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.

An object lesson in staying awake. I was motoring along the coast – going slowly against wind and tide, looking at a fisherman a hundred yards off and suddenly there was an enormous crash: the boat had hit an undersea obstacle and came to a shuddering halt. I flew forward badly bruising my chin on the side of the cockpit. If it had been a hand or an eye or someone had been on the forecastle it could have been serious. One moment placid calm; the next disaster.

We just do not know when the time will come.

I was journeying down to my small boat.

We were trying to get there before low tide cut us off and we had to get six people and their tent and two bicycles in the car. We made it just then. A windy passage with sails reefed and finding a camp site for half of us on the island. No time to think of anything else, neither the problems of today nor tomorrow.

Gabriel again dwelt in his mind on the words of today’s reading and the story of the bridesmaids, five of whom do not put enough oil in their lamps and missed the wedding.

The same courage. Stay awake.

Gabriel was in a church in London. He was studying this reading:

“Stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming.” (Matthew 24:92-95)

Gabriel visited once again the great abbey church. He could only be there a short time.

His dream the night before had been explicit.

He was inside the door of a monastery he had visited abroad. Again he had only been there once in the midst of a journey. But the message in the dream was clear. He should persevere in his journey and in his writing about it.

Daniel was still worrying about work. The Psalm comforted him.

“With night heaviness endures, with morning joy returneth.”

Despite all his doubts and worries, perhaps he would have been reassured by today’s psalm:

“I am sure I shall see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living.”

“Heavyness may endure for a night
But joy comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30)

Gabriel had had a weary night of worrying. He opened the Book of Common Prayer at the first place his finger fell and found Psalm 30. Despite his fumbling doubts, he felt that he should do no more nor less than the psalm commanded him to do.

The question today in the gospel has a resonance for all our characters and for ourselves.

“Who do you say the Son of Man is?
But you, who do you say I am.”

Gabriel thinks he knows or is prepared for peace of mind to assume that he is God.

Thomas doubts it but is open-minded and searches.

Anna believes he is earth, sky, and God in all, but God is in all.

Daniel is so overburdened with troubles of his own that he is too busy to enquire.

Antony knows he is just a great moral teacher and a good man. But you, who do you think he is?

Is any question more important? We actively need no learning to know the answer. Peter has none and he knows the answer.

“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

We enquire too much perhaps.

Gabriel had a dream. He dreamt that a dog was doing all the work in the house and the office but strangely the working dog was locked inside the dozing dog. The dozing dog was loved and pampered. The working dog was paddling furiously in the dark.

Gabriel for some reason in a dream was allowed to open up the outer loving dog and find the working dog fill of dirt. Was this dream an allegory for the rarity of love and regard and a pleas for those who do all the work anyway?

In today’s readings, Naomi returns to Israel with her daughter in law Ruth who gives up her husband to remain loyal to her mother in law. Her husband has died. She is rewarded with a new husband Boaz and progeny. A simple loyal woman who founded a dynasty.

Gabriel looked up from the hills over a great plain of wood and distant towns and nearby houses. And he could not pray, even though distant clouds brought soft rain and an extraordinary grey whiteness to the whole landscape.

That night he stared in the wood fire, flames leaping, smoke rising and listened to Bruckner’s Ave Maria on the radio and he could not pray.

Then later he went out and stared over the moonlit landscape, with a full moon.

Sometimes he had sat alive in the great dark abbey church and an extraordinary prayerfulness had come over him.

Now the whole moonlit courtyard, black shadowed, rearing up was a great abbey church and the distant star the tabernacle light and he could pray.