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.
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?
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