The newspapers are full of legal attacks on Christians. It is true that Christianity is under attack particularly in the Middle East but I can’t believe that a few laws will make much difference here.

The danger here is just indifference and a kind of lazy rationality that dismisses the Christian story as legend and myth. People aren’t going to cease to be Christians because a silly law prevents prayers being said before council meetings. It’s when the councillors get home and don’t want to say a prayer in the privacy of their minds that Christianity will start to die.

I was trying to get to sleep by saying the Rosary and I came to Christ’s Passion. I was struck as I have not been struck before by his curious interests. So vigorous before so active; at the moment of supreme trial, he says virtually nothing and when he does so, it is along the lines of “If you say so, so be it”.

No doubt this is obvious to others but previously I have focussed on the events, on the pain and horror, but in all this whirlpool I now realise there is a calm acceptance after the Garden and this Gabriel is I suppose the point of all this. Even for those who search and who do not yet completely believe this acceptance of fate and suffering and inevitable death that comes to all of us, the supreme moral of the story. If it was in a work of Tolstoy it would be immortal on its own, but because it is suffused with mystery it is extraordinarily powerful, whatever one’s beliefs.

There was a debate on in the House of Commons. There were perhaps a dozen or so attending at any one time. It’s strange how self-absorbed we are. 100,000 dead perhaps in the last year but once this year when we were discussing Murdoch, the House was absolutely packed, seething with anger, interest, and excitement. I had to shout to make myself heard – indeed, drew attention to it.

Nothing changes. Apparently when in the 1930s, they were discussing the future shape of the government of India and that led to hundreds of thousands dying, the House was almost completely empty: just Churchill and a few “die-hards” and one or two enthusiasts on the other side.

I went with my daughter to see the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy. It does you good to see so many pictures so recently and so quickly done of so many scenes so close at hand to north Lincolnshire in East Yorkshire. He has done his own interpretation of Claude Lorrain’s ‘The Sermon on the Mount’.

Whilst it is inconceivable that I could ever paint anything approaching Claude’s genius, it is somehow possible to have a stab at Hockney-like trees. Of course, Gabriel, one’s own mediocrity is not galling, it is just a fact. … Little steps.

We only went to see Hockney because it was a few steps from a conference on Somalia at Chatham House. Strange transition, from the horrors of Somalia to the peaceful Yorkshire wolds.

“The people honour me with lip service.” (Mark 7:1-13)

We use this phrase – paying someone with lip service – too often but although we do it I’m not sure we always realise the significance.

In today’s reading from Mark 6:53-56, Jesus goes about his normal daily work at Genezareth. It is routine for him. All our lives are routine, his was just doing a couple of miracles every day!

The thought occurred to me that for evil to really triumph, it is not just necessary for it to happen, but freedom be curtailed in an attempt to stop it happening.

I was alone after compline in the abbey church and lit a candle in front of the statue of Jesus. As I walked by I looked down the steps into the crypt and felt frightened, as if Death was down there. But the picture nearby of the Raising of Lazarus gave me the reassurance that death is not passing by, one can pass by death.

But the reading from the day before lingers, one of the most intense in the Gospels. What is its appeal – it is a sort of final acceptance, a laying down of the burden which will come to all of us.

“Now Master, you can let your servant go in peace, just as you promised, because my eyes have seen the salvation, which you have prepared before all the nations, a light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.” (Luke 2:29-32)

A most striking reading today is from Malachi 3:1-4:

“He is like the refiner’s fire and the fuller’s herb.”

It is not a concept, an early industrial process that we understand very well today, but it is an intense image.

I was talking to a friend and we were reading together a passage of spiritual literature. What struck me was the author’s faith in being childlike in faith. That it was only by some kind of childlike surrender of will and reason that one could find acceptance and therefore faith.

I was dreaming again. Now in my mind’s eye I saw a golden statue ahead of me. I somehow knew that this statue was all of us and we only need to have confidence, to have faith in ourselves, then we can do anything.

I had a dream about this politician that doesn’t exist. I know he doesn’t exist because his name was meaningless. But I still resented his success.

What does this tell me? That we will always be jealous of others even if they don’t exist.

I am still thinking of yesterday’s reading.

“Master, do you not care? We are going down.” (Mark 4:35-41)

How can we develop this element of insouciance?

When out sailing alone I have often been frightened by waves that were really not that difficult. Perhaps I should have remembered today’s reading more.

“Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?” (Mark 4:35-41)

When somebody recounts at great length all their woes, we try to listen and be helpful. But sooner or later we lose patience. I was thinking during such a conversation, if there is a God, how could he possibly listen patiently to all the woes addressed to him? If there are seven billion people on this planet, with a large proportion complaining to Him and asking for His intercession and if there are probably countless other billions of planets in the universe with intelligent life, how does He cope?

As I lay there dozing, thinking of this and coming to the conclusion that this surely proves that God cannot exist, a penetrating thought, a belief, an argument, came to mind that established that God could indeed listen to and act on all these simultaneous billions of prayers. Then I fell asleep and next morning could not remember the brilliant argument – frustrating!

