The Solemnity of All Saints, like its counterpart, All Souls, is a wonderful feast of encouragement. It reminds us that the communion of saints is a reality both now and hereafter. I think we do not always appreciate that fact, so focused are we on all that is wrong with the world and indeed ourselves.

One of the things the recent flood (O.K. six) of applications to join the community has taught us is that people are searching for communion and community with an urgency we have not seen for a while. Perhaps today we could each spend a few minutes thinking about how we build up community in our own situation and circumstances. Paradoxically, in a monastery, where we are bound together by the deepest of all bonds, our union in Christ, our celebration of the sacraments and our sharing of the gospel, we know we really have to work at maintaining unity. It is a gift, but one for which we have to prepare the way; and there is no other way except the way of renunciation, the way marked out for us by Jesus Christ himself.

(Podcast on All Saints 2010 now posted.)