Today the gospel crosses every border / All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace / Today the lost are found in His translation. / Whose mother-tongue is Love, in every nation. Drawn from Sounding the Seasons, my cycle of sonnets for the Church Year, this is a sonnet reflecting on and celebrating the themes [...]
On March the 25th many churches across the world, Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican, keep the feast of the Annunciation, and though we can no longer keep the feast outwardly and visibly in our churches, I would like to keep it inwardly and spiritually here with you. The Annunciation, the visit of Gabriel to the blessed [...]
The Lord is Risen! He is risen indeed Alleluia! Heres is an extra ‘fifteenth’ sonnet for Easter Morning, which I dedicate to my friend Mary who asked me to write it, and to the memory of her husband Gavin. May he rest in peace and rise in glory. Later today I will publish another Easter [...]
So many gospel themes find their focus on Maundy Thursday, so many threads of connection flowing to and from this deep source of love and vision, in the foot washing, and in the last supper. The meditation in this sonnet is centred on the ancient idea of the four elements of earth, air, water and [...]
The Gospel of John (John 12 1-8) tells us of how Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus. I love this intense and beautiful moment in the Gospels, The God of the Cosmos enters as a vulnerable man into all the particular fragility of our human friendships and intimacy. I love the way Jesus responds to Mary’s [...]
When Solomon dedicated the Temple he rightly declared that not even the Heaven of Heavens could contain almighty God, much less this temple made with hands, yet God himself still came into the temple. He came as a baby, the essence of all light and purity in human flesh, he came as a young boy [...]
The Gospel reading for this second Sunday of Epiphany (John 1:43-51) takes us to one of the most mysterious and beautiful moments in the New Testament. As the disciples begin to gather around Jesus, Philip finds Nathanael and says “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law, and the prophets did write, Jesus [...]
As we come towards Hallowe’en, it's worth remembering that the word "Hallowe’en" itself simply means "the eve of all Hallows", and All Hallows is the Christian feast of All Saints, or All Saints Day’, a day when we think particularly of those souls in bliss who, even in this life, kindled a light for us, [...]
We may find in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s writings essential guides for the seas we have to navigate in the “post-modern” era. Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Malcolm Guite (Hodder & Stoughton, 2017) The following passage is a brief extract from my book Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This book was written [...]
The 8th of May is the feast day of Julian of Norwich (ed. May 13th in the Catholic Church), sometimes known as Mother Julian or Lady Julian. She was an English Mystic of the late fourteenth Century, living as an anchoress in Norwich. Her life as an anchoress, finding Christ in isolation, and then finding [...]
Holy Saturday is a strange, still day, hanging in an unresolved poise between the darkness of the day before and the light that is not yet with us. No more so than now, in the preternatural stillness emptiness and grief of this pandemic, when life is paused, but also perhaps poised on the threshold of [...]
Here is my sonnet for St. Patrick’s Day. While Patrick is of course primarily associated with Ireland where he flourished as a missionary in the second half of the fifth century, he was not Irish to begin with. He seems to have been a shepherd on the mainland of Great Britain and was in fact [...]
Scribe of the Kingdom, Keeper of the Door As well as being St. Cecilia's day, 22nd November is also the day C.S. Lewis died in 1963. I remember the great celebration of his life, work and witness we had throughout 2013 and especially the honour and pleasure I had in lecturing on him at St. [...]
The feast of the Visitation usually falls on the 31st of May. It celebrates the lovely moment in Luke's Gospel (1:41-56) when Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was also, against all expectations, bearing a child, the child who would be John the Baptist. Luke tells us that the Holy Spirit came upon [...]