Today’s Gospel passage comes towards the end of the Sermon on the Plain, according to St. Luke. Up to this point our Lord has been setting out his programme for radical Gospel living. It all sounds very beautiful, but also definitely counter-intuitional, or hard to understand, or just plain crazy.
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 Sunday 3C; 23 January 2022: Luke 4:14-21
Homily for Advent Sunday 1C, 28 November 2021: Luke 21:25-28; 34-36
Homily for the 8 o’clock Mass, 6 November 2021, Sunday 32B: Mark 12:38-44
Homily for Sunday 31B, 31 October 2021: Mark 12:28-34
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.