As everyone here is intensely aware, this year our Sunday Gospels are generally taken from St. Mark. But because this Gospel is so short, when we come to the feeding of the 5,000, the lectionary switches instead to Chapter 6 of St. John’s Gospel. This Chapter begins with St. John’s account of the feeding of the 5,000, and then continues on with the long Bread of Life discourse that follows. We shall read extracts from that discourse over the next 4 Sundays.
Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family Year B (2023)
Genesis 15:1-6,21:1-3 Hebrews 11:8.11-12.17-19 Luke 2:22-40
Today is the last day of the year. We could do worse than to hear the Canticle of Simeon read out in the Gospel. In the Liturgy of the Hours, this Canticle belongs with Compline, the last prayer of the day, recited or sung just before bed-time.
Homily for the 8 o’clock Mass, Sunday 28A, 15 October 2023, on Matthew 22:1-14
Through the parable of the Royal Wedding Banquet we hear the thrilling invitation of Jesus: Come to my feast! Put on your glorious attire! Enter into my joy! This is God’s invitation to us to enter eternal life; to clothe ourselves in the incomparable dignity of divine Sonship; to join the communion of all the Angels and Saints in heaven, eternally rejoicing. And yet: this parable does not make us feel at all comfortable, and it’s not meant to; any more than it was meant to make the Scribes and Pharisees feel comfortable. For the weight of this story falls not so much on the invitation, as on the refusal of those invited. It ends uncompromisingly, on a note of harsh condemnation: Bind him hand and foot and throw him into the outer darkness.