News & Views December 2019
The Church Year begins in darkness – a deep purple darkness where we long for light and the bright shimmer of a star is a sign of hope and life. In the Liturgical Year, purple or violet is a colour of longing, renewal, and expectation: in Advent and Lent, at funerals or in the Sacrament […]
Weekly News 01/12/2019
Advent opens with a great promise: In the days to come the hope of people who need God. …The master is coming is also a promise, not a threat to breed fear, but to answer our cry. So Advent begins, not with thoughts of the past, with the coming of the Lord we celebrate at […]
Weekly News 24/11/2019
The year of Saint Luke ends with a characteristic take on the feast of Christ the King: in Luke’s gospel we are so familiar with seeing and hearing the voiceless, the rejected, those whom society puts in second place: how suitable, then, that on the feast of the King of all Creation we see him […]
Weekly News 17/11/2019
We must be very careful that the real point of today’s first reading is not washed away in genuine concerns over what one can and cannot say about the responsibilities of spouses. This is not, in fact, a recipe for the perfect wife, but an illustration, from one age, of the virtue of fully employing […]
Weekly News 10/11/2019
It is fortuitous that this passage of the Gospel is normally read near to the beginning of November when we have celebrated the feasts of All Saints and All Souls, since it is a strong proclamation of the reality of life after death and the resurrection of the body. This Sunday is not without its […]
Weekly News 03/11/19
There is a subversive humour in today’s Gospel which turns upside down the conventions of everyday life: we see a senior tax official climbing up a tree for a glimpse of Jesus, and the faintly ridiculous scene where Jesus stops, looks into the branches of the sycamore and says, Zacchaeus, come down! Did Zacchaeus worry […]
News & Views November 2019
On 13 February 2019, it was announced that Pope Francis had approved the Decree concerning this miracle, and Newman’s canonisation would take place in Rome on 13 October 2019. “May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of […]
Weekly News 27/10/19
A few weeks ago (22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time) we had a Gospel about humility in social life today we hear the Lord reiterating the message, but this time in reference to our prayer lives. The two Gospels are linked by the last words today, which also appear in the other story: Everyone who exalts […]
Weekly News 20/10/19
Perhaps the hardest Olympic event is the marathon: not only does it demand strength and fitness, but it calls for immense perseverance and endurance. Life in general and the Christian life, in particular, is a marathon. We will face hills and mountains as well as valleys and gentle slopes in life: we will face obstacles […]
Weekly News 13/10/19
There are many messages in todays Gospel: the power of God to heal, the compassion of Jesus for those in need, the fact that a despised foreigner (the Samaritan) is the only one who recognises what has been done, the role of faith and the importance of thanking God for gifts received. But because this […]