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.
To 'recall' the words of Jesus is about more than learning a few pious phrases by rote. It is about acquiring a true perception of reality, about seeking stable criteria that let us understand, discern, and choose well in order, thus, to contribute to a society founded on rock, not on shifting sands or in the middle of a sinking, fetid swamp.
Continue reading To love as God loves is to nurture the existence and thriving of others while having no truck with death, resisting anger, bitterness, spite, all those mortiferous passions that put out grace’s flame and make us ungracious, causing us to subsist in a kind of living death, for it is quite possible to have a regular pulse and a normal digestion yet to be soul-dead.
Continue reading Often we may feel like the Biblical owl among ruins, hooting watchers in the night perched on the rubble of yesterday’s sureties. We must face an uncomfortable fact amply evidenced in Sacred Scripture - God cares less than we for monuments of reassurance.
Continue reading At times we may find that life is like a vast resonant room in which threatening and comforting voices outshout, or outwhisper, one another. We must choose, then, which to follow, we must know how to tell the voices apart.
Continue reading I dare say most of us know from experience what we feel like when we know we have acted cowardly. It is damned hard to live with our disappointment in ourselves as we think, Now I have ruined something that can never be rebuilt.
Continue reading The source of Thomas's despair turns out to be a source of hope. The penny drops - Jesus infallibly takes out sins away, if we let him, but he does not necessarily remove our wounds.
Continue reading Pope Francis has challenged us, and constrained us, to seek clarity in diverse circumstances, to work out what things are really about in order, then, to make responsible choices and to live credibly as Christians.
Continue reading How might we celebrate Easter if our heart is tuned in a minor key; if our life does not let itself be ordered by means of bombastic end rhymes; if when we look around, at ourselves and the world, we are fearful? The Gospel helps us - it speaks of perplexity in the face of Christ's resurrection, of uncoordinated reactions, hesitant response.
Continue reading The Word entered the mute silence of death in order to resound there and to let his essential fire burn so that Christ's faithful, when their hour comes, may go forth to encounter physical death in peace, with hope, recognising in it, as St Francis sang, a sister that does not close, but opens.
Continue reading The cross touches us; and today we touch it. One by one we kneel before it to kiss it, each of us carrying his or her own burden, often known to no one but ourselves.
Continue reading The Paschal motif points towards a way of living in this world, so lovely and so brittle. None of us has here an abiding city, we are pilgrims here a while, then called to pass on, to pass by.
Continue reading The longer we are priests, the more lucidly we recognise what it is all about: our own lives must be laid down on the altar, like the hosts we offer daily. God's transforming power, poured out through the Church, can make realities poor in themselves into something infinitely precious and nourishing.
Continue reading It is the drama we now enact liturgically that makes sense of the world's drama. The world has long since lost the plot - it acts without care, frenetically, often enough grotesquely.
Continue reading Oh, how we love situations like these, when we’re confident we’re on the side of right! How we love to invoke high principles in aid of our self-righteousness!
Continue reading The foundation of all spiritual life is this: the interaction of God's fidelity with ours.
Continue reading This is what the Gospel is about: the possibility of man illumined, not by some tedious faux gnosticism but by divine Fire renewing our flesh and spirit to the core, burning up all dark attachments, all lies, all compromises with evil in order to make us fit to know God.
Continue reading Why does God not choose more secure, warrantable procedures? Based on his case history, the Lord would not stand a chance confronted with the terms of a modern insurance agency.
Continue reading The fact that Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets in person, so to speak, naturally appear within the radius of Jesus's glory proves that death is not a matter of final consequence — death, in fact, is rather overrated.
Continue reading No divine gift, no call, is private. All is grace to be freely received, freely shared.
Continue reading Must we prevail on the Lord to conduct a little aggiornamento in order to fall into line with current pastoral guidelines? In fact, God’s primary concern is not to keep us comfortable and undisturbed - he wants us to know the truth, which alone liberates.
Continue reading I consider the hypothesis of epochal change well-founded but not deterministic, nothing is written in the stars. Whether the epoch on whose threshold we stand will be better or worse, hostile to God or in the service of Christ, depends on us - for we are God’s collaborators, a pretty daring move on his part.
Continue reading How can we follow the Lord's exhortation to be like children without becoming infantile?
Continue reading We are daily faced with pretensions to a new world order resting on the notion that a 'reasonable' solution to global tension is businesslike. It presupposes that everything, and everyone, has a price - what counts is to work out how much you are willing to spend.
Continue reading Is it not often the case that we, healed of an ill that has plagued us, feel, in addition to relief, a kind of bereavement?
Continue reading Were we less fearful of our own betrayals, our own brittleness, God might work wonders through us. If God is God, almighty and merciful, why should he not be God in me?
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