St Ita’s name means ‘thirst for holiness’. I think of that often – how we start our lives in Christ with such thirst, such hunger, such openness to God’s grace, only to slowly become tired and open ourselves once again … Read More

A few days ago, I posted an icon and a few words about St Thaney, the mother of St Kentigern. A young woman, a child really, who was raped by a man in power, she was then rejected by her … Read More

St Thaney became pregnant after being raped when she was very much still a child. She was so innocent in her youth that her abuser was able to make her believe that he was in fact a woman and that … Read More

At times, Christ finds a soul who so loves Him and so gives herself to Him that He fully unites Himself with her, and the human soul becomes Christ-like even in this life. For such souls, though, earthly life is … Read More

Some years ago, I witnessed the death of a lovely lady who was slowly taken away by cancer. It was a terrifying experience for all involved, but it mostly affected her daughter, who was the old lady’s only child. When … Read More

Today – October 11th – we celebrate St Kenneth’s Feast Day – his isle, where he lived as a hermit for some time, is just off the coast of Mull. His cave, which can still be visited today, is one … Read More

Decades ago, when my spiritual father was a little boy in Communist Romania, he came very close to death. A violent disease almost killed him. An orphan by father, with a mother exhausted by worry and work, the four-year-old child … Read More

Bishops, priests and monastics – male and female – can suffer (God willing, maybe not all of us do) from a type of loneliness that comes from the responsibility of always comforting (without being comforted), always forgiving (without ever being … Read More

I look at St Bede’s life and it becomes obvious to me that the madness of the world in which we we live feeds on our lack of love for each other. We can scream at each other at the … Read More