The sight of a queue for confession can provoke exasperation and anxiety in a penitent. How long will I be waiting for? Will there be time for the priest to hear my confession, as well as the twenty people ahead of me in the queue? As a penitent, I am familiar with these emotions. As a confessor, though, I suggest that a queue for confession is one of the more edifying sights there is (certainly it’s one of the most edifying queues there is). It is an expression from the peni

‘Epiphany’ is a Greek word which means something like ‘manifestation of divinity’. Traditionally, it has been linked to three events in Jesus’s life: the adoration of the Magi, which we hear described in today’s Gospel; Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan, which we will celebrate next Sunday; and his first recorded miracle at the wedding feast at Cana. Each of these events is an epiphany, because, in each one, Jesus is revealed as more than simply a human being—in them, his divinit

Like the others feasts and celebrations that make up the Christmas season, the remembrance of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph gives us another opportunity to reflect on the meaning of the incarnation whereby the Eternal Word of God, the Son of God, who is God, came to live among us – and not just to live among us but to live among us as one of us and for all of us. In working the miracle of the Word made flesh God chose to become part of a human family, not just sym