I’ll never forget the first time I saw Pope Saint Paul VI in person at the audience hall now named after him in Rome. I had arrived in Rome on 10 October 1975, a Friday, and went to the papal audience the following Wednesday, 15 October. The excitement was high,...
The death of Christ is the act by which the floodgates of divine mercy are thrown wide open. To talk of God’s mercy means to talk of the death of Jesus. To ask for that mercy and to receive it means to be placed inside the death of Jesus. All...
HOLY THURSDAY These three holiest of days breathe deeply of Jesus. During them, the believing heart is drawn into a truer and deeper union of love with Him in his great work of redemption, the healing of man and the healing of creation. We call these three days the Sacred...
I recall years ago watching the film “Fatal Attraction.” Dan and Beth are happily married with a little girl. One weekend, when Beth is away, Dan has an affair with a woman he meets through work, called Alex. Dan saw it as being over, but Alex didn’t. In a series...
Our curiosity is piqued when we are told that someone has the “inside story.” In Washington, DC, the famous Georgetown University has a School of Foreign Affairs. In the autumn semester of 2005, I taught a course there on papal diplomacy. I remember one student saying to me that he...
Kept in its place, money can serve the good of the human heart. Think of your own generosity to the appeals I make all the year round for good causes of all sorts. Our parishes are filled with good and generous hearts and it is a wonderful thing to see....
For some reason, the story of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” came to mind when I was preparing something to say for this evening. It was not so much because of Snow White herself, or the Seven Dwarfs, but because of the “wicked witch” or was it the “wicked...
Lent and Pentecost have something in common: the Holy Spirit. We think of Pentecost as the time of the coming of the Spirit with all his wonderful gifts and graces, but of Lent as all this drudgery about giving things up and pessimism about sin and penance, feeling bad and...
Towards the beginning of the first lockdown last March, I was out walking round the little circle in front of the church. One of our older parishioners was passing by and I went up to greet her, stopping of course at a “safe distance” as we are told to do...
We saw last Sunday how the power of Jesus’ preaching in the synagogue of Capernaum discombobulated those who heard him. It claimed an absolute authority over them. It even chased an unclean spirit out of one of their number. Today, the scene changes from a public one, a synagogue, to...
