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.
It is obvious that the pig picture has an impact on the small, but are we sufficiently aware that the opposite is also the case? When one finds oneself in the middle of life, looking at once forward and back, it is good to be reminded of this.
Continue reading Joy is stirred in us as an expression of gratitude, when the good that surrounds us calls forth the good in ourselves and we are conscious of subsisting in a strange, jubilant harmony with the world — and with God, who holds the world in his hand. To be sad, in contrast, is to feel cut off, uncomprehended.
Continue reading We live in an age of banality and horizontality that has cut itself off from heavenly reality, a time that has largely lost the ability to think metaphysically, to perceive spiritually, and that therefore lives with a profound frustration expressed in tired purposelessness, as if we were sunk in some kind of collective depression.
Continue reading Christianity isn't magic - becoming a Christian doesn't provide the automatic solution to any problem. But Christian faith, the grace of belonging to Christ through the Church, is the fount of a strength that may resolve even intransigently locked crises from within.
Continue reading The problem is that we, when we turn faith into a project of welfare, easily forget what the whole thing is about. We think of ourselves as decisive agents - our outlook becomes horizontal and we end up, to speak in Biblical terms, 'forgetting God'.
Continue reading When you find that nothing you possess, nothing that surrounds you, is enough, remember that what you are meeting is not just your own limits; you are perceiving the beginning of God's unlimitedness. That kind of experience is an implicit prayer.
Continue reading To pretend to pursue beauty or goodness by subverting truth is deceitful.
Continue reading The persecution that arose in Jerusalem after the lapidation of Stephen caused the apostolic nucleus to explode. The Twelve, who since the Ascension had huddled, first in fear, then in creative confidence, with Mary the Mother of Jesus, scattered.
Continue reading Western philosophy since Descartes has tended to assume that the perception of reality results from inference; that I can, in isolation, think my way to the truth. The Gospel’s philosophy is different - it submits that truth is discovered by way of encounter.
Continue reading A life pierced by repentance may become an even more effective vehicle of grace than one that has never known what it is to fall and to be raised up again.
Continue reading Error, the loss of direction, may confer momentary thrills, but its long-term effect is frustration and sadness. It is worth being attentive to intimations of frustration and sadness - should they occur, it is time to check the compass.
Continue reading A Christian should be a loyal citizen and contribute to the good of society, on this subject the New Testament is clear. Our loyalty, however, should not become gormless gullibility.
Continue reading God wishes to dwell in us, he wants to be known - we are called to be burning coal to let his divinity burn with cleansing, blessing power in the world. Are we wholly surrendered to this hope?
Continue reading Jesus, rising from Sheol, serenely put off death as if were an old pyjamas for which he had no further use. He folded it neatly, showing even this last enemy divine respect, a kind of tenderness due, not to death as such, that's for sure, but to the wounds death has imprinted on human experience.
Continue reading We think that a given circumstance, a given person, a given wound prevents us from being free. We spend our time moaning about that circumstance, that person, that wound.
Continue reading Christ is risen! May he be fully alive in us, in the unity among us, that the world may believe and rediscover the gladness it has lost.
Continue reading If we seek an image of what the Church is, we find it here, in the fact that we, of ourselves a heap of forlorn individuals, are by God's efficacious power turned into a unified, jubilant sea of living fire. The Church's decisive synodos happens through incorporation into Christ's Pasch.
Continue reading Christ's cross, geometrically a sign of contradiction, a function of two lines that will never run parallel, has become a symbol of wholeness.
Continue reading We intuit what it means to love, not just when it feel right, but definitively, 'until the end'.
Continue reading If we pay attention we see, here and there, the hoof-print of him whom Revelation refers to as 'the accuser of the brethren'. Let's not fall for his tricks.
Continue reading Jesus must go up to Jerusalem to take the altar's place. The old covenant has completed his mission; the new covenant, drawn up in his Blood, is about to begin.
Continue reading St Joseph calls us to live our faith coherently, with courage and devotion, and not to confuse ourselves and others with all manner of superfluous, useless chatter. In a time like ours, in which the significance of words is easily subverted, such an approach is balm for the soul.
Continue reading The Easter mystery provides us with a master-key to human existence. Let us remember to use it where life seems locked, where death by way of illusion appears to have the last word.
Continue reading Often we complain against God and feel ignored by him when in fact grace is in store for us. We are like the Israelites who complained in Mara, 'We have no water' though they practically stood on the threshold of a wonderful oasis.
Continue reading This Lent, make it your exercise to look at yourself in the mirror at least once a day and remind yourself, ‘I am holy to the Lord’. Then live accordingly.
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