(This is my first time preaching for some years — wish me luck!) Readings: Jer 20:7-13; 1 Cor 10:31-11:1; Luke 14:25-33 In my time I’ve worked in vocations and I’ve known a few other vocation directors too and one of the things we have all wondered about from time to time is how to advertise, …
Category Archives: Homilies
The Queenship of Mary
Readings: Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 112:1-8; Luke 1:26-38 Today’s memorial might focus on Mary’s place in the cosmos — and by extension the cosmic identity and destiny of all sons of Adam and daughters of Eve — but the readings chosen to help us probe that identity and destiny are relentlessly focused on God, all about …
Monday Week 13 Year II
Edel McClean offers these reflections: Readings: Amos 2; Matthew 8: 18-22 I’m perplexed by today’s gospel reading. I don’t want this to be my Jesus speaking. I want to catch a softness in his eye. I want him to smile. I want him to be a wee bit easier on people. But Jesus isn’t going …
Monday Week 6 Year II
Edel McClean offers these reflections: Readings: James 1:1-11, Psalm 118, Mark 8:11-13 The liturgical title for today is Monday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time. A quick look at ordinary in the dictionary tells us ‘unexceptional, plain, uninteresting’. It seems a little like what the Pharisees are accusing Jesus of in our …
Sunday Week 3 of Advent Year A
Though I’m not up to preaching these days I thought I might enlist the Loyola Hall Team to give their reflections occasionally. Today’s offering is from Edel McClean. Readings: Isaiah 35:1-6,10; Psalm 145:6-10; James 5:7-10; Matt 11:2-11 Advent is all about faith and hope, and our readings today don’t let us down on that front. …
Sunday Week 7 Year C
Readings: 1 Sam 26:2-23; 1 Cor 15:45-49; Luke 6:27-38 Today’s readings are a charter for stupidity and a counsel for failure. Economics is founded on the belief that value grows by self-interest. Politics is built on the conviction that power must be contained by power and violence met with violence. And the biological science has …
Sunday Week 2 Year C
Readings: Isaiah 62:1-5; I Cor 12:4-11; John 2:1-11 Here’s a quiz for you… How many times does Mary appear in John’s gospel? … Trick question: the answer is none. The ‘mother of Jesus’, however, appears twice. Isn’t that a strange way to tell the story? It’s not that John didn’t know her name – so …
Wednesday Week 2 of Advent
Readings: Isaiah 40:25-31; Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus confuses me. I love this gospel but my first reaction hearing Jesus words ‘I am gentle and humble in heart’ is to say ‘who are you kidding?’ We used to have a big red poster downstairs, done by Cafod I think, with a face of Jesus, Ché Guevara-style, and …
Sunday Week 33 Year B
Homily for a Study Day on the Spiritual Exercises dealing with the Contemplatio ad Amorem Readings: Dan 12:1-13; Heb 10:11-14, 18; Mark 13:24-32 A plane passed over and I could hear it with a shudder even though I was sitting in The Arches (basement prayer room). I heard the plane in my praying and the …
Saturday Week 31 Year II
Readings: Philippians 4:10-19; Luke 16:9-15 Money continues to be in the spotlight today and it’s interesting how Jesus both praises and condemns it in the same breath. He calls it tainted, little, even loathsome and yet, precisely because it is so unimportant it assumes importance. How we handle the small stuff reveals our hearts better …