Le Dome and the Exaltation of the Cross

The Feast of the Exhaltation of the Holy Cross is the beginning of monastic Lent. I like the Orthodox practice of tonsuring infants after baptism so they all become monks.


The monastic thing has always haunted me, the silence, the Divine Office , the community, the poverty, the stability. I tried it for a short while with the support of my then Bishop and the kindness of a certain Abbot but the lure of the world, I am worldly, the lure of the world....

I couldn’t stop thinking of how nice coffee in Paris would be, and the thought of never, ever, going to the Opera, ever again, not that I go that often and the prospect of always, 365 days a week, having the same brand of packet soup for lunch, proved too much. But it was the thought of never ever sitting in a cafe on the Left Bank which became quite obsessive, it has not bothered me since leaving the cloister and I haven’t actually been to Paris since leaving.

There is a rebellious spirit that I suspect we all have, the preference to do, not God’s will but our own. St Benedict reminds us, “what we have lost by disobedience let us regain by obedience”. The Cross is the great sign of obedience, of “preferring nothing to the will of God”. The heaviest Cross is often the tiniest, we can be heroic when being sawn in half but little things, that is where the weight lies.

I am struck by the triviality of the sin of our first parents, it is a childish act of scrumping, of disobedience. ”Sin entered the world through one man...”. How small a sin it was, it could have been a cup of coffee a Le Dome or wanting a different first course but the effects spread, what we once craved can become infinitely distasteful. Adam’s sin makes him hide his body from Eve and it makes it impossible for him to face God and impossible to remain in the Garden. It very quickly leads on to Abel’s death, it is a discarded apple seed spat into a still pool, into the face of God, the ripples spread.

The only answer, the only way stop the ripples of sin in the world is the Cross and if we haven’t the courage to stretch out our own hands to embrace the Cross, then at least we can cling to the feet of the Crucified and cry Kyrie Eleeison.


thanks to Da Mihi Animas for the video