4th Sunday of Easter 26 April 2026 Sermon

4^th Sunday of Easter 26.4.26   Good Shepherd

Whenever we see a large number of people, we can think - more sheep for the Good Shepherd to gather in!

He wants to save all of them, and the worst ones even more again.

The Good Shepherd will not be satisfied just to keep most of the flock in view. He will go after the lost even if has the other ninety-nine in place.

(Parable of lost sheep Lk 15, 3-7)

And the salvation in this case is not just an impersonal rescue, like picking up a whole batch, but is a personal pursuit on the shepherd’s part.

He knows His sheep by name, and not just the name, but everything about each particular sheep.

He knows us far better than we know ourselves. All our hopes, fears, joys sorrows, what we most want, and least want. It is all in plain sight to Him.

He wants to help with all those things. Come to Me, and I will give you rest Mt 11,28)

It is tailor-made salvation, where whatever is wrong can be set right, and whatever is right can be made better still.

Imagine what a quantity of need there is, when a large number of people are considered.

We might get a general idea of the scale, but only God can see it exactly.

We have His full attention. He speaks to each one, on a personal level.

We should not make it hard for Him to find us. Instead, let us run to Him.

In our need let us go closer to Him instead of moving away.

We can take comfort that this world, as vast as it is, and often called cruel – is in fact under the providence of a loving and all-powerful God.

To know we have God ruling the world instead of nobody running it, is a great relief.  If we look into a vast sky or wilderness or sea - we are not seeing something impersonal. For the heavens declare the glory of God (Ps 19,1)

Sometimes the lesser beings show more sense than we do. They set about worshipping God, while we want to complain and dispute with Him.

Jesus calls His sheep to a deep trust in Himself. We will not run from Him when we realize how much He is doing for us.

He calls us by name; now we call Him by name. the Holy Name which is above every other name. (Ph 2,9-11)

So we see sometimes He calls , sometimes we call Him. The constant communication will bring much good fruit.

Today is Vocations Sunday, on which day we consider God's call for a number of His people to be priests and religious.

We need as well to pray for the context out of which vocations come.

If the general faithful are truly faithful they will generate more vocations, and it will not be seen as anything unusual or somehow wrong.

It is not unusual to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, to want more of what He is offering us.

Our prayer can help generate a climate of expectancy, whereby it is normal and good to consider religious life. Faith is contagious and will find its way in, even when opposed. We are glad to be part of the whole process. May His Kingdom come among us!

 

 

3rd Sunday of Easter 19 April, 2026 Sermon

3^rd Sunday of Easter  19 April 2026 Revelation

God likes to reveal Himself in stages. He wants us to know Him, to interact with Him. He appreciates that we can only take things in, bit by bit.

God can be seen as a remote figure, not greatly relevant.

There is a lot we cannot know about God, but there is always something more that we can know.

We learn about God from the Scriptures, from the Liturgy, the teachings of the Church, the inspiration of the saints.

We come to appreciate His perfection, His benevolence to us.

We discover the need to keep God central in our lives. We do not push Him to the side, whether through some grievance with Him, or through indifference or distraction.

Some of His mysterious nature He reveals to us when we are ready to absorb what He tells us.

Take the Emmaus story. The disciples had a good start in that they were weeping for Christ.

Then they took a wrong turning by admitting defeat too quickly.

Then they recovered again by recognizing Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

God wants us to know him better, to understand his words, miracles, prophecies etc

The success of Our Lord’s coming was total as regards Himself but not yet complete at ground level.

To help others grasp this teaching, it means some have to take the lead and give good example; to make God present in this place and time.

Much of the world is godless so it is a huge task, but this is a good place to be in the process – here in the house of the Lord.

Some things we understand, and one of those things is that God wants people to know him,  

If we call on God only when things are going wrong, that is treating Him like a repair-man. We don’t expect to know the names of all the people that do jobs for us; we do need to know God's name.

With God it is highly personal, and He wants us to respond  in that way as far as we can.

He wants us to take an interest in Him; to be aware of His personal presence, really acting for the good.

Everyone should be doing this. It would be a much better world if they did; for the moment we will have to get by on reduced numbers!

Once we start on the path of knowing God we will be drawn further and further along that path. God is loveable even though mysterious.

We pool our talents and see the whole Body moving forward.

