The devil took advantage of Christ's hunger to tempt him to limit his concern to the relief of human need. These are vital concerns, but they cannot be the sole concern of the Church. We need daily bread; we need, too, a reason for living, a sense of purpose, a vision.
We are blind: we cannot see God with our senses, and our deductions from what we know or are thinking about the word of God itself - how little power they have to bring us to God! We are blind, and our eyes need the touch of our Lord's hand to enable us at times to even see dimly.
Most of the early monks were not ordained. It was the pastoral work they undertook with the faithful that, over the centuries, gradually led to the present situation in which most monks are ordained priests.
On the whole, monks do not become famous - and that is a good thing - but monasteries do - and that is an excellent thing. In other words, it is the community that matters.
Moral choices do not depend on personal preference and private decision but on right reason and, I would add, divine order.
I believe that we have a duty to look frankly at the social conditions around us and to work to do what we can to address the specific needs which we find.
Living and working in the centre of a city, one cannot but be affected by the sight of the homeless on the streets. They are almost an expected feature of life in a big city, and it is tempting to think there is little or nothing that can, or even should, be done about it. This is not so.
Christ shared our experience; he suffered as we suffer; he died as we shall die, and for forty days in the desert he underwent the struggle between good and evil.
