Words on the Word

Erik Varden is a monk and bishop, born in Norway in 1974. In 2002, after ten years at the University of Cambridge, he joined Mount Saint Bernard Abbey in Charnwood Forest. Pope Francis named him bishop of Trondheim in 2019.

Please find below a selection of homilies:

Herring In Norway, Christmas is herring season. Christmas, as we know, lasts until 2 February. One has time to eat a lot of herring. So I valued as topical the review of Graeme Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring in the TLS. Most Read More
Trivialities In today’s office of readings the breviary gives a passage from St Basil’s Rules. It meditates on God’s immense graciousness, then concludes with the words: ‘To confess my personal feelings, when I reflect on all these blessings I am overcome Read More
Shun to Appear Harsh I recently found, hidden away in a book, some advice from St Seraphim of Sarov that a friend, a Benedictine nun, sent me in the last letter I received from her before she died in 2009. I needed to re-read Read More
The Pain of ‘Why?’
The Pain of ‘Why?’
This conversation, which you can read online in Spanish here, was part of the presentation of Healing Wounds in Spanish.
How do you believe that contemplating the wounds of Christ can help human beings find comfort and healing in the midst of Read More
Learned Levites I happen to own a life of St Francis de Sales published in 1928 by Eugène Julien, bishop of Arras. It carries the epigraph, ‘A mes prêtres, ce beau visage de Prêtre’, ‘To my priests I propose this beautiful type Read More
Magic, Moving Chains The internet can be serendipitous. Looking for Imogen Cooper’s 1989 recording of Schubert’s Impromptus, I happened upon this remarkable lecture she gave in Oxford in 2014. I listened to it on a train, entranced. Never have I heard a performer Read More
Full of Schubert On Sunday evening Dame Imogen Cooper gave her last solo recital at Wigmore Hall, playing Schubert’s Impromptus. In a noble speech at the end, after the Duke of Kent had presented her with the Wigmore Medal, she said she felt Read More
2 Sunday A
2 Sunday A
Isaiah 49:3, 5-6: He formed me in the womb to be his servant.
1 Corinthians 1:1-3: Paul, appointed by God to be an apostle.
John 1:29-34: I did not know him myself.
‘No’, says the Baptist, ‘I did not know him.’ Indeed, he Read More