Palm Sunday Benediction, 05.04.20: On Devotion to Our Lady Devotion to Our Lady in the Roman Catholic tradition has always been very powerful, very present. It has gone through periods where there have been abuses, where Our Lady has been treated as if equal to Christ himself or even...
From the beginning of the First Reading, right through the Second Reading and the whole of the Passion according to St. Matthew, Jesus seems totally defenceless, vulnerable, helpless: “I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard.” When Peter takes...
Well, today, my message to all of you who are watching is very simple: be confident, have hope, trust in the power of God and in the power of Jesus Christ! Yes, we are going through a very trying and difficult time, for many a tragic time: the loss of...
The Sunday Bread, 22nd March 2020: Laetare Sunday Readings: 1 Samuel 16:1,6-7,10-13; Psalm 22(23); Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1,6-9,13-17,34-38 “If I should walk in the valley of darkness, no evil would I fear.” Why? For “you are there with your crook and your staff; with these...
There can be no “good” time for something like the coronavirus to come upon us, but at least in Lent, a penitential season, we have a spiritual perspective which might help us to face it with some sense of meaning and purpose. At the beginning of Lent we...
The three ways in which Jesus is tempted embrace the three fundamental types of sin from which all others come. The first is the worship of the body. Jesus is tempted to use his freedom to heed the flesh, in this case by satisfying his hunger, rather than...
The darkness and death on Golgotha were not just events restricted to that time and place. Everything in the earthly sojourn of Jesus has relevance for every time and place given that he experienced these things not only as man but also as God. And so the darkness...
If you were French, the word “Lent” would mean “slow.” So, the season of Lent would somehow mean a season of slowing down or even a “go slow.” Slowing down in what sense, though? Might it mean cutting back on prayer, going slow on going to Mass? Not likely!...
Those of us over forty probably all have a set of scales in the bathroom. It’s no fun, bleary-eyed first thing in the morning, to approach the scales with trepidation that yet another few pounds have mysteriously appeared! We are quick to let friends know when we lose a...
On these recent Ordinary Sundays of the Church’s year, our second reading is taken from the first letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians. Corinth was an ancient Greek city with 90,000 inhabitants in 400 BC. The Romans demolished it in 146 BC and built a new city...
