Category Archives: The Swelling Year

All this day O Lord, let me touch as many lives as possible for thee; and every life I touch do thou by thy spirit quicken, whether through the word I speak, the prayer I breathe, or the life I live. Amen (A Prayer of Mary Sumner) God of all generations, all mothers and allContinue reading “Silence and a Candle (For Mary Sumner)”

If we picture him, as so many do, seated with the red inquisitors, seeking heretics in each closet, proud in righteousness and judgment, we must not silence in memory the man who fought with truth as his sharp weapon and never took a place of power but kept his mouth a flaming torch; or theContinue reading “Dominic and the Inquisitors (For Dominic, Priest and Friar)”

Who was he, do you think, when he shone there that day, whiter than all the world’s bleach could make him, when we climbed up the mountain and he was ablaze and our hearts were dilated within us? Why was he joined up there, on that stark mountain-top with those prophets, Elijah and Moses, whoContinue reading “Who Was He? (For the Transfiguration of the Lord)”

I. David tore his clothes and cried to God for mercy, though his sin had dwelt within the heart of him for many days and years. For God had said through Nathan that the sins that he had kept in private would be shown throughout the lands when his enemy would take King David’s wivesContinue reading “Bread in the Springtime Part 2 (Tenth Sunday After Pentecost)”

Where others had forsaken heaven’s king on gaining earthly kingdoms or had fled further into their monastic realm, Oswald, son of Aethelfrith, though gaining lands that reached out far and wide, did not forget the kingdom that no human eye could see. And one day, so Bede relates, he sat at table with a silverContinue reading “The Ageless Kingdom (For Oswald, King and Martyr)”

Today the church remembers a French priest of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jean-Baptiste-Marie-Vianney, who helped restore the church after the French Revolution. Poem for John Baptist Vianney The years since he had hidden from The army he’d deserted Had seen the people dance amidst The decadence of peace. The little Corsican Emperor, Falling downContinue reading “Poem for John Baptist Vianney”

If they believed as through a cloud or through the mist, tenaciously clinging onto prodigious light and glimpses of the city through the haziness of law and death; If they lay like Jacob on their deathbeds, prophesying of what great lions would grow from the children he had raised and how Egypt soon would fadeContinue reading “The Tenacity of Belief (For Men and Women of the Old Testament)”

I have won the smiles of the lofty and the proud. I have had the high priest’s ear, won favour all around. Before the Sabbath, I will take Your hanging body down. I was righteous by the law; I have sealed my own defence. I have stood against them all and had my words hurledContinue reading “The Garden and the Tomb (For Joseph of Arimathea)”

For, though our bodies must be trained and strengthened to withstand the stress of life and all its straining days, and though our hearts and lungs must learn the best rhythm, the smoothest flow, learnt through all our daily drills, our spirits too must learn to tell the good from ill and the true fromContinue reading “The Spiritual Exercises (For Ignatius of Loyola)”

He bubbled full of divine joy; His picture always smiles. Though overburdened with the world, He danced on Clapham’s green. His house was always full of guests; His table overflowed. He chased his children round the room And coughed a quiet knell. He called for Sunday to consume Our tokenistic hearts. He said his pieceContinue reading “The Practical View (For William Wilberforce)”