Readings: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; 2 Peter 1:16-19; Mark 9:2-10 We’ve reached here the highpoint of Jesus ministry. Literally. In recent weeks he’s raised the dead, he’s made a meal for a multitude out of scraps and gleanings, he’s walked on water … and everywhere the crowds are following him in droves. These are his glory …
Category Archives: Homilies
Sunday Week 16 Year B
Retreat directors are a sneaky bunch—they often give today’s gospel to people coming on a retreat as an invitation to ‘come away to a quiet place by yourself and rest for a while’—and they completely leave out the bit about not actually getting any peace or quiet when you get there. All the clamouring crowds …
Thursday Week 14 Year II
Time to come out of the closet: I’m a CSI fan. (only the original of course…) Last time a scene struck me and stuck with me. A cop was talking about his wayward daughter. He’d been watching her on a street corner, drugged up, plying her trade as a prostitute. But he said all he …
Monday Week 14 Year II
‘I will betroth you to myself for ever, betroth you with integrity and justice, with tenderness and love. I will betroth myself to you faithfully and you will come to know the Lord.’ For years now I haven’t been able to call Jesus ‘Lord’. The word worms uneasy in my mouth and in my heart …
Sunday Week 14 Year B
‘When I am weak, I am strong’. Isn’t that a lie, a sweet lie? It sounds good, sounds holy, but it hides the fact that this world is run by the strong for the strong—and the weak, the weak have to get by with the crumbs from the strong man’s table. Who bears the brunt …
Sunday Week 12 Year B
The storms we experience in the readings today are as ambiguous as any we face in our living. Are they destroying hurricanes or are they occasions when the veil is blown away to give a glimpse of God? We have two storms, today. We hear God finally answering Job from the heart of the whirlwind—all …
Sunday Week 11 Year B
Pauline—one of the Loyola Hall team—Pauline spends most of late winter trying to convince the rest of us, at every meal, that the beech trees are about to get their leaves. The rest of us peer at the barren branches and enjoy ourselves pouring scorn on Pauline. This goes on regularly for weeks until she …
Corpus Christi Year B
We all make promises … and we all break them. Yes, we say, we will do X or Y or Z … but find A and B come to hand instead. Some promises we make lightly and in haste and renege on them with hardly a qualm. Other promises gather a life’s hope and commitment …
Sunday Week 4 of Easter Year B
This is the one day of the year I wish I was a vegetarian. It’s a problem for me sitting at Sunday lunch eating my roast meat because it puts me in mind of just what it is to be a sheep. Being a sheep is all about the slaughter. I don’t like to think …
Friday Week 3 of Easter
There are two things going on here – the promise of life and the shock of its asking price. A promise of life – but it’s more than about just being alive – it’s about having life in you. Do you ever feel that, inside? That you are alive, against the odds, breathing, beating, fragile, …