We help each  other to find Him, and know Him better. One person is up, the other down; another day it can be the other way round.

Our public communal worship is important.

Today many see  the point of religion as ‘helping people’ and that is the only point for them.

But we need to know God as well, for our own benefit and because He commands it. He does not need our love but He desires it.

Those who want to know will know. Seek and you shall find. Mt 7,7

Does it look like nothing is moving in the spiritual world? There are things going on that we cannot detect from the physical senses.

However the holier our lives the more aware we become and the more we do find out.

Meanwhile we walk with the Lord, like the two disicples.

2nd Sunday of Easter A 12 April 2026 Sermon

2^nd Sunday of Easter A  12 April 2026 Expectant faith 

It was one thing to rise from the dead. Jesus then had another task to perform, and that was  harder – to convince people, including even His disciples that He had indeed risen!

The last chapters of each of the four gospels give accounts of the kind of resistance He met. The apostles just could not believe it; they were not used to things going that right.

We are so accustomed to bad news that when we hear the good we are inclined to doubt it. What’s the catch, we might say.

Our world is in many ways hostile to the faith, and this can affect us. We still have the faith but it is harder to flourish when surrounded by negative factors, such as ridicule, scepticism, denial, persecution etc.

Even those who had been with Jesus for years still had trouble believing His word, though they had seen so many miracles.

Jesus told His disciples He would rise (Mk 8,31),  so why did they not believe it?

The disciples believed, but not yet enough. They were too much accustomed to the world of death to be ready for resurrection.

Now they had more life in their midst than they could handle. They were joyful, but needed a new way of grasping things.

For our part, are we thinking resurrection? We are in the same position as those first disciples.  We need to build up our faith, our expectancy of  God's marvellous actions in our midst.

And as always when we need something big it is from God that our help will come.

Jesus gave His followers a necessary lift. He appeared to them over and over until it finally sank in.

He does the same for us, not with appearances, but evidence of His goodness in our midst.

Much of it comes through the saints, canonised or not, who have given witness by their lives of the truth of the Resurrection. They have gone out into the cold wind of resistance in all its forms, and kept the flame alight.

We share in the Resurrection of Christ, firstly by coming to faith in Him, then by acting according to His teaching, then also by receiving Him sacramentally.

The apostles reached a level of identification with Christ such that even the shadow of  Peter would heal the sick (Ac 5, 15-16) or contact (Ac 19,11-12) with handkerchiefs, aprons,  of Paul.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

One thing the apostles had to do was organize the Church, sending people here and there, esgtablishing new dioceses and parishes (as we would call them now). All one Church, just getting bigger.

It means that disciples come and go from different necessities, which means sometimes sad farewells, as more and more varied needs musdt be attended to.

Thus, in this parish we have reached a need for some re-positioning, and this always means some sadness, but of course some new friendships can be made, and life goes on. In our case resurrection life.

We are destined to meet again, in Heaven if not before.

In our particular case the moves are not so dramatic, all being in the same city.

But near or far, we are always bound by our link with Christ. We are at one with all who are at one with Him.

1 Th 5, 11 Therefore  encourage one another, and build each other up. Just as in fact you are doing.’  That’s what we will do, by God's grace.

 

 

 

 

 

Easter Vigil 2026 Sermon

Holy Saturday 4 April 2026  Keeping vigil

When we keep vigil it means we are waiting for something to happen which has not happened yet, but we greatly hope it will happen.

It can be associated with anxiety, like attending to a sickness; or with joy, as in welcoming a returning traveller.

We have both anxiety and joy in our dealings with God.

We are anxious if  certain problems we face seem larger than we are and might be too much. But we continue to wait and pray for a happy resolution of the problem.  In  our anxiety we reaffirm our trust in God.

We are joyful in our vigil as we sense the power of God  coming through, like the first light of dawn breaking up the darkness.

Our Easter vigil is of the joyful kind, as vigils go. We know that whatever anguish we feel at Christ’s death, the certainty of  His resurrection will be stronger.

This is why we have a Saturday Mass for the Resurrection, and not just go straight to the Sunday. The Saturday Mass forces us to express trust in God to bring events to their best conclusion. Expectant waiting is something we get used to in our faith life.

On Sunday morning we allow ourselves to feel the full force of Jesus’s resurrection. That is more straightforward. He is risen and will never go back to the tomb.

