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.
Today we not only accompany Christ through the fulfilment of a Mosaic prescription; we get a foretaste of what will be our own eternal destiny, if we stay faithful to God’s call. In a wonderful phrase in this morning’s Vigils reading, St Sophronius of Jerusalem exhorted us: ‘Let us be shining ourselves as we go together to meet the light whose brilliance is eternal’.
Continue reading One who knows the Lord is transformed and before him or her a new dimension of existence opens up. Notions like 'love', 'justice', 'benevolence' are no longer simply beautiful words; they become vital energies needing to find expression.
Continue reading Let us thank the Lord when he, like a good orchard keeper, subjects us to a thorough pruning, when he re-digs the soil in which we are planted and graces us with a cartload of dung. That is how we will grow.
Continue reading We are losing the sense of the Church as subject. The Church is now mostly a direct object surrendered to verbs of action whose subject is ‘we’: we no longer seek to be formed by the Church; we form it.
Continue reading He, who knew the extent of the mission field, was certain that evangelisation must flow from prayer. There must be, within the Mystical Body, women and men who offer themselves up to prayer unceasingly for the sake of all.
Continue reading If what we seek is affirmation and comfort for ourselves, then we’ve had it. Then we shall already have surrendered to Goliath.
Continue reading Such is his reverence for our freedom that he honours even our destructive choices. That is one of the great mysteries of faith.
Continue reading For centuries St Anthony was presented like a tortured peasant in the grip of diabolical illusions - a representation allegedly based on St Athanasius’s life. How easy it is to form opinions on the basis of books one hasn’t read!
Continue reading The feast we keep today speaks of the effective transmission of grace resulting in lives of integrity, holiness, and fruitfulness. It is a lesson we need to hear and heed right now, when the Church’s credibility worldwide is, on account of human betrayal, at an all-time low.
Continue reading Jesus stands in the middle of the Jordan, the frontier that since Abraham had marked the Promised Land off from the rest of the earth, pontifically, as a bridge-builder; from now on the Gospel will reach the ends of the earth. The alabaster jar is broken open for the whole house to be filled with its aroma.
Continue reading It is wonderful: God prepares our salvation by means of a scenography conceived in minute detail so as to give us reliable signs by which we may ascertain its accomplishment. Now the hour has come.
Continue reading To hear someone say, ‘I love you’, transforms a life. It makes a narrow existence broad; indeed, to hear those words, ‘I love you’, is our best way, perhaps, of getting an inkling of what ‘eternity’ means.
Continue reading There's a lot of talk, right now, about the Church's various crises. To my mind, there is only one fundamental crisis of importance, given that all the rest spring from it - I mean the widespread loss of faith in Christ as the Son of God.
Continue reading To come close to others is risky; to be drawn by blood ties into God's salvific plan is to become part of a passion narrative. What the holy Family displays is not saccharine harmony but readiness to renounce what is one's own in order to assume, as a holy obligation, the vocation of another.
Continue reading The challenge Christ poses has never appealed to the majority. However, in each generation there have been exceptions — men and women, sometimes children, whose heart's eyes have been opened to the transforming potential of God's love; who have let themselves be transformed; and have thereby transformed society.
Continue reading Salvation? We've got so used to being needless that we don't sit around waiting for someone to save us: if our own strength runs out, we can always lean on the welfare state - or on the internet, which delivers cardboard-wrapped solutions to our problems to our door as long as our credit card is in balance.
Continue reading Cut off from the notion of God's Image, the body is at the mercy of our imagination's surrealist tendencies (homily in French).
Continue reading To be a Christian is to assume risk responsibly; to put one's trust in God and not in oneself. Then joy's floodgates burst open.
Continue reading The Mother of God becomes a holy tabernacle, the manifestation of human nature unscathed, the way God created it at first. In Mary we contemplate the perfect prototype of our race (Homily in Norwegian).
Continue reading Why did the Word become flesh? Why was the incarnation a necessity?
Continue reading There was a time when being a Christian felt like being part of the winning team. That is no longer the case - but Christ's reign has not for that reason been sidelined.
Continue reading To be an atheist is not necessarily to fail to believe in God. To be an atheist is to live as if God did not exist - thus atheism is possible among believers, too, a terrible, destructive possibility.
Continue reading Do we not, as Catholics, look at ourselves in the mirror rather too much these days? It is both boring and counter-productive, so let us instead drape our mirror with Abgar’s cloth and set our sight on the face of Christ.
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