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.
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 With increasing frequency we hear the word 'truth' used with a first-person singular possessive pronoun - even university presidents can be found to speak in earnest about 'my truth'. It is agreeable to behold the world in this light; if truth is mine, it follows that I am always right.
Continue reading In the Church we transcend time. We must always be mindful of this.
Continue reading The sanctuary where Samuel heard his call was not a fervent junior seminary. It was a tepid, lurid scene, a place void of conviction, an accusation against itself for failing to live up to its objective.
Continue reading Structures and institutions fall. What remains is the Word proclaimed in the night by a star.
Continue reading No child belongs to its father or mother; it is entrusted to them; but has its own integrity from conception. It is God's gift.
Continue reading Rightly understood, the Word of God is the paradigm by which all things are judged, the cornerstone that is at the same time a stumbling-block for unbelievers.
Continue reading Emmanuel, God-with-us, would use us to cleanse this world with water, oil, and fire, then spread abroad his sweet perfume. The grace of Christmas is anchored in history but nonetheless points forwards to a new heaven, a new earth.
Continue reading Only one who knows himself carried by an all-powerful benevolence can say, 'I know neither who I am nor what I shall become, but I know that I am loved'. That is the only remedy for ills whose deepest root is perhaps not so much ideology as despair.
Continue reading En dom i bibelsk språk er ikke et juryutsagn rettet mot en anklaget forbryter; dommen går ut på at ting fremstår slik de er. Det skjulte blottlegges på godt og ondt.
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