For me, the trouble with Lent is that it happens every year!   By that, I mean that what should be an intense and focused preparation for the central feast of the Christian calendar becomes another routine we go through for forty days before we arrive at yet another Holy Week, just like all the others...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday February 11th 2024 | 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time All of us in the last few years have come face to face with serious illness and death in the form of Covid-19. According to the World Health Organisation, a conservative estimate of three and a half million people have died from...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday February 4th 2024 | 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time “Jesus of Nazareth, This is your Life….” … and he is presented with the red book of his life, as all around him relatives and friends applaud. If the TV show ‘This is Your Life’ had been around in the time of...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday January 28th 2024 | 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time In Luke’s Gospel we hear the story of the Roman Centurian who pleads with Jesus to heal his gravely ill servant. Not being a Jew, he does not consider himself worthy of asking Jesus to do this for him, so he sends...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday January 21st 2024 | 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time I learned as a teacher that it can be very disillusioning to begin a lesson with the words, “…remember what we said yesterday…” – disillusioning because the statement was usually met with a sea of blank faces indicating that what I thought...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday January 14th 2024 | 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time If I was going to be stranded on a desert island and could only take one story from the Gospels with me, I think I would choose today’s Gospel as the story I would take. There is just so much going on...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday January 7th 2024 – Feast of The Epiphany of the Lord The very early communities of Christians had very little interest in the birth and childhood of Jesus. Their starting point was the Resurrection on Easter Sunday morning – an event which shocked and overwhelmed them, leaving them struggling to understand...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday December 31st 2023 | Feast of the Holy Family Parents reading this will easily remember the many milestones your children encountered as they grew. You will remember their first words, first tooth, first steps, first day at school, and so many other firsts of childhood. It was you who taught your...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday December 24th 2023 | Fourth Sunday of Advent Let me begin with two quotes, from two different people with radically different backgrounds. Firstly, Mahatma Ghandi, Indian mystic and activist who said, “Love is the strongest force the world possesses, yet it is the humblest imaginable.” Secondly, Albert Einstein, possibly the greatest...

Gospel Reflection for Sunday December 17th 2023 | Third Sunday of Advent During the week a reader commented: “I am surprised that people flocked to him for baptism and repentance. His reputation was not great!” That surprise is well founded because John the Baptist was not what we would call an ‘attractive’ person. From his...