Refreshments in Battle
21st Sunday after Pentecost In today’s epistle, St Paul reminds us that to be a Christian is to be a soldier. Like any soldier, we must have armour, helmet and weapons. Unlike the soldiers of this world, our weapons are of a spiritual nature: truth, justice, peace, faith, the Spirit, prayer. Armed with these, we overcome […]
A Spiritual Machine Gun
Solemnity of the Holy Rosary Tomorrow, 7 October, is the feast of the Most Holy Rosary. Today on the first Sunday of the month of October, we celebrate what we call the external solemnity of the feast so as to allow the faithful to more easily take part in this significant celebration. Incidentally, tomorrow has […]
St Cecilia October Triduum
3-5 October 2024 October is the month of the Holy Rosary and of the Holy Angels. There is obviously an affinity between Our Lady and the Holy Angels. Mother Mary is the most angelic of all saints, the one whose purity and holiness is most like that of the angels. But, though not an angel, […]
Holy Angels and Mental Sanity
Saint Michael At every single Holy Mass, the Church unites herself with the choirs of angels in singing the eternal Sanctus: Holy, holy, holy, Lord, that the prophet Isaiah heard in his glorious vision of Heaven (Isaiah 6). Every Holy Mass takes us to Heaven and gives us a share in the heavenly liturgy, the […]
Nothing Is Wanting
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost Today’s liturgy provides us with the first verses of St Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians. It’s an extraordinary piece of writing that seems written for our day and the wave of apostasy afflicting the Church. St Paul had heard echoes of conflict among this cherished group of Corinthian Catholics to […]
Disease of the Mind
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost This Sunday’s Gospel presents Our Blessed Lord turning the tables on the Pharisees. Usually they are the ones putting Him to the test and getting burnt. This time He is on the offensive, and the battle is decisive. He asks a very simple question: the Christ, the Messiah, the one whom […]
Being Possessed
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary The birth of a baby is a joyful event, for it inaugurates a rejuvenated future full of promise. However, it is also full of mystery, since we simply do not know what the newborn will become. The Church celebrates three nativities, those of Our Lord, Our Lady who had […]
September St Cecilia Triduum
This month’s triduum of prayer and fasting (5-7 September) will conclude on Saturday with the feast of a little known martyr of the early Christian era. I’m referring to St Regina of Alesia. This young woman, converted early to Christianity, consecrated her virginity to Christ whom she loved above all things. As happened frequently in […]
Who Are the Pallbearers?
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost Today the holy Gospel takes us to the little town of Naim. Our Lord approaches with His disciples, and as He does so, a funeral cortege is processing out in direction of the graveyard. The dead man was young, the only son of his widowed mother. The details are important, because […]
