Obedience is not a popular word today. We are sold instead the dogma of self-will, the do-as-you-please philosophy. And yet that dogma is an illusion. All you need do is get caught on a speeding camera and you will get a hefty fine for disobeying the rules. All you need...
Love is not a matter of words, but of deeds. Deeds of love make words of love have sense. The same is true of faith. God-talk is all very well but doing deeds which show I have faith in God is what counts. Talking about morality is also fine but...
We’ve all seen it. The distracted parent on the street, trying to juggle shopping with pushing a pram whilst keeping an eye on a toddler who has recently discovered his feet. The toddler runs ahead thoughtless of any danger. Suddenly, the parent sees that the child is about to run...
The other night I watched the film, “In order of disappearance”, shown on the BBC. It’s about a father who, once he realises his son’s apparent suicide was anything but, takes revenge on a drug cartel for having murdered his son. The film shows the impact of the son’s death...
Jesus is about thirty years old in the Gospel scene of today’s Mass. He’s just come from what we traditionally call his hidden life, the thirty years spent at Nazareth, growing up subject to Mary and Joseph, growing in wisdom and understanding before God and man. We know that already...
It was dangerous to be a Christian in the first century in Rome. Christianity was seen as an enemy of the Empire. Many Christians were put to death by horrible forms of torture like being beaten to death or thrown to the lions. To survive, Christians built the catacombs, underground...
There are three main characters in today’s readings. Taking them in chronological order, they are Job, Jesus and Paul. The book of Job, remember, is a parable about innocent suffering. Its point is to show that trust in God in the midst of suffering will eventually perfect the one suffering...
As you know, we celebrate this week the 100th anniversary of the Scottish Catholic Education Act. The Act transferred ownership, as it were, of the Church’s schools to the state but with a number of conditions attached in order to preserve the Catholic identity and ethos of the schools. In recent...
So, it’s the week of prayer for Christian Unity, or week of ecumenism as it’s called. There’s no question that this is a difficult thing. Even the word ecumenism is difficult: it sounds something to do with the environment! There are all kinds of reasons why divisions appeared in the...
St. Mungo ( died, 614) did not exactly have an illustrious start in life. He was the illegitimate child of a princess and her cousin who was a king. St. Mungo’s grandfather, King of the area of Lothian at the time, was furious when he found out his daughter was...
