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.
The solemnity we celebrate today is not about a magic talisman in an ornamental cupboard.
Continue reading A man is no automaton. He is unprogrammable, possessed of that liberty to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ that is at once our crown of glory and our potential path to self-destruction.
Continue reading Underlying the many, often bewildering crises of the contemporary Church is a basic conflict of principles. It is a conflict between autonomy and heteronomy.
Continue reading Liturgically speaking, this day marks the end of the first forty days of Paschaltide, corresponding to the forty days of Lent. The two periods are like giant waves flowing up to, then away from, Easter — ebb and flow.
Continue reading We must not surrender a key notion like 'freedom' to purely subjective, pragmatic interpretation. If we do, it may happen — indeed, it almost certainly will happen — that injustice is committed in the name of freedom.
Continue reading This may seem like just another well-intentioned but predictable bishop's sermon, stuffed full of pious phrases but with zero relevance for life as it really is. Let me then conclude on a note of explicit clarity.
Continue reading Christ knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows our true identity, our name, even when we ourselves may think we don’t know any more who we are.
Continue reading Nothing is harder to bear than the consciousness that I've betrayed someone I love, and who loves me. How can Peter rejoice in the fact that Jesus is alive, and receive Jesus's Spirit, when he knows he has let him down cruelly?
Continue reading Thomas realises: what Jesus takes away is the sin of the world, not its wounds. His blood, though, flows into them and makes them clean.
Continue reading I am aways touched when we read, on Easter Morning, of the shroud our Lord left behind, especially of the cloth that had been over his head, 'rolled up in a place by itself'. It affords us an image of the Lord of Life rising up out of death with ordered peace, putting death aside, tidily folded, like a pyjamas for which he has no further need.
Continue reading The ceremony with which our Easter Vigil begins is a sign of the task which, by the power of Christ's victory, is mandated to us: to let our risen Saviour's light spread throughout the world, that the world may appear in truth the way it is, that is, created by his love to live in him.
Continue reading The cross, which a while ago represented utter shame, is carried in in triumph as we sing: 'By the wood of the cross, joy entered the whole world.' A transformation takes place; we see the cross at one and the same time as something in itself evil and as the sign of God's vanquishing evil.
Continue reading It is a deeply human need to wish, at the moment of a definitive departure, to leave behind some sign of what those from whom we part means to us.
Continue reading In the holy oils God gives us a palpable, sensual sign that his hand touches us tenderly, with healing, as a caress. In this way he shows us how we are to live upon this earth.
Continue reading The Lord reminds us that death (our own, but also the death of cultures and of civilisations) is intrinsic to life and that we, to see the sense of it all, must look beyond death. He reminds us that history progresses towards towards a goal which is of eternity.
Continue reading To go to confession is a wonderful thing. Why, then, are so many people intimidated by the mere thought of it?
Continue reading The root meaning of the New Testament verb denoting 'to sin' is ‘miss the mark, especially of a spear thrown’ - later it came to mean, ‘miss a road’ or more generally, ‘fail of one’s purpose’. These insights from lexicography are helpful as we try to work out where sin makes its presence felt in our own lives.
Continue reading Let's not go down the elder son's road, opting out, upset because no one affirms our self-importance, angry because others get what we consider they do not deserve. Were we to get what we deserved, most of us, in fact, would be in trouble.
Continue reading Only the Catholic Church can mobilise humanity to join in a spiritual act of consecration, all at the same time, throughout the world; what we are part of is a momentous act. Let us thank God for the grace of being part of this communion.
Continue reading When we're really poorly, we seek remedies anywhere. Cures abroad have a special attraction.
Continue reading Is this, then, all that the Bible has to say for itself: that we human beings are subject to luck?!
Continue reading To be human is to be prepared to set out ever anew, to learn to embrace the terrible in order, thereby, in Christ's name, to be renewed in the core of our being, to glimpse the new heaven and the new earth towards which we're drawn.
Continue reading By receiving the ashes, we testify that our pilgrimage goes through the burn-out of death and that there, in what is lifeless, the empowering, joy-bearing power of Christ is made manifest. Nothing in us is so dead that it cannot be resurrected if Christ's light is allowed to shine upon it.
Continue reading Sin can, in fact, settle in the body and express itself somatically. A splinter in a vital organ, be it the eye or the heart, will naturally provoke an infection.
Continue reading It is my business to remind you that justice is a Christian imperative. There are boundaries, metaphorical and geographical, that must not be breached.
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