The World, the Flesh and the Devil

The Devil presenting St Augustine with the Book of Vices

My sermon for the First Sunday of Lent, Year A:

The readings today, appropriately enough for the beginning of the penitential season of Lent, revolve around the weakness of our human nature, our inclination towards sin and self-seeking, and our susceptibility to temptation. They invite us to reflect on the wisdom, the realism and the compassion of Christian spirituality on these subjects, especially on what we might call the psychology of temptation.

Lent: our annual spiritual refresher course

My sermon for Ash Wednesday:

Every celebration of Mass begins with the Penitential Rite, as we call it. We prepare to meet Christ and receive Christ in the Eucharist by pausing for a moment, right at the start of Mass, and turning our attention to our faults, our weaknesses, the areas of our life where we fall short of the standard of Christian holiness. We apologise to God and we ask him to give us strength in our future struggles.

Lent is a whole season of the Church Year dedicated to this aspect of Christian spiritual life.

"De-chavving" the car park

The bushes around the car park had gradually grown very tall and, following a suggestion at the last parish council meeting, I arranged to have them cut down a bit, making the car park and the church entrance far more visible from the street.

"Worldly prudence"

Mr Worldly Wiseman from Bunyan's  
The Pilgrim's Progress

An addendum to Sunday's sermon, courtesy of F.P. Harton in his book The Elements of the Spiritual Life. The book was first published in 1932 and Harton, an Anglican clergyman and sometime Dean of Wells Cathedral, obviously belonged to the High Church party of the Church of England. My second-hand copy is a 1957 reprint, but the book is apparently available in a modern edition.

A house built on rock

My sermon for the 9th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A:

The gospel reading today brings to a close a long and important section of Saint Matthew's Gospel: Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

This great exposition of Jesus' moral teaching covers chapters five, six and seven of Matthew's Gospel and there are some disadvantages in dividing it into several short segments, as in the gospel readings for Mass over the last five or six Sundays. It's a good idea to read all three chapters together, to get a picture of the whole charter of Christian moral life, or the way of God's Kingdom.

Consider the lilies....

My sermon for last Sunday, 8th in Ordinary Time, Year A:

There's a story about one of the hermits living in the desert in the fourth or fifth century, who came back to his hermitage one day to find a couple of robbers making off with his few possessions. Instead of protesting or trying to stop them, he began to help them remove his few goods from the house. He seemed to look on the experience of being robbed as a test of his vow of poverty or an opportunity to show, even to himself, his level of non-attachment to material things.

Education Sunday

Yesterday was "Education Sunday" and Bishop Regan wrote this Pastoral Letter on the subject of Catholic Education:

"But I say this to you...": Christ's new standard

My sermon for 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A:
The religion of the Old Testament is criticised sometimes for being too legalistic, but I think that's a mistake and a misrepresentation.

The faith of the Chosen People didn't revolve around a set of harsh rules; their faith revolved around the character of God, especially his quality of loving-kindness or steadfast love (hesed in Hebrew, a word that's used hundreds of times in the Old Testament to describe the main quality of God's character).

Your light must shine among men

My sermon last Sunday, 5th in Ordinary Time, Year A:

The instruction that Jesus offers in these few lines of the gospel seems at first glance to contradict the teaching he gave on other occasions, along the lines that when we pray, or fast or give alms, we should do it in secret, and God, who alone sees what we do in secret, will reward us.

The Poor in Spirit

My sermon for last Sunday, 4th in Ordinary Time, Year A:

There's a type of person in the Bible who is held up as an ideal or a model of faith in God: the poor humble man, or the poor righteous man.

In many places the authors of the Old Testament draw an approving picture of the person whose material circumstances are insecure, who is under no illusions about his or her lowly social status and lack of influence, but who persists in devotion to God and in trying to live a good moral life, in keeping with God's Law.