Fortunately the joyful side will eventually be the whole reality and not have to share the stage with anxiety and other negative factors.

Jesus spent only three days in the tomb and every other day outside of it, and He certainly will not be going back there.

This is ‘keeping vigil’ - the more we expect things to go the right way the more joyful we are in anticipation.

And the better we will behave, because we learn a divine patience, God is always acting for good. We know that even if we cannot detect the precise way He is doing that.

We  have just heard many readings, shedding light on various aspects of our faith. Whenever we mention the past, it is to remind us how much trouble we have seen, but gradually we will emerge from the rubble and have only joy!

We reclaim the past not ignoring it, but drawing wisdom from it.

Then finally tonight we go into the Mass as the crowning event , still anticipating, because other things need to happen – but we are more secure because we have come so far. Those readings are our own story, which is still being written.

After it all, we express gratitude for what has been and what will be.

We do not become jaded or cynical, thinking that talk of a better future is just wishing on a star.

We will not become cynical if we pray consistently. We do  not accept that the world can never change.

Worlds can change if people change. And that much any person can achieve.

5th Sunday of Lent A 22 March 2026 Sermon

5th Sunday of Lent 22 March 2026  Life triumphs

We have desire for two things, somewhat opposed but both valid.

One is to go to Heaven, the other one is to stay here. We are happy to die if it is somewhere out there, a remote event, but not if it is today or tomorrow!

If we die at an unwanted time and it means we go to Heaven, we can come to like that.

We are supposed to trust the will of God. He knows His timing and He may have different ways of dealing with each person. For example, a short life or a long life, who can tell?

We try to cure sickness, of course, but we give way to the inevitable. Much is beyond us.

God is not as worried about death as we tend to be, because He is Lord of the living and the dead. (Rom 14,9). He knows both sides.

We know that God is concerned more with the state of the soul than that of the body, so He works for a closer union with each person. He wants people to know and love  Him; to come to a life that cannot die, and which will  bear much fruit in doing Gods will.

My greatest aim is to please God, we can say, but in practice it is more likely we please ourselves while trying not to offend God.

If God created us and designed the whole universe, and how everything works, we can trust in His being able to handle our life and death.

What Jesus did with Lazarus was unusual, but entirely within His power.

We ask the Lord to give us the right balance in dealing with these things.

Ph 1,20-26 :I am happy to live happy to die, whatever God wants, I want.

We see this with Jesus himself. He died to please the Father, while also fulfilling His own will, over which He had perfect control.

We should take reasonable care of our health and try to live as long as possible, but not clinging to life through fear.  The martyrs show us the way. They could see Heaven more than earth as they gave up their lives.

It is alright to want these things, which are really different stages of the same reality.

So it is natural if I pray for a safe trip, or a good result to the medical test, but we will be able to cope with whatever happens.

I want to be as good a disciple as I can be. And that is the basis for a happy death.

We will not resent dying but will see it as primarily a joyful thing,  as we go to a better state.

We wish this for others whom we love, that each person will come to the full spiritual understanding of his own death and what is involved.

The miracle of Lazarus was just God’s way of  demonstrating the power that he has, and the goodwill He has towards us.

Who can raise the dead by a word? He whose voice will bring forth the dead (Jn 5,25).

He is teaching us two things. Let go of those you love, and do not doubt that there is enough Life there to receive them.

We are now in the last two weeks  of Lent and we will have deeper thoughts on these matters at this time.

The Crucifixion looks like the end of the road and the crushing of all  hope; yet so quickly is that position reversed.

Life overpowers death, and we must get used to that idea. Only three days in the tomb, a great many more days outside!

More generally this is how God deals with us. We  think He has forgotten us etc, but then He reveals His hand and we realize He has never left us.  How slow we are to adopt that message; can we go a little faster this final stage of Lent?

 

 

4th Sunday of Lent A 15 March 2026 Sermon

4^th Sunday of Lent  A  15 March 2026 Live in the light

If we had to form a visual concept of heaven, I don’t think many people would  think of heaven as ever being in the dark. No dark, not even shadow.

By the time we get to Heaven we will have finished with darkness. You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord… have nothing to do with the futile works of darkness. (Ep 5 ,8-14  second reading)

Our Lord gives the man sight, for the first time. It was an exercise of that same power by which He created all things.

