Category Archives: Devotional

I missed this one too back on 6 July. It was a difficult one to write, being about two martyrs of the British Counter Reformation – two men about whom good can be said but who, in the end, sadly missed the point. Only This (For John Fisher and Thomas More) When all is revealed,Continue reading “Only This (For John Fisher and Thomas More)”

Here is another poem belonging earlier in the calendar. This one was written for the third Sunday of Easter. Like Him We saw Him; He sat With us and ate A piece of bread. We heard His voice and Knew it; He Showed His hands and Feet to say: Do ghosts have hands And feetContinue reading “Like Him”

Collating my poems so far, I have realised that there were a few days in the calendar which I missed. I am now going back to write the missing poems, and will post them, a little out of order, as I write them. This poem was written for the second Sunday of Easter. Ears, HandsContinue reading “Ears, Hands and Eyes”

You want me to tell you why God is to be loved and how much. I answer, the reason for loving God is God Himself; and the measure of love due to Him is immeasurable love. (Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God) The honey-tongued doctor With his gentlest words And his stern rod of powerContinue reading “De Amore Dei (For Bernard of Clairvaux)”

It starts with a child on his knees: Lord, I am so small; this task Is vast beyond my comprehension. How can I know now what to do? This is how it starts – the tremor and The sense of awe, the knowledge that The universe is bigger than All of our strength and prideContinue reading “Fear and Wisdom (Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost)”

My soul will magnify the Lord, Though my body humbles Him – Eternity contained within a womb; Grand kingdoms thrown to the ground And humble plots of land raised up; The hungry filled, the complacent hungry; The pure made from earthly soil; The humble one called blessed. All this is reversed when Eternity enters myContinue reading “Magnificat (For Mary, Mother of Jesus)”

I. It is hard for those who have never known persecution, And who have never known a Christian, To believe these tales of Christian persecution. (T.S. Eliot, Choruses from “The Rock”) When we saw the trains go by, We did not ask who rode in them. When we saw the churches close, We must confessContinue reading “Faces in the Colosseum (For the Martyrs of the 20th Century)”

Lord take from thy Servants sad carefulness, and all distrust and give us onely such a proportion of temporal things, as may enable us with comfort to do our duty. (Jeremy Taylor, The Golden Grove) If, he suggested, we thought of each day as being a day of business, we would rise with the firstContinue reading “Punctuation and Breath (For Jeremy Taylor)”

I. Absalom, my son! he cries. Absalom, my son, my son! Would that I had died, not you, O Absalom, my son my son Absalom! My son II. Deal gently with the boy, he said, The father with the son that raged And took his wives and took his bed And wanted now to takeContinue reading “Bread in the Springtime Part Three (Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost)”