NOTES ON SUDDEN LIGHT- gaining strength where it seems there is none

Well that really does work. As my day has gone by chinks of light have broken through and dispelled the muddy grey. Many of those chinks have been of your making so thank you! My desk is still messy as hell but whatever. I have been thinking today that without the challenge we would be so much weaker. The broken history of England's Church means you are never short of a challenge but it makes the triumphs even brighter. At Cambridge we had an amazing Catholic chaplain who made sure that every month we would have mass in a different college chapel. As many of you will know many of these chapels date back to before the Reformation. Each of these masses felt like coming home. That is not to say that the Christians who prayed in these churches the rest of the time were not worthy Christians or that their prayers are worth less but simply that these were built as Catholic churches before 1536 and to bring Christ back felt quite electric.

Of these masses I had two favourites; one in Kings chapel which is large and overwhelming but that day had a presence which I never felt there before that mass and never again after as the sun came through the windows and hit upon the raised host. Suddenly that whole place felt smaller-like it had come into focus. The other was on bank holiday Monday in May when we would dress in our academic gowns and celebrate the life and death of John Fisher. This saint founded two of the colleges but, when he refused to refute his faith, found the University turned against him and made him an exile. For the Medieval church of St Mary's to be filled with candles- celebrating him at the heart of his University five hundred years after his death is evidence- there is a greater plan-faith will triumph...in the end