Nature abhors a vacuum: and terrible things can happen to a man with an empty heart. That is one reason why it can be more difficult for a priest or a religious to be a good Christian, living a really vital Christian life, than for happily-married lay people. The latter can without too much difficulty integrate their love of each other into their shared love of God, sanctifying the one and deepening the other. What of the priest and the religious?

One sometimes meets among lay people a dangerously romanticised idea of this vocation. For them, these are men and women set apart, dedicated, living in the sanctuary, their whole lives are spent close to God, their minds and hearts filled with God, and with a charity which causes them to think of all other human beings as ‘souls’ to be served and saved. And to move the more sentimental, there is that appalling painting of the young monk with cowled head gazing wistfully through the narrow gothic windows of his tiny cell at the world he has lost for ever…