‘Death,’ says His Grace, ‘throws it all apart. For we are not as we should be. Faith requires our adjustment to God’s truth. God’s triumph in a very real sense [ … ]

The impression clearly formed is that the Archbishop’s ideas are not mere bookish speculation but, as it were, bucket-and-spade, in the sense of his having visited the place where he thinks it was that Jesus was baptized. He tells us about the place, in the Holy Land, over the Jordan, where there is a confluence, troubled waters, and danger in entering into them. The picture he evokes of broiling surge, plunging deep, a GPS map-point, a trial in ways apart from our sacrament. Where waters churn and threaten to swallow you. And he is convinced it happened there. He is convinced. He relates it to our own baptism [ … ]

Technically accomplished, stylistically brilliant, Tomàs’s ‘Gospel’ is at once a tale of hope in the discovery of love in Jesus – of hope in redemption, forgiving, forgetting, and denial – and it is a journey through those troubled, complex regions of the disappearing centre of Catholic faith [ … ]

On the square: a church with no regular priest. Still, the church was open, that first exploration, and it was clean, loved and well-maintained. Prayerful, you might say. The interior walls new brick. Simple and holy. Two women were making arrangements with the flowers and such like and they looked at me blankly then upon enquiry in Spanish they told me there was to be a Mass on Sunday [ … ]

Duly, we are ashed. Communion follows. Adedokun, serving, puts it all together, takes it all apart. Our thoughts rest, solemn, as we aren’t asked to sing our way out of it. It is one of the good times. Quietly, just sitting like that, it’s pretty good. Dry. All careful-minded. It seems they must see we are taking it the way it is meant to be – solemnly [ … ]

Then at ten-past-ten we go upstairs. Visiting teachers often prefer this space.

There is natural light and fresh air. Today, we sit on chairs only, gathered around close, with no desks in the way of us. His Grace works from a flip-book. A set-piece. He sits always gently bobbing – the quiet thrill of it. The flip-book has clearly seen previous use. And big Clarks shoes and fade-to-black socks… There is a quiet examination of consciousness. I confess… Then we say a Hail Mary. Some part of what the Archbishop says to us is this:

‘What I should like to do today is to pose to you possibly the most important question, which is this: How can we ready ourselves for the experience of Easter? [ … ]

On Tuesday, His Grace turns to the theme of Jesus’ hidden years. His Grace asks the students to consider questions concerning what really happened: ‘Who, for instance, was Joseph? Was [ … ]

On Thursday, there is more lost-history to contemplate. More Christian life unknown. Certainly, His Grace tacitly withdraws some measure of the veil of – more creative years. Though what he has to say does not overtly contradict received Church teaching.

His Grace moves the beginnings of Christian faith – the Church – as from stunned remains: Jerusalem razed – as our first generations looked back onto it.

This nexus of salvation-history – all history pointed forwards-backwards either way in faith in Jesus. As, in intervening centuries, disparate communities scatter through what is becoming a wreckage of Empire, spiritual waste, gather their scraps, and they begin to communicate. Truth-recalled – reverse-transcribed like RNA like a retrovirus – penetrated into the pagan world laid out for it – became life [ … ]

We were at Lourdes before we crossed the Pyrenees. This lies back in the days when I wanted a clean faith, a vertical faith, where I could just be me, and nothing to do with home. Later, I have come to know, and quite to like, that modern Catholicism’s splashed all over the blessed place, a more womany religion, and perhaps that is its secret heart. Fundamentally vulgar, squalid, domestic, this, necessarily, was an attempt to share. All manner of things. All manner of stuff and business. Normally, the rule is, Mum and I talk through the dog: Samson’s very happy to see you. Samson was missing you. Oh look, Samson’s giving you his paw. That’s how we share most directly. That’s how we confer such mutual feeling and human emotion. I had wanted to share a lot, but we never did – not directly. Now this delicate matter of Catholic faith [ … ]

Sometimes, when I read my Bible, I pause in the reading and say to myself: ‘This bit’s real.’ It would be fair to say, I have issues with Mary, because, [ … ]

The Carrefour will be open, where I can buy nuts for the red squirrel, who lives in Campo Grande. The red squirrel is Valladolid’s best bit. Even as a child, [ … ]