The Son of Man must be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
Today, on the Feast of the Holy Cross, with the whole Church, we turn our gaze towards Christ crucified, and towards the Cross on which he died.
22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C – 31 August 2025
Homily for Sunday 20C, 17 August 2025, Luke 12:49-53
I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!
In the plan of St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, travelling with determination towards his Passion, Death and Resurrection. The first incident in that journey recounted by St. Luke is an unhappy attempt to enter a Samaritan village. There James and John ask if they should call down fire from heaven to burn these people up (cf. Gn 19:24). But Jesus rebukes them (Lk 9:54).
Homily for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C: 27 July 2025
First as a deacon and now as a priest, I have always found the various secret prayers prescribed by the rubrics very consoling – the obligatory ones, which should be said during the liturgy, as well as some of those no longer strictly required. For example, as you prepare the chalice on the altar at the Offertory, you are meant to say: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity”.
Homily for Sunday 14C, 5 July 2025: Luke 10:1-12,17-20; Gal 6:14-18
Homily for the Feast of St. Benedict, 11 July 2025
Coming down the hill on either side of the valley from the West, or turning the corner at the end of the valley from the East, you catch an occasional glimpse, between obstructing trees, of Pluscarden Abbey. There it stands, in the middle of nowhere, in this gentle and fertile valley: a mediaeval monastery. Somehow the sight is always both astonishing and stirring.