Here I have put together a selection of homilies. The Word of God is ‘alive and active’ says the Letter to the Hebrews. That is not to say that it lives a hidden organic life we can trace through a microscope, as if it were a virus; but that it is inspired, a bearer of God’s eternal Spirit. Therefore it resounds to this day with quite as much force as when it was first spoken. It ever has something new to say. The preacher’s first task is to listen intently to this Word at once ancient and new, then to make his own, necessarily limited words its vehicles. I have not been able to provide translations of texts in other languages; but if you rummage around a little you will find a fair amount of material in English.
Does humble generosity on my part call it forth in others? Or is harshness I encounter a reflection of my own hard heart?
Continue reading Pius XI did note signs 'of a more widespread and keener interest evinced in Christ and his Church', but he recognised the risk that such interest could be held hostage by worldly pretension. So he bade the Church, and the world, raise their eyes towards Christ, the King, who reigns from the Tree and there displays his love, the criterion for the kingdom he founded, into which he calls us.
Continue reading Many of the priests who laboured here could have lived more visible, more publicly appreciated, more apparently successful lives elsewhere. They chose a hidden, often austere existence as weather-beaten shepherds of a little flock because the Lord in his wondrous providence had called them here.
Continue reading If the Bible is God’s word and if, as Jesus says, ‘everything written in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms’ must be accomplished, then it is our duty vigilantly to interpret the signs of the times in the light of divine revelation. We must look for the eternal in time, in our time.
Continue reading Of course the monk desires life — and how! He wants to live entirely, without compromise; that is why he consecrates his life to the service of the Lord of Life, who gave his life that we might live, saved once for all from the clutches of the Reign of Death.
Continue reading After his dinner at the Pharisee’s house, Jesus told the crowds, ‘whoever of you does not renounce all he has cannot be my disciple’. The ‘all’ includes our certainty of having the totality of answers before life has finished putting its questions to us.
Continue reading Surely, when the Church assures us that the Son of God was made fully man, that means he will also have had a sense of humour.
Continue reading In the Gospel narrative of the institution of the Eucharist, we read, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many’. This has caused a headache for liturgists seeking to render the phrase in vernacular translations of the Eucharistic Prayers.
Continue reading The Apostle was determined to remain poor and transparent, to be a voice crying in the wilderness, not a protagonist accumulating thousands of ‘likes’ on Facebook.
Continue reading Anyone who has sat at a deathbed knows how obvious it is that we’re made for more than just physical existence. At some point the longing of the spirit must burst boundaries set by our natural frame.
Continue reading We often hear ourselves and others say, 'I'm so exhausted'. So ingrained is the habit that if someone doesn't profess, within a few minutes of a conversation starting, to exhaustion, people are likely to think, He must be a right layabout!
Continue reading Saying thanks is hard for many. A person’s capacity for gratitude is a pretty infallible index of his or her inner freedom and maturity.
Continue reading Biblical faith is not always comforting; it confronts us with the truth, with ultimate reality. That is uncomfortable if we are allied, consciously or unconsciously, to lies and illusions.
Continue reading The Lord has appointed, for each of us, an agent of particular providence. This agent’s purpose is, expressly, to guide us on the right path.
Continue reading Thérèse knew what it means to live in an all-encompassing now, in Christ. One who lives like that, be it forgotten in a sickroom, knows no periphery; he or she is always in the centre, where essential things happen and the world is transformed.
Continue reading Our time is apt to subjectivise and sentimentalise faith. Often enough we hear Christ spoken of as if anyone were free to conjure an image of him forth from his or her own imagination, like a rabbit from an old top hat.
Continue reading I am struck by the fact that our society, which tends to reject any notion of God, often seems nonetheless to take evil for granted. We see this daily in political rhetoric, which is getting sharper everywhere.
Continue reading In the Gospel Christ asks, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ As professing Christians — as monks under vows, ministers, teachers of theology — we have sophisticated answers ready to come tripping off our tongue.
Continue reading Put first things first — use money with your eyes set on God’s kingdom, don’t pretend to serve the kingdom if what you really seek is riches for yourself. Here and now we are shaping our eternity, making ourselves more or less fit to belong in the kingdom of God.
Continue reading Mercy is not about taking things lightly, about shrugging our shoulders and saying, 'Oh, it doesn't matter'. Mercy is the divine quality that sees a life not just for what it is or has been, but for what it might become, and that lets God, the Almighty, loosen what is rigid, melt what is frozen, straighten what is crooked — and even raise the dead.
Continue reading The story of the Cross that was looted, held hostage, instrumentalised politically; then freed and raised up in the Church, regained as a focus and criterion of faith, challenges us to think critically about how symbols of faith are used in public life.
Continue reading Any building project calls for sacrifice, whether we are constructing a tower, a romantic relationship, or a life of faith. Sometimes we shall be tempted to give up; it seems simpler to start afresh with something (or someone) else - but is there any joy in leaving a trajectory lined by an increasing number of monuments to keenly begun but swiftly abandoned enterprise?
Continue reading To renew our society we need more than just re-budgeting and larger prisons. We need a new sense of purpose, a new unifying energy; we need men and women whose goodness of life makes us spontaneously want to be like them.
Continue reading Our foot no longer strikes against the rock; the freeing chain of love has been restored; God's thread is once again perfect and runs, faster than the pen of any scribe, to complete redemption's wondrous tapestry; the round dance continues.
Continue reading The sight of Moses at a hundred-and-twenty being told he cannot enter the promised land towards which his life-long endeavour has been directed may seem to us unfair.
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