The icon of Our Lady of Vladimir, pictured below, was just catching the golden rays of the setting sun when the photographer happened to pass by … Today’s feast, which has ancient roots, commemorates a younger Mary, in fact the beloved child of Anne and Joachim who presented and dedicated her to God in the […]

This aperture in a bank in our garden is a mere twelve inches high, but looks as if it could be the entire height of a human person! We think the foxes may use it to take their rest … Many of the saints spent time in caves, to give themselves entirely to prayer, as […]

This thirteenth century Benedictine nun was known as the ‘Nightingale of Helfta’. The Lord said to her: ‘Everything you have and by which you can please me you have from me and through me’. She never forgot this, and was faithful throughout her life, as Novice Mistress and Choir Mistress. One of her novices was […]

This feast commemorates the two basilicas which house the tombs of the two great saints. St Peter’s tomb is well known; St Paul’s less so; it is in the church known as ‘St Paul’s outside the walls’. Beneath the altar is a marble tombstone bearing the words ‘Paulo Apostolo Mart.,’ ‘Paul, Apostle, Martyr’. May these […]

‘You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you they will put to death; you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives’. These are the final words of today’s Gospel […]

This great Benedictine saint wrote: ‘I understand that, each time we contemplate with desire and devotion the host in which is hidden Christ’s Eucharistic Body, we increase our merits in heaven and secure special joys to be ours later in the beatific vision of God’. May we find time in our busy days to do […]

‘From the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator’. These words come from our Old Testament reading today, and are as apt now as the day on which they were written. ‘The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end’. So from the […]

Some words from today’s reading from the book of Wisdom: ‘She is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image […]

Some more words from the book of Wisdom: ‘For they will be made holy who observe holy things in holiness, and those who have been taught them will find a defence. Therefore set your desire on my words; long for them, and you will be instructed’. We become like that which we love; we become […]

‘The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be an affliction, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace’. This reading from […]