My attention wandered during Vigils this morning. I began by thinking about Gregory the Great as the Great Communicator. His letters are clear, concise treatments of the matter in hand, often marked by a commonsense approach which was anything but common at the time (Gregory on the role of women, marriage and what we would now call family life should be read by all who think the Catholic Church's teaching antediluvian in attitude). His liturgical reforms are legendary, and he was, of course, the first pope to come from a monastic background. Everyone knows he sent Augustine to these shores after seeing Anglo-Saxon slaves for sale in the slave-market (non Angli sed angeli).

That is where my distraction began. We know that Gregory was probably blue-eyed with fair hair himself (actually, he was pretty bald on top, but the hair at the sides was long and carefully curled, after the Roman fashion of the day). Both his parents were tall, so there is a distinct possibility that Gregory was, too. I wonder whether he saw in those young Anglo-Saxons a vision of himself in boyhood and thought what might have become of him had he not been a Christian? Our most important acts are sometimes prompted by thoughts and feelings that barely make a ripple on the surface of our conscious mind. Could it have been so with Gregory? I don't know, but I spent a pleasant couple of minutes wondering and I daresay I shall spend the rest of the day scrutinising some of my own motivations.

There's the rub. Distractions in themselves are neither good nor bad. It is what we do with them that counts.

(Note for the historically curious: Gregory had portraits of his parents frecoed on to the walls of his monastery of St Andrew's on the Caelian Hill and the monks had a portrait done of Gregory himself: these were seen about three hundred years later by John the Deacon, who described all three. Gordianus, Gregory's father, had "light eyes" and his mother, Silvia, had blue eyes. Gordianus's hair-colour was described as "light tawny". Clearly, neither was olive-skinned with dark eyes, as we might have expected.)

Why do so many people think of Christianity as joyless? They see only the prohibitions, I suppose, and regard them as a curtailment of freedom rather than as a means to true freedom. Then again, some people have to feel miserable in order to feel good; which is sad, especially when they inflict their views on those around them. Others worry and fret that anything they enjoy must somehow be sinful, or, even worse, be sinful for others.(How often has someone, wine-glass in hand, opined that they are shocked by the idea of nuns drinking wine; to which the only honest answer is, "Christ was a wine-bibber, and though I'm only drinking water at the moment, it is for the sake of your scruples, not mine.")

God doesn't want us to be gloomy. He made us for the enjoyment of this world and the next. We tend to forget that he delights in our happiness and that we honour him and his creation by being joyful. Do not make the mistake of thinking that joy is inconsistent with suffering or difficulty. Negative experiences force us to take our eyes off ourselves, which can be the first step in allowing joy into our lives. As Hebrews 12.2 reminds us, Jesus endured the Cross, despising its shame "for the joy that was set before him". We do not know what today will bring but whether it be good or ill, we have reason to be joyful.

Forgive the title for this post, but St Augustine's story is of a remarkable change of heart and all the consequences which flow from that. The young Augustine was brilliant but brittle: he was clever, but he was also ambitious and selfish. Even his conversion to Christianity was not without its problematic side. History, however, has forgiven him his abandonment of his mistress and their son, forgiven but not forgotten, for the effect of these events in his private life and what we once thought of as the decay of the Roman Empire (revisionist historians now stress continuity rather than change) on the development of Augustine's theology is incalculable.

From Augustine come the concepts of original sin and the just war; the first fully-articulated realisation of the need of grace for true freedom; the idea of the Church as a spiritual City of God; the monastic rules and the example of monastic living in north Africa, and much more. In the Confessions, he gave us a new literary genre: the spiritual autobiography which goes beyond what we commonly expect of such a work to give us a theory of time which still commands respect today. Above all, Augustine engaged intellectually with the questions behind the "plain sense of scripture". His view of human nature was far less pessimistic than is often suggested; and in the expositions of the psalms or the sermons, for example, which were jotted down by a listener as he spoke, we hear the warmth and humanity of Augustine the pastor.

Augustine was a great man, all the greater for not seeking greatness, one of Africa's best gifts to the Church. May he pray for us all.

St Monica gets rather a raw deal. Everyone is so mesmerised by her son, Augustine, that she only seems to exist in reference to him. She is commemorated as a widow, yet the story of her marriage to the pagan Patricius, a difficult and demanding man, rather than her widowhood, is surely the story of her sanctification. In her younger years, she struggled with a drink problem; in her later years, she struggled with philosophy and theology in order to be able to engage with her brilliant but wayward son. It would be interesting to know how far their discussion of Ambrose's sermons drew Augustine away from Manicheism.

Augustine wrote poignantly about their last meeting at Ostia and rightly attributed the grace of his own conversion, as well as that of his father, to his mother's prayers and influence. The Church, by and large, has remembered only her prayers, but Monica is a good example of a tough-minded woman with a generous heart, remarkably clear-eyed about her family's shortcomings but firm in faith and patient under all the blows that life dealt her. She is the patron saint of married women, mothers and alcoholics. Her heaven is obviously a busy one.

It is depressing when medical people tell one to "be careful". I was hoping I could start living "normally" again, conscious of the backlog of work that has built up over the past few weeks, the bills that will soon be falling due, all the plans on hold while waiting for some little clots to disperse. Unfortunately, they haven't, so this curious kind of pottering existence must continue. It seems the antithesis of everything monastic, never to be still for more than a few minutes at a time, always having to think how to do whatever needs to be done and accepting that some things are currently not possible. Frustration!

The truth is that in my heart of hearts I rather despise the idea of "being careful". It is such a namby-pamby notion, not at all to my taste. St Benedict has an answer for that, of course. In chapter 33 he reminds us that as monks and nuns we do not have even our bodies and wills at our own disposal (RB 33.4). They are given to God and the community unreservedly. That is so contrary to modern ideas of self-sufficiency and self-fulfilment that it comes as something of a shock. Do I not have any rights in the matter? Well, no, you don't. Everything you do, even the lifestyle you adopt, has consequences for which you, and you alone, are responsible. You are, as it were, a steward of yourself and it is up to you to prove yourself a good steward.

That means, alas, that I'll have to do as I'm told and bear the anger and annoyance of those whose own plans will be affected by the scuppering of my own. My guilt feelings will probably head towards the stratosphere but I'm sure I'll learn something valuable. The skies won't fall in because I'm not there to hold them up; and possibly, just possibly, I'll learn that God's ideas are better than my own. Hope so.