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.
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?
Continue reading While striving to conduct our pilgrimage on earth with integrity, in faith, we must set our eyes on our homeland in heaven. That is what we affirm today, standing here as pilgrims of hope.
Continue reading To be cut off from Christ's grace by irresponsible, perfidious choices: this is the only thing we really have to fear in this life.
Continue reading The passage through which Christ carries us opens for us fullness of life; at the same time it sanctifies death. We shouldn’t, then, fear either.
Continue reading Once Christianity had become a project of state, to some extent a political tool, rationalised and cleansed of what literal-minded, earnest men considered papist superstition — which in many instances was simply poetry — there was little space in the Norwegian-Danish inn for extravagant foreigners riding through the night from the Orient seeing and singing.
Continue reading Do I embrace this grace in order to live in accordance with what God makes possible for me? Or do I choose instead, by laziness and ingrown habit, to keep pouring chocolate sauce on my baptismal garment?
Continue reading When the Church sheds her Marian, at once virginal and maternal character, she stands there simply as a tired old woman. She no longer wants to have anything to do with her bridal garment adorned with gold of Ophir - she embraces instead the fashion of yesteryear, optimistically attempting to charm the world.
Continue reading Salvation? We've got so used to being needless that we don't sit around waiting for someone to save us: if our own strength runs out, we can always lean on the welfare state - or on the internet, which delivers cardboard-wrapped solutions to our problems to our door as long as our credit card is in balance.
Continue reading There is no trace of joy in Jerusalem's merriment, it is charged with the dark energy of despair. Its feasting is a mockery of fate, a burp in the face of the gods.
Continue reading The trauma searing Europe today feels more like sickness than war. And is it not true that our continent is sick - is the drama now unfolding not the visible symptom on the body politic of a virus that has long raged invisibly within?
Continue reading God's word surrounds us everywhere, even though we don't hear or see it any more than we see or hear a mobile network, be it 5G. We ought to think about this more.
Continue reading The first feast of Christ the King was intended as a proclamation, addressing to people everywhere the message of a Psalm of David: ‘Let them remember that they are but men!’
Continue reading The Church was born of an eschatological expectation that resisted sentimentality. It is good to be conscious of this right now, at a time which perceives spirituality, and even theology itself, as an emotive category.
Continue reading Our community is imperfect; that can be painfully obvious at times. Yet nonetheless it glows with a transcendent yet palpable benediction of which it is not the origin.
Continue reading The widow in the Gospel gave ‘out of what she didn’t have’. A good financial adviser would call her reckless, irresponsible — in fact, he'd probably ask that she be placed under tutelage, as being unable to administer her resources.
Continue reading God can do all things. He can make water into wine, swords into ploughshares, enemies into friends, dry places into fruitful land.
Continue reading