Margaret’s many remarkable qualities and abilities remind me of some of those spectacular mosaics you see in both ancient and modern buildings. The colours and proportions of the mosaic emphasize its more salient features but require that you stand back to take in the whole. Any fair hearing of the...

So, the 2025 Jubilee Year, was officially inaugurated on Christmas Eve by Pope Francis when he opened the holy door in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. He has given it the theme of “Pilgrims of Hope.” Bishop Frank Dougan gave the official start to the holy year in our...

To me, Jane Dell was one of the “realest” people I have ever known. She was wonderfully and unapologetically just herself. That meant that you had to take whatever was on offer in any particular exchange, and Jane never left you in any doubt as to what that was on...

Pontius Pilate represents all secular power and justice but in its tragic claim to subject the Truth of Christ, the Truth who is Christ, to the perverse standard of human pride. He is aided and abetted, in fact he is cynically manipulated, by the corrupt religious power of the time:...

We “only die once and after that comes judgment.” Why do we die, though? And why only once? Death is not God’s work or will, for He is Life itself. So, death can only be the result of a radical separation from Life, from God. Such separation is the meaning...

We are commanded to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. In other words, we are to love the Lord as the Lord Himself loves. But who, bar a very few exceptional souls, does that, can do that? Yet, to the degree we don’t do it,...

This feast is a feast of immense Christian hope! It unites our present, and our past, with our future. And yet, that future is somehow already present because the saints see us, they love and pray for us, they encourage us to keep going. If we long to be with...

Creation is not just happenstance or coincidence. It is the work of the Creator. St. James tells us in the second reading today that: “It is all that is good, everything that is perfect, which is given us from above; it comes down from the Father of all light; with...

So, we have just heard the final instalment of the long chapter 6 of St. John’s Gospel on the Bread of Life. The Church has spread the chapter over five Sundays to help us “chew” on it and to savour its deep, rich and often complex tastes. As we have...

It’s a curious fact of life that the food we eat to stay alive is itself all dead. Yet, no matter how well we eat, or take medication, to stay alive, we know that death will come. For some, mortality simply means that we will die one day; it’s a...