The Gospel today is taken from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is the new Moses going up on a mountain and giving a new law. “You’ve heard it said, but I say to you”. He shows a clear display of a special authority. The law is not being abrogated, it’s not being done away […]

At the commencement of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus compares his disciples to 3 things, salt, light and a city built on a hilltop. All three exist not for themselves but for something else. Salt is meant to season and preserves food before refrigeration. Also salt renders earth infertile. Conquering nations, after tearing down […]

Many people today when they read this story would immediately dismiss these two people, Simeon and Anna, as Holy Joes; but if we have an open mind to the word of God there is a very relevant message for our world today, in these two people. They discover Christ as the fulfilment of all-human dreams […]

The story of the Magi told in today’s Gospel is a summary of the principal dynamics of the spiritual life. What are the lessons we can learn from this story? 1. Watching the night sky with scrupulous attention for signs of God’s purpose, the Magi evoke the importance of alertness in the spiritual order. We […]

Today we celebrate the great feast day of the Baptism of Our lord. It has been said that the most important day of our lives is our Baptism, the day when we were grafted onto Christ. When St. Pope St. John Paul II went back to visit his country Poland for the first time, his […]

The English writer, John Ruskin has provided us with a beautiful illustration of what the Lord wants us to be in the world. Before electricity, streets were lit by gas-lamps. Lamplighter went from lamp to lamp with a burning torch. Ruskin looking across the valley, he could see the torch of the lamplighter and the […]

Our first reading today brings us back to the 8th Century BC and the musings of the Prophet Isaiah. A century before the time of Isaiah, the Assyrian warriors had attacked the northern part of Israel and had carried off a lot of the people and those who remained were subjected to oppression. One of […]

We often see how history repeats itself. Recently was listening to a commentary about Syria and one commentator ironically said we’ve been here before with Kosovo, Rwanda, Srebrenica. Cambodia. Today some people would say that time is meaningless, things just come and go without any rhyme, or reason, or purpose, history is just one event […]

Our gospel today is taken for the 11th Chapter of St. Matthew. John the Baptist has been arrested and he hears about what Jesus is doing but he has his doubts. Now if John the Baptist had his doubts, many people of that time had their doubts. He sends his followers to ask Jesus if […]

Mark Twain wrote a story called “The Terrible Catastrophe”. It is about a group of people who get trapped in a tragic situation. They are doomed to die. They have no way of escape. Mark Twain didn’t want the story to end unhappily and so he concluded his story with these two sentences. ‘I have […]