There was a rare debate in the House of Commons on defence. I feel so strongly about our weakness in a dangerous world after abandoning for ten years our aircraft carriers that I got up at 5:00am and hurried back from Strasbourg. You always wonder if speaker after speaker warning of the dangers of a particular situation ever make any difference in the House of Commons, but it is all we can do. Before I sat down, I quoted Winston Churchill’s description of his sleepless night following the resignation of Eden which I quoted earlier. I am not sure if his doom-laden prophecy went down any better now than it did then.

We are debating “living wills” in the Council of Europe. I said they were a first step in a long campaign to legalise euthanasia. In the Council of Europe, unlike Westminster, pro-lifers can still win votes. So we inserted a strong amendment saying that whatever the future of living wills, euthanasia and ‘assisted dying’ or ‘encouraged exit’ as I call it should continue to be banned. We will never give up arguing that however old, “useless”, or crippled you are, you have as much right to full medical help as the rest of us.

I was walking around Strasbourg Cathedral, its great bells peeling out. It rises up around the buildings, soaring, dominating the street leading to it. What an extraordinary sight. On this day though I always think of St Francis de Sales climbing the mountains of the Haute Savoie and of my own long walks coming down the fields around the small churches like Ormaret, sometimes tiny, which perhaps Francis visited on his missions.

Sometimes the priest says something in confession that really helps. I was complaining about my impatience with others. He said that often those who are most impatient with others are most impatient with themselves. I was going to ask him how one deals with jealousy as well but by that time he had already started on his absolution so that will have to wait.

I was walking around Lincoln Cathedral at night and was struck anew by the extraordinary richness and detail of the stonework. The intricacy is extraordinary.

I had not realised until I watched a programme about the life of Pugin how he spent many hours as a young man being inspired by the gothic beauty of this place. As I stood for a moment amazed by the buttresses flying up around the chapter house, I could not doubt that the soaring faith of the men who built this could not be in vain.

Dear Gabriel,

The story of Jonah has much to tell us about jealousy and resentment. Jonah first doesn’t like the Ninevites whether they’re misbehaving or doing good and he gets his comeuppance.

How do we deal with regret? You can think of the prayer ‘Let just live one day at a time, remembering that yesterday is history, and tomorrow is another day’. A better way is to remember that we can’t remake time. We all know that time travel is impossible because we might change the past simply by visiting it. Equally if we had done one thing different in the past, it might have remade everyone’s present.

But if God exists, clearly He must be outside time, otherwise his life would be unbearably long and tedious. I don’t believe he knows the future or predetermines it. Like us, He knows only the past, otherwise He would have to predetermine countless millions of alternative futures. So the point of all this is that we have to be happy with the past as it is – our own and other peoples – and there should be no regret.

Today we were at the celebration of the restoration of St Peter’s Church at Stonyhurst. It is nearly two hundred years old, being built in 1835 shortly after the Catholic Emancipation in 1829. It could be said that it is only two hundred years old, not four hundred years old, but one can not reject it. Like everything else it is a necessary part of the past. We all are.

It has been inspiring to read in Martin Gilbert’s The Wilderness Years of Churchill’s lone crusade to warn his countrymen of the dangers of their policy of dust with regard to rearmament. I was struck by this moving passage on the resignation of Antony Eden from the government:

From midnight to dawn, I lay on my bed, consumed by emotions of sorrow and fear. There seemed one strong young figure standing up against long, dismal, drawling tides of drift and surrender, of wrong measurements and feeble impulses. Now he was gone. I watched the daylight slowly creep in through the windows and saw before me in mental gaze the vision of Death.

Saul publicly got even more jealous when David crept up on him while he was sleeping in the cave. David could have killed Saul but he only cut off the hem of his cape. Did he really believe his own words: ‘You are a more upright man than I,’ he said to David, ‘for you have repaid me with good while I have repaid you with evil.’

I went to see ‘Three Days in May’ at the theatre about the crucial days in May 1940 when Halifax wanted to start negotiations for peace. But what is remarkable about Churchill is his extraordinary forgiveness to the men of Munich – the Chamberlains and Halifaxs and Hoares who had been ignoring and bad-mouthing him for years.

There was a debate on ‘assisted dying’ in Westminster Hall. I was only allowed a couple of minutes to speak at the very end. Appropriate, perhaps. What do you say about dying in two minutes? But then we have a lifetime to prepare and only a short time to do it.

We believe that the body is simply the mirror of the soul, and however old, crippled or useless someone might seem to society—our society seems to be dominated by the worship of youth and beauty—they are of immense value to society and should be sustained by society to the very end of their lives.

I said that ‘assisted dying’ could too soon become ‘encouraged exit’ and that we valued old and ill people precisely because of that; because the body was the mirror of the soul and therefore of value whatever its state.

‘They have given David the tens of thousands,’ he said, ‘but we only the thousands; he has all but the kingship now.’

And Saul turned a jealous eye on David from that day forward. [1 Solomon 18:6-9; 19:1-7]

Ah, jealousy: how do we get rid of it? I do not know.