Gospel Reflection for Sunday November 19th 2023 | 33nd Sunday in Ordinary Time All of us have noticed, I’m sure, how little we communicate with one another in ordinary, everyday life. It is more noticeable in cities than in towns or more noticeable in towns than in villages, but the trend is still there. At...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday November 12th 2023 | 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Imagine, if you can, that you are living in a time of great suffering and anxiety. You are part of a small group of Jews who followed Jesus of Nazareth and came to see him as the Messiah – the chosen one...

The Gospel today contains, I think, an insight into a quality of Jesus we can too easily overlook.  When we list the qualities and virtues of Jesus, we rarely include it.  When we examine our conscience we equally rarely include it as a possible place of sin.  It is a quality that says to us:...

Introduction: Awesomely simple, wonderfully direct, easily understood…..and incredibly difficult. So often the simplest things are the most difficult to achieve. This Sunday’s Gospel says this: “Love God, Love your neighbour as yourself.” And that’s it. There is no more to say… Join me in reflecting on this simple but profound Gospel. Many thanks, Brian. Gospel...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday October 22nd 2023 | 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time One of the things I particularly like about the Gospels is their ‘realness’. The stories, memories and events of Jesus’ life are told to us in a sincere and authentic way. Nowhere is there an attempt to sugar-coat reality or present us...

INTRODUCTION TO THIS WEEK’S GOSPEL REFLECTION It is not possible, I think, to begin a reflection on a Gospel about the coming of the ‘Kingdom of God’ without acknowledging the intense suffering and the terrible tragedy presently afflicting God’s own people of Israel and the Palestinian people who have long shared that land. I can...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday October 8th 2023 | 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time The people who populate Matthew’s parables remind me a bit of the little girl in the poem who had “a little curl, right in the middle of her head. “When she was good, she was very, very good,” the poet tells us,...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday October 1st 2023 | 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time An eight-year-old, I think, could quite easily understand the message of today’s Gospel story. It is so crystal clear as to need no explanation or interpretation. ‘Practise what you preach’, ‘don’t say one thing and do something else’, ‘think before you commit...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday September 24th 2023 | 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time I am reminded this week of the saying that “history is written by the victors.” When reading the Gospel of today, particularly the last sentence, “…the last shall be first, and the first, last.”, I felt very strongly that it had to...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday September 17th 2023 | 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time In his adventure/survivor novel, ‘Lord of the Flies’, William Golding introduces us to a group of teenage boys (in fact, a school choir) stranded on a desert island when their plane crashes. They quickly discover that they are the only survivors and...