Like so many parishes in our diocese and in the West, so in ours, death notifications now vastly outnumber baptism notifications; marriages have dwindled to a trickle; confessions are petering out; confirmations and first communions have dropped dramatically and we hardly ever see most of the children or their parents...
I don’t know if you follow Catholic commentary on the internet regarding current affairs in the Church. Sometimes, I am dismayed by how negative and polarised it can be. You can almost feel the fear and anger behind both what’s being said and how it’s being said. If we think...
Jesus got up from table and removed his outer garment. For a Hebrew man, the outer garment was a sign of his dignity as a free man. In divesting himself of it during the Passover meal, Jesus was assuming the condition of a slave. When he took flesh from Mary’s...
Why does the Spirit lead Jesus into temptation by the Devil or test Adam and Eve by prohibiting them from eating from certain trees or test us by prohibiting behaviours and attitudes He defines as sinful? The answer is so that we will use our freedom to choose Him...
Our opening prayer this afternoon concludes with these words: “may the presence of your Spirit among us bring renewal and courage.” And in a few minutes, we will pray a very searching and thorough Litany of Renewal, asking the Lord Jesus for many graces of both deliverance and reform. ...
Every human being has a natural desire for God. Many don’t believe in God but that doesn’t mean God is not there, caring even for those who don’t believe in Him. We can either heed our natural desire for God and search for Him, or we can frustrate it, by...
The Son of God drew his humanity from Mary. Hers was a uniquely pure humanity, soaked with the fullness of grace and matured by the fullness of her freed yes to God. Being free from sin did not make her less human, because to sin is not human. It is...
If God’s gift of marriage is the crowning of creation, his gift of the family is the crowning glory of marriage. Man and woman were created in his image and likeness, but that image is perfected in the gift of children. The family is the image of the Blessed Trinity....
The way in which the Christmas story is depicted nowadays can make it seem like a story just for children, magical even. The advent of Santa Claus as a major Christmas character reinforces that perception. What can then happen is that we adults get caught up in a kind of...
The very personal and moving encounter between Jesus and Peter in which Jesus asks him three times “do you love me?” tells us what sin is really all about and what mercy is really all about. This scene takes place back in Galilee, and the apostles are doing what...
