My best thanks to the RCIA Group at Woodford Green who generously invited me to give them a Day of Recollection on Saturday. As always, one receives much more than one gives and I am still pondering some of the questions asked and the insights shared. One of the joys of the day was being with people who have come to Catholicism via many different routes and who have such a sense of the great treasure offered them that they are prepared to make huge sacrifices. It was truly humbling. The (delayed) Prayer Podcast takes up one of the big questions that the group raised.

A feast of the unity of the Church and a reminder that the first of the four conditions for an infallible papal utterance is that he should be speaking ex cathedra, from the chair, i.e. in his official capacity as pope. The Anglo-Saxons had a special devotion to St Peter and his successors: one thinks of all those Anglo-Saxon kings making pilgrimages to the tombs of the apostles, or Benet Biscop bringing back treasures from Rome, including John the Cantor, to beautify English church worship. Certainly, in Rome one does get a sense of unbroken tradition, of Romanitas and catholicity, and here and there, in the quiet of Sta Sabina perhaps, or one of the other less-visited basilicas, an intimation of a reality which surpasses all the "smoke and the noise and grandeur of Rome" itself.

More suicides are committed in February than in any other month, apparently. In Britain the number of young people committing suicide is beginning to trouble the media as well as families and friends. If one has not oneself experienced despair, it is impossible to understand the depths of misery and loneliness that could prompt the taking of one's own life. We often underestimate the significance of covert appeals for help. If anyone were to say he/she was feeling suicidal, we would all assure them that things must eventually get better; but the sad fact is, most suicides do not announce their intention beforehand, nor do they believe in the possibility of things improving. Cain doubtingly asked God if he was his brother's keeper. Probably most of us feel that in some sense we are responsible for others. To use a fashionable phrase, we all have a duty of care. Maybe the man who acts like the life and soul of the party is in desperate need of someone reaching out to him; maybe the woman with the carefree laugh is weighed down with terrors we know nothing of; maybe the child who looks so "normal" we scarcely notice needs someone to look again. Looking again is something God does all the time.

Yesterday was busy, busy, busy, even for life in the monastery. Some things, however, had to be done, like putting a new hard disk inside an elderly computer (a Mac, so no problems there) and a few overdue changes to the web site (no time for all of them, of course). Whenever we tackle some of these "pending jobs", it seems a host of others follow in their train. We rarely use the dishwasher except when we have groups in, and naturally, because we have several groups in over the next few weeks, the dishwasher has decided to die. I was trying to repair the door of a kitchen cabinet the other week when a second fell off. Should we put away the toolbox, I wonder. Fixing things is apparently not for us.

The Lenten Sunday Mass readings form an excellent baptismal catechesis. Last Sunday we were with Jesus in the wilderness, struggling with temptations of body and mind; this Sunday we shall be on the mountain of Transfiguration, glimpsing something of the glory that one day will be ours. It is a strange and startling transition but one we must take seriously. This week's podcast comes both in audio form as usual or in video (rather homespun video, alas). The audio quality is not up to scratch but we hope it soon will be.

A sad sight yesterday as we walked along the Ridgeway: a wounded buzzard, flying limpingly from bush to bush. We could not quite see what was wrong, but the bird was apparently in distress and we were powerless to help. A reminder, if we needed one, of the fragility of every living being.

There is no doubt about it, more people will be celebrating St Valentine today than St Cyril and St Methodius. Sales of red roses, chocolates and champagne will soar while the religiously inclined will be left feeling like bubble-busters as they keep their Lenten fast and ponder the saintly brothers' work for Church Slavonic and the liturgy — so dull by comparison. For the Church's calendar to be so out of step with contemporary culture is a modern phenomenon. Many of the earliest liturgical commemorations were of pagan festivals Christianized, just as many Christian holy places were built on the site of pagan ones. Gregory the Great's advice to Augustine of Canterbury was typical: do not destroy the shrines of the Angles but make them Christian. Can we make Valentine's Day a little more Christian without making it dull? Donne springs to mind.

The words which introduce and conclude the giving of this prayer in today's gospel constitute in themselves a little treatise on the nature of prayer, just as the Lord's Prayer itself is a pattern for all Christian prayer. We are reminded that we do not neeed words: our Father knows our needs even before we can put them into words; what he looks for in us is a heart ready to give and receive forgiveness. We worry that God will not hear us, which is why we multiply our babblings. Instead, we need to worry whether we will hear him, whether we will be ready to be a channel of his love and forgiveness, the miracle of being a forgiven sinner.

The Wantage branch of the Catholic Women's League met here on Saturday for a Day of Recollection. What a treasure the Church has in women such as these: lively, intelligent, compassionate. Sadly, the CWL does seem to have something of an image problem today, which is a pity because a lot of women are missing out on something really good — and so are those parishes where the work of the League is equated with the production of endless cups of tea. The Wantage branch are certainly not walk-overs and draw their membership from a wide range of ages and occupations. After Mass, talks and discussion ranged from Newman and his ideas of doctrinal development to Summorum Pontificum and the ways in which liturgy engages hearts and minds — or fails to. But what always strikes us is the generosity and kindness the members show both to one another and to us. We may have been the hosts in theory, but we learn every time the CWL comes what it is to be treated "tamquam Christus", as though we were Christ.