Sunday Reflections
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
In the story The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgeson Burnett, the orphan child, Mary Lennox, is sent from India to live with her uncle in his Yorkshire manor. Mary is a spoilt, badly-…
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Jews looked back nostalgically to the reign of King David, who conquered his enemies and established a strong kingdom. They were now occupied by the Romans, who rode powerful stallions, their…
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jesus’ words in today’s gospel seem at first sight to be very harsh. Are we being asked to put aside the fourth commandment, “Honour thy father and thy mother?” Jesus spent thirty years as part of…
Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The prophet Jeremiah preached primarily in Judah, from 626 until 587 BC. The people had started to worship other gods and their evil practices had deeply offended the true God. Jeremiah prophesied…
Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
The image of God as shepherd recurs throughout the Old and New Testaments. Psalm 23 is a perfect example of the care God gives to his people: leading them to rich pastures, nourishing, guiding and…
Corpus Christi
St John devotes chapter six of his gospel to Christ’s teaching on the Eucharist. He had fed five thousand people from the loaves and fishes that the little boy had been prepared to share. The…
The Most Holy Trinity
God has been revealing himself to humanity from earliest times. In the first reading, he appeared to Moses in the form of a cloud, a symbol of divine presence repeated through the Old and New…
Pentecost Sunday
Jesus said Nicodemus: “The wind blows where it chooses” (John 3:8). This would be an excellent description of the coming of the Holy Spirit. On Pentecost Sunday he came as a powerful wind, the…
The Ascension of the Lord
The Ascension of the Lord forms the hinge between the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. The Gospel recounts the life of Jesus on earth, while Acts is an account of the early church.…
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Jesus knew that his life on earth was over. He felt joy that he was returning to the Father but sorrowful that he was leaving his friends, with whom he had shared so much in his short time with…