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.
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.
Continue reading 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