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. Here too, are some conferences delivered in Rome for the Vatican Lenten Retreat 2026, at the request of Pope Leo XIV.

Entering Lent

22 February 2026‘Whoever says “I abide in him”’, who claims to know Christ, ‘ought to walk just as he walked.’ Such is the criterion of Christian authenticity.

Bernard the Idealist

23 February 2026Bernard’s was a quicksilver nature containing and having to equilibrate massive tensions. His teaching on conversion is born of a Biblical culture second to none and of well pondered notions of theology – it is also, increasingly so with the passage of time, born of personal struggle.

God’s Help

23 February 2026God can enable a new world to emerge after he has pulled down walls we thought were the world, walls within which we actually suffocated. CONTINUE READING

Becoming Free

A variety of political causes in Europe now harness the jargon of freedom. Tensions result – what one segment of society perceives as ‘liberating’ is found oppressive by others. Continue reading

Splendour of Truth

What is truth?’ People of our time ask it earnestly, often with remarkable good will, notwithstanding their confusion, fear, and the rush they are always in – we cannot let it go unanswered. Continue reading

The Fall of Thousands

Not every fall ends in exhilaration – there are falls that reek hellishly, bringing destruction to the guilty and carrying ruin in their wake. That wake is often broad and long, pulling in many innocents. Continue reading

Glory

Augustine liked to say that we carry the image of glory in an ‘obscure form’. Once we have passed through this life, the form will reveal itself explicit and ‘luminous’. Continue reading

God’s Angels

An angel is a guardian of holiness. An angelic encounter is always personal – it cannot be replaced by a download or a chatbot. Continue reading

Bernard the Realist

The more Bernard recognised the cry for mercy in human hearts, in bitter tears, in worldly conflicts, in madcap campaigns against decency and truth, and in the whisper of the trees of the forest, the more he was conscious of God’s gracious response. He heard it in the holy name of Jesus, which became unspeakably dear to him. Continue reading

On Consideration

Though the pastoral burden does have a fearful aspect, it is fearful only if we fail to notice who puts the burden on our shoulders. It is no less a participation in the sweet yoke of Christ, who lets us discover that the cross-bar entrusted to us is luminous and light, that a share in it is joyful. Continue reading

To Communicate Hope

Around us, the cross-overshadowed naves of ancient cathedrals are handed over to mini-golf; sanctuaries are used for secular skits designed, in desperation, to display ‘relevance’. Meanwhile, a stone’s throw away, in the secular arena, the young disconsolately sway, softly singing that life is an open wound and that there is no balm in Gilead. Continue reading