As you go a-visiting over the festive season you will certainly be bringing with you a gift to your loved ones and friends. Whatever gift you bring, your main gift will be yourself, your presence, your company, your love. In listening to the Gospel of the visitation of Mary to...

The readings of this Sunday are the last ones of Advent which focus mainly on the second coming of Jesus at the end of time. They are bursting with joy and anticipation.  In the first reading, Israel is invited to sing and shout for joy, to exult with all her...

Our first two readings proclaim how much God wants our good. The first is like an ode to joy, God being the one who literally moves mountains and valleys and commands the trees of the forest to ensure that Israel’s return from exile will be smooth and jubilant. St. Paul...

“To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.” This response to today’s psalm sums up what Advent is all about. If Advent means the coming of the Lord, lifting up my soul to him means going out to meet him. To lift up my soul means to offer it...

At one point in the Gospel of John, Jesus says that he has not spoken on his own authority but has spoken only what the Father told him to say. In the section from John which we have just heard, Jesus says that he was born for one thing: to...

As we approach the end of the Church’s Year, or the Liturgical Year, we are given readings from the Word of God which direct our gaze towards the end of time itself. Traditionally, November has been the time to reflect on what are called the “last things”: death, judgment, heaven...

Any man can only be a father if he first has three basic gifts: the gift of being himself a son, the gift who is the mother of his child and the gift who is his child. Because he is gifted in these ways, a father is himself a gift....

Sometimes, the way you imagine someone or someplace to be turns out to be very different from the reality. You may evenconvince other people to expect someone to look the way you describe them. Sciencefiction films have developed a whole gallery of figures, both pleasant andterrifying, which might lead us...

The Catholic religion is a religion of the body as much as of the soul. While it is true to say that Jesus died to save our souls, it is truer still to say that He died to save the whole of our being, body and soul. We don’t just...