenes. It’s not so much lectio divina, reading slowly, understanding the text, asking what does it mean to me as what I call imagino divina: trying to remember the text, scene by scene.

Tonight I was trying to remember everyone’s favourite story: the disciples meet Jesus on the road from Emmaus.

I was walking with them. I am walking with theirs. And my eyes closed.

First I am dejected, then I listen, but I am listening so hard.

“Then starting with Moses and going through the Prophets, he explained to them the passages throughout the scriptures that we about Himself.”

And still they do not recognise Him. And still I do not recognise Him.

So I plod on in my dream.

And then we go into the house together.

“Now while He was with them at table, He took the bread and handed it to them. And their eyes were opened, but He vanished from their sight.” (Luke 24:13-35)

This happens to me: I believe for a moment, then He vanishes.

“…As she said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there through she did not recognise him…” (John 20:11-18)

I always think of my poor faith at this point. Do I turn round and He is standing there and I do not recognise Him?

I love the Masses of Easter Week. The readings are sublime. The Church bedecked with flowers.

“Filled with awe and great joy, the women came quickly away from the tomb and ran to tell the disciples.” (Matthew 28:8-15)

They have been running ever since… to tell us.

We were back in London by the evening. The priest looking at the packed congregation in the Cathedral asked us to lift our faces, smile: Christ is Risen, He is Risen Indeed. Be happy! If it is true, we should never again have an unhappy day. The trouble is we don’t really believe.

There is a hole in the Lady Chapel; the roof is being repaired and the Abbey is freezing. The Vigil with welcoming of catechumens lasted three hours. I was hunched in my four layers including scarf and anorak. I’m not sure I went to bed full of joy, just tired and cold.

We were discussing Aquinas’s proofs of the existence of God. My belief is that these rational proofs are themselves subject to leaps of reason. Religion can only be preached; the proof of its value is the effect it has on one.

We have these grudges, these ambitions, these angers but as Father Sebastian put it to me Our Lord’s Passion is not about us sharing in it but of Him relieving us of our burdens.

And the least of the burdens was carrying the Cross from Wells to Downside. I went to bed full of joy.

Why can’t one feel this joy in one’s ordinary life? Because in ordinary life, you don’t spend your hours of the day in church and four hours on a Cross walk.

We were in the Abbey. I couldn’t help thinking of the new pope washing the feet of the inmates in the young offenders’ institution. Our service was a bit of a family affair: one son serving, another carrying the canopy above the Host, a daughter doing the collection.

“He has sent me to bring good news to the poor and to the blind new sight.” (Luke 4.16-21)

I went to the 1030 Mass and chanced upon a funeral. It was lovely. The couple had been married 60 years and met in the war. The reading was from the Wedding Feast at Cana. With rejoicing comes wine, with death and sorrow comes a new sort of rejoicing at a new start.

The two simple commands to believe in God and to love your neighbour are difficult. But we should see them not as an unattainable mountain top but as a slope we climb week after week, year and year.

I always find this passage confusing but beautiful.

“Now has the Son of Man been glorified and in Him God has been glorified. If God has been glorified in Him, God will in turn glorify Him in Himself.” (John 13:21-35)

Anyway, somehow we are being glorified and that’s all that’s important.

So it is coming. The week’s road to impending doom, like a well loved tragic novel, each day leading to the same thing. But I feel sorry for Lazarus; he doesn’t seem to have enjoyed his reawakening for long.

“Then the chief priests decided to kill Lazarus as well, since it was on his account that many of the Jews were leaving them and believing in Jesus.” (John 12:1-11)

How absurd to be distracted during the two-hour mass in the Cathedral by the little boy next to me kicking his feet. How easily we are distracted.

I always sympathise with Caiaphas.

“You fail to see that it is better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed.” (John 11:45-46)

But utilitarianism is always a blind alley because it has no direction save its own interest.

The Latin sung mass I heard today in the Cathedral was not utilitarian. It was something more important: beautiful.

I find and found when I heard this today a passage that impressed me hugely. Belief in Christ is tempered by our inability to think that one obscure man can indeed be God, the Creator of the Universe. But listen to today’s Gospel:

“Is it not written in your law, I said, you are Gods? So the law used the word Gods of those to whom the word of God was addressed. And scripture cannot be rejected.” (John 10,31:2,2)

So here Jesus is saying to his listeners, we are all gods. I find this reassuring. We are all part of God, are in this sense God. Or have I misunderstood? I have an uneasy feeling this may be another thought of mine that may not be quite orthodox. I am not a consecrated person. We are all priests.