2019 (18)
2019 (18)
Our readings this morning all talk about an encounter with God that carried with it an invitation or a call to spread God’s word, to accept God’s grace, and to do God’s will.
I’m sure we all recognised these calls. They all broadly follow a similar pattern. There is usually …
3 min (717 words)
Read more...Today’s readings are about restoration and healing, and today, I hope, you have had some time to be restored and to at least begin to recognize areas where you might need God’s healing. After journeying with Moses up the mountain and seeing the burning bush and entering into …
7 min (1,315 words)
Read more...On Wednesday this week we all gathered to receive ashes and were told to ‘repent and believe in the Gospel’ or to ‘remember that we are dust, and to dust we shall return’. Repent, Believe, Remember. These are good things to do during Lent as we prepare ourselves to celebrate …
8 min (1,545 words)
Read more...Our readings this Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent, speak of coming home. St Paul in our second reading speaks of Jesus appealing to us to be reconciled with God. The Jews, after their wanderings in the desert after leaving Egypt and being sustained through the manna from …
11 min (2,151 words)
Read more...My brothers and sisters, tonight we gather to celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper and we are asked to remember and recall the great gifts that God has given us. We celebrate tonight together, a Mass that marks the beginning of our Sacred Paschal Triduum – the holiest …
9 min (1,827 words)
Read more...Our readings today are bound together with two overarching questions. The first question we might reflect on is who do we listen to? The second is do we know what time it is?
What has appeared repeatedly in our Easter readings is the story of the Church’s universal mission. …
9 min (1,698 words)
Read more...In today’s readings I think there are two verbs we should take special notice of. The first is ‘encourage’ from our first reading. The selection from the Acts of the Apostles describes the conclusion of St Paul’s first missionary journey where he took the good news of Jesus. …
7 min (1,254 words)
Read more...In our first reading today we hear the opening lines from the Acts of the Apostles. Our Gospel is also taken from the end of Luke’s Gospel. Both the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of Luke were, we believe, written by the same person and both the Gospel and first reading …
6 min (1,198 words)
Read more...Last week we celebrated the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. A feast that reminded us that “Within God there is distinction but no difference. And that within God there is love without distance or diminishment.” [because, as Fr Terence Klein recently noted in his …
9 min (1,658 words)
Read more...Ecclesiastes is a book in the Bible that forms part of the wisdom tradition and is named after the assembly, the church ecclesia, to whom the preacher Qoheleth is speaking. A previous wisdom book, the Book of Proverbs, made an argument that hard work and careful planning …
11 min (2,014 words)
Read more...The readings in our Mass today asks us, I think, to focus on God’s victory over evil and God’s power at work in Mary, and whether we allow it to work in ours lives as well.
When Pope Pius XII proclaimed Mary’s Assumption in 1950, he called his document Munificentissimus …
8 min (1,483 words)
Read more...Our readings today address a disappointed people but they offer a universal hope of salvation – not a guarantee, but a promise that all are welcome.
We know that 200 years after the text of Isaiah was written, there was great disappointment among the Jews after their exile, …
7 min (1,351 words)
Read more...Pope Francis recently declared September 1 as the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, as the Orthodox Church has done since 1989. You can read the full letter here. According to Pope Francis, “The annual World Day of prayer for the Care of Creation offers to …
9 min (1,746 words)
Read more...In our readings today we are once again reminded of the humility we need in our relationship with God, and with creation, and with each other. This humility – we can recall – was a key feature of last week’s readings where we realized how humility was a truthful attitude and …
17 min (3,265 words)
Read more...There are so many stories in today’s readings but I think they share the chorus of ‘Rejoice with me, for what was lost is now found’. The gospel for this Sunday includes the story of the prodigal son, and our first reading from the book of Exodus has been selected to make …
13 min (2,515 words)
Read more...Our first reading this morning from the second book of Kings refers to a time about 850 years before Christ when Elisha the prophet took over from Elijah. That story is in the 19th Chapter of the first Book of Kings. At that time the northern kingdom of the Jews was in …
9 min (1,658 words)
Read more...At the heart of today’s readings is, I think, the distinction between a gift and a reward. God is always gifting us, blessing us, and bestowing grace upon us. It is not something we can ever earn or take for granted, rather we can only say how unworthy we are of it and thank …
10 min (1,943 words)
Read more...On the face of it – our readings today talk about a key aspect of our faith, the importance of life and our belief in the resurrection from the dead. In both the first reading and the Gospel we hear two stories about seven brothers.
In the first reading we hear the heroic …
8 min (1,455 words)
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