Today we reflect on the great gift that God has bestowed upon his Church: all those people throughout history whom the Church has declared to be saints. We don’t only celebrate these people, but also all those anonymous people who attained great sanctity in their lives, even though their sanctity may not be known until the end of time, when all is revealed. And yet, some people might object to this great proliferation of saints. Doesn’t it, one may ask, detract from the idea

Among the reasons why the Lord twins these commandments is surely that together they are the way of heaven, the way things are in heaven. Yes, there were the early debates among thorny scholars about the greatest commandment: whether it is God, our parents, or our neighbour who came first is indeed behind the interlocutors' question. The Lord ends that speculation by providing not one but two commandments. And yet, the end of that speculation identifies a new way of living

The celebrated reply of Jesus to the Pharisees and Herodians, “Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar — and to God what belongs to God”, is often understood as a lesson about the respective responsibilities of religion and the state. Yet there is something far more profound in our Lord's answer. It concerns not simply what we must give, but to whom we ultimately belong. The question put to Jesus was carefully contrived. The Pharisees and Herodians, otherwise unlikely alli