The Blood of the Shepherd

Good Shepherd Sunday Today’s liturgy offers one of the best-known passages of the Gospel, the Good Shepherd, to our meditation. The image is a tender one, that of a man who looks after his sheep with great care and does not want any of them to be lost. The Good Shepherd is not like a […]

Thank You, Holy Father!

Low Sunday The two essential points of meditation offered to us on this Octave of Easter are the importance of faith and mercy. In the epistle, St John insists that it is our faith that conquers the world, faith in the Son of God Incarnate who came to reconcile us with the Father. In the […]

Regina Coeli, Laetare! 

Easter Sunday It took them a while to figure it out. The Apostles had come a very long way. From their initial encounters with the Rabbi from Nazareth, through the three years of their formation with Him, the witnessing of the miracles and the learning of all the lessons He taught with His words and […]

The Harmony of God’s Plan

Paschal Vigil  On this holy night on which Holy Mother Church gives us such a rich and diverse selection of sacred texts and holy rituals, it would be easy to miss seeing the forest for the trees. To be true, the liturgy of this night is so grandiose that for those who are not familiar […]

Behold the Man – Behold the Church

Good Friday  When Pilate had Our Blessed Lord brought out to the people and pronounced the well-known words: Ecce Homo – Behold the Man, the Saviour had become unrecognisable. This may have been precisely what inspired the words in the first place. As Psalm 21 reminds us, Our Lord appeared more like a worm than […]

Loving to the End

Maundy Thursday More than the other evangelists, St John seeks to help us penetrate inside Our Lord’s dispositions as He prepares Himself to suffer His passion. He commences his description of the last hours of Our Blessed Lord’s life with these words: Jesus, knowing that His hour was come, that He should pass out of […]

Success in Failure 

Palm Sunday From the perspective of anyone without the faith, the life of Christ was one gigantic failure. His obituary might have read something like this:  Of spurious ancestry, born in a dirty stable, practiced a back-breaking, low-paying trade, turned himself into a rabbi without an education, had a flair for creating enthusiasm among the […]

The Friends Of The Cross

Passion Sunday In today’s Gospel we hear Our Blessed Lord point out to the Pharisees the main reason they do not understand what He has been trying to tell them. He who is of God hears the words of God; therefore you hear them not because you are not of God (Jn 8:47). They heard […]

My Body For You

Fourth Sunday in Lent – Laetare In the midst of our Lenten austerities, Holy Mother Church invites us to rejoice. Laetare, laetitia, expresses an overflowing joy, one of victory. Indeed, we are on the threshold of the greatest of victories, that of Our Lord Jesus Christ over the powers of death and hell. One of […]