Collected here are articles and reviews that have appeared in print, as well as a presentation of my books. There are a few interviews and some sound material, notably my reading of the Gospels in Greek, a project that remains work in progress.
Benedict left Rome in search of solitude, but was not alone when he set out. With him went his nurse.
Continue reading It is an illusion to think I can spend 95% of my waking hours in a state of frenzy — running after people, doing chores, scrolling on the phone — then dive into contemplative ecstasy the moment I set aside seven minutes to pray. We prepare our time of prayer by the way we live the rest of the time.
Continue reading To what do you attribute a growing interest in Catholicism? I think people feel attracted to it because it’s true; that’s the fundamental reason.
Continue reading Benedict’s example stands for a critical view of the turbulent, unsleeping city, of its rat-races and pleasure-hunts, inviting us to ask: Is this really what I want?
Continue reading Any charism, to last, must eventually find objective expression in a framework of sharable stability. There is no inevitable contradiction between rule and life - the challenge is to maintain the rule infused with life, and to regulate vitality.
Continue reading Once we have allowed a thought or desire into our heart and mind, it settles and makes itself comfortable. We are not built as computers: there is no ‘delete’ function that will, when a button is pressed, get rid of undesirable content.
Continue reading The Fathers had an ability to see things and situations as they are, without illusions but also without melodrama, trusting that God’s grace can draw blessings out of everything as long as we take right measures to stay faithful and attentive where we happen to be, keeping alive our deepest, truest self, the one that grows and blossoms out of God’s call.
Continue reading There are inevitable times of tension in store for those who embrace a life of spiritual pursuits when they discover the continued exigence of practical life, those times when Benedictines dream of becoming Cistercians, Cistercians hanker after the Charterhouse, and Carthusians dream of a solitary mountain-top with steep access.
Continue reading Poemen is not satisfied to upbraid his neighbour; he is concerned for his salvation.
Continue reading There has, alas, been no shortage within living memory of bishops and priests bringing shame on the ordained ministry. Their legacy calls for justice, conversion, and tears - let us not for a moment, though, think, that an unworthy steward can sabotage God’s design.
Continue reading If I incline to judge certain people, or categories of people, harshly, it is very possibly because, at some subliminal level, I find myself standing accused: my prompt judgment may well be an act of self-defence by means of attack.
Continue reading I was asked - Is it possible to speak of chastity today? It would seem that it is.
Continue reading Perhaps I cannot change, doomed to remain forever in settled patterns of dysfunction and sin? Some of us will know such thoughts from experience.
Continue reading If we just talk and talk and talk, we end up repeating ourselves, peddling banalities, just saying what people have heard already. We bore ourselves, and we bore other people even more.
Continue reading Since Christ died for all, and since the ultimate vocation of human beings is in fact one, and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every person the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery. Such is the mystery of man, and it is a great one.
Continue reading The Fathers would rather be disdained than idealised. We find the same concern alive in modern saints, a test of authenticity.
Continue reading To speak of high ideals is delightful. It is easy to assume that by talking of virtues I acquire them, rather the way we might think that by purchasing a book we have read it.
Continue reading If there is one thing that strikes us to the point of nausea when we consider famous, once highly esteemed spiritual teachers and founders who, within living memory, have come tumbling down from their pedestals, is it not precisely the lurid nature of their betrayals?
Continue reading Our Lord’s command of charity obliges us, as Catholics, to work for a good and just society.
Continue reading The monk seems to embody the very type of a pacified human being, whose inward order is outwardly reflected in a grave demeanour and measured movement. What image might such a person use in order to provide a simile apt to render the secret of his consecrated life?
Continue reading The Lord who calls us is free to choose whatever means he deems effective to open our hearts, bodies, and minds to this great gift. An infirmity or injury, a serious diagnosis, that may at first make us feel as if we were struck down by destiny can turn out to be, in fact, a provision made by a kind yet nonetheless cross-shaped providence.
Continue reading Xenophobia is fear of people who are not locals. Xeniteia is at heart a neutral term indicating the state of living abroad, be it as a trafficked worker or as a wealthy retiree in a comfortable flat on the Costa del Sol.
Continue reading The enclosure of philosophy within a narrow framework of technical terms and assumptions was a notable feature of intellectual life in the twentieth century. As a result many women and men take it for granted, now, that philosophy has nothing to say to them - ‘philosophical’ has come to spell ‘useless’.
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