Homilies

Homily for St. Cecilia’s Abbey Ryde, Sunday 7C, 20 February 2022, Luke 6:27-38

According to St. Paul, we should “have that mind in us which was in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5). In today’s Gospel according to St. Luke, our Lord manifests his mind to us, and asks us to imitate it. Love your enemies, he says, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you (6:27). Through all this list of commandments, Jesus is painting for us a self portrait, and indeed sketching out for us his own autobiography.

Homily for Sunday 4C, 30 January 2022, Luke 4:21-30

Today’s Gospel scene sets before us the mystery of the Lord’s attractive power, and also, immediately conjoined to that, the mystery of his rejection. We have here an illustration of the truth stated by St. John in his Prologue: He was the light that came into the darkness of our world, and the darkness could not comprehend it. He came to his own, but his own received him not (Jn 1:5,11).

Homily for the 8 o’clock Mass, Sunday 29B, 17 October 2021: Mark 10:35-45

As Jesus made his way to Jerusalem, and to his Passion and death, the Apostles James and John put to him a request. In doing so they put us all forever in their debt. Thank God for this instance of tactlessness and stupidity! Their ambitious striving for the top places in the coming Kingdom evoked from Jesus a response that gives us a privileged insight into into his own mind, into the Christian life; into God’s plan of salvation.

Homily for Sunday 28B, 10 October 2021 (Wisdom 7:7-11; Hebrews 4:12-13; Mark 10:17-30)

The story of the Rich Young Man we heard in today’s Gospel is such a divine word. We receive it as ever alive and active; not to be judged by us, but precisely to judge us; to scrutinise our secret thoughts and intentions (Hb 4:12). This is the passage that prompted the youthful Antony, father of all monks, to abandon all things in order to follow Christ, round about the year 269.