Rather unusually, today [31 March 2007], we've heard the two great prophets - Ezekiel in the First Reading and Jeremiah in the Second - we've heard these two prophets share a sort of double vision of the two scattered and divided nations - Isael and Judah - gathering into a single unified people, purified by exile and alienation, now able to worship God worthily with a new heart and a new Spirit.

And it is this same vision that Bach takes as his starting point in that mighty opening chorus of the John Passion [heard in the Abbey Church on 25 March 2007] which carries its own prophetic [message]: "In all lands, the gathering nations hail the Lord and Master". Later in the Passion, this is catalysed into a passage of particular urgency: "Haste. Haste, poor soul, ensnared in Ereason, Haste" "Oh where?" asks the chorus. "Haste to Golgotha" is the reply "All your hopes are flowing there".

This extraordinary scene of gathering is re-enacted each year throughout the world over across every Basilica, Cathedral Church and local community - and so it would be here with us this coming week when many gather for the festival, leaving behind an increasingly bleak world of spiritual exile and alienation, to join us here at Ampleforth in search of the only One who can save us all, and they will hasten to this Golgotha 'for all their hopes and ours are flowing there'.

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Holy Week Tridium and Easter Ampleforth 2007