Lent Sunday 3B, 7th March 2021. Having an argument is a good way of ‘creating an atmosphere’: one can enter a room and know immediately that something is going on – something bad – something not conducive to peace. But one can also enter a room after an argument and …
Lent Sunday 2B, 28th February 2021 At first sight it seems a bit of a puzzle to juxtapose two such different readings as in today’s Second Sunday Mass of Lent: we are uplifted by the wonder and promise of the Transfiguration but this is preceded by the harrowing story of …
Sunday 6 B, 14th February 2021 We are all lepers, now, and in need of conversion. Our leper here represents us all in this time of pandemic, but also, at all times, in need of spiritual healing. There are many reasons one could come up with for the emphasis in …
Sunday 5B, 7th February, 2021 First, the bad news: For every patient who dies from Covid-19 in hospital, from the moment they encounter that first masked paramedic, they will never see a human face again. Not one smile, nor pair of cheeks, nor lips, nor chin. Not a single human …
Sunday 4B, 31st January, 2021 There is a certain irony or tension in our disdain for authoritarian regimes and yet our desire to have leaders who speak with authority. And this tension or ambivalence, applies as much to the Church as to our political life. Interestingly, one of the marks …
Sunday 3B, 24th January, 2021 We would be much better off on our own, surely, without the burden of all these extra laws and extra people? We know who we are as Catholics. Bring the rest on board and we won’t know who we are any more. And France and …
Sunday 2B, 17th January, 2021 We each have a facility within us for discerning God’s will but it needs cultivating and protecting. It needs cultivating because, like all senses, it will atrophy without use. It needs protection because there are many other voices seeking to claim its attention. Innocence is …
Second Sunday after Christmas, 3rd January 2021 These are tremendous texts: they situate our local ‘coming together’ here in Turvey in a far wider setting – indeed, in the largest setting possible: the beginning and end of all meaning: Through him all things came to be,not one thing had its …
Advent Sunday 4B, 20th December 2020 We are forever attempting to tabernacle God for ourselves; finding a place for God which we can clearly identify and then control, but God is not of this nature at all. Indeed, the very word ‘God’ is a failed attempt at pinning something down …
Advent Sunday 3B, 13th December Now, it would be anachronistic to say that John the Baptist was in the wilderness of Judea in order to save it: no, he’s there in order to call the people from the towns and villages of Judea, especially Jerusalem, in order to save them …
