Today is a First Friday, and so I have endeavoured to spend the day more in the presence of God than perhaps I would normally. I have not been on Facebook, nor checked my emails, nor have I had my phone on. I am sure I have received abundant graces today: graces are often painful - I hope I am not complaining - but they should be welcome nonetheless. I am afraid there is no way to become a Saint but the way of suffering. The easiest way is (pacè Durham InterCollegiate Christian Union) the way of Mary. She does not indeed take away our crosses, but she helps us bear them.
Talking of Mary, I should remind you that the 8th of September is the Feast of Her Nativity. Today is the fifth day (it seems later to me) of the Novena in preparation for that Feast. I hope I shall have something useful to say in my blog on that feast day.
It seems to me that the lack of reverence shown by, for example, certain Christian Unions, to our Lady, does not make a lot of sense. But I do not intend to expound upon that now.

Today is the Feast of St Gregory (and in this country it actually is a Feast now, and not a mere Memoria). I am glad that St Gregory - a Doctor of the Universal Church! - has been (in England) given a somewhat higher rank than "Memoria."

In addition, I have discovered that the Saint venerated in this diocese on the 1st of September is St Sebbi. He was a King of the East Saxons, the husband of St Osyth; this was in the seventh century. He abdicated, and became a monk: a thing I think the modern world would regard with bemused incomprehension.

Another thought of mine relates to Stephen Hawking. The other day I said that I thought he had posited an effect without a prior cause, which is absurd. Upon reflection, he might have meant that "laws pre-existing in nothingness" were the first cause, which certainly seems to make more sense. But it implies that laws can create something out of nothing, and creation implies a will. Laws of themselves cannot do anything. Indeed it seems to me that the very notion of law requires a will: for a law can only exist in reference to the will of the lawgiver. But if the laws are the first cause, then they would be their own lawgiver, and then what? This does not make sense. This makes law and will the same thing. Or it implies that the laws are not given: that they are of themselves, and also (to follow the logical sequence) eternal (since they are outside time). There is no reason why a law cannot be eternal, but a law has to be given, otherwise it is not a law at all.

There is no contradiction here: a law can certainly be eternal. But there is one necessary conrequisite (I have deliberately refrained from the word "prerequisite"): that the Lawgiver be eternal.

But the Lawgiver must cause the Law, so the Law cannot be the First Cause.