When he was received into the Catholic Church, John Henry Newman had an uncertain future.  For twenty years he had been an Anglican...

One of the least admirable traits of public figures is their ability to field dozens of questions from journalists without giving direct...

Too often in our glancing through scripture do we seek the comfortable, loving, and consoling words of Jesus; phrases like: "Come to me...

Shortly after the Second World War, a communist government took over Czechoslovakia, and started cracking down on dissent and religious...

Today’s feast is the feast of Dominican friars, nuns, sisters and laity all around the world, of whom there are more than 100,000. It is...

How we read a text depends on what questions we bring to it. We might think of Abraham’s negotiation with God as being about whether a...

Among the congregations who hear this Gospel read this Sunday, I suspect more than a few people would have quiet sympathy for Martha....

Taking every form of evil upon himself and demonstrating God’s love as expiatory, Christ Jesus , this God-man, removes the debt which humanity incurred with its disobedience thus rendering humanity potentially debt free, the curse of eternal punishment lifted and thus as Paul writes he made peace by his death on the cross.

When Jesus sends out the seventy-two disciples in Luke 10, it might seem at first like a simple mission of peace: they are to heal the...

Why on earth would anyone start believing in the resurrection of Jesus?  Why would anyone take the apostles at their word, when they say...

At the end of almost every Mass you are told to go in peace, and off you go, on your own, trying to live a Christian life.  It’s not...

Today we celebrate the greatest mystery of our Faith, the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, the mystery of God’s inner life. In one way,...

Once while saying a requiem Mass for a dear friend, I realised that my words, “This is my body” didn’t just refer to Christ’s resurrected...

WITNESSING THE ASCENSION: A JOURNEY FROM WONDER TO MISSION   The Ascension of Christ marks a pivotal moment in salvation history—a...

St Augustine sure knew what peace looked like.  He was raised with Christian values by his mother, St Monica, but schooled with...

There’s something majestic about a great city. Looking down on one from a mountain or an aeroplane, the landmarks can certainly seem...

One of the most consoling images in the gospels is the image of the good shepherd. Jesus here likens himself to this pastoral occupation...

Some time over the next few weeks the Gospel we have just heard will be solemnly proclaimed at St Peter’s in Rome, and the question it...

There is a cartoon which shows us St Thomas complaining “Peter denied Jesus and he is not called Denying Peter; Mark is not called...

VICTIMÆ PASCHALI LAUDES The liturgical hymn we sing on Easter Sunday, the Victimæ paschali laudes , is one of only three sequences...