You could call it the Council of the Friars – yet none was there, or only one. “The Great Council”, as the Fourth Lateran was known, included the greatest mediaeval pope, Innocent III, 71 patriarchs and metropolitans, 412 other bishops, around 900 abbots, priors and periti, together with envoys of the emperor and monarchs.

The true (verum), the good (bonum) and the beautiful (pulchrum) – it was a 13th century German Dominican and Doctor of the Church, Albert the Great, who first identified these as the three ‘transcendental properties of being’.

There are 37 miracles recorded in the Gospels, most of them in Matthew, Mark and Luke. John’s Gospel, which we heard today, is different. John only reports eight miracles, six of them uniquely among the evangelists, and all of them at much greater length.

I know what it’s like. My Dad’s nursing home is closed to the public and my Mum is in hospital, allowed no visitors. Today I’m saying Mass in an empty cathedral and miss my people very much.

On this day in 1535, the Lieutenant of the Tower of London woke old Bishop Fisher at 5AM for his 9AM execution. He decided to go back to sleep so to save his strength for the occasion!

It’s blowing a gale, the sea is wild, the waves breaking over, the boat filling with water (Mk 4:35-41). Where’s Jesus when you need Him? Sound asleep…

There’s an old Peanuts comic in which everybody’s self-appointed life-coach, Lucy, is telling her younger brother Linus about the many uses of a tree. “They provide shade from the sun,” she tells him, “and protection from the rain. They prevent erosion, and their wood is used to build beautiful buildings.”

Faust: in German legend he was a learned, successful yet dissatisfied man who made a pact with the Devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The legend has been retold in books, plays, movies, even an opera.