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 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.
Continue reading The rainbow God set as the sign of his covenant, a sign no lesser cause can usurp, indicates an economy of mercy, for God will henceforth leave the world undestroyed. It also indicates an economy of patience, for in a post-diluvian world man must bear the brunt of his choices.
Continue reading Affirming our mortality, we embrace our limitation. We own that, despite occasional lapses of delusion, we know we are not God.
Continue reading We might be tempted to try a Marxist reading of our passage from Job, and say, ‘Haha - here is proof of alienation from life-activity even in Biblical times, proof of man reduced to a cog in the wheel of a structure that exploits him — live the Revolution!’ And we'd miss the point.
Continue reading If we stay faithful to our call, we too, shall by grace be a sign to the nations, a sign of hope and direction our disoriented times need badly as they hurtle ever further off the rails.
Continue reading Do we feed ourselves and others on solid food or on milky mush? One quickly tires of mush, which can hardly be said to anticipate the Marriage Feast of the Lamb.
Continue reading It is a gigantic and tragic paradox that the celebration of such noble legislation coincides this year with a motion for a new abortion law whose predictable finality is the elimination of, precisely 'the poor and disadvantaged in society' before they have even seen the light of day, that we might forget all about their existence.
Continue reading