He was showing how powerfully and how rightly God can intervene.

And the man would have received perfect vision too. God does all things well!

What does this miracle mean for us?

Jesus is restoring our spiritual sight, so that we can tell night from day when it comes to right living, making right decisions.

We see with the eyes of faith, and things previously strange suddenly seem to make more sense (like the need for the sacrifices we make, for instance.)

If we had perfect spiritual sight we would never sin; our judgment would be accurate at all times and in all matters.

This is how it would have been for Our Lady, the perfect eyes of faith leading to the best possible way of living this life.

Our adherence to moral truth would work the same as with physical sight we keep to a well-defined path and do not go toppling off to the side

Somehow it is different when we get to moral sight; we wander off the path quite freely and do not seem to consider that a bad thing.

Due to there being so much sin in the world there is much distortion when it comes to perceiving reality. Wrong judgments are made, and many wrong turnings, leading to much disorder.

Jesus shows us the difference between good and evil, leading us to choose the good which eventually becomes obvious.

In Lent especially we are looking for the light which is eternal and infinite, to be ‘children of light, so that our deeds are good’ (Ep 5,8)

How can we acquire so much clarity?  Different elements come together - . prayer, good works, sacraments, study, discipline etc.

All these things will restore our sight, and make it easier for us to take the obvious right course.

We break free from all distortions and come to see our need for grace and mercy from God.

Whatever truth we grasp we can build upon and habitually make better choices.

We will have eyes to see the glory of God, as much as our nature can absorb.

It is the light that God Himself emanates. It will have a beauty beyond anything we can see or imagine here.

The city lights will lose their appeal -  the passing and often false lights of our world. We will seek instead the purer light of Heaven.

Heavenly light inspires us with its beauty, greater than any earthly light.

Lord, that I may see (Mk 10,51)- the blind man by the side of the road.

3rd Sunday of Lent 8 March 2026 Sermon

3rd Sunday of Lent  8 March 2026 The right God

We worship in spirit and in truth, Our Lord says to the woman at the well (Jn 4,23-24).

The Samaritans had a hazy idea of God, other nations even hazier still; but the Jews had the real God and the right God.

Their response to God was not brilliant but it does help, if we are having a conversation, to know whom we are addressing.

People have formed all sorts of notions about God – that there is more than one god, that gods are not much different from humans when it comes to faults and passions; they plot murder and revenge etc They were likely to get angry and demand obedience from the people.

In the absence of revelation from the real God mankind would struggle, though some of it was their own fault for not obeying. St Paul has put it that all people should be able to work out at least basic truths about God, from the signs around them. (Romans 1,19-20)

Coming to our own time, by now we know a lot about God because He has come down from Heaven to tell us!

We know this many things about God: because He has told us, shown us, or taught us through the Church, the wisdom and example of many saints.

1) God created us to share in His life. He is not cruel as past ages often thought. He wants us to be happy, always happy, and intervenes to help us towards Heaven, with as much Heaven as can be had in the present world.

When we say, God loves us, that is what it translates to – He seeks to maximise our happiness, take away all sorrow.

2) God has revealed Himself carefully as humans have only limited capacity, can only take in so much at a time. So Our Lord clarified much of the Old Testament teaching, not to abolish it, but to fulfil it (Mt 5,17).

3) There is only one God, who is eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing; has no beginning or ending. There cannot be any other god, because the one we worship is infinite. We cannot have half of infinity; it has to be all.

There is no part of time or place outside of the reach of God's knowledge and power.

4) God was not just for the Jews; the kingdom of God was not a political kingdom. It was spiritual and meant for all people, of whatever tribe or race.

The battle for clarity, for truth in worship has been going on ever since.

There is only one real God, and here He is, in this church, with us who profess union with Him. We become one with Him in filial obedience, trust and love.

And then the matter of loving others, what God does so much better than we do, but we learn as we go. We hate no one, reject no one, while we do insist on truth in worship and all dealings with God.  If we seek Him in humility of heart, we will get to know God better and eventually claim Him in Heaven.

Meanwhile, the woman went and fetched her neighbours to see this remarkable man (Jn 4,28-30). We must do the same insofar as we want everyone to know what we have experienced.

Plus we need those neighbours to take their place here with us, and supplement the Church’s presence and activity in such urgent times.