John 21:1-14 Just after my A levels I was able to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Our visit to the Sea of Tiberias stands out for me as a time of grace. In what was a fairly packed itinerary, there was suddenly time to sit and watch the water. It was a relief …
Category Archives: Monastic
Easter Thursday
Luke 24:35-48 This Gospel passage gives the impression that Jesus just appears among his disciples. They are startled and Jesus reassures them with his greeting of ‘Peace be with you.’ Understandably they think he is a ghost and he reassures them again: ‘Touch me and see for yourselves.’ If I imagine myself among the disciples …
Easter Wednesday
Luke 24:13-35 Luke paints the picture of the disciples at the end of an emotional journey where crucifixion has dashed their hopes. As they walk they talk to each other. There is a sense in which the journey is a time of healing as the disciples verbalise the experiences of the past days. A stranger …
Easter Monday
Matthew 28:8-15 ‘Filled with awe and great joy the women came quickly away from the tomb and ran to tell the disciples.’ These words leapt out at me this morning. I went searching for a picture that would capture ‘awe and great joy’. I had to settle for depicting ‘joy’, but not before I had …
Easter Sunday Reel
Easter Sunday by miriam.birgitte
Easter Sunday
John 20:1-9 I’ve always loved the early morning. I was usually the first up at home and loved to be in school extra early. There is something about the quiet and the dark that prepares me for the day. I can easily picture myself with Mary Magdalene, having awoken from a light sleep and feeling …
Holy Saturday
LAMENTATIONS OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAH Holy Saturday is often spoken about as a day of ‘emptiness and numbness’. On one level this is true, but since entering the monastery I have discovered another dimension. On a day when you could feel out of sorts and not quite know what to do the for best, the …
Good Friday
Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9 Every piece of text in the Good Friday liturgy is heavy with meaning. Pieces of scripture that I may have heard throughout the year have a whole new resonance today. I found it hard to pick just one text. I settled on the text from Hebrews. In a series of fairly complicated …
Maundy Thursday
Exodus 12:1-8,11-14John 13:1-15 Each year I am stuck by how much the liturgy invites us to engage our senses during Holy Week. We wave a palm branch, we hear the story of the anointing and can imagine the smell of the perfume filling the house, we picture the silver coins of betrayal and the darkness …
Wednesday of Holy Week
Isaiah 50:4-9 Matthew 26:14-25 Today we have Matthew’s telling of the Last Supper. Once again Judas is in full focus and his actions seem inevitable. Those thirty pieces of silver are lodged in our collective imagination through art, poetry and hymnody. Stories of betrayal are always uncomfortable. Betrayal can happen in a matter of seconds. We …