While I served as abbot, it was my duty and privilege to deliver regular chapter talks. These conferences aimed to relate the community’s current concerns, hopes, and endeavours to the chapters of the Rule of St Benedict we had heard during the week. To read what is going on now in the light of a timeless ideal, asking ‘What does this mean?’, ‘Where is this taking us?’, was a helpful practice, I found. Under this tab I will try to do something similar, letting faith illumine life here and now.

Repairing the Wound

5 November 2021
I think there is an immense work of bearing to be done in the Church today. I think this bearing, consciously and freely assumed, is a precondition for healing. Continue reading

Traditionis custodia

17 September 2021
These days there is a tendency abroad that seeks to reduce ‘tradition’ to a term of partisanship, something one can be either for or against. It makes no sense. Continue reading

On my appointment

1 October 2019
In a world, a time, ever more marked by indifference and cynicism, hopelessness and division, it is our task to stand for something different: to point toward the Light that no darkness can overcome, to nurture good will, to let ourselves be reconciled, to enable a communion founded on trust, in peace, to bear witness that death has lost its sting, that life is meaningful and beautiful, of inviolable dignity. Continue reading

Vision

10 September 2017 General Chapter OCSO
I am moved by the intention to renew our life that it might be a sign to our times. Yet hopes for a new spring have, for many of us, been unfulfilled - we find ourselves in a state that is decidedly autumnal. Continue reading